I don’t often defend the South African government, in fact I think this is the first time I can remember (I did a search on the blog and found THESE – none of them positive) and so now I find myself in unfamiliar territory (and I’m pretty sure I’m going to seriously anger a few people) so here goes!

When I was young my dad gave me a book called “Defining Moments: When managers must choose between right and right”, although at the time I didn’t quite understand the concept but over the next 10 years I have made many painful decisions where both choices would have been the correct one, therefor they fall into this category.

South Africa’s decision regarding the Dalai Lamas visit was no different!

This was a defining moment and without doubt a choice between letting one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time come for another’s birthday, and to appease a global giant for our own economic salvation.

If you are confused here’s a quick summary. This is the Dalai Lama, he is essentially the spiritual leader of Tibet and the political leader in exile, if you will, with massive influence – he is HATED by the People’s Republic of China’s government. Overall he is an amazingly wise spiritual man who does nothing worse than promote peace, humanity and equality (although he is opposed to oral or anal sex – minus one point for that!) and his name is Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso

He was invited by The Arch Desmond Tutu to speak at a number of university’s and attend the Arch’s 80^th birthday. A simple enough request although travelling to SA the DL needed a VISA – eish, problem!

The SA’n government basically delayed this request indefinitely until yesterday when the DL decided to cancel his trip as it was clear he was not welcome! He posted this statement on his website.

Why you ask, was the government so hell bent on keeping him out? Quite simply the Chinese Government told us to. Jacob Zuma said he wasnt sure why there was a problem, Kgalema Motlanthe said he would have gotten his VISA eventually (he said this after the trip had already been cancelled). That was a little like saying we would have won the cricket world cup if Allan Donald hadn’t f#@ked up that last run (the saying ‘no comments on the scoreboard’ comes to mind!).

The truth is the South African government had to make a call. Do we allow someone into the country who, if we are completely honest, can do nothing TANGIBLE for us as a nation at the risk of severely pissing off our biggest global customer, China? The answer ladies and gentlemen is simply NO. We cannot afford to lose ANY business let alone the world’s most dominant economic superpower (well they will be shortly) especially when they can buy what we are selling somewhere else.

If China were to turn its back on South Africa the economic ramifications would be catastrophic for an emerging nation with the problems we have, in fact it may be crippling. The answer here was as simple as inviting a street child to sleep in your local Woolworths at the risk of chasing off the rest of your customers (I’m not saying the DL is a street child before any of you get pissy!) but in that instance anyone of you would side with the retailer without a moment’s hesitation – so why when YOUR economic destiny falls in the balance do you all of a sudden climb onto your high horse?

I’m proud that, for once, our government made a tough, public decision for the benefit of us as a nation and if you think that this wasn’t the case – GROW UP! Sometimes in life we have to make tough calls, we can’t make everyone happy and we certainly can’t just make decisions that have massive consequences just because The Arch and the DL are nice people. A government is elected to make the best decisions of behalf of the people and this is, WITHOUT DOUBT, what they did!

I have profound respect for the Dalai Lama and I mean no disrespect to him in any way but unfortunately we as a country sometimes need to play the political game not for gain but sometimes just to survive. Was it handled wrong, absolutely! All the silence and bungling of government officials for months was pathetic and for that I am ashamed. Do I think it’s right to try criticize the DL like the article by Simon Allison in the Daily Maverick, absolutely not – the man is practically the Tibetan Nelson Mandela, but at the end of the day I’ll stand behind their decision in this defining moment, because it was the RIGHT RIGHT!