Tomorrow I depart for a (nearly) three-week trip to South Africa. My blogging for the next few weeks will therefore involve some combination of reportage, essays, and something of a travel diary. I will try to post an essay daily, but of course this promise comes with the caveat that I need to have the available technology and access.
I’ll arrive Sunday night and have a conference in Pretoria at the University of South Africa my first few days in country, so blogging may be light for a few days. In the meantime, you might want to look at something I have written about the crisis in Iran that has some Africa-related observations at dcat.
You also should check out these remarks on the current status of United States-South African relations from Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of African Affairs. There are few revelations contained in the talk, which Carson gave at the Woodrow Wilson center, but it provides a useful framework for understanding American perspectives on the US-South African relationship.
