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Famous Graveyards of South Africa |
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South Africa is littered with the graves of heroes, martyrs and soldiers who died in the cause of defending their beliefs and their fatherland.
King of the Zulu
The Zulu King Shaka ka Senzangakhona can be found in the town of Kwa-Dukuza in KwaZulu-Natal province. A simple grave with a large granite headstone lies along a busy street exactly where the mornach was assassinated by his brothers in 1828. It is flanked by a museum that preserves the Zulu culture and depicts the lineage of the Zulu Kings from Zulu himself to the present day King Goodwill Zwelithini.
The KZN Battlefields
Battlefield tourism is growing from strength to strength. There are even more graves of British soldiers lying in various scenes of battles between the British and the Afrikaners and the epic battles between the Zulus and the British dating back to the mid 1800s. The most famous of these gravesites are the ones in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands where the Zulus defeated the British in the historic battle of Isandlhwana in January 1879. You can even watch a re-enactment of the war if you happen to be there on the anniversary of the battle.
Struggle Heroes
The country is dotted with the graves of many South African struggle heroes.
- A notable site is the grave of Steve Bantu Biko, the Black Consciousness leader who died in custody at the hands of the apartheid government in September 1977. Biko was buried in Ginsberg cemetery near King William’s Town in what is now known as the Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance.
- At the Avalon Cemetery in Soweto lies the graves of struggle heroes Communist Party leader and Housing Minister in South Africa's first democratic government, Joe Slovo. It’s impossible to miss the grave with a prominent tombstone that’s designed like the hammer and sickle of the Communist party.Hector Pieterson, the first victim of the Soweto 1976 student uprisings; human rights activist Helen Joseph and Rivonia trialist Elias Motsoaledi, among others, are also buried at the Avalon Cemetery, which is by far the busiest and biggest cemetery in the country.
- About 30 kilometres from Avalon Cemetery, lies the Braamfontein Cemetery where the composer of of one of Africa’s greatest musical pieces, Nkosi Sikele’l iAfrika, Enoch Sontonga was buried. Sontonga’s grave is now a national monument, but it would have remained hidden there, unknown, had government not initiated plans to honour the man posthumously in 1995.
The graves of other notable freedom fighters and prominent men of South Africa’s bloody history dot the landscape, most notably the graves of Zulu Kings Dingane, Senzangakhona and others in an area known as eMakhosini-The Valley of Kings, where seven Zulu kings are buried in different areas. Ironically, the Boer leader Piet Retief who was massacred by Dingane’s soldiers, is also buried in the eMakhosini Valley.
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