Nelson Mandela dead: Three wives and a family life haunted by shadow of tragedy

South Africa was moving forward, but nothing could make up for the toll taken on his family life by his years in prison – and before that on the run

Taken its toll: Mandela's personal life was filled with sadness, his second daughter Makaziwe was named after his first daughter who died aged nine months

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Mandela's personal life was filled with sadness and tragedy.
South Africa was moving forward, but nothing could make up for the toll taken on his family life by his years in prison – and his years before that on the run as a wanted man.
Known worldwide for his warmth and humanity, Mandela admitted he had been “a demanding, ambitious father” and “physically undemonstrative” with his children.
Married three times, he fathered six children and had more than 20 grandchildren and 13 ­great-grandchildren. But, in his lifetime, he also lost two sons, a daughter and a great-granddaughter in tragic circumstances. While in prison, he also missed the funerals of his mother and son, when the authorities refused to let him attend them.
After stepping down as President in 1999, he set about making amends to his family – becoming a father to his children as well as a nation.
The irony was that Mandela loved children. He delighted in spending time with his sons, daughters and grandchildren – and in meeting every new great-grandchild. He later moved back to the town where he was born, Qunu, to live as simply as his status would allow. With third wife Graca he also supported children’s charities and loved to be surrounded by young people.

First wife: Evelyn

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Still, the shadows of the past were never far away. Mandela’s first marriage, to Evelyn Ntoko Mase, lasted 13 years but was put under strain by his days on the run as a revolutionary, when he would pop up at rallies all over the country confounding the authorities but could never return to his family home.
Three of four children from that first marriage died. The couple’s first daughter, Makaziwe, died from illness aged just nine months and they named their second daughter in her honour.
Their eldest son Thembi, 25, died in a car crash in 1969, Mandela – ­imprisoned on Robben Island – was not allowed to go to his funeral.
Then, when the couple’s youngest son Makgatho died from Aids in 2005, it inspired Mandela to take up the fight against the disease – using his famous name to challenge the taboos surrounding it.

Makgatho: Died from Aids, aged 54

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 He led by example, saying that he wanted to let it be known publicly how his son had died. “That is why I announced my son has died of Aids,” he said. “Let us give publicity to HIV/Aids and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness, like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died of HIV/Aids and people will stop regarding it as extraordinary.”
In 2003, he established a campaign to fight Aids that was so close to his heart he gave it his prison number, 46664.
Apart from the loss of his children and the road accident that killed his great-granddaughter Zenami in 2010, there were other deep sadnesses. Without a doubt, one of the deepest was Mandela’s failed marriage to Winnie.
From childhood, Mandela had always loved women. In Long Walk to Freedom, he writes: “The game I most enjoyed playing with the girls was what we called khetha, or choose-the-one-you-like.
“This was a spur of the moment sport that took place when we accosted a group of girls our own age and demanded that each select the boy she loved. Our rules dictated that the girl’s choice be respected and once she had chosen her favourite she was free to continue on her journey escorted by the lucky boy she loved.”
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela – his second wife – came from Mandela’s own Transkei region. The country’s first black social worker, she was working in Johannesburg when they met. Married in June 1958, Nelson and Winnie Mandela had two daughters, Zenani, born in 1958, and Zindzi, born 1960 – just 18 months before her father was sent to Robben Island.
Zenani grew up to marry Prince Thumbumuzi Dlamini, elder brother of King Mswati III of ­Swaziland.

Premiere: Mandela's daughter Zindzi

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 At the age of 25, Zindzi, who had barely known her father, read out his speech refusing his conditional pardon in 1985. Mandela’s letters from prison overflow with love for Winnie. “Whenever I write you, I feel that inside physical warmth, that makes me forget all my problems,” he says in one letter.
“I become full of love.”
In another he wrote: “We couldn’t fulfil our wishes, as we had planned, to have a baby boy.
“I had hoped to build you a refuge, no matter how small, so that we would have a place for rest and sustenance before the arrival of the sad, dry days. I fell down and couldn’t do these things. I am as one building castles in the air.”
During Mandela’s incarceration, Winnie took on the mantle of his political heir and the “Mother of the Nation”.

Love: With second wife Winnie

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 But her increasingly radical views caused tensions between them. Her supporters were behind the infamous “necklace” murders, where tyres filled with petrol were put around the chests and arms of suspected collaborators and set alight.
Then her personal bodyguards, known as the Mandela United Football Club, kidnapped a 14-year-old activist named Stompie Moeketsi who was later found murdered.
The ANC leadership declared Winnie was out of control but Mandela, in jail and in ill health, refused to repudiate her.
On his release in 1990, Winnie walked by his side but Mandela refused to move into her Soweto mansion and relations between them cooled. In 1991, Winnie was charged with the assault and kidnapping of Stompie.
Initially convicted and given six years in jail, Winnie appealed and had the sentence reduced to a fine. For many years, Mandela had tried to find excuses for the wife he felt he had left abandoned during his years on Robben Island. But in 1992, they announced their separation.
Divorce followed in March 1996, with Mandela citing Winnie’s adultery.
A newspaper editor had shown him a letter that confirmed Winnie had been unfaithful. In court, after gentle prodding by his own lawyer, Mandela quietly described how he had been “the loneliest man” after he was released from a 27-year imprisonment in 1990.

 

 Winnie, he testified, had been having an affair with a young colleague and never entered his bedroom while he was awake.
Yet even on the day of their formal divorce, Mandela still paid tribute to Winnie – known inside the ANC as Comrade Nomzamo – saying: “I shall never regret the life Comrade Nomzamo and I tried to share together. Circumstances beyond our control however dictated it should be otherwise.
“I part from my wife with no recriminations. I embrace her with all the love and affection I have nursed for her inside and outside prison from the moment I first met her.”
In 2003, Winnie was found guilty of 43 counts of fraud and 25 of theft, and was sentenced to five years in prison. This was later appealed and she received a suspended sentence.
As a result of the initial verdict she resigned both her parliamentary seat and the presidency of the ANC Women’s League.
In Long Walk to Freedom Mandela writes that Winnie “married a man who soon left her; that man became a myth; and then that myth returned home and proved to be just a man after all”. In 2007, Winnie was elected to the ANC national executive, winning the most votes of any candidate. Whatever scandals scar her past, she remains a powerful figure in the ANC and in South Africa.

His third wife: Graca

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 On his 80th birthday in 1998, Mandela married Graca Machel. She was the widow of Samora Machel, one of his old ANC allies who became president of Mozambique and had died in an air crash 12 years earlier.
Graca was 52 when the couple married – almost three decades Mandela’s junior.
She was an international stateswoman in her own right and already well known as a ­humanitarian activist and campaigner on women’s and
children’s rights.
After more than a decade of marriage – and a chance to at last spend time with the children who saw so little of him in their childhoods – Mandela called Graca “my life”.