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Official Language and Symbol – 1994

The chief negotiators from the ANC and the NP government were tasked with resolving the flag issue in February, 1994. “A final design was adopted on May 15, 1994- derived from a design developed by South Africa’s former state Herald, Fred Brownell. The new South African national flag first flew on 10 May 1994 — the day Nelson Mandela became president, two weeks after the country’s first democratic elections of 27 April 1994.”¹

In 1994, the language issue resurfaced again as “the national unity government tried to include a clause in the constitution by giving an equal status to the country’s 11 languages. But instead of creating harmony, the legislation has drawn fresh lines in the ethnic battleground. Most of the current controversy swirls around Afrikaans and English, which were the languages of record for many years under white minority rule. This meant the country’s nine indigenous African languages, spoken by most of the population as first languages, were ignored”. South Africa’s indigenous languages are Ndebele, South Sotho, North Sotho, siSwati, Xitsonga, Setswana, Tshivenda, Xhosa and Zulu.²

1. “Fly, the beloved flag,” accessed December 9, 2010, http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/flag.htm.
2. “LANGUAGE DISPUTE REOPENS OLD WOUNDS IN SOUTH AFRICA,” The Miami Herald, August 27, 1994 Saturday, p. 29.