Picture: @PresidencyZA Twitter.
South Africans have many ways to celebrate Heritage Day, and so do our major political parties.
The DA chose to celebrate by visiting the Codesa walkway at Emperors Palace, to remember the negotiations that led to the establishment of a democratic South Africa.
The EFF decided to mark the occasion by calling for land expropriation without compensation, the Die Stem section to be removed from our national anthem and for Swahili to be adopted by South Africans.
And the ANC, represented by deputy president David ‘DD’ Mabuza, unveiled a statue of Adam Kok in the town named after him, Kokstad.
Mabuza will also be making an address at Heritage Day celebrations at the Riverview Stadium later this afternoon.
The statue of Kok has been erected at the municipal building in Kokstad to honour the leader of South Africa’s Griqua people.
READ MORE: It’s Heritage Day, not Braai Day says Twitter
During apartheid, Heritage Day was known to Zulu people as Shaka’s Day, as it falls on the presumed date of his death in 1828.
When South Africa’s first democratically elected government proposed a Public Holidays Bill in parliament, and the bill did not include September 24 as a public holiday, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) objected to it.
As a compromise, the date was indeed made a public holiday but with the more inclusive name Heritage Day replacing Shaka’s Day, with the idea being that South Africans of all cultures would celebrate the unique heritage of their own people on the day.
More recently, a celebrity chef nicknamed Jan Braai spearheaded a campaign to informally rename Heritage Day, calling it National Braai Day instead.
While the idea may have had good intentions behind it, not everyone supports the proposed change, with some taking to Twitter to voice their disapproval.
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