Goodbye Pretoria: hello Tshwane
8 March 2005
South Africa's administrative capital is about to get a new name. The city that was named after Afrikaner hero Andries Pretorius in 1885 will soon officially be known as Tshwane.
According to the City of Tshwane website, Tshwane was the name of the son of an African chief who settled in the area hundreds of years ago; and is also a word that means "we are the same" or "we are one because we live together".
Tshwane Executive Mayor Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, addressing a special session of the metro council on Monday, said the new name would "articulate the mindset of the new nation".
"We are confirming the demise of oppression and the advent of freedom ... the death of apartheid and the birth of democracy", Mkhatshwa said.
The metro council authorised the registration of the new name with the South African National Geographical Names Council.
It also agreed to launch a campaign to popularise the new name with local and international
media agencies, the UN, the African Union, the SA Weather Service, the National Roads Agency, foreign missions in the country - many of them located in "Jacaranda city" - and South African missions abroad.
According to Pretoria News, the name "Pretoria" will in future apply only to a limited central area bordered by DF Malan Drive in the west, Nelson Mandela Drive in the east, Pretoria railway station in the south, and Boom Street in the north.
This means that the Union Buildings - South Africa's seat of government, the place where Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa's first democratically elected president in 1994 - will no longer be in Pretoria, but in Tshwane.
Councillor Theo Tlholo told Pretoria News that the metropolitan area of the City of Tshwane was bigger than the current Pretoria, Centurion, Mabopane, Soshanguve, Hammanskraal and other areas which make up the Tshwane metro - home to approximately 2.5-million people.
"Our marketing efforts are
geared to establish the City of Tshwane as a brand among well-known capital cities throughout the world", Tlholo said, adding that these all these cities had built their brand around a single name.
"Harare is Harare, Windhoek is Windhoek, London is London and New York is New York. There is no other brand name that competes with their brand name."
The move will also see about 17 street names changed, including DF Malan Drive and Potgieter, Pretorius, Prinsloo, Proes, Schubart, Van der Walt and Vermeulen streets.
According to the City of Tshwane website, the name Tshwane "comes to us from Chief Mushi, who settled in the Pretoria area about 100 years before the arrival of the Voortrekkers [Afrikaans-speaking settlers who "trekked" into the interior of the country to escape British rule] in the early 1800s.
"Chief Mushi and his tribe had moved from Zululand and first settled at Mokgapane (Mooiplaas, east of Pretoria). He later moved from Mooiplaas to what is now
the Pretoria area, on the banks of the Tshwane River, named after his son Tshwane (today called the Apies River). Tshwane is the authentic African name for Pretoria."
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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