ANC: New government should regulate old South African flag
The African National Congress (ANC) says the newly elected government should put in place laws to regulate apartheid symbols should the courts fail to do so.
The High Court in Johannesburg on Tuesday reserved judgement in an application by the Nelson Mandela Foundation to have the public display of the apartheid flag banned.
The foundation, through its legal representative Advocate Thembeka Ngcukaitobi, argued that the flag is a symbol of racial discrimination and does not have any place in the new South Africa.
ANC spokesperson Dakota Legoete echoes these sentiments, saying the old flag represents a dark time in the country’s history.
"This flag represents a history that is very bad for us as South Africans, because any attempt to use this flag it’s like asking a Jewish who's a victim of a Nazi holocaust to put up a portrait of Hitler or to put up a Nazi flag in their institutions. It's very wrong and it cannot be encouraged.
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"Any narrow nationalist with a right wing element cannot be encouraged in a society which comes from a divided past of apartheid."
Legoete says the ruling party presupposed that the flag would disappear after the fall of apartheid.
"We thought South Africans understand that we need to build one nation with common patriotism with common purpose. We thought we are together because apartheid as long declared as the crime against humanity through a UN resolution. Now, anything that its undermined by the UN cannot be promoted any member state of country or nations of the world so we took it for granted.
"But I think it’s about time that our government - the new dispensation - if the court does not find it will have to get a law which regulates symbols."
Legoete says they are waiting for a ruling to be delivered before deciding on the next step.
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