“In a move that will be welcomed by many people who have been praying about this issue for years”, a group of prominent Capetonian furniture makers have met with the Western Cape Provincial Geographical Names Committee (WCPGNC) on Friday May 30, and proposed the renaming of the Table Mountain.
Table Mountain is clearly not a good name for the mountain which, together with Devil’s Peak, towers above Cape Town. Nor has it always been the name chosen for the geological feature. A map dated somewhere around the 1660s indicates that the peak was known as The Flat Rock, while in the 1700s, it was known by the Afrikaner population as Die Aambeeld or The Anvil. Because it looks a bit like an anvil, see?
Tony Balding of the South Africa Association of Cabinet Makers (SAACM) stated:
Obviously, Table Mountain is poor choice of name for the Mountain. It only shares one feature with a table: the flat top. There are no legs, which make up at least half the interesting bits of a table, and it’s giving our customers a false impression of what to they’re going to get when they order a table from one of our members. Many of them fully expect their commissioned project to be made of sandstone on a partially eroded granite basement, whereas we tend to work in wood or metal.
In addition, many of our customers expect our products to last for hundreds of millions of years and have a cable car from the floor to the top of their table. And don’t even get me started on the whole size issue.
It’s frankly creating unrealistic expectations and all because of the utterly terrible moniker given to it by some unimaginative and quite possibly short-sighted Dutchman.
It needs a new name and we won’t stop until it gets one.
This is merely the formalisation of a campaign which has been going on for many years. Previously, carpenters have climbed Table Mountain carrying a selection of exquisitely-crafted dining chairs and walnut sideboards in an effort to publicise their campaign and seek guidance from whoever would listen. There is a record of a letter being sent to President Thabo Mbeki in 2001, requesting a name change, but rumour has it that he refused to acknowledge the plea as a means of getting back at the local cabinetmaking community after he trapped his finger in a wardrobe in the mid-90s.
If the SAACM campaign does manage to gain some degree of traction, however, it will also give hope to the Christian community of Cape Town who, having rather too much spare time on their hands after 1994, given that they were no longer having to help prop up Apartheid, decided that Devil’s Peak was a bit of a rubbish name for… er… Devil’s Peak.
Many prominent members of their community have now got together and sidelined some of the money which could have been used to feed hungry children in order to petition the Provincial Government into changing the name of the kilometre high rock which has, for centuries, apparently cursed the inhabitants of the Mother City.
A spokeswoman for the group said:
The thing is that Capetonians don’t know just how great life could be if we renamed Devil’s Peak and removed the demonic possession which has hung over the city since the mountain was named. If we can get it renamed to Dove’s Peak, then everything would be instantly sorted out: there would be no more poverty, no more crime, no more meltdowns from Helen Zille on Twitter – even the South Easter wouldn’t ruin our springtime any more. If we can get it done before next April, then One Direction might even cancel their concert.
It will just be rainbows and sunshine and unicorns for all once this pointy lump is rid of its demonic name.
When it was pointed out that Johannesburg suffered many of the same problems as Cape Town, yet doesn’t have a mountain named after Beelzebub on its doorstep, the spokeswoman responded:
Yes, but that is a city of sin. God is omnipotent, yes, but I think we need to understand that even He has limits.
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Posted in response this this “news” story, detailing how “a group of prominent Cape Town Christians” want to change the name of Devil’s Peak.
Because that’s absolutely the worst thing facing the Cape Town community at the moment, obviously.
