Pope Francis: A Perfect Example Of South To South Communication

Looking at what Pope Francis has said and how he said it during his African tour brings to the mind three literary memories; Ngugi’s Globalectics, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the tria-logic theory in Mazrui’s cultural forces behind world politics.

These are the books that have advocated for the cultural approach of dialogic to fighting poverty in the southern hemisphere of the earth. And indeed, beyond the rudiments of south to south communication Pope Francis has beautifully come out as praxis of south-south dialogue.

He, however, converts his dialogic to the trialogic when he shrewdly extents the Southern development concerns to the North in a polite manner like advocating for human duty to protect of the earth.

The South has always been complaining of diplomatic harassment whenever the North point out a concern about governance, human rights, development priorities and other failures in the South. The solution to this has been suggested by many scholars, but Ngugi was clear about it by devoting to it a whole chapter in his two last books; Globalectics and In The Name of the Mother. He called it the need for south-south dialogue as a regurement for cultural and economic development in the South.

In a similar manner, the four chapters in Paul Freire’s book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed discussed it as well; Freire’s concepts like dialogic, anti-dialogic, pedagogy of the oppressed and humanization of the dehumanized are all about the south to south communication and the Globalectical sine qua non of south-south-north trialogic in world development.

These theories have been given a test for feasibility by Pope Francis. Like his example on immorality of corruption where he cited a pitiable case in his home country of Argentina, in the story of the corrupt money magnate who requested to be buried along with his money but the coffin could not close well because the money was extremely much and filthily excessive.

This example was well received without upsurge of negative emotions among the audience in Nairobi, like the way it could have done when the US ambassador gives a lecture about corruption in Kenya. Above all else Pope Francis achieved praxis of Freire’s theory of the pedagogy which requires faith in the poor and the oppressed when he visited the displaced Moslem communities in the war torn city of Bangui.

(By Alexander Khamala Opicho)

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Articles by Alexander Opicho