Nelson Mandela: A Ladies’ Man Who Didn’t Always Have Time For His Family

As the Daily Mail puts it: ‘a dancing Ladies’ Man with a very tempestuous love life.

…in his youth, Mandela was a tall, powerfully built boxer and keen ballroom dancer renowned among his friends for his success with the opposite sex…

He met and married a beautiful nurse named Evelyn Mase (pictured), but began spending more nights away from home.

While Evelyn raised their three surviving children at home — one died as a baby — Mandela increasingly spent his evenings out.

‘In the townships, he was a ladies’ man, quite vain, immaculately tailored, a keen boxer and ballroom dancer,’ remembered Anthony Sampson, the late British journalist and a close friend of the country’s first black president…

He flaunted his female friends in front of Evelyn, even bringing them to the marital home.

Unable to ignore growing gossip that he had strayed, Evelyn demanded to know the truth. Furious, Nelson denied the allegations and insisted that any female friends he had were ‘political colleagues’.

‘The gossip continued and there were those who tried to console me by claiming he was bewitched,’ said Evelyn later.

Then came proof. ‘There was another woman and this one started coming home, walking into our bedroom, following him into the bathroom . . . I declared that I would not allow it.’ Allegations have even emerged that Mandela sired an illegitimate son by his legal secretary, Ruth Mompati, during this period…

The marriage broke down in acrimony, and in her divorce petition Evelyn made damaging allegations of domestic violence. She accused Mandela of beating and throttling her, and even threatening to attack her with an axe, forcing her to flee from the marital home and stating that living with him ‘had become dangerous and intolerable’.

Mandela categorically denied the accusations.

He met is second wife, Winnie, at a bus stop. She became an international figure in her own right while he was imprisoned.

Alone and isolated, she developed a fondness for cheap brandy and spent much of her nine years in exile hopelessly drunk.

Eventually, she was allowed to return to Johannesburg in 1986 — to be portrayed to the world by the ANC propaganda machine as a heroic figure battling for justice for her husband and the black masses.

In truth, she was a bitter woman consumed by hate who turned to violence and murder, lived off her husband’s name and ruthlessly protected her own interests.

Less than two years after his divorce from Winnie, Mandela married for a third time on his 80th birthday in 1998. This time, his bride was Graca Machel, the former wife of Mozambique’s president, who had been killed in 1986 in a mysterious plane crash blamed on South Africa’s apartheid spies…

Mandela found happiness with his third wife, but his children by Evelyn continued to have issues with their father.

Yet the same could never be said of the six children he is known to have fathered.

In a poignant insight into how his dedication to the political cause tore his family life apart, his eldest surviving child has told how, even in his final years, Mandela remained an aloof, cold figure unable to express love.

Contradicting the popular impression of him as an outgoing, warm individual, Maki, his daughter from his doomed marriage to Evelyn, said he was ‘open and extrovert to the world, but awkward in his intimate personal relationships with his own family’.

She said she and her two brothers, Thembi and Makgatho, felt angry towards their father for abandoning them by devoting his life to politics and, ultimately, ending up in jail.

Even after he was set free in 1990, she claimed his children took a back seat.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.