Evelyn Mase

Uncommon card · No. 174441

Evelyn Ntoko Mase (18 May 1922 – 30 April 2004), later named Evelyn Rakeepile, was the first wife of the South African anti-apartheid activist and the future president Nelson Mandela, to whom she was married from 1944 to 1958. Mase was a nurse by profession. Born in Engcobo, Transkei, Mase was orphaned as a child. She moved to Johannesburg to train as a nurse, and there met and married Mandela. Living together in Soweto, they raised four children, three of whom—Thembekile, Makgatho, and Makaziwe—survived into adulthood. She trained to be a midwife while working as a nurse. In the 1950s, her relationship with Mandela became strained. He was becoming increasingly involved in the African National Congress and its campaign against apartheid; Mase eschewed politics and became a Jehovah's Witness. She also accused him of adultery with several women, an accusation corroborated by later biographies, and of being physically abusive, something he always denied. They separated in 1956. She initially...

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