Three Flags in Twenty Years: How Seychelles Stitched Its Rival Parties Into One Banner
Julio Song · · 9 min read
Most countries pick a flag at independence and stop there. Seychelles went through three in twenty years. The first lasted about a year. The second went up after a coup. The third, the five-band starburst you see today, came out of a public competition and a new constitution.
Read them in order and you get a short political history of the islands. Each flag records the political deal of its moment, and whose colours made it onto the cloth.
Before the parties, a tortoise
For most of the 20th century the islands flew a British Blue Ensign with a colonial badge in the fly. According to Flags of the World's notes on the colonial flags, the badge from 1903 showed a giant land tortoise and palm trees, a motif credited to General Charles Gordon. A redrawn badge followed in April 1961.
None of that touched party politics, because there were no parties yet. The two that would shape every later flag both appeared in 1964, according to the History of Seychelles. James Mancham led the Seychelles Democratic Party. France-Albert René led the Seychelles People's United Party, the SPUP.
Mancham's party won the elections of 1966 and 1970. By 1975 the two rivals had formed a coalition, with Mancham as President and René as Prime Minister. On 29 June 1976 Seychelles became an independent republic inside the Commonwealth, and it needed a flag that two parties who disliked each other would both salute.
Flag one: a saltire for a coalition
The answer was a compromise you read from across a harbour. The 1976 flag split the field with a white saltire into blue triangles and red triangles. Flags of the World's page on the 1976 flag explains the palette: blue and white for the Democratic Party, red and white for the SPUP.
So the first flag of independent Seychelles was a coalition agreement in fabric. Neither party got the whole field. Each got an equal share of the triangles.
The same source notes a second reading, that the colours also nod to Britain and France, the two powers that had ruled the islands. Both readings point at the same habit. The designers chose colours by who had a claim on them.
That balance lasted less than a year.
A coup while the President was in London
On the night of 4 to 5 June 1977, Mancham was in London for a Commonwealth heads of government meeting. Back in Victoria, about sixty SPUP supporters who had trained in Tanzania seized the capital. The Library of Congress country study puts it plainly: they toppled Mancham, and René, who said he had not known of the plot, was sworn in as President.
The account of the 1977 coup records two deaths, one policeman and one insurgent, in fighting at the Mont Fleuri police station. Within weeks a proclamation on 28 June revoked the constitution and abolished parliament, placing all legislative power with the President.
The new regime turned to the symbols next.
Flag two: the party flag, minus the sun
The saltire went. In its place came a flag of red over green, divided by a wavy white band. This was no fresh design. Flags of the World's page on the 1977 flag shows it was the SPUP's own party flag, with one change. The party version carried a yellow rising sun. The national version dropped it.
The official meanings were tidy. Red stood for progress and revolution. Green stood for the earth and agriculture. The white wave stood for the sea that washes the beaches and the resources of the Indian Ocean.
But the source of the design was no secret. The blue of the Democratic Party had vanished. The flag that had given each party half the field now gave one party all of it.
The politics followed the flag. In 1978 the SPUP merged with smaller groups to become the Seychelles People's Progressive Front. A 1979 constitution named the SPPF the sole recognised party, and René ran unopposed that year, taking 98 percent of the vote. For the next twelve years, the national flag and the ruling party's flag were near twins.
What makes the Seychelles case worth your time is what happened when the one-party era ended.
The Third Republic wants new symbols
On 4 December 1991 René announced a return to multiparty politics, and the constitution was amended later that month, according to the History of Seychelles. The government invited exiled opposition leaders back. Mancham, who had lived in London since the coup, returned in April 1992.
A first draft of a new constitution failed its referendum in 1992. A redrafted version passed in June 1993 with 73.9 percent, according to the 1993 referendum results. That document created what Seychellois call the Third Republic.
The elections that followed in July 1993 did not change the government. The 1993 general election returned René with 59.50 percent against Mancham's 36.72 percent. The SPPF took 27 of the 33 seats in the National Assembly. The Democratic Party took five.
So the old ruling party stayed in charge. But a multiparty state flying one party's banner was an awkward fit, and the Third Republic set out to replace its symbols.
Case study: Philippe Uzice and the fan of five colours
The government ran a nationwide competition in 1996 to create new symbols for the Third Republic. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs guidelines on national symbols credit the winning flag to Philippe Uzice, who designed and conceptualised it that year.
Uzice was 28. In a 2018 interview with Nation, he said he researched the history of Seychelles and submitted half a dozen designs. He also studied other countries' flags, because he wanted one that would stand out among them.
It does. The flag has five bands, blue, yellow, red, white and green, fanning out from the bottom corner of the hoist. The ministry's guidelines set the geometry. Along the top edge, blue, yellow and red each take one third. Down the fly edge, red, white and green each take one third. Red is the hinge, the one band that touches both edges.
The legal record is precise. Flags of the World's page on the current flag records that the National Symbols Bill was published in the Official Gazette on 8 January 1996 and took effect on 18 June 1996, National Day. The colours are fixed by Pantone reference: 294 for blue, 122 for yellow, 1795 for red and 356 for green.
What the colours officially mean
The government's list never mentions a party.
- Blue is the sky and the sea around the islands
- Yellow is the sun, which gives light and life
- Red is the people and their determination to work for the future in unity and love
- White is social justice and harmony
- Green is the land and the natural environment
The ministry adds that the oblique bands symbolise a dynamic country moving into the future.
What outside observers read in them
Look at the flag next to its two predecessors, though, and a different key appears. Red, white and green are the 1977 flag. Blue is the Democratic Party colour that the 1977 flag removed. Wikipedia's article on the flag describes the 1996 palette as the colours of the two main parties, the SPUP and the Democratic Party. Jaume Ollé, writing on the Flags of the World page, says the new flag includes the colours of all, or at least the principal, parties.
So the 1996 flag quietly does what the 1976 flag did openly. It gives both sides a share. The difference is in how it tells you. The 1976 flag labelled its halves by party. The 1996 flag describes itself in sea, sun and soil, and leaves the party arithmetic for you to notice.
There is one more echo. The 1977 flag dropped the yellow sun from the SPUP banner. The 1996 flag brought yellow back as a band of its own, officially the sun.
The test came in 2020
Uzice told Nation he was proud of how the flag unites people. He pointed to the Indian Ocean Island Games, and to political parties and companies borrowing its colours for their logos. His complaint was personal. He said he wants recognition, not money, and noted that a great percentage of the population does not know his name.
The design faced its real test 24 years after it first flew. In October 2020 Wavel Ramkalawan of Linyon Demokratik Seselwa won the presidency with 54.91 percent. The 2020 election was the first peaceful transfer of presidential power between parties since independence in 1976.
The two earlier changes of government, independence and the coup, had each brought a new flag. This one did not.
Compare Malawi. In 2010 its government replaced the rising sun on the national flag with a full white sun, a change the public nicknamed "Bingu's flag" after the president who approved it. In 2012, under a new president, parliament voted to restore the old design, according to the history of the flag of Malawi. A flag tied to one leader did not outlast him.
The Seychelles flag of 1996 was built to avoid that fate. By folding the colours of both old rivals into one design, and then describing it purely in terms of sky, sun and land, it left a new government nothing to object to.
Reading the three flags together
Line the three flags up and the sequence is plain. The 1976 saltire split the field between two parties. The 1977 wave handed the whole field to one. The 1996 fan gave both a share again, this time without naming them.
The next time you see that starburst at a sports meet, count the bands from the hoist. Blue for the party that lost in 1977. Red, white and green for the party that won. Yellow for the sun the winners took off their own banner, back on the flag in plain sight.
Julio Song
Writer
Julio is a staff writer at FlagDB. He studied Mathematics at the University of Madrid and has a passion for vexillology.
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