We've had the dotcom bubble burst and the sub-prime loan bubble burst. The rumpus around the government's refusal of a visa to the Dalai Lama should serve to burst another bubble.

I'm not particularly referring to a prevailing view that the visa refusal has punctured South Africa's international reputation, which might well be the case in certain quarters. I'm referring to something more general, more insidious: the grand illusion of the 1990s of an ideologically free, transcendent set of universal values laid down by the International Monetary Fund, Amnesty International and the Nobel Prize committee.

Let me first concede that the government's handling of the Dalai Lama invitation has been clumsy. We were told the visa was declined because we didn't want the Dalai Lama's presence in South Africa to distract world attention from 2010 soccer World Cup preparations. The refusal has achieved exactly the opposite.

We were told that refusing the visa was our own decision. The next day, the Chinese ambassador said his country had raised the matter with our government. The two statements are not necessarily in contradiction, but where's the harm in saying our sovereign decision was informed by, among other things, China's concerns?

I can hear many readers saying: Outrageous! I might be inclined to agree. But how many of these scandalised voices are the same voices that spent the last decade telling us we couldn't do this or that because we'd scare off foreign investors (presumably those in New York and London and not those, who now have the serious money, in Shanghai)?

South Africa has been fortunate to have four Nobel peace laureates and we have felt a legitimate sense of collective pride in our winners. But let's not delude ourselves that these awards have somehow been free of ideological framing.

For instance, the joint award in 1993 of the peace prize to Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk assumed a problematic symmetry. It was a symmetry that implied South Africa had been involved in a "race war", the leaders of the two sides came together and, in a spirit of conciliation, delivered their respective and bellicose constituencies ... and we've all lived happily ever after.

Which brings me to another Nobel laureate, Tenzin Gyatso, better known as the 14th Dalai Lama. I've heard a colleague, Health Minister Barbara Hogan, describe him as "a brave man who has fought for the liberation of his people". Others view him as an ascetic holy man.

In 1911, when China's last dynasty was overthrown, all Chinese officials were expelled from Tibet. The 13th Dalai Lama proclaimed what many Tibetans consider an independence declaration - though no one in the international community recognised Tibet at the time.

In the 1930s, the Chinese Communist Party, still embroiled in a protracted civil war, recognised in principle the right to Tibetan self-determination. In the late- 1940s, this principle seems to have been dropped quietly . In 1950, a year after victory, the People's Liberation Army overran Tibet's eastern province.

Tenzin Gyatso, who had by then become Dalai Lama, signed an agreement acknowledging China's sovereignty over Tibet. He made no attempt to rally the Tibetan people to defend their independence. The ruling elite was reassured by China's promise not to tamper with the theocratic political system underpinned by feudal oppression.

But the presence of Chinese troops in eastern Tibet fanned patriotic sentiments. These were exploited by landlords fearing that, sooner or later, the Chinese would implement land reform. The CIA air- dropped arms into Tibet and trained Tibetan irregulars.

In 1959, there was an uprising in the capital, Lhasa. It was brutally suppressed by the Chinese, with tens of thousands of deaths. The Dalai Lama had conveniently fled into India before the uprising, taking 60t of treasure with him. None of the major protagonists emerged with much glory from this episode.

The democratic credentials of the Dalai Lama, living in Indian exile for the past five decades, remain suspect. Without consulting Tibetans, he openly abandoned the demand for independence in 1987, a shift he first secretly communicated to Beijing in 1984. The autonomous region of Tibet is one of the poorest parts of China. Whether as a result of deliberate policy, or because of market forces, ethnic Chinese now outnumber Tibetans in the territory.

Three things at least are clear. One, there are serious, unresolved cultural and developmental challenges in Tibet. Two, there are sharply contested versions of how to resolve these challenges. And three, Tenzin Gyatso (aka the Dalai Lama) might be a fellow laureate, but he is no Albert Luthuli or Nelson Mandela.

Jeremy Cronin is Deputy General Secretary of the South African Communist Party. This article first appeared in The Times, March 30 2009. It was republished in the Party's journal Umsebenzi Online, April 1 2009

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