South Africa has twelve public holidays, and almost all of them were created or renamed after 1994. The Public Holidays Act of 1994 replaced the apartheid-era calendar wholesale, and the new list was designed to commemorate the struggle against apartheid and the constitutional order that followed it. It also contains a rule found in few other countries: if a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday becomes a public holiday too.
The Twelve Public Holidays
| Date | Holiday | Description |
|---|---|---|
| January 1 | New Year's Day | BBQs (braais), beach trips, and celebrations |
| March 21 | Human Rights Day | Commemorates the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 |
| April 3 | Good Friday | Christian holiday; widely observed |
| April 6 | Family Day | Easter Monday renamed; family gatherings and outings |
| April 27 | Freedom Day | Celebrates first democratic elections in 1994; the most significant national day |
| May 1 | Workers' Day | Labor rights celebrations; trade union marches |
| June 16 | Youth Day | Commemorates the 1976 Soweto Uprising against apartheid education policies |
| August 10 | National Women's Day | Honours the 1956 women's march to the Union Buildings against pass laws |
| September 24 | Heritage Day | Celebrates South Africa's cultural diversity; also called "Braai Day" |
| December 16 | Day of Reconciliation | Promotes national unity; historically significant for both Afrikaners and ANC |
| December 25 | Christmas Day | Family celebrations; summer BBQs and outdoor activities |
| December 26 | Day of Goodwill | Known as Boxing Day in other countries; relaxation and shopping |
A Calendar Rewritten in One Act
Before 1994, South Africa's holidays commemorated the Afrikaner nationalist narrative. Van Riebeeck Day marked the Dutch landing at the Cape in 1652; Republic Day marked the 1961 departure from the Commonwealth; Kruger Day honoured the Transvaal president; Settlers' Day marked the 1820 British arrivals; and the Day of the Vow marked a Voortrekker oath before the Battle of Blood River in 1838.
All of them were abolished. The Public Holidays Act, passed in the transition year, replaced them with a list built around dates from the liberation struggle and the new constitutional order.
Only three survived in some form: Christmas Day, Good Friday and New Year's Day. The Day of the Vow on 16 December was kept as a date and renamed the Day of Reconciliation, which is the most deliberate act of reinterpretation in the calendar.
The Sunday Rule
Section 2(1) of the Public Holidays Act provides that whenever a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday is a public holiday. It applies automatically and to every holiday.
The effect is that South Africa can have thirteen or even fourteen holidays in some years rather than twelve. Saturdays get no such treatment, which is the standard complaint.
The president may also declare additional one-off public holidays, and has done so for election days, for the 2010 World Cup opening, and for Nelson Mandela's funeral in December 2013.
Human Rights Day and Sharpeville
21 March is Human Rights Day, and it marks the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. Police opened fire on a crowd protesting against the pass laws outside the police station in Sharpeville, killing 69 people, many shot in the back.
The killings prompted the banning of the ANC and PAC, drove the liberation movements underground and into armed struggle, and marked the point at which international opinion turned decisively against the apartheid government.
The United Nations designated 21 March as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 1966, using the same date. It is one of a small number of national tragedies that has become an international observance.
Freedom Day
27 April marks the first non-racial democratic election in 1994. Queues outside polling stations ran for hours and in some places for days, and turnout was around 86%.
Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president on 10 May, which is not a holiday. The election date was chosen as the marker instead.
The interim constitution took effect on the same day, which is why 27 April is treated as the founding moment of the current South African state rather than the 1996 final constitution.
Youth Day and the Soweto Uprising
16 June commemorates the Soweto uprising of 1976, when thousands of schoolchildren marched against a decree requiring that Afrikaans be used as a medium of instruction alongside English in African schools.
Police opened fire. The official death toll for the day was 23 and the eventual toll across months of unrest ran into the hundreds. The photograph of Hector Pieterson, aged twelve, being carried by another student became one of the defining images of apartheid.
The Organisation of African Unity designated 16 June as the Day of the African Child in 1991, and it is now observed across the continent.
Heritage Day, and Braai Day
24 September is Heritage Day, intended to celebrate the cultural diversity of South Africa. It replaced Shaka Day, a KwaZulu holiday commemorating the Zulu king, after the Inkatha Freedom Party objected to the date being dropped from the new national calendar during negotiations.
Since around 2005 it has acquired a parallel identity as National Braai Day, promoted by a campaign that Archbishop Desmond Tutu agreed to patron in 2007. The argument for it is that the braai — the South African barbecue — is one of the few practices genuinely shared across every community in the country.
Critics say it trivialises the day's purpose. Both names are now in common use, and the observance is overwhelmingly a braai.
The Day of Reconciliation
16 December was the Day of the Vow, commemorating a pledge Voortrekkers were said to have made before defeating a Zulu army at the Ncome River in 1838 — a battle known as Blood River in Afrikaner tradition.
It was also, from 1961, the date on which Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing, began its campaign. The date therefore carried opposite meanings for the two sides.
Renaming it the Day of Reconciliation, and keeping the date rather than abolishing it, was a deliberate choice by the negotiators to hold both histories on the same day. It is generally regarded as one of the more successful symbolic decisions of the transition.
Women's Day
9 August marks the 1956 march of around 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to petition against the extension of pass laws to women.
The marchers left petitions outside the prime minister's office, stood in silence for thirty minutes, and sang a song composed for the occasion whose line — wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo, you strike a woman, you strike a rock — is now proverbial in South Africa.
August is designated Women's Month, with government and civil society programming through it. It is a separate observance from International Women's Day on 8 March, which South Africa does not mark as a holiday.
Workers' Day and the Unions
1 May became a public holiday in 1995. The date had been observed by South African trade unions since the 1920s and had been the subject of mass stayaways in the 1980s, when COSATU and its affiliates called national strikes on 1 May in defiance of the state.
The 1986 stayaway involved an estimated 1.5 million workers and is generally counted as one of the largest in South African history. Making the day statutory was an acknowledgement of the labour movement's role in the transition.
Trade union density in South Africa remains high by international standards, and the day is marked with rallies at which the leaders of the governing alliance speak. It is also a reliable occasion for public disagreement within that alliance.
What South African Workers Get
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act provides 21 consecutive days of paid annual leave, which works out at fifteen working days for a five-day week. Twelve public holidays on top of that puts South Africa around the middle of the international range.
Employers must pay at least double for work performed on a public holiday, and employees cannot be required to work one without agreement. The Act also entitles workers to a paid day off if a public holiday falls on a day they would ordinarily work.
Public holidays may be exchanged for other days by agreement, which is used in some sectors to accommodate religious observances the calendar does not cover. Mining and manufacturing collective agreements frequently include such provisions.
Family Day and What Is Missing
Easter Monday was renamed Family Day in 1995, secularising it while keeping the date. Good Friday kept its name, which is one of the few explicitly Christian references remaining in the act.
South Africa has no public holiday for any non-Christian religious observance, despite significant Muslim, Hindu and Jewish populations. Employers are required under the Employment Equity Act to accommodate religious observance reasonably, but there is no statutory day.
Proposals to add Eid, Diwali or other days have been raised by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, which conducted public hearings on the calendar in 2012 and 2013. Nothing was changed. For related context, see the count of countries in Africa and the countries where Swahili is official.
