Every year, on the 16th of June, the whole country commemorates the lives of countless young people who, on a fateful June 16 in 1976, took to the streets to stand up against a cruel government that saw them only as objects to do with whatever they liked, and, every year, on the very same 16th of June, the memory of those brave young people gets drowned in a sea of parties and alcohol. This might be a very harsh and generalizing thing for me to say, but I really believe that young people in South Africa have developed a very bad way of commemorating this important and historic day.

What’s even worse is that it seems as though the same is true for many of the other important, historic days in the event calendar of the country. From Women’s Day to Human Rights Day, it seems as though with every year that goes by, the meaning and significance of each of these days gets reduced to nothing more than just having parties and giving away free T-shirts and a couple of food parcels. It’s a sad and cruel reality, and we need to change it if we are serious about preserving the rich history of the country.

But, even if our ways of commemorating these days might not be perfect, there are some places where the commemorations are a whole lot better, and this past Youth Day proved it to me.

This year, unlike other years, I commemorated June 16 in Bloemfontein, and it was the first time I commemorated this day outside of my hometown of Jouberton. Now, I’ve been to a lot of these June 16 events before but, to be honest with you guys, I was amazed at how the young people this side decided to mark this day. Unlike the commemorative events I’ve been to before, the young people in Bloemfontein decided to commemorate the memory of the youth of 1976 with a poetry slam (or competition): it was a new way for me to commemorate the day, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The event began with an open mic session where any poet or performer was allowed to get on stage and perform whatever it is they wanted to. This resulted in different poets performing poems they had written especially for the event. The poems they performed were diverse and ranged from the very simple and easy to follow ones (well, at least for me), to ones that were harder to follow and even harder to understand (again, for me). The open mic session then ended with a brilliant writer called Ace Moloi from Qwaqwa reading one of the short stories that will be coming out in his upcoming short shorty collection. It was a wonderful beginning to what would end up as one of my favorite nights in Bloemfontein.

We then moved on to the poetry competition itself. Four poets had signed up for the competition and were set to go head to head in two rounds: each one of them had to perform a single poem per round. They each performed their best poetry and the judges chose the two that would go to the finals. In the finals, the two contestants who made it each performed another single poem and, at the end of the final round, one poet, a lovely poet by the name Black Soul, was crowned the winner of the night. Straight after the poetry slam the audience was treated to wonder sets of live music performances by different bands, and the night ended with us having enjoyed beautiful art dedicated to commemorating the lives of the young people who made sure we would be where we are today.

All in all, what this event showed me is that we as young people need to rethink the way we commemorate the lives of the young people who paved the way that will lead to our success. And that we, as an entire country, also need to rethink how we commemorate our fallen heroes. Look, it might be all nice and well to have a party and dance, but the real question we need to ask ourselves is this: is all the partying we’re doing really what we would like to reduce our history to?