Today, millions of South Africans will light a fire, open a cooler box, and call it Heritage Day. Few will think about the fact that the holiday nearly didn’t exist. It survived because a political party dug in its heels, and it took on its current form because ordinary people decided what it should mean.

A King’s Day

For decades before the end of apartheid, 24 September belonged to one man. In Zululand and Natal, it was Shaka Day. The date is traditionally given as the day in 1828 when King Shaka was killed at KwaDukuza by his half-brothers Dingane and Mhlangana. In 1932 a memorial was built over his grave there, and every year the Zulu king, impis in full dress, and dignitaries have gathered at the site to honour the founder of the Zulu nation.

Shaka Day was always about more than remembering him. It was a statement of Zulu identity and royal authority, and in the second half of the twentieth century it became tied up with the politics of Inkatha, the movement Mangosuthu Buthelezi led.

The Omission

When the new democratic Parliament drafted a Public Holidays Bill in 1994, it cleared out the old calendar. Some days, such as Republic Day, were removed completely while others, such as the Day of the Vow, were repurposed as the Day of Reconciliation on 16 December. New ones, such as Freedom Day, Youth Day, and Women's Day, were introduced, which commemorated various important days in the struggle against apartheid. The draft left 24 September out.

The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), whose support was concentrated among Zulu speakers in KwaZulu-Natal, objected. Relations between the IFP and the African National Congress were already tense, and the violence in KwaZulu-Natal during the transition was still fresh. Dropping Shaka Day was seen as a slight against a whole nation at a fragile moment.

The two sides reached a compromise. The date stayed, but it was no longer about one king or one group. It became Heritage Day, a holiday for every South African to mark their own traditions. It was first observed on 24 September 1995.

Mandela’s Framing

A year later, Nelson Mandela explained the idea behind the day: “When our first democratically elected government decided to make Heritage Day one of our national days, we did so because we knew that our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our new nation.”

That was the hope. The difficulty was that a day meant to celebrate everyone’s heritage does not tell anyone what to actually do. Official events came and went, speeches were made, and schools held dress-up days. For many people it was simply a day off in the spring.

Enter the Braai

Filling that gap was left to citizens, not to government. In 2005 Jan Scannell, better known as Jan Braai, started a campaign asking South Africans to spend 24 September around a fire. His reasoning was simple: whatever else divides the country, almost everyone braais.

The heritage establishment was not convinced at first. In 2007 the National Heritage Council dismissed the idea as trivialising the day. That same year Archbishop Desmond Tutu became the campaign’s national spokesperson and put the case for it in one line: “We have 11 different official languages but only one word for the wonderful institution of braai.” By 2008 the Council had come round and endorsed it.

Whose Day Is It?

The debate never went away. Critics say the braai waters a day of cultural memory down into a shopping event for butchers and liquor stores. Some in KwaZulu-Natal still call it Shaka Day, and the Zulu king still leads the commemoration at KwaDukuza every year. Others argue that the braai has done what official programmes could not: it gave the day a ritual people chose for themselves.

There is a case that the story shows the arrangement working. The state set aside a date but did not prescribe what it means. A Zulu family can honour Shaka, an Afrikaans family can hold a potjiekos gathering, a Cape Malay family can cook bredie, and neighbours who share none of those traditions can still end up around the same fire.

Heritage, in the end, belongs to the people who live it, not to the parliament that names the holiday. Heritage Day began as a political bargain. What it has become was decided by South Africans themselves.