Nelson Mandela

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I returned today from India, having attended the UK-India Round Table. We started our meeting on 6 December with two minutes’ silence for Nelson Mandela. In fact, India has declared state mourning for five days. We could not even consume alcohol at the meeting.

I was born and brought up in India and married my South African wife a year after Mandela was freed in 1990. When I first visited the Free State she came from, my family there told me, “If you had come just a few months earlier, no Indian was allowed to spend the night in the Free State”. An Indian whose car broke down on the way from Johannesburg to Durban would report to the police and invariably would have to spend the night in jail. Things have changed, thanks to Nelson Mandela and President F W de Klerk.

One individual who has not been mentioned in these amazing tributes is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He is the one who has spoken about the word “ubuntu”, which anyone who has been to South Africa knows about. The person who personified ubuntu was Nelson Mandela himself. As he said, ubuntu is about not enriching oneself but putting back into the community with human kindness. We can see that in his lack of bitterness, his ability to forgive and that saying of his:

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite”.

What about Mahatma Gandhi? Nelson Mandela was a huge admirer of Gandhi. In fact, he said:

“India is Gandhi’s country of birth; South Africa his country of adoption. He was both an Indian and a South African citizen”.

He also said:

“Both Gandhi and I suffered colonial oppression, and both of us mobilized our respective peoples against governments that violated our freedoms”.

Is it not amazing that these two men had difficulties with our two great Prime Ministers—Mahatma Gandhi with Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela with Lady Thatcher?

The noble Lord, Lord St John, mentioned the great rugby victory. In prison on Robben Island, Mandela would often quote the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, and its last lines:

“I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul”.

Mahatma Gandhi’s most famous saying applies better to no one else—ever, ever—than Nelson Mandela. I will paraphrase it: “Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits form your character and your character determines your destiny”. Mandela has been an inspiration not just to his country, the world or this generation but for ever more.