“No birthday cake for him.”

China-fearing bureaucrats at South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Co-operation (DIRCO) breathed a sigh of relief this morning when the Office of the Dalai Lama in Delhi, India announced that the Tibetan spiritual leader had cancelled his trip to South Africa due to not receiving a visa in time.

The visa saga has been dragging on for almost three-weeks now as the Dalai Lama was due to visit South Africa this week to attend the birthday party of Arch-bishop Desmond Tutu, as well as deliver addresses on world peace.

Claiming errors with his application, filling in the wrong form, not ticking the correct box and a catalogue of other technical cop-outs,  DIRCO refused to comment further on the application, amid rising public fury and suspicion that the visa would not be granted due to South Africa’s fear of insulting its largest trading partner, China.

Whatever the case, with this announcement from the Dalai Lama, the yellow-bellied diplomats at DIRCO can now give a non-committal shrug while South Africa’s reputation as a country that prioritises the principles of human rights and pluralism over the economic bullying of world powers, slides further into historical fiction.

For shame, South Africa, for shame!

[Source: Times Live]