Will Pretoria have a Fidel Castro Street?

What? Change Pretorius Street (Pretorius being the person of whom the city is named after) into Fidel Castro Street? Commemorating a dictator responsible for the impoverishment of his people? Why not Mugabe?

Well, at least the starving poor can jump with glee knowing that the main street cutting through Pretoria Central is named after someone not even South African; and languish in poverty from the lack of jobs and services. Nice one ANC. Glad to know they have their priorities straight.

Who is, is fact, Joan Muller. Please enlighten the readers because I had a quick look but could not find her name as an office bearer. Was she talking on behalf of the SACP as a party? Not that it would surprise me if she was, because the SACP reminds me of a motor scrap yard: heaps of junk, a lot of noise and all they can manage to do is sell off pieces of what cannot be a complete product. Did she not also suggest to rename the municipal headquarters "The Cuckoo's Nest"?

Fidel Castro Street? What a servile colonialist mentality! Why is it thought necessary to name streets after white foreigners?

I fully support getting rid of rascist offensive names. I think Fidel and Che made meaningful contributions to over throwing apartheid and defeating the illegal SDAF invasions of ANgola and occupation of Namibia. We should never forget our comardes who helped us militarily defeat teh SADf just as our Vietnamense comrades defeated America and iteh barve IRA defeated Britain

I think it is a great idea to name the streets after these two great men. They both did far more for freedom throughout Africa than most. Che led revolutions throughout the continent against tyrannous regimes and tried to instill regimes that were for the people. Calling Fidel a dictator is fair but you should consider what he did to improve the lives of cubans, they are all allowed, no entitled to a University education, if the country was allowed to maintain trade with the US, its closest and most logical trade partner then it would not be in the economical rut it presently finds itself in at the moment. By all means name the streets after Castro and Che, they are great champions for freedom as well as racial equality. Please people do some reading on these men.

A small point... Can Joan Muller or any other SACP member/supporter please answer these questions:

1. How many members does the SACP have?
2. In what country in the world has communism ever worked?
3. If ever other communist regime has failed utterly, what makes the local bunch think they have a handle on the ‘holy grail’?
4. In what way has Castro benefited the people of Cuba?
5. How many people did Stalin have killed?
6. How many SACP members/supporters drive/use/covet products from the following countries/economic powerhouses: US,UK,EU,Japan?
7. Doesn’t that make you a bunch of hypocrites?

Realising that communists throughout the world and history are renowned for their sense of the surreal and inability to smell the coffee (freely available in capitalist countries), and one doesn’t want to overwork the underworked, here are the answers:

1. Plenty – we’ve even had to hire a Wendy house for our next meeting.
2. Absolutely none.
3. Stalin told us, and we have Mao’s ‘Red Book’.
4. Well, they can corner the market on 1950’s era American gas guzzlers – when they go.
5. About 20 or 30 million, but who cares, they were counter revolutionaries and dissidents.
6. All of us, actually.
7. We want a ride on the gravy train. Duh!

Isabella, Mr Viljoen et al. How about leaving Pretoria street names as they are, and start naming the other ten thousand (yes, ten thousand)unnamed streets in Pretoria municipal area.
Your backward thinking makes the Malemas, Mugabes and the Che's etc. look good, instead of what they realy are. By your argument it is OK to kill to impose your will on others. Watch out for what you ask for, the guy with the AK47 might have other objectives as yourself.
And so by the way, Fidel has proved beyond doubt that education in a communist system does not necesarily mean financial prosperity. Communism opresses the person and the mind and are for the lazy who want to do as little as possible, and don't expect anything in return. Except of coarse for the bosses. Don't you remember the story about this communist leader whose doggs ate out of plates made from pure gold, while the pawns died of hunger on his doorsteps. Well, your heros were communists, and were in it for themselves.
And yes, most of us has read the history of the Che's. He killed anyone who disagreed with him. So did the Idi Amins and the Mugabes. (yes he killed more than 20 000 Mathabeles)
Does the rantings of a Malema comes to mind. Have the death threats to yourselves not woken you up to reality yet? Well, maybe its time to wake up, and think twice about what you want for South Africa and your children.

On a recent visit to Maputo I noticed that most of the main streets are named after communist leaders. I would not want one ot those streets to be named after me though. They are full of potholes and rubbish and sidewalks are practically non-existent.

Now, everyone that has recently visited the CBD in Pretoria would know that it is very run down and third world-like. When 2010 comes, I do not want tourists associating that mess with Afrikaner heroes. Let them rather say: "I was mugged when I crossed Che Guevara street"...

For the same reason I am quite happy that the Johannesburg airport is now named OR Thambo. Poor guy's name will now forever be connected with stolen luggage and airport robberies.

Oh yes loving it, while were at it, let name one george bush street, or i don't know Joseph Stalin street. or chairman moa ave. Naming a road after the leader of a country half way round the world is preposterous. Are we so servile and colonial that we think it is somehow relevant, At lease old Pretorius was bone on good old south African soil.

If this renaming happens, it gives us a new term for the impulse to totalitarian commemorative display in a democratic polity: castroation.

Cuba is ruled almost exclusively by whites; Black officials in Cuba would have fit nicely (that is, decoratively and subordinately) into the late unlamented tricameral nonsense.

One must love the Eurocentrism: Fidel Castro the lily-white son of Spanish immigrants saving the poor brown and black Cubans from themselves, HF Verwoerd the son of Dutch immigrants bringing his brutal vision. Pure Caucasian Che bringing amateur gunpoint salvation to non-white countries: the Marxist Mad Mike Hoare.

Baasskap is baasskap. Honouring it is a slave mentality.