Pretoria - The new La Mercy airport, north of Durban, has officially been named King Shaka International Airport.
After a series of public consultations with relevant stakeholders, the KwaZulu-Natal Government submitted the name to the South African Geographical Names Council.
On Tuesday, Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana approved the airport's proposed name. The airport is expected to be ready for operation in May this year.
Xingwana also approved the renaming of Piet Retief in Mpumalanga to eMkhondo as well as the correction of the spellings of some of KwaZulu-Natal's village names.
Due to technical matters identified late last week, Xingwana has retracted the registration of the Tshwane municipal council name as a geographical feature.
The Ministry has instructed officials to do more work on the matter.
"As government we believe geographical name standardisation is at the heart of our social cohesion project," she said.
