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ANC wants struggle heroes and heroines to have false reputability

As a Pan African scholar I am concerned with the programme of renaming the cities, hospitals, roads, schools, universities, and streets in South Africa. Renaming of public spaces with the names of our heroes and heroines is a good honour to those men and women who made prime sacrifices to ensure that a democratic South Africa is a reality.

As South Africans we cannot embrace being a rainbow if we forget the memories of our past. The African National Congress is working hard each and every day to ensure that the injustices suffered by black people during apartheid are healed, but we cannot heal our past by exploiting divisions in our African communities. The African National Congress is changing true history of South Africa by renaming the public spaces with the names of their struggle heroes and heroines. After seeing the changing of street names in the city of Pretoria, I asked myself this questions: why do we still celebrate the 16th of December as a day of reconciliation; why do we still use the Coat of Arms as the highest symbol of our state; why do we call our country a rainbow nation.

Pretoria is an Afrikaner city with the largest Afrikaner population in South Africa and Afrikaans is still the most spoken language. Its streets are named after the Afrikaner nationalists’ heroes or apartheid government officials. To the Afrikaner population, Pretoria is their patrimony left behind by their heroes. PW Botha in his 1985 speech he said “Pretoria has been made by a white mind for a white man”. To rename Pretoria streets with the names of African National Congress struggle heroes and heroines will change the history of South Africa in such a way that the next generation in our country will be told that people like Lillian Ngoyi, Thabo Sehume, Eskia Mphahlele, Walter Sisulu, January Masilela, Nana Sita, Stanza Bopape, Justice Masemola and others were the architects of the city of Pretoria. These struggle heroes I have mentioned above and others were not responsible for the civilization of Pretoria. That is the reality. Destroying of the history of white South Africa has caused faction strife and chaos in the country.

In my view, the African National Congress is not correcting the past; they are becoming colonialists and racists in their thinking and actions. I bet that the political party is slowly becoming what they appear to hate.

When will everything in South Africa stop being about African National Congress? I am not against this programme of renaming public spaces; I only want the African National Congress to apply fairness whenever they rename the public spaces. My only worry is that the target and interest of the African National Congress is to erase the history of the Afrikaner people only. In KwaZulu-Natal there is a hospital named after Mahatma Ghandi who was a hero to the Indian population in South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi is considered to be father of civil rights movement in South Africa and he has received praises all over the world because of his non violence philosophy which is believed to have changed the world we see today. Great leaders around the world respected Mahatma Gandhi including the late Nelson Mandela who called him “the archetypal anticolonial revolutionary” whose “nonviolent resistance inspired anticolonial and antiracist movements”. However people who respected Mahatma were never familiar with the real Mahatma Gandhi who was a malicious racist. Mahatma Gandhi hated black people, so why doesn’t the African National Congress remove all the memories of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa? If they do remove his remembrances, will these be fair to the Indian community in South Africa? I Doubt.

The African National Congress is suffering from a poverty of ideas; they abandon the fact that African culture lacks written history. We no longer have History as a compulsory subject in most if not all South African government schools. History is an asset of the country because “without history there is no future”. If this programme of changing public space names is important to restoring the dignity and transformation in South Africa, why don’t we also change the name of our country “South Africa” which is just a geographical location? The name South Africa means nothing to us the population of the country. It does not even express who we are, “it is just an English construct of the colonial impose we inherited from colonialism” (Malaika wa Azania). The African National Congress should also rename provinces like North West, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and Western Cape. These provincial names do not make sense because they are just directions, they don’t have African meaning.

What the African National Congress is doing now with the renaming of public spaces is a clear indication of the misuse of political power. They are just trying to show who is in power. Or Maybe the African National Congress struggle heroes and heroines fought for freedom and democracy so that the ANC can abuse the rights of the people of South Africa. If that is the case, South Africa is not a fully democratic country. We don’t have to pretend as if Apartheid never happened in our country, however to rename public spaces will never bring peace and harmony in our country; instead it will increase the racial injustices. We, the blacks, we always say this land in South Africa belongs to us. It is true, the land belongs to the blacks but we also have to take into account that the world recognizes South Africa as a multicultural or multiracial country. Our national anthem is evidence to that.

It is high time we question the literacy of our leaders in South Africa. Our leaders have turned the constitution of the country and the freedom charter into a marketing slogan rather than reality. Renaming of public spaces will not benefit the masses of our country. To the African National Congress, renaming of public spaces is a good thing as it enables them to gain support from black people although they gain support at the expense of the national unity. The African National Congress is causing political instability and unrest in our country. The African National Congress brought freedom to South African, but it is now difficult for the organisation to maintain that freedom. National building is anathema to the African National Congress.

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