MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Name Changes Crusade

By

Dear Editor

As the legendary Fyodor Dostoyevsky put it in his Notes From Underground novel: “I’m like no-one and no-one is like me. I am me. They are them” … therefore, the repetitive, unjustifiably enforced and laager-mentality name changes of Gqeberha and Kariega refer [Trevor Bradfield, Walmer … The Herald 29 February 2024].

If one can take a drive from the Nanaga Farm Stall towards East London, then one will find lots of Kariega-named landmarks like a river along the way, hence the originality of the currently enforced name for Uitenhage is already a no-brainer in that repetition context. It is akin to the apparent ANC Imperialism of naming or renaming just about anything and everything after the said party’s members and its royallty like the Mandelas, Sisulus, Mbekis etc.

I am therefore speculating that very soon, the ozone layer covering the Southern African Development Community [SADC] is most-likely to be christened the Nelson Mandela Environmental Shield or something sycophantic along those lines; excusing the usage of a particular religious faith for the renaming crusade of outright atheists (non-believers in God) and nihilists (non-believers in anything).

Port Elizabeth does however have a namesake in the state of New Jersey in the USA, but I also doubt it very much that it was politically named and Gqeberha remains a repeated limited area that is Walmer township. In a nut shell, the born and bred Baainars like myself are not going to take the Gqeberha mononym lying down; irrespective of seemingly siding with the albeit annoying and often arrogant Anglo-supremacists, colonialism apologists and justifiers; if not outright white supremacists.

Regards

Luyanda Marlon Kama
Kwa-Dwesi, Gqeverha.

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.