CULTURE
WHAT THE LAND was already called
LONG BEFORE THE ROAD SIGNS SPOKE ENGLISH, AFRIKAANS OR GERMAN, THE LAND ALREADY HAD ITS OWN LANGUAGE. NAMES SHAPED BY RIVERS, HILLS, WINDS AND MOODS, NAMES THAT DESCRIBED, RATHER THAN POSSESSED.
When the colonists arrived, they redrew the map of the land in their own image. Port Elizabeth, Pietersburg, Nylstroom, Witbank … The new words settled on top of the old ones like dust, and many never questioned what lay beneath.
But in recent years, South Africa has been listening again. Some of those buried names have risen back to the surface, carrying history in their syllables. Gqeberha, once Port Elizabeth, returns the isiXhosa word for the Baakens River that runs through the city. It’ s a name that moves like water, deep, rhythmic, sprung from the earth. Polokwane, which replaced Pietersburg in Limpopo, means“ place of safety” in Sepedi. It was chosen not as an act of defiance but of belonging, echoing the sense of refuge the area once offered travellers and traders.
Up north, Modimolle replaced Nylstroom, a correction to a colonial era misunderstanding. In the 1860s, Voortrekkers mistook a local river for the Nile and built a settlement called Nylstroom. The indigenous name, now restored, is Modimolle, meaning“ place of the spirit” or“ God has eaten” in Northern Sotho; a sacred reference to the nearby Modimolle Hill, long a site of prayer. Similarly, eMalahleni, meaning“ place of coal” in isiZulu, reclaimed the identity of a landscape once renamed Witbank(“ white ridge”) by miners who ignored what the locals had already called it for generations.
Not all stories are clean exchanges. Some older names linger in fragments, bent through colonial spelling but still audible. Kuruman, derived from the Tswana word“ kuru”, meaning a great fountain or spring. Keimoes, from the Khoekhoe word for“ large eye” or“ spring of water.” Prieska, likely from Prieschap, meaning“ place of the lost she-goat”... These are names that hold both cultures at once, indigenous cadence and European distortion folded into one.
Language is never just words. It’ s worldview. Indigenous names come from relationship with the land; colonial ones, from dominion over it. Indigenous names speak of texture, rhythm, life: uKhahlamba, the isiZulu word for the Drakensberg Mountains, means“ barrier of spears.” Gariep, the Khoekhoe name for the Orange River, means“ great water.”“ Karoo” comes from a Khoekhoe word describing the dry, stony landscape stretching under an endless blue sky.
The movement to restore them isn’ t about erasing the past. It’ s about hearing the land clearly again. Every renaming – from Grahamstown to Makhanda, King William’ s Town to Qonce, Uitenhage to Kariega; is a small act of linguistic archaeology. It reminds people that identity doesn’ t begin with arrival, and that history didn’ t start with ink on a colonial map.
What’ s beautiful is that South Africa now lives with both layers visible. The old and the older. The European echoes and the indigenous tones rising back through them. Travellers might still ask for directions to Port Elizabeth, and locals will gently reply,“ Ah, you mean Gqeberha.” The correction isn’ t a scolding; it’ s a quiet invitation to listen closer.
In the end, the story of South Africa’ s place names is less about politics and more about memory. To rename is to remember, to return a sound to the soil that first spoke it. When a place is called by its first name again, it doesn’ t erase history. It lets the land speak in its own voice; steady, ancient … still here.
56 | SUMMER 2025 / 26 • rovesa. co. za