Victoria Falls to rename streets

The Victoria Falls Municipality has embarked on a street renaming exercise to replace colonial names in a town where 86 roads remain unnamed.

The latest development comes a year after the local authority proposed to change the names of Livingstone Way and Park Way to Robert Mugabe Way and Joshua Nkomo Way as a way of honouring the two icons.

City fathers are waiting for the government’s approval to rename the two streets after the country’s liberators.

Town Clerk Christopher Dube said a committee had been set up to spearhead the streets renaming process which is expected to end next month.

He said residents had been tasked through a multi-stakeholder committee to come up with possible names that take into consideration the history of the town and the country.

“We’ve had two meetings so far, the first one being an introductory engagement where we were explaining to people what we intend to do and we asked members of the committee to go and mobilise people to think about possible names and submit to us,” said Dube.

“We’re not concentrating on colonial names. As we speak we’ve 86 streets that have no names while we’ve new suburbs that will be coming soon and all we’re doing is being pro-active and naming all of them.”

Dube said so far only a few names have been proposed by war veterans although he couldn’t be drawn into revealing them.

He said they expect each name proposal to be accompanied by a brief history of the person to be honoured.

The town clerk said once the names have been submitted, the local authority would engage community elders, historians, chiefs and councillors for guidance on historical issues and contributions made by people to be honoured.

Asked whether the council will replace all colonial names, Dube said: “If in the process there are colonial names then we’ll deal with that.

“Already we’ve renamed two streets in honour of our liberation leaders the late Vice President Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo and President Robert Mugabe and we’re waiting for government approval,” added the Town Clerk.

The chairperson of the Victoria Falls Combined Residents Association (Vifacora) Morgan Dube appealed to residents to come up with new names as a matter of urgency.

He said residents were happy that the town would now bear local names they can identify with.

Source: Victoria Falls renames streets (25/5/16)