Mandela and Thembi

Thembekile (known as Thembi) was Mandela's older son (with his first wife, Evelyn) and his third-born child. Because of his long working hours, Mandela did not spend much time with the boy and his siblings. He tells us how Thembi responded to that situation:

One day...my wife [Evelyn] informed me that my elder son, Thembi, then five, had asked her, "Where does Daddy live?" I had been returning home late at night, long after he had gone to sleep, and departing early in the morning before he woke. I did not relish being deprived of the company of my children. I missed them a great deal during those days, long before I had any inkling that I would spend decades apart from them. (Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, page 119.)

After his parents divorced, Thembi was upset. Mandela tells us:

. . . Following the breakup, Thembi would frequently wear my clothes, even though they were far too large for him; they gave him some kind of attachment to his too-often-distant father. (Long Walk to Freedom, page 209.)

While Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island, Thembi was killed in a car accident. His father was not allowed to attend the funeral of his twenty-five-year-old son.

Not long before Thembi died, Mandela had also lost his Mother. The anguished prisoner wrote the following words to a friend:

I have lost both Thembi and Ma, and I must confess that the order that had reigned in my soul has almost vanished.