Thembi, alone of all Nelson's children, was old enough at the time of his imprisonment to visit him. He never did, and while members of his family have placed different interpretations on this, Winnie's explanation is as follows:

When Nelson went underground, he relied heavily on Thembi. The other children were too young to understand. Thembi almost lived underground with his father. Being of an arrestable age, his father instructed him to keep an extremely low profile and not to disclose, even to his mother, his visits to Lilliesleaf. I took him out there personally to spend weekends with Nelson, and he joined me in many dangerous missions. His very closeness to his father and his involvement with him forced him to maintain a facade of distance and aloofness, a facade he maintained even in the presence of his brother and his sister and his mother. I was amazed that as young as he was, he was able to keep that facade so completely. He worshipped his father and was fully committed to his role in Umkhonto. I, in turn, worshipped Thembi.

When he was killed in a motor accident. Nelson wrote to me where I was in the condemned cell for eighteen months in solitary confinement. He reminded me of how Thembi had visited him at Lilliesleaf wearing Nelson's oversize suit jacket. He had said to Nelson, 'Tata, now I am in your place and I will try to be you and look after the family.'

Thembi was the most hurt by his parents' divorce. He was old enough at the time to understand the meaning of divorce and it left him traumatized. He suffered too on account of the extreme positions his parents took, his father committed to politics, his mother to religion.

Thembi fell in love with Thoko at school in Swaziland. She fell pregnant and returned home, forced to end her schooling. He followed her to Retreat in Cape Town, where her mother had a retail business. Thoko helped in the store and Thembi had a good clerical job. Their eldest daughter, Ndileka, was born, followed by their second daughter, Nandi. Ndileka was three and Nandi only six months old when Thembi was killed. Thoko survived the accident and continued to live with her mother.

Later the granddaughters joined Evelyn in the Transkei and went to high school there. The granddaughters are grown women now and between them have given Nelson two great-grandchildren. Nelson arranged a scholarship for the younger granddaughter, Nandi, and she is presently studying in Cape Town and sees 'Tatomkhulu', her grandfather, as regularly as she is given visits. Ndileka is a nurse.

Nelson's mind often turns to Thembi; when Zindzi informs him she is learning to drive, he writes:

It pleases me that you're taking driving lessons and hope you will be as careful a driver as Mum is. Thembi could drive the colossal Oldsmobile at ten. But if you get your licence, you'll have done better than Mum and I. We were twenty-six and thirty-three respectively when we got ours. Good luck darling!

4 September 1977

MAKGATHO

Makgatho says:

I made my first visit to Robben Island when 1 was sixteen years and nine months old. It was in June 1967 and I was schooling in Orlando. I had not seen Tata since his first arrest in 1962. We did not attend the Rivonia Trial. We were schooling in Swaziland at the time. I only left Swaziland in 1964.

The only news I had of Tata during this time was what I read in newspapers. I could not write to Tata. Tata could not write to me. When I returned to Orlando I visited Mum Winnie and she gave me news of Tata. I liked going to Mum Winnie's. I would play records and relax for the day I was there.

Mum Winnie arranged for me to see Tata. She arranged my fare to Johannesburg and left me at the station. Thembi met me in Cape Town. Thembi had left to live in Cape Town in 1965. He was already married then and seemed to be doing well. I knew he loved Tata. Maybe he went to live in Cape Town because Tata was there. I took the boat and went into the hole. There were four of us traveling together. We were all visiting relatives on the Island.

I had a good visit with Tata but the time was too short. Tata told me to stand back so he could look at me. He said I had grown tall and was good looking. He asked about my schooling and said I must apply to go to Fort Hare. He told me about his days at Fort Hare. We talked a lot. He smiled a lot. The thirty minutes were short.

After that I used to visit Tata twice a year. The SACC [South African Council of Churches] paid our fares. I had two visits 1968, two in 1969, two in 1970. Then I had one visit a year, right up to 1978. I last saw him in 1983.

Makgatho's visits became irregular after 1983 and then stopped. 'I just got lazy,' he explains. He resumed his visits to his father only in 1987. The reason perhaps went deeper than laziness. It was basically that he could not cope with father's persistent exhortations to return to school. Speaking about his education, Kgatho says:

I wrote my standard nine at St Christopher's and passed, but I could not return to write my matric. The fact is that I was expelled. We had organized a strike. I stayed with Mr M. B. Yengwa in Manzini for three years, and then started schooling in Orlando. Mama paid. She got help from the Institute of Race Relations.

I wrote my matric and got a school-leaving certificate. I had applied to Fort Hare but I did not have a university exemption. I wrote the supplementary but failed again.

Nelson had faith in his son's intellectual capacity and felt he should return to school. He wrote to a friend in November 1974:

My son Kgatho. twenty-four, owes two subjects for his matric. He did very well up to JC [Junior Certificate] passing with honours though he wrote the exams several months after being expelled from the boarding school for organizing [so it was alleged] a student strike. He has since lost all his sharpness and has through private tuition twice attempted matric without success. The real trouble is that at his age and in my absence he finds it a bit hard to resist the attractions of city life. I have been trying to get him back to boarding school - Clarkebury or St Johns, both in the Transkei - where he would be able to study full-time, far from the influences that make it difficult for him to concentrate on his work. He has a powerful argument to fall back on: a comfortable job which he may lose if he accepts my suggestion and he is also engaged. However, I feel he could take time to study for a year to complete at least matric. Thereafter, I told him, I would discuss further plans. Perhaps if he could be invited to Durban, taken around places like Ngoye, Westville, M. L. Sultan College, to see at first hand what young people are doing elsewhere, such an opportunity might arouse his ambitions and induce him to improve his performance.

1 November 1974

But instead of returning to school, Makgatho married and fathered a son. Nelson was skeptical about the marriage but grew fond of his daughter-in-law, Rennie. She kept closer contact with him than his son. She brought him the first grandchild, Mandla, to visit him. He gazed on the baby he could not touch and saw in the broad healthy face the renewal of the Mandela line, and felt reassured.

Then Rennie did what Kgatho wouldn't do. She expressed a desire to return to school. Nelson discussed the matter with Alan Paton and Paton arranged for Rennie to be enrolled at Inanda Seminary and he, Peter Brown and Ismail Meer paid her fees. Nelson's ambition for his son continued unabated. He wrote to his eldest daughter Maki:

The fact that Rennie is at school and her own decision will make Makgatho realize that he will be the only black sheep in the family. Keep writing and urge him to think of his future and to go back to college.

31 December 1978

In 1979 it seemed that his entreaties to Kgatho to return to school were at last having an effect. He wrote cautiously:

I'll not comment on Makgatho's promise to go back school. It is what he has been saying these last nine years. When he does actually enter a school I will do everything in my power to help him, but definitely not before that.

But Makgatho did not have a matric exemption and therefore could not be admitted to college. He was deeply frustrated and full of pain because he could not please his father. Nelson heard that his son was not bearing up to his responsibilities and was drinking a little too much. Maki felt that he would be better off living with his mother in the Transkei and blamed her father for discouraging him from doing so. Nelson replied:

In a previous letter you referred to Makgatho's behaviour and blamed me for having influenced him not to come to the Transkei. But the truth is that on the question of education he has given me as much trouble as you have done. There is nothing I have not tried in the last eight years to get him back to school. But all my efforts have been in vain. Even the fact that Rennie went to Morris Isaacson School in 1975 and she is now at Inanda is all due to the efforts of Mum Winnie who is keen to do everything in her power to help all the children attain their ambitions. We are all trying even now and keeping our hopes up, but both Mum Winnie and myself are far from him and it is not easy at all to persuade him by telephone calls and letters only.

However, there was more to the problem than a waywardness and a refusal to return to school. Makgatho's marriage was hitting the rocks. The family blamed Rennie; Nelson remained neutral. He wrote to Zindzi:

I have taken no sides in this dispute, firstly because I have not heard Kgatho's version. Even when the impossible occurs and Kgatho writes, I will lean towards an amicable settlement. I will think of both parties as well as Mandla who will certainly suffer far more than any other person when his parents break. Imagine darling, just what our reaction would be if someone urged Mum to pack her belongings and find a new home because of my faults. You are the product of the love and affection of your parents, and throughout your life you have drawn strength and hope from the love and security. Destroying that love and home, for whatever reason, would be like a beautiful rose whose tender roots are exposed to the frost.

Was Nelson thinking of Thembi? Of the frost that had settled on his heart when his father had parted from his mother? Kgatho and Rennie divorced, and Kgatho married again and had another son. It was K. D. Matanzima who brought him and his second wife and son to Cofimvaba to join Evelyn. Proudly. KD claimed, 'I sent a Jack to catch a Jack.'

In Umtata, he presented the prodigal Madiba to the Thembus, flew him to Port St Johns to meet his senior wife, who had looked after both Kgatho and Thembi when they had lived with her for a year while schooling in the Transkei. Kgatho joined his mother in her business and they are today running the Mandela Trading Store in Cofimvaba quite successfully.