Fifty years ago South African surgeon Chris Barnard became world famous after leading a team of doctors that performed the first ever heart transplant. There was unprecedented media interest in the story, fuelled in part by Barnard’s charisma as well as fierce competition between news outlets. As Marina Joubert writes, no other medical milestone has had such a defining effect on the relationship between medicine, media and society.

No one in Zimbabwe has as much stature to rebuild the country as the new interim President Emmerson Mnangagwa. But will he use the power he has to turn his back on Robert Mugabe’s legacy? Robert Rotberg assesses the odds. Meanwhile, the jubilation among Zimbabweans at finally seeing the back of Mugabe has been tempered by concerns that the country might not see a genuine transition from dictatorship to democracy. Mia Swart argues that the signs so far are not encouraging while Peter Vale ponders the oddness and symbolism of Mugabe’s use of old-world diction in his address to the nation that seemed quaint, and even preposterous.