Comments on: Dalai Lama debacle as a case study on SA foreign policy

By: Marvin Caldwell-Barr

Marvin Caldwell-Barr — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:52:58 +0000

This is a great article, bristling with salient points; you must have put in a lot of time and effort to get your factual ducks in a row. Definitely a don’t-throw-away piece, which I’m filing away for future reference.

In my opinion the ANC took a business decision — rather than political — to defer to the wishes of the Chinese government, probably thinking the ensuing flak would be light enough to brazen out. In taking that decision it will have been cognisant of the price France is paying for going against the wishes of the Chinese government with regard to the Dalai Lama.

It has backfired horribly, and the echoes of it will reverberate throughout South Africa’s international relations for a time to come.

In a normal situation we would have been able to live down the brouhaha without too much bother. But now, for all the reasons you raise, we are deep in the proverbial smelly stuff.

In a way, I feel sympathy for the ANC; it was, from the start, damned if it did, and damned if it didn’t.

By: Lyndall Beddy

Lyndall Beddy — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:07:41 +0000

Jerry

Maybe because China had the sense to ban Mugabe from attending the Olympics. How many would have been there had Mugabe been able to attend?

A bit of double standards there, don’t you think?

By: sipho

sipho — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:41:09 +0000

Well, if it goes to court and the people win, it’s going to send an awfully big message to China!

@Lyndall,

That’s what the Fastcompany article is about…China, paying bribes and kickbacks. Corruption extraordiaire! My, what a good example they set for doing business!

@Jerry,

Let me explain to you how schoolyard bullying works. A schoolyard bully terrorizes all the kids. Each one of them is too afraid to stand up to the bully so they all give in to the bully’s demands. The fear is that if I stand up, I will get beaten up. Nobody will help me because they are all too afraid.

So everybody else doesn’t stand up, ergo we shouldn’t stand up. I guess Gandhi and Nelson Mandela should have applied your reasoning of submission too. Is this what you teach your kids?

This is South Africa and South Africans should decide for themselves. Who knows, we may even set a trend of standing up to the bully!

Jerry, it’s only when everyone cowers that terrorism works,right?

If we ALL stood up to China at once, can they intimidate us? How? No raw material to run their economic engine and no market to buy it…do you think they would last a week?

Oh, latest news: massive spy software found in 103 countries…guess where it’s controlled from?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/29spy.html?_r=1

more reason to do biz with China!

By: Siobhan

Siobhan — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:04:05 +0000

@Dave Harris, Sipho Thank you both.

Yes, Dave, I’m sure you are right about Fire Wind. He/she writes like a Party propaganda sheet to tell the Chinese abroad what to think and say.

@Fire Wind: Since you apparently prefer fiction to history, you might be entertained –and also enlightened–by reading the five novels on China in Tibet by Eliot Patison. Much of the detail in his stories came from Tibetans who had been in Chinese ‘Re-Education Camps’. They make the Russian gulags look like scout camps.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:05:52 +0000

@ Firewind

I would like you to consider something. Who would you be quicker to believe, the ANC government, with a terrible track record of lies, corruption and deceipt, or a man who is the spiritual leader of Tibet? I wonder what Nelson Mandela thinks of the current government’s decision. We all know what Desmond Tutu thinks and I tend to agree with him!

By: Dave Harris

Dave Harris — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:15:09 +0000

@Lyndall Beddy
“The real point is that the Chinese PAY BRIBES!”
Right on the money Lyndall!! I wish more South Africans would understand how the oppressive Chinese government operates.
Now if we had more transparency in government and a few dedicated hotshot investigative reporters we could figure out the real criminals behind this corruption. The SA government’s decision makes NO economic or political sense!

@Siobhan & Sipho et al
Fire Wind appears to be a mole of the Chinese government. Not worth taking seriously.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:28:53 +0000

i am having difficulties coming to grips with the furore around the government’s visa refusal of Dalai. I think there is something else at work. Maybe we should rather talk about degrees of complicity in aiding and abetting rogue states (presumably this means countries with less than impecable human rights records).
China is a very important trading partner of SA, by the way it is also a very important trading partner of US and EU, that is why everyone was at the opening ceremony of the Olympics.Is it an acceptable response and action of people who have a problem with China’s human rights violations. violations. i did not see people matching in the streets or protesting that by even engaging in such actions, including sending our athletes there could be construed as ‘constructive engagement’. One eminent priest said when chastising Trevor Manuel ‘Dalai is a Nobel Peace prize winner’. But so is FW de Klerk.It was never a benchmark of anything. We are going to secure our economic interest first like everyone else, we do not have friends, we have economic interests. Some south africans must grow up.

By: Lyndall Beddy

Lyndall Beddy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:41:48 +0000

Sipho

The real point is that the Chinese PAY BRIBES! It is cheaper than any other method of acquiring land and/or minerals.

China is NOT our biggest trading partner, and we have now offended the rest of the world, risked the vast amounts of Aids given for welfare as well as other trade, and contaminated 2010.

What other explanation than bribes can you think of?

By: Sipho

Sipho — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:49:46 +0000

@Bongo
Soon you will be a proud Chinafrican citizen!
Hail to the next great colonizer, also the world’s greatest polluter and murderer of tens of millions of its own citizens. Go watch all the NINE COMMENTARIES ON THE COMMUNIST PARTY videos at youtube then let us know how nice it will be to do business with the most oppressive regime on the planet bar none.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8oaUepvc70

Don’t live in the past
pay attention to the present
Don’t look at the trees, look at the forest

@Siobhan, I agree with you
@Firewind seems to be doing just that, expelling wind!

Hey @Firewind, do you even meditate? Have you even read any of the hundreds of books on Buddhism and Compassion that HH has written? What’s your expertise in this field? Please fill us in. To judge a man like HH, you must be equal or greater, true? So let’s see what’ve you done with your life!

By: Fire Wind

Fire Wind — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:49:26 +0000

The goverment did the right decision not to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama. Those who are upset should question their own confusion, being unable to distinguish clearly between religion and politics. What does the Dalai Lama want to do here anyway? He is supposed to be a Buddhist monk who should engage in spiritual practice and not in politics. It is a sad sign of these degenerate times that these things are happening and that people are so confused, glorifying people who are themselves seriously transgressing human rights issues and dividing society. Investigate more deeply what the Dalai Lama has done, he is even currently brought before the Indian High Court in New Delhi for violating human rights, the courtcase is still running. We need to learn to differentiate more clearly and not fall into blind glorification without questioning. Those who don’t will soon feel very embarrassed when the truth and facts come to light. I think this was a very wise decisions of the ANC government, and I congratulate them for that. We do not need more confusion and pretense, division and blaming. What our society needs is a good example of pure spirituality (without mixing in worldly politics) to lead us to peace and harmony, true friendship and well-being. The Dalai Lama has shown that he is not such a person, but quite the opposite. Where ever he goes he causes distress, division, anger, fighting, and confusion.