The Lama and the Red Tape

The Dalai Lama will not be joining us for Desmond Tutu’s birthday party. 

Given the confusion between Llamas and Lamas, I wonder if immigration got confused?

It’s not as if South Africa hasn’t invited personas non grata here before, so I can’t see what the issue is. If we can entertain Fidel Castro, surely the Dalai Lama doesn’t represent a threat? 

During the Castro fiasco Nelson Mandela said that we would never allow others to dictate who our friends should be. It’s actually in our very forward-thinking and much lauded constitution – freedom of association – oh, and religion.

Still, the Chinese have given us pots and pots of lovely money, so we can’t risk all that can we? 

On the other hand there is karma to consider and I hasten to suggest that the pots and pots of lovely money might be outweighed by the kick in the ass karma will give us for refusing the Dalai Lama a visa.

It’s bloody embarrassing, that what it is. It’s like refusing Ghandi entry into a club because he wasn’t following the dress code. He is the Dalai Lama. He will reincarnate and never forget. I wouldn’t risk that, would you?

Aside from it all, he wasn’t coming here on a political mission to stir up sympathy for the Tibetan cause. He was coming here for a birthday party, for a priest! He’s hardly Gaddafi looking for asylum, which we’d probably grant along with a house in Clifton and a bullet proof Hummer. He isn’t a jihadist arriving with dynamite strapped to his private parts. He is a well respected holy man and international figure of peace. 

Immigration authorities say that this honoured personage decided to cancel his application while it was under review. For over 6 months? I must say with the birthday four days away, I’d also give it up as a lost cause.

 

I can’t say that I’m surprised it took so long for them to look at his application though. I’ve been waiting for a new identity book for over 18 months. We’re not exactly the most efficient bureaucracy in the world. We love red tape more than we love the rugby. God bless us. 


Have to add this cartoon in from a brilliant SA cartoonist - Jerm. 

The Cyber Spy and the Marbles

In a bizarre case of art imitating life, it turns out that my gossip mongering about the Chinese telecommunications company that used British Telecom to send information back to the mother ship wasn’t all just heresay. It turns out they’re spying on just about everyone. According to one report there are only two groups a country or a company can fall into – those that already know about it and those who haven’t found out yet.

Alright, it isn’t as though they can come out and say they’re doing it. That would be like us South Africans admitting we were ever in Angola. It just isn’t done. Google didn’t outright accuse the Chinese government either; they simply said the hacking originated in a Chinese province.

Conspiracy theories are everywhere today.

While I sat in my little bubble on the fourth floor of a nondescript, let’s be honest, horrible ugly, office block yesterday, merely a block away some lunatic decided to walk into the local police station and gun down some officers. Such drama, so close by and I missed it. Shocking really – and here I thought I was the center of the world.

The story has some bizarre twists. The civilian who went postal was about to be fired from the police station for “misuse of firearms” or some other nebulous terms that is supposed to convey the fact that he gave gun licenses to people who shouldn’t have access to lethal weaponry. His response was to take a gun and kill everyone before killing himself. I have to say, it seems a bit of an OTT response.

There are always those people around that give off those vibes that they just might snap and go postal. I had a colleague once who if he was late for work our boss would come running up and ask if he’d gone off his rocker. He always seemed pretty calm to me, but then again those are the ones you have to watch for. Them and freakily happy ones. The ones that never have a bad day, those who are always perky, perky, perky! Everything they say has an exclamation mark at the end and one day that mask will just crack and then watch out. People will all shake their heads and say, “But she always so nice.”

That’s what the neighbours always say you know, “He was a nice quiet boy, never had parties or anything, never caused any trouble.” I’d rather have loud, noisy sane neighbours then quiet genocidal ones. I wonder what the Norwegians neighbours had to say about him? This is why I’d rather I inspired in people love or hate, then absolutely nothing. The last way I want to be described is, “Oh, her? She’s was nice… fine…um….” Fine? Nice? I’d rather be remembered as total bitch or a loud mouthed busybody than as someone who couldn’t even make an impression.

I suppose it’s a sign that I’m unlikely to kill off any office drones this week.

Someone tell Julius he doesn’t need to hide in his underground Hitler house just yet, I still have my marbles.