44 name changes for Ekurhuleni streets: New name origins

Residents travelling through Ekurhuleni shortly will notice a few changes to street names.

Also read: 44 name changes for Ekurhuleni streets

In September 2019, Council for the City of Ekurhuleni adopted a document which detailed name changed of 44 streets.

The new names aim to celebrate and recognise those who fought against the apartheid regime.

When the NEWS/Express/GCN requested comment on the renaming and process thereof, the city’s media department included a comprehensive list of new names which included the origins and history of the namesakes.

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While some new names such as George Bizos need little introduction, others do.

Here is a list of a local names and the role they played in creating and inclusive South Africa:
• Voortrekker Road in Kempton Park will be renamed Amon Ngulele Road
Amon Ngulele was born in Thembisa. His activism started when he was appointed as a shop steward while employed as an administration clerk for Anglo-American.

Later he would become a full-time organiser for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

During his time with NUM he worked his way through the ranks and was promoted to personal assistant before he was elected general secretary.

Amon was the first chairperson of the unbanned SACP branch in Thembisa.

He served as a former councillor of the Kempton Park Municipality under the Khyalami metro after the first democratic elections in 1995.

During this time, he also served as chief whip of council.

Amon played a pivotal role in the amalgamation of various municipalities into what is known today as the City of Ekurhuleni.

The city’s name was proposed by him and finally adopted by the metro. He died on April 18, 2003.

• Geldenhuys Interchange will be changed to Bavumile Vilakazi Interchange
Bavumile Vilakazi was born on June 1, 1955, in Avaton.

His political activities began at an early age when he was living in Sharpeville at the time of the Sharpeville Massacre.

In 1977 he was elected as president of the AME Church’s youth league.

He later worked for the transport corporation and became actively involved in the union before starting as a shop steward.

Bavumile was detained on December 11, 1984, and tried in the 1985 Delmas treason trial to suppress the United Democratic Front (UDF).

He was a member of the ANC and served as Gauteng provincial secretary.

Before his deployment to Uganda as the South African high commissioner, he served as Ekurhuleni’s mayor.

• Rand Airport Road will be renamed to Fanyana Banda Road
Fanyana Banda was born on December 4, 1974, at Natal-Spruit Hospital.

He became a member of the Self-Defence Unit (SDU) while still in high school.

He dropped out of school during the riots of 1991 when the Ikatha (SDU) was searching for him.

Fanyana underwent training underground and continued operating in Ekurhuleni, defending his people until he was shot dead on January 9, 1994.
At the time he, was protecting the then struggle stalwarts, the now President Cyril Ramaphosa and Joe Slovo, during peace-making processes at the Kwa-Mabuzo Hostel when it came under attack by the Internal Stability Unit and SDU.

• Barbara Road will be named Lazarus Mawela Road
Lazarus “Lazi” Mawela from Thembisa was an activist whose politics was shaped by the 1976 student uprising.

He was one of the founding members of the Black Peoples Convention until the establishment of the UDF.

He was instrumental in the formation of street committees (M-plan) and civic movements in 1980s in Thembisa.

He is a former councillor serving the Lethabong Municipality following the first local democratic elections in 1995.

• Linksfield Road will be renamed to Lethabo Malatjie Road
Lethabo Malatjie was born in 1973 in Limpopo.

His political activism began in 1989 during the banning of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) and later joined South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) under the leadership of Peter Mokaba.

He then joined the South African Student Congress while studying at the University of Limpopo.

Lethabo later moved his studies to Wits University before he was suspended in 1996 for political activism.

Despite this, he later graduated with an LLB.

He joined the police force and became a member of Popcru before working his way through the ranks to become the chairperson of the Popcru Germiston branch.

He also became an ANC Regional Executive Committee member, where he served until his death.

Lethabo was an attorney who ran his law firm and became an active member of the Black Lawyers Association, where he also served as the regional chairperson.

• Edenvale Road will be renamed to Lungile Mtshali Road
Lungile Mtshali started her political activities in the unions, where she became shop steward for SACCAWU in the late 1980s while working at the OK-Bazaar in Germiston, where she remained until 1996.

She was part of the national negotiating team for living wages and working conditions.

Her activism continued beyond unions as a member of both the ANC and ANCWL.

She served as a member of the Ekurhuleni ANC regional committee from 1995 before being elected as a councillor.

She was also elected as the deputy chairperson of Gauteng SALGA.

Lungile remained a councillor until her death.

• Kraft Road to be renamed Ntemi Ncwane Road
Ntemi Ncwane was born on July 2, 1926, at Charmers in Benoni before her family was moved to Etwatwa.

She relocated to Orlando East to continue with her studies at St Peter’s College, where her involvement with the liberation movement began.

She became a member of the ANCWL and formed part of the 1956 march to Pretoria.

She was at the forefront of the campaign against Bantu education to such an extent that she banned her children from attending school for two years because she didn’t want them to learn Afrikaans.

Ntemi was part of the strikes which took place in the 1950s and 1960s, abolishing the consumption of potatoes when prisoner’s heads were buried and used as fertiliser on potato farms.

Her home in Etwatwa was used as a plotting spot for members of the MKMVA and for planning exile for those who wanted to leave South Africa.

She was detained without trial in 1976.

Ncwane was harassed and accused of hiding terrorists, referring to students involved in the uprising.

She also participated in the peace march between locals of Daveyton and hostel dwellers.

• Atlas Road will be renamed Solomon Jefferson Mahlangu Road
Solomon Jefferson Mahlangu was born in 1967 in Thembisa.

His political activism started with student politics while in Siphiwe Primary School. He was involved in underground operations on behalf of Umkhonto WeSizwe.

Because of his involvement in the fight against the apartheid regime, Solomon was forced to flee the country to join the ANC and Umkhonto WeSizwe, the then military wing in 1985.

He was trained in Angola and specialised in anti-air artillery and was deployed to the northern front.

Umkhonto WeSizwe soldiers were deployed to defend the northern front because UNITA and South Africa’s apartheid regime were to using former Zaire (DRC) as a springboard for attacks to Angola.

He was given the responsibility of being a commissioner, which is the position he held until his death in July 1987 at the hands of UNITA rebels who ambushed them.

He was executed with seven other combatants in Cacuso/Ceso and was buried in the bushes of Angola.

• Pomona Road will be renamed to Petrus “Chilly” Magagula Road
Petrus “Chilly” Magagula was born on August 18, 1968.

He started his political activism in student politics while he was a learner at Thuto Ke Matla Comprehensive Secondary School in Thembisa.

Magagula was a member of Cosas until its banning in August 1985 by the apartheid regime.

He evaded arrest from the constant harassment by apartheid security forces, until the unbanning of all political organisations on February 2, 1990.

He continued his activism through the Thembisa Student Organisation (TESO) and as part of the Thembisa Education Crisis Committee.

Magagula was instrumental in the formation of street committees as organs of power.

He was part of the underground structures of Umkhonto WeSizwe, the military wing of the ANC, until its disbandment in 1993 at the Orlando Stadium.

In 1991, he was a volunteer administrator of the ANC for the first Thembisa branch under the mentorship of Barbara Hogan.

He then served the movement as its ANC Gauteng provincial organiser, a position held until his death on October 12, 2010, following an illness.

• Van Buuren Road to be renamed Thabo Mbeki Road
Thabo Mbeki is a former president of South Africa.

He was born and raised in Mbewuleni in the Cape by Epainette and Govan Mbeki.

In December 1961, Mbeki was elected secretary of the African Students’ Association.

In 1962, Mbeki and a group of comrades left South Africa disguised as a football team.

They travelled to Botswana and flew from there to Tanzania, where Mbeki accompanied Kenneth Kauda, who would later become Zambia’s post-independence president, to London.

Mbeki stayed with Oliver Tambo, who would later be elected the longest-serving president of the ANC in the absence of the jailed Rivonia trialists.

He worked part-time with Tambo and Yusuf Dadoo while studying economics at Sussex University in the coastal town of Brighton.

Mbeki has been a powerful figure in African politics, positioning South Africa as a regional power broker and promoting the idea that African political conflicts should be solved by Africans.

He headed the formation of both the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU) and played influential roles in brokering peace deals in Rwanda, Burundi, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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