More about Names on Maps

 

DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN?

Place names and names on maps are perpetual sources of controversy. Even though Governor Rufane Donkin’s wife never did anything for South Africa or, indeed, ever stepped onto the shores of the Eastern Cape some of us get quite apoplectic when ‘Port Elizabeth’, for example, suddenly becomes ‘Gqeberha’. 

We like the names we know, even if they are pretty irrelevant names. In 1814 Governor Cradock gave a village the name of his father-in-law, the Duke of Clanwilliam, because he was trying to raise a cash loan from him to pay off his lifestyle debts. The good Duke never set foot in Africa in his life, but the burgers of Clanwilliam would be horrified if you tried to change the name of their town.

“We can’t just go putting names on maps” and “I'd recommend extreme caution and care when deciding on naming ‘newer’ or previously unnamed places” are amongst the comments I have received on this issue. I agree, but I do also have a BUT .. to add.

 Hiking maps are not like road maps. The person on foot sees everything on the ground, and every rock, stream or even fallen tree is a landmark. As a species we interpret and remember landscapes by naming features, and we use these names to guide ourselves and to direct others. Communities that walk everywhere have names for every feature. When we mapped the Cederberg we went into the surrounding mission communities and collected over 400 place names that had never appeared on maps before. And if names don’t get recorded on maps then when people no longer walk that way the names get lost.

The Drakensberg is like everywhere else in that it has some really beautiful names, quite a few seriously commemorative names, and a sprinkling of quite silly names that have become so embedded that they are unlikely to be changed.

Take ‘Bannerman’, for example. It’s a thoroughly accepted name and thoroughly associated with a popular part of the Drakensberg. There’s a Bannerman Walk, Hut, Cave, Pass and Face – five names! But why ‘Bannerman’? According to Pearse a visitor thought that part of the escarpment rock face resembled the visage of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Who was he? He was British Prime Minister from 1905 to 1908, an even shorter reign than that of Boris Johnson. His mugshot appears above.

Bannerman is not really remembered for anything at all – his main claim to fame is that he is the only British PM ever to die in No 10 Downing Street – after he had resigned, but before he had moved out, so he wasn’t actually in office at the time. He never had anything to do with South Africa, he never came here and he never did anything for this country.

In those years there were no photographs published in newspapers. The only person who could have thought that a rocky cliff thirteen thousand kilometres from home looked like Sir Henry was an arbitrary visitor who happened to pass that way. He/she just ‘put the name on the maps’ without the slightest ‘caution and care’.

When he was OC of Giant’s Castle Bill Barnes [according to his history of Giant’s Castle] personally assigned the names Bond, Erskine, Durnford, Katana, Potterill and Kambule to the relevant escarpment peaks. He makes no mention of any consultation on the matter; it was his sole, personal decision that these British Army soldiers should be so honoured. None of them had anything to do with hiking, climbing or the conservation of the ‘Berg; some of them, but not all, died chasing Langalibalele. There might well be many who would question the appropriateness of these names.

Incidentally, Barnes named the triple-peak ‘Durnford’, and it appears as such on the SG’s 1:50 000 series. The corruption ‘Mount Durnford’ probably arose from confusion with the more famous Mount Durnford in Antarctica.

So to cut a long story short, what I am suggesting is that the more names we can find for Drakensberg features the better. I would feel certain that the field rangers, for example, use many names that are not on the maps. And please, if you object to a name that appears, then provide an alternative – otherwise I will keep the name that is suggested.

Finally, a confession. All the maps published so far, including the EKZNW maps, feature five names given by myself and Theuns van Rensburg back in the 1980s. All seem to have become accepted – there have been no objections that I know of, and I’m not going to tell you which ones they are! 

Cartographer’s licence, there it is.