Discover PRETORIA: The Administrative Capital of SOUTH AFRICA | 10 Interesting Facts You Should Know
This city is popular for its long line of history and part it plays in South African heritage. Apart from that, it is a beautiful city and has an important role in the higher education of South Africa. Pretoria often goes by the name “Jacaranda City”. The streets of Pretoria are lined with more than 70 000 Jacaranda trees that produce little purple flowers. During the flowering season, which is between October and November, the fragrance of the Jacaranda flowers fills the air and makes it quite pleasing to take a walk. One should just be cautious if you’re allergic to bees, because the purple trumpet-shaped flowers are also a big bee-magnet.
Ironically enough, Pretoria is the city with the second most Jacaranda trees in South Africa, but its title still remains intact. Another big irony is that Jacaranda trees is also not indigenous to South Africa, or even Africa. It is a tree that is imported from Argentina and Brazil, with the intent to beautify the city.
Around the year 2000 the South African Government initiated a process to change the name of the city Pretoria. It was decided that it should be renamed to “Tshwane”. The exact origins of the new name, is not for certain, though there are some speculations. One of the speculations are that it is named after the son of Chief Mushi, Tshwane, who settled in the area about a century before the arrival of the Voortrekkers in the early 1800s.
Another speculation is that it is named after the Apiesriver (monkey river) that runs through Pretoria, as the Sotho and Tswana word for monkey is “tshwene” and sounds a lot like “Tshwane”. The last speculation is that “Tshwane” comes from the Tswana “black cow”, this would come from the tradition of sprinkling water on a black cow and letting it graze as part of a rainmaking ceremony.
But, the name was never changed successfully due to a big resistance from the Afrikaans community, that regarded Marthinus Pretorius as a hero and a big part of their he
