Freedom Day
latest news & developments
Ramaphosa calls for ‘real change’ as SA marks 32 years of democracy
President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa’s democracy must be measured by its ability to deliver real, material improvements in people’s lives
SA marks 32 years of democracy amid deep inequality and joblessness
South Africa’s 32nd Freedom Day highlights both democratic gains and ongoing struggles with inequality, unemployment and poverty
Freedom demands more: Making “good trouble” in a world adrift
To realise systemic change, we must insist on accountability at the highest levels of leadership, while also enabling those in positions of power to rise to the demands of this…
The sound of freedom is not silence
Leaving the township can change your surroundings but unlearning the fear it taught your body is where the real work of freedom begins
Oliver Tambo: The quiet architect of liberation and the Moses of a nation in exile
The ANC president was the quiet architect of liberation, carrying a people through the long wilderness of exile, sustaining hope when the promised land seemed impossibly distant
Fruit of freedom withers under broken land deal
The death of Spokes Sithole at 108 exposes the broken promise of one of South Africa’s largest land restitution settlements, where freedom and land ownership have not translated…
Three decades on: Assessing South Africa’s Progress since 1994
The democratic breakthrough of 1994 stands as one of the most significant political achievements of the modern era. Against the odds, South Africa chose negotiation over civil…
Freedom in South Africa is incomplete until all SADC nations achieve genuine democracy
If we are to honour our freedom, we must also stand in sympathy with our neighbours, whose struggles remind us that democracy is never guaranteed. Their pain must be felt as our…
Freedom, memory and the curious outrage of comfortable men
As we commemorate freedom, a familiar chorus returns: that South Africa has too many ‘race laws’, that redress has gone too far, that equality now demands forgetting
We stand with Cuba, our friend
The protests rejected this. They insisted that what we are seeing is the expansion of a single logic: imperial in character, colonial in structure, even when it speaks the…
The great white farmer myth distorts black agrarian input
When foreign governments, organisations or political networks speak about offering South African farmers land, visas or farming opportunities abroad, they should define farming…
No freedom without water
Across South Africa, communities are marking Freedom Day under the weight of an escalating water crisis, where unreliable supply, contamination and ageing infrastructure continue…
A nation still waiting to come home
Freedom is not just about liberation from oppression. It is about the work of restoration. Of dignity. Of truth. It is about ensuring that no one remains missing, not in body,…
We celebrate May Day and Freedom Day but SA’s working class is still unfree
About 32% of the population is unemployed; of the employed, 35.9% are in informal work; and of the formally employed, nearly 40% earn less than R3,500 a month
Freedom Day in a fractured nation: Who are we becoming?
Freedom is not about slogans or votes, it is something we must make together by our actions, in a country inured to violence and a world where self-interest rules.