A Sushi Bar, the Dalia Lama, the Rugby World Cup, Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s Foreign Policy, and the Bokke Jive

I have prepared myself a full English breakfast: pork neck bacon, sunnysides, mini pork sausages, and whole grain bread. I’m having it while watching House Hunters on Fine Living Network channel.

I don’t get to have such a breakfast very often because sometimes I can be so busy or lazy that I can’t get the chance to prepare it or even sit at a coffee shop to be served one.

So as I’m watching this Danish guy who has just sold his house and wants to relocate to the Carribean island of St Lucia. In one of the houses that he gets to view, which is an open plan his reaction to a kitchen counter which separates an open plan kitchen to the dining area he says: “Wow I can have a sushi bar here! You know, serve sushi to my friends”. Now as he say that I my mind is rushing I recall an SMS sent to me last night by a friend complaining about how much she can’t get used to the idea of the Kenny Kunene a.k.a. ‘Sushi King’ reality show ‘So What’ on E-TV. It got me thinking that sushi is, in some circles, much bigger that we know it in our shores. One wonders as to why, of all the cheap goods that we receive from Asia, the price of sushi remains staggering above R120.00 per serving at a supermarket in South Africa.

Thinking about sushi as cuisine which the world inherited from the Asian cultures I also think about the recent debacle between the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and South Africa-China Relations. A debate which I attended over the weekend was entitled “A Dilemma or Dalia Lama”. In this debate a greater proportion of the discussion centred around South Africa’s Foreign Policy versus our economic relations with China. Mind you I was not allowed to take any footage or pictures in this debate because some of the people who were part of it belong to certain offices and did not want to be quoted without their knowledge. Emanating from the discussion it became clear that there certainly is a dilemma for the government to choose to offer a visa to someone who is considered to be an enemy of China. Some based their arguments on the fact that China’s foreign policy is an interfering in nature. China’s economic muscle combined with a foreign policy that wants to extend its political and cultural hegemony seem to have played a role in the government’s decisions to delay the issuing of a visa to someone who is well known and whose visa application, when other things are equal, should have been afforded the urgency and the courtesy which it deserved.  So one must wonder if the exorbitant price of such will drop accordingly or is it going to be inflated by Desmond Tutu’s outrage and expression of anger to a government which misrepresent him by not allowing his buddies to come to his slumber party.

As if that is not enough to leave the rainbow nation divided into two the South African rugby team lost and thrown out of the world cup. A friend posts something on facebook which says that his friend said that he does not know why he says this but he blames Desmond Tutu for South Africa’s loss in the world cup. Some people even went to the extent of blaming the Dalai Lama himself. It is quite sad because as a nation we were so united behind the Bokkes. Even a bunch of hip and happening trendsetters taught us the ‘bokke jive’. So losing like that was shameful and for this to happen at such a time it is obvious that we are gonna need to pray about this and we must also fast and even refrain from eating anything which is raw fish, rice and algae for the next four years. However maybe South Africa had it coming because a bad omen started with Bafana Bafana celebrating their qualifier to the CAF and only to be told that South Africa did not make it. Perhaps South Africa’s foreign policy needs to change from being a ‘no interference’ to something else. I can’t help but blame SAFA for failing to pay the sangoma for doing the job that he was tasked with and expect the results. The SAFA bosses have caused a mere R10, 000.00 to cost us our position in the CAF games because anyone can see some forces at play here. Bafana is in the first position in log of its group and the next thing a team that is in second position in that group is selected over the first one...no-no-no Sangoma!