Rewriting the past leaves us with names stripped of meaning

The Herald opinion piece on geographic renaming (Rewriting the narrative of our past, present and future, The Herald  May 21) confirms the decolonisation bias of the department of sport, recreation, arts and culture. 

The department argues that geographic renaming is an act of reparation and visual redress through the change of colonial place names to indigenous names. 

If only things were that simple. 

Yes, history is littered with changed place names, and critical toponymy is a well-established field of study demonstrating that place names have always been sites of struggle for political dominance. 

But the department’s decolonisation, as espoused by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o,  is one of many theories. 

A civil service, advocating one theoretical approach — over others — contradicts the very principles of SA’s constitutional democracy. 

And history is littered with the tragedies of dogmatic orthodoxies relentlessly pursued by the state, be it apartheid, fascism or Nazism.

Authors such as Nigerian philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò have pointed to serious shortcomings in decolonisation theory. 

In his 2023 work, Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously, Táíwò asserts that decolonisation has lost its way, suffocates African thought and suppresses human agency. 

In simple terms, human agency is our ability to make choices, act and set intentions in our lives.

The  arts and culture department’s decolonisation theory is stripping us of our rights to make choices. 

Under the decolonisation approach to geographic renaming, we are left with places stripped of meaning through flawed participation processes which are not constitutionally compliant.

The consequence is that all colonial place names are being changed to indigenous names.

But the new names decay on the landscape from a lack of meaning — through a failure in placemaking. 

Placemaking failures are a consequence of flawed participation processes that lack the empowering dimensions of human agency.

The foisting of names onto places, as was the case with Gqeberha, rob citizens of placemaking opportunities, deepen divisions and polarise society.

Renaming processes have been devoid of the prescribed documentation and research which motivates changes to place names and in considering dimensions such as the socioeconomic impacts.

In the case of Gqeberha, very few people understand the meaning of the word and its significance to the wetland systems of the city.

Public understanding is so poor that some people understand Gqeberha as being the Khoisan name for Queen Elizabeth! 

Zimbabwean historian Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni points to the consequences of failures in human agency.   

In most of natural resource rich Africa, political independence has not translated into economic independence for its citizens.

African countries are dominated by local elites, beholden to the economic interests of offshore shareholders thriving off our natural resources.

Local elites suppress human agency, focusing on economic self-interest, at societal expense.

Local elites amass fortunes offshore from the plunder of the public fiscus using populist theory to prop up public credibility.

In changing his country’s name to Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko imposed a theory of national authenticity for his colonial cultural purge, left the Democratic Republic of Congo in ruins, and became one of the world’s wealthiest heads of state.

And in SA, similar trends are blatantly obvious — be it train money in Dubai or hamburger change in couches. 

Our South African constitution provides hope.

Human agency — through our choices, actions and aspirations — is starting to fill the voids of corruption-induced government failure masked as administrative ineptitude.

Be it in security, health care, electricity, water or many other services, human agency is finding solutions where the state has failed.

In the case of place names, the government has failed us, and the quest to give expression to Khoisan identity through name changes is proving to be stillborn in the flurry of empty narrative devoid of tangible material benefits. 

But South Africans, in their own inimitable way, are finding solutions.

In many areas, such as New Brighton, the name change tsars have been sent packing, corrected by the power of human agency.

It’s the type of agency which characterised Singapore, which went through its own decolonisation pain in the 1960s, to become a balanced, vibrant, multicultural and prosperous nation when all economic indicators pointed to a looming disaster.

Honest and principled leadership provided the encouragement and space for the agency of entrepreneurial Singaporeans to rescue their economy, and name changes supported, not hindered that quest. 

Our cultural tsars need to understand that South African history is alive in our landscapes, entrenched in the memories of our people, and well-documented.

It’s not a case of rewriting history as the arts and culture department maintains.

Rather, we must develop what we already have and make space for the greater appreciation of our cultural assets.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the writing of the late Mzi Mahola (1949-2023).

Mahola wrote poetry, drama and novels in English and isiXhosa. 

 Mahola’s being was a life of literature and struggle in service of the city and its people.

Yet, his work is barely accessible, known only to the small circles of creatives who thrive off human agency.

The department should be focusing on releasing the spirit of human agency, and less on rewriting a past already there or imagining ghosts. 

On current form, our politicians show no signs of leading the department to unlock such promise.

But the power of South African human agency — our resilience, our ubuntu, our “boer maak ‘n plan” spirit — can change our current paralysis, very quickly, for the greater public good.       

Graham Taylor chairs the Historical Society of Port Elizabeth

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