Burning issue: Zizi Kodwa moves to ‘red flag’ DA’s provocative election ad

The Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Zizi Kodwa said he is considering taking further steps against the Democratic Alliance (DA) over their much-criticised burning flag advert.

The DA’s election advert showed the burning of the flag as “a symbolic representation of the future that awaits South Africa if people do not vote for the DA”, opposition party leader John Steenhuisen explained at the launch of its campaign advert.

ALSO READ: ‘Insulting the nation’: Zizi Kodwa condemns DA’s burning flag ad

DA’s burning flag advert debacle rages on

The advert was widely slammed with President Cyril Ramaphosa calling it “treason” and “totally unacceptable” earlier on Tuesday. This after Kodwa already labelled it on Monday as an insult to South Africans, saying it had potential to “sow division and hysteria in our nation”.

Even former public protector Thuli Madonsela, while saying she understood the DA’s intentions with the image, thought it was ill-advised and showed “disrespect and disloyalty to the flag”.

Zizi Kodwa considers further steps

The department issued a notice on Tuesday, saying Kodwa is considering further steps to take against the “abhorrent and unpatriotic” political advertisement.

The minister had instructed the Acting Director-General [Dr Cynthia Khumalo], advisors and the legal unit of the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture to urgently advise him on the recourse government can take when national symbols are denigrated and desecrated, the department revealed.

“The desecration of national symbols should not be part of election campaigning and should not be tolerated in any instance,” the minister was quoted as saying in the notice.

“We are taking steps to ensure that there are consequences for such actions. It is our duty to ensure the protection of our national symbols which are a product of our hard-earned democracy.”

ALSO READ: ‘In some countries, it’s a crime to burn the flag,’ says Thuli Madonsela on DA election ad

DA flag advert ‘offends gains made by country’

In his statement on Monday, Kodwa said the burning flag advert offends the gains the country has made as a free and non-racial democracy, as well as the efforts of those who fought for this freedom.

“It offends all South Africans who proudly raise our country’s flag sky high and appreciate its representation as the flag of a free, democratic and non-racial nation.

“I shudder to think what other South African compatriots such as Helen Suzman, Zack de Beer, and Van Zyl Slabbert would say about this act of desperation and recklessness demonstrated by the current ahistorical and unpatriotic leaders of DA,” he added.