Termine

This paper compares contested street renaming processes in Pretoria, South Africa and Berlin, Germany. In the mid 2000’s, the City of Pretoria embarked on a process of renaming a number of street and place names considered distasteful, racist or out-dated, proposing to change them to recognise black histories and local liberation heroes. Attempts at toponymic re-inscription of the urban landscape, including changing the name of the city, were vigorously opposed by, among others, Afrikaner groups who saw the action as an attempt to erase Afrikaner history and heritage. For a decade or more Berlin-based activists have agitated for the changing of streets named after German officials involved in colonial projects in Africa, mainly in what is known as the Afrikanische Viertel in Wedding. Part of a project to call attention to links between contemporary racism and German colonial history, these attempts to rename streets has consistently been obstructed by affected residents resistant to change, a lack of political will and dismissive mainstream public opinion. These two similar, yet contrasting examples of street renaming struggles, one in Africa, another about Africa, one driven by local authorities but resisted by civic organisations, the other driven by civic organisations but resisted by local authorities, open up an important set of questions about race, place and belonging. What notions of race are raised and how are they mobilised in attempts to claim and contest urban public pasts? What concepts of place are at play in these contests over street names in Berlin and Pretoria? And how is belonging framed and articulated through the contestation of commemorative place names in both contexts? Using a South African example to comparatively interpret cultural and political dynamics that inform heritage contestation in Germany, the paper therefore interrogates what urban decolonisation can possibly mean. ​