The country has been celebrating the achievements of former President Nelson Mandela and his supreme vision of nation building.

For this amazing attribute alone, he has already gone down in history all over the world. I recall talking to him on more than one occasion, and an overriding feeling I recall related to his genuine interest in me at the time and his genuine spirit of peace and togetherness for all the people who live in our country.

I am sure that anyone speaking to the great man experiences the same feeling. When I was at various places overseas, I was proud to hear his name come up in conversation and then to hear the universal positive comment that followed.

But now to something different – the ongoing debate about whether to change the name of Pretoria to Tshwane. If there is one aspect of South Africa’s post-1994 history which has been the opposite of Madiba’s vision of nation building, it is name changing.

The whole spirit of name changing is the opposite of nation building. This is particularly true of the fact that it nearly always ends up in a mudslinging match between factions. The name changing always appears to be an attempt to get one up on the opposition. Nearly always, the name changing has no apparent logic in actually producing something positive.

I understand that there may be some names that need changing. However, my approach is that the process should be that, first, the existing name has to be removed. Note the word ‘removed,’ not ‘replaced’.

So there should be a ‘removal’ process. In other words, if some name is felt to be offensive or problematic, then somebody should first apply for removal. They would then have to give good reasons why the existing name should be taken away or removed.

There would then be a public debate pro-cess about the removal.

Now note another point – I do not believe that name changing should be allowed at municipal or even provincial level. Name changing should take place at national level only.

For example, I was born in Durban but I now live in Pretoria; however, fundamentally, I am a proud South African. As a result, I have a personal feeling about, and connection to, names such as Table Mountain, the Drakensberg and Ulundi. Just because I do not live in Cape Town or Ulundi should not mean that I have no input should the authorities in Cape Town or Ulundi want to change names in their areas of jurisdiction.

So the name Pretoria belongs to all the people of South Africa, not just the people who live there.

Okay, back to my process. After it may have been decided to remove a name, the name should lie vacant, so to speak, for a further six months while alternatives are proposed.

So, in Durban, for example, when they decided to remove the names of Point road and Broadway road, they should, first of all, explain why the names Point road and Broad- way road are offen- sive to some section of the population, and then move to the removal pro-cess, if the names are found to be problematic.

In the case of Pretoria, we already have a metropolitan (metro) municipal area called Tshwane. That is fine, no problem. But then one problem is that the metro is actually called the City of Tshwane, which is confusing.

When the previous metro mayor was pushing for the name change, I was at a dinner with many foreign guests when the mayor said: “We even have a meteorite crater in our city.”

The foreign guests were amazed and asked me how one could possibly have a crater in a city. I had to explain, with much embarrassment, that the Tswaing crater is indeed impressive, but is actually 30 km away, but still within the metro’s boundary. They said that the mayor was a loony since he could not tell the difference.

Name changing is very expensive. In Pretoria’s case, a figure of R1,5-billion has been spoken about. This does not even take into account international maps, Google Earth, history text books worldwide, global positioning systems in cars and aircraft and a myriad of other systems that all contain the existing name. The chaos caused by name changing is immense.

Where Johannesburg has road signs that say ‘Pretoria’, should the City of Johannesburg pay or should Pretoria pay if the signs have to be changed? All the ‘Pietersburg’ signs around Pretoria were up for years and were only changed to ‘Polokwane’ when the African National Congress had its big rally there. Some signs still say ‘Pietersburg’.

I guess Pretoria paid for the signs to be changed, so we paid for the decision of Polokwane. You see how this name changing is a national issue, and not just a local issue?

Recently, in Pretoria, when Minister of Arts and Culture Lulu Xingwana put the Pretoria name change issue on hold, a former councillor, Lebogang Nawa, said: “It seems our government is worrying too much about a minority vote.” Can one imagine the great Madiba saying something to that effect – why worry about a minority?

Nation building in South Africa has actually been incredibly successful; the world looks at us in stunned awe. Why mess it up now?

To subscribe to Engineering News's print magazine email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or buy now.