Name change for Pretoria going nowhere
Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, has confirmed that the process of changing Pretoria’s name to Tshwane has fallen into limbo.
Responding to a parliamentary question from the EFF’s Thapelo Mogale, the minister said the process to change the name of South Africa’s capital commenced in 2005, but it was never finalised.
The South African Geographical Names Council (SAGNC) recommended the proposed name change at its meeting of 25 May 2005.
However, the minister at the time, Pallo Jordan, did not take a final decision on the matter.
This changed in 2009, when the new minister, Lulama Xingwana, approved the name change in November that year.
During this period, McKenzie said that various objections were received from different stakeholders and political parties.
These objections raised concerns about inadequate consultation, cost implications, and potential confusion arising from a local authority and a geographical feature—a city—sharing the same name.
Pretoria is the administrative capital of South Africa, founded in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius, a leader of the Voortrekkers, who named it after his father, Andries Pretorius.
Tshwane is the indigenous African name for the area, used by early inhabitants who lived near the Tshwane River under the leadership of Chief Tshwane.
The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality was established on 5 December 2000, five years before the name change for Pretoria was proposed. Pretoria is the name of the city within the Metropolitan Municipality.
Despite the objections, McKenzie noted that the name change was briefly published in 2010, but this was subsequently withdrawn at the instruction of the minister to enable further consultations.
Where the name change process is currently sitting
In 2012, when the current deputy president, Paul Mashatile, was Minister of Arts and Culture, the matter was again brought up.
“Given the significant time lapse since the original application between 2005 and 2012, and changes in municipal administrations, the minister referred the matter back to the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality,” McKenzie said.
This was for the city to conduct a new round of public consultations and obtain a fresh public mandate before resubmitting the application to the SAGNC.
“Since that referral, the Department has not received a resubmitted application from the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. Accordingly, the process has not been concluded, and no current process is underway,” he said.
There was a brief period in 2016—a local election year like 2026—when then-mayor and current minister of electricity Kgosientso Ramokgopa had committed to changing the city’s name, but these promises never went anywhere.
At the time, Ramokgopa said that the name change was necessary to “ensure social cohesion”, positing that the “majority” of people in the city wanted the name changed.
Incidentally, that was the same year that the ANC lost control of the metro, with the city moving to a new minority-led administration under the Democratic Alliance.
No political party has managed to gain an outright majority mandate in the metro since, with various coalition governments taking control of the city over the past decade.
Talk of changing the city’s name has since fallen far down the list of topics the city is addressing, with deep financial issues and crumbling infrastructure top of mind for most residents.
Despite Pretoria’s name change being unlikely, changes to other major city names in South Africa have been pushed through without much hassle (though not without pushback).
Some notable changes include Port Elizabeth being renamed Gqeberha in 2021, Ladysmith becoming uMnambithi in 2024, and, most recently, East London officially being renamed KuGompo City in February 2026.
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