One More on Pretoria

I forgot to mention this one seemingly small event during our drive through Pretoria. 

As we were travelling en route to the park for lunch, we noticed these odd street signs:

Almost as large as a car, these sign were on many street corners.  As you see, the sign has a street name on the bottom (Jacob Mare Street), but this street name has a red line running diagonally through it.  At the top, is another street name (Jeff Masemola St), but this one doesn’t have a line through it. 

 We weren’t sure what to make of this, so we asked the all-knowing Musa.  He did not disappoint!  Musa explained that the ANC leaders in Pretoria began a movement two years ago to rename many of the Afrikaaner-named streets in Pretoria and honor those who fought against Apartheid.  Musa also went on to tell us that the name of the city of Pretoria is also being renamed, to Tshwane, a Bantu word that refers to the river running through the region.

I was able to find the website for the city of Tshwane/Pretoria and it had a nice document that explained all the street name changes.  In all, 21 name changes are being planned.  Here are just a few from the list:

Current Street Name	New Street Name
Jacob Mare	Jeff Masemola
Beatrix	Steve Biko
Hans Strydom	Solomon Mahlangu
Mitchell	Charlotte Maxeke
Van der Walt	Lilian Ngoyi
Prinsloo	Sisulu
Table Cell	Table Cell
Vermeulen	Madiba

Outside of the emotional/historical significance of these name changes, the question has to be “How much?”  From what I have been able to find, it looks like these changes will cost on the order of 350 million Rand, or almost $44 million.  That’s a LOT of money.  Considering the impoverished state of Kliptown or SSP’s attempts to get more township students into higher-end schools, I have to wonder if this is money that couldn’t be better spent elsewhere…