467
Archaeology and symbolism in the new South African
coat of arms
BENJAMINSMITH,
J.D. LEWIS-WILLIAMS,
GEOFFREYBLUNDELL
81CHRISTOPHER
CHIPPINDALE
*
FIGURE1 (right). The n e w national coat-of
arms for South Africa, in colours of black,
brown, gold and green.
Above: a rising sun symbolizes promise of
rebirth; the secretary bird with uplifted wings
represents growth, and as a protective bird
‘slays serpents and thus protects us against
those who would do us harm’; a protea power
is symbolic of the country’s beauty and the
flowering of its potential; a crossed spear and
knobkerrie display authoritx lying down to
represent peace.
Below: elephant tusks enfold the lower
half, to represent wisdom, strength,
moderation and eternity; wheat ears are a
symbol of fertility and growth; the central
shield carries the two San figures discussed
in the text.
Bottom: the /Xam text rendering the
motto of ‘Unity in Diversity’.
FIGURE
2 (left). The central shield, with the two
San figures. Following the symmetrical habit of
heraldry, the same figure is placed in mirror
opposites, each grasping the other’s hand.
South Africa celebrated its sixth Freedom Day on
2 7 April 2000. President Thabo Mbeki paid fitting tribute to South Africa’s first democratic elections of 1994 by unveiling a new national coat of
arms. The old coat of arms, derived from that
adopted at Union in 1910, looks fussy today and
evokes the values of a long-gone age.
* Smith, Lewis-Williams & Blundell, Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits 2050,
Johannesburg, South Africa. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Chippindale, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Downing Street, Cambridge CBZ ~ D Z ,
England. [email protected]
ANTIQUITY74 (2000): 467-8
NEWS & NOTES
468
The new coat of arms (FIGURE
1).designed by
Iaan Bekker, uses a series of motifs symbolizing
another kind of national identity - one which is
South African, African and universal. A central motif
2) derived from
is a pair of human figures (FIGURE
San rock-art. They are modelled on a human figure
on the famous panel (Lewis-Williams 1988) which
was removed from Linton (Eastern Cape Province)
to the South African Museum in Cape Town in 1918
- in our view the greatest rock-art panel in any
museum anywhere in the world. The San figures
are a conscious historical reference intended to escape the colonial legacy and the racial divisions of
the old South Africa.
The Government chose San figures for the central human image, as representing a heritage that
unites all South Africans in common humanity. The
particular choice of the figure was made by the Rock
Art Research Institute at the University of the
Witwatersrand,the national research centre for rockart. Its form and poise, and the manner in which a
standing human figure is depicted, are characteristic of the hunter-gatherer rock-paintings of southern Africa. As the President explains it, this figure
serves to evoke South Africa’s distant past, in a country which seeks to embrace the indigenous belief
systems of its people.
The motto underneath, also drafted by one of us
at the Rock Art Research Institute (JDL-W),is in the
IXam language, one of the several known but extinct languages of the South African San people.
The /Xam, like most San groups, did not use abstract nouns; and the motto ‘Unityin Diversity’which
it expresses therefore has no exact /Xam equivalent. It is rendered in the phrase ‘!ke e: ixarra //ke’,
which-translated literally -means ‘Diversepeople
unite’, or ‘People who are different join together’.
The colon in the phrase is an accent indicating
the preceding ‘e’is a drawn-out vowel. The and
‘I’ and ‘ I / ’represent three click-sounds of the IXam
language in the standard system of writing Khoisan
languages (see e.g. Barnard 1992).We hope that nonSouth Africans, ignorant of click-languages but familiar with computer files and the Internet, will
not pronounce them as ‘forward-slash’!
No one has spoken the IXam language for many
decades, but there is good knowledge of it from 19thcentury records made by the Bleek and Lloyd family of the language and tales of these San people,
many of whom were held in prison in Cape Town,
far from their ancestral lands (some /Xam tales are
published in Bleek & Lloyd 1911and Lewis-Williams
2000). When all written history in South Africa is
enmeshed in the colonial experience, it is fitting
that a nation self-consciously re-founding its identity should turn instead to an archaeological kind
I:’
I!’
of historical image, and to a text taken from oral
tradition. South Africa recognizes eleven national
languages today. To express the national motto in
yet another tongue is to express no partiality to any
one of those eleven. That the tongue used is extinct
today is a rare and moving tribute to past people of
the South African land.
What other national coat of arms expresses such
sentiments in such an archaeological and in such
an eloquent way?
References
BARNARD,
A. 1992. Hunters and herders of southern Africa:
a comparative ethnography of the Khoisan peoples.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BLEEK,W.H.I. & L. LLOYD.1911. Specimens ofBushman
folklore. London: George Allen.
LEWIS-WILLIAMS,
J.D. 1988. The world ofman and the world
of spirit: an interpretation of the Linton rock paintings.
Cape Town: South African Museum.
LEWIS-WILLIAMS,
J.D. 2000. Stories that float from afar:
ancestral folklore o f t h e /Xam San of southern Africa.
Cape Town: David Philip.
FIGURE3 . The male figure on the rock-art panel
from Linton, on which the figures are based. In the
original, h e holds a bow, arrow and other kit in his
hands. There h e is gendered; his penis is omitted
in the re-drawing as inappropriate to a coat of
arms.
After redrawing b y Thomas Dowson from RARI
redrawing archive.