south africa
dalai lama
Photo: A Tibetan exile shouts slogans during a protest to mark the 52nd anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against China, in New Delhi March 10, 2011. The Dalai Lama said he would step down as Tibet's political leader, a move seen as transforming the government-in-exile into a more assertive and democratic body in the face of Chinese pressure. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
and human rights activists. In preparing to meet with all of these people, he would study their stories in-depth and take into account the nature of their reputations. “In most cases, the reputation of that leader would always be very large. However, every time I would meet the individual, I noted that the reputation was always far bigger than the person. Now, as I was preparing to meet Nelson Mandela, I considered that his reputation was in fact larger than anyone else’s. But in only this case, was the individual much larger than his reputation.” I have often wondered what it was about Nelson Mandela that the Dalai Lama had witnessed. Was it that Madiba is simply unique
among men, above his peers and beyond fault? Did he stand out from his comrades as someone entirely different from them? Or, as it’s been said, is Madiba essentially an African leader who holds to a certain moral code, one that is drawn deeply from the culture of his birth? The giant who is Nelson Mandela is in fact a man who expressed an intrinsically African integrity through his political will. My sense is that it was this aspect of Mandela that the Dalai Lama had perceived. In preparing for the ’96 visit, I had presented the case for Tibetan freedom to the then deputy director general of the Asia desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She happened to be sensitive to the plight of the Tibetan people, and came at it from the perspective of having lived for
Tuesday - 20 September 2011