by Chi Ibe

Nelson Mandela, who passed on at 95 yesterday is reverred across the world as a stateman, and an icon extra-ordinaire. One area he wasnt’ so lucky though was married.

He divorced his first wife even before he spent 27 years in prison when he was 26 and she 22. They were married for 13 years and they had four children.

”I could not give up my life in the struggle, and she could not live with my devotion to something other than herself and her family,” he explained in his autobiography ‘Long Walk to Freedom’.

He next married the famous Winnie Madikizela in 1949, three years before he was thrown in jail.

“One day Nelson just pulled up on the side of the road and said: ‘You know, there is a woman who is a dressmaker, you must go and see her, she is going to make your wedding gown. How many bridesmaids would you like to have?” she wrote in her 1984 autobiography ‘Part of My Soul Went With Him’

“That’s how I was told I was getting married to him! It was not put arrogantly; it was just something that was taken for granted. I just asked: ‘What time?'”

That marriage, heralded across the world ended bitterly in a front-page divorce where he complained of abandonment.

He married the great love of his life, Graca Machel when he was 80.

As his biographer, Anthony Sampson once said, “he was a ladies’ man and proud of it”.