Four academics and activists launched a new advocacy group that is calling for a discussion on changing South Africa's name.
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A new think tank and advocacy group is calling on South Africans to consider changing the name of the country.
Launched by four prominent academics and activists, Vuka Azania wishes to position itself as a unifier of liberation ideals.
As the group’s name suggests, Azania is their preferred alternative to South Africa, reviving the sentiments adopted by liberation movements during apartheid.
‘Liberated people must name themselves’
Reverend Dr Allan Boesak, senior counsel Dr Muzi Sikhakhane, Professor Isaac Shai and Arthur Fraser launched the movement in Sandton on Friday.
Sikhakhane said Vuka Azania was not a political party and stressed there were “varied paths to agitating for change” in South Africa.
Boesak argued that the country’s colonial history had led to a “spiritual degradation of the African people” that underpinned South Africa’s social ills.
“Knowledge production remains geocentric and colonial in character while African knowledge systems and languages remain marginalised, and are not the language of economy or power.
“Secular colonialism, racism and racial capitalism continue to inflict on black people, not merely an injustice to be corrected in the future, but a form of ongoing violence that demands an immediate and drastic response.
“We declare that this country must be renamed Azania. The colonial name South Africa cannot carry the full memory, pain, struggle and destiny of the indigenous people.
“A liberated people must name themselves if dignity is to be restored. Vuka Azania stands for, and will advocate for, a truly decolonised post-colonial constitution that confronts the history of conquest,” said Boesak.
Azania etymology
A 1992 research paper written by Professor John Hilton of the then University of Natal details several possible etymological sources of the word Azania.
Early uses of the word include a 2000-year-old Greek reference to north-east Africa, as well as an ancient region of Greece, among others.
Sikhakhane said a grand discussion on the country’s future was needed.
“Our strategic posture is informed by the fact that fundamental change in the country will only come when black people begin to appreciate that they have agency and only they can determine their destiny.
“One the first strategic interventions that Vuka Azania wants to do is to call for and organise a black people’s convention to discuss us – ourselves, our condition – to discuss what we are about, to discuss why we hate each other, to discuss why we want to be slaves, why we do not want anything that seeks to liberate us,” said Sikhakhane.
