South Africans in the coastal city of Durban have been outraged by moves to rename one its streets — notorious for drugs and prostitution — after Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi.
Twenty people wrote to the city complaining about the decision and local radio talk shows had been abuzz with the issue, city spokesman Desmond Myeza said on Friday.
“They were unhappy that the Point Road area is associated with prostitution and drug trafficking and Mahatma Gandhi was not that kind of a person,” Myeza said.
From the 1890s, Gandhi spent two decades in South Africa fighting for rights of Indian workers who had come as laborers to the eastern province now known as KwaZulu-Natal.
Several planned street renamings had been put on hold, said Myeza, adding the city council may still go ahead with its current plans for honoring Gandhi.
More than a decade after South Africa’s first democratic elections, the country’s map is still dotted with scores of names from its apartheid and colonial past.
Officials embarked on a drive to redress this and earlier this month voted to rename the capital Pretoria, established in 1855 in honor of a white Afrikaner leader, as Tshwane — a pre-colonial chief.
