Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign

I guess it was only a matter of time before the 2010 World Cup hit a snag concerning South Africa's past. It seems that after apartheid's death in 1994, the World Cup host has been busily changing the names of it's cities to "better reflect the country's African character."

The only problem with that is that the new names have had trouble getting out to the international community. Who knew that Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital, is now officially called Tshwane? Yeah, me neither.

As you can imagine, this business of changing the names of cities isn't popular with everybody in South Africa. But it seems that FIFA and the organizing committee have made a good move here to include both the old and new city names both on the World Cup tickets and on signs directing tourists and fans in and around the host country.

World Cup runs into apartheid name spat [Mail & Guardian]

-ac