Nelson Mandela still towers over South Africa, but as he turns 86 this weekend a project to immortalise the anti-apartheid icon with a sculpture bigger than New York's Statue of Liberty was cast in doubt.

Mandela, preparing for a low-key family birthday party tomorrow and known to shy away from self-congratulatory symbols, is probably not terribly upset.

The Mail & Guardian newspaper said yesterday a property dispute looked likely to derail plans to erect a 65 m high statue of Mandela in the gritty industrial city of Port Elizabeth.

"Nelson Mandela's giant birthday gift flops owing to battle over prime property," the newspaper said.

Officials in Port Elizabeth, now renamed Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality, had no immediate comment on the report while the head of the "Statue of Freedom" committee could not be contacted.

The Mandela statue -- which would stand head and shoulders above the Statue of Liberty -- was the most ambitious of a slew of projects across South Africa, ranging from Johannesburg's new Nelson Mandela Bridge to numerous roads, hospitals and schools named after the country's first black president.

A 6 m Mandela statute already bestrides the pedestrian plaza at Johannesburg's swankiest shopping centre, which renamed itself Nelson Mandela Square this year to honour the tenth anniversary of the end of apartheid.

The hagiography is known to unsettle the Nobel Peace laureate, who refers to himself as a footsoldier of the African National Congress (ANC), the liberation party he led to victory in South Africa's first all-race elections in 1994.

Mandela has officially retired from public life, but still keeps up a punishing schedule including a set of appearances at this week's Aids conference in Bangkok, highlighting the global epidemic which has become one of his major causes.

The Port Elizabeth statue has received no such backing, with Mandela indicating through his spokesperson that he could not be involved in the project.

Officials in Port Elizabeth were more upbeat, saying the development – which was supposed to include a museum, an African music archive, a cruiseliner terminal, conference centre and a residential marina -- would jumpstart tourism in one of South Africa's poorest regions.

"From the time construction starts on the Statue of Freedom, no international tourist will be able to consider a visit to South Africa complete without a visit to Port Elizabeth," the project committee said in its prospectus.

Estimated to cost about R500-million, the statue development had its bizarre aspects including plans to construct Mandela's "skin" out of metal from recycled guns and a waxworks museum featuring notables ranging from Anne Frank to Yasser Arafat.

Not everyone was impressed.

"When it comes to blatant exploitation and unadulterated crudity of formulation, you can't do a lot better than this," newspaper columnist Robert Kirby wrote of the plan.

But it appears that land use issues, rather than aesthetic complaints, may be the downfall of the statue plan.

The Mail & Guardian said conflicting lease agreements over the site owned by state transport firm Transnet had resulted in a court case which could end the statue plan forever.

"Transnet has no intention of participating in the proposed development," the company said in court papers, adding that the project's backers "are propagating the freedom statue project without having secured any rights to the land in question." – Reuters.