[Answer]-Should South be used to rename files and/or instances of a keyword in code?

In a scale of one to madness, I think it’s a terrible idea. Your version control system would commit suicide as soon as you tried to update the code further since your VCS would only have the old values while your migration would change the existing files.

I think it’s reasonable to have the migration rename uploaded files, but not source files.

Why treat this any different from any other change to your source? Why put this particular source change in a migration? This is madness 🙂