It is impossible to count the number of times one can hear the phrase “Mother City” in English-language news and television programmes in a single day. It is used in the same way that “Joburg” or “Jozi” refer to the city of Johannesburg.
But while those two words are simple nicknames, contractions of the main name, the phrase “Mother City” conveys something else.
While there appears to be no definitive history of where the phrase “Mother City” comes from, it does appear to be generally accepted to refer to the status of Cape Town as South Africa’s “first” urban settlement.
Except that it wasn’t.
As every Grade 6 learner knows, the first urban settlement in South Africa was Mapungubwe. This was at least four hundred years before European colonisers arrived in what is now Cape Town.
Why then, is Cape Town referred to as the “Mother City”?
It can only be because those who use the phrase, perhaps unconsciously, are claiming that Cape Town is where South Africa’s development sprang from.
The word “mother” has immense power here. It suggests that the rest of the country was somehow born from this place. That, without it, South Africa would not have developed, would not even exist.
Historical myth
But it also adds power to a bigger, stronger and more dangerous historical myth.
When I was at primary school, during the apartheid era, my white classmates and I were told that when white people came to South Africa, there were no black people in the interior of the country.
It was not true.
But millions of white people were taught this, and as we all know, it can be hard to unlearn things we were taught when we were young.
Even today, some people claim this.
In 2012, then FF+ leader and deputy Agriculture Minister Pieter Mulder repeated this in Parliament (several months after I published that piece, we bumped into each other, and with extreme politeness but some emotion, he made it clear he still refused to accept my view).
Read more: Back to the future: South Africa’s battle with its past
Just last week, in a spat on X, the cartoonist Jerm repeated what is often called the “empty land myth”. This forced News 24’s Fact Check Desk to provide the facts, and the real historical context.
It is also wrong to claim Cape Town gave birth to South Africa as the society and economy that we now have.
What really developed South Africa (albeit unequally) was the discovery first of diamonds in Kimberley and then gold in Gauteng and platinum group metals in North West.
This changed everything.
Previously, our country was occupied by people who farmed their own food and organised themselves in different ways.
The discovery of minerals led to hundreds of thousands of people coming here from Europe. Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit and others brought capital and dug as fast as they could.
Migrant labour
To do this, they dragged in people from surrounding areas. This included people from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and other areas.
This was the root of the migrant labour system, which has brought so much heartache to so many. This dynamic has made it much harder for generations of people to form stable nuclear families, and surely the fundamental reason that only 35.6% of children in our country live with their biological fathers now.
In terms of the society we are now, Gauteng was the “mother”. Cape Town at best was the fun-loving grandfather.
You might want to argue that Cape Town is the Mother City because Parliament is there.
But the seat of government is not in Cape Town, it is in Tshwane. No one refers to that as the “father city”.
And if you want to give Parliament, and those in it, that level of respect, that’s entirely up to you.
Considering that South African urban spoken English has changed so much over the last 30 years, it is astonishing that the phrase “Mother City” still has so much power.
This may be because many official sources have used it for so long.
SouthAfrica.net, an entry portal for information for people wanting to come here uses the phrase.
As does Cape Town tourism.
And the city itself, as recently as last week.
Handy catch-phrase
In some ways, you can understand why this would happen. Those who market the city would be looking for a handy and unique catch-phrase. And “Mother City” would fit the bill.
Of course, some might try to blame the DA for this. They would claim that it is their deliberate strategy and their “Eurocentric” beliefs that have led them to push this phrase.
That would be wrong, because it does not explain why someone with a nuanced understanding of our history, such as President Cyril Ramaphosa, would use it.
Or why Dirco Minister Ronald Lamola used the phrase as recently as November last year.
Part of the answer may also lie in the fact that language can often be nostalgic, it is full of phrases that are rooted in history. This means that the prejudice of the times in which they were formed can be passed on.
This often happens unconsciously, it is entirely possible to use these phrases without realising their history.
For example, some English phrases are rooted in prejudice against Irish or Catholic people. Examples of this can include “paddy wagon” for police car (“Paddy” being a common Irish name and thus the police car was carrying Irish people) or “Irish twins” referring to two children born to the same mother in the same calendar year.
At one point, “beyond the pale” referred to a border beyond which “savages” lived. One of its most famous usages was, again, in Ireland, when Dublin was referred to as beyond the pale, where Irish people lived.
Of course, meanings change over time.
But in the case of Cape Town, “Mother City” gives it a power linked to our racist and colonial past. It perpetuates the myth that South Africa was “empty” before white people came.
Yes, it is entirely possible to use the phrase in a perfectly innocent way, to mean nothing by it.
But words have power. Because of their history. And just because you can use the phrase innocently doesn’t mean you should. DM