(£2.5m) from which he made cash gifts to his family totalling £1.1 million, a public reading of his will revealed earlier today. The will was formally read to his family shortly before it was made public in Johannesburg on Monday.
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| Late Nelson Mandela |
Justice Moseneke, Judge President of the Eastern Cape Themba Sangoni and prominent human rights lawyer George Bizos were named as executors of Mandela’s will and testament. Moseneke, summarizing what he said was a 40-page document said the will was put together on 12 October 2004 with final amendments made in 2008.
None of the 3 surviving children of South Africa’s 1st black president received any money in his will, and neither did his 2 eldest grand-daughters, because each of the 5 had received gifts worth £165,000 in the years before Mandela’s death in December.
However, in an apparent snub Mandela left nothing to his 2nd wife Winnie, to whom he was married for nearly 40 years before they divorced in 1996.
His oldest grandson Mandla, a traditional chief in his rural Eastern Cape birthplace who has had several public disputes with the rest of the family, will now also receive £165,000 but it will be controlled by a family trust rather than given to him direct.
His other grandchildren received varying amounts of money, some of which he said should be disbursed by older members of the family or put into trust, suggesting he wanted to ensure it was wisely spent.
His widow Graca Machel will keep the 4 houses they owned jointly in her home country of Mozambique, along with the couple’s cars, artwork that decorated their homes and any jewelry he gave her.
Mandela also left £165,000 to each of Graca Machel's own 2 children with her 1st husband, former Mozambique president Samora Machel, and made gifts of £5,500 to his former schools and universities and rewarded those who had worked for him since his release from prison with £2,000 each - including his cook, his driver and his personal assistants.
George Bizos, a close personal friend of Mandela and one of his executors, said the former president had never accumulated much personal wealth because self-enrichment did not interest him.
“When people asked him how they could please him, he would say to them: ’Build a school or, if you have the money, a school and a clinic,’” he said.
“I don’t know that he ever accepted money for his own benefit and that actually makes him quite different to what normally happens in South Africa or elsewhere.”
The African National Congress, the political party to which Mandela devoted his life, will receive an unspecified amount of interest from one of his family funds, to promote its policies and particularly “reconciliation among the people of South Africa”.
Dikgang Mosekene, South Africa’s deputy chief justice and one of Mandela’s 3 lawyers, said that although the reading had been “emotionally-charged” there had been no challenges to it thus far.
Mandela passed away at his Johannesburg home on 5th December 2013 and at the age of 95. He was buried in his childhood hometown, Qunu in the Eastern Cape on 15th December at a funeral service attended by 4,000 people.
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