MyPE

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

Name Changes Referendum

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Dear Editor

As the business sector’s saying goes:- “If it has to be enforced, then it is not a great idea to begin with”, I therefore doff my hat to Willy de Jong [The Herald 07 September 2023] for outlining an insightful, wise, respectful, mature and accommodating theorem on why names like Port Elizabeth has to be retained in lieu of the enforced Gqeberha moniker.

As some black bigots cum educational snobs like to spitefully remind me, as an apparent English sycophant, polisher of my masters’s marbles and/or shameless Anglophile, that South African is not some British outpost; pragmatism is the main reason why I am advocating for the retention of marketable names like Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage.

Our tourism industry is spluttering as it is and yet seemingly government functionaries see it fit to put the proverbial spanner in the works of an already struggling economic engine, irrespective of the general good of the masses, as long as their salaries and relevance are justified. I am talking about roughshod self-preservation of the politically connected within the echelons of our largely kleptocracy [governance through thievery].

The name changes fiasco can be refered as same script, different cast, when compared to Nazi Germany’s case study as after name-changes, who knows, Cape Malay people of the Western Cape will be side-lined as Malaysian offsprings that came to South Africa as indentured labourers and therefore not of Khoisan lineage. To get the bigotry ball rolling, South African Indians would also be most-likely muzzled into keeping quiet as originating from an indentured labourers’ heritage and therefore only tolerated because of the BRICS concoction.

As my The Godfather movie namesake, Marlon Brando, opined that after Adolf Hitler had killed off all people of Jewish ancestry, he would have therefore targetted those who were not blond or had no blue eyes, then homosexuals, then the disabled and so forth. In a nut shell, the current name changes tomfoolery has jealousy-driven intolerance and spite written all over it and is therefore setting a dangerous precedent for an ultimate genocide.

Fortunatelly, international petition platforms like Avaaz are well aware of the #RetainPortElizabeh movement, let alone our constitutional court that would be mulling over the matter of other places like Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and even the capital city Pretoria, remaining untouched by the hypocritical Africanism currently at play.

Regards

Luyanda Marlon Kama
Kwa-Dwesi, Gqeberha.

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Port Elizabethan

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