BCC attacked for misspelt word on official city crest

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor

THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) last week attracted the wrath of residents on popular social media site Facebook, after posting a picture of the official city crest which had a wrongly spelt Ndebele word.

The crest, has the city logo, which is depicted as ‘siye pambili’, which social media users have said should instead be ‘siye phambili’.

In defending the misspelt word, the local authority claimed that the crest had been registered as such and they could not change this.

“It was actually supposed to be “Phambili” and also pronounced as such but the Crest was registered with “Pambili”. The crest was registered with Pambili and hence can’t be changed,” wrote the local authority in response.

However, residents would have none of that, accusing the local authority of being dishonest.

“The City of Bulawayo if one can correct their name and surname that identify with them if they are wrong why can’t we change Pambili to Phambili?,” wrote one Nhlanhleni K Lawrence

Ayibongwe Mzingwane Tsambiwa said; ”I have seen many roads being changed what so difficult with correcting the spelling, wherever is registered why can’t you approve the change as authorities and tell whoever is holding to that wrong spelling to change.”

In March 2016, the local authority passed a resolution to correct misspelt suburb names in the city noting that the wrong spellings were “linguistically and culturally wrong”.