Letter from Pretoria/Tshwane: For a figure who is meant to be bequeathing his name to South Africa's capital, Chief Tshwane had a somewhat ignominious entry into the world. In a low-key ceremony last week, which not even the city's mayor attended, the semi-mythical character - or rather a statue of him - was finally unveiled.
Historians are still uncertain as to whether the chief existed, and if he did as to whether he was someone worth celebrating. Yet Tshwane (pronounced "Swan-nay") is being billed as a new, inclusive name for Pretoria - a name that supposedly reclaims South Africa's capital from the legacy of apartheid.
The pilloried seat of government in South Africa's darkest years, Pretoria remains for many a city with negative connotations.
The local council last year initiated the proposed name-change, getting approval from a state-sponsored geographical council and more importantly, the imprimatur of President Thabo Mbeki, who now sits in Union Buildings.
Not everyone is happy though. Many Afrikaners - descendants of the early Dutch settlers who trekked here from Cape Town to avoid British rule - regard the name-change, and even Chief Tshwane's unveiling, as a calculated insult designed to diminish their heritage.
To their chagrin, Tshwane is already being used instead of Pretoria in many settings. The new name is attached to the city's metro council and national media outlets generally interchange between the two terms.
The local authority somewhat dubiously translates Tshwane as "We are the same", whereas historians trace it to the name of a local river, which in turn appears to have been named after a native chieftain who settled in the area between 1100 and 1600 - critically before the arrival of the Voortrekkers in the mid-1800s.
Not much is known about the human Tshwane, according to Angus Taylor who sculpted the chief in question.
In the absence of records, he worked on reports of missionaries who lived in the area and took photos of apparent descendants to try to try to identify common physical features in the Tshwane clan.
For the statue, he gave the chief a leopard-skin gown - the attire of a king - replete with eagle feathers, but he was conscious "not to make it look like a casino prop, or like something from a show in Sun City [ a nearby gaming mecca]".
The unveiling had been delayed amid pleas that the statue should be moved to a more prominent site on Church Square - specifically to a plinth occupied by an imposing bronze of former settler president Paul Kruger.
The council backed away from such a move, however, knowing it would fan the flames of an already bitter controversy.
Critics of the name-change say it is a waste of taxpayers' money with its cost to the economy estimated at €130 million. Opponents also argue that the local government is repeating the mistakes of the apartheid regime by "politicising" place-names across the state.
Pietersburg, the capital of Limpopo province, for example, became the more native Polokwane, and Louis Botha Airport was turned into Durban International.
More controversially, a Zulu monarch is now campaigning for the dropping of Natal" from the eastern province of KwaZulu Natal, while just this week the go-ahead was given to renaming South Africa's main airport in Johannesburg the OR Tambo International - in honour of the late former president of the ANC.
For many Afrikaners, such changes are tolerable but tampering with the integrity of their ancestral home - named after the Boer hero Andries Pretorius - is a step too far.
Kallie Kriel, spokesman for Solidarity, a trade union traditionally perceived to represent white worker interests, said the 1994 post-apartheid elections were "a contract, saying that we would have mutual recognition for the benefit of all. This is a move away from that - where minority interests are totally ignored and only majority interests are served."
Of Chief Tshwane, Kriel said he wasn't opposed to the statue per se but in the current political atmosphere - and with a decision imminent from culture minister Pallo Jordan on the city's name- change - its commissioning was "provocative".
Such traditionalists may be focusing on the wrong target, however. The biggest threat to Pretoria's identity comes perhaps from not African revivalists but property developers. A new trek from the south is under way, this one led by the capital's larger, neighbouring city.
"At current growth rates," National Geographic reported last year, "Johannesburg will envelop Pretoria and other nearby towns to form a megacity of 20 million people by 2010."
If such predictions are right the debate over Pretoria, or Tshwane, will be little more than academic.
