what happened on reconciliation day
For Afrikaners, 16 December was commemorated as the Day of the Vow, also known as Day of the Covenant or Dingaan's Day. The Day of the Vow was a religious holiday commemorating the Voortrekker victory over the Zulus at the Battle of Blood River in 1838, and is still celebrated by some Afrikaners.n the other side of the political spectrum, 16 December is also the anniversary of the 1961 founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the armed wing of the African National Congress. The day is also the de facto start of the sixteen-day South African summer holiday period.