JOHANNESBURG (dpa) – European place names predominate in South Africa even years after white domination was consigned to history. English, Irish and Scottish names lie not far from German ones, and around Cape Town there are many French names.
Johannesburg drew gold miners from all over the world, and they stamped their mark on the city. They brought with them place names like Yeoville, Windsor, Killarney. Heidelberg, founded by a German businessman in 1862, lies to the southeast of the city.
A glance at the map reveals the names of European cities. Fontainebleau and Bordeaux are not far from La Rochelle and Verona. Saxonwold is there along with Windsor, Denver and Sandhurst.
The Germans are well represented with Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Wartburg and Underberg, and there is a New Germany as well.
Paris is a dusty town in the centre of the country, and the French have left their mark particularly in the names of wine estates at the Cape of Good Hope.
But now some eight years after the first democratic elections finally ended white domination, South Africans are tackling the thorny issue of name changes to get away from the white settlers and colonialists of the past and Africanize their place names.
Where the fall of communism in eastern Europe brought with it many immediate name changes – often back to old pre-communist era names – this did not happen in South Africa.
There were other priorities. Many black people did, however, stop giving their children western-style first names. Now African names predominate.
But the end of an era is in sight. The Northern Province is setting the pace and has unleashed a debate with a rash of name changes to towns and cities.
White South Africans in the region saw their own cultural heritage under attack and pointed out the name changes would not come cheap.
Should millions really be spent on new signs and headed notepaper in a country in which social needs cry out for funding from the state.
“This is nothing more than an act of self-affirmation,” provincial governor Ngoako Ramathlodi responded. The Northern Province will itself in future be known as Limpopo Province, for the river that runs along its northern border.
And the capital Pietersburg, named for a proud Boer pioneer, will be renamed Polokwane, as will Potgietersrus, named for another leader of the “Great Trek” of the 1830s. It becomes Mokopane.
Nylstroom – the Boers thought they had discovered the source of the Nile when they named this town – will be Modimolle, and Warmbaths, where hot springs bubble out of the ground, will be Bela-Bela.
The national capital of Pretoria has already been changed to Tshwane, although the new names have yet to catch on in everyday use, partly as a result of the half-hearted implementation of the changes.
A good example is that of Verwoerdburg, which lies on the main highway between Pretoria and Johannesburg. It was renamed Centurion years ago, but the road signs still confuse drivers by using the old name.
And it is a name most South Africans of all colours would like to put behind them. Hendrik Verwoerd was the prime minister of the 1960s and known as apartheid’s chief architect and ideologue.
But there is embittered reaction to many of the changes, as shown by the controversy over a street name in Johannesburg. The main thoroughfare named for D.F. Malan, a white supremacist prime minister of the apartheid era, was renamed for Beyers Naude, a white churchman who opposed apartheid.
The new signs have repeatedly been flattened by unknown persons using their four-wheel drive vehicles as battering rams.
