South Africa / Mzantsi Afrika / Afrika Borwa /
Suid-Afrika / Ningizumu Afrika /Afrika Dzonga /Afrika Sewula / Afrika Tshipembe
Motto (part of the circle of foundation):
The motto, shown on a green ribbon linking the bases of the tusks, reads: !Ke e: /Xarra //Ke.
Taken from the language of the now extinct /Xam or /Kham Bushman people, it translates as: “People who are different come together” or “Diverse people unite.”
The official description reads: “It addresses each individual effort to harness the unity between thought and action. On a collective scale it calls for the nation to unite in a common sense of belonging and national pride – Unity in Diversity.”
The /Xam language is the only Bushman language recorded as having been spoken south of the Orange or Gariep River, and therefore represents the earliest known human inhabitants of the region from which sprang the modern South African state.
The motto is almost impossible to pronounce for anyone not familiar with the click sounds of Nguni and South Sotho, which in turn are derived from the languages of the Bushmen.
This means that the motto is extremely difficult not only for foreigners and for South Africans whose language is English or Afrikaans, but also for Tswana-, North Sotho-, Tsonga- and Venda-speakers, and for members of those Swazi clans which are of Sotho origin.
The most easily pronounced click sound is /, which in Sotho and Nguni is spelt C and is close to the sound made by English-speakers that is written as “tsk-tsk”. For this sound the tongue is drawn back from the gums just behind the front teeth.
The sound represented by ! is made with the tongue initially on the top of the palate, but is usually rendered in Sotho and Nguni as the sound made with the tongue in the front of the palate, and which in those languages is spelt as Q.
The // sound (X in Nguni and Sotho) is made with the tongue on the side of the palate, just above the molars (on either side of the mouth).
The colon in the second word is, however, not a click sound, but an indication of a lengthened vowel.
The letter X (in the third word) represents the sound spelt as KH in transliterations of Russian or Arabic, as G in Afrikaans, Dutch and the Sotho languages, and in Xhosa as RH. It is also sometimes spelt in a Bushman context with the letters KH.
Using the spelling of Nguni languages, the motto can be written as: Qę ę crharra xę.
The need for new arms:
It became clear even before the 1994 elections that a new national coat of arms was needed for South Africa, since the old arms were based on those of its constituent colonies (provinces). This writer, in a proposal to the Commission on National Symbols (part of the Congress for a Democratic South Africa which drafted the interim Constitution) proposed that time first be given to the new provinces to adopt their own arms, and that new national arms be considered afterwards. Other correspondents appear to have made similar representations. This time frame was in fact followed, but the arms, when adopted, were unrelated to the arms of any provinces, either the current nine or the previous four.
Design process:
Proposals for a new coat of arms were put forward by the Heraldry Council, but were rejected for reasons the Government declined to specify. During 1999 the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology requested ideas for a new coat of arms from the public. A brief was written based on ideas received and input from the Cabinet. Design South Africa, a body representing design agencies across the country, was approached to brief 10 of the top designers. Three designers were chosen to present their concepts to the Cabinet. The work of Iaan Bekker, who has previously designed numerous corporate identities for public and private sector organisations, was eventually chosen.
Post-apartheid South Africa:
The apartheid era in South Africa officially came to an end with the holding of all-race elections over three days, beginning on 27 April 1994. On that day an interim Constitution came into effect and a new national flag
was hoisted.
The country – often referred to as the New South Africa – remained a parliamentary democracy, but for the first time that democracy was based on the votes of the entire adult population. The head of state was now called President (no longer State President), and Parliament comprised the President, the National Assembly (replacing the House of Assembly) and the Senate.
The country now comprised nine provinces, as opposed to the previous four: two of the old provinces – the Orange Free State (Free State Province) and Natal (KwaZulu-Natal) – retained their territory, while the two large provinces of the Transvaal and the Cape were subdivided – the Cape into Western, Eastern and Northern Cape, and the Transvaal into the PWV Province (now Gauteng), Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga) and Northern Province (now Limpopo), while pieces of both Transvaal and the Cape made up North West Province. The “independent” and non-independent homelands of the apartheid era disappeared, and were integrated into the provinces into which they now fell.
Pretoria remained the administrative capital, while Parliament remained in Cape Town. The idea of moving Parliament to another centre has been mooted, but has met with strong opposition, especially from the Western Cape, and as of early 2002 no action had been taken in this regard.
The interim Constitution was characterised by a strong human rights focus and a breaking away from the previously accepted doctrine of the sovereignty of Parliament. The Constitution was now seen as sovereign, and a Constitutional Court was added to the existing judicial structure with the function of interpreting the Constitution.
The Supreme Court was renamed the High Court, but retained its previous division into an Appellate Division seated at Bloemfontein and various provincial and local divisions.
The Constitutional Court, however, was based in Johannesburg, which had not previously been a formal capital. However, during the rule of Lord Milner, British High Commissioner for South Africa, it was a de facto capital when he resided in Johannesburg after his appointment in 1901 as Governor of the Orange River and Transvaal colonies, ruling through Administrators based in Bloemfontein and Pretoria. It therefore has a history as a capital city under an oppressive régime.
Relationship with the Commonwealth:
South Africa, which had been a founder member of the Commonwealth of Nations, had not been part of that organisation since 1961. In 1994 it was welcomed back with open arms.
This meant that the British sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, once again had a role to play in South Africa. She had been Queen of South Africa from 1953 to 1961 (this was the first Commonwealth member outside Britain to create a separate title for the sovereign) and Head of the Commonwealth, but although remaining Head of the Commonwealth she had ceased to have any link with South Africa. Now once more, in her capacity as Head of the Commonwealth, she was linked with the country, and in 1995 she paid a visit to South Africa in that role.
During that visit she also flew her personal flag, not to be confused with the so-called Royal Standard (in fact a banner of the royal arms).
South Africa’s rejoining the Commonwealth also meant that Mozambique was entirely surrounded by Commonwealth members, and in 1995 this former Portuguese colony was admitted to the Commonwealth despite not having any British colonial links or even the English language in common use.
Languages of the new South Africa:
Instead of just two languages, both of European origin, South Africa now had 11 official languages. These are reflected at the head of this article in the names listed for the country.
The languages are English and Afrikaans (as they had been in the past) plus nine vernacular tongues:
Xhosa,
Zulu, Swazi, Ndebele[1] (all of them Nguni languages), Tswana, North Sotho (or Pedi) and South Sotho (all of these Sotho languages), Tsonga (also called Shangaan) and Venda.
This also meant that the country had additional vernacular names:
Mzantsi Afrika (Xhosa), Ningizumu Afrika (Zulu and Swazi), Afrika Borwa (Sotho-Tswana), Afrika Sewula (Ndebele), Afrika Dzonga (Tsonga) and Afrika Tshipembe (Venda).
No recognition was, however, afforded to the languages of the country’s inhabitants of longest standing, the Bushmen and Khoikhoi,[2] chiefly because of the small numbers of communities still speaking these languages.
The only surviving Khoikhoi dialect is Nama, spoken by small, isolated communities in the west of the Northern Cape, and by a larger grouping of communities in southern Namibia. Many surviving Khoikhoi communities use Afrikaans in preference to their ancestral tongue.
The Nama word for “south” is !khawagas, while the word Africa or Afrika (either the English or the Afrikaans form is used) takes a final -b (a masculine ending). So the country’s name in (grammatical) Nama is Afrikab !Khawagas. However, most Nama know the country as either Suid-Afrikab or South Africab.
Permanent Constitution:
The interim Constitution continued in use until 1996, when a definitive Constitution was finally produced by Parliament and approved by the Constitutional Court.
The chief difference between the 1996 Constitution and the interim document was that the Senate was abolished (for the second time in the country’s history) and replaced by a body representing the nine provinces, to be called the National Council of Provinces.
