Business

Named after Nelson (Yolandi Burger)

Yolandi Burger was on a bus, on her way to a hospital when she saw a sign for Nelson Mandela Park. She wasn’t in Johannesburg, but in Loughborough in England. It was an unusual sight, and it made her contemplate how names can shape how we perceive a space, how they carry the weight of legacy and, ultimately, influence our expectations. And when the name belongs to someone as globally significant as Nelson Mandela, the meaning of that space is magnified. “It made me think about how this name had travelled and what it meant for the people who used that space,” she says.

Burger is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Johannesburg and a research fellow at Loughborough University, working with the Gauteng City- Region Observatory (GCRO). Her project, Named After Nelson, studies how and why places take on Mandela’s name, what that implies for those who live and work there, and who carries the responsibility once the sign is in place. The research forms part of the Memorialising Mandela in the Metropolis collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF). “The naming act is powerful,” she says. “It’s a form of commemoration that turns everyday places into carriers of memory.”