South Sudan raised its flag as a national flag for the first time on July 9, 2011, the day it became independent of Sudan. The design was not new. It was the banner of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, carried through the Second Sudanese Civil War from 1983 to 2005.
From a rebel banner to a national flag
The war ended with a comprehensive peace agreement in 2005, which set up a referendum. It was held in January 2011, and nearly 99 percent of voters chose secession. Six months later the SPLM flag became the flag of a state.
That continuity is the point. Most new countries commission a flag; South Sudan kept the one it had been fighting under, which means the national flag and the movement's flag are the same object with two names.
Reading the design
Three equal horizontal stripes of black, red, and green, divided by narrow white bands, with a blue triangle at the hoist and a gold five-pointed star inside it.
Black is the South Sudanese people. Red is the blood shed over decades of war. Green is the agricultural land, which is what the country has to build on. The thin white bands stand for peace. The blue triangle is the Nile, the country's most important natural resource. The gold star, known as the Star of Bethlehem, stands for unity among the states of South Sudan.
Flying it
The flag is flown on government buildings and at schools, and it appears at public ceremonies and on national and public holidays. Protocol requires that it be handled and displayed with care.
Independence Day brings it out in force, as do national cultural festivals, and for a country that spent decades fighting for the right to fly its own flag, the display carries more weight than it would elsewhere.
Similar flags and influences
The flag has clear echoes of Kenya's and of Sudan's, sharing colors with both. Those colors belong to the wider vocabulary of African liberation movements, which is where the SPLM drew its design from in the first place.