The letter to the School Council
Dear Members of Council and the School Executive,
We write on behalf of the Old Diocesan Committee regarding the flying of flags at Bishops, and to ask Council to settle the matter, openly and for the long term, through a clear written policy. We do so with concern that a flag has been flown in an official capacity without such a policy in place, and despite the view expressed by the Student Representative forum.
The position of the ODC, adopted by vote (eleven in favour, one abstention), is that Bishops should fly only its three official flags; the national flag of South Africa, the Bishops flag, and the St George's flag, in any official capacity. These three belong to all of us. They carry no faction and ask no member of the community to take a side. The many other flags in the world, however worthy the causes behind them, do the opposite: each invites the school to align itself in a contested matter, and each presence or absence is then read as a statement. A school that opens that door does not open it once. It commits itself, in perpetuity, to deciding which causes are flown and which are not, and to defending every one of those choices to a community that will never wholly agree.
This is a governance matter, and it sits with Council. The Diocesan College Council, Rondebosch, Incorporation Act, 1891 vests the general direction and management of the College's affairs in the Council (Section 2), a power Council exercises subject to the trust deed (Section 6). The role reserved to the Bishop of Cape Town under that deed concerns the religious teaching of the school; it does not extend to community relations or to symbolic and public-policy questions of this kind. Neither St George's Cathedral nor the Archbishop therefore carries a governing remit over flag policy, and the Executive cannot reasonably present its decision as following the cathedral's lead. The determination is Council's to make, and we ask that Council make it.
We are conscious of how this letter may be read, and we will not hide behind generalities. The flag presently at issue is the Pride flag. We hold every gay and lesbian member of the Bishops community in exactly the regard we hold every other, and we want them to know, without ambiguity, that they belong here as fully as any Old Diocesan ever has. Our concern is not with them, and not with their inclusion, which we support without reservation. It is with the instrument. We do not believe the school's care for any of its members is best expressed by a flag, precisely because a flag cannot be raised for one part of the community without establishing the principle that the school will then weigh, and fly, the symbols of every other. The message these boys are owed: you are welcome, you are safe, you are ours, is owed to them directly, in the school's own voice and by its own conduct, and it is stronger said that way than flown on a pole next to the question of “Whose flag comes next?”.
Should Council nonetheless decide that Bishops will fly flags beyond the three official ones, we ask that the full written flag policy be published to the Bishops community. It should state plainly the principle by which the school decides what is flown and what is not, and apply that principle evenly, to the Palestinian and Israeli flags, the Ukrainian, the Taiwanese, the Tibetan and the rest; together with the days on which the school's own flags are raised. A policy that can be stated simply and applied consistently can be defended. One that cannot will be argued out in the community, flag by flag, for years.
We make this request in good faith and in the service of the school we love. We ask that, pending Council's determination, no flag beyond the three official flags be flown in any official capacity, and that Council resolve the matter, with a published policy, as a matter of urgency.
Yours faithfully,
The Old Diocesan Committee
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