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freedom day edition 2026latest news & developments
In need of work opportunities: Job seekers gathered outside a store in Tswelopele, Tembisa, to apply for
employment. Photo: Twitter / X

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

Call for transformation: Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mmamoloko Kubayi acknowledged that black legal practitioners continue to be sidelined and denied fair business opportunities with government. Photo: DOJ

Dearth of State briefing; death of black legal practice

Discriminatory procurement practices keep black law firms small, while many black advocates are forced to leave the Bar. LPC statistics for 2024 show that the largest majority…

Dubious family relations: Suspended Sedibeng Deputy District Police commissioner Mbangwa Nkhwashu. Photo: Screenshot

From freedom to looting

Explosive testimony before the Madlanga Commission has laid bare allegations of cartel-linked corruption involving senior police officials and municipal departments, raising…

Angst: ANC heavyweight Tokyo Sexwale visiting a township. For those who remain in the townships, freedom
is imagined as elsewhere but leaving does not automatically translate to being free. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy

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

Figure of unity: Former ANC president Oliver Tambo knew liberation required courage and legitimacy, an appeal to universal principles that could bind disparate nations into solidarity. Photo: The Presidency

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

Unresolved: Spokes Sithole, who was born in the same year as Nelson Mandela, 1918, is one of the original
claimants in the R1 billion Mala Mala land claim. He died at 108. Photos. Lucas Ledwaba

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…

Nomsa Mazwai’s sober fest reimagines how we celebrate

A Freedom Day weekend gathering at the Soweto Theatre, where families are invited to experience music, food and wellness, fully present and fully sober

Against the odds: South Africa’s democracy has matured in visible and subtle ways, the Constitution enshrined gender equality,  expanded access to education, healthcare and economic opportunities.  Photo: ConCourt

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…

Hope: Zimbabweans standing in line to cast their vote, hoping for change. Photo: ZEC

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…

Victims of apartheid: The TRC Cases Inquiry, chaired by Judge Sisi Khampepe, will assist in bringing closure to the families of slain activists like The Cradock Four who, like Zandisile Musi and Neil Aggett, among others, never disappeared but were physically erased by the previous political order.  Photos: Foundation for Human Rights/ South African History Online

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,…

Selective memory: There is a privilege in being able to forget history. It belongs mostly to those whose lives were not shaped by it. Photo: GCIS

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

Privilege: White farmer myth survives while African farmers face a different historical landscape.  Photo Delwyn Verasamy

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…

Affirmation: Solidarity with Cuba, marking 65 years since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion by the imperialist US regime, which sought to destroy the Cuban Revolution. Photo: SACP

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…

Unsafe supply: Qwa Qwa residents use river water to do their laundry. They also collect water from the river for their homes. Photo Delwyn Verasamy

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…

Royal stamp: As part of its KwaZulu-Natal outreach before the local government elections, the Electoral
Commission of South Africa official also engaged King Misuzulu kaZwelithini. Photos: IEC

Democracy doubts deepen in KZN

Support for democracy in KwaZulu-Natal has fallen to its lowest levels in decades, with trust in government and institutions collapsing. Yet, most residents say they would vote…

On 27 April, Freedom Day we hand over our report card to those — too numerous to mention — who laid down their lives for the freedom we enjoy.
Photo: ANC Gauteng

Freedom in our lifetime

We will tell our fallen heroes that when they ran to the world in anguish seeking help against the racist Nationalist regime, at present, the world looks to us for help