The arms of the Van Riebeeck family – Gules, three annulets or – crop up time and again in South African coats of arms, often merely to indicate that the arms belong to this country. (These charges are called ringe in Afrikaans, and ringen in Dutch, but in English a “ring” is one worn on the finger, and set with a stone.) They are often held to be those of Jan van Riebeeck, who founded the refreshment station in Table Bay which was the beginning of European settlement in South Africa. However, it appears that Jan did not display them,  although the family’s use of device goes back
to the Middle Ages. The arms were, however, displayed by his son Abraham.

Van Riebeeck’s three annulets appear in various guises. Cape Town was granted the plain red shield with an anchor as a supporter, but later added a gold shield. The Cape Colony (and the Cape Province afterwards) had the annulets in the same field as a rampant lion.

Grahamstown (on its own authority) changed the background colour to blue. It also made the third annulet larger, and this was repeated in the arms of the town’s two public schools, today known as Graeme College and Victoria Girls’ High School. Grahamstown, however, later obtained a grant of arms in which the annulets appeared on a red pile. Much later, St Andrew’s College (a school attended by descendants of the colonel) was granted arms also incorporating annulets (two this time).

Wynberg, site of Jan van Riebeeck’s farm, used the Van Riebeeck arms in its first quarter. Stellenbosch took just two annulets and placed them on either side of a peacock. And Pinelands High School (taking its cue from the Pinelands Municipality) has three annulets on a red chevron.

Port Elizabeth’s crest places Van Riebeeck’s three annulets on a red mural crown. And the coronet that substitutes for a crest in the arms of the Western Cape Province also features the annulets.

Trees are commonly seen in heraldry. In Britain and Germany, the tree most usually encountered is the oak – so much so that, if a blazon mentions “a tree”, it is automatically assumed that it is an oak. Shown at left is a typical British heraldic drawing of an oak tree: note the exaggeratedly large size of the leaves. This is a heraldic convention that allows one to identify the type of tree instantly. Oak trees do occur in the heraldry of South Africa, but in view of their being imports from Europe or North America, they are usually used in the arms of places or institutions specifically associated with historic oak trees.

In these examples, the oak firstly appears as a silhouette, while in the second and third only sprigs with acorns are shown.

The most easily identifiable African tree is the baobab (Adansonia digitata), which appears in the arms of Limpopo Province. This species is the only kind of baobab that grows naturally outside Madagascar; the island has several varieties.

The national tree is the yellowwood – this encompasses three species of a worldwide genus, Podocarpus falcatus, P latifolius and P henkelii. The poorly drawn specimen in the third quarter of Knysna’s arms is apparently intended to be P falcatus.

Northern Cape has a thorn tree, which unfortunately is not identified. It seems likely to be either the Karoo thorn, Acacia karroo, or the camel thorn, A erioloba.

Ciskei had a milkwood, or umqwashu, representing the milkwood tree near Peddie where the Mfengu people took an oath.

And Limpopo Province features a most unusual tree, the Modjadji cycad, in the coronet that serves in place of a crest in its arms.

There are two distinct trees associated with the Free State (as it is now called): the Oranje Vrij Staat had an unspecified tree in its seal which came to be called the Tree of Freedom. However, through an artist’s interpretation at London postage stamp printing works De la Rue, this became an orange tree (to see how this happened, see here), and was seen as such in the arms of the Union of South Africa.

Finally we find an olive tree in the arms of the Hoërskool P J Olivier in Grahamstown. It forms part of the arms because of the use, in quarters two and three, of a coat of arms connected with the name Olivier; however it is not the arms of the South African Olivier family.

The sun – usually rising, occasionally setting – occurs in several South African coats of arms. The oldest sun is probably that of the East London City Council. But similar rising suns are also to be found in the arms of the University of Fort Hare and the Border Technikon, while the Eastern Cape Province has a rising sun in its crest.

A sun full in the sky is seen in the arms of Morningside High School.

It is traditional in heraldry for the sun to be represented by a gold roundel or half-roundel (as above) with rays in the form of alternating (straight) piles (triangular projections) and wavy piles, or wavy piles alone. But outside the heraldic tradition, rays are often shown as being trapezoid beams radiating from the round sun. An example of this is the setting sun in the arms of Westerford High School.

An entirely different tradition is found in the arms of Chinese High School, Port Elizabeth. The sun in these arms is copied from the flag of the Republic of China, and is a white roundel with short white triangles around its edge.

Man-made structures are not often encountered as heraldic charges, but there are some that are found in South Africa. Ironically, the oldest kind currently to be  seen in Armoria is in the newest coat of arms: the typical Nguni-style beehive hut, which appears as the crest in the arms of KwaZulu-Natal. It was also to be found in the seal (not an armorial device) of King William’s Town.

The huts of the Nguni and Sotho are, however, not intended to be permanent. Traditionally, they are burned down when the head of a household dies. Permanent structures were an innovation brought into South Africa by the Dutch, who built the Castle in Cape Town. This building appears in a number of military coats of arms, although Armoria does not currently have an example of it. A structure that appears in two Port Elizabeth school coats of arms is the Donkin memorial pyramid, appearing in the arms of Pearson High School (which once occupied premises facing the Donkin Reserve) and Lawson Brown High School.

The Rondebosch Municipality cannot really be said to have had a coat of arms, but in the landscape it bore as a “shield of arms” was a fanciful representation of the town hall, as well as a steam train.

The Transvaal Colony did not have a coat of arms at all, but its colonial seal included a mine headgear built of steel girders (and a steam locomotive). Bophuthatswana’s coat of arms also included a mine headgear, but a much uglier, more modern one, of concrete construction.

The town of Despatch, which grew up around a brickfield, incorporated the brickworks chimney into its arms, while a fortification of sorts can be seen in the arms of the Hoërskool P J Olivier, which has a battlemented grey stone wall in the inescutcheon which represents the Graham family.

The Ekurhuleni metropole incorporates a shape into the base of its arms which resembles a city skyline, against the background of a mine dump. Formed in 2000, the metro incorporates several large towns at the eastern end of the Witwatersrand Main Reef.

The mediæval heralds were not scientists, but military staff officers who believed what the learned scholars at the universities told them. And if the scholars believed that fantastical creatures like dragons and griffins existed, who was any mere herald to disagree?

So the strange creatures catalogued by the learned men of those times found their way into coats of arms, as did animals that really do exist, doing things that modern zoologists scoff at, like pelicans that wounded themselves to feed their young. Indeed, many mythological creatures became so firmly entrenched in heraldry because of their symbolism that it was well nigh impossible to eradicate them, even when science proved that they had either never existed or could not do what they were reputed to.

Not many have found their way into South African heraldry, but for a start we can look at the griffin (an amalgam of eagle and lion) and the wyvern (or two-legged dragon).

Table Mountain, at the foot of which the first permanent settlement in South Africa began, features in a number of coats of arms – in two of them, as the compartment on which the supporters stand.

At the north-eastern extremity of the range stands Devil’s Peak (which in the days of Dutch rule was called Windberg). It predominates in the “arms” of Rondebosch and is found also in the arms of one of the schools of Rondebosch.

Overlooking the town of Uitenhage are the Groot and Klein Winterhoek mountain ranges. The Groot Winterhoek and their principal peak, Cockscomb, are featured in the arms of Hoërskool Brandwag.

And in the arms of the Free State Province there is a geometric outline representing the familiar Free State koppies (flat-topped hills).

Flowers of many kinds are found in South African coats of arms. Perhaps the most familiar are daisies, and two different kinds are found in provincial coats of arms. Northern Cape has a pair of Namaqua daisies – most likely Arctotis breviscapa, although the flower most usually called Namaqua daisy is Dimorphotheca sinuata, while the Afrikaans equivalent name of Namakwalandse gousblom is normally reserved for A fastuosa. The Barberton daisy (Gerbera jamesonii) appears in the arms of Mpumalanga, and is repeated in the coronet this province uses instead of a crest.

A particularly striking indigenous flower is the Orange River lily (Crinum bulbispermum), which appears in the arms of the Free State Province.

Another outstanding indigenous is the strelitzia (Strelitzia reginæ), which appears in the arms of several institutions. Here it is found in the arms of Sunridge Primary School and in the new arms of KwaZulu-Natal.

While nature knows many kinds of aloes, in the Eastern Cape it is mostly Aloe ferox that appears in coats of arms. The arms of the Port Elizabeth Divisional Council (below right) not only has two aloe plants in the top, but also includes two specimens of prickly pear cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica), a plant now listed as a prohibited alien. Almost as if to make up for this solecism, the council’s arms also included, outside the shield, four inflorescences of an unspecified protea species – probably Protea repens, or perhaps P neriifolia.

Aloes also occur in the arms of the Nelson Mandela Metropole and of the Hoërskool Brandwag, while another is found in the badge adopted in 1997 by the South African Police Service (replacing the 1930 version of the Union arms previously used by the South African Police, within the same star).

Two protea species appear in the arms of the Union (and Republic) of South Africa. The national flower, Protea cynaroides, can be seen between the hindlegs of the dexter supporter, growing from the compartment (the ground the supporters stand on). On the sinister side is another protea, but it’s not entirely clear what species it’s meant to be.

And in the “circle of ascendance” of the arms which South Africa took into use in 2000 is a stylised P cynaroides in the colours of the national flag.

P cynaroides also appears in the coronet which Western Cape uses instead of a crest.

In the arms of East London, aloes (probably A arborescens) appear in the compartment, but they are ridiculously small between the hind legs of the buffalo. Transkei has a pair of aloes similarly small and paired, but this time in the crest.

A water lily can be seen in the arms of Despatch.

Exotic flowers are no longer favoured as they once were, but the sunflower (Helianthus anuus), because it is economically useful, can be seen in the crest of North West Province.

And then there are exotics that are of special significance because they are symbols of countries from which settlers came to South Africa. The thistle appears in two coats of arms from Albany – two thistles are in the chief of Rhodes University’s shield, while a single thistle shares the chief of the Albany Divisional Council’s shield with a leek and a shamrock, symbols respectively of Wales and Ireland.

For the Chinese people, the poppy is an important national symbol. Two stylised poppies are in the arms of Chinese High School, Port Elizabeth.

Stylised flowers actually appear quite frequently in heraldry. The most familiar is the fleur-de-lys, the symbol of the kings of France, which can be drawn in many different ways (one authority states that there are more than 40 styles). In the arms of the Cape of Good Hope Colony they are used to symbolise the French refugees (often called Huguenots) who settled at the Cape under Dutch rule.

Another stylised flower that crops up in heraldry is the cinquefoil – or formally drawn five-petalled flower – which can be seen in the arms of the City and University of Port Elizabeth, while the quatrefoil – a four-petalled flower – is found in the arms of Newton Technical High School.

And getting away from plants traditionally regarded as bearing flowers, the bulrush appears in the crest of Port Elizabeth’s Westering High and Primary schools.

Flames can be found in a variety of coats of arms, with varying symbolism. Educational institutions have them to symbolise the tradition of learning going from generation, emblemised as a flame that is passed on. Stellenbosch University has a torch, held by a human hand, in its crest, while the Hoërskool Brandwag also has a flaming torch. Westering High and Primary schools have a lamp, another symbol of learning, which is burning. Alexander Road High School also has a lamp, at least according to its blazon, but the illustration shows a candlestick and burning candle.

An unusual variation is the campfire in the arms of the Hoërskool Despatch, and the Ibhayi City Council had a crest of flame with an anchor.

And an even more powerful symbolism is found in arms where flames represent the action of God in people’s lives. Examples are the burning bush seen by Moses (from the Book of Exodus), featured in the arms of the Presbyterian Church of South Africa, and the flames of Pentecost (mentioned in Acts), in the arms of All Saints’ Church.

Farm animals cover a wide range of species, especially nowadays when many farmers have gone in for keeping wild game (see here and here for examples). But while game animals often feature in coat-armour, the same cannot be said for the domesticated variety. Currently on Armoria, only a handful are to be found. Firstly there are the rams Beaufort West has for its supporters: dexter a merino, and sinister an Angora goat – both important in the economy of the Karoo, the merino producing fine wool as well as meat, and the Angora for its mohair. A third farm animal appears in the town’s crest, namely an ostrich. But since it is a bird, you will find that species here.

Sheep also appear in the seal of the Oranje Vrij Staat, signifying the drier grazing conditions of the western parts, compared with the wetter Highveld of the northern Free State.

More a religious symbol than strictly a farm animal is the lamb (also, by the looks of it, a merino) found in the arms of the Diocese of Port Elizabeth, which represents Christ as the Lamb of God. A related symbolism is found in the four sheep – symbolising a much larger flock – in the arms of Bishop Michael Coleman of Port Elizabeth, which recalls Christ’s injunction to Peter to “feed My lambs”. In addition the arms contain a pastoral staff, as used by both shepherds and bishops.

The only other farm animals currently found on Armoria are indigenous cattle. The indigenous breeds of Southern Africa are all descended from the herds of the Khoikhoi, who – possibly as long ago as 2 000 years – acquired cattle and a cattle culture from a Nilotic people near the Zambezi River. These they brought southwards, also providing cattle and cattle culture to the Bantu-speaking peoples who entered the country later. The best-known among these types is die Nguni breed. The best-known individual Nguni animal found in a coat of arms is the ox included the arms of Ciskei as a symbol of the Christians among the amaRharhabe (western Xhosa) people in memory of the prophet Ntsikana, who had a favourite ox. Other ox- or bull-heads are to be found in the arms of Bophuthatswana and Transkei.

Already in the early days of the Cape settlement the Dutch-speaking Boers had begun crossing Khoikhoi cattle with imported breeds. The result was the sturdy Africander breed which provided the trek-oxen of the Trekboere and the Voortrekkers. Thabazimbi has the head and shoulders of an Africander bull in its arms.

The African elephant (Loxodonta africana) appears in many coats of arms, as a whole animal, the head only, or represented by its tusks. The oldest elephant in South African civic arms is that of Pietermaritzburg. The Port Elizabeth Divisional Council shares a statant elephant
with its successor, the Nelson Mandela Metropole, which also has a pair of black tusks, while Knysna has an elephant’s head caboshed.

Venda intially had just a statant elephant, but on its “independence” changed this to an elephant’s head caboshed, and added two rampant elephants as supporters.

The elephant’s tusks were formerly prized as a source of ivory – elephants were hunted out of many parts of Africa because of the greed of hunters. While South Africa and some other African countries today take good care of their elephants, some parts of the continent are still in danger of losing every last one of its elephants. Elephants are symbolised by two tusks in the current arms of South Africa, which stand in the place of supporters. And in the arms of Ciskei, four ivory arm-rings, symbolising chiefly authority, were used as the base of the crest.

And although it is an intruder from another continent, the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) is found in some South African arms, a borrowing from the augmentation of honour in the arms of Sir Rufane Donkin.