Flag of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe’s flag has seven stripes, green, gold, red and black at the centre, and a white triangle at the pole with a red star and the gold Zimbabwe Bird. The government says green is vegetation and agriculture, gold the mineral wealth, red the blood shed in the liberation war, black the black majority, the white triangle peace and the red star the nation’s aspirations; the bird is the national emblem.
Easily confused with
- Flag of MozambiqueBoth have a triangle at the pole holding a star, beside green, gold and black stripes; Mozambique’s triangle is red with a yellow star, book, hoe and rifle, Zimbabwe’s white with a red star and the gold bird.
- Flag of ZambiaZambia’s flag is green with an orange eagle in flight above a block of three vertical stripes, red, black and orange, in the corner away from the pole. Zambia’s embassy in Washington says the red is the struggle for freedom, the black the people of Zambia, the orange the country’s mineral wealth and the green its natural resources, and the eagle in flight freedom and the ability to rise above the country’s problems.
How to read it
Section 4 of the Constitution of 2013 says Zimbabwe has a national flag, set out in the First Schedule, which depicts it. The government describes it: seven horizontal stripes of equal width, from top to bottom green, gold, red, black, red, gold and green, and at the hoist a white triangle separated from the stripes by a thin black line, holding a red five-pointed star with the gold Zimbabwe Bird on it. The flag was accepted on 22 March 1980 and first raised at midnight on 17–18 April 1980, at independence.
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The Zimbabwe Bird
The bird on the flag is one of the soapstone birds carved at Great Zimbabwe, the walled stone city in the south-east of the country, near Masvingo, that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Mail & Guardian, reporting for the Associated Press in 2003, called them stylised fish eagles that stood on the walls of Great Zimbabwe between the 12th and 14th centuries; the country is named after the city, “house of stone” in Shona. The birds also appear on Zimbabwe’s banknotes and official documents. “The birds are among the most symbolic cultural objects of our time,” Godfrey Mahachi, head of the national museums, told AFP in 2020. “They connect the present with our past.”
Most of the carvings were taken out of the country in colonial times and have since come back. Al Jazeera, reporting AFP in 2020, counts eight original sculptures, six of them from the ruins: South Africa returned five in 1981, Germany returned the base of one in 2003, and one was still in South Africa. The base returned by Germany had been taken from the ruins in 1906, went to the ethnological museum in Berlin and then to Leningrad, and was rejoined with the bird’s head, which had stayed in Zimbabwe, at a ceremony in Harare.
Telling it from Mozambique’s flag
Mozambique’s flag also has a triangle at the pole with a star in it, and green, black and gold stripes. Its triangle is red and its star yellow, carrying a book, a hoe and a rifle; it has three main stripes, green, black and gold, separated by thin white stripes. Zimbabwe’s triangle is white, with a red star and the bird, and it has seven stripes.
Read next
- Next in African flagsPan-African flagThe Pan-African flag has three horizontal stripes, red, black and green. The Universal Negro Improvement Association adopted red, black and green as the colours of the race in 1920, and its catechism of 1921 says red is the blood men must shed for their redemption and liberty, black the race its members belong to and green the vegetation of the African motherland.
- The same shape in Asian flagsFlag of JordanJordan’s flag has three equal stripes of black, white and green and a red triangle at the pole holding a white seven-pointed star. Al-Mamlaka, Jordan’s public broadcaster, explains the stripes as the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates, the red triangle as the Hashemite family, and the seven points of the star as the seven verses of the Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Quran.
More african flags
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with lines, squares and rectangles, stars or triangles.
Sources
- Zimbabwe 2013 (rev. 2017) Constitution, Constitution of Zimbabwe, 2013 (rev. 2017), section 4 and First Schedule, Constitute Project, Section 4; First Schedule, Part 1
- National Flag of Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe Government Portal), Zimbabwe Government Portal, National Symbols, “National Flag of Zimbabwe”, Government of Zimbabwe, Whole page
- Ancient eagle comes home to roost in Zimbabwe, Mail & Guardian (Sapa-AP), 15 May 2003, Mail & Guardian, Whole article
- Zimbabwe gets back iconic bird statues stolen during colonialism, Al Jazeera (AFP), 13 March 2020, Al Jazeera, Whole article
- Mozambique 2004 (rev. 2007) Constitution, Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique, 2004 (rev. 2007), articles 13 and 297 (English translation), Constitute Project, Article 297
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 13, 2026. How we research
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