In the first post where TheOldHippie gives an excellent summary of the life of Evelyn Rakeepile, formerly Mandela, née Mase, he mentions that when their oldest son, Thembi, was killed in a road accident in 1969 Nelson Mandela wrote to his former wife from prison to do his best to comfort her.
In The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela published this year (London: W.W. Norton & Co) it includes this letter.
Evelyn, as well as her brother, Sam Mase, and his wife, Adelaide, were all Jehovah's Witnesses. What may be of interest to this board is a letter from Nelson Mandela to Adelaide. Her husband, Sam, had written a letter of sympathy for the death of Thembi, Nelson's son and Sam's nephew, to which Nelson Mandela replied (in part) :
I am grateful to Sam for the message of sympathy contained in his letter of August 20...I was happy to know that you travelled all the way to the Rand [the area where Johannesburg lies] for the occasion [of the funeral], and to hear of the excellent contribution made by the people of Engcobo [where Evelyn was born] to whom I am greatly indebted.
I read the fresh and meaningful passages from the scriptures to which [Sam] kindly referred me. He is an expert on religious matters, a fact which makes me respect his views on all questions relating to the gospel. All that I wish to say here is that the importance of the passages quoted by him lies in the fact that they tell us of a way of life which would have brought us peace and harmony many centuries ago, if mankind had fully accepted and faithfully practiced the teachings they contain. They visualise a new world where there will be no wars, where famine, disease and racial intolerance will be no more, precisely the world for which I am fighting, the world painted by the prophet Isaiah where the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling shall all live peacefully. Of course [Sam] and I have not always seen eye to eye as to how this world will come about. In the numerous discussions I had with him I persistently tried to hammer one central point: that the new world will be born as a result of our own toil and tears, our sacrifices and struggles. The progress made by man during the 500,000 years from the primitive and simple forms of social organisation to the advanced and complex systems of the modern age, and more especially the rapid and tremendous advances made over the last 50 years or so, show very clearly that in the foreseeable future mankind will inherit the kingdom described by the prophet Isaiah.
The lives and actions of prominent religious men show that those who fight for a new order need not divorce theory from practice. Moses shared common hardships with his countrymen in Egypt and eventually led them physically from slavery to the Promised Land. In his efforts to establish the Christian Church, St. Paul came into conflict with established authority and vested interests. The advocate who prosecuted him is reported to have said: "The plain truth is that we find this man a perfect pest; he stirs up trouble amongst the Jews the world over, and is ringleader of the Nazarene Sect." [Acts 24:5] Thereafter this "Nazarene Sect" was to spread to almost every corner of the globe and be embraced by many nations as their state religion. The man who was described as a perfect pest later became a saint loved and respected by millions of Christians throughout the world. You will, however, appreciate that it is not possible to discuss in full important problems such as these through correspondence and I will say no more here than merely to indicate that the spread of the Christian faith and the new world it created was accomplished by the physical labours of the vast and fearless army of the gospel. All I should like to add is that I was deeply moved by [Sam's] affectionate letter, and I know that Thembi's death was as painful to you as it was for me.