The Union of South Africa King's Medal for Bravery was the highest South African civilian decoration, during the period that the country was a constitutional monarchy in the British Commonwealth. It was instituted by King George VI on 23 June 1939 as the King's Medal for Bravery, and was renamed the Queen's Medal for Bravery on 15 December 1952, after the accession of Queen Elizabeth II to the throne. The medal lapsed when South Africa became a republic on 31 May 1961.
The King's/Queen's Medal was awarded for gallantry in saving or endeavouring to save the lives of others. It had two classes: gold and silver. Although it was primarily a civilian award, during the Second World War it was also granted to military personnel, for non-combatant acts of gallantry.
A public competition was held to find a suitable design for the medal. The winning entry, by Miss Renee Joubert, depicted 18th-century Cape hero Wolraad Woltemade on his horse, rescuing shipwreck survivors from a stormy sea. As a result, the medal was often referred to as the "Woltemade Medal". Its ribbon was blue with orange edges, two of the colours of the South African national flag.
A total of thirty-six medals were awarded: one in gold and thirty-five in silver. Eighteen of the recipients were military personnel.
In the British order of precedence, the gold medal ranks as a 2nd-level decoration (equivalent to the George Medal), and the silver medal ranks as a 3rd-level award (equivalent to the Queen's Gallantry Medal). However, in South Africa, the gold medal is ranked as a 1st-level decoration and the silver as a 2nd-level award. Despite its status, the medal has no post-nominal letters.
The medal was revived in 1970, as the Woltemade Decoration for Bravery. It was re-designed in 1988 as the Woltemade Cross for Bravery, which was discontinued in 2002. The current civilian award for bravery is the Order of Mendi for Bravery.
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“If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“During Prohibition days, when South Carolina was actively advertising the iodine content of its vegetables, the Hell Hole brand of ‘liquid corn’ was notorious with its waggish slogan: ‘Not a Goiter in a Gallon.’”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Thou hast brought him a pardon from good King John.””
—Unknown. King John and the Abbot of Canterbury (l. 108)
“People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbours.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)