DISTRIBUTION OF CULTURAL CAPITAL THROUGH BODIES AND EMBODIMENT

SHAPING A WHITE IDENTITY IN EPPING GARDEN VILLAGE IN 1938–1950

DISTRIBUTION OF CULTURAL CAPITAL THROUGH BODIES AND EMBODIMENT

In addition to economic capital the residents were given cultural capital.

The professionals used their resources systematically in order to establish a proper and uniform White habitus for everyone. The ideas concerning acceptable ways of handling race relations, sexuality, appearance, work ethics and family life were imposed using body techniques, such as the ideas and practices concerning cleanliness. The spatial design of the suburb and a certain amount of symbolic violence supported the process

of rehabilitation. From the very beginning, the uplifters controlled the boundaries around the social bodies of the residents.

The aim was that the people would acquire an ideal way of being White, and the level of this success had to be consistently presented in everyday life. The signs of a good white were shown spatially and at the bodily level, in one’s house and family, and in the public spaces. Willing-ness to work, to show a proper habitus, and an ability to develop one’s whole life in the right direction were expected.

Simultaneously, the social games started in the suburb when the residents began employing their tactics and manipulating the social situ-ations. What Bourdieu would call a ”fi eld” – an area of everyday life or a social space where social games could take place (1998: 77) – developed in Epping Garden Village. Respectability and a membership of the mid-dle-class were the prizes set for the winners of this game. From the start some people were more willing or more able to rid themselves of the looming stigma of being poor white. Those people had much more to win, and thus also more to lose. During these years there was still a chance of respectability even for the White poor.

Despite the unequal power relations, the residents’ everyday life was not completely invaded by the regime. The residents developed devices to cope with the surveillance, and discovered ways to escape the all-seeing eye of the professionals. The case of Mr. Oosthuizen above shows that the residents began to see their relationships with these professionals as tacti-cal¹²³ ones – despite the fact that these interactions also had a negotiated and mutual side – and attempted to use them to their own advantage.

Men and Women at Work: Toiling, Gendered and Regulated Bodies The poor white bodies had to be disciplined, regimented and moved if the correct way of living was eventually to appear self-evident and un-rehearsed. The relationship between work and honour was central to the category of a good white. The ideal gender roles too were clear in the archival fi ndings.

Men’s glory was to work and provide for their families, look after their women, and to protect them. The white male body was supposed to be a hard-working, disciplined body. A White man was never lazy. If he could

123 Here I am referring to de Certeau’s (1984: 36-38) idea of tactics as the ability of the one in a weaker position to manipulate the strategy given from those above.

not fi nd any other job, the Railways and some other institutions offered sheltered employment for him.

In practice, some men were not able to fulfi l the expectations harboured of them as breadwinners. They could not keep their jobs and they often struggled to fi nd new ones. Drinking and relations with other women were considered offensive, but the ultimate sin was for a man to be ‘work-shy’.

The fi rst work-shy men appeared in the archival data in 1943.

“These two ’won’t works’ are well known at the Labour Bureau where they have often refused work or accepted it and resigned after a few weeks. It appears to be a typical case for a Labour colony but unfor-tunately there is no such institution in existence at present. The father joins in the drinking parties at the house.” (CHL, SWR: 1943.) The demands expected of female behaviour were far stricter, and la-belling occurred easier than with men. An alternative to this lala-belling was to assume the powerful role of an all-mighty Afrikaner mother, a volksmoeder. In this image, correct behaviour was connected to sexual virtue (kuisheid). As Louise Vincent points out, the romanticised catego-ry¹²⁴ of volksmoeder was appealing, particularly to those women whose own position in the society was ambiguous. The role of the volksmoeder offered working-class Afrikaner women a way to fi ght back against their marginalisation.(Vincent 2000: 67-68.)¹²⁵

In the 1930s the ACVV was an organisation with a considerable in-fl uence on poor white women’s lives. It was known to take a positive stand regarding the use of contraceptives by poor white women, mainly because ‘birth spacing’ would save women’s strength and contribute to them being proper volksmoeders (Klausen 2001: 20). It seems, however, that contraceptives failed to gain popularity. Instead, from early on, EGV became derogatorily known as a konyntjiedorp¹²⁶ and ‘nappy valley’

where families were big. In all likelihood the improved living conditions in EGV combined with Afrikaner politician’s pronatalist ideologies and

124 At the turn of the century the ideal image of an Afrikaner mother was that of a praying mother, biddende ma.

125 For discussions on volksmoeders, see also Marijke du Toit 2003 and Anne McClin-tock (1995: 378-379). On the position of Afrikaner women in South African nation-build-ing in the early twentieth century, see Marijke du Toit 1992.

126 Lit. a village of rabbits. A seemingly joking expression that in fact implies that the people living in the suburb breed like animals, are too weak to control their sexuality and too uneducated to limit the number of their children as a civilised person would.

the idealisation of volksmoeders tipped the scales in favour of large fami-lies.

This was the time after the extension of white franchise, which gave white women the right to vote in 1930. The law also increased gender equality, although in the form of increased control.¹²⁷ Since the white women’s rights had recently been upgraded, they had to earn their place in the power structures of society, and prove they also deserved full citizenship. The easiest way was to prove their worthiness was by adapt-ing the general concern about racial purity and emphasisadapt-ing the role of women (they may only be women, but they are still White) in the nation-building process.

Afrikaner mothers were to be the sentinels of the honour of their volk.

Theirs was the mission of protecting the purity and thus the organic unity of the white race. More concretely, they supervised the cleanliness of their own bodies, as well as that of their families and houses. The bur-den of educating the new generations to be proper whites rested on their shoulders. Volksmoeders were the true guardians of the category of a proper white. Undoubtedly, this role appealed to the women in Epping Garden Village. It gave them a dignifi ed status in the community as well as a place in the nation-building process.

Ideally, the female body was a domestic and self-sacrifi cing mother-body. In practice, many women worked outside home either to compen-sate for men’s failure to provide for their families, or because they needed the money. Often, they had no choice.

“No mother’s allowance is available for Mrs. C., as it is felt that her children were institutionalised to enable her to fi nd employment. She is having diffi culty in fi nding work as she is not in good health, has only passed Std. 6, and is not bilingual. She has no qualifi cations or experience in work other than domestic, but her physical condition does not allow her to enter into domestic service. She obtained a job at the Dry-Cleaning Depot at Stuttafords but collapsed on the fi rst day of employment.” (CHL, SWR: 1945.)

127 The Immorality Act was amended in 1927 to prohibit extra-marital intercourse be-tween all Whites and Africans presumably for eugenic reasons. This was an extension of pre-Union laws of 1902 and 1903, which had forbidden the sexual intercourse only between “Black men and White women”. (Horrell 1978.)

The archival fi ndings show that during the fi rst years women were ac-tively discouraged from working outside the home, since their homes and families were seen to be their fi rst priorities. Girls often had to cut their education short for the sake of their families, and the theme of a female being an asset to the family in this manner occurs frequently. The social workers, being educated women themselves, wanted to guarantee the girls an opportunity for education.

There were little professional prospects for uneducated white women.

The jobs for which they were qualifi ed were badly paid, and there was no career to be pursued. The most honourable work was a woman’s work in the home. A woman who did not properly carry out her domestic duties was defying the boundaries of the category of a good white, and deserved chastisement.

“He furthermore fi nds his work too fatiguing at the age of 63 years, with the result that when he returns home to a household which is always in confusion he often gives his wife and children rough treat-ment.” (CHL, SWR: 1947.)

Despite all these pressures and feminine ideals, there were allegedly sev-eral prostitutes in the area, a claim not totally unfounded since the earliest archival material several times mentions houses of ill-fame and prostitu-tion at the poverty-ridden Epping Garden Village. In comparison with life in the slums, life in Epping Garden Village was comfortable, but some families were still barely able to feed their children (as the existence of 41 undernourished children in 1941 demonstrates) (CHL, SWR: 1941).

In the interviews, some senior residents told me of their diffi culties to survive in the 1930s and 1940s.

“I always prayed, even if there was nothing in the house. Since I came here it did not go so bad, but before that, more than once, there was nothing to eat. The children would cry for a piece of bread and there is nothing, and then I’d just pray. Tomorrow something happens. And those days you know, it was bad days. Those days I even asked the peo-ple to scrub their kitchen fl oors for a sixpence. And they said no, they’d do it themselves. I walked and I asked, walked and asked.” (Female, long-term resident, 82 years.)

She did the honourable thing, pinched her pennies and starved, but not everyone was equally resistant to relatively easy money, which

prosti-tution could provide. The risks involved were stigmatisation and being expelled from the suburb, or worse: the women could be, for instance, branded as unfi t mothers.

In spite of possible negative consequences, the archival material has an abundance of examples of women’s slipping morals. They were labelled sexually deviant, bad mothers or bad housekeepers. In the archival fi les the social workers often described these women as slovenly, nervous or in the worst case, hysterical. The ethos seemed to be that if the women could not handle the toughness of their lives, there had to be something wrong with them.

These developments and ideals lead to the category of a sexually pure

’proper woman’ becoming well internalised, and rarely questioned by women themselves. If a woman resisted the positive volksmoeder model role, she risked being perceived as leaning towards the negative stere-otype of a whore. Thus the concept of volksmoeder, initially tempting and empowering, further ossifi ed the gender roles in the area.¹²⁸

In addition to time-consuming demands to work hard and be proper, all the residents were presumed to have productive leisure. Organising the residents’ leisure was an important part of the social workers’ initial task description. Planned leisure would ensure that the tenants would not engage in any counter-productive activities, but instead divide their free time between sport, church and gardening.

Extensive club work was organised from the start. In the 1930s and 1940s leisure activities were organised by gender. There were boys’

clubs to boost male socialisation, and the social workers did their best to awaken the ladies’ interests in sewing and decorating.

For men there was sport and garden work, for women there was guid-ance in good housekeeping and care of their children. The women were constantly educated to become more moral and skilful people. Education-al movies were shown weekly at the community hEducation-all, and the domestic science¹²⁹ students from the universities of Stellenbosch and Cape Town visited and taught them household and gardening skills. There were lec-tures on medical topics: child health and children’s diseases, and leclec-tures on handicrafts and cooking.

128 Dworkin (1983) examines the allure of the political ultra-right, and its promises to women of conservative families who would otherwise be bound to total powerlessness.

By giving a selected few women a task and a seeming purpose in life, it recruits them to work for a repressive power structure, which, in the long run, tends to deny women their rights.

129 Home Economics.

In 1942 the residents were allowed to organise a dance in the com-munity hall once a month. The social workers were concerned that only the residents from Epping would attend and the residents would become isolated, as experience had shown that the middle class rarely volunteered to spend their free time with poor whites.

“It is a well-known fact in Good Hope Model Village that people across the road in Brooklyn refuse to attend dances in the Martin Ad-ams Hall, because the hall bears the stigma of being a social Hall for poor whites.” (CHL, SWR: 1942.)

The social workers were correct, and after fi rst few dances the people were left to spend their time among themselves. However, the dances became vastly popular in the suburb, and are still organised.

For the rest, the resident activity tended towards the sporadic, and was characterised by short, fervent periods of mobilisation and long periods of oblivion and passivity. This tendency towards passivity was already known to the social workers in the 1940s. They found it diffi cult to per-suade people to attend the stimulating activities that they co-ordinated right from the start.

“Experience in Good Hope Model Village proved that if any organisa-tion depended for support on Good Hope Model Village Tenants only, that undertaking was a hopeless failure.” (CHL, SWR: 1942.)

The social workers’ contempt and frustration are visible in this material.

But in the 1940s the optimism had as yet not disappeared completely.

“Tenants in Epping Garden Village differ from those in Good Hope Model Village at the present time. They are still pulling together, but with the years, the same attitude might manifest itself amongst tenants and members of the public in that neighbourhood; and it is felt that such an event as the Dance Orchestra competition would defi nitely counteract this.” (CHL, SWR: 1942.)

The social workers’ fears were justifi ed, and the careful optimism died when within a few years a passive attitude also became the norm in EGV.

These fi rst years were full of social workers’ attempts to organise group work, and consequent disappointments.

“…the tenants in the Company’s villages have not developed the habit of using their leisure creatively. An investigation into the way in which housewives, men and young people spent their leisure would undoubt-edly reveal surprising results . . . Attempts have been made in the past to organise certain group work and although it has been a failure in most cases, the reasons for the failure have never been analysed.”

(CHL, SWR: 1945.)

Despite these feelings of failure, the survey of 1946 revealed that 17 per cent (594 of 3481) of the residents were active members in associations, clubs and committees, which varied from Reddingsdaadbond¹³⁰ to Volk-spele¹³¹; and there was even a pigeon society.¹³²

Becoming a good white was not a part-time commitment. In their re-ports, social workers often evaluated the people’s use of (free) time when discussing their degree of upliftment.

“The house is poorly furnished, the bedding is fi lthy and the house smells unpleasant. The fl oors and walls are dirty. Mr. Smith has not attempted to improve his garden although he spends a lot of time at home.” (CHL, SWR: 1948.)

Thus, during the fi rst years work was seen as the best bodily technique for upliftment of poor whites. Since some residents did not improve, new bodily techniques were needed to battle these newly perceived problems, and the advances in medical science seemed to provide some answers.

In the 1940s, expertise in the analysis of the body reached a new level as the infl uence of nurses, medical doctors and psychiatrists began to increase in the housing schemes. The Company fi rst employed a psy-chiatrist in 1944, and psychological jargon began to penetrate the social workers’ observations.

130 The Reddingsdaadbond was a society concerned with the economic survival of the Afrikaners.

131 Afrikaner dances and songs that were considered very traditional, while they were actually largely created in the early twentieth century in order to strengthen the process of nation building.

132 The occurrence of crime was low, although the fi rst statistics show that at the begin-ning of the 1940s crime was increasing. In 1940 there were 15 cases, in 1941 17 cases, in 1942 28 cases and in the fi rst three months of 1942 already 13 cases. The majority of the criminals in these cases, however, were runaway (ex-)husbands who would not support their families.

“The psychiatrist’s opinion is that at this stage she is absolutely inca-pable of ”pulling herself together” and from childhood she has built up what has now become a ”conditioned refl ex” in that, to all diffi cult situations she reacts emotionally and is incapable of reacting in any other way. He has hopes that regular psychiatric treatment will bring her to a more reasonable outlook on life, which will allow her to live a normal married life.” (CHL, SWR: 1948.)

Medical certifi cates became a routine part of many procedures, such as applications for housing. Some residents learned that through the medical professionals it was sometimes possible to turn the attempts to supervise their embodiment to their own advantage. Doctors’ certifi cates were pre-sented to various ends, such as to get a transfer closer to a station, or to a larger house, to get children sent to or returned from an institution – and to avoid or acquire employment. Sometimes the certifi cates were also played off against each other, as residents had learned that professional opinions could differ.

“Sarie, 16 years, and Marie, 14 years, were admitted to the Housecraft School at Riebeeck West in January. After the Easter weekend, when home, they refused to return, but sent two Medical Certifi cates signed by Dr. de V., stating they were unfi t for manual labour. The Principal of the school arranged with the Social Worker to have the girls re-ex-amined by Dr. O. who found them fi t and strong for the course in

In document The Making of a Good White : A Historical Ethnography of the Rehabilitation of Poor Whites in a Suburb of Cape Town (sivua 134-148)