Less than two years later, Mandela married Graca Machel, the widow of Mozambican president Samora Machel, killed in a 1986 plane crash. Graca’s poised personality is very different from the volatile and fiery Winnie, and she was hailed by Mandela’s friends as having had a significant effect on her husband.
At their wedding on July 18, 1998 – Mandela’s 80th birthday – Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu joked that Machel had made ‘a decent man’ of Mandela. She even managed to forge a close friendship with Winnie and when she spoke about Mandela to her new friend, she’d refer to him as “our husband.” They were both at his bedside when he died at his Houghton, Johannesburg home on Dec. 5 at the age of 95.

Graca Machel

Mandela's third wife