Anonymous C replied with this 5 years ago, 1 hour later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,138,008
@previous (dw)
Eh, that's what the locals call it. Are you saying Wikipedia knows more than the locals do about their own city?
Anonymous C double-posted this 5 years ago, 33 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,138,015
By the way, Lulu Xingwana is Xhosa. In renaming the place back to what she (and Wikipedia) supposed was the original Setswana name, ironically she made the same basic mistake as the white guy, Lichtenstein, who thought that Tswana was just an (inferior) dialect of Xhosa... or even more likely, it was deliberate sneering at the Tswana people (who are hated by the Zulus and the Xhosas... in fact the word Tswana originally meant "filth").
The same thing happened in Zimbabwe when the Shona came into power and renamed all the old Ndebele place names with Shona spellings (Umvuma -> Mvuma etc.) They claimed it was because they wanted to erase colonial history, but really it was a show of dominance over the Ndebele, who historically, under Mzilikazi & Lobengula, used to kick their ass.
Xhosa people tend towards not pronouncing F clearly, as that sound is not very common in their language, hence the H replacement in the spelling. Tswana people say their F's more clearly, and almost certainly would have pronounced it "Mafikeng", not "Mahikeng", so I'd say the British were more accurate when they spelt it with an F.
It's kind of like an Irishman insisting that 33.333 should be spelt "tirty tree and a turd".
Meta !Sober//iZs joined in and replied with this 5 years ago, 42 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,138,017
@previous (C)
Also the Shonas tried to erase the Matabele people with the Gukurahundi.
But at least they got rid of Ian Smith, right?
Sheila LaBoof (OP) replied with this 5 years ago, 36 minutes later, 8 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,138,026
@1,138,015 (C)
fuck, there's too many kinds of ethnic groups for me to ever remember and I don't even want to
I would have thought everyone would have six different ancestories by now and give up this tribla shit
dw replied with this 5 years ago, 1 hour later, 9 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,138,046