My dear friends and fellow South Africans,

Last week I was in the Eternal City to attend the 5th World
Parliamentarians' Convention on Tibet. The city was bathed in the
golden light of winter sunshine as we gathered from the four corners
of the earth to consider the question of the mountain Kingdom of
Tibet. We last met in Edinburgh in 2005 and, to be candid, precious
little has been achieved since then for the plight of the Tibetan
people. Thus it was a poignant and sober gathering which convened at
the elegantly appointed House of Deputies; 2009 is the 50th
anniversary of China's annexation of Tibet. His Holiness, The Dalai
Lama's envoy to South Africa, Mr Sonam Tenzing, was a baby when he was
smuggled out of Tibet when the spiritual leader of Tibet crossed the
border into India after an epic 15-day journey on foot from the
Tibetan capital, Lhasa, over the Himalayan mountains. To this day,
neither Sonam nor the Dalai Lama has returned to their motherland.

For the benefit of younger readers, the Dalai Lama left Lhasa on 17
March 1959 with an entourage of 20 men, including six Cabinet
ministers. Many thought he had been killed in the fierce Chinese
crackdown that followed the Tibetan uprising earlier that month. The
Dalai Lama had to navigate the 500-yard wide Brahmaputra river, and
endure the harsh climate and extreme heights of the Himalayas,
travelling at night to avoid the Chinese sentry guards. He finally
crossed the Indian border at the Khenzimana Pass, before resting at
the Towang Monastery, 50 miles inside the Indian border. It was not
known if the Indian Government would offer him asylum. The government
of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was been heavily criticised
internationally for failing to condemn the Chinese crackdown. India,
we now know, proved to be a noble and generous host to the Tibetan
government-in-exile in keeping with that nation's generous spirit and
democracy.

It is estimated that 2,000 people died during the three days of
fighting between the Tibetans and the Chinese army. In the worst
single incident, the Chinese army fired about 800 artillery shells
into the Dalai Lama's Summer Palace, razing the ancient building to
the ground. The area contained over 300 houses, and thousands of
civilians died and were injured in the inferno.

The tragedy marked the end of the uprising in Lhasa. All fighting-age
men who had survived the revolt were deported, and those fleeing the
scene reported that Chinese troops burned corpses in the city for 12
hours. China then announced in an order signed by leader Chou En-lai
that a large-scale rebellion had been crushed in Lhasa, although it
said the revolt was still continuing outside the capital. China
announced that the Tibetan governing body had been dissolved under
martial law, and said the Dalai Lama had been replaced by the Panchen
Lama, his pro-Chinese rival, as the nominal head of a committee to set
up a Tibetan Autonomous Region within the Chinese People's Republic
(Source: BBC online).

Today, When His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks to Tibetans in India or
in other countries he frequently repeats the words tsenjoli (exile)
and tsenjolpa (an exile), and the deep impression left by these two
words has become a significant identifier of the Tibetan people-post
1959. In the English session which I chaired, South Africa's leader of
the opposition, Athol Trollip, made the pithy observation that the
Tibetan Diaspora was much longer than the black liberation exile of
thirty years or so. Just before I left for Italy, I received a
memorandum from the Counsel General of Durban which received
widespread publicity at home and abroad. The Counsel General wrote to
me:

'On 23 October, I met with Rev. Musa Zondi and other colleagues from
IFP, and we had a frank and smooth talk on promoting China-South
Africa friendly exhanges, as well as the Tibet and Dalai Lama issue. I
sincerely hope this meeting will enhance the understanding of the
leaders of the IFP on the essence of the so-called "Tibetan issue", to
correctly deal with the Tibetan issue, which concerns China's core
interests.

It is reported that, under Dalai Lama's persuasion, the so-called
"World Parliament Members Conference on Tibetan Issue" will be hosted
in Italy on 18th November, 2009, which bears the motivation of
interfering China's internal affairs and supporting Tibetan
independence to support Dalai Lama's intervention of separating Tibet
from China under Dalai Lama's pretext of "High-level Autonomy". As far
as we know, an invitation to the above mentioned conference has been
sent to the President of IFP, His Excellency Prince Mangosuthu
Buthelezi.

China and South Africa have always shared a friendly relationship.
Although Inkatha Freedom Party is an opposition party, it should also
cherish the China-South African friendship and respect the
international community's consensus. We sincerely wish the leaders of
IFP can identify the nature of the conference, proceed from the
overall situation of China-South Africa friendship, and take any
action which will interfere in China's internal affairs and hurt
Chinese people's feelings. We sincerely hope Prince Mangosuthu
Buthelezi make the right decision, and not attend the above mentioned
conference in Italy'.

I read this with a heavy heart because, of course, the last thing I
would ever want to do is hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. Last
year I traveled to this great and ancient civilisation and marveled at
her progress. I think my exchange with the Counsel General (I
politely, but firmly, stated that I would not be deterred from my
support of the Dalai Lama or from traveling to Rome), touched upon the
thorniest issue in this dispute: the tendency on both sides - like
here often - to demonise the other protagonist. As I listened and
carefully weighed the delicate arguments in Rome one is deeply aware
that this question is located in the 'most important conversation in
the world': the survival of planet earth.

Glaciers high in the Himalayas, we heard, are dwindling faster than
anyone thought, putting nearly a billion people living in South Asia
in peril of losing their water supply. Fresh water supplies are the
gold rush of the twenty-first century. Throughout India, China, and
Nepal, some 15,000 glaciers speckle the Tibetan Plateau, some of the
highest land in the world. There, perched in thin, frigid air up to
7,200 meters (23,622 feet) above sea level, the ice might seem
secluded from the effects of global warming. But just the opposite is
proving true, according to the latest scientific research. The Tibetan
plateau is suffering from soil erosion, melting permafrost, shrinking
glaciers, grassland degredation and declining biodiversity as a result
of increasing human activity and climate change. Since 1961,
temperatures have risen 0.32C every 10 years, one of the fastest rates
of warming in the world, leading ice fields on the "third pole" to
melt faster than anywhere else in China's territory. The population
has almost tripled in the same period as a result of an influx of
migrants from China's dominant Han ethnic majority.

China produces some of the most eminent scientists in the world and
many of them are convinced that Tibetan nomads possess vital
'know-how' to manage Tibet's biodiversity as they have done for
centuries. Now this just a thought: imagine for one moment if the
biggest challenge of our time - our planet's very survival - was to
draw Chinese scientists and Tibetan nomads together in a common
endeavour. When one looks around the world's conflict hotspots from
here to Northern Ireland to the Middle East one becomes aware that
differences often fall away when local communities grasp that they
share many of the same goals of their neigbours. Yesterday, we learnt,
the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, will attend the Copenhagen
climate talks next month as it unveiled firm targets for curbing the
world's biggest carbon footprint for the first time. China announced
that it would cut emissions of carbon relative to economic growth by
40% to 45% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels. Here China has taken a
lead. History will judge THE Middle Kingdom fairly if she demonstrates
the same clarity of vision and leadership by working with, and not
against, the grain of Tibetan culture.

Sincerely,

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP