Johannesburg  - South Africa's frontrunner for president, Jacob Zuma, defended the government's refusal to deny the Dalai Lama a visa, even as the organizers of the 2010 football World Cup expressed disappointment at the subsequent canning of a 2010-related peace conference.

Zuma is the president of the ruling African National Congress party. He is poised to replace President Kgalema Motlanthe as leader after general elections on April 22 that the ANC is favoured to win.

Addressing a meeting in Pretoria Thursday night, Zuma defended South Africa's reputation, which has taken a battering over the decision to bar the Dalai Lama following pressure from China.

"I don't think it amounts (to the) undermining of the human rights. I think this country's more sensitive to human rights than many," he said.

Where government fell down was in failing to garner support for the decision, he said.

South Africa initially denied having come under pressure from China to bar the Tibetan spiritual leader from attending Friday's defunct conference, claiming instead the Dalai Lama would detract attention from the World Cup.

A government spokesman later admitted Africa's biggest economy had felt compelled to choose between the Dalai Lama and its ties with the Asian giant.

China is one of South Africa's biggest trading and investment partners. A respected local weekly, the Mail & Guardian, recently reported that China was a key funder of the ANC's lavish election campaign but because political parties are not obliged to disclose their funding sources it was not possible to confirm the report.

Friday's conference, which local Nobel peace laureates Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu and former president FW de Klerk were patronizing, was called off after they, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee, boycotted the meeting in protest over the Dalai Lama ban. Former president Nelson Mandela had also been linked to the event.

Some prominent voices in government and the ANC have spoken out against the state's decision.

Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Indian peace paragon Mahatma Gandhi, who spent around two decades in South Africa, called for a rethink, according to the Mail & Guardian on Friday.

"We as a people who suffered oppression in this country should know liberation doesn't come from outside," Gandhi, a long-standing ANC member, comparing Tibet's bid for greater autonomy with the anti- apartheid struggle.

Health Minister Barbara Hogan was roundly censured by government for also publicly denouncing the snub.

The affair has cast a pall over the reopening of the first of ten World Cup stadiums on Saturday in Rustenburg for a game between South Africa and Norway - an event FIFA is using to showcase its preparedness for the tournament. The Nobel winners had been due to attend the match.

Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of the 2010 local organising committee, was quoted by SAfm radio as expressing "great disappointment" at the canning of the peace conference while on a visit to Italy. But the world had since "moved on," he said.

FIFA has declined to take a position on the visa denial, on the basis that South Africa's Premier Soccer League, not it, had organized the conference. (dpa)