Yes, US$250,000 is what it would cost you to have a feel of Nelson Mandela’s life in prison.
An auction is being held in South Africa to give people an opportunity to spend one night in the same jail that held anti-apartheid icon for 18 years.
A charity is taking bids, opening at US$250,000, to allow 67 people to stay overnight in the old maximum-security jail in Robben Island, where Mandela was locked away from the rest of the world.
The event is being organized by a group called CEO Sleepout to mark the day Mandela would have turned 100 years old.
The South African founding father dies in 2013 aged 95.
The bidding will close at midnight local time on 17 July, just a day after Mandela’s birthday is marked.
No auction of its kind has ever been done in the country. The highest bidder will win the honour of spending the night inside the historic Cell Number 7, where Mandela was locked.
The celebrated freedom fighter was released in 1990 as South Africa began to move away from apartheid, a process completed by the first multi-racial elections in 1994 when he became the country’s first black president.
Some of the money raised in the auction will be given to a US group providing prisoners with access to public university-level education, CEO Sleepout said.
So far three bids have been registered on the charity’s website.
