Freedom Day is a day of respect and commemoration and NOT the opposite! It is a day to celebrate and come together as one nation! Not forgetting the fight that was fought for freedom and the ones we honour fighting so hard for it.
Celebrated on the 27th of April each year, Freedom Day honours the anniversary of South Africa’s first non-racial election of 1994 and pays homage to the country’s liberation from Apartheid rule. For the first time, all races in the country were allowed to vote for a government of their choice. Nineteen political parties participated in the non-racial election, and 19.7 million people across the country voted.
The African National Congress (ANC) was then voted into power, and Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the President of South Africa on 10 May.
Remembrance of this day sets out the vision of the South Africa we desire to build. It is a blueprint for change. It both reflects on the injustices of the past and sets the norms and values for the future. It identifies human dignity, equality and freedom as founding democratic values of our society and states.
Freedom Day stands for the freedom of the people. It incorporates the freedom of being in everything you are as long as it does not crush the boundaries of living, the livelihood and being of another human. This public holiday may as well be the most important reminder on the calendar to the South African people that the rainbow nation was a long struggle to achieve, and it is up to the South African people to keep it alive.
