Port Alfred ratepayers move to interdict name change process

With both the Minister of Arts and Culture and his department staying firmly out of the fray, it’s up to the Eastern Cape Provincial Geographical Names Committee (ECPGNC) to respond to a court application seeking to stay the Port Alfred and Kowie River name change process. The Port Alfred Ratepayers and Residents Association (PARRA) on December 2 filed court papers that seek to interdict the current process to rename Port Alfred and the Kowie River on the basis that it’s unlawful. Through their lawyer Marius Coetzee of De Jager Lordan, PARRA argues that the public participation process so far undertaken by the ECPGNC fails to meet the requirements of the acts that govern how they should be done.

PARRA says the way the ECPGNC has acted so far goes against the policies published in the South African Geographical Names Council’s handbook and the ECPGNC’s own published policy: PARRA argues that notice of the public participation process wasn’t published within the prescribed timeframes and the ECPGNC failed to provide the information that stakeholders needed to meaningfully engage with the process. The Notice of Motion cites as first respondent arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie, with Eastern Cape Department of Sport Arts Recreation and Culture (DSRAC) MEC Sibulele Ngongo, Ndlambe Local Municipality, the SAGNC and the ECPGNC second, third, fourth and fifth respondents. PARRA has also requested a cost order against the SAGNC and ECPGNC.

The name change proposal was first made public in July, when a letter from secretariat head of the ECPGNC Mark Mandita, addressed to Ndlambe Local Municipality stakeholders and shared by the municipality’s committees department, invited stakeholders to a consultation on August 6 in the Port Alfred Civic Centre. “ECPGNC has received applications to standardise some geographical features in the Ndlambe Local Municipality. “It is against this backdrop that you are cordially invited to the Ndlambe Local Municipality stakeholders’ consultation meeting,” Mandita wrote in a letter date July 24.

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The proposed name changes are: Port Alfred to iCoyi or iCawa; the Kowie River to iQoyi; Alexandria to Nkosi Chungwa or Emnyameni. The ECPGNC is a body established by the MEC for Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture.

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