Mandela’s first wife dies

JOHANNESBURG: Evelyn Mandela, the first wife of South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 82 after a respiratory illness, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Evelyn Mandela, who was a cousin of the late leading anti-apartheid figure Walter Sisulu, a close comrade of Mandela, died on Friday, the newspaper said.

The deeply religious daughter of a mineworker, Evelyn Mandela married Nelson Mandela in 1944.

She bore him four children, one of whom died after nine months, but in 1955 she gave him an ultimatum to choose between her or the African National Congress, the continent’s oldest liberation movement. —AFP

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