Pretoria -
The capital city will continue to have two names – with the uncertainty surrounding its proposed change from Pretoria to Tshwane destined to drag into next year.
In October, the City of Tshwane municipality cancelled indefinitely the final round of public participation meetings, saying it wanted to approach “various institutions and organisations” on the matter that had been dragging on since 2003.
The new date for public participation is yet to be set but is unlikely to be in this calendar year.
Tshwane is the name of the metropolitan area, while the city is known as Pretoria, creating confusion and uncertainty about what people should call the capital city.
Executive mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa remained adamant that the decision to change the name to Tshwane had been made and would not be revised.
Ramokgopa said the council had given its approval and stood by its decision, irrespective of the outcome of the public participation to be conducted in due course.
“Information obtained from the public participation as well as our record of decision will be given to Arts and Culture Minister Paul Mashatile. The minister will then make a final decision,” Ramokgopa said in an exclusive interview with the Pretoria News.
Civil rights organisation AfriForum said it was unfortunate that the mayor was determined to ignore the views of the people and forge ahead with the renaming.
AfriForum leader Kallie Kriel said the organisation would continue to challenge the decision to rename Pretoria and would resort to legal action if the name was changed.
He believed the delay by the council in carrying out the public participation exercise was because there was overwhelming public support for the capital city’s current name.
Kriel said: “The last round of public participation recorded an 81 percent rejection of the name change. Our SMS campaign has seen about 164 000 respondents indicating they favoured the retention of the name Pretoria.
“The city is delaying the final round of public participation because it knows people are against the name change. We need to prevent a similar situation as that of e-tolling, where the views of the public were ignored.”
The DA spokeswoman on local geographic names, Elmarie Linde, said the Pretoria name issue was “very emotional”. It was important that any process to change the name adhered to the legal framework and offered all residents the opportunity to make proposals, have their say and indicate their preferred name.
“We don’t know exactly the reason for the cancellation of public participation meetings and will submit questions to find out why this decision was taken,” said Linde.
Meanwhile, work on the site of the multibillion-rand development of Tshwane House, the new headquarters of the City of Tshwane, would begin at the end January or early in February, the city said.
Mayoral spokesman Blessing Manele said construction would start under an early works contract amendment, to carry out bulk earthworks for the foundations of the new Tshwane House.
Passers-by and members of the public will start seeing the construction from the ground as early as the first week of April.
The completion and occupation of the building has been pencilled in for July 2016.
Once completed, the building will house the office of mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa and the core administration of the capital.
The building is located on the site of the demolished Munitoria, the historic former municipal head office that housed the mayor's office and council chambers for more than 40 years.
Munitoria was gutted by fire in 1997 and subsequently imploded.
Ramokgopa now works from the Centurion municipal offices. His core management team and other city officials are scattered in different buildings across the metro.
The mayor said while the exact cost of this private-public partnership project was yet to be finalised, the initial submission was between R1.8 billion and R2bn. This included 25 years of operation and occupancy of the building.
The preferred bidder for the project was a joint consortium made up of Tsela Tshweu Consortium and Group Five and Standard Bank.
Pretoria News