JOHANNESBURG: “I can’t help it if the ladies take note of me,” Nelson Mandela once said. “I am not going to protest.”

The thrice-married former president of South Africa is a celebrated charmer who, even in old age, has captivated celebrities such as Naomi Campbell and the Spice Girls. But one woman, it has been claimed, turned down a proposal of marriage from Mandela before he went on to wed his current wife, Graca Machel.  Amina Cachalia, a distinguished activist in the struggle against racial apartheid, politely rebuffed the great statesman in the 1990s, according to her son, Ghaleb.

“She called me and my sister aside and said she wanted to tell us about this proposal and that she was not going to accept it,”Ghaleb said on Monday. “She was very matter of fact about it.”

Mandela had been a guest at Cachalia’s 21st birthday party and was visited by her in prison on Robben Island. “We knew they were good friends, he was a friend of the family, he dropped in all the time. It didn’t come as a surprise to us,” Ghaleb said.Cachalia’s husband Yusuf had died in 1995, by which time Mandela was heading for divorce from his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Asked why his mother had spurned one of the moral giants of the 20th century, Ghaleb replied: “She wanted to honour the legacy of my father. She was a strong and independent woman. She wanted to live her life as she saw fit and be close to her grandchildren.”

Cachalia, whose father had joined Mohandas Gandhi in passive resistance to the South African government, never regretted her decision and remained fiercely independent until her death this year at the age of the 82, Ghaleb added. “My father was the love of her life.”

But after Yusuf died there were “romantic interludes” with Mandela in the 1990s, which are detailed in Cachalia’s autobiography, When Hope and History Rhyme, published this month. The book skates past the marriage proposal, which Ghaleb revealed to South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper.

Mandela married Machel, the widow of the Mozambican president Samora Machel, on his 80th birthday in 1998. Now 94, he remained in hospital on Monday for a sixth day, receiving treatment for a recurring bout of pneumonia. Doctors reported a further improvement in his condition over the weekend.

By arrangement with the Guardian