ANOTHER VOICE murray swart Sandwiches vs airports

IWOULD rather have a sandwich named after me than an airport and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those who have been immortalised (for now) with statues, streets and stations, agreed.

It’s taken some time for Krotoa to receive due recognition but sadly, naming a landmark or land mass, for that matter, after someone is less about honouring the individual and more about politicising them.

Disagree?

Well, whatever happened to Stalingrad, or HF Verwoerd Primary, or Rhodesia? Time, context, clarity, convictions and consciousness have seen us re-evaluate many of the figures who brought us to the current day and found that the bulk of those who were once revered should have been reviled.

Sadly, many of the names that were felt needed to be honoured belonged to dishonourable people.

There are many great South Africans who do wonderful things. There are many others who are gone but can’t be forgotten, having made incredible contributions in order for us to get to where we are. Then, there are still many more to come and work with what we leave behind.

These people deserve recognition and the rest of us deserve good role-models. Everyone deserves a goal, a dream or just something to aspire towards.

However, if you are genuinely deserving of public approval, an airport carrying your initials is simply not what you are looking for.

Don’t get me wrong.

It might be a nice little trinket and something to remind people about who you were when you aren’t around any more but it certainly isn’t an accolade worth striving towards.

Having part of public infrastructure carrying your name, ensuring that your contribution to a society that hates, kills, screws and enslaves, while congratulating the hated, dead, screwed and enslaved on their newfound freedom, is not something that any of us should aim towards.

If anything, it is something we should all try to steer very clear of.

If ever there was an individual deserving of being a household name and worthy of having her story passed down from one generation to the next, that individual would be Krotoa, as hers is a tale of remarkable achievement and sacrifice in the face of tremendous adversity.

Her story is both inspirational and cautionary and is one that each and every South African needs to know.

The fact that they don’t is an indictment on our systems, political, educational and socio-economically, but naming an airport after someone so influential yet so unsung is not going to make hers’ a household name. It will only result in the use of her name in many more households until the next shift in power or agenda.

Granted, there is nothing flashy or glamorous about a sandwich.

It is something quite ordinary and mundane. One could even go as far as to consider it rather boring.

It’s nothing like an airport, with all that excitement, energy and movement, but if push comes to shove, I would still rather have people associate me with a sandwich than an airport.

The world has enough airports but not enough sandwiches and it is better to be associated with feeding than flying.