When I first moved to South Africa more than a decade ago, I lived in Johannesburg before moving to Cape Town.
During my sojourn in the City of Gold or Egoli, as Johannesburg is also known, I happened to have reason to visit a commercial and residential suburb called Sunninghill every now and then, and was always amused to find myself on Naivasha Road or even Nanyuki Road.
I remember thinking at the time that whoever was in charge of naming the streets of Sunninghill must have had a soft spot for Kenya. Not knowing how old the suburb was, I guess I assumed it had been some British colonial officer on transfer from Kenya.
For those who may not be aware, South Africa was a British colony until 1961, a year after British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s "Wind of Change" speech.
This was when the British appeared to finally acknowledge that the sun was truly setting on their Empire, which had once covered around 25 per cent of the world's land surface.
During the years when both SA and Kenya were a part of the empire on which, for a while at least, the sun never set. There was quite a bit of movement between the two countries.
For instance, there were Afrikaner settlers who fled SA after their 1899-1902 war with the British. Among these was former president Frederick de Klerk’s grandfather, clergyman Willem de Klerk, who ministered and was buried in Eldoret.
Meanwhile, a number of Kenyans, among whom former Cabinet ministers Charles Njonjo and Njoroge Mungai are perhaps the best known of the time, attended Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape town of Alice.
But I digress and should really take you back to the streets of Sunninghill. Recently, my other half had business which took him to the area, and he was so fascinated by all the Kenyan place names he kept coming across, he kept texting me to tell me about them.
When I got onto Google to see just how many streets there were with a Kenyan connection, I was amazed. Among others, there were the following: Bogoria, Diani, Nanyuki, Naivasha, Narok, Tambach Kikuyu, Kilindini, Kisumu, Malindi, Nakuru, Ngobit, Tana and Thika. They even had the name of a person: Mungai.
This made me wonder what it was about this one suburb that had such a connection to Kenya, and so I asked on Twitter if anyone knew how this state of affairs came to be.
A friend who is a history researcher suggested: “Perhaps [the streets were] named during World War Two, when South Africans based in Kenya in 1940 went to fight against the Italians in Ethiopia, the first WWII engagement with South African troops. The Royal Navy Eastern Fleet was even based at Kilindini in 1942.”
Another person claimed he had been informed by a South African that the place was “acquired by whites who migrated from Kenya during Independence time. They gave the streets Kenyan names.”
These are quite plausible theories, though I would like a definitive answer, preferably from someone with hard evidence. Nevertheless, it is quite a curiosity and quite a few Kenyans and others on Twitter are still commenting as I write this, 24 hours after the post went up.
As far as I recall, the only streets in Nairobi with a South African convention are Luthuli Avenue in the CBD and one that not many know, Jabavu Lane in the Kilimani area.
This last was named for John Tengo Jabavu (1859-1921). He was a political activist and the editor of South Africa's first newspaper to be written in the Xhosa language.
I’m guessing that as the Xhosa language is one of the official languages of the Eastern Cape, one of the Kenyan Fort Hare graduates may have had a hand in naming the lane. But who knows?
There are also a number of Sowetos spread across Kenyan cities and towns in the same way as there is a Cape Town housing project named Mau Mau.
