South African Heraldry - Distinctive Features

Distinctive Features

South African heraldry has a number of distinctive features:

• the use of indigenous animals, birds, fish, trees, and flowers as charges
• the use of African traditional weapons, huts, and headdress as charges
• the increasing use of African shields, especially in civic arms
• the occasional use of tinctures such as brunatre (brown), ochre, and tenné (orange), which are uncommon in European heraldry
• the occasional use of an oxhide pattern for the field of a shield
• a uniform pattern for the arms of family associations
• uniform patterns for the arms of various types of military units
• the use of trefoils and trefly lines in the arms of educational institutions to represent the three participants in the education process, i.e. students, parents, and teachers
• the Bureau of Heraldry's distinctive style of artwork, introduced in the early 1970s and modified in the 1990s
• the adaptation of traditional lines of partition to create special effects
• the development of new lines of partition, e.g. the "gably" line based on Cape Dutch farmhouse gables, and a line suggesting an outline of Table Mountain
• the development of an Afrikaans heraldic vocabulary.