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Makgatho Mandela’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Author

Emma Newman

Updated on January 01, 2026

IntroSouth African lawyer
A.K.A.Makgatho Lewanika Mandela
WasLawyer 
FromSouth Africa 
TypeLaw 
Gendermale
Birth26 June 1950, South Africa
Death6 January 2005, Johannesburg
(aged 54 years)
Star signCancer
Family
Mother:Evelyn Mase
Father:Nelson Mandela
Siblings:Makaziwe MandelaZenani Mandela-DlaminiZindzi Mandela
Children:Mandla Mandela

Makgatho Lewanika Mandela (26 June 1950 – 6 January 2005) 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 (Thembi) was born in 1945. Thembi was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1969.