Last modified: 2025-05-24 by bruce berry
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![[Flag of Botswana]](../images/b/bw.gif)
![[Variant]](../misc/fis_vari.gif){kind=small}
2:3~ image by Zoltan Horvath, 23 Apr 2024See also:
The colours
on the flag correspond to those on the national coat of arms.
The blue represents water (the motto on the national arms is PULA, meaning "let there be
rain"). The white-black-white bands depict the racial harmony of the
people as well as the pluralist nature of the society. They are inspired by the
coat of the zebra, the national animal.
Nick Artimovich,
01 Nov 1996
I returned today after ten days in Botswana.
Flag flying is not very common and is mainly restricted to the government and
the larger commercial organisations. Many of the flags which I saw were in a
very sorry state of repair - a case of up the pole and forgotten! On further
inquiry I learned that there is a law which requires government permission to
be granted before the flag of Botswana
can be flown. How effectively this is implemented (if at all) is unclear but it
might explain the lack of flags. Certainly there were no flags available for
purchase.
Bruce Berry,
14 Apr 1998
The colour shade for the
blue used on the national flag is being discussed by the Cabinet. There
has been a problem with standardisation and so flags with various shades of
blue (from different manufacturers) are seen and the government wants to change
this. As soon as I get the confirmed details, I will share them with you.
Bruce Berry, 10 May 2001
I just came across the following account of the origins of the Botswana flag and coat of arms in George Winstanley’s book, Under Two Flags in Africa: Recollections of a British Administrator in the Bechuanaland Protectorate and Botswana 1954 to 1972 (Colchester: Blackwater Books, 2000). George Winstanley arrived in the Bechuanaland Protectorate in1954. After being a District Administrator at several stations, he was transferred to Headquarters in 1962. He was a Clerk to the Legislative and Executive Councils and later Clerk to the Cabinet where he worked closely with Sir Seretse Khama where he helped to organise the first general election in 1965 and the second in 1969. On his retirement in 1972 he was Permanent Secretary for Agriculture.
Regarding the Botswana
flag, he states:
"...But I became much involved in selecting a national anthem and in the
design of the coat of arms and the flag... It was decided to hold competitions
for all three to try and involve the population at large. I issued the
necessary notices and received several entries for each category...”
(p.235)."The entries received in
the flag competition were hopeless so I designed the flag myself.
I wanted to make it easy to draw hence the
all the straight horizontal lines. The blue background of the flag represents
water – vital to the country's agriculture - and the black central strip
bordered with two white strips represents racial harmony" (p.236).
Regarding the coat of arms:
"The coat of arms proved more difficult. We received two good entries, one
from Lady Fawcus (spouse of Sir Robert Peter Fawcus, HM Commissioner between
1963 and 1965) and one form Lady England (spouse of the then Director of
Agriculture). However, the Cabinet decided that neither was suitable as it
stood and asked me to arrange for the best in both to be combined. My wife made
the sketch as directed and after Cabinet approval this was submitted to the
College of Heralds in the UK who made more alterations and produced a final
design. The two zebra symbolise the abundant wildlife in the country as well as
alluding to black/white co-operation, the ivory tusk also refers to the
wildlife, the ox head and the stalk of sorghum refer to agricultural resources,
the interlocking cogwheels suggest the mineral potential and the wavy blue
lines emphasise the importance of water in an arid country such as Botswana.
The supporting word "PULA" - the Setswana word for 'rain' - suggests
happiness and optimism" (p.236).
Gerald Noeske, 11 Sept 2004
Act 25,1966
PART I Blazon of the Arms or Ensigns Armorial of
Argent three barrulets wavy in fesse azure between in chief three cog-wheels, one above engaged with two below and in base a bull's head caboshed proper, and for the supporters on either side a zebra the dexter supporting an elephant's tusk the sinister a stalk of sorghum proper. Motto "Pula".
PART II Design of the National Flag of Botswana
Five horizontal stripes
having colour and width as follows, that is to say taken from the top:
1st Stripe - azure blue having a width equal to 9/24ths of the total depth of the
flag.
2nd Stripe - white having a width equal to 1/24th of such depth.
3rd Stripe - black having a width equal to 4/24ths of such depth.
4th Stripe - white having a width equal to 1/24th of such depth.
5th Stripe - azure blue having a width equal to 9/24ths of such depth.
PART III Design of the Standard of the President of Botswana
An azure blue flag with a
black circular disk (having a diameter equal to 12/24ths of the depth of the
flag) superimposed on the centre of the flag, a white circular disk (having a
diameter equal to 10/24ths of the depth of the flag) superimposed on the centre
of the black disk and the coat of arms superimposed on the white disk.
Santiago Tazon, 27 Apr 2001
This agrees with what I posted recently based on
Album 2000 information. However, I drew the white disk on presidential flag
sized 11/24 (as I had no numbers there).
Željko Heimer,
30 Apr 2001
![[Botswana flag construction sheet]](../images/b/bw'.gif)
image by
Zoltan Horvath, 23 Apr 2024
The construction sheet is
provided along the edges of the figure so (9+1+4+1+9):36. The image at FOTW
agrees with this, either Mark Sensen was aware of this data or he had a good
artistic feeling.
Željko Heimer,
18 Mar 2001
A document, Botswana Emblems Law 1966, can be retrieved from
https://sherloc.unodc.org/cld/uploads/res/document/immigration-consolidation-law--1966_html/Botswana_Statute_Law_1966.pdf),
but no color specifications of the flag are provided.
I haven’t found any
document which defines the colors.
Zoltan Horvath, 23 Apr 2024
The protocol manual for the London 2012 Olympics
(Flags and Anthems Manual, London, 2012) [loc12]
provides recommendations for national flag designs. Each National Olympic
Committee was sent an image of their flag, including the PMS shades, by the
London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) for their approval.
Once this was obtained, the LOCOG produced a 60 x 90 cm version of the flag for
further approval. So, while these specifications may not be the official,
government, version of each flag, they are certainly what the National Olympic
Committee believed their flag to be.
For Botswana : PMS 277 blue and black. The vertical version is simply the flag
turned through 90 degrees clockwise.
Ian Sumner,
10 Oct 2012
Other sources for colors:
The Flag Manual - Beijing 2008 gives PMS 277
(blue), and PMS Black. (illustration is light blue)
The Album des
Pavillons 2000 [pay00] (Corr. No. 5.) gives
approximate colors in Pantone and CMYK systems:
Blue: Pantone 2915c, CMYK
59-7-0-0
Dark blue: Pantone 287c, CMYK 100-68-0-12
Red: Pantone 186c, CMYK
0-100-81-4
Green: Pantone 357c, CMYK 80-0-100-56
(I do not know why other
colors are defined; they may be colors on the coat of arms on the Presidential
Flag.)
The Album des Pavillons 2023 specifies the colors of the flags in
three color systems.
Blue 2915c, CMYK 61-13-0-0, RGB 98-181-229
Blue 287c,
CMYK 100-84-26-6, RGB 0-53-128
Red 186c, CMYK 14-100-79-4, RGB 200-16-46
Green 357c, CMYK 86-39-88-39, RGB 33-87-50
Vexilla Mundi gives colors in Pantone
system: PMS 284 (blue), PMS Black, and PMS White.
Wikipedia gives the following color
values: (no source is given)
Blue: RGB 109-169-210, Hex: #6DA9D2
White: RGB 255-255-255, Hex: #FFF FFF
Black: RGB 0-0-0, Hex: #000000
Zoltan Horvath, 23 Apr 2024
There has been an attempt recently to standardise the shade of blue on the
flag of Botswana. The Botswana Bureau of Standards "National Flag Specification"
(2015) lists the Blue as Pantone 15-4225 TCX.
Bruce Berry, 23 Apr
2024
Who was "El Negro
de Banyoles"?
Ca. 1830, two French adventurers-naturalists living in Cape Town, Jules and
Edouard Verreaux, unearthed the corpse of a tribal chief shortly after his
funeral and stuffed it using taxidermy methods. In 1888, the Catalan
veterinarian Francisco Darder, then curator of the zoo of Barcelona, bought the
stuffed corpse, known as "the Bechuana", and exhibited it later in
the Darder Museum he founded in 1916 in Banyoles (province of Gerona) to
display his naturalist's collections. "El Negro" became a source of
fascination and legends for the inhabitants of the city.
In 1991, the physician Alphonse Arcelin, of Haitian origin, asked the
municipality to remove the corpse from the Museum. The corpse was removed from
the Museum during the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games to avoid a risk of boycott
by African countries.
In 1996, the Spanish government decided to avoid an international crisis and
asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to find a solution. Since the warrior had
lived in Southern Africa, and even if his real ethnic origin is unknown, the government of Botswana decided to claim and
re-bury the corpse. The warrior had probably lived in what is now
South Africa, but South Africa was not considered a suitable solution because of its political situation.
In September 2000, the corpse was removed one night from the Museum and sent to
Gaborone, the capital of Botswana,
and buried during an official ceremony in Tsholofelo. Since it was not
possible to decide whether the warrior was a Tswana, a Bushman (Khoisan) he was
re-buried as an "African".
Ivan Sache,
26 Nov 2000
Botswana offers but one example of an actual Flag on
Stamp, namely the commemorative issue for the tenth anniversary of the
University of Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland; this features the flags of all
three of the countries (I believe that the university has subsequently split
into its component parts, but I may be wrong on
this). There are a few issues which show the Botswana state arms, and while
these are not specifically flag related I have included them for the benefit of
those of us who might be interested in political or state heraldry; these issues
are identified with an (H) after the topic.
NUMBER SUBJECT DATE TOPIC
241 Human Rights Year 1968 Arms of Botswana & Human Rights Emblem (H)
242/43 " " As above, but with different arrangements and positioning of symbols
284 Fifth Anniversary 1971 Arms & map of Botswana (H) of independence
317 Tenth Anniversary 1974 Map & flags of the three of University of countries
Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland.
Ron Lahav, 28 Jun 2005