Former South African president, Nelson Mandela, was a man who practised and preached the power of love. In fact, he believed in love so much that he exchanged vows with three different women in his lifetime. With three wives, six children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, Mandela left behind a big family. As a political activist, he was not above controversy and his love life often paid the price. Toluwani OLAMITOKE examines the kinds of relationships he had with his women.
Evelyn Mase (1944-1958)
Mandela married his first wife, Evelyn Mase in 1944, the same year he co-founded the African National Congress Youth League.
Like him, Evelyn Wase hailed from the rural Transkei and had come to Johannesburg in the early 1940s to carve out a living in the big city.
She was the cousin of African National Congress (ANC) stalwart, Walter Sisulu and met Mandela in Sisulu’s home in Soweto, southwest of Johannesburg, in 1944.
Evelyn was said to have confessed while speaking on her love life with Mandela, “I think I loved him the first time I saw him.” They married months later.
Working as a nurse, she supported him as he completed his law studies. Their first years together as newlyweds sounded like typical marital bliss — bathing their three babies and cooking together.
But Evelyn soon became resentful of her husband’s increasingly noticeable absences and buried herself in religion.
Mandela who was often refered to as a charismatic “ladies man” was said to have often flaunted his female “political colleagues” in front of Evelyn.
“There was another woman and this one started coming home, walking into our bedroom, following him into the bathroom,” Evelyn claimed.
“I declared that I would not allow it.”
When Mandela was arrested for treason the first time, he came home on bail to find Evelyn had gone, leaving behind their two youngest children.
She returned to Transkei, ran a shop and remarried in her 70s.
In a later interview, she remarked bitterly, “How can a man who has committed adultery and left his wife and children be Christ? The whole world worships Nelson too much. He is only a man.”
Despite their strife, when she died, Mandela attended the funeral in Johannesburg alongside his second and third wives.
Winnie Madikizela (1958-1996)
Then there was, of course, Winnie. Out of his three marriages and lesser known relationships, his three-decade long relationship with Winnie Madikizela is probably remembered best.
Winnie came into Mandela’s life at the start of a second treason trial, which saw him jailed for 27 years.
She too came from the country, but took to the city, and once she met Mandela, also dived into politics.
When they met at a bus stop, Nelson described it as love at first sight. They were soon married in June 1958, just a year after he divorced Evelyn.
But the honeymoon phase was short and sweet. Soon after saying “I do”, she was arrested for an incendiary speech, prompting Mandela to remark proudly, “I think I married trouble.”
The couple had two daughters before the prison doors slammed behind Mandela in 1964.
Over the next 27 years, from his jail cell on Robben Island, he penned love letters to Winnie. In his book, Long Walk To Freedom, he wrote: “My dearest Winnie, your beautiful photo still stands about two feet above my left shoulder as I write this note. I dust it carefully every morning, for to do so gives me the pleasant feeling that I’m caressing you as in the old days. I even touch your nose with mine to recapture the electric current that used to flush through my blood whenever I did so.”
In the coming years, Winnie was in and out of jail herself as the police hounded her in a bid to demoralise him.
And despite the love letters and prison visits, it was political strife and alleged affairs on Winnie’s part that eventually drove a wedge between the couple. They divorced in 1996.
Graca Machel (1998-2013)
Less than two years after divorcing Winnie, Mandela was dating his soon-to-be third and last wife, Graca Machel, who was described as a serious but warm woman 27 years younger.
Graca’s first contact with Mandela came in 1986 when her husband, Samora Machel, died in an air crash many believe was orchestrated by the apartheid regime, and he wrote to her from prison.
She was still in mourning when they met in person in 1990, but two years later, Mandela became the godfather of her stepchildren and in 1996, they were spotted at President Robert Mugabe’s wedding.
Mandela was in love again, and was reported to have told reporters when asking him on the relationship between him and Graca that, “Late in life, I am blooming like a flower because of the love and support she has given me.”
On July 18, 1998— his 80th birthday, Graca broke her vow that she would not marry another president.
While being a proud husband, Mandela sometimes found it hard to keep pace with the younger woman.
“She is busier than I am. We meet for lunch, go off and then only see each other again for supper. I wish I had married a wife who was less busy,” he quipped to students at a ceremony in March 2007.
She famously got along well with Mandela’s ex-wife, Winnie. “I call her little sister and she calls me big sister, we share everything,” Winnie said in an interview. “When she talks to me, she talks about ‘our husband’.” They were both by his side in his final days.
Amina Cachalia
For Mandela, one might consider Amina Cachalia as “the one who got away” in his lifetime of loves.
Amina, a longtime Indian anti-apartheid and women’s rights activist, became close friends with Mandela over the years.
When her husband, ANC activist, Yusuf Cachalia, died in 1995, he professed his love for her.
In a passage from her biography, ‘When Hope and History Rhyme’, she describes intimate visits from the former president of South Africa:
“On one of these visits, I must have been looking rather flustered as I bustled about doing my chores. Mandela sat me down on the two-seater couch in the living room and kissed me passionately. Running his fingers through my hair, he said: ‘’Do you know that you are an exceptionally beautiful, vivacious and enticing young lady?’’
“I hollered at him. He looked very worried and wanted to know what was so wrong with what he had said. I replied gently: ‘I’m not a young lady; I am a middle-aged woman.’”
Amina died earlier this year at the age of 83.
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