R22m for a flag? Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea?

 
 

Last week I read an article which said that the government is planning to spend R22 million to erect a 100 meter high flag in Freedom Park in Pretoria. I first thought it had to be fake news.

Turns out it wasn’t.

That’s right folks, the Department of Arts and Culture is planning to spend twenty-two MILLION Rands on a flag.

Excuse me when I say: “WTF!!!”

Let me be clear, I love the South African flag. I always have. I remember clearly the night before the 1994 election when the Apartheid flag was lowered for the last time. I was in the Stellenbosch elections office, with some people from Kayamandi. We sat on an old mattress and watched the ceremony on a little black and white portable TV. When the new flag was hoisted, we wept and hugged each other. Even though the election was only due to take place over the next few days, we knew that this was the symbolic beginning of the new dawn.

Like many South Africans I have over the years bought all kinds of paraphernalia to celebrate the new flag (ok, I stopped short of underpants – but just). For me, the new flag has always been a reminder of the triumph of good over evil – and the high price that was paid to achieve freedom.

However, this proposed flag would do the opposite.

At a time when hunger, unemployment, and general despair is growing at an explosive rate, what kind of tone deaf eejits (as the Irish would say) could even think of blowing TWENTY-TWO MILLION RANDS on an enormous piece of bunting?

Over the last few years, the government has consistently made it clear that they are starting to run out of money. They tell us that there is no money for a universal income grant, or an increase in civil service salaries.  

Year after year they inform us that they have to up our taxes to keep the country afloat or to pay for a future National Health Service. Yet, somewhere they have apparently squirreled away R22 million to pay for a mine-is-bigger-than-yours pole and a flag. This, despite claiming poverty for the last two years when artists were begging for help during COVID.

If artists were not where they felt the money was best spent (despite being the Department of Arts and Culture), then I’m sure Andre de Ruyter would have been delighted to buy some spare parts for those failing power stations. Or think about the joy the flood victims in KZN would have experienced if there was an addition R20 million for emergency relief, or the gratitude from farmers receiving that kind of aid in drought stricken areas.  Then of course it is also never a bad idea to pay off some of our gigantic debt.

But no, a flag it is….

(Of course, I’m well aware that government departments can’t just move money from one department to the other – although perhaps it is time for this to change - but, the money could always go back to Treasury at the end of the financial year and to be spent more wisely.)

In an interview with John Maytham on Cape Talk last week, the Director of The South Africa Bureau of Heraldry, Thembinkosi Mabaso, explained that it was all part of an effort to popularise the flag.

I didn’t realise the flag had a popularity crisis, but be it as it may, I fail to understand how putting a gigantic flag in a park in Pretoria where only those who visit or live in the vicinity will ever see it, would help. 

If anything, it might turn sentiment against the flag.

I certainly know that whenever I would look at that flag and remember what it cost me, the tax-payer, I would be seriously pissed off.

Instead of serving as a symbol of freedom and unity (which Mabaso says is the intention behind it), it would serve as a reminder of the excesses and stupid decisions of a government at a time that the cries of the people of this country were getting more and more desperate.

Mabaso insisted that there is currently no monument to the flag. Do we really need a monument to the flag? Monuments are more often than not a celebration or remembrance of the past or the dead. Is that what we want for our flag? Surely, wherever the flag is hoisted, printed or waved by proud South Africans, that is a glorious living monument?

If the government really wants to celebrate the flag they should be putting people and their needs first.

That is after all what the flag stands for - not some vanity project that will cost the country a fortune.