Council to fight ruling on street names

Pretoria - The Tshwane Metro Council is set to challenge Friday’s ruling by Pretoria High Court Judge Bill Prinsloo, who ordered the municipality to restore the old street names on street signs.

Prinsloo granted an interdict to civil rights initiative AfriForum after it challenged the municipality’s decision to remove the old street names and replace them with the new ones.

Mayoral spokesman Blessing Manale said yesterday the council believed the judgment “borders on trampling on the separation of powers as it (the court) interdicted the city administration from implementing a decision of the council”.

According to Manale, the decision clearly stated that the dual name plate signage will be kept for a six-month period after which only single names will be displayed, complemented by the “Know your street names campaign”.

“The city rejects calls by the opposition that the city should not replace or remove any old names until such time all areas currently without names have been named.

“The opposition has the audacity to suggest that before meeting current needs, the city should not tamper with any apartheid legacy, history, monuments, past discrimination and dehumanisation practices and icons,” said Manale.

It was “convenient” for the DA to blame the ANC government for a lack of street names in the townships, “when it was their previous government who would not even allow these communities to mention names of those leaders they now feel should be prioritised for townships”.

“In a desperate appeal to the emotions of our people, the opposition has suggested that the amount of approximately R2 million being used for signage can improve service delivery overnight. This in their minds is cheaper than the cost of apartheid-era heritage, identity, forced history, and defence of our hard-earned freedom.

“We believe that the practice where the old street names were displayed dually with the newly-agreed names of Tshwane’s principal streets and main roads during this period was reasonable enough to afford all stakeholders the opportunity to lodge objections, request reviews, and to update their business and marketing information, as necessary,” he said.

The DA’s spokeswoman on local geographical names, Elmarie Linde, said: “The mayor’s political impudence and disrespect for policy is costing the taxpayers of the city a lot of money again with the recent street name blunder and legal costs.”

The metro council’s Local Geographical Names Policy, approved in 2011, stated the old street name signs had to be visible for two years after the name change, she said.

“The question now arises; is the mayor considering himself to be above the city’s policy decisions or is he merely ill-informed?

“A court order last week confirmed that the Tshwane metro removed the old street name signs prematurely. The implication is that a staggering R2m will be spent to replace the street names that were removed,” she said.

This money could have been used to give names to the more than 5 100 streets without names, she said. “The DA will submit a petition at Thursday’s council meeting, asking for the naming of streets in Hammanskraal. Too many residents are residing in so-called ‘sections’ and ‘blocks’ in areas such as Hammanskraal and Soshanguve.”

Instead of addressing service delivery priorities, the ANC chooses political opportunism that more than often results in irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money, said Linde.

ANC’s deputy regional chairman (Tshwane), Mapiti Matsena, said while AfriForum’s initial urgent application to interdict might have been within their rights, “the ANC is disturbed by what is clearly a strategy by a sect to reverse the entire naming process, and maintain the ugly veil and identity of apartheid Suid-Afrika on the face of democratic South Africa’s capital”.

The ANC sees AfriForum’s actions and the subsequent judgment “as a last attempt by the group to uphold genuine sentiment of minority groups, re-instill the spirit of swart gevaar and perpetuate a lie that it is only towns and streets with Afrikaans names that are targeted for name changes”.

“The interdict by AfriForum seeks to undermine the gains of our democracy and the embracive heritage approach adopted by the ANC to make all South Africans feel they have a sense of belonging to the cities they reside in,” he said.

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