Statement on the Dalai Lama

Sunday, 7 September 2014

The South African Communist Party has noted reports in the media about another planned, but subsequently cancelled, visit by the Dalai Lama to our country. The SACP in fact welcomes the cancellation of this planned visit. The aim of the visit by the Dalai Lama to our shores is to pursue his agenda of a secession from China. In fact the SACP calls upon government not to grant the Dalai Lama a visa to visit our country.

The SACP wishes, for the record, to reiterate its attitude and stance towards the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama has been relentlessly pursuing an agenda for Tibet to secede from China. As the SACP we are opposed to this, as there is only one China and that Tibet, like Taiwan, has always been part of China. In addition, China had, for decades, stood with us in our struggle against apartheid and refused to recognise the apartheid agenda to balkanise our country into a ‘white' South Africa and several Bantustans. We similarly refuse to be associated with an agenda that is aimed at undermining the sovereignty and national unity of China.

The SACP also stands opposed to the Dalai Lama's agenda to use the political prestige of visiting South Africa to try and legitimate his secessionist agenda. The Dalai Lama has recently acknowledged that in the 1960s he was covertly being funded by the CIA (U.S), basically in pursuance of this agenda, and had led an unsuccessful violent revolt in Tibet. It is a fact that, contrary to ideological claims by his supporters and the opposition parties, the Dalai Lama's hands and history are not clean!

The SACP also calls upon our media to desist from disinformation on this matter and tell the South African people all sides of the story about the Dalai Lama, and not this one-sided, sanitised and biased story about the Dalai Lama. On this matter let South African media give us a break from Western imperialist propaganda!

The Dalai Lama is not a monk and spiritual leader only; he is a man with a perverted political agenda.

Statement issued by the SACP Central Committee, September 7 2014

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