Malawi became the butt of some gentle humor at Nelson Mandela's funeral Sunday, in the wake of South African President Jacob Zuma's recent gaffe implying the small African nation was backward. Zuma triggered a diplomatic spat in October during a speech when he sought to persuade South African motorists to accept a highway toll plan around Johannesburg.

While reporting on the phenomenon of T-shirts originating in the U.S. and winding up in Africa, NPR Planet Money recently turned up a Bat Mitzvah T-Shirt in Nairobi and asked for help tracking down the owner. After some Facebook sleuthing - and pinging the wrong Rachel Williams a couple of times - JTA's Adam Soclof finally got in touch with Rachel Aaronson, who led him to Jennifer.

At the 1964 trial that convicted Nelson Mandela and his co-accused, and sent them to prison for life, he made a statement to the packed courthouse, which he repeated on his release in 1990, after 27 years in detention. "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities," he said. "It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

As an emerging middle power Turkey has been actively seeking to exert influence, specifically in the Middle East and in Africa through means of public diplomacy. Educational exchanges, cultural institutions, media outputs, international conferences, infrastructure aid, and humanitarian assistance are Turkey’s most notable governmental and non-governmental public diplomacy tools.

It has been almost a week since Nelson Mandela's passing. For some South Africans, the reality that their beloved former president is no more finally sank in on Wednesday, when they saw his mortal remains at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Mandela's body lay in state at the newly renamed Nelson Mandela Amphitheatre, where Madiba was inaugurated as South Africa's first democratically elected president in 1994, from 8am to 5.30pm on Wednesday, under the watchful eyes of the national ceremonial guard of the SA National Defence Force.

Rarely covered in the English-speaking press because of its past as a Portuguese colony, the behavior of the government in Angola is becoming increasingly troubling. Crony capitalism isn't rare on the African continent—or indeed anywhere else in the world—but Angola's iteration is particularly extreme. Following a civil war that ran on and off from the nation's independence from Portugal in 1975 all the way to 2002, Angola’s elite—overseen by 71-year old President José Eduardo dos Santos—has fed greedily at a trough of oil and gas.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Nelson Mandela was a man who cherished the ideal of a free society all his life, an ideal that, as he proclaimed at his trial in Pretoria in April 1964, he hoped to live for, but if need be, die for.

Fifty-three heads of state and government have so far confirmed attendance at upcoming memorial events for peace icon Nelson Mandela, South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said Sunday. The dignitaries will include U.S. President Barack Obama, along with three former American presidents, Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff, French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron.