All Together Now: Make It 'Marching to Tshwane'
*By MICHAEL WINES
(www.nytimes.com)
*
PRETORIA, South Africa, Jan. 1 - Long ago, New York was New Amsterdam.
Beijing was Peking. Mumbai morphed from Bombay, Myanmar is the country
formerly known as Burma, and even Cary Grant was once Archie Leach.
So is it such a big deal if Pretorians want to call their city Tshwane?
City fathers here think not. Next month, the 142-member council that
rules this city and its suburbs will receive a scholarly report on the
merits of consigning "Pretoria" - a name that honors the white victor in
an especially gruesome battle against blacks - to the dustbin of
geography. The goal is to replace it by year's end with the name of a
chief who ruled here before whites arrived in the mid-1800's.
"Tshwane is the authentic African name for Pretoria," proclaims the Web
site for the Pretoria metropolitan area, which already calls itself
Tshwane. "Also interesting is that the word tshwane means 'we are the
same' or 'we are one because we live together.' "
But, so far, Pretoria's proposed name change is less a unifier than the
flash point of a spirited debate - one replete with divisions over
politics, history and especially the shifting role of race in the South
African character.
There was an angry exchange in Parliament between members of the
governing African National Congress, who say they want to "rectify
European history," and white members of minority parties, who say that
history should not be casually erased.
In the city itself, the renaming campaign has dragged on for two years,
hamstrung by citizens' confusion and fierce opposition from the
Democratic Alliance, the multiracial but white-led minority party that
holds about a third of the metro council's elected seats.
It is too simple to say that only the city's blacks want to scrap
Pretoria. Nor is it true that only whites seek to preserve the name,
which has persisted through 149 years and three separate South African
nations.
But in a democracy based on reconciliation between white oppressors and
their black victims, erasing the name of the nation's administrative
capital is a deeply symbolic move - and one that clearly reflects the
rising confidence and power of this nation's black majority.
The metropolitan mayor, Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, said as much in November
when he accepted a report on the issue from a committee of 14 academics.
"The matter is quite sensitive," he said then. "We are dealing with
human beings and their fears." But if a majority of people want the
city's name changed, he said, opponents will have to accept it.
South Africa's black rulers might never have broached the topic a decade
ago. But after a decade of politely tolerating Pretoria, George and
sheaves of other names imposed by colonial occupiers, the A.N.C. has
lately embarked on something of a campaign to reclaim the nation's
native African identity.
Eastern Cape Province, one of nine, has been debating for two years
whether to rename itself KwaNtu, Ekhaleni or KwaXhosa. Western Cape
Province may keep its identity, but is considering name changes for as
many as 11,000 locales, led by George, a coastal golf and beach mecca
whose proposed new name is Outeniqua, taken from surrounding mountains.
Limpopo, once called Northern Province, has ordered a host of newly
renamed towns - among them Bela-Bela (formerly Warmbaths), Makhado
(Louis Trichardt) and Mookgopong (Naboomspruit) - to start renaming
facilities like airports and hospitals to conform to their new titles.
Late this year, the government mounted a two-month road show just to
allow South Africans to vent their feelings on names that they regard as
insulting, racist or merely past their prime. That exercise concludes
this winter with a national conference on name changes, sponsored by the
government's Geographic Names Council, in Johannesburg.
Plenty of names are in need of change: streams, villages and roads still
incorporate racially derogatory terms like "kaffir," an insulting
description of blacks, and still more are named after apartheid-era
figures who, by general agreement, hardly deserve memorializing.
Some cases are murkier. The chairman of the Geographic Names Council,
Tommy Ntsewa, was quoted as assailing the Western Cape town of George in
a public hearing in November, asking, "Why should we be honoring King
George? For what? For colonizing us?"
If his point resonates here, it might be lost on citizens of Georgetown,
the capital of Guyana, or Georgetown, the affluent District of Columbia
neighborhood.
That said, South Africa has so far pursued its name changes with what
Mr. Friedman and other experts call remarkable restraint, especially as
compared to the wholesale changes made in many other newly liberated
nations. The country's two most famous cities, Johannesburg and Cape
Town, have kept their names specifically to promote international
business and tourism ties. In most other cases, those choosing names
have shied away from lionizing liberation heroes and relied more on
geographic features, like the names of rivers or mountains, that would
offend neither blacks nor whites.
In Pretoria, that principle has been only partly sidestepped. Tshwane is
not only the name of a noted Ndebele chief, but also the African name of
the Pretoria-area river where his people lived before moving in the
1800's into Zimbabwe. William Baloyi, a spokesman for the metropolitan
mayor, Mr. Smangaliso, said the city intended to hold a series of public
forums on the renaming issue to ensure that everyone was heard before a
decision was made.
"We're not going to shove the name down the throats of the residents,"
he said. "If they don't want it, we won't change it."
Still, there is little doubt where city officials and many residents
stand. Pretoria was founded and named in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius,
the first president of the South African Republic. But it is named after
his father, Andries, the hero of the historic battle of Blood River - so
named because a river at the battlefield ran red with the blood of 3,000
Zulu warriors slain by his Voortrekker fighters.
For decades, the battle's Dec. 16 anniversary was an occasion for white
celebration, a sort of apartheid Thanksgiving. Under democracy, it has
itself been rechristened the Day of Reconciliation. Renaming the town
that commemorates the battle is, to some, a logical next step.
"I'm surprised that they've waited so long," said Greg Cuthbertson, an
expert on British imperial history at the University of South Africa who
helped prepare a scholarly report for the mayor on the names Pretoria
and Tshwane.
The change is nevertheless not a done deal. True experts on place names
say it is not to be done lightly: "Names are words in a language, and to
change a name would be tantamount to changing a word in a language,"
said Peter E. Raper, a Pretoria scholar who served until 2002 as the
chairman of a United Nations group on geographic names. "People in other
countries have to go to a lot of expense changing maps, atlases and all
the rest. It really has a ripple effect."
When the metropolitan government first proposed renaming the city in
early 2003, the civic response was so intense that officials scrapped
the move until experts could study the issue further. When the
Pretoria-to-Tshwane proposal resurfaced at midyear, the leader of the
minority Democratic Alliance here quickly gathered 16,000 signatures on
petitions opposing the change.
"The business community is really up in arms because it would cost an
arm and a leg to change their particulars," he said in a telephone
interview. "We're internationally renowned for the name Pretoria. You
know, at the end of this year there's an election. And I personally
think they have to show their people what they've done to be re-elected."
The leader's name is Gert Pretorius. Yes, he allowed, he is a "very
distant" relative of the city's founder.
"We were never very interested in that," he said. "As some people say,
'What's in a name?' "
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