MIKE SILUMA | Don’t elevate form over substance when it comes to transformation and redress

This week, sports, arts & culture minister Gayton McKenzie revealed his department was processing thousands of objections to proposed town and city name changes already assented to by the South African Geographical Names Council.

On the face of it, the large number of objections — more than 38,000, if DA MP Anna Maria van Zyl is to be believed — might suggest great public unhappiness over the changes. But this corruption should be treated with a great deal of circumspection, owing to the deep inequalities in our country. For these can influence both access to information and the ability to intervene in legislative and consultative processes, resulting in privileged voices dominating public discourse.

Also, we have no idea how many citizens stand four-square behind the name changes, in stark contrast to the objectors. The move to change names will obviously have its supporters.

In any event, McKenzie’s statement, made in answer to a parliamentary question, raises an issue of greater importance than mere number-crunching. From where this columnist stands, at the heart of the matter is the role name changes play in nation-building and whether they advance national unity or hinder it.

South Africa’s black people, regarded as non-citizens, had to like it or lump it when it came to such matters.

The rebranding has included streets, public institutions, cities and provinces. Before 1994, all such naming was done unilaterally by colonial and apartheid administrations. White interests stood front and centre, so celebrating colonial and apartheid figures was the order of the day. South Africa’s black people, regarded as non-citizens, had to like it or lump it when it came to such matters.

Today, moves to rechristen places, amenities and entities in the public sphere have involved replacing many names from the old order with those reflecting South African history from the black point of view — a perspective previously ignored or suppressed by the country’s former rulers.

However, in a heterogeneous country such as South Africa, where nation-building is still a work in progress, the challenge is surely to find the right balance, to ensure all South Africans, irrespective of their race, can see themselves reflected and recognised in the new names.

Some take the view that, because South Africa is a black-majority country, the wishes of that majority must hold sway. In other words, just as in the past the white minority was able to lord it over the black majority by force, now the majority should be allowed to ride roughshod over the country’s minorities and ignore their feelings and wishes.

However, as is evident from our bloody and divisive history, going down that road will lead only to resentment and endless strife. Just as the oppression of the majority by a minority proved unsustainable in the long run, so too a majoritarian winner-take-all approach is bound to lead to conflict and instability down the line. Both options are in any event antithetical to our founding principles, which envisage a country of equality and justice for all.

At the same time, given that names are closely linked to cultural identities and perspectives on history, the rebranding of places, facilities and entities in the public sphere will have to mirror the shared self-concept of the country’s people. This notion does not extend, of course, to obviously offensive names, such as those that celebrate or seek to justify the institutionalised racial discrimination of our past or have the effect of stirring up racial hatred.

In addition to renaming streets and public places, there are some who would like the country’s name itself to be changed. Such persons point to other African countries that changed their names after independence. For example, South West Africa became Namibia, Rhodesia was rebranded Zimbabwe, Bechuanaland was designated Botswana, and the Gold Coast was rechristened Ghana. Interestingly, Mozambique chose to retain its pre-independence name, though its capital, originally called Lourenço Marques, became Maputo.

Evidently, each country is different, shaped by its own unique history.

To be sure, some who oppose the current name changes have used the state’s governance failures to disguise their fundamental opposition to South Africa’s sociocultural transformation. Why, they ask, is the government focusing on changing names instead of improving service delivery and fighting crime and corruption?

Beyond the hidden agenda, we should guard against succumbing to the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The question of setting national priorities is a valid and crucial one, and will ultimately determine whether South Africa goes to pot or becomes one of the world’s happier, fairer and safer countries.

The imperative to redress the wrongs inflicted on the majority of South Africans in the past is one we as a society can shirk only at great political and economic cost. However, at the same time, our country is faced with many grave and pressing economic and developmental problems — such as lacklustre economic growth, runaway unemployment, and a general failure on the part of the government to improve the quality of life of its citizens.

But surely we can walk and chew gum at the same time?

Ultimately, our leaders must ask themselves if their decisions today will lead to a more prosperous, united and peaceful country tomorrow.

And when it comes to name changes, we could call South Africa the Garden of Eden if we wanted to, but how would that help us if South Africa turns into a hell on earth for the majority or all of its citizens? What future will our citizens have if water is not provided reliably to them, roads and traffic lights are not fixed, unemployment is not drastically reduced, or high-quality health care is not rolled out to those who need it? What is crucial is that the decay in our failing state — which has been thoroughly infiltrated by criminal cartels — is arrested and reversed.

We must be wary of choosing form over substance when speaking about change.