MagRush writer | August 25, 2019

Court clips old flag flailing wings

Sat in Johannesburg High Court, Wednesday, the Equality Court of South Africa has found that the gratuitous display of the old South African flag constitutes “hate speech”. In the ruling, Deputy Judge President Phenias Mojapelo said the verdict does not abolish the (old) flag permanently. The controversial flag can be used for artistic, journalistic and academic purposes. This is an important judgement that seeks to rein in the provocative show of the old flag since the don of democracy. The damning judgement also ruled that the old flag stokes “unfair discrimination” and fans “harassment”.

The (Nelson) Mandela Foundation Trust and South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) were the complainants who mounted the court proceedings around this piercing and divisive matter. Afriforum, among the respondents, sees the judgment “as a setback for freedom of speech”. The court made no ruling on the costs, however.

The old flag was used from 1928 under the Union of South Africa until 1994 when it was shelved after the new democratic dispensation. When the Afrikaaner-apartheit regime took over the reigns in 1948, it attempted to change the (United Kingdom aspects of the) flag in 1961 without success. Nevertheless, the heinous apartheid government managed to rename the Union of SA to “Republic of South Africa” the same year. Prior to Namibia gaining independence in 1990, the old flag was extended to the annexed South West Africa (as it was known then) by the apartheid rulers. The continued display of the old flag post-1994, the Mandela Foundation says it “has come to globally represent a symbol of white supremacy, exclusion and hatred and is considered by most South Africans as a source of trauma and terror…” visited by the tyranny of colonial and apartheid years adjudged a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations.