/ 10 May 2005

Mandela sues over forged sketches

Nelson Mandela has filed a lawsuit against a former associate and a businessman for selling forgeries of his art work for millions of dollars, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

”The papers were filed in Johannesburg yesterday [Monday],” said Mandela’s long-time lawyer and friend George Bizos, who defended him during the Rivonia treason trial during the apartheid era.

The lawsuit targets the elder statesman’s ex-lawyer Ismail Ayob and Ayob’s business associate Ross Calder, who are accused of selling fake art works bearing the magic Mandela moniker.

Bizos said Mandela is not trying to reach an out-of-court settlement with Calder, as the businessman has claimed in a newspaper.

”There are no negotiations,” Bizos said.

”He has attempted to negotiate but we have not responded because the stopping of the sale of the works is not negotiable.”

Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail — most of them at the infamous Robben Island prison off Cape Town — was released in 1990 and then decided to collaborate with ”an artist to produce limited edition paintings which he signed”, Bizos said.

The paintings are partially coloured sketches that depict a lighthouse on Robben Island under a purple sky, a view of a verdant patch as seen from a cell window with brown bars, a church on the island and a prison dormitory.

The works have been snapped up overseas by celebrity buyers.

The venture by South Africa’s first black president was aimed at raising funds for his Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.

Bizos said Mandela had stopped signing the art works in the hope that all the copies would be sold but it emerged from sources all over the world that Calder and Ayob had ”mechanically and photographically reproduced innumberable copies which are being sold at exorbitant prices”.

”We have no idea what monies have accrued and where they have gone,” said Bizos, adding that ”between R30-million and R40-million [$4,9-million, â,¬3,7-million] are not accounted for” during Ayob’s association with the fund-raising scheme.

Calder, in an interview with The Sunday Times newspaper, denied reports that he had made R25-million out of the venture and claimed his business retained ”only 25% to 30% of the revenue from the sale of Mandela art works”.

According to Calder’s website — www.touchofmandela.co.za — the Mandela art sold has a theoretical value of R575-million.

The art works up for grabs on Calder’s website include ”500 signed and numbered coloured lithographs and 50 artist’s proofs made from hand-drawn colour separations by Nelson Mandela”, with prices hovering about £7 000 or more.

Apart from 11 lithographs, there is a set of three prints of Mandela’s hands and a five-set sketch series of hands — ranging from a clenched fist signifying struggle to a handshake symbolising the ”future”.

In a letter of motivation accompanying the hand sketches, Mandela wrote they are ”not so much about my life as they are about my country”.

”I drew hands because they are powerful instruments. Hands can heal, punish or uplift. They can also be bound but a quest for righteousness can never be repressed.”

South African commentator Oupa Ngwenya recently wrote that he hoped the ”titanic court battle” would ”end this entrepreneurial saga”, adding that Mandela should ”not strain his spine bending backwards to accommodate those who have used his name for their own ends”.

Mandela is in the United States this week, where he is due to meet with President George Bush. – Sapa-AFP