Mass Shooter in US Affiliated Himself with Old South African Flag

The young man suspected of walking into a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and shooting dead at least nine people apparently admired Apartheid, and the picture of him being widely spread in the media has him wearing a jacket emblazoned with the old South African and Rhodesian flags.

Reports said Dylan Storm Roof, 21, walked into the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last night, sat there for an hour, and then opened fire on the congregants.

The local police chief called it a hate crime (referring to a traditional offence – such as murder, arson or vandalism – with an added element of bias).

Roof, who his uncle describes as an ‘introvert’, has been arrested by police and is in custody after a citizen alerted police to his ‘suspicious activity’. Roof was apprehended in his car in Shelby, North Carolina, which is approximately 320 km from the scene.

In a photograph of Roof that began circulating widely in the media, he is standing wearing a jacket with two flags on the right side of his chest. A headline on dailykos.com ran: “Two patches identified. Rhodesian flag and Apartheid South African flag.” Reuters reported that Roof was given a .45 caliber pistol from his father on his 21st birthday in April. (Update Friday 19 June 2015: latest reports say that Roof bought the gun himself in April.)

Richard Cohen, the president of the South Poverty Law Center, said on the center’s website, “A white man who admires apartheid walks into a black church and kills nine people.  According to an eyewitness, he says that he has ‘to do it’ because black people ‘rape our women’ and are ‘taking over our country.’

“It’s an obvious hate crime by someone who feels threatened by our country’s changing demographics and the increasing prominence of African Americans in public life. Since 2000, we’ve seen an increase in the number of hate groups in our country — groups that vilify others on the basis of characteristics such as race or ethnicity.“

American President Barack Obama said that although “now’s the time for mourning”, the point has come for Americans to reconcile the fact that these types of mass violence events don’t occur as frequently in other advanced countries and it’s going to be important for Americans to come to terms with this and “shift how we think about the issue of gun vioence” in the USA.

At this point there is nothing to suggest that the shooter had any other link with South Africa other than wearing the flag on his clothes.