PETER BRUCE | KuGompo is no name for a proud city

,

When I was a kid we spent our holidays on the Wild Coast near Umtata, where we lived. Our cottage was made from a wattle frame with mud packed expertly around it, much like many of the thatched huts rural Xhosa people used to live in. But it had no foundations — the only way you could get permission to build close to the water without breaking admiralty rules.

I remember at night, when the waves outside crashed, you could feel the thump in your bed. The sound was double: a warning as the top of the wave’s curl found the water again and then a much louder bellow as the whole thing came down.

That exact noise was given a name recently. I would have called it “ka-boom”. But the members of the South African Geographical Names Council persuaded the minister of culture, Gayton McKenzie, that the Xhosa version of “ka-boom” was “KuGompo” and that it should be the new name for East London.

I’d like to be able to report feeling somehow connected to the name change, but I don’t. It is ridiculous. Much as changing Port Elizabeth to Gqeberha was. Gqeberha is the Xhosa name for the Baakens River that flows largely unnoticed through the city and is then feared when it floods.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got no problem with changing names of towns, and there are a few I’d rename in a heartbeat. Starting with Durban, named for a snivelling coward who liked to push his weight around. But there has to be a better way than relying on caprice or the cultural whimsy of a few unknown and unelected people, often activists, on provincial and national renaming committees.

East London has had a few names. My grandfather called it Panmure. It was also once officially Port Rex. Port Elizabeth was named by Sir Rufane Donkin, the British governor at the Cape, for his late wife. In all, a conceited and self-aggrandising act repeated hundreds of times in colonies around the world. “Sir” Harry Smith, a total thug, has three towns in South Africa named for himself or his wife.

So yes, let’s change names. I don’t think renaming Graaff-Reinet after Robert Sobukwe is a bad thing, but I have no ties to the place and I admire what Sobukwe did. But the people of Graaff-Reinet need to be heard.

Why have we not named PE after Nelson Mandela? Or East London after Steve Biko?

These should surely be open and democratic processes. All registered voters in an area to be renamed should decide. The Americans add local propositions to their elections all the time, and there’s no reason we can’t do the same. It would be obviously more democratic, and the proposition would need to be either retaining a name or changing it to one alternative.

That would require a little more debate than “KaBoom City” or Gqeberha. Why have we not named PE after Nelson Mandela? Or East London after Steve Biko? Mandela gets a bay and a hospital in Mthatha (a renamed Umtata). Biko gets a bridge and a really shitty statue outside the KaBoom city hall. These were South Africans of extreme courage, even when no-one was watching — which is when courage is most sorely tested. Chris Hani gets a “district”, but the ANC’s district development model is performing so spectacularly poorly that districts as a thing might not survive the creation one day of efficient government.

I see now that McKenzie has been swamped by protests about his name changes, and he is doing the right thing by listening. He should stop everything in its tracks and go back to parliament for new legislation. The residents of Graaff-Reinet, East London, King William’s Town, Grahamstown (and a host of other places renamed with great pomp and self-satisfaction and then left to continue rotting by their ANC local administrators) deserve to be heard — not by pitching up to a meeting somewhere but by putting an X on a ballot overseen by the IEC.

We mustn’t be scared to change. Renamings are important. Shaka City would be a just reward for Benjamin D’Urban. Port Biko or iMonti, as Xhosa people have called it for a century would be perfect for East London. I think PE just has to be somehow named after Mandela.

But I don’t live there, so it’s not my issue. If I did, I’d sure as hell want to be asked for my formal approval before someone changed my address and my sense of belonging somewhere. And spare me the lectures. Apartheid and colonial rule were appalling for riding roughshod over people’s feelings and traditions and values.

And whatever we may think of our colonial heritage or apartheid today they were profoundly destructive for most South Africans.

The whole promise of democracy though, is that this time we would do better.