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Mandela`s biggest regret"

South Africa is closely watching; so does Tanzania, and the rest of the world. But as the world closely monitors the fate of anti-apartheid icon, the biggest regret for Nelson Mandela, a man whose actions liberated millions in his country and inspired billions globally, was failure to have a stable family.

He has respect, fame and a lasting legacy inside and outside South Africa, but according to his words, missed one major thing, which he came to regret: stable personal lives.

Nelson Mandela’s life has always known one thing: struggle; he spent 27 years in jail during his struggle to liberate South Africa from brutal apartheid regime. He struggled to build a family, but ended up as husband to three wives, a father to many children and an unstable family. To his credit, he rebuilt his rainbow nation during a single term in its presidency.

Now he lies in his hospital bed; he has clocked 30 days fighting for his life. But as he struggles with his life, back home his family is also involved in a bitter struggle over a burial site.

But as he fights for dear life, Mandela reveals his biggest regret, quote, Failure to have stable personal lives.

“When your life is the struggle, as mine was, there is little room left for family… That has always been my greatest regret, and the most painful aspect of the choice I made.” Mandela wrote in his memoirs.

Judging by what transpired within his family early this week, it’s obvious Mandela was right: He sacrificed his life to liberate millions of blacks in South Africa, but at the end, lost the opportunity to be a father -- his right to live close to his family.

On Friday, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu had few choice, if saucy, words for the feuding family of Nelson Mandela, saying it was like spitting on the face of the world’s most respected leader.

The Mandela's family dispute comes at precarious times. The statesman is in hospital yet again, and this time, on life support for a recurring lung infection.

Yesterday, South Africa’s newspaper, The Star, published a story titled Mandela: A family of struggle in which all key members of the anti-apartheid icon who are currently involved in a family feud are well explained.

Dr Pumla Makaziwe Mandela

The only surviving child from Mandela’s “first” family, Makaziwe has often spoken out about the void between her father and his children.

“‘I used to talk to my brothers about it and they would tell me ‘Don’t look for your father. He has given his life to politics. He lives and breathes politics’,” she told the Daily Mail in 2010.

In an excerpt from his own, Conversations with Myself, Mandela recalled a visit from friends the night before he was again set to leave home on business: “We sat up until about midnight, and as they were leaving the house, my daughter Makaziwe, then two years old, awoke and asked me if she could come along with me... For some seconds a sense of guilt persecuted me and the excitement about the journey evaporated. I kissed her and put her to bed and, as she dozed away, I was off.”

It didn’t get any easier after Mandela returned into his children’s lives.

“I still think that after he was released, he should have created some space for the family, for his children,” Makaziwe told the Daily Mail years ago.

“We were ignored, or at least not acknowledged, while he was preoccupied with politics… Even now, when he has more time, he doesn’t make the effort to really engage.” Still, it’s been Makaziwe who’s come most strongly to the defence of her father, recently calling the media covering his hospital stay “racist” and “vultures”.

She has also teamed up with half-sister Zenani to have Bally Chuene, George Bizos and Tokyo Sexwale removed from the Mandela Trust.

And, perhaps with time, her rift with her father has healed.

“It’s the hand that he stretches out,” she said earlier this year.

“It is the touching of the hand that speaks volumes for me. And for me, if you ask me what I would treasure, it is this moment that I treasure with my father. It means ‘My child, I’m here’. It means to me that ‘I’m here. I love you. I care’.”

Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela

The chief of Mvezo and Mandela’s oldest grandson, Mandla is said to have come under pressure after his grandfather lost both his sons.

“He was devastated when my older brothers passed away,” Makaziwe told the Daily Mail in 2010, a time before legal battles had pitted the two against each other. “Now he’s pinning his hopes on my brother Makgatho’s sons.”

Mandla has often spoken of the influence his grandfather had on his life and his studies, because he was the chosen one to lead the family.

“He really wanted to ensure that if there was a next one in mind to take over and look after the Mandela legacy, he needed that individual to have a strong foundation,” Mandla was quoted as saying by the African Review in 2010.

But as the burial saga swirls out of control, even this Mandela endorsement has been questioned. This week, his brother Ndaba said Mandla was born out of wedlock – making him ineligible as chief.

It’s now a fight over who is the “most” Mandela.

Ndaba was born of infidelity, Mandla said. Mbuso and Andile were not really his brothers, he said. Makaziwe had no place in the Mandela family business, he said. And he knew the true wishes of his grandfather, he said.

“This is the very family who have taken their own grandfather to court for his money,” he told the media yesterday. “I still refuse to be associated with the court actions that are a clear squabble over my grandfather’s money.”

The wives

Evelyn Mase, the first wife

“I think I loved him the first time I saw him,” Mase told her biographer, Fatima Meer. But after their marriage dissolved owing to what Mandela called ideological differences, Mase felt bitter and isolated from the “second family”.

“How can a man who has committed adultery and left his wife and children be Christ?” she told a journalist after his release. “The whole world worships Nelson too much. He is only a man.” She died in 2004.



Winnie Mandela, the second wife

Zami – that’s what Mandela called Winnie, for whom he pined from prison. “The letters from you and the family are like dew and summer rains and all the national beauty that refreshes the mind and makes one feel confident,” he wrote to her in 1976.

In 1992, they divorced on the back of allegations of Winnie’s infidelity.

“I shall personally never regret the life Comrade Nomzamo and I tried to share together… I part from my wife with no recriminations,” Mandela announced.

Graça Machel, the third wife

In a 1998 interview with The Mercury’s sister paper, The Star, Machel called her then boyfriend “simple, humble and soft”. She said they were “two grown-up people who love each other”, but said they would not get married. That was January. In July, they wed.

From a personal file published in Conversations with Myself, Mandela wrote: “I cannot describe my joy and happiness to receive the love and warmth of such a humble but gracious and brilliant lady.”

The children

Evelyn’s sons

When Madiba Thembekile, Mandela’s first-born son, died in a car accident aged 24, his father felt he should have been prepared. It was the second child he had lost – his first daughter, also named Makaziwe, died of meningitis when she was nine months old, said Mase.

Thembi’s death was a blow. Mandela, who was in prison, couldn’t attend the funeral and transferred his hopes to Makgatho, his second eldest. It was a strained relationship. Makgatho was only 12 when his father went to prison.

“I will be failing in my duties if I did not point out that the death of Thembi brings a heavy responsibility on your shoulders. Now you are the eldest child,” he wrote to Makgatho in 1969. When Makgatho died of Aids in 2005, Mandela reportedly said: “My son was an attorney by profession and he was actually admitted as an attorney by the judge president of this province, which was a great honour. Beyond that, I’ve nothing else to say.”

Winnie’s daughters

It was 1977 when Zenani Dlamini first hugged her father, she would tell US media in 1987, such was the impact of Mandela’s imprisonment of the lives of her and her younger sister Zindzi.

In 1969, he wrote to his daughters from prison: “Once again our beloved Mummy has been arrested and now she and Daddy are away in jail…

“For long you may live like orphans without your own home and parents… Perhaps never again will Mummy and Daddy join you in house No 8115 Orlando West, the one place in the whole world that is so dear to our hearts.”

Mandela would later writes: “As I later said at my daughter Zindzi’s wedding, it seems to be the destiny of freedom fighters to have unstable personal lives. When your life is the struggle, as mine was, there is little room left for family. “That has always been my greatest regret, and the most painful aspect of the choice I made.”