Johannesburg - Freedom Day is much more than just another day off work; 27 April is set aside annually to celebrate peace, unity and human dignity, while honouring those who lost their lives in the anti-apartheid struggle.
This year, freedom will be celebrated in true hip-hop style, with music blasting into every corner in Newtown, reports Joburg.org.
A concert has been planned, Back to the City Concert, at Ritual Stores, on the corner of Bree and Henry Nxumalo streets, in Newtown.
It will feature some of South Africa's top hip-hop artists, such as Teargas, Tumi, Khuli Chana and JR of Make The Circle Bigger fame.
It is the fourth such concert and, according to the organisers, promises a holistic programme.
The main entertainment stage will include performances by Zuluboy, Driemanskap, Flex Boogie and Zaki Ibrahim. In the evening, there will be Cape Town's 5th Floor, Illiterate Skills and Archetypes; Durban's Abdus, Black Moss, Skye Wanda and Liquid KZN; and Joburg's Take Away, Projektah, Ricky Rick and Smerf.
The Red Bull Stage will be given over to breakdancers, moving and shaking their way through a hip-hop showdown.
There will also be a hip-hop summit, with free discussions on the business of music.
Topics will range from management, recording, distribution and publishing, to the old and new, and design. This is scheduled to take place from 10am to 12pm.
The concert will start at 10am and go on until 11pm; tickets are R50 and will be available on the day at the box office.
Freedom Day was named a day of celebration after the country's first democratic elections, held in April 1994.
Sixteen years on, Joburgers gear up to celebrate their liberation and democratic society.
According to the national government, on the day "we commemorate the heroism and sacrifice over years of struggle to win our freedom, with the solidarity of people from across the globe. We [also] celebrate the continuing hope and resilience of our people, working together to achieve the vision in our Constitution."
Visiting areas of significance on the day is one way to commemorate the struggle. There are a number of struggle sites in Joburg, many in Soweto.
Places of interest in the historic township include Kliptown, home of the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication. This was the place where, in 1955, about 3 000 representatives of anti-apartheid organisations gathered to draw up the Freedom Charter. This historic document forms the basis of the country's Constitution.
Organisations that gathered included the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People's Congress; together they formed the Congress of the People.
The Hector Pieterson Museum, in Orlando West, is a reminder of the Soweto Riots, which started on 16 June 1976. One that day, schoolchildren marched peacefully against the use of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in township schools. They were met with gunfire from the police, sparking riots that soon spread across the country.
One of the first children killed on the day was Hector, a 13-year-old who was shot dead by police. The museum was erected in his honour and opened on 16 June 2002.
There is also Mandela House, the home of a young Nelson Mandela and his family from 1956 to the 1990s.
This house, at 8115 Vilakazi Street in Orlando West, is now a museum. Mandela donated it to the Soweto Heritage Trust on 1 September 1997, which formed a partnership project between the City, Standard Bank and the Gauteng Department of Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation.
The Constitutional Court is a symbol of the country's democracy and is the protector of its citizens' basic human rights and freedom. The court is situated on Constitution Hill in Braamfontein.
Here too is the notorious Old Fort prison complex, where thousands of anti-apartheid activists were imprisoned, alongside common criminals.
Moving into the CBD is Gandhi Square, which was built in memory of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the Indian community in early 1906 in acts of passive protest. He was also jailed at the Old Fort, in 1908.
Gandhi believed in the effectiveness of what he called the "soul force" in passive resistance, maintaining that the suffering experienced by resisters encouraged a change in the hearts of the rulers. He refined this philosophy, Satyagraha, through his 20-year struggle against racialism in South Africa.
