Mandela, now 94, was arrested as a young liberation fighter on August 5, 1962, near the town of Howick, just months after he founded the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC).
He had recently returned from a trip across Africa drumming up support for the new Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), or “Spear of the Nation”.
A modest monument at the site of his arrest was put up in 1996, but it will now be eclipsed by the monumental sculpture made up of 50 steel rods of between five and 10 metres high symbolizing the prison.
When viewed from the right angle, a portrait Mandela steers into focus.
A makeshift exhibition — modelled from the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg — opened at the site last year, pending the construction of a proper museum.
