An insurrection in South Africa over the renaming of the historic country town of Graaff-Reinet has exposed deep-seated divisions in the country as it grapples with its troubled past.
According to a recent government decision, the nearly 250-year-old village of whitewashed Cape Dutch buildings and red flamboyant trees has been renamed after anti-apartheid icon Robert Sobukwe, who was born and died there.
According to a government document, it is one of over 1,500 geographical name modifications since the end of apartheid in 1994, with some focusing on names that “still reflect colonial and apartheid legacies.”
In the case of this generally tranquil oasis, deep in the semi-desert Karoo and approximately 650 kilometers (400 miles) from Cape Town, the renaming has sowed discord among its 25,000 residents, prompting demonstrations, petitions, and legal threats.
“There are now groups fighting each other,” said Hands Off Graaff-Reinet movement activist Laughton Hoffman, who went door-to-door to gather opposition to the shift.
“The renaming is taking us back,” he remarked, clutching stacks of objection forms, almost 22,000 of which had already been handed to the government.
The town is South Africa’s fourth oldest and holds a special place in the history of the Afrikaner population, which descends from early Dutch immigrants who arrived at the Cape 300 years ago.
It was founded in 1786 and named for the Cape Colony’s then-governor, Dutchman Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff, and his wife, Reinet. A century later, it became a launchpad for the Great Trek, when people fled to avoid British authority.
“What they’re doing is to divide a community that was otherwise healthy and happy,” another fierce opponent, lawyer Derek Light, told AFP in his office near an iconic neo-Gothic church.
A 2024 survey of 367 persons representative of the racial makeup of inhabitants found that approximately 84 percent did not want the name changed, he added.
According to Light, who has previously represented the country’s richest man, multi-billionaire Johann Rupert—whose family hails from Graaff-Reinet—and is working on a legal challenge to the name, the topic has sparked “angry rhetoric.”
He highlighted words made by Zola Hanabe, the first mayor following the first all-race elections in 1994.
“They came from overseas by sea,” Hanabe said of colonial settlers in a recent interview with Newzroom Afrika. “If they try to fight what we are, our origin, then the sea is open.”
The majority of locals, including Hands Off Graaff-Reinet advocate Hoffman, identify as “Coloured” individuals of mixed African, Asian, and European origin.
“We don’t agree with things like black economic empowerment because I’m a colored person, and we have been marginalized over the last 30 years,” said Hoffman.
Nestled in a loop of the Sundays River, the town is a picture of open verandas shaded by jacarandas, devoid of the high-security walls and electric gates found elsewhere in South Africa.
Its heritage is a big tourist attraction, with approximately 100,000 tourists each year continuing on to the surrounding Valley of Desolation, which is another reason stated in some opposition to the new name.
But for the family of Sobukwe, who formed the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959, the name represents long overdue recognition of his role in the liberation movement, with the debate reflecting persistent apartheid-era differences.
“I am not surprised by the opposition of a specific segment of the population who does not want to embrace change,” his grandson, Mangaliso Tsepo Sobukwe, told AFP.
Sobukwe organized anti-apartheid protests leading up to the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, in which security forces opened fire and killed dozens of people, exposing the world to the cruelty of white-minority rule.
His tomb on the outskirts of town was vandalized this week. Police said they had initiated a desecration investigation and were working to determine who was responsible.
“Someone who comes from that area, who led this glorious struggle for everyone to live in harmony, is being ignored and not accepted by the community of Graaff-Reinet itself,” said PAC deputy president Jaki Seroke.
“There is no malice intended in the name change. It is really about building a nation,” he said.
