South Africa’s Equality Court has banned flying the country’s apartheid-era flag, saying that “gratuitous” displays of the flag are acts of hate speech and racial discrimination.
As the Washington Post reports, the decision was handed down Wednesday by Judge Phineas Mojapelo, who said flying the Old Flag violated anti-racism and harassment laws under the Equality Act.
In his ruling, Mojapelo focused on the flag’s racist symbolism: how it flew high over a country that systematically and wholly used segregation to subjugate black South Africans.
“The dominant meaning attributable to the Old Flag, both domestically and internationally, is that it is for the majority of the South African population a symbol that immortalizes the period of a system of racial segregation, racial oppression through apartheid, of a crime against humanity and of South Africa as an international pariah state that dehumanized the black population,” Mojapelo wrote, according to the Post.
He added that displaying the flag, “visually communicates a message of the belief in or support of racism, white supremacy and the subjugation of the black population.”
Recent Comments