Renaming Sandton Drive: A disregard for public input and policy

By loudly supporting efforts to change Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive, Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi and Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero mock the public participation process which ended yesterday.

Yet their performances on X were surpassed by that of Al Jama-ah MMC Kabelo Gwamanda, whose community development responsibilities include street renaming.

In an advert paid for by ratepayers, Gwamanda says the motivation for the renaming is to celebrate Khaled’s “influence on global struggles for freedom by replacing symbols and names that reflect colonisation with those that represent restoration and renewal”.

Verbal puffery from a dimwit.

Failed mayor Gwamanda says Sandton Drive reflects colonisation, while Leila Khaled represents restoration and renewal.

Nonsense. Sandton Drive is among the most neutral street names in Johannesburg – a city with which Khaled has no connection. Restoration of what? Renewal of what?

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The choreographed tweets by Lesufi and Morero were met with negative responses, mostly focusing on the lack of service delivery.

Morero’s invisibility during Joburg’s water crisis is drawing flak.

Indeed, multiple reports have surfaced showing just how bad things are in Johannesburg, while political elites feast. Ferial Hafajee’s Daily Maverick piece: “How ANC-EFF cadre deployment crashes Johannesburg’s water supply”, stands out.

Water supply is indeed crashing. And the network of old pipes and leaking reservoirs is crumbling amid a R32.54 billion infrastructure backlog.

We ward councillors deal daily with understandably irate residents and stressed-out officials who do not have the resources to do their jobs properly – because so much has been stolen.

In these circumstances it is wrong to be spending money on unnecessary renaming.

ALSO READ: Renaming Sandton Drive: Who bears the cost?

Most people can see that.

Petitions have flourished.

As an elected ward councillor for much of Sandton Drive, I have been part of a group that collected well over 5 000 opinions online and hundreds more on paper.

These were all handed in yesterday.

We’ll be monitoring how they are treated. Public participation must not be mocked or become a tick-box exercise.

Previous columns have pointed out that the proposed name change deviates from the Joburg council’s own policy.

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And the documents circulated (but not to me as affected councillor) failed to mention a whole Section (6) of the council’s name changing policy.

Another omission is the failure to hold public meetings. The policy calls for: “At least one public meeting, the extent of which should be in keeping with the size, functional range, cultural significance and/or visual prominence of the feature being named or renamed.”

Sandton Drive is important enough to warrant a public meeting, which was not held before the deadline for public comments. To hold one after the deadline could be interpreted as an act of bad faith if nothing said in that forum could be taken into account.

Given the way politicians and officials are behaving, they intend to go ahead regardless of public opinion. They think their solidarity slogans should trump everything else. And that a majority vote in council will overcome any flaws.

Their attitude is: to hell with council policy, service delivery, costs, breaches of the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act… and public opinion be damned.

This time, let’s not let them get away with it.

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