"A few months after Mandela’s inauguration, I was rummaging for second-hand furniture at a pawn shop in Ontdekkers Road. I bought a rickety coffee table that I still have, and a few other bits and pieces. I needed to get them home, but I had no trailer, and no roof rack. The pawn broker went inside and returned with a tatty old South African flag to protect my car’s roof when we tied the furniture to the top.It was startlingly absurd. That flag, which I had once been taught to revere above all else, was being given away by a pawn broker. That flag, which must never touch the ground, was reduced to packing material.That this flag no longer held any value could not have been demonstrated more eloquently. Even to burn it would have given it back some of its significance, because you cannot desecrate something that means nothing."