Makgatho Mandela

Who was Makgatho Mandela?

Makgatho Lewanika Mandela was the son of Nelson Mandela and his first wife Evelyn Mase. He was an attorney, widowed with four sons. He died of AIDS on 6 January 2005 in Johannesburg.

His second wife Zondi died on 13 July 2003 at age 46. At first, her cause of death was given as pneumonia; after Makgatho's death, their son Mandla later announced that her pneumonia had been a complication of AIDS.

When Nelson Mandela announced the cause of his son's death, he said: "Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like tuberculosis, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of HIV/AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary."

Makgatho Mandela is sometimes wrongly referred to as the older son of Nelson Mandela, but his brother Madiba Thembekile Mandela was born in 1945. Thembi was killed in a car crash in 1969.