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The newly gazetted names of KuGompo City and Robert Sobukwe Town face fresh legal challenges.
Lobby group AfriForum has approached the high court in Pretoria to challenge the renaming of Graaff-Reinet to Robert Sobukwe Town, while National Community Dialogues chairperson Leonard Ncumbese confirmed that lawyers had also been briefed to challenge East London’s name change.
Ncumbese was part of a grouping that spearheaded a petition opposing the name changes affecting several towns in the Eastern Cape, which gathered about 38,000 signatures.
Brandon Blignaut, representing NPO Friends of Schalk Movement, which is working in conjunction with Ncumbese and other objectors, confirmed that court papers had already been drafted and would likely be filed next week.
The legal challenge is to compel sports, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie to provide reasons for allegedly failing to respond to objections against the name changes.
“We prepared an application to request the minister to provide reasons why he has not responded to the objections and why he has renamed the town despite the objections. He is going to have to respond to that,” said Blignaut.
He said once reasons were received from the minister, they would consider launching a further application to review and set aside McKenzie’s decision.
AfriForum’s argument in relation to Robert Sobukwe Town is that the process followed by authorities was unconstitutional and ignored thousands of objections from residents.
AfriForum’s head of cultural affairs, Alana Bailey, said the application sought to challenge both the decision itself and the legislation governing geographical name changes.
“The purpose of the application is firstly to have the provisions of Section 10 of the Act declared unconstitutional,” she said.
Bailey argued that the law allowed the government to approve name changes before fully hearing affected communities and that residents were only able to formally object after the decision had already been approved.
“No provision for consultation or public participation is made before the final name change is effected,” she said.
AfriForum claims more than 21,000 objections were submitted against the renaming of Graaff-Reinet, but these were allegedly not properly considered before McKenzie approved the decision.
“It speaks for itself that when the approval of the name change occurred, the first respondent did not have all relevant information before him,” Bailey said.
The South African Geographical Names Council (SAGNC), Eastern Cape Provincial Geographical Names Council and Dr Beyers Naude municipality are also cited as respondents in the matter.
Bailey further accused authorities of failing to follow the Eastern Cape’s own policy on geographical name changes, which she said required proper stakeholder engagement and public consultation before recommendations could be made.
“In what follows, I will show noncompliance with the policy during the process which eventually led to the approval,” she said.
Speaking to the Dispatch on Thursday, Bailey said while the application specifically challenged the renaming of Graaff-Reinet, the constitutional challenge to the process itself could have wider implications for other towns renamed during the same period, including KuGompo City, formerly East London.
Responding to the application, SAGNC chair Johnny Mohlala confirmed the council had received the court papers but defended the process followed.
“If you ask me, from the point of the council, this matter is functional, meaning the council will never arrive at a different conclusion than it has already arrived at,” he said.
“The council is satisfied with the process that it followed until its recommendation of the name changes. We can’t possibly find anything wrong in what we’ve done.”
Mohlala said the matter would now be left to the courts.
“If the court is what they’ve called for, I’m the one who will go there, because then we’ll have a court decision which will then be binding on all parties.
“I’m not a judge, but this one won’t win in court,” he said.
Graaff-Reinet, the sixth oldest town in the country, has long been at the centre of debate over renaming proposals, with some groups previously pushing for the town to honour anti-apartheid activist Fred Hufkie instead of Robert Sobukwe.
Sobukwe, a Graaff-Reinet native, was eventually selected.
He was the founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress and led the 1960 Sharpeville anti-pass protests.
After his arrest, Sobukwe was imprisoned on Robben Island under the notorious “Sobukwe Clause”, which allowed authorities to extend his detention indefinitely.
After his release, he remained under house arrest until his death in 1978.
The latest court challenge comes after Sobukwe’s grave was vandalised, with suspicions raised that the incident may be linked to opposition over the renaming of the town.
Sobukwe’s family said they were not surprised by AfriForum’s legal action.
His grandson, Mangaliso Tshepo Sobukwe, described the organisation as “a well-funded racist, right-wing organisation”.
“They will do whatever it takes to sustain the legacy of apartheid,” he said.
Following the renaming announcement, McKenzie revealed he had received calls from Freedom Front Plus leader Corne Mulder expressing opposition to the decision and indicating the matter could end up in court.
At the time, McKenzie said he felt obliged to approve the renaming after councils involved in the process had “ticked all the right boxes”.
McKenzie’s office had not commented by the time of publication.
The matter is expected to be heard next week.
Daily Dispatch