-
Freedom Day celebrations
Some Gauteng residents believe government should do more to create job opportunities and fight corruption.
This as the country prepares to mark the 32nd anniversary of freedom on Monday.
The famous Vilakazi Street in Soweto, Johannesburg, and Freedom Park in Pretoria have seen an increase in tourists this week.
South Africans Sipho Mawela and Abigail Williams, who lived through the apartheid era, believe the country’s citizens have a lot to celebrate.
“It’s good to be free and to be alive in the new South Africa where we live with harmony and freely. We have rights to start businesses, education, and everything is free, although our country is not doing so well with it, but everything else is nice. But everything else, I would say, is a disaster: unemployment, crime rate, corruption,” says Mawela.
“To be this free in this South Africa that has this history is a God-given gift,” says Williams.
Reflecting on 32 years of democracy:
Meanwhile, Thalis Limongi from Brazil and Cho Park from South Korea say visiting the country at this significant moment makes their trip even more interesting.
“This is my first time in Soweto, but I didn’t imagine that Soweto was like this. It was a coincidence; we didn’t know that it was Freedom Day before we got here. So, it has been more special because being here near this important date is a very, really interesting thing because it gave me another idea about the history,” says Limongi.
“I was always interested in apartheid history and South African history, so my first trip to South Africa was to Cape Town, and then I came here to learn about history. It was a coincidence, but it means a lot to me,” says Park.
