The Mandelas, the Kennedys, the Marcoses — political lineages all have their rogues

9 Jan 2025

From hijacking to arms dealing, from funding a coup to industrial-scale plunder, the children and grandchildren of political dynasties and world leaders have not all covered themselves in glory.

This week Mbuso Mandela made headlines after his arrest, with four others, in the famous but now neglected Houghton home that once belonged to his grandfather, political icon Nelson Mandela.

Like the Kennedys, the Mandela dynasty, which includes about 17 grandchildren, has had its share of tragedies, mavericks, reprobates, criminals and off-their-rockers relatives.

Young Mbuso, now 33, has been in trouble with the law before – several times, in fact.

There was a rape charge in 2015 for an assault on a girl. Mandela argued he was unaware she was 15 at the time and that the sex had been consensual. In 2022, he was bust for being in possession of an unlicensed firearm.

Mbuso, Magkatho Mandela’s son, has been central to other family scandals including drug abuse, stretches in rehab and failure to pay maintenance. He inherited about R3-million from his grandfather’s estate.

In 2023, another of Mandela’s grandchildren, Zoleka, daughter of Zindzi, died at 43 of bone cancer. She penned a candid and painful biography of her survival of sexual and drug abuse.

Another of Mandela’s grandchildren, Melisizwe, posted a note on WhatsApp this week declaring: “To all media personnel, I kindly request that you refrain from calling me during this time. I am still enjoying the last few days of my holiday in Cape Town.”

SAPS told News24 that “two Indian males, one coloured male, a white woman and Mandela’s grandson” were found at the Houghton home. Mbuso and “the woman” were in a relationship and lived in what was once Madiba’s main house.

A veritable real rainbow nation of suspects, at least.

You’d think with a famous political surname you’d leverage a bit more, like the offspring of other political dynasties across the globe.

Like a little bit of coup on the side?

There are children of world leaders who have been caught doing worse than Mbuso.

Sir Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990), was convicted in 2005 and given a four-year suspended sentence for funding a 2004 attempted coup d’état in Equatorial Guinea.

Thatcher, who was then 52, was arrested in Cape Town where he was living at that time. He pleaded guilty.

A condition of the sentence was that Thatcher leave South Africa and never return – which he did, travelling to the US to join his family, and where he now lives.

Thatcher was also linked to the Al-Yammah arms deal when the UK sold weapons to Saudi Arabia, paid for in oil. Sir Thatcher has globe-trotted from SA to the US to Switzerland, Monaco and Gibraltar like a twitchy shelf company. In 2005, he was said to be worth £60-million, much of it allegedly offshore.

Daddy’s boys and girls

The Dos Santos family of Angola have spent more than 38 years amassing huge wealth at the expense of the people with José Eduardo dos Santos’s oldest daughter, Isabel, named by Forbes magazine as “the richest woman in Africa”.

Her fortune is estimated at $2.2-billion. Isabel headed the national oil company Sonangol, but was forced out by her father’s successor João Lourenço, shortly after he came to power in 2017.

In 2020, an Angolan court froze her bank accounts and assets. Dos Santos and her Congolese husband, Sindika Dokolo, are suspected of having embezzled a billion dollars from the public firms Sonangol (oil) and Sodiam (diamonds).

In 2017, Teodorin Obiang, the eldest son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea (Sir Thatcher’s previous playground) was sentenced to a three-year suspended sentence by a French court for plundering the oil-rich but impoverished West African state to fund his revolutionary life in Paris.

He was also accused of money laundering, embezzlement and corruption and sentenced in absentia.

In the Philippines, most government positions are held by politicians who are members of “fat political dynasties”.

Since 2001, according to Carla Teng of the Asia Media Centre, Filipinos have elected four presidents who were all descendants of political dynasties. This includes the infamous Marcos family.

In 2022 Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jnr was elected president of the Philippines, marking the return of the Marcos family to power.

The regime of Marcos Snr was notorious for corruption, cronyism, violations of human rights and media censorship.

Marcos relatives, the Romualdezes, are primarily engaged in local politics, particularly in the province of Leyte and Tacloban City – the domain of former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos.

The Trumps

Soon to be inaugurated US president 47, Donald Trump is a convicted felon in New York. A jury of his peers found him guilty in the Stormy Daniels “hush money” trial, so that’s a first in US history.

The president-elect’s sentence, which will be handed down this week, will not affect his immediate prospects and term, but remains a blot.

Trump has five children from three marriages – Donald Jnr, Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany and Barron; and they are blocks beneath the pyramid which props up The Donald’s fake empire.

Daddy’s favourite, Ivanka, is married to Jared Kushner, who has a $3-billion private equity fund backed by Gulf State investors. The Mueller report into Russian interference in the US presidential elections revealed 2016 meetings between Kushner, incoming security adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian envoy.

Kushner and Flynn both met the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, at Trump Tower in 2016.

Don Jnr is his daddy’s social media, post-nasal-dripping meat puppet and executive vice-president of the Trump Organization. Don Jnr dropped in on Greenland recently to hand out Maga hats, hoping to convert the Greenlanders and distract the US media.

Eric likes crypto, his father likes crypto and Elon Musk likes crypto because the banks have too many regulations and rules when it comes to funnelling dark money.

Mbuso Mandela’s slide into drugs, sex and violence, while it is a tragedy for all in the family, is a burden less heavy than the sins of other dynasties. Besides, other Mandelas have got on with their lives, some on holiday in Cape Town. DM

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World

Like a little bit of coup on the side?

Daddy’s boys and girls

The Trumps