Road Name Changes. Moving On.

I was driving down Rick Turner, about to turn into, what's Nicholson called now? When I saw it, some trickster had put up a piece of white paper over the road sign. They hadn't blacked it out, they hadn't totally covered it, it was not a protest, it was a celebration. Over "Turner" they had put "Is my Hero". Reading "Rick is my hero" was instantly funny, a little pop culture thing, a homage to some boyfriend, maybe.

I was in the city when I showed the photograph to somebody. Ha, Ha, I thought, share it for a laugh. This elder said to me, "Good, Rick Turner was an activist, he was a Hero, it's good that people recognise that.". He looks at me, "You don't know who Rick Turner is. Do your reading.". I thought to myself then in a flood of different thoughts. Firstly, city officials who make changes without the proper consultation process are easy targets, idiots really, but what is the outcome, is it really so bad? 
We have a hidden history, blame it on the schools then and the dumbing down of schools now, but I bet you Rick Turner is not taught in schools. We are being told our history, unknown, unimportant to those not directly involved. Our daily symbols are being subverted and not altogether in a bad way. Those petty-minded countrywide City Officials must have known this shift in thinking would happen. History forced on us, on one level, How Rude! On another, Thank you.

Let me tell you what I have found by doing my reading. I will lazily quote the wiki, to show you how easy it is to find this stuff.
"Richard Turner (born 1942 in Stellenbosch), known as Rick Turner, was a South African philosopher who was allegedly assassinated by the apartheid state in 1978. Nelson Mandela described Turner "as a source of inspiration" Turner graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1963 attaining a B.A. Honours. He continued his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris where he received a doctorate for a dissertation on the French intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre. He returned to South Africa in 1966 and went farming on his mother's farm in Stellenbosch for two years before lecturing at the universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Rhodes. He came to Natal in 1970 and become a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Natal and in that same year he met Steve Biko and the two formed a close relationship. 

In 1972 Turner wrote a book called The Eye of the Needle - Towards Participatory Democracy In South Africa. The South African authorities thought that the book exercised a strong influence on opposition thinking with its plea for a radically democratic and non-racial South Africa. Such a society, he argued, would liberate whites as well as blacks. In the same year he was banned for five years. He was not allowed to visit his two daughters or his mother and had to stay in the Durban area. Even though he was banned this did not stop him from speaking out and in April 1973 Dr Turner and other banned individuals staged an Easter fast to illustrate the sufferings that bannings impose on people. The fast was supported by the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury. After his bannings, Dr Turner was kept on the staff at the University even though he was not allowed to lecture.

On January 8, 1978, Turner was shot through a window of his home in Dalton Avenue, Bellair, and died in the arms of his 13-year old daughter, Jann. After months of investigations and predictably so, police investigations turned up with no clues, and his killers were never identified. However it is widely believed that he was murdered by the apartheid security police.
Turner has been largely left out of the pantheon of post-apartheid heroes. Most of his former comrades ascribe this to his focus on popular self-management and bottom up democracy which is very uncomfortable for the post-apartheid state which is notoriously authoritarian (mixing neo-liberal managerialism with Stalinism in its practices)."

One click on a web search, that's how easy it was. You see it's not the actual names that are the problem, it's the manner in which it has been done. Mixing neo-liberal managerialism with Stalinism in it's practices. Me, I don't mind, the new names, they're good names. I just want to know who they are before they're imposed on me. I want to have a say. I agree with Rick Turner. After all, it seems, Rick is My Hero.