Flag of South Africa

How to read it

Section 5 of the Constitution of 1996 says the national flag is black, gold, green, white, red and blue, as described and sketched in Schedule 1. The schedule makes it one and a half times longer than it is wide. The green Y-shaped band is one fifth as wide as the flag: its centre lines start in the two corners next to the pole, meet in the centre and run on to the middle of the free edge. White edges the band above and below and gold edges it towards the pole, each edging one fifteenth as wide as the flag. The triangle by the pole is black, the upper band chilli red and the lower blue, each a third as wide as the flag. The flag was designed by Fred Brownell, then the State Herald, and was first used on 27 April 1994.

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What do the colours of the South African flag mean?

Officially, nothing fixed. The government says the design and colours sum up the main elements of the country’s flag history, and that because single colours or combinations of colours mean different things to different people, no universal symbolism should be attached to any of them. The one reading it gives is of the shape: the band that starts at the pole as a V and flows into a single horizontal band can be read as the convergence of diverse elements within South African society, taking the road ahead in unity.

Who designed the flag

Fred Brownell, South Africa’s State Herald from 1982 to 2002, whose job included approving coats of arms, badges and flags. He told the Sunday Times in 2014 that he sketched the prototype in under two minutes in 1993, on the back of a lecture programme at a congress of the International Flag Federation in Switzerland. His first drawing had three arms converging, “streams flowing into one another”, he said. His daughter Claire, a schoolteacher, persuaded him to drop the middle arm because the drawing looked too much like the peace symbol.

About 7,000 designs had been sent in and narrowed to six. Brownell’s was among the five shown to the committee and the cabinet, and with no time to take it to Nelson Mandela in Rustenburg, a drawing was faxed there and coloured in before Mandela approved it, The Herald reported when Brownell died in May 2019. His University of Pretoria doctorate (2015) was on the flag’s symbolism.

The official colours

The government lists textile colours on the CKS scale (spectrum green, blue black, national flag white, gold yellow, chilli red and national flag blue) and approximate Pantone equivalents: green 3415 C, gold 1235 C, red 179 C and blue Reflex Blue C. Its rules on use are in Government Gazette 22356, Notice 510 of 8 June 2001. Hung vertically on a wall, the red band goes to the viewer’s left with the hoist at the top; hung horizontally, the hoist is to the left and the red band at the top.