Makhanda name battle heads for court
A 70-year-old Makhanda pensioner has taken arts and culture minister Nathi Mthethwa to court to challenge the Grahamstown name change to Makhanda.
Lifelong resident of the city Monameli Ndumo describes in an affidavit how the process leading to the name change had limped along and repeatedly collapsed over 12 long years.
Ndumo, who co-chairs an organisation called Keep Grahamstown Grahamstown (KGG), said the entire process had been fatally flawed.
There had been no proper consultation of the community or stakeholders, the minister had not informed people of their right to object and finally, most objections had simply been ignored.
He disputed that the SA Geographical Names Council had ever made a resolution proposing the name change to the minister as required by law and said the minister could therefore never have adopted it.
He said Mthethwa had also caused confusion by spelling the name Makhanda whereas the municipality, named after the same person, had been spelt Makana.
He said this was irrational, likely to cause confusion and went against the need for standardisation of names.
Makhanda was a Xhosa warrior who led a failed attack against a British garrison in the area in 1819.
Makana was an alternative name coined for Makhanda, and is considered by many to be a misspelling of his name. Ironically, it was this name that was adopted in 2002 for the umbrella municipality under which Makhanda falls.
Ndumo argues that very few residents associate Grahamstown with its namesake, Colonel John Graham, who pioneered the military campaign to drive the AmaXhosa across the Fish River, and therefore did not find the name offensive.
The final nail in the coffin of an entirely flawed process, says Ndumo, was the way the minister had dealt with over 10,000 objections. He had failed to deal with the substance of each objection and had simply referred them to the Names Council. This was not a task the minister could legally delegate, he said.
Ndumo said one of the major objections was the cost implications of changing the name of the city. He pointed out that the municipality had twice been placed under administration and was currently insolvent and unable to even pay Eskom for its electricity supply.
“The name change will exacerbate this economic distress as it will require the replacement of the city’s name on all major buildings, road signs, billboards and literature.”
Ndumo has asked the Grahamstown high court to review and set aside the decision.
He has also asked the court to order both the minister and the Names Council to hand over all documentation to do with the decision...
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