Throughout the ISL program, West Chester University (WCU) students learn about leadership and service from a diverse array of people. “Queen,” Mary Burton, Cecil Begbie, and Gail Johnson come to mind. Yet many South Africans are no longer alive to tell their stories. South Africa recognizes the lasting influence of these individuals through memorials, museums, art, and more. One such remembrance--Freedom Park--overlooks the city of Pretoria, the executive capital of South Africa.

Freedom Park lies about two miles southwest of the capital’s Union Buildings--the location of the President’s offices. The Park is a celebration of the country’s history from the dawn of time. It offers visitors a space for reflection through both a memorial and museum.

The Garden of Remembrance remembers South Africans through three memorials: S'khumbuto, a “testimony to the various conflicts that shaped present-day South Africa and… those who died during these struggles;” Isivivane, “the spiritual resting place of those who played a role in the freedom and liberation of South Africa;” and Uitspanplek, a tranquil area of green fields and reflective pools that overlooks Pretoria. The Freedom Park website details the symbolic components of each memorial.

The //hapo museum provides a narrative of African and South African history. Told across seven epochs that span 3.6 million years, this narrative grounds visitors in a colorful understanding of the South African story.

For WCU students, Freedom Park not only provides an understanding of history, but also reveals the country’s contemporary values of remembrance and community. As one student reflected in their journal,

“the amazing thing is how broad [South Africans] set their spectrum of celebrated individuals. Not just among Afrikaaner/British vs. Africans, but internationally, across political boundaries, across race boundaries, etc. There was a man walking around with an EFF beret on and I couldn’t imagine someone wearing anything marginally communism-related in the states, much less putting up a banner to celebrate Che Guevara or Nkrumah…”

Upon the Garden’s completion in 2004, then-President Thabo Mbeki reflected on its mission to honor South Africa history. His remarks were as follows:

“This is a place to which all our people of all colours, cultures, ages and beliefs, men and women, will come to pay their quiet tribute to those whose memory will never be extinguished, who will live on in every generation that lives, summoning each to be the standard bearers of the cause of the freedom of all humanity.

“Here too will come people from other lands to join us in the process of the renewal of our vows never to betray the memory of those who have passed on, never to dishonour the cause they served, never to forget who they were and what they did.

“It will therefore not be a place of grief and mourning but of celebration that we and all humanity have such as they whose names will be inscribed on Freedom Park, to light our way to the genuine emancipation from oppression, from hunger, and from the tyranny of ignorance, that is due to all human beings.”

Let us set upon this path of human emancipation.