The Buffalo City municipality is looking to change the name of East London to Gompo.
The city had tried to change East London’s name to Gompo in 2018 but this had not been approved by Nathi Mthethwa, the then minister of arts and culture, as there was already a settlement in the metro with that name.
The settlement will have to change its name before East London can also be renamed to Gompo.
“Our city, East London, is situated in South Africa, whereas there is east of London that is in England. It does not make sense. By the way these are colonial names,” said Humphrey Maxegwana, the metro’s speaker.
However, some residents have said changing names is a waste of resources. Scott Roebert, of a local ratepayers’ association, said: “Changing the name does not necessarily change anything. Things have gone wrong in the country in the last 30 years.”
Image: South African Tourism from South Africa, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons