This spring marked the thirtieth anniversary of the election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s president and the end of apartheid, the system of legalized racial segregation that had existed in South Africa for decades.

Around the same time as that anniversary, there was another momentous event in the country: South Africans went to the polls in May, and for the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress — the political party of Nelson Mandela — lost its parliamentary majority.

These two events — the anniversary of Mandela’s election and the unprecedented defeat of his party today — bring up important questions about South Africa’s politics since the fall of apartheid and where the country will go from here.

This will be the first in a two-part special looking at South Africa 30 years after the end of apartheid. Wilmot James, a senior advisor at Brown University’s Pandemic Center, a former member of the South African parliament and former advisor to Nelson Mandela will be Trending Globally’s guide for these two episodes.

To start this episode, we’ll hear some of Wilmot’s story and how his life intersected with the rise and fall of apartheid in his home country.

Learn more about Brown University’s Pandemic Center

Transcript coming soon to our website

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On June 4, results came in from the largest democratic election in history. Over 640 million people voted in India’s election, which took place at over one million polling places across the country over the course of six weeks.

Many predicted that India’s prime minister Nerandra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would dominate the election, grow their ranks in Parliament, and further impose their Hindu-nationalist ideology on the country.

However, that wasn’t what happened. Modi was reelected, but his party lost over 60 seats in the lower house of Parliament. The BJP will have to govern as part of a multi-party coalition, and most likely moderate their Hindu-nationalist aspirations.

On this episode, you’ll hear from Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University and director of the Watson Institute’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, about this historic election: what led to its surprising outcome, what it means for the Hindu-nationalist movement embodied by Prime Minister Nerandra Modi, and what it might tell us about the struggle for democracy occurring in countries around the world.

*Trending Globally will be taking a brief summer hiatus, but we’ll be back in July with all-new episodes*

Learn more about the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Transcript coming soon to our website

For this week’s show, we’re sharing an episode of “Humans in Public Health,” a podcast from The Brown School of Public Health. It makes a great follow-up to our episode earlier this month about Rhode Island’s first-in-the-nation legally approved proposal for a safe injection site (also known as an overdose prevention center) and how such programs will hopefully fit into the fight against America’s overdose crisis.

Host Megan Hall spoke with Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine and health services at Brown (and a former police officer), about the relationship between America’s overdose crisis, law enforcement’s drug policies, and the growing interest in safe injection sites around the country. They discuss how safe injection sites in New York City have affected the overdose crisis there and what lessons Rhode Island can learn as the state plans to open its first safe injection site later this year.

Listen to more from Humans in Public Health