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It is reported that Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande questioned Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s right to speak his mind about the Dalai Lama debacle. Nzimande’s DNA is programmed to forget that we live in a constitutional democracy and not a totalitarian dictatorship.

Nzimande’s own warped world-view means he sees all behaviour through the prism of someone ‘having an agenda’. Indeed, he fabricates the Dalai Lama's 'agenda' to attack his holiness, as he does with all those who disagree with him.

Dr. Nzimande needs to be reminded that immigration policy and the issuing of visas are not the fickle instrument of jackboot communists who wish to let some people in and keep others out. The Dalai Lama simply wanted to come to his friend Archbishop Tutu’s birthday party.

The spinelessness of our government in this matter has sent a signal to the world that we are willing agents of the Peoples’ Republic of China. We have sold our soul to a neo-mercantilist China in return for whatever scraps they are willing to throw our way.

We should partner with countries, especially ones as influential as China, on the basis of our proud values and our sovereign democratic integrity. But we should be nobody’s pawn. As other countries like Brazil have shown, it is possible to have productive relations with China without selling your silver – or your soul.