Given the human rights record of the city's founder, Colonel John Graham, Grahamstown must go, argues Ayanda Kota.
Given the human rights record of the city's founder, Colonel John Graham, Grahamstown must go, argues Ayanda Kota.
Graham was a butcher who had no regard for black life. Like all white supremacists he believed that white people had an ordained right to rule black people and that black people were an inferior and cursed race. He killed and maimed no fewer than 20 000 black warriors.
The pain and suffering of black people as a result of the violent process of land dispossession and political subordination led and begun by Graham is vivid to this day. The excessive poverty, pain and suffering of black people in the township today bears testimony.
The luxurious and affluent life of white people in Grahamstown West, staring at the township, divided by the Matyana River, is unbearable to those, black and white, with a conscience.
The name Grahamstown, as well as the Settlers' Monument and the Settlers' Hospital, symbolises our defeat as a people.
These names provoke what Fanon calls mental violence. The wounds can never heal while we continue to be confronted by such institutions with such names.
It is a disgrace that this town is still called Grahamstown almost 20 afters after apartheid ended. The name must be changed. Every time we call this place Grahamstown we do mental violence to ourselves.
I am an ardent supporter of the name-changing. For as long as we continue to live in the shadow of Graham, I will be reminded that Biko once said: “All in all, the black man has become a shell, a shadow of man, and an ox bearing the yoke.” Biko makes this point again: “A nation without a positive history is like vehicle without an engine.”
The point that Biko seeks to entrench is that we as blacks we live in shadow of a white domination. In Grahamstown we blacks, men and women, literally live in the shadow the white man who slaughtered our ancestors like animals, stole our land and began the domination and exploitation that continues today.
However I believe that name changing process must be democratised. It must not be driven by top down approach. It must also be transparent. The people must be able to decide what name they would like. This process must not be used by the ruling party for their own propaganda purposes.
This point is so critical and imperative that if it is omitted we will have the party keeping the people drunk on the memory of their role in past struggles. All the institutions, airports, towns and so forth get named after party leaders. Name-changing becomes a cover for party that is failing to address the legacy of Graham – which is landlessness, unemployment and poverty – to be seen to be doing something.
If the process is not democratised, the changes will just become cosmetic, not fundamental.
In fact even if we change the name of this town to one of the local heroes, Graham will find peace in his grave knowing that his work continues. Unemployment continues to be estimated at around 70%; people in Ethuthwini and Ethembeni don’t have houses, toilets and electricity.
Graham will find peace in his grave knowing that our Makana Municipality cannot account for at least R50 million while black people continue to be homeless, unemployed and lacking access to water.
Over and above all this, the education of the black child has been plunged into crisis.
Yes! Graham will find peace in his grave knowing that we don’t look after one another: we lack solidarity and love for one another. We kill one another. We kill Marikana mine workers for fighting for a living wage, and we kill Andries Tatane for fighting for basic services.
The name changing must be driven by our agenda, to decolonise Grahamstown and its people, to decolonise Azania and its people. Decolonisation must be driven by the agenda to free black people from all forms of oppression! Such freedom must seek to recreate black people, to infuse a new sense of being in all of us.
