Refusing Dalai Lama a visa implies China has a financial hold on government, writes Aspasia Karras

GUT reaction to South Africa’s refusal to admit the Dalai Lama to our shores for a 2010 peace conference could be one of frustrated outrage at the inherent irony of the act.

That is, unless you subscribe to the idea that the Dalai Lama is a small, balding, orange clad agent of Western imperialism whose presence at a peace conference with those three apologists for the South African moral high ground — Nelson Mandela, FW De Klerk and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu — would constitute a breach of our national interest.

Our nation’s much-lauded moral high ground is fast resembling a slippery slope on which we tread at our peril.

“The South African government does not have a problem with the Dalai Lama. But at this time the whole world will be focused on the country as hosts of the 2010 World Cup. We want the focus to remain on South Africa. A visit now by the Dalai Lama would move the focus from South Africa onto issues in Tibet,” said President Kgalema Motlanthe’s spokesman, Thabo Masebe, yesterday morning.

We certainly have the world’s attention. And what we are telling the world is precisely what our neighbour to the north so floridly expressed in the run-up to the protracted Zimbabwean election: “We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.”

It is no small wonder that Robert Mugabe feels that way. Chinese largesse has not only financially buttressed the Zimbabwean economy, such as it is, but also supplied handy government riot gear and jamming devices to use against the MDC’s radio signal when the perennial president still depended on that kind of thing.

Motlanthe’s spokesman protested loudly yester day that “the decision was made by the government and not by the People’s Republic of China. This issue is that this simply would not be in the best interests of South Africa at this stage”.

But a ministerial counsellor at the Chinese embassy in Pretoria said his government had appealed to the South African government not to allow the Dalai Lama into the country, warning that if it did so, it would harm bilateral relations.

And China is certainly holding a big stick. What the failure of bilateral relations could mean for the South African government is reflected in the figures.

Chinese foreign direct investment in South Africa is calculated at about R60-billion while South Africa’s foreign direct investment in China is about $2-billion (R20- billion). And South Africa accounts for around 20.8 percent of China’s trade with the African continent.

More insidiously, reports indicate the Chinese Communist Party is directly funding the ANC ’s election coffers. ANC president Jacob Zuma’s visit to Beijing last year does nothing to dispel this theory.

Speculation implies that the Chinese government has made a firm down payment on the South African government.

An implication of this relationship is the end of a human rights-based foreign policy — something our voting record at the United Nations already suggests.

The South African government is right on trend with its refusal to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama. An act of realpolitik that comes hot on the heels of the first case of major unrest in Tibetan populated areas and two weeks after the 50th anniversary of the failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Ninety-three Tibetan monks have reportedly been arrested by Chinese authorities after “a riot” in which a “mob” attacked a police station.

This might explain why the Chinese government would want to keep the Dalai Lama out of the spotlight at an international peace conference.

The fact that the arrests happened precisely a week after the first anniversary of riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, that began on March 14 last year, could have also caused some sensitivity on the part of the Chinese.

South Africa, on the other hand, was celebrating Human Rights Day on March 21.

Motlanthe invoked the dead at Sharpeville: “Today we are gathered to pay tribute to and honour the memory of South African heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives in pursuit of freedom, justice and human rights.”

He then asked the crowd at the Galeshwe stadium in Kimberley to “pause and look back at the road traversed, and reflect on what needs to be done to realise a non-racial, non-sexist democratic society based on the constitutional principles of human dignity, achievement of equality and freedom”.

Perhaps Tutu’s plaintive response to the Dalai Lama situation sheds some light on the road we have chosen to travel.

He said: “I will condemn the government’s behaviour as disgraceful, in line with our country’s abysmal record at the United Nations Security Council, a total betrayal of our struggle history.”

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