Nelson Mandela Update: Grandson Of Former South Africa President Announces His Wife Is Pregnant

The grandson of the former Nobel Peace Prize winner and South African President Nelson Mandela announced he was going to be a father by posting a picture of two positive home pregnancy tests Monday.

Mandla Mandela also posted a picture of himself holding his pregnant wife Rabia to mark the first anniversary of their marriage on Monday. The picture of the couple was captioned, "ALHAMDULILLAH," which is Arabic for "Allah is the greatest." The young Mandela reportedly converted to Islam when he got married last year.

"We are excited beyond words today to be celebrating not only our first wedding anniversary but also the fact that we are expecting our first bundle of joy,” the couple said in a statement Monday.

Mandla Mandela’s marriage to Rabia Mandela is his fourth. While he took on his wife's religion during their traditional Muslim Nikah matrimonial ceremony in Cape Town, Rabia adopted a traditional Mvezo name — Nkosikazi Nosekeni Rabia Mandla — when she was welcomed into the AbaThembu community, which is an ethnic group in South Africa. Her husband, the chief of the Mvezo community in the eastern part of the country, has the traditional name of Nkosi Zwelivelile. “Although Rabia and I were raised in different cultural and religious traditions‚ our coming together reflects what we have in common: We are South Africans,” he said when the two got married.

Mandla Mandela’s ability to have children made international headlines in 2012 when his first wife, Tando Mabunu-Mandela, submitted a document to a marriage court in South Africa saying he was impotent. He subsequently went to the court to nullify his third marriage and ask a judge to allow him to be married a fourth time for the "traditional reason" of fathering a child. But his then-wife filed paperwork saying he was unable to have children and therefore his main reason for the marriage was meaningless.

“In this respect, I assert that the first respondent [Mandla Mandela] has in any event fertility issues which render him incapable of producing an heir through natural conception,” the court document from Tando Mabunu-Mandela said.