In late October 2024, we partook in an online public participation process for Johannesburg’s proposal to rename Sandton Drive, a major arterial in the city’s economic district (Sandton), to Leila Khaled Drive. According to a City of Johannesburg-issued media statement, public engagement for the renaming initiative garnered more than 70,000 supporters, making it historic as “the largest… for a name change in the history of Johannesburg”.
That’s no mean feat. According to a Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) map of the month on street renaming in Pretoria/Tshwane, name changes in Gauteng and South Africa often court considerable controversy. Take, for instance, the City of Tshwane’s internationally contested renaming of Koningin Wilhelmina Avenue after departed Struggle figure Florence Ribeiro in 2012, or Johannesburg’s more recent renaming of William Nicol Drive to Winnie Mandela Drive.
But Johannesburg’s latest street renaming proposal is proving to be even more controversial because of the significant implications it has for social cohesion and diplomatic relations.
This street renaming initiative, as a sign of solidarity, will strengthen South Africa-Palestine diplomatic ties, which are rooted in a shared history of struggle and a commitment to justice and human rights. In early 2016, Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial nerve centre, gifted Ramallah, Palestine’s economic hub, a gigantic bronze statue of globally renowned statesman Nelson Mandela. Following on that spirit, what better way for South Africa, a country that was ravaged by decades-long apartheid, to solidify ties with Palestine than by Johannesburg renaming a major arterial after legendary Palestinian Leila Khaled?
Yet, the renaming proposal has not gone without political and diplomatic backlash, locally and internationally. A Palestinian freedom fighter, Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Many consider her a major icon for her significant contribution towards Palestine’s struggle for emancipation. But other local stakeholders, like the SA Zionist Federation and the SA Jewish Report, consider her a terrorist and the PFLP a terrorist organisation. Consequently, some have moved to block the name change.
Political heroes are often subjectively defined. One country’s hero can be another’s villain. Such is the case with Khaled, whose legacy is contested internationally. American and Israeli press reporting on Sandton Drive’s probable renaming — AP News, the LA Times, Jewish Insider, and The Jerusalem Post — portray her as a militant terrorist.
This is unsurprising since Khaled remains vilified by Israel, the US and many Western states for successfully hijacking a TWA aircraft from Rome to Tel Aviv in 1969, and for unsuccessfully attempting to hijack an El Al plane leaving Amsterdam for New York in 1970.
What lies behind this controversial move?
What is curious, however, is why Johannesburg, a municipality whose place-naming policy encourages neutral names and discourages name-changes after living persons, has chosen to honour a living figure with a diplomatically contested legacy? Clearly, there are deeper political motives behind Johannesburg’s decision to commemorate Khaled in Johannesburg’s “urbanscape”. Among them, most likely is to show the proverbial middle finger to Israel and her longtime ally, the US.
Remember, Sandton Drive is home to the Johannesburg US Consulate and several synagogues and Jewish schools. The proposed name change implies that the US Consulate and Jewish establishments on this road will endure the financial and emotional inconvenience of changing their addresses on official documents. The US Consulate and Jewish organisations might also suffer the embarrassment of using, as their physical address(es), the name of a person that US and Israeli governments consider a terrorist!
The US position and support for Israel, especially during the recent conflict, coupled with South Africa’s stance that Israel is an apartheid state, makes it difficult to dismiss claims by the Patriotic Alliance (PA), an opposition minority party in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, that Sandton Drive’s renaming to Leila Khaled is a calculated political attempt aimed at “diplomatically slapping” the US.
Without a doubt, this impending renaming will rub Tel Aviv and Washington DC up the wrong way, but how will they respond?
Tit for tat game of renaming in history
It’s no secret that in the past, both Israel and the US have themselves symbolically insulted/demeaned international organisations and countries via street renaming.
In 1975, for instance, the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 equated Zionism to “racism and racial discrimination”. Israel was deeply offended. So offended that not too long after Resolution 3379’s promulgation, local politicians in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa arbitrarily renamed all streets bearing the UN’s name “Zionism Street”.
UN Resolution 3379 was repealed in 1991, but Zionism Street lives on in Israeli cities, and there haven’t been any efforts to re-commemorate the UN’s name on Israeli urban territory since then.
The US is also no stranger to retributive renaming. In 1998, the Bill Clinton administration shamed the General Sani Abacha-led Nigerian junta by renaming a New York City street corner that was home to the Nigerian Consulate, to Kudirat Abiola Corner.
Abiola was a Nigerian activist and archenemy of Abacha who, in 1996, was assassinated by the Abacha regime for bringing international attention to the ills of Abacha’s presidency.
Later in 1998, the Nigerian government retaliated by renaming Eleke Crescent, a Lagos street in front of the US embassy, after controversial African American anti-establishment cleric Louis Farrakhan!
Funnily enough, embassies in both countries, out of chagrin, never used their new street names on their official documents. Nigeria’s regime change later in 1998 paved the way for the renaming of Louis Farrakhan Street after Walter Carrington, an African American US ambassador, in a bid to repair severed Nigeria-US relations. Interestingly, Kudirat Abiola Corner lives on in New York City.
Should the renaming go ahead, there are many who will be upset, locally and internationally. Diplomatic ties with Israel, whose occupation of Palestine seemingly has no end date, will continue to be strained. Time will tell how the US will respond. Whatever the consequences, this name-changing saga highlights street renaming’s power as a means of forging solidarity with certain states while symbolically insulting others.
The naming and renaming of monuments and public spaces will continue to be contentious as memory preservation through name change is an exercise of power. DM