South Africa celebrates 2020 Freedom Day
Freedom Day 2020 will be reflected upon during a live stream on 27 April 2020. The theme for this year’s Freedom Month celebrations is, “Solidarity and triumph of human spirit in this challenging times”. The President is expected to address the nation.
However, Freedom day 2020 as South Africans know it, is very much different than other years. The year 2020 shepherded in with the COVID-19 challenge, a worldwide pandemic; this has in a great part changed and transformed things differently than what it is known to be or differently to the norm.
Wretchedly, South Africans will celebrate the 2020 National Freedom Day under a dark cloud when the nation and the international community is battling with the global virus of Covid-19. It is inevitable that the country and the international community will be free of the virus by the 27th April 2020 which is the day when South Africa celebrates its National Freedom Day.
The President of the Republic of South Africa, HE Mr. Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Sunday, 15 March 2020 among other things, the prohibition of gatherings of more than 100 people and government’s cancelation of all planned celebrations for the upcoming national public holidays which includes commemoration of the 2020 Freedom Day on 27 April 2020.
Since the President announcement on the COVID-19 Pandemic during March 2020, surely things were transformed for business unusual. This also prompted the way national days were going to be celebrated and commemorated.
The origin of COVID-19 caused South Africans to be challenged in a big way. The norm as it was known had to be altered. A need to do things differently cropped its ugly head and thus too, how National Days as they were done before were challenged.
Freedom Day is the commemoration of the first democratic elections held in South Africa on 27 April 1994. These were the first post-apartheid national elections to be held in South African where anyone could vote regardless of race.
The 2020 National Freedom Day marks 26 years of freedom and democracy. It is a marked departure from colonial and apartheid oppression, spanning over 400 years, to a democratic constitutional order, undergird by the values of democracy, equality, non-racialism, and non-sexism, among others.
The National Development Plan, as the country’s foremost planning print, is undergird by these values. They have also found practical expression in government’s key priorities, as evidenced in the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) of successive administrations, at least since the official codification of the outcomes approach in government.
The 2020 calendar also presents an opportunity to mark the 24 years of the signing of the Constitution into law by the late President Nelson Mandela, in Sharpeville. This too presents an ideal moment to reflect on the 24 years of constitutionalism, and the trickledown effect that this has had on lives of ordinary people in the Republic.
It is a moment to take stock in respect of day to day life in South Africa in gauging whether or how the new dispensation measures up to the promise of the Constitution. Freedom Day is thus an ideal platform for reflection in terms of the progress made thus far in fundamentally transforming South African society, including some of the strategic gains made, as well as persistent challenges that threaten to stymie progress, if left unchecked.
On 27 April this year All South Africans, traditional leaders, different organisations, interfaith and all government spheres are called upon to take the opportunity to reflect through different media platforms with recorded messages in the different parts of where they seek lockdown the fruits of our democracy.
It is time to reflect, be responsible and stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic and ponder on the progress we have made as a country in moving South Africa forward.
South Africans are reminded that the values as espoused in the Freedom Charter still hold true even under these trying times and they are an overall vision for a non-racial and democratic society and many of its values are embedded in the Constitution.
Media enquiries:
Zimasa Velaphi
Cell: 072 172 8925
E-mail: zimasav@dac.gov.za
