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South Africa's government has officially approved a renaming of city and airport names, which VW employees at the largest group location in Africa should face some pronunciation problems.
The largest city in Lower Saxony's partner province in the Eastern Cape will no longer be called Port Elizabeth, but Gqeberha.
The location of the VW plant in Uitenhage (now officially: Kariega) is in the immediate vicinity.
The responsible minister of culture, Nathi Mthethwa, published the name change in the official gazette on Tuesday evening.
This had dragged on for a long time because of various objections from residents.
The background to this is the efforts of the South African government to get rid of old colonial names.
This also includes names that settlers from Europe once gave to their places of residence.
The small town of Berlin will become Ntabozuko in the future.
Places such as Pietersburg (Polokwane), Nylstroom (Modimolle), Witbank (eMahlahleni) or Warmbaths (Bela-Bela) have already been renamed in recent years.
Pronunciation problems for seafarers
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The port city of Port Elizabeth, located on the Indian Ocean, was initially a small settlement near a fort and was named after the wife of a British governor.
The new name is in the clicky language of the local Xhosa people the name for the river that flows through the place.
So far it has also referred to a township on the edge of the city.
Years ago, the name of the city's deep-water port had already caused seafarers to have problems with pronunciation: it is officially called Ngqura - groundwater in the language of the indigenous people.