The Johannesburg municipal council has deferred a motion to rename Wolmarans Street in the Johannesburg CBD.
The UDM’s Yongama Zigebe is spearheading the campaign to rename Wolmarans Street after the leader of The Revelation Spiritual Home (TRSH), Dr. uZwi-Lezwe Radebe. This church is located on the same street and is known for integrating Christianity with African spirituality.
On Thursday, Zigebe requested that the motion be deferred until the next council meeting. He did not explain why.
But he told The Citizen on Friday that he is still passionate about this name change and that he wants the process to go ahead.
“Renaming Wolmarans is not about hero-worship. It is about recognising contribution. Wolmarans Street currently reflects a colonial naming tradition.
“Renaming it does not erase history; it contextualises it. Johannesburg cannot remain architecturally African but symbolically colonial. Street names are not decoration. They are curriculum. They educate daily.”
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Why name a street after Dr Uzwi-Lezwe Radebe?
Zigebe said Radebe is an exemplary figure to the people of Johannesburg and the rest of Gauteng. He said Radebe embodies values of community upliftment, nation building and the advancement of the country’s democratic values. He has also described him as a leader in different sectors of society.
“This motion affirms that impact matters. That institution-building matters. That identity restoration matters. That African intellectual contribution deserves permanent recognition in the geography of this city.
“Renaming this street is not about sentiment. It is about aligning our spatial landscape with the democratic values of dignity, recognition, and cultural affirmation,” he said.
Opposition to the name change
Meanwhile, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) said it is completely against the renaming of Wolmarans Street. The party’s leader, Corne Mulder, told The Citizen on Friday that the Johannesburg municipal council should be more concerned about service delivery than renaming streets.
“We welcome the fact that the motion to change the name of Wolmarans Street was withdrawn. We do not support the proposed name change. It has become a very negative habit to try to change the names of streets, cities, and towns in the run-up to elections.
“It must be seen for what it really is. An attempt to disguise service delivery failures with something easy but very costly to create the impression that something was done,” said Mulder.
Who is Wolmarans?
Wolmarans Street is named after Jacobus Wolmarans, who played a crucial role in the history of Johannesburg, serving on the city’s administration in the 1890s. He was also a member of the executive committee of the ZAR Volksraad, which was the legislative body of the Transvaal Republic.
Controversies
Even though there are calls for Wolmarans to be renamed after Radebe, he has been in trouble with the law on several occasions.
In 2015, he refused to appear before the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities. At the time, the commission was investigating the abuse and commercialisation of religion.
He also made the news in 2016 for failing to follow an order by the CCMA to pay his former bodyguard R100 000; he had fired the protector for visiting a sangoma.
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