Belgium’s Longest Tunnel Could be Renamed After Wangari Maathai
Leopold II, Belgium’s longest tunnel could soon be renamed after Kenyan environmentalist the late Prof. Wangari Maathai.
Maathai, a Nobel Prize winner, is among 15 female nominees from whom the people of Belgium capital, Brussels have been asked to choose for the new name of the tunnel.
10 of the candidates were picked by the committee of experts and five by the people of Brussels.
They include Maathai, Andrée De Jong, Chantal Akerman, Isala Van Dies, Marguerite Yourcenar, Marie Curie, Rosa Parks, Semira Adamou.
Others are Simone Veil, Sophie Kanza, Marie Popelin, Annie Cordy, Astrid of Belgium, Elisabeth of Belgium, and Antoinette Spaak.
Voting will take place during the entire month of February beginning this Monday, according to a press release by Brussels Mobility.
The renaming procedure “to symbolically reinforce the place of women in the public space” started last year with a call for ideas to citizens and the reflection of a committee of experts.
At the moment, 43 percent of the streets in Brussels bear the name of a person but only 6.1% of the paths are named after a woman.
The people of Brussels will choose their preferred candidate via Brussels Mobility’s website, where information on each candidate is available.
The official name change will take place at the end of the rehabilitation of the tunnel.
Comments (4)
... I think that a woman is always identified with a man. If she does not belong to a husband, then she belongs to the father. Wangari Maathai was a divorcee from Nyeri. The father of her children, Mwangi Mathai, in 1978, said in divorce papers that he could not live with her, because she was the cause of his high blood pressure. What do you gain by being praised by others, without family and friends?
Unsettled Nomad go to hell you are an imbecile . you cannot accept Wangari is an Icon in her own right .
🤣🤣🤣🤣even if I admired what Wangari Mathis fought for n also I named my daughter the same names I doubt this whites Europeans idiots colonialist thugs who messed up some African countries will ever name such a tunnel to a black person.
Before we were invaded and physically and psychologically occupied by the illegal English settlers, my particular micro-nation (a word coined by Dr. Mathaai instead of the hackneyed preferred English word "tribe"), women from my micro-nation (taifa-dogo) did not take their husband's name after marriage.
I also commend her for dropping her colonial-English/biblical name, a trend which the Kenyan Freedom Fighters agreed to do especially during the struggle for independence of the people of Kenya.
I therefore recommend that the tunnel should bear her first name "WANGARI" instead of the name of her husbands father 'Mathaai."