The road across the Karoo to Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape. The town is set to be renamed Robert Sobukwe Town. (Photo: Theo Jephta) 
Graaff-Reinet attorney Derek Light has sent a legal letter to Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie challenging a government gazette notice published on Friday that officially renamed Graaff-Reinet Robert Sobukwe Town.
The notice is the latest step in a highly contentious battle over the Karoo town’s renaming, first proposed in 2024. Graaff-Reinet was established in 1786.
The town was named after the Dutch governor, Cornelis Jacob van der Graaff, and Reinet, the maiden name of his wife, Cornelia.
The new name honours the legacy of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, who was born in Graaff-Reinet in 1924. He was a political activist and the founder of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC).
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/AV_00003952.jpg "Pan Africanist Congress founder Robert Sobukwe in 1978. (Photo: Sowetan / Gallo Images)")
Read more: Highlighting the compelling case for renaming Graaff-Reinet to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe
“The Minister’s notice is defective. It fails to inform the public that they have 30 days to object and also where they can object,” Light said on Tuesday.
“This process has to be procedurally fair, and this standard was not met,” Light said. If found to be defective, this will also affect name changes for other towns on the list, including East London, which is now KuGompo City.
The government gazette can be read here.
‘Massive resistance’ to name change
“There is a massive resistance to the name change in town,” Light said. “There will be heaps of objections going in.”
One of the objections, by the Graaff-Reinet Economic Development Forum, contains commissioned research by two academics showing that the town’s residents are not in favour of the name change.
/file/attachments/orphans/The-jagged-ironstone-peaks-and-valleys-of-the-Sneeuberg-mountains-near-Graaff-Reinet_Morne-van-Jaarsveld_232083.jpg "The jagged ironstone peaks and valleys of the Sneeuberg mountains near Graaff-Reinet, now renamed Robert Sobukwe Town. (Photo: Morne van Jaarsveld)")
“This year, the town is 240 years old. The vast majority of people living here do not want a name change. The origin of the name has become opaque and is no longer offensive to anybody,” Light said, discussing the research.
He said the group’s other point of contention is the huge procedural failure by the Eastern Cape Geographical Name Council. “The public participation did not meet the legal standard required, and there have been a string of failures in the process,” he said. The process was referred back to the Geographical Name Council at one point to correct its public participation procedure.
“We have a complicated country with a complicated history,” Light said. “There is a need for redress, but when you do an exercise like the minister has done here, it is not acceptable.”
He said the forum also wants an explanation why the renaming was not in line with the government policy that it is undesirable to name a town after an individual. Light said not even Nelson Mandela had a town or a city named after him, only a municipality.
“We all recognise Robert Sobukwe as iconic. He died when I was still a young man, but I knew his wife. This not an attack on him or his family,” Light said. Sobukwe’s widow, Zondani Veronica Sobukwe, died in Graaff-Reinet in 2018. The Sobukwe family has given permission for his name to be used for Graaff-Reinet.
Light said up to today the full application and motivation for the name change, including the individual who proposed the name change, had never been shared with the forum.
He added that the forum will go to court if it has to. “This will not be tolerated.”
Open defiance
The chair of the Graaff-Reinet Ratepayers Association, Liz Buisman, said the town refuses to accept the name change. “We are determined, and we are rallying.”
She said scores of objections are being compiled and sent off.
The town will be hosting a large Heritage Society Conference in December. “We had a meeting on Monday, and it was decided that this will not be called the Robert Sobukwe Heritage Society Conference. It will be called the Graaff-Reinet Heritage Society Conference,” she said.
“We will remind the Department of this,”she added.
The impetus for the name change
The name change was proposed by Nolubabalo Mcinga, a South African politician, activist and former member of Parliament for the Economic Freedom Front, who was briefly married to the AbaThembu King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo. She also briefly acted as the deputy president of Floyd Shivambu’s Africa Mayibuye Movement.
She is the founder of the Azania Movement, which focuses on social justice and youth empowerment. Mcinga hails from Graaff-Reinet.
Daily Maverick is awaiting comment from Mcinga.
‘Correction of history’
Apa Poee from the PAC described the renaming of the town as a “revolutionary correction of history”.
“Let us be clear: this opposition is not about procedure – it is about power, memory, and whose history matters in Azania,” his statement reads. Poee added that colonial names are not neutral but “instruments of domination”.
“Graaff-Reinet is not an innocent name. It is a colonial inscription imposed in honour of Dutch colonial officials, representing conquest, dispossession and the erasure of African identity. Such names were never subjected to consultation with the indigenous African majority. They were imposed by force.
“To now demand ‘proper consultation’ as a precondition for undoing colonial injustice is to freeze history at the point of African subjugation. The PAC rejects this hypocrisy without reservation,” he said.
“Sobukwe was not merely a political figure – he was the philosopher of African liberation, the founding president of the PAC and the man who re-centred the African as the subject of history, not its footnote.
“The discomfort with Sobukwe’s name reveals the real issue: his ideas remain dangerous to colonial comfort,” he said.
Residents’ attitudes to name change
Professor Ronnie Donaldson, from the University of Stellenbosch’s Tourism and Urban research unit, was one of the academics who researched Graaff-Reinet residents’ attitudes towards the name change and found that 83.6% of those living in town were opposed to the name change, citing the town’s historical significance.
His study found that the name of Graaff-Reinet provided residents with a community identity and the fears were that this would be lost if the town’s name were to change. Donaldson further found that Xhosa-speaking residents referred to the town as “Irafu”, which was the phonetic expression for Graaff-Reinet.
The politics
The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Leander Kruger accused McKenzie of misleading the people of the Eastern Cape when, a year and a half ago, he told the media that he was not approving the name changes for Graaff-Reinet and that there were “bigger issues” that needed attention.
/file/attachments/orphans/ED_5852321_602977.jpg "Minster of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie. (Photo: Gallo Images / Frennie Shivambu)")
“Despite this, he signed off on the name changes of Graaff-Reinet to Robert Sobukwe, East London to KuGompo City, Aberdeen to Xamdeboo, Adendorp to Bishop Limba and Barkly East to Ekhephini.
“We await responses from the Provincial and National Name Changes Committee regarding how these rejected name changes have now seemingly been allowed to be processed. The DA will be actively assisting residents to object in the correct and legally compliant manner,” Kruger said.
“We will be providing individual objection letters for residents to complete and will also make online objection forms available for those who are unable to visit us in person.
“All completed objections will be submitted to the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture within the prescribed one-month objection period. It is critical that as many objections as possible are lodged within this timeframe.
“The DA supports reconciliation and nation-building in South Africa. However, we do not believe that forced or poorly consulted name changes achieve this goal. True reconciliation is built through unity, dialogue and respect for communities – not through decisions imposed without meaningful public participation or historical links,” Kruger said.
The leader of the Freedom Front Plus, Corne Mulder, called on people to “just ignore” the name change.
“Graaff-Reinet will always be Graaff-Reinet – and not Robert Sobukwe Town – to the Freedom Front Plus (VF Plus). The party, therefore, calls on the people of Graaff-Reinet, the broader Eastern Cape and the rest of South Africa to ignore the name change,” he said.
“This not only proves that limited public funds are being spent on misguided priorities, but it is also a blatant example of cultural imperialism in which Afrikaner cultural history is annihilated under the pretext of so-called social cohesion.
“It has become customary to expect Afrikaners, and only Afrikaners, to sacrifice their heritage on the altar to appease the rest. We refuse to keep doing it. So, the Freedom Front Plus implores everyone who values the name Graaff-Reinet to remain loyal to the name, which is inextricably part of everyone in the country’s shared heritage and national identity.
“More than 30 years have passed since the beginning of the new political dispensation, and yet there is still this needless meddling – such as changing names – which benefits no one. These steps create division and waste taxpayers’ money, while urgent problems such as job creation, infrastructure and safety are ignored.
“The Freedom Front Plus rejects Graaff-Reinet’s name change and will rectify it at the first opportunity that arises,” Mulder said.
McKenzie’s spokesperson, Stacey-Lee Khojane, has not yet responded to a request for comment. DM