Tibet’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama, was forced to cancel plans to give the keynote speech at the 80th birthday celebration of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu – a victim, some said, of the growing muscle of China not only in trade but in diplomacy.
A Nobel Prize winner, as is Tutu, the Dalai Lama was scheduled to give a peace lecture at the University of the Western Cape and at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Tutu blasted the government’s failure to issue the a visa for the Dalai Lama, calling it "disgraceful," and University of the Witwatersrand vice chancellor Loyiso Nongxa said it "ridicules the values enshrined in our Constitution."
Trade union leader Tony Ehrenreich, speaking at a midnight vigil for the Tibetan figure, said: "Even though China is our biggest trading partner, we should not exchange our morality for dollars or yuan."
Beijing has attempted to block visits of the Dalai Lama to other foreign countries in a dispute over Tibet which China claims. South African officials insist they were not blocking the visa under pressure from China.
Still, it seemed like too much of coincidence that South Africa’s Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe was in China recently signing a stack of commercial agreements, including one trade-financing deal valued at $2.5 billion. And visas for the Tibetan leader, approved.
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