South Africa was siding with oppressors in the way it handled a visa application by the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said on Wednesday.
“I’m a very sad old man who had thought that you guys approximated the kind of values that we support and what has happened is unconscionable,” Tutu said in an interview on Talk Radio 702.
He said the international community had always believed that South Africa would side with the oppressed, considering what the country had gone through when apartheid was dismantled.
“And here we are siding with one of the most vicious oppressors and we are scared to say no,” Tutu said.
“All the people involved in the struggle must be turning in their graves.”
‘But he cancelled!’
But the government, under siege by criticism not just from Tutu, but from all sides by civil groups, political parties and the press, has protested that South Africa had not actually denied the Dalai Lama a visa.
International relations spokesperson Clayson Monyela said on Wednesday that the government was still deciding on the visa application when the Tibetan spiritual leader cancelled his trip.
“The SA government had not denied him a visa. We did not say no to him. [His application] was being considered when he decided to cancel.”
He said it was difficult to say how long a decision on the application would have taken, but said a visa could take up to two months to process.
The Dalai Lama had applied for a visa to attend Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 80th birthday celebration this weekend, but withdrew his application on Tuesday to save the South African government the “inconvenience”.
He cancelled the trip because no visa had been granted to him.
Incomplete visa application
Monyela said the spiritual leader had admitted in a statement his first visa application in August was incomplete.
“There was acknowledgement or admission that he only submitted his original passport on September 20 … a period of roughly two weeks [ago].”
The Office of Tibet in Pretoria said last week the department had all the documentation required to make a decision on the visa.
The passport was submitted as soon as the Dalai Lama returned from a visit to South America.
Monyela said: “No government will process an incomplete [application].”
On Wednesday, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe told the Star newspaper he believed a visa would have been granted if the trip had not been cancelled.
“Of course, he has been here before. I don’t see why it should be an issue at all,” he was quoted as saying.
‘No pressure from China’
Motlanthe, who recently concluded a trip to China, denied there had been pressure from Beijing not to grant the Dalai Lama the visa.
The Dalai Lama visited South Africa on three occasions between 1996 and 2004, and met former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. In 2009, he was refused entry by the Zuma administration to attend a conference of Nobel laureates.
The government said the visit would detract from preparations for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. That decision drew sharp criticism from abroad and at home.
On Tuesday, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu reacted to Dalai Lama’s still not having been granted a visa to visit the country, by saying South Africans would pray for the downfall of the ANC.
‘Pray for the downfall of the government’
“We will pray as we prayed for the downfall of the apartheid government. We will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us,” Tutu told reporters in Cape Town.
He equated the ANC government to the “repressive and divisive” apartheid regime.
The ANC said Tutu’s reaction was “unfortunate”.
“They are not the same and to say ANC has gone worse… the bishop knows it well deep down his heart, mind and soul that that’s a total untruth,” ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said. — Sapa