There are many answers to Renier Schoeman’s question on the airport renaming, Why the outcry? (September 5).

‖It’s not about who, it’s about how and why. Name changes are identity theft. They do for public property what black empowerment, transformation, charters, rates and taxes do for private property — strip minorities of their right to promote the new elite.

‖Names are chosen for their message, not their merit. Oliver Tambo was a great man. Tshwane was not, yet his name was forced into use.

‖The public foots the bill.

‖It’s a distraction from other local government issues — like nondelivery. People want government to stop the country sinking, but some politicians rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, others remove them, and the rest rename them.

‖The good is lost with the bad. Whites voted apartheid in, but whites also voted apartheid out.

‖If minor politicians learn they can make their name by trashing white heritage, what stops them graduating from stealing a minority’s symbolic past to taking the rest of their assets?

And we thought Rip van Winkle was a figure of fiction! Where have you been all this time, Renier Schoeman, Why the outcry? (September 5). Sleepy old Cape Town, no doubt.

There are not many incoming travellers who would not recognise the names JF Kennedy or Charles de Gaulle, two statesmen who stood atop history’s highest pedestal. The argument that struggle-hero name changes should go unchallenged is a little lame, considering that not many visitors could put a face to the name OR Tambo.

It is damaging and confusing when emotionally challenged powers that be treat a 100-year-old brand as if it’s a balancing act performed by a troupe of circus dwarves.

Johannesburg is a name synonymous with a target market that says “we’ve finally arrived” — London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Dubai. OR Tambo — is that a new meteor crater? Over time the loss of a prestigious brand such as Johannesburg will score low on tourism loyalty.