“Mafadi”: the invention of a peak and the misconstructions of RSA mapmakers

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i always enjoy a good story of naming errors, but there are so many of them in the berg, eg giant's castle v garden castle, cathedral peak v mponjwane etc. The part that concerns me is the classification of the injisuthi dome as a khulu, based on how close it is to mafadi and the not significant height difference i feel it should be de-khulu-fied! I do like ntelede as a name for mafadi though.

The article does answer a previous question of mine though, the naming of rock formations, rivers and peaks. I went onto the website shown in the article, but the form itself doesn't appear to be downloadable, does anyone know how to get the form?

I personally don't think that peaks should be renamed based on historical errors, where would it end? Suddenly we name Cathedral Peak - Mponjwane and Mponjwane - Cathedral, Giants Castle and Garden Castle reverse their names, suddenly we have to rename half the KZN Wildlife reserves as Garden Castle and Giant's Castle (although technically Giant's Catle is in Lotheni, and, ironically enough, Lotheni Peak is in Giant's Castle)...

@Intrepid: Can't remember why I had Injisuthi Dome on "dodgy khulu status" (I think it was based on someones comments on an earlier forum), its more than 1km from Mafadi, has 6 contour lines between it and Mafadi, but anyway (I write this comment after writing about a page on the peak before convincing myself that my arguement was wrong!)...

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?

Personally, working in auditing, I'm very used to making a note of names being slightly wrong (if a company called Cathedral Peak 112 (Pty) Ltd has Cathedral Peak 113 (Pty) Ltd on an invoice, SARS can disallow the VAT and tax deduction of the amount, so it is actually an issue), so I can identify with such issue.

I agree that names are definately important, especially when talking about the highest point in a country. But what exactly constitutes a "correct name", eg Grimm's Castle at Garden Castle (my icon on this forum), it is officially an unnamed rock feature (hence me wanting a form to get its name officially recognised), its name comes from a discussion on this forum, does this make it an incorrect name?

Good old Injisuthi Dome, I think its another peak in the general area that is disputable as a khulu, after exams (and some physical verification in terms of the relevant auditing standards ) I will get back to you on what peak I am thinking of...

Thomas - sorry, I came across this after I had made my other post. Your suggested "Ntheledi" seems pretty valid to me.
However, don't be too hard on the mapmakers. We produced the original Drakensberg series in the midst of a plethora of "correcting", esp. Zulu names - the outcry we had for calling the Tugela the Thuleka is a case in point. I recently mapped the Wild Coast. Not only do the rural villages [kraals] move from time to time, they have different names depending upon whether you live in them, or from which direction you are looking at them. It's interesting that the posts on this page don't agree on the spelling of Injasuthi/Injisuthi etc etc .... In the MCSA [Cape Town] there are still warring factions over "Kasteelpoort" vs "Kasteelspoort". Cartographers often just can't win!