President Thabo Mbeki should accept that Afrikaans place names are also African, civil rights initiative AfriForum said on Friday.
Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Mbeki had implied that Afrikaners and Afrikaans-speaking people were not Africans, but Europeans, according to AfriForum chief executive Kallie Kriel.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation reported Mbeki as saying to MPs: ”In some instances these [unchanged] names give the impression that South Africa is a European outpost rather than a truly African country.”
He called on MPs to work together on name changes to more fairly reflect South Africa’s culture.
Kriel said it seemed as though Mbeki no longer seemed to support the contents of his famous ”I am an African” speech delivered on May 8 1996.
Mbeki said: ”The Constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our ‘Africanness’ shall be defined by our race, colour, gender or historical origins.”
Kriel said that the African National Congress’s efforts to change the names of places with a ”particular cultural and historical significance” amounted to ”disrespect and contempt of diversity”. — Sapa