Publications
Partners
To mark the 30th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy and the raising of the South African flag for the first time over the Union Buildings on 27 April 1994, the St Andrew’s School paid tribute to an Old Andrean.
Frederick Gordon Brownell, that passed away in 2019, designed the iconic flag that unified post-apartheid South Africa.
The celebration service took place at the St Andrew’s Chapel on Wednesday, 24 April, to celebrate Freedom Day on Saturday, 27 April.
Two of Brownell’s’ daughters, Heather and Susan, were in attendance.
Brownell was a farmer’s son from Bethlehem and was a boarder at St. Andrew’s from 1950 to 1957. He was a prefect in the Walter Carey library and excelled as a marksman in the school’s musketry team. He represented the Free State Command at the annual Bisley competition, earning provincial colours in addition to his full colours.
He graduated from Rhodes University (RU) and completed his postgraduate studies at the University of South Africa (Unisa).
In 1982 he became the state herald, supervising the design of many symbols, shields, and coats of arms. He has a unique claim to fame – he was involved in creating two symbols of freedom on the African continent: the Namibian and the South African flags.
In 1993 he was attending a meeting of flag researchers in Switzerland. At the time there was much activity in South Africa about designing a new flag for the country. He pondered a design and envisaged two streams meeting to become a river. He recalled attending chapel services and remembered the school chaplain, robed in his chasuble, and the classic “V” forming a convergence that formed the basis of a new national flag. He sketched these ideas, which was to become the six-colour national flag, on the back of the meeting programme.
In 2015 he received a PhD from the University of Pretoria (UP) for a dissertation titled “Convergence and Unification: The National Flag of South Africa (1994) in Historical Perspective.”
Following his death on 10 May 2019, he was lauded for designing the most cohesive symbol in the country, which has been embraced as a symbol of the people.
