The road to renaming - what's in a name? The changing of Durban's street names and its coverage in The Mercury

The article investigates how the Durban newspaper The Mercury covered the renaming of a large number of streets in Durban. Through analysis of selected newspaper articles combined with interviews with some of the central journalists covering the name changes, the article seeks to study the renaming process from different perspectives. Questions of identity politics, collective memory, rewriting of history and postcolonial discourses in the era of democracy are issues dealt with. The article also touches upon the increasing tendency to categorize the diverse South African media audiences into socio-economic groups, and the challenges that may arise from this in terms of creating, representing and reaching a complex nation.