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June 26th: South Africa Freedom Day During the struggle against apartheid, South Africa's national liberation movement - the African National Congress - observed special days. Liberation is Freedom. Hence the ANC's National Freedom Day was the most important day in the calendar, for the ANC. This day was June 26th. The special days of the ANC, marked every year with events and ceremonies, were: Date Day Origin Occasion 8 January ANC Anniversary 1912 Founding of the ANC 21 March Sharpeville Day 1960 Sharpeville Massacre 1 May May Day 1886 International Workers' Day 25 May Africa Day 1963 Founding of the OAU 16 June Soweto Day 1976 Youth Uprising 26 June South Africa Freedom Day 1950 National Stayaway* 9 August National Women's Day 1956 FEDSAW March to Pretoria 16 December Umkhonto we Sizwe Day 1961 Founding of MK * later also marking the Defiance Campaign (1952) and the Freedom Charter (1955) Five of these days are now Public Holidays in South Africa. The exceptions are January 8th, May 25th, and the most important day of all, National Freedom Day (June 26th). April 27th - the anniversary of the first universal-franchise election - is now called Freedom Day in South Africa. The flag shown above, which is a black green and gold tricolour with no other markings, was always known as "the national flag" in those years. It was never referred to as an ANC flag. This is the first of six messages explaining the liberation-movement history of June 26th. They will be: 1. Intro 2. June 26th, 1950: the second national stay-away, Preceded by: Defend Free Speech Convention, Johannesburg, 26 March 1950 1 May 1950, the first stayaway, massacre, 18 killed Publication of Unlawful Organisations Bill (later Suppression of Communism Bill) 20 June, CPSA disbanded 3. June 26th, 1952: the Defiance Campaign Preceded by Joint Planning Council between ANC and SAIC 4. June 26th 1955: Freedom Charter signed Preceded by Congress of the People Campaign (Freedom Volunteers) 5. June 26th, 1959: Anti-Apartheid Movement formed Preceded by boycott campaigns in South Africa 6. Aftermath and Summary The history of June 26th as South Africa's National Freedom Day is rich. Please contribute your further knowledge of it by reply to this post. -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
