R.W. Johnson: South Africa is going through an orgy of name-changing
[Mr. Johnson is emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Southern Africa correspondent for the London Sunday Times.]
South Africa is going through an orgy of name-changing. In Durban alone, the city council, run by the ruling African National Congress, has come up with 194 streets to be renamed while the local provincial authority has listed 78 rivers and 76 places to be renamed. Pretoria, the capital, is no more: It is now Tshwane, though even Africans seldom know that the name refers to a 19th-century local chief. Typically the name changes are pushed by the ANC and resisted by whites, especially Afrikaners, who see the most famous names of their own history disappearing.
Durban has seen a particularly fierce fight. A young Winston Churchill gave a famous speech here, during the Anglo-Boer war in 1899, and always regarded Durban as "a bastion of the imperial spirit"; others would say it was a center of jingoism, the last outpost of the British Empire. Certainly it is that spirit which the ANC wants to puncture.
The council wants Edwin Swales VC highway (after a local World War II hero) renamed after an ANC guerrilla hanged for sabotage, while Natal Mounted Rifles highway is to be renamed after an ANC activist who died of AIDS. (Whites bitterly point out that Swales died in a Lancaster bomber over Germany and the NMR fought the Nazis with distinction, so even "those who fought fascism" are to be forgotten.) The main road to the airport becomes Yasser Arafat highway; Moore Road (after Sir John Moore, the hero of the Battle of Corunna) becomes Che Guevara Road; Kensington Drive, Fidel Castro Drive; and Chelmsford Road (after Lord Chelmsford who defeated the Zulu King Cetshwayo) JB Marx Road, after the former black Communist leader who lies buried next to Khrushchev in Moscow. Naturally, Jan Smuts Highway will be Cetshwayo Highway and Victoria Road, Mandela Road. Most of the city-center streets are to be renamed after local Communists that not many have heard of.
However, the ANC, rather foolishly, decided to wipe out names associated with Chief Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party, even renaming the local stadium being built for the 2010 soccer World Cup after a local Communist leader, when it had been named after the father of King Shaka, founder of the Zulu nation. This led to a 10,000-strong march of angry whites and (mainly) Zulus through the city center, with shops smashed and looted, and a (temporary) council climb-down. ...
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South Africa is going through an orgy of name-changing. In Durban alone, the city council, run by the ruling African National Congress, has come up with 194 streets to be renamed while the local provincial authority has listed 78 rivers and 76 places to be renamed. Pretoria, the capital, is no more: It is now Tshwane, though even Africans seldom know that the name refers to a 19th-century local chief. Typically the name changes are pushed by the ANC and resisted by whites, especially Afrikaners, who see the most famous names of their own history disappearing.
Durban has seen a particularly fierce fight. A young Winston Churchill gave a famous speech here, during the Anglo-Boer war in 1899, and always regarded Durban as "a bastion of the imperial spirit"; others would say it was a center of jingoism, the last outpost of the British Empire. Certainly it is that spirit which the ANC wants to puncture.
The council wants Edwin Swales VC highway (after a local World War II hero) renamed after an ANC guerrilla hanged for sabotage, while Natal Mounted Rifles highway is to be renamed after an ANC activist who died of AIDS. (Whites bitterly point out that Swales died in a Lancaster bomber over Germany and the NMR fought the Nazis with distinction, so even "those who fought fascism" are to be forgotten.) The main road to the airport becomes Yasser Arafat highway; Moore Road (after Sir John Moore, the hero of the Battle of Corunna) becomes Che Guevara Road; Kensington Drive, Fidel Castro Drive; and Chelmsford Road (after Lord Chelmsford who defeated the Zulu King Cetshwayo) JB Marx Road, after the former black Communist leader who lies buried next to Khrushchev in Moscow. Naturally, Jan Smuts Highway will be Cetshwayo Highway and Victoria Road, Mandela Road. Most of the city-center streets are to be renamed after local Communists that not many have heard of.
However, the ANC, rather foolishly, decided to wipe out names associated with Chief Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party, even renaming the local stadium being built for the 2010 soccer World Cup after a local Communist leader, when it had been named after the father of King Shaka, founder of the Zulu nation. This led to a 10,000-strong march of angry whites and (mainly) Zulus through the city center, with shops smashed and looted, and a (temporary) council climb-down. ...