Tshwane is not a name that many readers will know. But they, particularly the many South Africans here in the Kingdom, will have to get used to it. It is the new name for Pretoria, South Africa’s capital. It is a move which will sadden South Africa’s Afrikaner community — the city was named after anti-British Afrikaner hero, Andries Pretorius. But it will delight many, because it emphasizes South Africa’s break with its apartheid past. Named after a pre-colonial local chief, it also means “We are the same” in Tswana. This is Africanization at its most obvious. That makes it a political gesture. But this is a political gesture that should resonate with the majority of South Africans.
There is nothing new about name changes as a practical demonstration of a change in political power. New York was once New Amsterdam. The British renamed it after their naval chief and king’s brother, the Duke of York, after they captured it from the Dutch in 1664. Long before that, Byzantium was renamed Constantinople in honor of the Roman Emperor Constantine who made it his capital in place of Rome. In 1930, its name was again changed to Istanbul as part of Ataturk’s Turkification policy, a policy that saw Adrianople become Edirne, Smyrna Izmir and Antioch Antakya. After World Wars I and II, when the map of Europe changed, there was a host of name changes. Pressburg became Bratislava, Fiume became Rijeka, K?nigsberg became Kaliningrad, and Breslau became Wroclaw, to name just a few.
There is a danger, though. Changing names of places is no substitute for providing decent housing, hospitals, schools, infrastructure and jobs for South Africans. If they make a habit of changing names without making the real changes that affect people’s lives, the new establishment in South Africa will end up being despised, and with them, all their work — including name changes. The case of St. Petersburg provides a suitable warning. After centuries as Russia’s Czarist capital, its name was Russianized to Petrograd following the 1917 revolution and then ten years later, changed to Leningrad in memory of Lenin. For the inhabitants, though, it remained St. Petersburg and their loathing of the Communists was such that they wanted all connection with Lenin expunged. In 1991, they voted to return to the old name.
In India, too, name changes — Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkata being the most obvious — have not found universal approval. There is a strong sense that the renaming of places is a ruse by populist politicians to divert attention from the fact that they are doing nothing to improve people’s lives or, worse, are corrupt. The old names continue to be used by a determined public, who were never consulted on the matter. Perhaps if they had, attitudes might be different.
That lesson is one the South Africans should heed. If in 20 years’ time, ordinary South Africans are still calling the capital Pretoria, it will not be because of any nostalgia for the past. It will be because of disillusionment with the political establishment that made the change, but did nothing else.
