I was twelve, standing on my father’s shoulders at the Union Buildings, when helicopters flew over Pretoria trailing the new flag. The green was impossibly bright against the winter Highveld sky. My father was crying, and he was not the only one.
A Flag Nobody Had Seen Before
Frederick Brownell designed the flag in barely seven days. The Y shape compressed an entire political settlement into six bands of colour: green for the ANC, gold for the sun, black for the people, red for sacrifice, blue for the sky, white for peace. Two diagonal lines held the compromise together, and against all expectation, it worked.
“Never, never again shall this beautiful land experience the oppression of one by another.” Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Address — 10 May 1994