What is utterly fascinating about the flag of Zimbabwe is not its colours or general design. It is the bird over to the left.
When I first saw this flag a few years ago I assumed that the bird depicted flies in large flocks across the land. But not so.
In truth this is likely to be based on a bird once in the area, but the actual symbol is derived from a sculptured soapstone bird found in the ancient Great Zimbabwe site. A statue not a creature.
More interesting still is that this bird has achieved something that little else could ever hope to do - it has figured both in modern Zimbabwe's symbols and in the symbols of the independent apartheid Rhodesia that declared UDI from the British.
The sculptors who long ago formed the soapstone birds could hardly have believed that they would provide the only point of unity between two regimes of sworn enemies. We never do know what our legacy will truly be.
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