Zuma’s ANC ‘worse than apartheid’, blasts Tutu in Dalai visa row

NOBEL Peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused South Africa’s ruling African National Congress as being worse than the apartheid regime for refusing to allow the Dalai Lama to visit, apparently to appease China.

The retired Anglican clergyman addressed a news conference last night, hours after the Dalai Lama’s office said Tibet’s spiritual leader was calling off a visit to South Africa because he did not expect to get a visa. The archbishop had invited his fellow Nobel Peace laureate to his 80th birthday celebrations.

Last week, China agreed to invest $2.5 billion (£1.6bn) in South Africa during a visit by deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe to Beijing. China sees the Dalai Lama, the leader of occupied Tibet’s Buddhists, as a dangerous separatist.

Archbishop Tutu said the government’s action was a national disgrace. Speaking in Cape Town, he said: “I really can’t believe it. The discourtesy is mind blowing.”

He said the decision by the ANC-led government of president Jacob Zuma was reminiscent of how blacks were treated under apartheid and ignored how the South African masses were helped by the international community to end white-minority rule.

He added: ‘“This government, our government, is worse than the apartheid government, because at least you were expecting it with the apartheid government.”

He continued: “Mr Zuma, you and your government don’t represent me. You represent your own interests. I am warning you out of love, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government.”

Foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela said the problem was in processing the visa paperwork. Mr Monyela said: “South Africa has not said ‘no’. The man has decided to cancel the trip.”

The archbishop’s foundation accused Mr Monyela of subterfuge. “It is an insult to our intelligence,” Dumisa Ntsebeza, chair of the foundation said.

In a statement, the Dalai Lama’s office said: “We are … now convinced that for whatever reason or reasons, the South African government finds it inconvenient to issue a visa to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”

Pretoria previously refused the Dalai Lama’s application for a visa. South African officials said the previous decision, about two years ago, was not related to China’s growing influence, even though the Dalai Lama had been invited to the 2010 peace conference by ArchbishopTutu and former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk.

Mr Zuma’s government has been heavily criticised locally.

“This is a morally bankrupt decision aimed squarely at appeasing the emerging economic superpower, China,” the Mail and Guardian newspaper said.

“It is, indeed, saddening to count the many countries who stood in solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement and ask: where is our principled stand with the people of Tibet? The gays of Uganda? The dissidents in China itself?”

China has ruled Tibet since its troops marched in in 1950.

Archbishop Tutu said: “People believed that we South Africans would be on the side of those who were being oppressed. The people of Tibet are being oppressed viciously by the Chinese.”

Archbishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.