Prevaricating over the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama
Weblog 25th March 2009-03-25
Dateline Jozi

It is hard to imagine a governing party in a working democracy taking the kind of liberties with public credibility in the run up to a national election that the ruling party is taking in South Africa’s immanent election, and getting away with it. Perhaps though South Africa is no longer a working democracy?

Some would say in retrospect that 2009 was when politics really got dirty, with fingers in the eyes to opponents, following a spray of dust to block the nostrils. Others argue that a country is only truly a democracy once the voter has changed the ruling party on a few occasions. Until then it is simply an emerging democracy.

This campaign of the ruling party is a defensive fighter’s response to some very real problems that no main persons want to deal with, yet. This is throwing dust in the face of your enemy as it advances. Distraction and misdirection: Keep all opposition in reaction mode so you never have to defend your record and no one else gets around to presenting their plan. In the meantime advance your troops.

It is a mean dust trail and one that rightly cannot be ignored. The ruling party must be most certain that they will walk this election again and again time without plunder to show such disregard for the State constructed out of the Struggle.

For us oldies the past month or so reeks of the old days when the Apartheid Regime would make some outrageous contribution to our daily fair … and then bluster their way through a series of denials backed up with fists and whatever for those too persistent in pursuit of transparent clarity.

The Minister of Foreign affairs [Mrs Dlamini-Zuma] this morning made a defence of the idea that sport and politics don’t mix that would have done her predecessor [Mr Botha] proud, and would undoubtedly confuse the hell out of Mr Peter Hain who organised umpteen campaigns against Apartheid sport, presumably with Mrs Zuma’s blessing, back in the bad old days. I imagine that Ms Zola Budd, wherever she is, feels a sense of chagrin that the people who destroyed her more than promising career would now be protecting her participation.

Or was there a difference between the apartheid regime’s violation of human rights in South Africa and the Chinese Government’s violation of the rights of Tibetans following their occupation of the Tibetan State for the past half century. The head of the SA Communist Party believes so.

Presumably the taxi drivers who this week vowed on the national news to disrupt the world cup because [apparently] their rights to terrorise motorists are being violated by the bus rapid transport system coming into being are ok, because they are not mixing politics with sport: their grievances are purely commercial.

The ruling party’s silence on the threats of taxi drivers contrasts curiously with their rudeness to one of the planet’s most revered figures. Nonetheless this strange disinterest in the affairs of the world pales compared to the way the Party has behaved recently over a range of issues that should affect voter responses but quite obviously are not going to, perhaps because the voter base of the party approves of their positions.

To mention a few: The shock release on medical parole, from a fifteen-year prison sentence of the Presidential candidate’s benefactor, Mr Shabir Shaik. The circumstances become murkier under cross-examination and the apparent fairness gap between his treatment and the plight of thousands of other alleged terminally ill prisoners is largely ignored, both by the government and its supporters..

Then there is a red herring, soften- them- up- for- bad –news report that the national prosecuting authority intends to drop its always-pending-[alleged corruption and racketeering ] case against Mr Zuma the prime Presidential candidate in the election…

Then there was is the brief ‘uproar’ over the listing of struggle icon, and convicted fraudster, Mrs Madikazela –Mandela for the national assembly. At number 5 there is no question that this formidable woman will take her rightful place in the national assembly, and the volume of antipathy over this is at a lower level of confusion. As was the bizarre endgame played out by another [lesser] struggle icon Karl Niehouse the ruling party’s answer to Karl Rove the Bush fixit man, who confessed tearfully to a stunned nation that he was a lying crook who deceived people over money. The list of circumstances in which the ruling party demonstrates it disinterest in the things that bother ordinary people is almost endless, and so ingrained has dismissive behaviour become that few people even bother to take note of it anymore aside from uptight opponents and reject larneys.

Nonetheless all this was light dust indeed in retrospect, when played out against their latest attempt to test how far they can fool all of the people and still win an absolute majority from the suckers.

To enlarge on my opening observation: This week the government of South Africa defended its commercial interests in the 2010 World Cup by playing the most bizarre card played by this capricious government in its fifteen year history in office. They banned the Dalai Lama from attending a world Peace conference organised to promote the World Cup competition.

Their reasoning: The Dalai Lama’s attendance was not in the country’s national interest. This phrase that has popped up a few times lately is again reminiscent of the Auld days and usually meant not in the ruling party’s interests.

It is hard to imagine how the Dalai Lama, more than likely the world’s most elegiac figure now that Mother Theresa has died could cause a rift in South Africa’s national interests.
I also have no recollection of a time when the public response to a ruling party decision was so overwhelmingly negative.

Fortunately for the ruling party the psychographics of soccer supporters is so diametrically different to the psychographics of Dalai Lama supporters with only marginal areas of overlap that most of those who intend to party at the world cup have only one world piece in mind, and it’s not the Dalai Lama, bless his withered buttocks.

What remains to be tested is whether the ruling party supporters numbered in any quantity amongst the unaccustomed outpouring of unhappiness at the bizarre behaviour of the government of the huge response to Tim Modisa’s after eight debate yesterday..

Top honours for the day go to the fellow [who may have been called] Thabo, who had the unenviable task of multi-tasking his defence for the Government while seemingly taking his daughters to school: to judge by the happy squealing backgrounds [one was reminded of Perlman’s great interview with a cabinet minister in some remote part of the continent discoursing on his country’s chances while feeding the chickens.].

The Party Spokesperson, remained firmly stoic in the face of a tirade of rage and confusion that had even the redoubtable Mr Tim Modisa amazed. If ever one had evidence that the national broadcaster’s prime radio station has some credibility it was the after eight debate on the Dalai Lama’s rejection. Even a cabinet minister was appalled [Mrs Hogan Min of Health]

… Will she be fired is the next question. She should be is my answer.

Thabo handled her betrayal with stunning fortitude. Even the loquacious Mr Leon, a well known, fellow guest with Thabo X , was silenced by the fellow’s dogged fortitude.

Of course the Party spokesperson was never able to give a direct NO to the repeated question. Did the Chinese government exert pressure on the Government to silence the meddlesome monk? Did the master prevaricator of the week draw the line at outright lying?

Perhaps he worked on a need to know basis and he didn’t need to know that. Perhaps these are the troops?

A day later the head of the Communist Party came on line to defend the decision, and the public was subjected to a delightful exercise in prevarication whereby the forcible takeover [in 1950]of the independent [Theistic] Kingdom of Tibet by China was represented as reclaiming an intransigent part of “one China”, and the efforts of the Tibetans to reclaim their independence was in effect likened to the behaviour of the late Ian Smith in unilaterally declaring Rhodesian independence.

The takeover of Tibet by China was a colonial act equivalent to South Africa deciding to annex Lesotho on the ground that it is surrounded by that country and subject to a “One South Africa” policy, and far from the Dalai Lama being a dissident priest he, like Nelson Mandela with whom he was to share the podium at the aborted Peace Conference, is a liberation leader. Obviously the communist party of South Africa can’t get it head around the fact that people want to be rid of communist rule where it still applies.

Anyway none of this had any effect on the voters who, in a series of extreme low poll by-elections on the 25th March sent the ruling party back into office by huge margins… If anything the ruling party seems more popular than ever, and so I stick by my prediction that the ruling party will win the by a landslide in a low poll election with the possible loss of the Western Cape.