Family Bereavements
A bereavement tends to bring out the best and worst in people - and all the more so when a family member is involved.
The sight of Nelson's Mandela family fighting over his legacy is a case in point - predictable and depressing in equal measure - as key figures seek to exploit their personal connection with the Father of the Nation, even before he has drawn his last breath.
For quite a while Mandla Mandela, the former President's grandson and official heir, was my 'chief villain' - as he exhumed the bodies of other relatives and spirited them off to a new site where he has opened a Nelson Mandela visitor centre.
From which Mandla Mandela stands to benefit from personally of course - especially if the new centre were to become a big tourist attraction down the road a bit.
What better tourist magnet could there be but the bones of a great African hero - one of the most important political figures of the last century - perhaps paraded like the body parts of a long dead Catholic saint.
But thankfully the South African courts have now scuppered that plan by ordering the bodies of Thembi, Makgatho and Makaziwe Mandela to be returned to Qunu - where Nelson Mandela's has repeatedly said that he wants to be laid to rest, in his ancient ancestral home.
Not to be outdone though is Winnie Mandela - who seems to pop up everywhere these days professing her undying love for her former husband and pushing herself into the spotlight at every opportunity.
Now this is odd indeed because in his memoir 'A Long Walk to Freedom' - which Nelson Mandela began to write while incarcerated on Robben Island - the anti-apartheid leader describes his four years with Winnie on his release from prison as the loneliest years of his life.
Presumably this is why Nelson Mandela divorced Winnie back in 1996 and built a new life for himself in which she had no formal role - although she was obviously still the mother of his children.
Yet Winnie has re-written history and reinvented herself with a new status of 'devoted and loving former wife' - in a shameless boost to her profile as the extended Mandela family plan their next moves, few of which seem to involve Nelson Mandela's best interests.
One of the few people to emerge out of this affair with any credit is American President Barack Obama - who refused to exploit the situation by visiting Nelson Mandela in hospital where he is clearly being kept alive rather than allowed to die peacefully.
If only other members of the family had behaved with such dignity and restraint.
