Fact File
Age: 52
Why in the news: Is the new Mrs Nelson Mandela (but will remain Mrs Machel)
Judging by her public appearances in South Africa, Nelson Mandela's new bride, Graca Machel, is a demure, matronly woman with a warm, affectionate smile.
But, extrapolating from her past, Mrs Machel (52), will certainly not play the role of the dutiful, adoring wife to her famous octogenarian husband.
She will retain her distinctive identity and not be subsumed by his international status: she signalled as much when she announced that she would continue to use her present name, acquired from her first husband, Samora Machel, the founding president of Mozambique who was killed when the plane he was travelling in crashed in South Africa en route to Mozambique from Zambia.
Another sign of her independence of mind is the decision to exclude the traditional commitment to obey her husband from the marriage vow she took a week ago at their wedding at President Mandela's Johannesburg home.
A third pointer is her decision not to live permanently in South Africa but to commute between her established home in Mozambique and her new ones in South Africa, a decision with which Mr Mandela concurred.
To make these points is not to deny that Mrs Machel loves her new husband. She does, but as an independent person, one who, in her case, will continue her work for the uplifting of children and as chairwoman of the UN-sponsored Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children.
Mrs Machel has her own definition of love. "It is," she says, "when you are next to the person and you feel so special, unique." As if proving her point, she appears to glow with warmth when she accompanies her husband as South Africa's new first lady.
But it is typical of Mrs Machel, born to a black nationalist family in Mozambique's southern province of Gaza, that she is not particularly enamoured of that role.
Reflecting on her role as first lady in Mozambique when she was still married to the charismatic Machel, she told a South African newspaper: "I never considered myself as first lady. I was busy with the things I wanted to do, liked to do . . . You see, as a first lady you are expected to do things as a reflection of what your husband is, or is doing. That is something I am not very comfortable with."
But Mrs Machel's spell as South Africa's first lady will not be a long one, Mr Mandela having already announced his intention to relinquish the presidential office after South Africa's general election in May next year.
When Mr Mandela retires as president to assume a new role as South Africa's elder statesmen - as the nation's sagacious patriarch - Mrs Machel will be at his side when he brings his moral authority to bear on the problems still facing South Africa and, the African continent.
But Mr Mandela will almost certainly be at her side, too, when she pursues her work to help children, especially those whose lives were traumatised by Mozambique's civil war, work for which she was awarded the coveted Nansen Medal.
Mrs Machel's strength of character and depth of commitment are manifest in her record as a nationalist cadre in Mozambique's war of independence against Portugal, a war which brought the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) to power in the mid-1970s.
Her curriculum vitae shows she served as Mozambique's minister of education for 11 years, during which she worked tirelessly to fulfil the new government's goal of universal education for all Mozambicans and saw enrolment in primary and secondary schools rise from 40 to 90 per cent.
Mrs Machel's generous disposition was manifest in her acceptance of President Machel's six children as her own when she married him in 1975; it is apparent, too, in her agreement to name one of the children she bore him Josina after his second wife, Josina Muthemba, a Frelimo fighter who died during the struggle against Portugal.
Mrs Machel, who heads the clan she inherited from her first husband, believes it is imperative for Africans to "decolonise" their minds and rediscover pride in being of African origin and culture. That implies reinstating African respect for family solidarity and values, an objective which Mr Mandela - whose long sojourn in prison deprived him of a full family life - fully shares.
Her advice to young black people is: "Fly high but remain African. Be proud of yourself for being yourself and give to others from your culture, your tradition, your resources. Receive help from others but remain yourself."
Her advice appears to sum up her attitude to marriage: love fully but do not become a cypher, allow love to suffuse your core without dissolving the unique self within it.