Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela’s compelling autobiography, in which he highlights his 50-year struggle (1944-94) to liberate Black South Africa from White Apartheid oppression. The irony, of course, is that Mandela spent 27 of those years in prison, where his walking was clearly limited.
Freedom in Exile is the Dalai Lama’s equally compelling autobiography, in which he highlights his 54-year struggle (1959-present) to liberate Tibetan Buddhists from Chinese oppression. There’s clearly irony, and sublime symmetry, in the fact that he has been walking to further his cause for exactly twice as long as Mandela was sitting in prison for his; and long enough for the Dalai Lama to walk around the world … twice.
China invaded and occupied Tibet in 1959 – forcing its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to flee into (permanent) exile.
The Chinese showed no mercy back then in killing tens of thousands of Tibetans to establish their totalitarian claim to Tibet as a part of China’s territory. And they have been determined ever since to disabuse the followers of the Dalai Lama of any hope for his return.
(“China’s Buddhist Intifada,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 18, 2008)
The far greater irony, though, is that Mandela managed to rally more support for his cause from behind bars than the Dalai Lama has managed to rally for his, despite all of that walking.
But the reason for this is obvious: where Mandela’s oppressors were just a bunch of White Afrikaners whose rule depended on support from Western powers, the Dalai Lama’s are the mercantile Chinese on whom these Western powers depend for economic trade and financial support. Only this explains why, instead of championing the Dalai Lama’s cause, Western leaders have been helping the Chinese enforce and prolong his exile:
Western leaders have made a mockery of their condemnation over the crackdown [on Tibetan Buddhists] by heeding China’s warning against meeting with the Dalai Lama in any official capacity.
In fact, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeased the Chinese by barring him from No. 10, agreeing instead to meet only in private at the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This enabled Brown to claim that he was meeting the Dalai Lama only ‘in a spiritual rather than political capacity.’
(“Punishing China for Its Brutal Crackdown in Tibet? Hardly!” The iPINIONS Journal, July 28, 2008)
Mind you, it’s hardly surprising that Western powers would sacrifice democratic principles for the sake of economic gain when it comes to foreign affairs. After all, this has been their only reason for not just supporting but defending dictatorial rule in Saudi Arabia for almost 75 years.
On this basis alone, South Africa could be forgiven for following suit. Except that it looks like a venal and craven fiend for conspiring to ensure that the global hand it took to freedom is not extended to a friend still suffering under oppression.
Specifically, South African leaders made quite a show during last week’s memorial events and funeral service of hailing Mandela as a veritable patron saint of the oppressed and of pledging undying fealty to him (and to what he stood for).
But nobody can have any doubt that Mandela would never have even countenanced currying favor with the Chinese by denying the Dalai Lama a visa to visit South Africa to attend a peace conference (of all things). Not least because in 1996, while still president, Mandela welcomed the Dalai Lama (as a fellow freedom fighter and fellow winner of the Nobel Peace Prize) with open arms.
Therefore, you’d think Mandela’s (self-professed) political heirs would rather die than betray not just a fellow freedom fighter like the Dalai Lama, but all they claim Mandela stood for to boot.
Yet they have been betraying both for years; and the irony (if not hypocrisy) seems completely lost on them:
Westerners are incredulous of South Africa’s decision to ban the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, from attending a peace conference for Nobel laureates that is scheduled to convene in Johannesburg on Friday. But nobody familiar with recent developments in South African politics should be.
A few years ago, communists and other left-wing factions in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) began undermining the presidency of Thabo Mbeki to make way for their standard bearer, Jacob Zuma. And since then I’ve been chronicling (and lamenting) South Africa’s slow but certain descent into just another dysfunctional, destitute and discredited African country…
I discerned early on that, given credible allegations that he’s not only a corrupt politician but also a rapist, Zuma knew full well that he would always be persona non grata in the West. Therefore, I was not at all surprised when he began emulating fellow African pariahs like President Mugabe of Zimbabwe and President al-Bashir of Sudan by forging political and economic ties with China and Russia.
This is why South Africa couldn’t care any less about outrage in the West over its ban on the Dalai Lama. Never mind the hypocrisy of Zuma and crew now governing like the Apartheid leaders they once reviled….
(“South Africa Bans Dalai Lama from Peace Conference to Appease China,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 24, 2009)
In fact:
What has happened to the ANC … is that Zuma has transformed it from a party that championed democratic freedoms into one that enforces party loyalty – whether right or wrong. Even worse, it is deploying many of the same tactics of political intimidation and repression that the Apartheid regime deployed during its rule.
(“South Africa “Betraying Its Values,” The iPINIONS Journal, May 13, 2011)
Which is why the hypocrisy in all of the talk last week about carrying on Mandela’s legacy was surpassed only by the corruption reflected in recent reports about Zuma using $28 million in public funds to renovate his private residence. Frankly, I could not help thinking as I watched the spectacular memorial events unfold (against Mandela’s express wishes, incidentally) that the ANC orchestrated them as much to rehabilitate Zuma as to honor Mandela.
No doubt you recall the dark cloud that rained all over last week’s main event, the highly touted memorial service at which heads of state, including President Obama, paid tribute. This, I submit, was not Mother Nature shedding tears of grief; it was God pissing on South Africa for refusing to grant the Dalai Lama a visa to attend Mandela’s funeral even on compassionate grounds.
A spokesman says the Dalai Lama will not attend memorial services for fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela in South Africa, where the Buddhist spiritual leader has twice been unable to obtain a visa.
(The Associated Press, December 9, 2013)
Meanwhile, just to complete the farce, China’s propaganda authorities ordered local and national media to censor anything speakers said about Mandela’s heroic fight for democratic freedoms, or about their common cause and camaraderie with the Dalai Lama.
Alas, I suspect the only homage Zuma and his ANC comrades will pay to Mandela’s legacy will be in building towering monuments to him (like the Rio-styled Christ-the-Redeemer statue they unveiled in Pretoria yesterday). Never mind their ulterior motive of trying to hide their flaws in the shadows these monuments cast.
But South Africa will never be the country Mandela wanted it to be under their leadership….
Related commentaries:
China’s Buddhist Intifada
Punishing China…
SA bans Dalai Lama…
Betraying its values
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