South Africa’s ruling African National Congress had initially stopped glorifying politicians in place names — like airports — but had now turned the clock back with the proposed renaming of the Johannesburg International airport.
Official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon, in his weekly internet column SA Today, on Friday noted the proposal to once again rename the Johannesburg International airport, “this time after the late ANC President Oliver Tambo”. It was previously known as Jan Smuts, after the wartime Prime Minister.
Twelve years into democracy, it now seems the ANC’s decision not to name airports after political personalities was simply an interregnum “until it found the self-confidence to go the other way and adopt a policy, as the National Party did before it, of choosing names to reflect its own image”, the opposition leader said.
A number of South African airports then were named after former National Party prime ministers and presidents — including PW Botha at George and BJ Vorster at Kimberley.
Leon said the Johannesburg example — recently gazetted — was “only the latest in a string of attempts by the ANC to replace seemingly innocuous historical or geographical names with names reflecting its own heroes and world view”.
“Cost is no object, according to the arts and culture ministry’s spokesperson, Sandile Memela,” he reported.
Memela told the South African Broadcasting Corporation this week that “there is not enough money in the world that could quantify the selfless sacrifice a man like Oliver Tambo made to what this country ought to be”, the opposition leader quoted him as saying.
Leon added: “One imagines that Tambo would, in that spirit of ‘selfless sacrifice’, have preferred to see money spent on housing, health and education rather than the ANC’s vanity.
“In fact, when Tambo returned to South Africa in 1990 after his long, enforced exile, he arrived at Jan Smuts airport and did not seem to care about its name.
“I remember that day well as I was dispatched by the then leader of my party, the late Zach de Beer, to be the DP representative on the welcoming delegation that stood on the tarmac to welcome Tambo back to South Africa.”
It was quite appropriate, Leon argued, in the early years of the post-apartheid era to get rid of offensive names that the previous regime had imposed on South Africa’s land and people.
Even some of the changes that continue today are welcome. The “Native Yards” of Gugulethu, for instance, are finally being given real street names, though people like Memela, who was a member of the “Native Club”, seem determined to revive the term, charged Leon.
But lately, the ANC has taken name changes to an extreme. It is no longer concerned with getting rid of offensive names, but in stamping its own peculiar political identity on the map of South Africa.
This presented a very real danger, as while the ANC may currently lay claim to the dominant political ideology, this is likely to change in years to come, Leon said.
“It will now not take very long for every other airport in the country to be named after a politician, and you do not need to be a prophet to see that they will be named after someone from the ANC or someone deemed appropriate by the ANC. And, in years to come, these names will also have to be changed.
“Some of the ANC’s changes are in themselves extremely offensive — not just to a minority or a segment of the population, but to everyone.
“The most egregious example is the National Academy for Intelligence, which the ANC named after Mzwandile Piliso.
“Piliso was responsible for torture and human rights abuses in the ANC’s notorious Quatro camp, and was implicated in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”
Leon argued that one could build other things to commemorate Tambo. “Build a hospital, and name it after OR Tambo. Build a school, and name it after Tambo. Build a road or a housing development or even a World Cup stadium, and name it after Tambo.”
“That way, at least, the money spent on honouring Tambo would also be going towards developing the country and improving the lives of its citizens.” — I-Net Bridge