Durban name-change sparks chaos

DURBAN – Shoppers fled and shop-owners hurriedly lowered their shutters as several hundred stick- and knobkerrie-wielding protesters ran down Durban’s five-lane Broad street yesterday.While police frantically moved traffic out of their way, the protesters upended dustbins, but they caused no apparent damage before being marshalled and directed to Albert Park.

There, they joined another 5 000 to 6 000 mainly Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) members protesting against the renaming of places – mostly street names – by the eThekwini municipality’s African National Congress-dominated council. The council plans to rename the Mangosuthu highway after the ANC leader Griffiths Mxenge, a lawyer killed in the 1980s, and Broad street after former SA Communist Party chairperson Dr Yusuf Dadoo.It also plans to rename the city hall Madiba Hall after former President Nelson Mandela.The protesters – whose ranks were expected to be swelled by members of the Democratic Alliance and African Christian Democratic Party – were to march to the city hall to hand over a memorandum of their grievances to eThekwini mayor Obed Mlaba.Heavily-armed police in armoured and normal vehicles were monitoring and trying to control the gathering on the ground, while a helicopter circled overhead.The name-change protest began at about 02:00 yesterday when a group barricaded the Mangosuthu highway, in Umlazi south of Durban, with dustbins and burning tyres, and smashed traffic lights.In his weekly internet letter, the IFP’s leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi reportedly said he knew the removal of his name did not diminish his status or contribution to the country’s liberation struggle.However, he feared that a new name for the Mangosuthu highway could “re-open the many old wounds in KwaZulu-Natal, which we have striven to heal for many years”.Buthelezi warned the ANC against honouring only its own liberation fighters in its renaming drive.”It seems to me that freedom fighters who did not hail from the same stable as the ruling party are being given scant consideration.This is short-sighted and in the long run, counterproductive,” he said.Renaming could not be conducted “in a manner befitting Mao’s Cultural Revolution, in which names and events that do not fit into the ruling party’s liberation narrative are disdainfully ejected”.Nampa-SapaThe council plans to rename the Mangosuthu highway after the ANC leader Griffiths Mxenge, a lawyer killed in the 1980s, and Broad street after former SA Communist Party chairperson Dr Yusuf Dadoo.It also plans to rename the city hall Madiba Hall after former President Nelson Mandela.The protesters – whose ranks were expected to be swelled by members of the Democratic Alliance and African Christian Democratic Party – were to march to the city hall to hand over a memorandum of their grievances to eThekwini mayor Obed Mlaba.Heavily-armed police in armoured and normal vehicles were monitoring and trying to control the gathering on the ground, while a helicopter circled overhead.The name-change protest began at about 02:00 yesterday when a group barricaded the Mangosuthu highway, in Umlazi south of Durban, with dustbins and burning tyres, and smashed traffic lights.In his weekly internet letter, the IFP’s leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi reportedly said he knew the removal of his name did not diminish his status or contribution to the country’s liberation struggle.However, he feared that a new name for the Mangosuthu highway could “re-open the many old wounds in KwaZulu-Natal, which we have striven to heal for many years”.Buthelezi warned the ANC against honouring only its own liberation fighters in its renaming drive.”It seems to me that freedom fighters who did not hail from the same stable as the ruling party are being given scant consideration.This is short-sighted and in the long run, counterproductive,” he said.Renaming could not be conducted “in a manner befitting Mao’s Cultural Revolution, in which names and events that do not fit into the ruling party’s liberation narrative are disdainfully ejected”.Nampa-Sapa