A period of reflection will be recommended to bring them to their senses, although anyone who knows anyone who has divorced is likely to see that this is mostly bunkum.Political discussion of divorce takes place in a realm of airy unreality far removed from the world inhabited by real live couples. Yet for all the heat and fury, the Bill will pass.In the debate the politicians can be counted on to miss the point yet again – that divorce is not a blight, but a blessing to most people.As a ritual opener, every speaker in the debate next week will intone the rubric that marriage break-up is a disaster. But Leigh also wants the present waiting period of one year extended to two years, starting with an initial compulsory six months in which the couples are forced to undergo “reconciliation counselling by people like Relate”. His proposal is designed to make them get back together again. (Winnie Mandela has been trying to insist on similar mediation by a discredited apartheid tribal chief, but her husband will have none of it.)”Almost every Tory I speak to in the Commons is unhappy about this Bill,” says Leigh.

“It will only pass because of Labour’s support.” The virulent campaign in the Daily Mail against the Bill has fuelled back-bench rebellion. Edward Leigh, one of the prime opponents, is among those pressing for wrecking amendments.The most controversial would restore the concept of fault. On Monday the Commons debates the hotly contested new divorce law in the Family Law Bill which will end the whole concept of fault and blame. Its fierce critics call it a charter for immorality, undermining the meaning of marriage.

Why shouldn’t the wronged partner have their injury put down on the record? What kind of useless contract is a marriage certificate if it is easier to walk away from than a TV rental agreement or a package holiday booking? They are horrified that the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” will no longer feature in British law.This morning Tory MPs who oppose the reform will meet together in a cabal organised by Dame Jill Knight and Baroness Young, the leader of the attempted revolt in the House of Lords Dame Jill says the back benches are abuzz with indignation. How undignified for one of the world’s noblest men to be brought so low in the divorce courts. “I asked her to settle it amicably and quietly and not to wash our dirty linen in public,” he said mildly in court Not Winnie. She wanted her day in court, her pound of flesh from that frail frame, with a gallon of blood for her gravy. The grotesque behaviour of Winnie, the trouble she causes wherever she turns her power-hungry vengeful eye has been the sorry spectacle of the world.

Yet Nelson Mandela’s exemplary dignity, careful not to retaliatenor publicly condemn, has kept him from tumbling into the humiliations suffered by other prominent divorcees.
For us in Britain, this front-page extravaganza of public dirty washing comes at a salutory time. Until there is a fully functioning justice system in Rwanda its people living outside its borders will not return home.John O’SheaDirectorGoal [relief and development agency]Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. Many marriages are made in hell: Nelson and Winnie Mandela can testify to that. Aid workers in Burundi fear that the country is on the verge of an explosion of violence. Civil war rages in the countryside between the ruling Tutsi military and the Hutus who have been “cleansed” from the capital, Bujumbura.