ABSTRACT

There is either failure or omission in the social sciences and humanities to entertain the idea that African political actions have behind them distinct traditions of thought, grounded in moral predicates that reflect time and the material conditions of existence. One way to cast aside African thought and ethical and moral systems is to present them as strings of legendary exceptions of heroism and humanity. In this context, I wish to revisit the last paragraph of Nelson Mandela's speech as a

moment and instantiation of a longstanding and uniquely African expression of humanism. I do so not to praise what was obviously political pragmatism and humane; but to suggest that the poverty of thought today and the violence that flows from it is also a consequence of the failure of scholars to provide answers to universal human dilemmas by looking for solutions in archives, canons, and traditions that partly generated the

crises besetting the world today.

SPEAKER BIO:

Professor Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui is Professor of International Relations Theory and African Political Thought at Cornell University in the United States of America. He is the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor in Political and International Studies at Rhodes University, 2020-2022. He is the author of *Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law* (1996) and *Beyond Eurocentrism

and Anarchy: Memories of International Order and Institutions* (2006). He is currently in the final phase of completion of a manuscript titled *The Gaze of Copernicus:

Postcolonialism, Serendipity, and the Making of the World*. The manuscript offers a critique of international relations, its practices, disciplinary canons, archives, and regimes of truth as foundations for a set of propositions on postcolonial inquiries, methods, and utopias.