Any name change still needs the approval of South Africa's Geographic Names Council and the national minister of arts and culture, but so far there is no sign of opposition from the national government.
Critics emphasize the costs of changing countless references to Pretoria on signs throughout the country, which they say could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, though advocates say the expenses will be closer to tens of thousands.
Pretoria, founded by Dutch descendants 150 years ago, "is now in another nation," said a black man once arrested there. It is being renamed "Tshwane," meaning, "We are the same."
(Craig Timberg -- The Washington Post)
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Many whites also call the proposed new name confusing and a waste of the government's energies.
"It's stupid, really," said banker Pieter Dykstra, a 53-year-old Afrikaner.
If the new name gets final approval, the Union Building, the elegant brownstone headquarters for the government's executive branch that sits on a hill overlooking downtown, would no longer be in Pretoria, nor would any of the city's leafy and mostly white suburbs, where the name has its strongest allegiance.
The Voortrekker Monument, a massive architectural homage to the Great Trek, also would be located in Tshwane -- much to the irritation of Desire Joubert, 23, an Afrikaner who was visiting the monument with her 9-month-old son and two friends last week.
"It just makes me so angry," Joubert said. "People are so hung up on the apartheid era. Why can't they just get over it? . . . I just feel like the government wants to forget all of what South Africa used to be."
Some whites say that no matter what the Geographic Names Council decides, they intend to keep using the name Pretoria.
Yet many black South Africans, including Moses Skhosana, say they are eager for the day the name Pretoria is erased altogether from the map, so they can finally feel at home in their nation's capital.
"I'm now going to say, 'I'm from Tshwane,' " Skhosana said. "It makes me happy."
