South Africans take their public holidays seriously. Sitting down to a meal with family and friends under glorious spring skies this Heritage Day, I found myself reflecting on our crowded and strangely clustered calendar of celebrations and thinking that, of them all, Heritage Day might just be the best.

Public holidays in South Africa broadly fall into four groups: religious or cultural observances, practical extensions of those observances, politically significant dates, and a handful of days carried over during the transition to democracy. The religious and cultural holidays are the most familiar.

In a majority-Christian country, Good Friday and Christmas anchor the year, while New Year’s Day serves as a secular marker, signalling the close of the festive season for many. The practical holidays simply lengthen these breaks so people can enjoy them fully. Family Day ties up the Easter weekend and the Day of Goodwill stretches the Christmas cheer a little further.

Political holidays are different. They mark milestones in the struggle against apartheid and echo the ideological forces that shaped modern South Africa. Human Rights Day on 21 March recalls the Sharpeville Massacre, originally a Pan-Africanist Congress-led pass law protest. Youth Day on 16 June remembers the 1976 Soweto Uprising born of the Black Consciousness Movement. Women’s Day on 9 August honours the great march largely led by the Charterist Movement with the African National Congress (ANC) at its core. Workers’ Day on 1 May, while lacking a uniquely South African origin, reflects the influence of the South African Communist Party. Freedom Day on 27 April celebrates the first democratic election in which the country moved toward governance by liberal institutions including the Constitution.

Deliberately

Two days were deliberately accommodated during the democratic transition. The Day of Reconciliation on 16 December evolved from what had variously been called Dingaan’s Day, the Day of the Covenant, and the Day of the Vow, commemorating the 1838 Battle of Blood River between the Afrikaners and the Zulu. For decades it was a point of division for both white and black nationalists and was deliberately used as the start date of Umkhonto weSizwe’s first sabotage raids.

Reconciliation Day was supposed to promote racial harmony but today for most people I think it marks the point at which most people start using the season's greetings: “Thank you very much for your email, we are closed, please contact us again in January,” the moment many South Africans sign off for the festive season.

Heritage Day on 24 September, originally celebrated in KwaZulu-Natal as the day of King Shaka’s death, entered the national calendar after the Inkatha Freedom Party objected to its omission.

Special

What makes Heritage Day special is that, unlike the other public holidays, it is not tethered to a single political, religious, or historical narrative. Most of our public holidays come with a built-in story imposed from above about what they are meant to commemorate. You cannot talk about Easter without invoking the resurrection of Christ, or Human Rights Day without revisiting Sharpeville.

Political parties, especially the ANC which was not present at many of these events, use these occasions for rallies and for asserting their own versions of history, this encourages rigid interpretations and a backward-looking focus. Even where themes have broadened, such as Youth Day now highlighting unemployment among the young or Women’s Day addressing gender-based violence, the starting point is still a historical moment.

Heritage Day, by contrast, has shed much of its original Zulu nationalist status. For most South Africans it is simply Heritage Day, an open canvas for people to colour in themselves. It speaks to the country’s cultural diversity without immediately invoking the heavy tropes of inequality, racial injustice, or government failure that tend to dominate our news cycle.

Because the day is not prescriptive, it has been claimed from the bottom up rather than imposed from the top down. Children and workers alike wear clothing linked to their identity, clubs organise walking tours of urban heritage, environmentalists explore biodiversity hotspots, and communities celebrate religious, culinary, and linguistic traditions. This year the day coincided with the Jewish New Year, so for those families this included foods involving the use of honey for “sweet year ahead”.

Foreign nationals also often join in Heritage Day celebrations, sharing something of their own backgrounds, and for a moment even our habitual xenophobia takes a back seat.

Debate

Of course there is still an annual debate over whether Heritage Day should be considered Braai Day or if this is an affront to the idea of indigenous culture, while some white progressives worry about whether they have any culture at all. The beauty of the day is that everyone has a place in the conversation.

It has been said that South Africans are not that different but don't have all that much in common. Heritage Day allows us to display our differences yet, in doing so, creates a shared language about them.

For one day each year, at the bottom tip of Africa, we get a gentler and more generous sense of what it means to live together here.