Frequently Asked Questions

The fiscal allocation for ECPGNC per annum/ financial year is R1m (One million rands only). The breakdown of such allocation attends to the following operational imperatives:

  1. Preparations for Committee meetings each quarter, they are four per year. There are extra special meetings that always sit because of the heavy load of work and demand, on urgent matters.
  2. Preparations for special events like Social Dialogue, public awareness and advocacy and publicity .activities of the committee.
  3. Preparations for public consultations ; like, Meeting with Mayoral councils, stakeholders’ consultations, Public Hearings etc.
  4. Facilitation of ECPGNC Educational Programmes to Local Municipalities and the establishment of Local Geographical l Names Committees (LGNC’s).
  5. Research work done by members through the length and breadth of the province.
  6. Secretarit meetings with LM Mangers to prepare for well-organized public hearings.
  7. Compensation of members for sittings, special meetings, and many and varying delegated ECPGNC roles.

Well, consultations will never be enough. In as much as ECPGNC pursue public consultations as best as possible, there is Ma-Radebe and Tata Bhele who would claim that he was not consulted in his house, or never saw the poster or the advert in the local newspaper or heard anything from the radio. Hence public consultations are coupled by radio announcements in Community radios, TV interviews, Load hailing, advising the local municipalities and working with Public Participation Officers of LM’s under consultation and myriad of soc8ail communication platforms. ECPGNC always strive to maximize its consultations, hence the postcards are close to being used as other broadcasting channels for more consultation and accessibility.

The ECPGNC Handbook on the standardization of place names is a user-friendly question and answer pocket-size booklet that responds to all possible questions.  This book states that every member of the public is free to make an application/ propose for name to be standardized. By the same token, the SAGNC handbook on standardization protects an individual identity to being made public.

Without relegating other service delivery imperatives to the periphery of essential service to be prioritized by government, standardization of place names is another service delivery function allocated to DSRAC to pursue. DSRAC established the ECPGNC unit to run with the ball on this competency and nothing more. SASSA runs with the ball for Social Welfare and so is Department of Labour for employment opportunities. That is to say, the ECPGNC has no role in fixing the potholes and providing water etc. The fiscal allocation for ECPGNC is merely for the standardization of place names.

The Unted Nations and the TRC noted that healing the nation out of centuries of injustice, prejudice, racial segregation, and calamities of apartheid policies will never be healed by monitory compensation alone. For that reason, both institutions made declarations that, to heal the nation, strive for social cohesion and nation building and make redress in the old conservative naming processes to people-centred naming process, led by SAGNC would be ideal. Hence the SAGNC was established. At the heart of TRC are the following guiding principles:

  1. All processes looking at redress of historical considerations of place naming.
  2. Views of the people take the centre-stage
  3. Restorative justice
  4.  Reparation/healing of society injured by centuries of racial segregation policies.