South Africa’s reluctance to allow the Dalai Lama to visit this country is deplorable. It shows an appalling lack of good judgement and an alarming lack of principle. It also confirms just how far the ANC has plummeted from the exhilarating heights of 1994.
There is not a single sliver of a principled reason to even hesitate before granting the Dalai Lama a visa to stay in this country for as long as he likes. He has struggled, without ever resorting to violence, to bring about peace and freedom from oppression in his country – goals that the ANC used to identify with quite openly.
In 1994, the ANC made us all proud to be South Africans. We stood tall under the principled leadership of two Nobel Peace prize winners, President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. No other country in the world could claim to have a government with a higher moral standing than the ANC that took office after our first democratic elections.
South Africans had done the unimaginable – we had thrown out the most despised, oppressive political system on this planet and replaced it with the best – an honourable system that believed in justice, transparency, honesty and ethics of the highest order.
We could trust our leadership because Mandela had sacrificed his freedom and had shown that he was ready to give his life in order to bring about a true democracy in this country. Tutu had stared down the might of the apartheid regime and had risked his life more often than any solider because he wanted justice in South Africa.
It is therefore desperately sad that the current ANC regime has thrown its democratic principles out the window for the sake of appeasing its new political bosses in Beijing.
China is not a democracy. If you disagree with the Chinese communist party the jackboots will arrest you for an indeterminate period of time – and there is no guarantee that you will survive your period of internment. Yet the ANC has decided to heed the voice of the oppressor rather than that of the oppressed.
We hang our heads in abject shame that the once proud ANC has prevented two of the most respected men on earth from celebrating a birthday together.
We have only one question for the ANC leadership.
How do you say “Ja, baas” in Chinese?
South Africa’s reluctance to allow the Dalai Lama to visit this country is deplorable. It shows an appalling lack of good judgement and an alarming lack of principle. It also confirms just how far the ANC has plummeted from the exhilarating heights of 1994.
There is not a single sliver of a principled reason to even hesitate before granting the Dalai Lama a visa to stay in this country for as long as he likes. He has struggled, without ever resorting to violence, to bring about peace and freedom from oppression in his country – goals that the ANC used to identify with quite openly.
In 1994, the ANC made us all proud to be South Africans. We stood tall under the principled leadership of two Nobel Peace prize winners, President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. No other country in the world could claim to have a government with a higher moral standing than the ANC that took office after our first democratic elections.
South Africans had done the unimaginable – we had thrown out the most despised, oppressive political system on this planet and replaced it with the best – an honourable system that believed in justice, transparency, honesty and ethics of the highest order.
We could trust our leadership because Mandela had sacrificed his freedom and had shown that he was ready to give his life in order to bring about a true democracy in this country. Tutu had stared down the might of the apartheid regime and had risked his life more often than any solider because he wanted justice in South Africa.
It is therefore desperately sad that the current ANC regime has thrown its democratic principles out the window for the sake of appeasing its new political bosses in Beijing.
China is not a democracy. If you disagree with the Chinese communist party the jackboots will arrest you for an indeterminate period of time – and there is no guarantee that you will survive your period of internment. Yet the ANC has decided to heed the voice of the oppressor rather than that of the oppressed.
We hang our heads in abject shame that the once proud ANC has prevented two of the most respected men on earth from celebrating a birthday together.
We have only one question for the ANC leadership.
How do you say “Ja, baas” in Chinese?
