When, on 6 February, the minister of sport, arts and culture, Gayton McKenzie, approved a name change for Graaff-Reinet to Robert Sobukwe Town — in honour of the legendary founder and leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress – he poked the badger.
The town exploded, resulting in ongoing tension, protests, and a seething impasse that has played itself out on the socials and took a serious turn on the evening of Wednesday 18 March when Sobukwe’s grave was desecrated. Images of the vandalism went viral, and by the following morning a criminal case was opened with the police.
Beset by a plethora of hurdles, the path towards the announcement has been sullied by all manner of disagreements, and spawned various bodies which have used different sorts of strategies to counter the decision. McKenzie had barely signed off on the name change when the Freedom Front Plus rejected this outright, and urged residents to do so too.
During a heated debate on the SABC program The Full View, the party leader, Dr Corné Mulder, referred to the intended move as a pre-election gimmick aimed at ‘hiding the incompetence of different local governments who couldn’t deliver services to the people’. His problem, he went on, was not Mr Sobukwe, but rather the many towns which were in the crosshairs of the renaming drive.
‘At the moment, we have very limited resources in South Africa,’ he declared, ‘ and instead of doing service delivery, instead of getting the infrastructure going and creating jobs, we are trying to have this kind of tokenism which I don’t think takes anything further.’
Mulder also believes the name change drive is a concerted attempt to erase Afrikaner culture. The PAC secretary-general, Apa Pooe – Mulder’s debating opponent — saw this differently. To him, the change ‘will bring about inclusion … historic justice’. As a reminder of the nation’s painful past, said Pooe, colonial names must simply be done away with, less as ‘an erasure of history but … a correction of history.’
To Mulder, as a starting point for the Great Trek, the town holds particular historical significance for Afrikaners, and in his mind there is simply no constructive justification for the name change.
Pooe then retorted: ‘Our African country should reflect who we are, should reflect what we stand for. It cannot continue to honour people who subjected us to dominance, people who subjected us to oppression. It’s a painful reminder to us as Africans when we see these names continuing to be in our streets, in our towns. The history of this country must reflect African heroes … those who stood for the truth … for a struggle against colonialism.’
Should any colonial or apartheid-era names remain ? Pooe responded with an emphatic ‘no’. Mulder went on to quote the ANC’s Freedom Charter, which declares that the country is for all who live in it, black and white. So then, if ‘something belongs to Afrikaners and the other communities, they should also have a say. You cannot just force things on other communities.’
Therefore, Mulder said, even if the change went ahead, the party would not accept it, and would continue to speak of Graaff-Reinet. In response, Pooe said it would be difficult to co-exist with people who did not seen to realise that transformation was a constitutional objective. This television debate thus mirrored the contestations on the ground.
A survey conducted in December 2023 has certainly borne out allegations that residents have not been adequately consulted – it found that 83.6 per cent of residents (92.9 per cent coloured, 98.5 per cent white and 55 per cent black) did not favour the name change. This prompted a local lawyer, Derek Light, to write to McKenzie, demanding that the name change be abandoned. He also argued that the proper legal progresses had not been followed.
Named after Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff, the Dutch governor of the Cape Colony at the time of the town’s founding in 1786, and his wife, Hester Cornelia Reynet, this is the fourth oldest town in the country. It is also where the iconic Sobukwe was born, and lies buried.
It’s the latest battleground in an ongoing low-level war. At least 1500 place names have been changed since 2000, many of them provoking similar protests and raising the same questions around whose history it is anyway.
Place names on conventional maps of South Africa largely reflect its colonial and apartheid history. Therefore, rather than genuine transformation, name changes – particularly from those of leading colonial figures to those of leaders of the liberation struggle – are often perceived as an assault on minority culture and history. These contestations almost always have racial undertones, and Graaff-Reinet is no different.
Among other things, businesses are frustrated about having to pay for rebranding. Others question the merit of a costly renaming exercise while the town is plagued by service delivery issues. Doubtlessly, questions will also arise about where the big renaming tender will go.
But the deeper questions around history, heritage and culture are clearly most important. Opponents believe the new democratic dispensation has it in for minority (read: white) history, and is seeking to eradicate this from memory. Proponents are adamant that, rather than an attack on minority culture, this is a form of restorative justice.
Graaff-Reinet has a big ‘coloured’ population, which (potentially) gives it a third voice, and a distinctive one at that. But there are those who argue that – in the conventional, binary clash between white and black — it has been largely ignored. At the very least, the next time around, all our communities should be given a chance to say who their heroes really are.
Featured image: The historic N.G. Kerk in Graaff-Reinet, towering over its main street. (SA Tourism on Flickr)