South Africa has generally had strong relations with Zimbabwe, but some say a last week's hiccup over criticism of election preparations reveals the diplomatic fine line the southern African nations walk. Last week, Lindiwe Zulu, a top international advisor to South African President Jacob Zuma, voiced concern that Zimbabwe was not well-prepared for the July 31 election, saying Zuma had spoken to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe by phone about the matter.

In Johannesburg, South Africa, there are a small but growing number of shared office spaces in which sole proprietors and small businesses rent a desk and other services. For small business owners and start-up companies, this route not only provides cheaper overhead for workspace, but it also helps entrepreneurs network. The OPEN Collaborative Workspace is on the fourth floor of a building in an artsy, up and coming area just south of downtown Johannesburg, in a neighborhood called Maboneng.

Directed by Andrew Brown, a Ph.D candidate in performance studies at Northwestern University, "Home/Affair" uses theater to communicate a political message about lesbian/ gay/ bisexual/ transgender refugees in South Africa. Homosexuality is illegal in 38 African countries, so South Africa, with more liberal laws regarding discrimination, has become a haven for gay refugees fleeing persecution.

One of his daughters and three of his grandchildren are using the former South African president's name in such pursuits as wine marketing and a reality television show, Being Mandela. His relatives also were embroiled in two lawsuits to secure control over his trust funds and the burial places of the remains of three of his children.

South Africa’s position in the Global Competitiveness Index has remained virtually stagnant in the bottom third out of 144 countries. The ranking of our micro-economic environment has deteriorated from 43rd to 69th and of our Labour Market Efficiency from 97th to 113th. Our higher education ranking has deteriorated from 75th to 84th – not surprisingly, as the threshold to exit high school is an embarrassing 30 percent.

On Saturday, after several weeks of preparation, six student poets from the D.C. Youth Slam Team and three adult poetry teachers are scheduled to leave the District, bound for Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, then on to the city of Tshwane, where they plan to participate in a two-week cultural exchange focused on poetry and social justice. The students and teachers are scheduled to meet youth poets, activists and writers in South Africa who are engaged in the movement to build a better society.

Four years after briefly stopping off in Ghana on his way home from a Group of Eight (G-8) summit, US President Barack Obama lands in Dakar on Wednesday night at the start of his first extended visit in his current designation, to the continent of his Kenyan father’s birth. But he is expected to give Kenya a miss, as its president is under indictment from the International Criminal Court.

A previous Culture Post explored cultural assumptions about who is the ‘public’ in public diplomacy and suggested an expanded vision of “the public” that includes the domestic, diaspora, and foreign publics. Failure to see a public and the role it plays can leave a nation vulnerable to blind spots in its public diplomacy.