Pretoria - The battle for Pretoria street names has literally been taken to the streets after 49 signs with the old Church Street name were put up on Sunday night, much to the annoyance of the City of Tshwane.
AfriForum Youth accepted responsibility for adding the Church Street signs to the name posts at some of the street corners, saying it was merely reclaiming its heritage.
Ian Cameron, leader of AfriForum Youth, said they had 54 signs to put up on the night. However, they only managed to put up 49 before police intervened, he stated.
Cameron said at least five of their members were unlawfully arrested during what he referred to as the Church Street renaissance.
They were detained at Sunnyside police station but allowed to leave two hours later without being charged.
Cameron said their new signs were put up under the signage of Stanza Bopape, WF Nkomo and Helen Joseph streets between Pretoria West and Hatfield.
The signs were written “Church Street”, with translations in Sepedi and Afrikaans and greeted those entering the city centre on Monday.
Cameron insisted they did nothing wrong. “We maintain that the metro council followed the wrong procedure when it changed the road names. The city’s actions were thus illegal,” Cameron said.
The city and AfriForum had been embroiled in the name change court battle for a number of years now.
The city lost its objection to the application for both old and new street names to be displayed on the streets in the high court in Pretoria.
It appealed against the decision and lost, and the matter is now heading to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
In terms of the high court ruling, the city had to reinstate the old street names, together with the new ones. This was pending court proceedings in which the decision to rename the streets would be challenged.
“Although the court granted the order to reinstate the original street name signs, (they) have still not been changed,” Cameron said.
He said their street signs had Afrikaans, Sepedi and English translations that would please everyone. All would be happy about the renaissance, according to Cameron.
“When we were putting up the signs, even taxi drivers were thanking us, because the new names were giving them problems too,” Cameron said.
However, the City of Tshwane has described the action as “cowardly and provocative”.
Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa said the city was well within its rights not to reinstate the old names until it had exhausted all remedies at its disposal.
“And until such time, AfriForum can continue to wish for a return to the past, an idea we are certain we will defeat at the Supreme Court of Appeal,” the mayor said.
Ramokgopa, through his spokesman Blessing Manale, condemned the action by AfriForum Youth.
“We regard this recent demonstration as yet another racist attack on our national democratisation and nation building efforts and a desperate attempt by the minority group to reinstil the spirit of a swart gevaar (black threat). (It) perpetuates a lie that the Afrikaner community is under threat of extinction as a result of the actions of a black led non-Afrikaans government,” he said.
“We regret that despite the police apprehending the perpetrators, they were later released without any charges or docket being opened against them.”
He said the city had consequently decided to lay charges of damage to property, vandalism and violation of a high court order, among others, against the leadership of the AfriForum Youth.
A total of 27 street names in Pretoria’s central business district were changed in early 2012 to reflect a shared heritage.
Earlier in 2007, the council had passed a resolution on changing identified street names.
The then council speaker Khorombi Dau said the names were of people who had contributed to the liberation struggle, the struggle for gender equality, as well as cultural activists.
Pretoria News