In Search of Pax Africana
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 1979
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In his sixth Reith Lecture, Professor Ali Mazrui examines Africa's physical location on the globe in relation to its economic, political and military destiny. The Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan gives his last lecture in the series entitled 'The African Condition'.
In this lecture entitled 'In Search of Pax Africana', Professor Mazrui explains that geographically, Africa is the most central of all continents, but politically and militarily it is probably the most marginal. What are the implications of this paradox, and how is Africa to get out of the prison-house of political dwarfs situated in the middle of the City of Man?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.1 | This lecture in the series The African Condition, given by Ali Masrui, |
| 0:08.7 | was originally broadcast in 1979. |
| 0:12.0 | In the early 60s, when I was a postgraduate student at Oxford, |
| 0:16.8 | I was much preoccupied with Africa's capacity for self-pacification. |
| 0:22.3 | The question which was often raised at that time in the wake of decolonization was this. |
| 0:28.7 | Now that the imperial order is coming to an end, who is to keep the peace in Africa? |
| 0:34.9 | I took the view that self-government implied above all self-policing. The logical |
| 0:41.2 | conclusion of the whole process of decolonization lay in Africa's ambition to be its own |
| 0:48.3 | policeman. From this emerged the concept of Pax Africana. In this lecture, I want to carry my concept of Pax Africana a stage further. |
| 1:00.0 | It's not enough that Africa should have a capacity to police itself. |
| 1:05.0 | It's also vital that the continent should contribute effectively towards policing the rest of the world. It's not |
| 1:13.4 | enough that Africa should find the will to be at peace with itself. It is also vital that the continent |
| 1:20.1 | should play a part in pacifying the world. I am in no doubt at all that the world needs a policeman. |
| 1:29.4 | The four crises endangering the planet are depletion of resources, |
| 1:34.6 | the population explosion, pollution and other dangers to the ecology, |
| 1:39.8 | and large-scale violence among human beings. |
| 1:43.8 | The first three dangers to our planet need institutions of global supervision and control. |
| 1:51.7 | But the worst danger concerns large-scale human violence, including the danger of a nuclear war. |
| 1:59.9 | And this is where Pax Africana looms into relevance. |
| 2:04.2 | Is Africa affected by this nuclear cloud hanging over the world's political system? |
| 2:10.1 | How does Africa suffer from it? |
... |
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