I am happy to engage forum participants on this “Mafadi” topic and appreciate any contributions to the debate, such as ghaznavid’s. I do recognize that the naming controversy you have mentioned is a particular can of worms (or a welcoming opportunity depending on point of view), especially in Africa and certainly in RSA after 1994 given all the renaming done up and down the continent. It might be natural to extrapolate the “Mafadi” naming dispute to all naming issues around us were they all the same but I would hesitate to conflate intent and results into the same bag as it is certainly a varied bunch.
1. The colonial and apartheid legacies left us names which for better or worse did marginalize the powerless and oppressed with ruling nomenclature designed to rule and overpower. Naming restitution for the silenced voices and labels is not something I would disagree with. But “Mafadi” does not belong in this unsavoury category.
2. The colonial legacy that left us with Drakensberg peak names that no local tribes could conceive of or invent because they had their own names seems somewhat tendentious but not necessarily malicious and surely there are enough peaks aplenty to assign all sorts of names to regardless of their tribal, national or racial origins. There seem to be plenty of Zulu, Sesotho, Xhosa, Griqua, Afrikaans, English, Scottish, et al names all along the Berg to create a wonderful panapoly of colourful descriptors and namesakes. Exclusion of one over the other is not something I would agree with, however. “Mafadi” does not belong in this category either.
3. Some peaks are erroneously but innocently named – got the geography wrong – or simply misinformed and proceeded to name in good faith. “Mafadi” does not belong here as well.
“Mafadi” is a special case, namely due to its prominence as RSA’s highest and therefore should be subject to serious scrutiny. Furthermore, it would appear to have a clear conception of how it got its name, or at least a very strong conjecture, as documented in the report. It is not entirely innocent, in my opinion, since the name was not invented but readily available on another peak to ‘grab’; the name is incongruous with its current peak; and the source of the name as written on the Directorate of Surveys questionnaire is almost ludicrous for a peak (“mother of Fadi”).
I have made a clear case for renaming that is apolitical, non-threatening, unambiguous, not serving special interests and anyone has the option to do likewise for any namesake in RSA and make a case for if, in my opinion, similar benevolent motives are at stake. To reconstruct history for the sake of truth is a long way from renaming for personal aggrandizement or subversive ends and has no place certainly in this dialogue. Unfortunately naming has not always been so innocuous. I would hope that renaming “Mafadi” would simply be an issue in itself and remain there.
The link to the form for submission from the SA Govt Services website was not working for me either which is why I included the contact information should anyone be able to collect the form and post for us to complete. I would certainly like to do so but am far from Pretoria.
NB: To gain a wider appreciation of “Mafadi” beyond VE members would require the document to be able to be googled, but having to log on to the VE website prevents that exposure. Is there a way it can be on VE but also external to logging on, Intrepid?
