JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela had a way with words, but not quite like this.

Cyclists traversing Johannesburg in the former South African president’s honor wore T-shirts with one of his many inspiring quotations, along with a glaring typographical error in the word “freedom.”

The T-shirt read: “The purpose of freedoom is to create it for others.”

Organizer Hugh Fraser said Tuesday that 5,000 T-shirts with the typo were made for Sunday’s 22-mile (35-kilometer) “Freedom Ride,” which passed landmarks in downtown Johannesburg and the city’s Soweto area.

Fraser says the spelling mistake was “a bit of a PR hiccup” and that the cycling event was otherwise a big success. It came two days after the July 18 birthday of Mandela, who died in December at the age of 95.