Regardless of whether you call the South African public holiday on 24 September Heritage Day, Erfenisdag, Usuku Lwamagugu or Braai Day, it is a day when South Africans are encouraged to celebrate their culture and the diversity of their beliefs and traditions in the wider context of a “Rainbow Nation” belonging to all its people.

As former President Mandela said in a speech on the second Heritage Day in 1996: “When our first democratically elected government decided to make Heritage Day one of our national days, we did so because we knew that our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our new nation. We did so knowing that the struggles against the injustice and inequities of the past are part of our national identity; they are part of our culture. We knew that, if indeed our nation has to rise like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of division and conflict, we had to acknowledge those whose selfless efforts and talents were dedicated to this goal of a nonracial democracy”.

In other words, Heritage Day is about appreciating your own culture and traditions but also about reaching out to other cultural groups and honoring a shared heritage. Heritage is everything we have inherited – our country’s wildlife, national monuments, traditions, museum collections, works of art, languages, literature, music, and much more.

In 2005, food lover and TV personality Jan Scannell (known as “Jan Braai”) started a media campaign proposing that the holiday be renamed as National Braai Day in commemoration of the culinary tradition of informal backyard barbecues, known as braais. On 5 September 2007, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrated his appointment as patron of South Africa’s Braai Day, affirming it to be a unifying force in a divided country, by donning an apron and enthusiastically eating a boerewors sausage.

So, get ready for the celebrations today, September 24 – and because the day falls on a Sunday this year, we get Monday, the 25th, as a bonus holiday and an added opportunity to braai and reach out to our neighbours, no matter what creed or colour they are!