‘In designing the emblem for the Society, I used an extract from Mazizi Kunene’s poem, because for me it suggested a variant of the mandala form. Mandala is a Sanskrit word denoting the magical circle and is symbolised in all radical, spherical or square arrangements. It is an extremely ancient religious symbol and it recurs throughout the world and throughout all historical periods. Scholars such as CG Jung, Mircia Iliade and Northrop Frye have explained the universal recurrence of this and other archetypal images, which suggest a basis for cultural contrast and comparison. Speaking of the mandala symbol, Jung suggested the probability that we are dealing with a typeform that exists a priori with an archetype that is inherent in the unconscious and therefore has no part in the coming into being and passing away of the individual¼ As the parallels from history show, the mandala symbolism is in no way a matter of unique curiosities, but of what we may call uniformities¼’

The SAFOS emblem design by Cecilia Scallan Zeiss, adapted from the description of Dingiswayo's collar in Mazizi Kunene's epic, Emperor Shaka the Great:

On the crest at its centre

Let it be like the great red circle of the rising sun.

Its middle must be woven with a black spot of crowded beads

But its outer fingers must be of yellow colours,

Spreading in threads of black and white beads

In its extreme point let there be the white beads of the river stones,

Whose colours alternate with the green of our summers.

The red part was the fire symbolising the generations of man.

The black part was the power of Being on which man depends