FINANCE Minister Trevor Manuel has a point when he says that, in many quarters, criticising the Dalai Lama is “equivalent to trying to shoot Bambi”.
The Tibetan leader shares a deified space occupied by several international icons who’ve fought for peace, democracy and freedom, including Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi. Converts to the cause cannot tolerate criticism of their high priests, even when it’s based on fact. This is not because airing dirty linen betrays a noble cause by supplying ammunition to enemies of the struggle, but for the simple reason that it amounts to sacrilege.
I presume Manuel was taking a dig at this sort of myopic, unquestioning support for Tibet’s cause — and the man who popularised it — when he addressed a gathering at the University of Cape Town last week. Manuel reportedly said it was time to interrogate the Dalai Lama’s credentials. Was he just a spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, or an illegitimate secessionist trying to drum up support for his selfdeclared government in exile “in the same way Taiwan was established to counter the legality of a single China”?
We needed to understand the role of lamas in Tibet’s history, he said. They were high priests and feudal overlords, which makes it problematic to elevate them to the status of demigods of democracy.
I quite agree. No one should ever be beyond well-reasoned reproach based on fact. Critical debate that doesn’t admit to holy cows is the essence of a robust democracy. But using this argument to justify clamping down on freedom of speech is a bit rich.
I don’t pretend to know much about Tibet’s history, or the Dalai Lama for that matter. But I can’t quite see how questions about the Nobel laureate’s legitimacy can translate into denying him a visa to stop him from making “a big global political statement about the secession of Tibet from China … on the free soil of SA”, as Manuel puts it. This amounts to a banning order.
I recall a much younger Manuel in a hall on the same university campus , railing against the injustices of the apartheid state, including banning orders against leaders of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress and South African Communist Party, who were prevented from freely propagating their views on their chosen podiums. As students, we indignantly punched the air with every “Amandla!” from Manuel, while outside rows of riot police lounged against Casspirs lined up on the edge of our campus.
Freedom of speech is not a complicated concept. It’s about being allowed to punt whatever views you want on any platform you’ve been invited to air them as long as you don’t defame anyone or break any laws, such as those governing hate speech or incitement to violence.
By banning the Dalai Lama from coming to SA until after the 2010 Soccer World Cup, our government has shown itself as eager as its apartheid predecessor to silence views it finds threatening or embarrassing.
No one really buys government spokesman Thabo Masebe’s argument that the Dalai Lama’s presence here would divert attention from the World Cup and that Chinese pressure had nothing to do with the decision to block his visit.
For a start, the conference he was scheduled to attend, along with fellow Nobel laureates and a few Hollywood stars, would have discussed ways of using soccer to fight racism and xenophobia ahead of the World Cup. You don’t get better publicity for a sporting event than that.
When the Chinese embassy reportedly confirmed it had appealed to SA not to let the Dalai Lama attend as it would harm bilateral relations, the cat was out of the bag.
Any ruling party that seeks to silence views that threaten its cozy relationship with a key trading partner, and perhaps even campaign funder, is guilty of a direct attack on our hard-won freedom of speech. And that’s worse than shooting Bambi.
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