Mpumalanga Province has been applauded for achieving a milestone of changing 215 names in municipalities to indigenous ones.
This was heard during a two-day seminar at Ehlanzeni Disaster Management Centre attended by members of the South African Geographical Names Council (SAGNC), the Provincial Geographical Names Committee and other stakeholders on July 19 and 20.
Ms Sibongile Manana, MEC for sport, culture and recreation, mentioned that the province had worked tirelessly to correct the skewed geographical landscape through various programmes which had since resulted in a milestone of 215 national geographical features that were recently gazetted by the minister of sport and culture, Mr Paul Mashatile.
“This milestone could potentially have been doubled, had our operational environment been less polarised and not driven by sentiment and the inherent fear of change that characterises human reaction to new developments,” she said.
It was heard that the Albert Luthuli Municipality had successfully changed 47 geographical names and the least number of changes were made in Mkhondo, Dipaleseng and Emakhazani, where all three names were successfully changed.
Manana also came down hard on other groups which had supposedly questioned the wisdom of spending money on name changing which is viewed as an unnecessary diversion of resources of government funds.
“We can’t help but wonder if the same could be asked of them about why they spent millions defending the status quo in courts, while they used the same money to implement these changes and save us the strain of funding legal battles,” she said.
SAGNC’s representative Mr Johny Matlala said the topic of name change was an emotive one as it sought to restore and redress the imbalances of the past which were caused by the colonial apartheid system.He said attempts at speeding up the process included the province’s Mabitso Campaigns and others.
Adv Sizani spoke about the fundamental processes of name change – he said features should be given clear names, spelled correctly and be gazetted. He urged members of the committee to ensure that they did enough consultation and completed all relevant documentation required by the process.
“Our constitutional framework enjoins us to correct this injustice within the framework of national unity, social cohesion and transformation,” he said.
Sizani also mentioned that SAGNC was responsible only for geographical features of national concern including towns, cities, suburbs and any form of human settlement, post offices, stations, highways and government dams.
“The council is not responsible for natural landforms like mountains, hills, rivers, bays, streams and islands,” he said.
He also mentioned that juristic names including the names of a country, a province and of local authorities fall outside SAGNC’s mandate.
He urged the audience to avoid naming geographical features after living persons, “We must say this has been happening without the approval of SAGNC and the ministry,” he said.
“There is a need for vigorous awareness and publicity campaigns to ensure that correct and appropriate information is disseminated to South Africans,” he said.
The seminar was also attended by the well-known political analyst Dr Somadoda Fikeni who spoke at length about the importance of naming in any nation-building processes.
“I showed them some of the patterns of renaming, their advantages and their weakness,” he said.
“When naming features we shouldn’t always focus on political figures, proper research must be done and we don’t need to insult others with naming,” he said.
Ehlanzeni’s district mayor Ms Letta Shongwe expressed her trust in the committee and the officials assigned to the programme. She also paid tribute to the late chief justice Pius Langa and conveyed a message of support to the Mandela family.
