Honorable MEC for Sport, Arts, Arts and Recreation, Ms. Desery Fienies,

Honorable MEC for Education, Mr Monakale

Deputy Chairperson of the South African Geographical Names Council, Councillor Johnny Mohlala, 

Incoming members of the Northern Cape Provincial Geographical Names Committee,

All Honourable Councilors of the SAGNC,

Honourable Mayors and representatives of all our municipalities,

Makgoshi and all our Khoi and San traditional leaders,

HOD for Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation, Mr Oupa Phiri

Senior managers of government,

The Secretariat of the SAGNC and the Northern Cape,

Good morning,

Dumelang,

Goeie More,

Molweni.

 

We are very pleased to be in the province of the Northern Cape to create awareness of the urgency of the matter of the transformation of South Africa’s naming landscape.

 

We are painfully aware that when this country was conquered, it had its names. Most of these names perished together with millions of indigenous people who died during wars of resistance. Not only this but landlessness, destitution and poverty prevailed.

 

 

The subjugation of African polities displaced local people from their places of abode. The newcomers or immigrants if you like, feeding their nostalgic appetite, started renaming geographical features using the names of towns and cities in Europe and other parts of the world. These foreign names signify and symbolise the conquest of local communities who had names of these places before. It also promotes false notions of discovering places or founding myths that have been perpetuated through historical writings and other forms of media. These are colonial mindsets that undermine the intelligence of local communities to the point of saying those inhabitants lacked the basic capacity of attaching names to their habitats whilst it is well known that this was one of the ways of dislocating local inhabitants from their habitats both physically and psychically. To use the words of Mary Louise Pratt, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese languages and literatures, the local inhabitants were being “de-territorialised” here. This history of racism is well documented in the works of our own scholar, Bernard Magubane, professor of Anthropology in his book, titled, Race and the construction of the Dispensable Other as well as in Patrick Brantlinger, professor of English and Victorian Studies, in his book, titled Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians.

 

 

So, when you see the Department of Sport Arts and Culture facilitating and creating an enabling environment for the renaming and standardizing names of geographical features, you must understand this to be restorative acts as well as acts of reclamation. It is also a reparative act as enshrined in the TRC report that enjoins us to facilitate symbolic reparations through changing names and building monuments, memorials and museums.

 

It is unfortunate that there are communities and individuals who either pay lip service to reconciliation and national unity or believe that it means retaining the status quo. You observe this in the resistance to change that occupies the South African public discourse. The pushback that you experience, especially from some sections of our population, is an indication of the impact that these processes have on the national psyche as well as the discomfort they cause for some of these communities. To undermine these changes, they resort to using the economistic argument of cost implications. They know that such arguments often easily resonate with many people in general because of the financial distress our country is experiencing. People often get hoodwinked by that argument as if stopping the process of name changes will suddenly eliminate all the poverty woes. It must be emphasised that the legislation making provision for renaming of the geographical landscape is progressive and seeks to empower communities in taking the first initiative as and when the need for name-change is identified, with the role of the Minister only being to grant approval for the recommendation once it has been established that the process was widely consultative and that all lodged objections have been taken into consideration before the submission of such a recommendation with the Minister. This is important to explain as there has been a misconception circulating in the popular press that the Department has been arbitrarily bringing about geographical name changes. In the context of cultivating a culture of human rights, geographical name change continues to be important in the restoration of dignity to many communities which were shunned and affixed denigrating names.

 

 

To dispel these misperceptions, it is necessary to share with you how our political principals have taken their time to bring about these matters. During the Covid 19 Lockdown period, between 2020 and 2021, former Minister Mthethwa made presentations to all nine provincial legislators where he engaged the legislators on the urgency for South Africa to deal with the matter of the transformation of our heritage landscape.

 

During his presentation to provincial legislatures, he shared with honourable members of the provincial legislatures some perspectives on where we come from as the government around the transformation of South Africa’s heritage landscape.

 

Some of the name changes that we have done have been successfully challenged in Court due to procedural flaws. A case in point is the name change of Louis Trichardt to Makhado which was successfully challenged in Court. The Court found that the consultation process followed was flawed. As a result, the name Louis Trichardt still exists in Limpopo. So, the question is, where is arbitrariness in this case?

 

There have been High Court challenges against the name changes of Nelspruit to Mbombela and Grahamstown to Makhanda. These Court challenges have been unsuccessful as the Courts have found that proper procedures were followed before the name changes were approved by the Minister. We would like to applaud the Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape PGNC for their hard work and strict adherence to proper protocols regarding the public consultation processes.

 

I am pleased that the Northern Cape government is busy with the process to appoint the Provincial Geographical Names Committee. You have a huge task ahead of you. This process is important in the sense that members of the community in all our district municipalities in the Northern Cape will have a body that will be able to process all applications for name change applications.

 

Almost all names of dorpies, towns, and cities in this province still reflect the colonial and apartheid legacies that were destructive to local populations. You will know of Upington, Kimberley, Posmasburg, Barkley West, Groblershoop, Douglas, Petrusville, Jan Kempdorp, and many more place names.

 

The very town we are gathered in, Upington, was named after a British governor of the Cape Colony during the time this part of our country was under colonial rule. The Nama name of this city is Khara hais.

 

Similarly, the Provincial Geographical Names Committee must work with local communities to rediscover the original name of the diamond mining town of Kimberley. I am saying this because this name is tantamount to celebrating our conquest because it is derived from the title of the British Secretary of State for Colonies during the discovery of diamonds in the area, the 1st Earl of Kimberley, in the County of Norfolk in the United Kingdom.

I do not want to create an impression that all is doom and gloom in the province. There are green shoots that we need to appreciate. The names of both the district and local municipalities in Upington and other districts are named after our heroes and heroines.

 

I can cite the examples of Dawid Kruiper, ZF Mgcawu, Sol Plaatjie, Sandile Present, and others. These are the names of municipalities, the university, and the library. None of these names are of our dorpies, towns, and cities.

 

 

I encourage all of us to continue with the good work this province is starting. We will be challenged in Court by those who do not want to embrace change. We will be told that we can use our budgets to build houses, roads, and schools. We will have to inform those that our mandate is crystally clear and it is about the preservation and promotion of our cultural heritage. As this Department, if we were to start building roads and schools, we would have veered from the mandate of this Department. The transformation of our naming landscape cannot be postponed and is a government priority.

 

The South African Geographical Names Council Act 118 of 1998 allows us to change names as we have seen in other provinces like Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and the Eastern Cape. The capital city of Limpopo was changed from Pietersburg to Polokwane and the capital city of Mpumalanga was changed from Nelspruit to Mbombela. The biggest town in the Eastern Cape was changed from Port Elizabeth to Gqeberha.

 

Major airports in Johannesburg, Durban, Gqeberha and East London were changed from colonial names to names that reflect a democratic country. This is also possible in the Northern Cape province.

 

From the process and procedural point of view, any South African can approach his or her own Councillor or traditional leader and make a proposal for a name change that does not augur well with people living in that town, city, or village. The municipalities working together with the Provincial Geographical Names Committees will organize public consultation meetings in the areas where the name changes are being proposed.

 

The public meetings will discuss and agree on the names that most people in the area would like. It may well be that many people in rare instances in an area like to keep the colonial or apartheid name thus the name change will not proceed. If most people who attended the consultation meeting agree to the name change, the South African Geographical Names Council application form will be completed and submitted to the SAGNC together with the attendance registers and minutes of public consultation meetings.

 

The Provincial Geographical Names Committee will also need to submit information relating to how the public consultation meeting was advertised. This may include local newspapers and community radio advertisements.

 

During public consultation meetings, PGNCs need to keep very good minutes and attendance registers. These are crucial in instances where the government is taken to Court by objectors who argue that the consultation meetings were attended by a handful of people who do not represent the views of the majority in a municipality.

 

Public consultation meetings under the guidance of the Provincial Geographical Name Committee, which is in the process of being appointed in this province, should also keep a record of those who oppose any name change as well as those who support the name change during all consultation meetings. The public consultation meetings should always try to achieve consensus on any name change proposal.

 

It will be useful for the PGNC to submit the proposed name changes to relevant municipalities so that the name changes can be put to a Council vote to ensure that name changes have been put through the democratic processes in our municipalities.

 

A Council resolution supporting a name change will assist whenever the name change is challenged in Court.

 

The South African Geographical Names Council will review all this information and recommend the name change to the Minister to apply his mind and make the decision on each application. If the Minister finds that all processes were followed in terms of public consultations before the name change application was submitted, the Minister may approve the name change. The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture will thereafter advertise the name change in the government gazette for public information.

 

The question that you will then ask is why we still have colonial and apartheid place names. We will all appreciate the fact that the national and provincial governments are not custodians of most of these place names. Most of them are under the custodianship of municipalities and traditional authorities.

 

 

We can, therefore, only make the point that as representatives of municipalities and traditional authorities, you are encouraged to start discussions in your municipality about the desirability of the names of your village, town or city to be changed to reflect the languages, culture, and heritage of the majority of people who live in it.

 

To representatives of SALGA and SANRAL, once the name of a dorpie, town, or city has been gazetted and all objections have been attended to by the Minister, SALGA and SANRAL can assist the transformation of our naming landscape by ensuring that road sign boards of old place names are replaced with the new approved place name sign boards on our roads.

 

I wish to take this opportunity to appeal to the province of the Northern Cape to finalise the establishment of the provincial Geographical Names Committees and send representation to the South African Geographical Names Council so that the transformation of our naming landscape can also take place in this province.

 

Let us be the champions of the transformation of our naming landscape that we wish to bequeath to our children, our grandchildren and posterity.

 

Thank you for your attention I wish you a productive workshop.