R1bn for a name change
Posted by Don Packett under Uncategorized on January 20 2005 at 5:17 PM
I don’t get it. I lived in Pretoria when I was studying. I lived in Church Street in the dead centre of town, right across the road from the Union Buildings. For the last year that I was there (2001) my electricity bill had a Tshwane logo on it.
Now I’m finding stories about the name-change being postponed, two years later, then stories about suburbs, Tshwane suburbs, without proper registration. It’s going to cost R1bn for Pretoria to change it’s name to Tshwane. But I thought it was already changed! You have a website dammit! Besides, how much needs to change? Take down some signs, erect some new ones, and presto! You have a newly-named city.
Now our ever-super-smart political parties are fighting over a report that was apparently formulated to weigh up the pros and cons of the name change. It has changed you fools! Or has it? What I love is that the Pretoria website has a Pretoria logo with a purple tree, but the background says ‘City of Tshwane’.
Pretoria/Tshwane, get a clue. Choose a name.
January 20th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
This is a sad, pathetic story, and yet, I wasn’t particularly surprised.
That’s even sadder…!
January 20th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
It’s… complicated
When you say “the name was already changed”, what you are referring to was not a name change at all, but rather a unification. Originally, Centurion, Pretoria, and a couple of other places were all seperate municipalities. Then they merged them all together into one municipality, and called it “the Tshwane Greater Muncipality”, or some such. That’s why your electricity bill was marked “Tshwane Metro”, because they’re the bureacracy that handles those things.
But WITHIN Tshwane, the individual towns and cities still officially keep their old names. Thus Centurion is still Centurion, Pretoria is still Pretoria, and so on. This was supposed to be a compromise. The government gets to feel like they’re changing the name to something more politically correct, while on the ground, the city keeps the same name. (I don’t know a single person who calls Pretoria who calls Pretoria “Tshwane”, and all the signs, businesses, maps, etc. still say Pretoria.)
The fuss started when the govt. tried to change the name of the Pretoria area within Tshwane to make it Tshwane as well, ie. get rid of the name Pretoria entirely. This caused a lot of problems, because among the people who actually live here, almost nobody wants the city name to change. They were eventually forced to bow to the will of the people and leave the name Pretoria intact. But I get the sense that this saga isn’t over yet…
January 21st, 2005 at 8:38 am
Right. I get it now. I’m quite surprised that government did bow down to the will of the people, they normally do whatever they want…
And I agree with you, this is far from over.
January 21st, 2005 at 9:26 am
Yeah, let’s ignore tha fact that they’re not there to bow to the will of the people, but to represent it.
Well done, Gov. Thanks for listening.
January 21st, 2005 at 11:01 am
O, who cares – it’s just a name anyway. Governments are great at wasting money, so this doesn’t bother me much.
Then again I have a sever dislike for our capital.
On a different note, doesn’t anyone find is ironic that the prurple tree is likely a Jakaranda, which is an alien species?
September 12th, 2008 at 11:02 am
i care! i’s not just a name they want to change. They want to erase the heritage of the Afrikaans people ’cause they still have us and now suddenly everything must be zulu. hey , wake up people, there’s other people in this country with pride and heritage too..not everyting must be spears and beads!
September 12th, 2008 at 11:08 am
i meant they still HATE us or someting..not have us…