S.African town in uproar over renaming after anti-apartheid icon

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GRAAFF-REINET — A rebellion over the renaming of the historic country town of Graaff-Reinet has exposed deep-rooted fractures in South Africa as it grapples with its tormented history.

In a government decree published last month, the nearly 250-year-old town of whitewashed Cape Dutch houses and red flamboyant trees was renamed after anti-apartheid icon Robert Sobukwe, born here around a century ago.

The wrapped statue of the late Robert Sobukwe, the anti-apartheid leader and founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) is seen through a fence of the Sobukwe Museum and Learning Centre in Graaff-Reinet, on March 5, 2026. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI / AFP)

It is one of around 1,500 geographical name-changes since the end of apartheid in 1994, some targeting names that "still reflect colonial and apartheid legacies", according to a government document.

In the case of this normally calm oasis, deep in the semi-desert Karoo and about 650 kilometres (400 miles) from Cape Town, the renaming has sown discord among its population of 25,000, leading to protests, petitions and legal threats.

"There are now groups fighting each other," said Hands Off Graaff-Reinet movement activist Laughton Hoffman as he went door-to-door to rally support against the change.

"The renaming is taking us back," he said, clutching stacks of objection forms, around 22,000 of which have already been delivered to the government.

The town is the fourth oldest in South Africa and occupies a proud place in the history of the Afrikaner community, descendants of early Dutch settlers who landed at the Cape 300 years ago.

Established in 1786 and named after the Cape colony's then-governor -- Dutchman Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff -- and his wife, Reinet, it became a launchpad a century later for the Great Trek when settlers left to escape British rule.

'Dividing a community'

"What they're doing is to divide a community that was otherwise healthy and happy," another fierce opponent, lawyer Derek Light, told AFP in his office near an iconic neo-Gothic church.

Zeina Jaftha (2nd-R) , an activist with the Hands Off Graaff-Reinet group, who delivered nearly 22,000 protest letters to the South African government, has a petition signed by residents during a door-to-door campaign on the outskirts of Graaff-Reinet, on March 3, 2026. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI / AFP)

A 2024 survey of 367 people representative of the racial make-up of residents showed that nearly 84 percent did not want the name changed, he said.

The debate has ignited "angry rhetoric", said Light, who has previously represented in court the country's richest man, multi-billionaire Johann Rupert -- whose family is from Graaff-Reinet -- and is working on a legal challenge to the renaming.

He cited the example of remarks by the first mayor after the first all-race elections in 1994, Zola Hanabe.

"They came from overseas by sea," Hanabe said of colonial settlers in a recent interview with Newzroom Afrika. "If they try to fight what we are, our origin, then the sea is open."

The majority of residents -- such as Hands Off Graaff-Reinet campaigner Hoffman -- identify as "coloured", people of mixed African, Asian and European ancestry.

"We don't agree with things like black economic empowerment because I'm a coloured person and we have been marginalised over the last 30 years," said Hoffman.

'Build a nation'

Nestled in a loop of the Sundays River, the town is a postcard of open verandas shaded by jacarandas and largely free of the high security walls and electric fences common elsewhere in South Africa.

Its heritage is a strong tourism draw, with about 100,000 visitors a year going on to the nearby Valley of Desolation, another reason cited in some objections to the new name.

But for the family of Sobukwe -- who founded the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959 -- the renaming is a long overdue recognition of his role in the liberation struggle, with the controversy reflecting lingering apartheid-era divisions.

"I am not surprised by the opposition of a specific segment of the population who does not want to embrace change," his grandson, Mangaliso Tsepo Sobukwe, told AFP.

A general view of the town of Graaff-Reinet, on March 4, 2026. Beneath flamboyant trees and the whitewashed gables of Cape Dutch houses, a battle over a new name is unsettling the tranquil South African town of Graaff-Reinet. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI / AFP)

Sobukwe led anti-apartheid protests ahead of the March 21, 1960, Sharpeville Massacre when security forces opened fire and killed dozens of people, exposing the brutality of white-minority rule to the world.

"Someone who comes from that area, who led this glorious struggle for everyone to live in harmony, is being ignored and not accepted by the community of Graaff-Reinet itself," said PAC deputy president, Jaki Seroke.

"There is no malice intended in the name change. It is really to build a nation," he said.