Dalai Lama has achieved monumental publicity, government has been caught lying
EDITORIAL: THE latest twist in the Dalai Lama saga has exposed the government’s shocking dissembling on the matter. Court papers submitted by IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who is challenging the denial of a visa to the Tibetan leader, strongly suggest that he did indeed apply for a visa to visit South Africa.
Government spokesmen and foreign affairs officials have stated that he made no such application. This lack of honesty on the part of the government points to just how ad hoc and ill- considered its decision was to deny the visa.
It suggests that the government might have been making up foreign policy as it went along.
The Cabinet was clearly not taken into the confidence of those who made the decision. Why else would a stunned and surprised Health Minister Barbara Hogan have called on the government to apologise for its decision?
The larger lesson here is that you cannot hide your lack of conviction behind bureaucratic processes and then pretend to the public that your decision was innocent.
And there is another lesson: by taking such a public stand, the government has heightened the profile of the Dalai Lama and raised awareness of his cause here and abroad in ways that the spiritual leader could never have achieved by addressing a conference.
As a feat of poor spin doctoring, this fiasco will take some outdoing.
South Africa now looks bad to those who value human rights. The Dalai Lama has achieved monumental publicity and the government has been caught out in a lie .
The ANC is not afraid of reminding us how it intends returning policy making to the public arena after the somewhat unconsultative Thabo Mbeki years.
But this momentous foreign policy decision appears to have been taken in a very thinly populated, smoke-filled room.
What an embarrassment.
