, with slogan "We are the same".
Tshwane is the
Setswana name of the
Apies River, which flows through the city. The origin of the name of the river is unclear. It may mean "place
-e of the black cow,
tshwana, from ceremonies where a black cow was sprinkled with water from the river to end a drought. Two other common explanations are demonstrably untrue. One is that it is the Tswana for the motto of Tshwane Municipality, "We are the same". However, this appears to be promoted only for its emotional value; if anything, it would mean "we are not the same" in Tswana (
ga re tshwane). On 21 May 2005, the Pretoria Civil Action Committee, a group consisting of business, labour, cultural, civil and political leaders opposed to the name change organised a protest in the Pretoria city centre. They marched to the office of Arts and Culture Minister
Pallo Jordan and handed him a petition signed by 3,000
University of Pretoria students as well as other petition documents. Former president
FW De Klerk, a Nobel prize winner and the last president under apartheid, also raised concerns about the change. In November 2005, the
Advertising Standards Authority found that advertising proclaiming that Tshwane, rather than Pretoria, was the capital of South Africa was misleading.
Proposed renaming of Pretoria On 5 December 2000, a number of former Pretoria municipalities, as well as others that fell outside the Greater Pretoria area, were combined into one area called the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. The legal process involved is as follows: • Recommendation to the Geographical Names Council. • Council approves/rejects recommendation (approved 26 May 2005). • Council gives its recommendation to the Arts and Culture Minister. • Minister approves/rejects recommendation. • Approved/rejected name is published in the Government Gazette. • Any person or body unhappy with the name change can complain within one month of above. • The minister can consult the Geographical Names Council with concerns raised. • The minister's decision, along with the reasons for it, are published • The minister will then take the matter before parliament where the central government will decide on whether to change the name or not based on the information before it. Some groups attached themselves to the Pretoria name change issue, including the trade union
Solidarity, which, along with the Pretoria Civil Action Committee, threatened legal action should the name change be recommended by the minister. In early August 2007, it was reported in the press that the municipality, after consulting with the Gauteng provincial government had withdrawn the application to change the name, and was instead contemplating a plan to change all road signs pointing to "Pretoria" to "Tshwane" or the "City of Tshwane" across the country. This plan raised threats of legal action from both political groupings opposed to the renaming, and concerns from municipal officials about the possibility of vandalism to the proposed signs. In 2010, the Ministry of Arts and Culture prepared to publish the registration of
Tshwane as a place name, in the Government Gazette. However, the registration was withdrawn at the last minute, which was explained by the minister. Although it was too late to remove the name from printing in the
Government Gazette, the retraction of the name registration was published the following week in the gazette. In November 2011,
Kgosientso Ramokgopa, who had been elected mayor earlier that year, vowed to push forward with the renaming in 2012. ==Management and corruption==