Graça Machel: so much more than a first lady | Robert McCrum

The campaigner: Graça Machel, wife of Nelson Mandela, at a meeting last year seeking to end child marriages. Photograph: Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

Shakespeare, in one of Nelson Mandela's favourite lines, now strangely apposite, says that "the valiant never taste of death but once". As the world waits for Mandela to make his final rendezvous with history, one woman – his third wife – who has been at his bedside throughout his illness, and now keeps vigil there, is almost perfectly cast for her role. Graça Machel (pronounced Mah-shell) has, after all, been here before.

In 1986, Machel was tragically widowed when the Russian Tupolev jet carrying her husband, Samora Machel, the first president of independent Mozambique, ploughed into a remote hillside just inside the South African border. The apartheid regime denied involvement, but suspicions of a political assassination linger. As the nation rallied in grief, Graça Machel, a young mother, was dubbed Mozambique's Jackie Kennedy. It's not an implausible comparison. She has the same easy, cosmopolitan self-confidence, natural presence, and command of languages (English, Portuguese and French).

She has many weighty qualifications, too, including a law degree – combined with an impressive slate of global achievements in women's rights and humanitarian issues. "I'm not Samora's wife," she's been known to snap. "I'm me." In public, she's beloved for her ready smiles and self-deprecating humour, mixed with a steely determination. As Mozambique's first lady, she was widely credited with being a moderating influence over her firebrand Marxist husband.

And if Samora Machel's story is now part of African liberation folklore, and if Nelson Mandela is a figure for the ages, Graça Machel is close to the equal of her two husbands. Shy of publicity, she once said: "It's not two leaders who fell in love with me, but two real people. I feel privileged that I have shared my life with two such exceptional men."

She was born Graça Simbine on 17 October 1945 on the coast of Mozambique, then a Portuguese colony. Her family were peasants. Her father, who was semi-literate, provided for the family by oscillating between the South African mines and farming, and would become a Methodist minister. When he died, weeks before Graça was born, family legend says that he made his wife promise that their unborn child would have proper schooling. Machel's mother kept her word. "We were a poor family," Machel has said, "but I had the best education."

When young Graça Simbine got a scholarship to high school in the capital, Maputo, she was the only black African in a class of 40 whites. Now her education as an African radical began. "Why is it," she said to herself, "that I'm made to feel strange in my own country? They're the foreigners, not me. Something is wrong here."

Machel remains formidably committed to asking awkward questions about the status quo, and following her own agenda.

In the beginning, like Mandela, she was an African freedom fighter with a mission to liberate, and educate, her people. After a spell in Portugal, Graça Simbine joined Frelimo (the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) as a courier, was trained as a guerrilla fighter (she can still strip an assault rifle) and met the movement's charismatic leader, Samora Machel. The couple became lovers during the revolutionary war, and married in August 1975, two months after Mozambique gained independence. Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia's first president, came to the wedding. Not for the last time, Graça Simbine, now Machel, found her life linked to a moment of history.

It was said that the union was as much a political partnership as a romance. When her husband became president, his new wife became minister of culture and education. Graça Machel now showed her true colours. Mozambique had one of the highest illiteracy rates in Africa. Within two years, she had boosted school attendance and lowered illiteracy. But any euphoria she might have felt was soon dashed by new crises. A CIA-backed counter-revolutionary movement (Renamo) plunged the new nation into civil war, causing chaos and wrecking the economy. Then – just as peace was being established – Samora Machel was killed in that mysterious plane crash. Graça was devastated. Pictures of the funeral show her bowed over her husband's casket, stricken with grief.

Winnie Mandela and her still-imprisoned husband wrote letters of condolence. To Nelson, Graça Machel replied, movingly: "From within your vast prison, you brought a ray of light in my hour of darkness." Solace was fleeting. For five years, Machel wore black. Finally, in 1991, prompted by her 12-year-old son, Machel started anew, launching a foundation to address poverty.

Once again, she demonstrated extraordinary gifts of leadership and imagination. In 1995, she won the UN's important Nansen medal for her work on childrens' rights in refugee camps. "Graça Machel is impressive," says the author of the book that inspired the movie Invictus, the Observer's John Carlin. "She has a different level of intelligence, clarity and charisma."

When, in 1996, she was urged to run for secretary general of the UN (a job that went to Kofi Annan), she declined with the strategic savvy characteristic of an ex-freedom fighter. "There is no political will," she said of the UN. "So what would I do there?" Besides, she had a new, even more demanding, role to explore. Machel was on the path to becoming Mandela's third wife.

Their first meeting had come, after his release from prison in 1990, at a very low point in the life of the ANC leader. "We were both very, very lonely," Machel has said. "We both wanted someone you could talk to, someone who'd understand." In private, Mandela was broken. His wife, Winnie, refusing him any marital relationship, had humiliated him in public during their celebrity divorce.

Once Mandela's marriage was over, Machel says: "We started to see each other more often." Their first significant public appearance was at the grave of Samora Machel. By 1996, rumours of a relationship had been confirmed: paparazzi shots of here a shy kiss, there some sheepish hand-holding. The president's office declared Machel to be Mandela's "official companion".

When she could be persuaded to say anything, the new "official companion" displayed her old romantic sang-froid. She told a Portuguese newspaper that, as with her first husband: "Nelson and I were together some time before love came. It wasn't love at first sight. No, with me, things don't happen like that."

Second chances: Nelson Mandela and his new wife, Graça Machel, on board the QE2 in 1998. Photograph: Louise Gubb/Corbis

There was no doubt who was playing hard to get. Machel remains devoted to Mozambique. They were living in separate cities, an hour's flight apart, and the president was telephoning twice a day.

Mandela, now eager to remarry, even enlisted the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who got himself into trouble with South Africa's feminists by saying that the president needed "someone to give him his slippers". When Machel finally agreed to marry the president on his 80th birthday (he is 27 years her senior), she said: "It took a very special person to change my mind." Winnie, meanwhile, raged ineffectually against the emotional cunning of the woman she called "that concubine".

It is a belated love match between two people who occupy a quite extraordinary place in contemporary Africa. Mandela has been the first to acknowledge Machel's role in the autumn of his life. "She is the boss," he said in 2007. "When I am alone, I am weak." For her part, Machel bats away any sentimental idealisation of her man. "People may say my husband is a saint," she told one English newspaper, "but … to me, he is just a human being who is simple and gentle. I wasn't prepared for Madiba (his clan name) coming into my life, but now we make sure we spend time with each other because we were so lonely before. You only live once."

Graça Machel knows what it means to be unique. She is the only woman to have been first lady to two separate presidents. Not since Eleanor of Aquitaine became first the queen of France, then queen of England, married to Henry II, has one woman occupied such a position. Her love story has a Shakespearean dimension. As Mandela's widow she will become an icon of South African sorrow, and an impressive mother-figure to a nation in mourning. Like her beloved Madiba, Graça Machel now stands in the antechamber of history, with yet another extraordinary future role almost the only sensible prediction.

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Born Graça Simbine in Gaza Province, Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) in 1945. Educated in Methodist mission schools and studied German philosophy at the University of Lisbon. Married Samora Machel in 1975; married second husband Nelson Mandela in 1998. She has two children by Machel.

Best of times As Mozambican minister for education and culture, she made huge advances in boosting literacy. In 1995 she received the Nansen medal from the UN in honour of her humanitarian work.

Worst of times Her first husband, Samora Machel, died in a plane crash – in suspicious circumstances – in 1996.

She says "I gave my youthful years to a cause that has not been completely fulfilled. I thought we'd have eradicated illiteracy by now. I thought every single child would be attending school by now. I thought there would be more women in top positions by now. On the other hand, when I look at how many young women are now at university, I think, OK, we've done pretty well."

They say "She has focused on the issues most critical to her home country, issues of development and particularly women's and children's rights, and she has widened her scope to effect change worldwide." African Law Review

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Barack Obama's South Africa visit dominated by Nelson Mandela's health - video

Barack Obama pays homage to Nelson Mandela on visit to South Africa

US president calls Mandela 'an inspiration to the world and a personal hero' and meets members of his family

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Nelson Mandela's wife draws strength from Barack Obama's words of comfort

Michelle and Barack Obama with South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma and his wife Tobeka Zuma in Pretoria. Photograph: Elmond Jiyane/EPA

It spoke volumes that when an audience awaiting the president of the United States burst into full-throated song, it was with the words "Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela, ha hona ya tshwanang le wena", which translates as: "There's no one and never will be anyone compared to him."

Not even Barack Obama, at least not here. The aching absence of the most important black politician of the 20th century was inescapable for an African audience gathered in Soweto to hear the most significant of the 21st.

The US president wisely did not try to compete with the 94-year-old lying critically ill in hospital. "Obviously he's on our minds today," he told the town hall event for young African leaders. "He still inspires us all."

Obama's first visit to South Africa as president is going ahead as planned despite the frenzy of anxiety and attention around Mandela's condition. On Saturday Obama and his wife, Michelle, did not call on Mandela in hospital out of deference to his "peace and comfort", but did meet some members of his family for about half an hour at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.

Mandela's wife, Graça Machel, said: "I have drawn strength from the support received from President Barack Obama, Michelle, Malia and Sasha. Having taken the time to telephone me to express their solidarity and meet our children, they have added a touch of personal warmth that is characteristic of the Obama family. I am humbled by their comfort and messages of strength and inspiration, which I have already conveyed to Madiba."

Obama went on to the highly symbolic location of Soweto, South Africa's biggest township, the heart of the urban black struggle against racial apartheid. Mandela moved to a matchbox house there in 1946, an era when the township remained in poverty, illuminated at night only by candles and coal fires. He was arrested in 1962 – allegedly with the help of America's CIA – and returned for 11 days after being released from prison in 1990.

Poverty persists in today's Soweto but it also contains shopping malls and theatres, hosts literary and wine festivals, and invites tourists to view its middle-class homes and visit Mandela's old house, now a museum. There is also a university campus, where on Saturday giant US and South African flags decorated a black-curtained auditorium. Obama's audience included Nigeria's Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man, and Patrice Motsepe, the wealthiest black South African, as well as hundreds of young movers and shakers.

In a short speech Obama quoted Mandela's writings, urged young leaders to follow his example, and referred to the anti-apartheid hero's former home nearby. He said the 1976 student uprising in Soweto "helped open my mind to a broader world".

The president described "the yes-we-can attitude of young African leaders" and earned applause for referring to Johannesburg by its nickname "Jozi". He denied that the US fears competition from China in Africa or that it is seeking to expand on the continent militarily.

Describing Africa as a region "on the move", Obama said: "There is, as the song says, a new Africa. More prosperous, more confident, taking its place on the world stage."

A television link provided questions from Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, pushing him on why he is not visiting his father's homeland during this tour. Explaining that he had been there multiple times before, Obama, whose itinerary also includes Senegal and Tanzania, replied: "I was trying to spread the wealth a little bit in terms of my visit."

Among those present was Matsi Modise, 28, the leader of an organisation for black South African entrepreneurs. "It's a great privilege to be here," she said. "To hear his voice means a lot. He made it possible for young black people to dream in this world. Black used to be associated with racism and oppression, but he's redefined black in terms of leadership."

By the end of his 90-minute event, Obama had evidently won some hearts and minds despite the big story elsewhere. People crowded forward to shake his hand. Mandy de Waal tweeted: "Twitter is alive with the sound of South Africans falling in love with Obama. Looks like we're star-struck!"

But outside the campus, several hundred protesters sang and waved a banner: "Away with USA. Arrogance, violence and plunder." Riot police fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd.

The other reaction in South Africa has been one of apathy, partly because all attention is on Mandela, partly because excitement about Obama in Africa has waned since the heady days of 2008. "He's now 'only' an American to us," said Eusebius McKaiser, a political commentator and radio talkshow host. "His blackness is no longer of interest."

Mandela's health inevitably weighed heavy. Earlier, at a joint press conference, South African President Jacob Zuma told Obama: "I know that he is your personal hero as well, Mr President.

"The two of you are also by bound by history, as the first black presidents of your respective countries. Thus you both carry the dreams of millions of people in Africa and the diaspora, who were previously oppressed."

The US removed Mandela from its terrorist watch list only in 2008, 15 years after he was awarded the Nobel peace prize. But it now has a president who described Mandela as "one of the greatest people in history".

Obama praised South Africa's transition from white minority rule as a shining beacon for the world. "The struggle here against apartheid for freedom, Madiba's moral courage, this country's historic transition to a free and democratic nation, has been a personal inspiration to me, it has been an inspiration to the world," he said.

"The outpouring of love that we've seen in recent days shows that the triumph of Nelson Mandela and this nation speaks to something very deep in the human spirit, the yearning for justice and dignity that transcends boundaries of race and class and faith and country. That's what Nelson Mandela represents, that's what South African at its best represents to the world, and that's what brings me back here."

Obama finishes his South African trip on Sunday, when he plans to give a speech on US-Africa policy at the University of Cape Town. He will also stop at another sacred space in the Mandela story: Robben Island, where the activist spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars.

The two men met once in Washington in 2005; both have the single photo of the five-minute encounter in their offices.

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Power shifts to daughter as Mandela's family argues over burial

Makaziwe Mandela, the former president's eldest daughter, in 2011. Photograph: Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images

Family anguish over the health of Nelson Mandela has been deepened by arguments over his final resting place, prompting a power shift that could see his eldest daughter emerge as the head of South Africa's most revered clan.

Makaziwe Mandela, 60, is believed to be in line to assume the title after Mandla, the anti-apartheid hero's grandson and traditional heir, conceded he had "overplayed" his hand in a dispute involving the exhumation of Mandela's three dead children.

The development came following a family summit called by Makaziwe last week in Qunu, the village where Mandela grew up and to which he returned in retirement, as her father remained in a critical condition.

Mandela's eldest granddaughter, Ndileka, last week confirmed the move. "My aunt Maki is the senior member," she said. "She is the elder in the family. It's our family and it has always been based on collective decisions."

Questions over the succession emerged as relatives discussed a painful question about whether to lay Mandela to rest close to his deceased children, a debate that raised the issue of Mandla's decision two years ago to exhume their bodies.

Mandela has three deceased children: Thembekile, killed in a car accident in 1969; Makgatho, who died of an Aids-related illness in 2005; and a girl also called Makaziwe who died as an infant in 1948. Mandla moved their remains from Qunu to the hamlet of Mvezo, 15 miles away, apparently without consulting the family. Mvezo is where Mandela was born and where Mandla is chief. At the time it was suspected that Mandla, also an African National Congress MP, was paving the way for Mandela himself to be buried in Mvezo, where Mandla has begun constructing a museum and other facilities. But last week, this appeared to be a battle he had lost.

The gathering of Mandela elders and relatives decided that all three children should be re-exhumed and returned to Qunu so that they will lie close to their father when he is eventually buried there. The decision was backed by a court ruling.

Mandla was contrite, according to Bantu Holomisa, a close friend of Mandela who was at the meeting. "There was no argument because Mandla said, 'I made a mistake.' He apologised and said he had overplayed it. The elders said, 'Son, you should consult us', but they didn't want a lot of argument. We didn't want him to feel he was facing a tribunal."

Mandela has three living children, all daughters, as well as 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. There have long been whispers of a split pitting the descendants of his first wife, Evelyn, against those of his second, Winnie. The potential conflicts have an added dimension in the shape of his third wife, Graça Machel. There are also widespread cultural assumptions around the supremacy of the male line. But Holomisa suggested that age trumps all. "Makaziwe is the eldest daughter of Madiba," he said, referring to Mandela by his clan name. "Then you have his other daughters Zenani and Zindzi. I think they are more senior than Mandla. He is a chief in a certain area, but the daughters are calling the shots. Madiba has taught them to have a meeting and decide things collectively." Further evidence that Makaziwe is asserting her authority came in a recent legal action that she and Zenani took to remove Mandela's long-time friend and lawyer, George Bizos, from the boards of two investment funds. Mandla opposed the suit, while Bizos and his allies claim it is part of a plan to assert control of Mandela's assets.

Holomisa has played down suggestions that the house of Mandela is at war with itself. Mandla has also denied reports of a rift. His spokesman, Freddy Pilusa, said: "According to Mandla, there's no issue. If anyone with authority wants to repatriate [the bodies] they can do so."

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A bittersweet wedding in the village that shaped the early life of 'Tata'

Bridesmaids and bride gather at a wedding ceremony at the local church in Qunu, Nelson Mandela's home village. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer

A convoy of cars and buses decked with balloons streamed into Qunu on Saturday as the childhood home of Nelson Mandela hosted a wedding and enjoyed a moment of respite from the deep uncertainty caused by the health of its most celebrated son.

Well-wishers flocked to the celebration within sight of the former president's large house as the bride walked into a crowded church.

A remote and tiny place nestled in a valley in the green hills of the Eastern Cape, Qunu has experienced three weeks of heartache since Mandela was admitted to hospital. But even as pessimism eased over the imminence of his death, the village was bracing itself for the spotlight when the world finally comes to bid him farewell.

Qunu, the village where the anti-apartheid hero has felt most at home, is a place that has both shaped Mandela and been profoundly shaped by him. It is the heart of his extended family, his beloved childhood home and the place he harked back to often during his 27 years in prison. It supplied the inspiration for the political philosophy that emerged during his incarceration.

These identities explain why Qunu's expected role as Mandela's final resting place fires passions so deeply, and why last week in a courtroom in the sprawling town of Mthatha, members of Mandela's close family gathered to discuss an issue that has cast a shadow over the former president's most recent and most grave illness.

At the centre of the case is a dispute that has pitted two factions of Mandela's family against each other, centring as it does on Mandela's wishes – expressed two decades ago – about his funeral arrangements.

Then Mandela asked to be buried in a simple ceremony in his childhood village home. The man known affectionately as "Tata", "Madiba" and as "Dalibhunga" had an additional request – that he be buried with his three deceased children, Makgatho, Makaziwe and Thembikile, in Qunu.

At the heart of the controversy is the disclosure that, unknown to Mandela, his sometimes controversial grandson Mandla, who has clashed in the past with other members of his family, had secretly reburied the three family members in the village of Mandela's birth, Mvezo – where Mandla is an influential tribal chief.

Although members of Mandela's family have been reluctant to discuss the issue – not least as the 94-year-old remains critically ill – the story that has gradually emerged is of a bitter feud that has ended up before the courts after a stormy family meeting last week.

If feuds and squabbles among Mandela's family are nothing new, this one has more troubling aspects.

It has struck a discordant note in the midst of a visit by US President Barack Obama who met members of Mandela's family, even as South African President Jacob Zuma voiced his hope that Mandela might recover.

It has sharply underlined both the deep sensitivities over the arrangements for Mandela's eventual death – in a culture where discussing an impending death in public is taboo – and over who within the family, and in South Africa's wider society, will claim and shape his legacy.

By the court hearing's end it was those opposed to Mandla who emerged victorious, with an order from the presiding judge directing that the moved bodies be reinterred in Qunu at the site high on a hill that residents say is being prepared for Mandela himself.

The court order, however, is only the latest round in a murky affair that has stirred animosities within Mandela's family, pitting Mandla against another group led by Mandela's eldest daughter, Makaziwe, that began – if reported accounts are true – when Mandla exhumed the bodies in 2011 to have them buried in Mvezo without telling other members of his family.

Little is known for certain: the affair has emerged in unauthorised and off-the-cuff remarks including from one of the family's lawyers, Wesley Hayes, who confirmed that a court hearing had taken place behind closed doors "due to the sensitivity" of the case.

The disclosure that Mandela's children had been secretly reburied in Mvezo has appeared all the more shocking for how it was discovered – only after preparatory work was begun at the family grave site in Qunu to move the bodies to where Mandela will eventually be buried.

Opening the graves, the undertaker found no remains, leading other family members to challenge Mandla.

As the details have leaked out piecemeal, they have lifted the lid on long rivalries within the family of three-times married Mandela, not least over the guardianship of his memory.

Mandla's detractors, both in public and anonymously, have stoked the suggestion that his aim all along has been to have Mandela interred in Mvezo, where he has built a museum and guest houses.

The controversy over where Mandela should eventually be buried has come amidst a continuing battle over the Mandela trust fund which has broken into the open again, and which also pits Makaziwe against Mandla.

In a third sphere too – the political – Makaziwe has warned off other parties from attempting to "misappropriate" the legacy of the African National Congress's most celebrated figure.

As noted by William Gumede, a South African political analyst interviewed by the Washington Post, the divided ANC's leadership – facing growing challenges to its authority – has also displayed a strong interest in managing Mandela's legacy as it relates to them.

"Some ANC leaders want to cling on to brand Mandela, as members are leaving the party," said Gumede. "They say, 'Stay, this is still the party of Mandela.'" It is a charge of politicising the legacy of Mandela that the ANC has emphatically rejected.

Inevitably, perhaps, Friday's court case has unintentionally drawn attention to many of the most difficult issues that have come to swirl around Mandela.

If the intense media interest in Mandela's hospitalisation has often seemed unseemly to members of his family – Makaziwe has called journalists "vultures" – it is because issues of family privacy have collided with the affection felt in South Africa and globally for an international figure. Mandela's towering legacy has long overshadowed his other reality: that of the frail and elderly man now being treated in Pretoria.

That contradiction has been felt most keenly in Qunu, where the issues of memory, identity and place converge. It was his early experience in Qunu that would supply a key strand of Mandela's philosophy as it emerged during his 27 years in prison – ubuntu, or the idea of "human brotherhood".

What that entailed – as Mandela's friend and authorised biographer Anthony Sampson described it in Mandela – was a "quality of mutual responsibility and compassion". "He often quoted the proverb 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabuntu'," wrote Sampson, "which he would translate as 'A person is a person because of other people'. Mandela regarded ubuntu as part of a general philosophy of serving one's fellow men." Mandela himself wrote that he had learned to value the idea as a teenager observing life in Qunu and at the tribal court whose ruling class he belonged to. It is precisely for this reason that Qunu has come to be so important to Mandela's own story.

Yesterday in Qunu, as the bride walked into the crowded church where some members of the congregation held up leather herders' whips, the drivers outside discussed their own wedding plans and Mandela's health.

"He's very old. We wake up each morning and listen for the news," said one. "But this is very nice," he said, indicating the wedding.

"I'm getting engaged myself in November in Mthatha. I hope Madiba gets better. Then I can invite to him to my wedding."

One of the guests comes over to chat. I ask whether the wedding has taken Qunu's mind off the question of Mandela's health.

In answer, he sadly shakes his head.

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