Mr President, please lower the giant R22m flag idea

It is still not clear whether the department of sports, arts, and culture intends to spend R22 million on a 100m-tall national flag, or whether it wants a massive flag to fly from a 100m-tall flagpole.

Whatever the truth is, the plan is, even by the ANC’s “let them eat cake” detachment from reality, simply absurd.

Not because it is not technically feasible – a flagpole that tall would be tricky to build and keep stable, although a giant flag placed at ground level would be easier – but because the waste of this amount of money in our current circumstances is mind-boggling.

Totally unable to read the room, the department believes the massive flag will become a tourist attraction and will help to unite the country.

Judging by the reaction so far to the hare-brained scheme, all the proposal has done is unite people in their anger at the ANC’s continued squandering of our steadily declining financial resources.

ALSO READ: South Africa to spend R22 million on 100-metre-tall flag

No surprise, either, that many of the negative comments centre around the probability that this is another project where the comrades can gather at the taxpayer-funded feeding trough.

Surely, President Cyril Ramaphosa, you are not going to let these tone-deaf apparatchiks get away with it?