Reassessing SA's political holidays: Are they still relevant in our changing society?

Daily Maverick

7 hours ago

While our public holidays that commemorate important events in our history should have a place in the calendar, it can sometimes feel as if fewer people care about the real reason for the day off. This apparent feeling seems to mirror the ANC's political decline. The two may well be related.
South Africa, like many other countries, has public holidays that commemorate important political events.
Who can deny the importance of 27 April? If you were alive in 1994 you may well remember voting yourself, or watching other people voting for the first time.
Each of our political holidays (as opposed to religious and international holidays like New Year's Day or Christmas Day) commemorates something important.
But they are also the result of the settlement involving the forces that were dominant during the early 1990s.
For example, Cosatu and the union movement were powerful enough to ensure that there was a Workers' Day. If there had to be a negotiation process now, it is not certain that unions would have the power to force their will on this issue.
At the time, there were only two major players. Famously, when there were negotiations on issues like public holidays, decisions were made by the concept of 'sufficient consensus'.
In practice that came to mean when the ANC and the National Party agreed. It also meant that there were some clever solutions to difficult problems. The 16th of December is now the Day of Reconciliation.
Battle of Blood River
But its date was chosen to allow people to continue their celebrations of their victory over the Zulu nation in the Battle of Blood River in 1838 (the fact this battle occurred should put to bed the colonial myth that South Africa was 'empty' when white people moved into the interior of the country).
While it could be argued that we most certainly do need a day of reconciliation, no one would argue now that it should be held on that date.
But something else may now be happening. As we move further away from the historical events they are supposed to commemorate, they feel less important.
If you were alive during the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, you might well remember the horror when it emerged that so many people had been killed by the police in one incident.
If you were not alive during that time, you might well ask why it is that Human Rights Day falls on that day, and not on the date of the Marikana Massacre (16 August 2012)? Especially, as the argument would go, when that date marks a moment when a democratic state used police to defend the interests of capital against workers.
This was always foreseeable. While our society is still defined by racialised inequality, personal memories of apartheid may recede.
This then leads to a question about whether or not our political public holidays should continue or if there should be a change.
It is likely that the ANC would argue they should all remain.
But in fact, it is possibly because of the ANC that there is also less support for some of our current holidays.
For many years it has been common practice for government figures, who were all from the ANC at the time, to almost monopolise these events.
The PAC has always been almost ignored on Human Rights Day for example, when it was they who led the march on the Sharpeville Police Station.
Generations have now grown up who have seen only ANC figures on a stage during a public holiday commemoration.
Strategy
At the time, the ANC was doing this deliberately. It was part of a strategy to remind people that they must vote for the ANC because it was the ANC that had fought for freedom from apartheid.
The impression being given was that the ANC was using these events to campaign. There were government stages and sound systems and celebrations, but all presided over by ANC figures.
But as the ANC has lost credibility, so it may also have weakened the credibility of our political public holidays.
It is true that some figures from other parties are now joining these events through the coalition. PA leader and Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie presided over the national government's Youth Day event on Monday, 16 June 2025.
Interestingly, President Cyril Ramaphosa was not there. The keynote address was given by Deputy President Paul Mashatile.
And his critics might well accuse him of using the event to campaign. Because while he is correct to say that youth unemployment is a 'moral emergency', it is interesting that he is only entering this debate now, while campaigning for the position of ANC leader.
It is a well-known facet of human culture that the meaning and importance of past events shifts according to present-day dynamics. From time to time events and figures rise and sink in prominence as present day politicians seek to use them for their own ends.
It is entirely possible, for example, that someone like Julius Malema could seek to make 16 December less about reconciliation, and more about a day to commemorate how white people took land from black people through violence.
The fact that both the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto weSizwe and Jacob Zuma's MK were formed on 16 December suggests this date might well continue to carry important significance.
Zuma could certainly continue to use the day to stir an ethnic nationalism of some kind.
But some of our other public holidays might simply continue to recede to the point where questions are asked about why we retain them.
National Dialogue
This could be one of the questions that the National Dialogue has to grapple with. And it could reveal the relative strength of certain constituencies.
For example, it seems unlikely that unions will have the power to make Workers' Day great again. And thus it could lead to that day falling away.
Women's Day is both a symptom of the government's weakness (it has failed to stop so many women being killed by so many men) and a reminder of how deep the need for change is.
But political formations formed to serve only the interests of women have failed to make important headway in our society in the past (the last party that tried this approach, Women Forward, won just over 6,000 votes in 2019).
This suggests that few people will stand up to defend Women's Day, even if there is an important need for it.
If there ever is a proper national debate about our public holidays, that will be a sign that the end of apartheid is no longer the foundation of our society. And it will reveal how power is shifting into a proper post-apartheid nation. DM