Names war is not over

The protracted street names battle in Tshwane may be partially won - but the process has only just begun.

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Pretoria - The protracted street names battle in the capital may be partially won - but the process has only just begun.

To commemorate Heritage Month in September, the city is set to announce the proposed new names for additional streets for public consultations.

Mayoral spokesman Blessing Manale said the new administration after the elections would announce a project bigger than street names.

“It includes township signage, heritage projects and the One Capital City Campaign. This will take place in the next financial year,” he said. “We spent about R4 million in popularising the new names in 2013 and R800 000 on new signage. We have not added up the legal fees.”

Manale was speaking moments after the Constitutional Court ruled that the new street names should remain - for now.

However, it would be up to a high court review to determine if the city was thorough in its public consultations and correct in implementing the changes.

“We will continue to foster nation-building and social cohesion among our youth and ensure that our developmental initiatives are aimed and bridging the racial divide,” said Manale.

“And to this extent, we will in the new local government term seek to resolve the outstanding issues of the Pretoria vs Tshwane name saga.

“Also, the contentious issues of statues of pre-colonial and apartheid figures and icons in the city.”

The Constitutional Court, in its ruling, berated civil rights organisation AfriForum for the legal strategies used to prevent the name changes.

In a scathing judgment, the apex court found that AfriForum’s earlier legal bid, citing supposed Afrikaner hurt, was insensitive, divisive and in conflict with the ideal of national unity.

“The sense of place and belonging contended for by AfriForum is highly insensitive to the sense of belonging of other cultural or racial groups.

“It is divisive, somewhat selfish and does not seem to have much regard for the centuries-old deprivation of a sense of place and sense of belonging” black people have had to endure,” Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said in a majority judgment.

Describing the proposition as mind-boggling, Justice Mogoeng insisted that the opposition to replacing the names of streets linked to other racial groups left little room for the acceptance of black people as fellow human beings deserving of human dignity and equality.

In 2012, the city resolved to change 25 street names in the CBD in a bid to transform the country’s capital by recognising the names of Struggle stalwarts. However, AfriForum was successful in an urgent application to delay this, pending a further high court review.

The high court in Pretoria ordered the city to retain the old street names under the new ones pending the review application. AfriForum launched the application only after six months and the review is still pending at the high court in Pretoria four years later.

But in April 2013, mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa announced that the old names would finally be removed, prompting AfriForum to apply for an interim interdict preventing the city from doing so.

In its arguments, AfriForum said the removal of the old street names would cause irreparable harm to the Afrikaans community, violating their constitutional rights.

The interdict was granted, with the city ordered to reinstate the old names that would have cost upwards of R2.6m. Further appeals by the city before the high court and Supreme Court of Appeal were unsuccessful.

But yesterday, the Constitutional Court set aside the interdict, saying AfriForum had failed to prove irreparable harm to the Afrikaans community and had used the Constitution as a weapon to frustrate the street renaming process.

Chief Justice Mogoeng noted AfriForum’s arguments that the loss of the old street names - even temporarily pending the review process - would supposedly cause great emotional hurt to Afrikaners.

He said, however, that the organisation did not have the right to have the old street names displayed in perpetuity.

He added that the organisation’s only right was to participate meaningfully in a properly facilitated process leading up to the change of street names.

The court acknowledged that if the city had failed to properly do this, the review process at the high court would be the best avenue to investigate if anyone’s rights had been violated.

It found that the arguments for the interim order were not solid enough for the high court to initially grant it, and set it aside.

The Supreme Court of Appeal order that the city pay for AfriForum’s legal costs was also set aside, with each party now set to pay its own costs.

AfriForum legal representative Werner Human told the media they accepted the judgment but were confident the review at the high court would show that the public was not properly consulted on the street name changes.

Pretoria News