(Re) writing an urban landscape: street names in Harare’s CBD after 1980

Abstract

This paper examines some changes in street names in Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, after 1980. It is guided by some current perspectives in onomastics such as onomastic erasure, descriptive backing, and studies in the linguistic landscape. A historical background of the country from 1890 is given in order to understand how European names emerged on this urban landscape. From a corpus of over 51 names, it was observed that only 19 street names were changed. The changed names are discussed alongside the old name. The study observes that these street names are statements of power on the urban landscape. Whenever street names (and other place names) are changed on a landscape, history is rewritten or in some cases erased and replaced by a new script