How many children did Nelson Mandela have?
How many children did he have from each of his 3 wives and which children were with which wife?
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- HOW MANY WIVES DID NELSON MANDELA HAVE
- king mswati\s daughter
Mandela has been married three times, has fathered six children, has twenty grandchildren, and a growing number of great-grandchildren.
He has six children in all — four from his first marriage, Thembi, Mkgatho, two daughters called Makaziwe, two from his second, Zeni and Zindzi, and none from his third.
His first marrage in 1944 was to Evelyn Mase. Mase was a nurse who he met in the Transkei. They were married for 14 years and had 2 sons and 2 daughters.
Thembi – died in a car crash in 1969, Mkgatho – died of AIDS on the 6th January 2005 in Johanesburg at the age of 57, both daughters were called Makaziwe, the first died when she was just 9 months old.
Mandela married his second wife, Winnie Madikizela, in 1958. They had two daughters, Zeni and Zindzi.
Marriage and family
Mandela has been married three times, has fathered six children, has twenty grandchildren, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. His grandson is Chief Mandla Mandela.
First Marriage
Mandela’s first marriage was to Evelyn Ntoko Mase who, like Mandela, was also from what later became the Transkei area of South Africa, although they actually met in Johannesburg. The couple had two sons, Madiba Thembekile (Thembi) (born 1946) and Makgatho Lewanika (born 1950), and two daughters, both named Makaziwe (known as Maki; born 1947 and 1953). Their first daughter died aged nine months, and they named their second daughter in her honor.
The couple broke up in 1957 after 13 years, divorcing under the multiple strains of his constant absences, devotion to revolutionary agitation, and the fact she was a Jehovah’s Witness, a religion which requires political neutrality.
Thembi was killed in a car crash in 1969 at the age of 25, while Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island. All their children were educated at the Waterford Kamhlaba.
Evelyn Mase died in 2004.
Second marriage
Mandela’s second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also came from the Transkei area, although they, too, met in Johannesburg, where she was the city’s first black social worker. They had two daughters, Zenani (Zeni), born 4 February 1958, and Zindziswa (Zindzi), born 1960. Later, Winnie would be deeply torn by family discord which mirrored the country’s political strife; while her husband was serving a life sentence on the Robben Island prison, her father became the agriculture minister in the Transkei. The marriage ended in separation (April, 1992) and divorce (March, 1996), fueled by political estrangement.
Mandela still languished in prison when his daughter Zenani was married to Prince Thumbumuzi Dlamini in 1973, elder brother of King Mswati III of Swaziland. As a member by marriage of a reigning foreign dynasty, she was able to visit her father during his South African imprisonment while other family members were denied access. The Dlamini couple live and run a business in Boston. One of their sons, Prince Cedza Dlamini (born 1976), educated in the United States, has followed in his grandfather’s footsteps as an international advocate for human rights and humanitarian aid. Thumbumuzi and Mswati’s sister, Princess Mantfombi Dlamini, is the chief consort to King Goodwill Zwelithini of KwaZulu-Natal, who "reigns but does not rule" over South Africa’s largest ethnic group under the auspices of South Africa’s government. One of Queen Mantfombi’s sons is expected to eventually succeed Goodwill as monarch of the Zulus, whose Inkatha Party leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, was the rival of Mandela during much of his presidency.
Third marriage
Mandela remarried, once again, in 1998 on his 80th birthday, to Graça Machel née Simbine, widow of Samora Machel, the former Mozambican president and ANC ally who was killed in an air crash 12 years earlier. The wedding followed months of international negotiations to set the unprecedented bride-price to be remitted to Machel’s clan. Said negotiations were conducted on Mandela’s behalf by his traditional sovereign, King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo, born 1964. Ironically, it was this paramount chief’s grandfather, the Regent Jongintaba, whose selection of a bride for him prompted Mandela to flee to Johannesburg as a young man.
Mandela still maintains a home at Qunu in the realm of his royal nephew (second cousin thrice-removed in Western reckoning), whose university expenses he defrayed and whose privy councillor he remains.