Nelosn Mandela Wills Half Of His Estate To His 3rd Wife, Winnie Madela Not Mentioned In The Will

Nelson Mandela with his 3rd wife Grace(left) and 2nd wife Winnie(right)

Nelson Mandela's 40 page will was read today to his family and Mandela left an estate worth R46m (£2.5m) from which he made cash bequests to his family totalling the equivalent of £1.1 million.

None of the three surviving children of South Africa’s first black president received any money in his will, and neither did his two eldest grand-daughters, because each of the five had been made gifts worth £165,000 in the years before Mandela’s death in December.

 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 four houses they owned jointly in her home country of Mozambique, along with the couple’s cars, artwork that decorated their homes and any jewellery he gave her.

Mandela also left £165,000 to each of Grace's two children with her first 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.
In an apparent Mandela left nothing to his second wife Winnie, to whom he was married for nearly 40 years but whom he divorced in 1996