The City of Cape Town’s renaming panel, set up in a bid to avoid the controversy that has enlivened the process in other centres, has hit a stumbling block.
The Western Cape African National Congress (ANC) announced on Tuesday that it rejected the 17-member panel and demanded that the body be reconstituted.
The panel, which met for the first time last week, was set up by the city’s Democratic Alliance-led administration.
The ANC acknowledged in a statement that it was important to have academics and researchers on the panel.
But community activists and participants in the struggles that shaped the city’s heritage and culture should also be represented.
”No insult is intended to the good women and men on the panel.
”However, there is a grave danger that the panel is used to deliver on a set of proposals that depoliticises the role that thousands of people played in the struggle against apartheid and cloaks this in a mantle of pseudo-consultation and academic rigour.”
It said there was no way that chairperson Rhoda Kadalie, formerly a member of the South African Human Rights Commission, could be impartial in that role.
”Apart from the fact that she is a close friend and supporter of [city Mayor] Helen Zille, she is a strident and polemical critic of the ANC,” it said.
The panel did not reflect the demographic diversity of the city; there had been too little community consultation.
Zille should appoint a new chairperson and reconstitute the panel, it said.
The panel has already begun sifting through about 200 submissions from members of the public and organisations, including political parties, on renaming streets, buildings and public places in the city. — Sapa