Mabila Mathebula
I am not as good as Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi in recalling dates. He was a moving encyclopaedia when it came to remembering events and linking them to dates.
To add insult to injury or salt to a festering wound, I even forget to wish people who are nearest and dearest to me a happy birthday. Karmic law caught up with me last Sunday.
When my best friends, Dr Alex Masianoga, Anthony Murudi, Dr Peaceman Sopazi, Links Mudaly and Pastor Strike Manganyi, forgot to text me and wished me a happy birthday on Mother’s Day, I was not offended. I was amused and sent them a paltry fine which they must pay on or before the end of the month.
I did it deftly because I need them in my life. I call this “male sickness” or “birthday dementia”, which I am also suffering from.
Although I behave like most men from Mars, when I heard about the DA burning the South African flag, I recalled an interview I had on SABC radio with the then-leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, Mosibudi Mangenaon, on September 9, 1994 .
I plied him with questions about the South African flag and he replied: “Coming to the flag specifically, and honestly, I don’t know what it means. I wish someone could explain it to me what it means. In all countries, people know what their flag means. I am not denigrating the flag. I do not know what it means. I do not understand the design and what those colours stand for.”
He said that replacing the old apartheid flag with the new flag was a big mistake. As a young journalist, I spoke like a child and thought like a child. Little did I realise that what Mangena said would be a self-fulfilling prophesy in years to come.
The DA would like to be associated with progressive thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson who is best remembered as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. After the burning of the flag, the DA would be shocked to discover that Jefferson was not obsessed only with unalienable rights.
Jefferson also believed that: “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”
Our flag is more of a proclamation than an explanation. Proclamations that are not explained become problematic for future generations.
When I visited a museum in Philadelphia in 1999, after I attended a quality conference, I was struck by Charles H Weisgerber’s painting “The Birth of Our Nation’s Flag”.
According to tradition, it was Betsy Ross who, at the request of General George Washington and the Congressional Flag Committee, made the first 13-star, 13-stripe American Flag, the design of a circle stars so familiar today. Though Ross is generally regarded as a legendary figure in American history, there was a woman by that name and there is documentary evidence that she was paid in 1777 for making shifts, colours and so on, if not the first flag.
Her first husband, John Ross, was an upholsterer who had a shop on the site of what is now 239 Arch Street. The Betsy Ross house is an interesting example of mid-18th century Philadelphia town architecture, although surrounded by colonial and Revolutionary War days.
I also saw the Liberty Bell and interviewed some few people about its history. I was told that on July 4, 1776, the newly written Declaration of Independence was read to the Continental Congress in the State House. Four days later, the bell was rung to alert the people to the public reading of the declaration. The Liberty Bell’s traditional association with events of the American Revolution and its prophetic “Proclaim Liberty” inscription, have made it a most cherished and revered symbol of American Freedom.
Please excuse my ignorance, I do not know the person who was commissioned to design our South African flag. I also do not know people who was part of the flag committee.
The burning of the flag is a graphic description of what sociologists call social conflict. According to Joan Ferrante: “Sociologists use the term ”ingroup“ to describe a group with which people identify and to which they feel closely attached, particularly when the attachment is founded on hatred for or opposition towards another group known as an ”outgroup“. Ingroups cannot exist without an outgroup. An outgroup is a group of individuals toward which members of an ingroup feel a sense of separateness, opposition or even hatred. Obviously, one person’s ingroup is another person’s outgroup.”
Research has shown that often an ingroup and an outgroup clash over symbols – objects or gestures – that are clearly associated and valued by one group. For example, when the apartheid government made Afrikaans the medium of instructions, we saw clashes between the ingroups and the outgroups and slogans such as “Afrikaans must be abolished” were commonplace.
In 1988, Israeli reporter Danny Rubinstein witnessed clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers over symbols, especially the Palestinian flag. This is how he describes the scene, like Charles Dickens: “Palestinian Arabs hoist the flag (which is very much like the Jordanian flag), while Israeli soldiers bring it down and attempt to catch and punish the perpetrators. At times the situation takes a ridiculous turn. Sometimes ago, in Bethlehem, I heard an Israeli officer issue an order to close down for a week all shops on certain streets where a Palestine flag had been hoisted on the corner utility pole the night before.”
Pace Commercial College, in the heart of Soweto, was known as island of hope in a sea of turmoil. Pace was an American project, with many American sponsors pumping millions of dollars into it during the dark days of apartheid. The headmaster, Rex Pennington, and his staff enjoyed all the trimmings.
Simply put, Pace was a world-class school. The day the pupils burnt the American flag, all the sponsor withdrew from Pace, because to Americans. their flag is sacrosanct.
I suggest that after the election, we need a serious discussion about our flag and national anthem. These are important national symbols, for example, the EFF does not sing “Die Stem” when it sings “their national anthem”. On the other side of the coin, some Afrikaans groups do not sing “Nkosi Sikelela”.
After the election, the government must answer Mangena’s questions about the flag. Who designed it? Who was part of the flag committee? What do the colours and the design mean? Where was the flag designed? With regard the national anthem, if we are a nation of silos, there won’t be a national anthem. Perhaps we need to bring back the reconciliation project back and former presidents can guide us?
Author and life coach Mathebula has a PhD in construction management.
The Star