Rex Tillerson will make his first trip to Africa as Secretary of State between March 6 and March 13. He will visit five of Africa’s fifty-four countries—Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria.

He recalls the popular challenge now underway against Omar al-Bashir’s rule in Sudan; the deaths of Kofi Annan, the first African secretary General of UN, and Winnie Mandela, a flawed leader of the South African liberation movement; the highly positive emergence of the reform-minded Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister; and the international attention to Congolese surgeon Denis Mukwege, who won a Nobel Peace prize for his work with rape victims.

South Africa’s national elections will take place on May 8. Looking toward that event, the African national Congress (ANC) and its leader, state president Cyril Ramaphosa, is working to improve the party’s image, much besmirched by corruption and mafia-style assassinations.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa selected Shamila Batohi to the new national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) for a single ten-year term. As NDPP, Batohi will head the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which, as its name implies, determines who to prosecute and who not to prosecute on behalf of the state. 

Since assuming office in 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has consistently disappointed those who hoped that he would usher in a new era of South African leadership in foreign policy.