South Africa renames +80 cities and towns to disassociate itself from colonialism

Like anyone except the dozen people who speak a Khoisan language will use those new names. They will be excellent Scrabble plays.

Children having temper tantrums

CRADOCK CRADOCK CRADOCK

The snowflakes are about to have a shrieking meltdown over this post.

Who give a fat fuck?

So what? Ireland did the same thing.

Nothing new, they have already renamed a few in the past, I'll keep using their old names, because I don't speak any bantu language or any language from any African tree.

And Bruce is now Kaitlyn.

I can understand the impulse, but it seems rather confusing.

Ain’t nobody gonna now how to say those names.

Ireland only did a partial job.

[quote] Graaff-Reinet → Robert Sobkwe or Fred Hufkie

wtf?

Well, at least we can say South Africa never fails to fascinate.

I'm fascinated by Capetown! It has to be one of the world's most stunning cities.

But what's its new/real name now?

Since I had never heard of any of these before, I won't notice a difference. The only city I want to visit is Cape Town.

Now most of those garbage heaps will have unpronounceable names. Progress at work!

Excuse me tourists, I speak jive.

Amateurs

It’s not just Americans who are erasing history they don’t like.

R19, I think the point is that in this case, history is actually winning out.

Replacing historical place names of English or a Dutch language origin with random strings of letters in South Africa is erasing history.

I'm sure people can look up the names on the internet, r21.

R21, I'm pretty sure that whatever tribe exist(ed) in South Africa before the English/Dutch has a much, much longer claim to history in that region.

R23, history didn’t stop when the Europeans came and is now somehow restarting. History includes the time when these places were in their heyday when they had the English and Dutch names.

R24, okay? So a place should maintain a name that they've held only for a blip in the historical radar?

To be fair, some of those places (especially the Dutch-named towns) were founded by the Dutch in the first place.

But hey — it’s their country, they can name and rename places however they see fit.

Because names like "De Aar" sound so sentimental...

Is South Africa one of those counties where there is no dominant language or dialect? Because the not chosen language speakers will be pissed.

South Africa has 11 official languages.

The town of Zola Budd retained its name because its citizens run barefoot and have a knack for tripping American fraus.

Totally their right to do so…it seems to be irritating to some of you here…

[quote] South Africa has 11 official languages.

I don’t see gibberish on the list. I wonder why they decided to use that for the new place names.

OP is also:

*CNN has Trump outside of margin of error now*

[quote]Trump will win. We know. The rest choose to live in their MSNBC bubble. This is 2016 all over again.

I think these cities are all in the Eastern Cape province, which is demographically overwhelmingly Black and the traditional homeland of the Xhosa (a Bantu ethnic group descended from people who migrated from Central Africa to the area at least five hundred years before Europeans arrived.)

Capetown is in the Western Cape. There is a large Black population in the Western Cape but the largest ethnic group are the Cape Coloureds (a mixed race people who descend from Africans, Europeans and the indentured Asians who were brought over in colonial times). The Indigenous Africans of the Western Cape, an area which Bantu groups never really settled because the landscape was not conducive to the forms of agriculture they practiced, were the Khoisan people (what used to be called the Bushmen and the Hottentots). Very few Khoisan people still exist and practice Khoisan culture or speak Khoisan languages, but the Cape Coloureds have significant Khoisan ancestry.

The Cape Coloureds generally speak Afrikaans as a first language and despite having been marginalized during Apartheid, still mostly politically align with white South Africans and vote for the Democratic Alliance. I’d be surprised if any places in the Western Cape were re-named with Xhosan or other Bantu-language names.

You can call me whatever you like, just don’t call me late for dinner.

That list also matches 2024's Top African-American Baby Names list.

What comes to your mind when I say tall building in Chicago?