Mogoeng flays apartheid relics

CHIEF Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng yesterday came out strongly against the opposition to street name changes in Tshwane.

Mogoeng said during the apartheid era, there was “hardly a city, town, street or institution of note which bore a name that sought to give honour to black people’s leaders or even their treasured history”.

“Everything about the oppressed was dismissively branded as backward and inconsequential. Virtually all recognition and honour was thus respectively given to, and bestowed upon, white history and their heroes and heroines.

“The system was all about the entrenchment of white supremacy and privilege and black inferiority and disadvantage. No wonder the United Nations resolved that that system was a crime against humanity,” Mogoeng said in his ruling.

“Almost all cities, towns and street names continue to reverberate with great sounds of veneration for the architects of apartheid, heroes and heroines of our oppressive and shameful colonial past. All of us must embrace and internalise the constitutional reality that this country belongs to all of us who live in it.”–