Cape Town - The City of Cape Town’s renaming committee has agreed to recommend to mayor Patricia de Lille that council rename a portion of Voortrekker Road in Durbanville to Pampoenkraal Laan.
The chairman of the naming committee, Brett Herron, said the city had cleared up any concerns that objectors had to the renaming.
One of these had been from the Durbanville Heritage Association, who said in a letter to council that it believed the existing name was more fitting because of the Voortrekker monument in the area.
The road runs alongside the Durbanville Town Hall where the Pampoenkraal Heritage Site Upgrade project is under way.
It used to be the resting area for travellers during the early 1700s.
The committee did an in loco inspection of the area to understand objectors’ concerns.
Herron said that after engagement with them, they were now in support of renaming the 225m stretch.
The committee agreed that the renaming should include the word “lane” in English and Afrikaans.
The naming committee has also visited the Rocklands Minor Hall in Mitchells Plain to inform a decision on a proposal to turn the hall into a UDF museum.
The hall is used as a crèche.
The committee noted it was not within the city’s mandate to establish a museum and that, instead, it can create a memorial at the hall or rename the hall itself.
The DA’s Leonore van der Walt said the committee did not want to see the crèche being forced out of the hall.
But the ANC’s Xolani Ndongeni and Rina Simons said they didn’t believe the hall was conducive as a facility for children. The hall was overcrowded and the ventilation was poor.
The city had to do more to improve the conditions for a crèche, they argued.
They also called for provincial and national government to get involved in the memorialisation plan.
The PAC’s Anwar Adams said it would be an insult to only name a hall after the UDF and that the city should look at renaming the precinct instead.
Herron said: “We have to work around the reality and not what we think should happen there. I suggest we pursue what we can bring to fruition.”
Subcouncil 12 asked the committee not to exclude access to the hall for recreational purposes in the memorialisation plans.
In the past six months of last year, 161 events took place at the hall.
The subcouncil proposed an existing quad which links the library and other civic buildings to the halls, for a memorial instead.
The naming committee agreed that the city should look at upgrading the minor hall, possibly creating a mural and a memorial to the political movement.
The city’s heritage department has been asked to gather all related items from its archives for the committee to determine whether a memorial would be feasible.
Cape Argus