Johannesburg - South Africa's iconic former president Nelson Mandela will return to the prison whence he walked free 20 years ago, on the anniversary of his release on February 11, the government announced Friday.

     Mandela, 91, will attend an event at Groot Drakenstein jail (formerly called Victor Verster prison) commemorating his release, Deputy Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said.

     President Jacob Zuma, members of the Mandela family and other veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle, including two other surviving so-called Rivonia Trialists, Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg, will also attend the ceremony, which is expected to draw 20,000 people, Mbalula said.

     The Rivonia Trialists is the name given to the group of eightactivists, including Mandela, who were sentenced to life in prison for sabotage by the racist white apartheid regime in 1964.

     The jail outside the town of Paarl in the Western Cape is where where Mandela spent the last years of his 27-year imprisonment for defying white supremacist rule.

     The celebrations will include a 500-metre walk, commemorating Mandela's walk to freedom from the prison with his then wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Madikizela-Mandela will participate in the walk, according to a statement by the ruling African National Congress.

     Mandela himself is very frail and unable to walk unassisted.

     Later that day, Mandela, who became South Africa's first democratically-elected president in 1994, will attend the opening of parliament in Cape Town.

     Zuma, who is South Africa's fourth post-apartheid president, will open parliament with a state of the nation speech.

DPA