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In Stockholm, a small cultural storm has broken out around the name of the Konstfack Vita sjávar venue. The dispute follows a lengthy discussion in the United States and other parts of the Western world about why statues of oppressors are allowed to take place in the public sphere.
The discussion has been going on for many years in South Africa, where the inhabitants perhaps more than in any other country know what colonialism and white supremacy mean. As recently as the 1990s, the country was governed according to the principles of the apartheid system, and the long-standing injustices are reminded of the long-standing injustices on a daily basis.
Local naming committees For the past quarter century it has been tasked with removing the old place names and replacing them with variants that have their roots in the majority black population, but the work has lost momentum.
This week it was decided that the port city of Port Elizabeth will change its name to Gqeberha, after the name of a local river. It seems simple, but the “q” is a clicking sound and the “h” is pronounced as a guttural sound and local media have made videos in which readers test the pronunciation.
On social media, people have wondered what is wrong with “PE”, as basically everyone already says, or “iBhayi” as the city is sometimes called in the Xhosa language.
Well, the proposal has been approved in the capital, Tshwane, where the government is based. Tshwane? Yes, that is the name of Pretoria since 2005, but in principle no one uses it in everyday speech.
Then around the turn of the millennium, the debate was more lively. Thousands of white South Africans of Boer descent protested against the “change of place name” (change of place name in Afrikaans), which seemed deaf considering that the criticism was that names like Verwoerdburg were abolished in favor of neutral Centurion. Previously, the city was renamed Verwoerdburg in 1967 after the assassination of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of the apartheid system.
Today, criticism comes not from conservative whites but from the left wing where EFF party leader Julius Malema campaigned for Winnie Mandela to be allowed to name Cape Town Airport.
When The Herald newspaper talks to residents of Port Elizabeth / Gqeberha, few are furious, but no one seems particularly excited about the new name, primarily because of the costs associated with the change. Poor city dwellers don’t want to see a façade renovation but a nation-building repair from scratch.
– This is all a waste of money and resources. It will cost millions, but people like me don’t have a job or a home. South Africans prioritize the wrong things, says Zoleka Katase.
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