Eastern Cape Provincial Summit on Transformation of Place ...



Speech by Advocate Sonwabile Mancotywa: CEO of the National Heritage Council at the South African Geographical Names Council Workshop in Mbombela, Mpumalanga Province – 26 July 2013“Heritage Preservation: Role of Geographic Names”Changing place-names continues to generate controversy. But the spark has changed. The necessity of changes is no longer in dispute. What is still contested is the choice of names that are either erased or honoured. This reflects lack of a criterion and the contentious nature of place-names themselves. How do we decide which name to pull off our public signage or put up? The official guidelines on this subject don’t go further enough. They are focused on procedures, not so much on the substance of the names. Take the Louis Trichardt/Makhado controversy that doesn’t seem to go away. At some point the court ruled that the new town-name, Makhado, be replaced with the old name, Louis Trichardt, because there was insufficient public consultation by the municipality. Public consultation is required by official guidelines. The municipality re-opened public consultation and, thereafter, having satisfied the requirement, reverted back to Makhado. Guidelines on name-changing require no more than a wide and inclusive public consultation process. And, to make changes doesn’t even require majority consent, within the affected community. Even if majority support was needed, name-changes would still happen. Black people welcome name-changes and are in the majority in most residential areas. Frankly, procedural objections are simply a smokescreen. They hide something else. Place-names are an emotive subject. Place-names are about identity and have been used to achieve colonial conquest. The choice of names that were either selected or omitted for public entities is indicative of South Africa’s ghastly past.It is not accidental that European settlers, soon upon arriving on this African soil, re-named our societies and distorted our history from the moment of their arrival. The Former Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr Pallo Jordan, often said that judging by the heritage that you see on South Africa’s landscape one would think that Africans are foreigners in their own country. Place names, symbols, languages, culture, music, and food, dress-codes all reflect the legacy of colonialism and apartheid rather than the realities and value system of today. Erasing African history and culture was an intentional act, seeking to make us believe that Africans had no history of their own prior to the arrival of settlers. We were told that Africans were without any achievements of their own; they were savages without any intellect. Nothing was mentioned of the sophisticated technology that enabled us to smelt iron, and to draw unique art-works. This colonial omission and distortion, presented as true historical records, was then touted around as justification for making Africans servants to European settlers. This was supposedly to our own benefit because, left alone, we would have remained stagnant and continued to savage each other. This was colonial stereotyping at its racist best.Indeed without a collective memory of who or what we were prior to the arrival of settlers, it became easy to believe that we would be doomed without the “masters”. We did not have sufficient and objective official records of our pre-colonial life. The idea was to make Africans not only accede, but also resign themselves to their own our oppression.Consciousness, therefore, is the source of any individual or collective action. Frantz Fanon, and later Steve Biko realized this. That is why they advocated that any sustainable political action, especially a rebellion against oppression, depends on positive self-perception, and self-belief that we too are human beings, equal to any other. Once the oppressed had developed that consciousness, then it would be impossible to suppress their rebellion because it would be emanating from their inner being. Colonial place names were meant to justify ownership particularly over the disputed territory and to expunge the history of Africans from any public space or public narrative. Africans were largely excluded and some names were down-right offensive towards them. The few African place-names selected were mis-spelt. As a result they either had no meaning or gave a distorted meaning. Distorted African place-names added further insult. It showed total lack of respect for the humanity of Africans. That was not surprising. Apartheid rested on the idea that Africans were sub-human. And, the founders of our democratic republic correctly realized that heritage and identity-formation are inherently linked. This link is particularly important in societies emerging out of colonialism. We have a historical duty to re-define ourselves, as opposed to continuing an image and identity imposed upon us by our former conquerors. We seek to re-define ourselves precisely because we realize that, if were to continue with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, we would essentially be complicit in the distortion of our own history as African people. We would be accepting colonial definitions of who we are as Africans and what our history is.If we indeed accepted this colonial definition, then we would be perpetuating our servitude. Ours would be freedom without meaning. We embark on this course, because, as I said earlier, our identity and history was re-defined and wrote in a way that sought to advance our own oppression. Heritage is a core component of our public memory. And it is this public memory that informs our own identity-formation: We are what we know or recall of ourselves. Name-changes, therefore, seek to restore that human dignity by affirming that Africans too, like other peoples any-where in the world, have a history and historical figures that have earned recognition. They are not invisible or without any past to speak of. But, how do we embark on this restorative project without alienating another section of our society. Whites are part of this society and its history. Addressing the injury of Africans, therefore, ought to not make Africans insensitive to the anxieties of their white-counterparts. After all, we have committed ourselves to building a united and non-racial society, where each individual and community counts equally. This requires formulating public policies that take us towards this noble objective. I, therefore, propose the name-changing process be guided by the following four principles: Firstly, Whites need to recognize the pain caused by the exclusion, offensive, and distorted African place-names. Whilst there seem to be some recognition, changing place-names is often dismissed as unnecessary. We are told this exercise is not as important as building material changes. This is disingenuous. Surely, opponents of the name-changes these do not expect to convince the public that they care more for the poor than the present government. And, if place-names really did not matter, why are they up in arms opposing them. So, it is paramount that they genuinely recognise that changing place-names is necessary to build a healthy society at peace with itself. As our founding-father, Nelson Mandela, often reminded us: reconciliation must never be a one-sided affair in which the former victims are expected to simply forgive. Former perpetrators also have a responsibility to take ownership and acknowledge the pain inflicted on the victims. This process would lead to a mutual process of restoring human dignity on both side. Secondly, the choice of place-names should be guided by our founding values and African identity. These values include non-racialism, justice and human dignity. Place-names, as anywhere else in the world, serve as a public depiction of these values. Which-ever names we chose to honour, therefore, should embody these values. Needless to say, place-names that violate national values must be erased and not be selected for future use. The new names should also reflect our African identity. It is really a misnomer to have Eurocentric names in an African country. You’d be hard-pressed to find Afro-centric names in Europe. Understandably, this reflects our colonial history and the European descent of our white-counterparts. But, White South Africans have little, if any, emotional ties to Europe. Afrikaaners are quintessentially African in both their culture and language. Surveys tell us that Whites generally define themselves as South Africans, not Euro-Africans. Surely, they can’t object to the affirmation of their African-ness through place-names. Thirdly, and linked to the point immediately above, public spaces should be named after figures, events or entities that appeal to us all. They should affirm our commonality. Divisive personalities have no place in our public spaces. I haven’t heard of a street named after Adolf Hitler in Germany or any of his fellow brutes. Germany made a conscious decision to rid its public space of its Nazi past. Neither has that episode of German history been erased nor can it ever be erased from national consciousness. Rather, it is preserved in museums. There is no reason for South Africa to be any different, unless we seek to replicate our ghastly past. Finally, new names should go beyond political personalities. Politicians are not the only ones that personify our national values. Our past is full of sports-persons, musicians, clergy and community activists that symbolize our values and have a cross-cutting appeal. Or we can have African names that speak to the (historical) meaning of the place, in the same vein as Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Gauteng. The very names of these provinces reflect that profound desire to forge a new identity and this has been effective in re-positioning and re-branding these provinces. The process of name-changing and national yearning for it will not go away. So we may as well harness it in a way that strengthens us as a nation. This is more meaningful than the continuing bickering. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download