It’s an amalgamation of the recognisable gay rainbow flag and the South African national flag.
South Africa’s Department of Arts and Culture approved the registration of the flag last week, reported the Timeslive citing an announcement in the official Government Gazette.
Founder and flag designer Eugene Brockman of Gay Flag of South Africa, a non-profit organisation that submitted the flag for approval as a symbol for LGBTI people was quoted as saying, “The flag has become a symbol of both the celebration of queer South African identity as well as the obstacles and hate crimes LGBTI South Africans face that are unique to this country.”
Mava Mothiba, representing the department's bureau of heraldry, said yesterday there had been no objections to the flag - a combination of the international gay flag and the South African national flag.
"It has been registered under the Heraldry Act and is protected by the act," he said.
The flag was launched in December 2010 at the annual Mother City Queer Project (MCQP) party an annual event hosted by the gay community of Cape Town.
The country decriminalised laws against gay sex in 1994 and in 1996 became the first in the world to outlaw discrimination against sexual orientation under its post-apartheid Constitution.
In December 2005, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that it was unconstitutional to prevent people of the same gender from marrying when it was permitted to people of the opposite gender, and gave the South African Parliament one year to pass legislation which would allow same-sex unions. In November 2006, Parliament voted 230:41 for a bill allowing same-sex civil marriage, as well as civil unions for unmarried opposite-sex and same-sex.