South Africa: the city of Brandfort renamed "Winnie Mandela"
Winnie Mandela, in 1986. Gideon Mendel / AFP
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In South Africa, the small farming town of Brandfort, south of Johannesburg, lost its name over the weekend.
The locality is now called "Winnie Mandela", in homage to this figure of the struggle against apartheid, forced by the government to reside there for eight years, at the end of the 1970s, as a measure of banishment.
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With our correspondent in Johannesburg,
Claire Bargelès
This choice of name change is part of a large-scale policy of the South African Ministry of Culture which intends to rename towns and places, in order to give a symbolic place to the different local cultures and to the heroes of the country.
The name change of Brandfort is all the more symbolic as it is also the city where Hendrik Verwoerd, considered to be the architect of apartheid, spent part of his youth. By choosing to rename the place “Winnie Mandela”, the government therefore clearly wishes to enhance the legacy of the fight against the regime and bring down the symbols of oppression. A policy that began with the advent of democracy, but which continues today, carried by militant movements calling for the fall of colonial symbols, such as the
statues of Cecil Rhodes
.
However, not everyone is happy with these choices.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, regrets the lack of consultation with residents and denounces unnecessary spending to change traffic signs in particular.
The debate had already raged earlier this year when the country's fifth city, Port Elizabeth, was renamed Gqeberha, to pay tribute to the Xhosa ethnic group, a name difficult to pronounce for opponents of change who fear a confusion for tourists.
It also remains to be seen whether, on a daily basis, these new names will come into use.
Indeed, this is not yet the case for the town of Mbombela, for example, which many continue, more than ten years later, to call Nelspruit.
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South Africa
Nelson Mandela