SHAPING A WHITE IDENTITY IN EPPING GARDEN VILLAGE IN 1938–1950
A SOAP OPERA OF SOCIAL RELATIONS AND SOCIAL CONTROL
“If you live or work in Ruyterwacht you have to play their (the residents’) game. The name of the game is holier than thou.” (F., 27 years.)
Towards the end of the 1940s the social competition between the resi-dents turned fi erce. In their everyday lives many resiresi-dents were able to manipulate the social networks of the area to their own ends. The mor-als of the residents were constantly evaluated in gossip, which became a source of social control, and an effective social weapon. The distrust between residents grew when it became commonplace to control an un-pleasant neighbour by leaking detrimental information about him or her to the social workers.
My senior informants described this turn by saying that after the early years “something happened”, and “things were not any more just what they used to be”. This change of atmosphere was also visible in the ar-chival fi ndings.
“Mrs. M’s neighbours are causing her considerable worry and dis-tress. She has lived in the neighbourhood since 1939 and her domes-tic and private affairs are subject to much gossip. She is not in good health and recently underwent a serious gynaecological operation.
She is also very nervous. The unpleasantness of the neighbours has a debilitating effect upon her health and nerves.” (CHL, SWR: 1948.) It was possible to take advantage of people’s competition for resources and social status, and get the residents to tell on their neighbours. Con-trolling their everyday life was much easier if the residents supervised one another. Potential trouble could be prevented when it was reported beforehand, and any attempts to lead the social workers astray were soon revealed by an envious neighbour who could thus earn some moral mile-age for himself.
“It was stated by neighbours however that Mr. E. and this girl are liv-ing together as man and wife. Durliv-ing a recent interview with Mr. E. he confessed that this was the case.” (CHL, SWR: 1949.)
In the archival fi ndings the language of guilt, shame, confessions and rep-rimanding characterises this hide-and-seek-game, which could turn dra-matic at times. Social workers were never out of work, for there always seemed to be people in need of help. The reactions to this varied from iso-lation from other residents and the evasion of the uplifters to adaptation to situation and playing along in the constant social drama of the suburb.
The Central Role of the Nuclear Family Unit138
It is still important to remember that Epping Garden Village was never a closed institution, but an outwardly normal suburb. It was thus essential for the elite to present the process of upliftment as philanthropy towards families, which was the accepted form of intervention at the time – also in Europe (Donzelot 1979). Philanthropy was an excellent method with which to combine assistance and medical-hygienist thinking into one functioning system. The most important unit of rehabilitation was thus the family, and families were treated as wholes.
Ideally the basis of every household in EGV was a married couple.
Those couples caught co-habiting ”as man and wife” were promptly given two options: either get married or leave. In the case of extramarital affairs, the transgressors were punished and separated. Solid married life was a sign and a condition of people’s successful upliftment.
The marital relations of the tenants were thus kept under the Com-pany’s watchful eye. This surveillance did not mean the mere control of sexual exclusivity, although it was a large part thereof, but also the stability of the relationship between the spouses. During these fi rst years divorce was actively discouraged, and a woman’s lot in a marriage was to endure. A deserted woman received plenty of sympathy, whereas a woman who could not or did not want to stay in an unsatisfying union was readily deemed bad.
138 Codes used to produce the text of this sub-chapter were: Families and Social Rela-tions, Control and Social RelaRela-tions, Parenthood and InstituRela-tions, Parenthood and Social Control; Parenthood and Social Relations; Parenthood and Professional Co-operation;
Marital Relations; Marital Relations and Space, use of; Marital Relations and Space-exclusion.
“ Mrs. V. has deserted her husband and children three times since the family assumed tenancy in March, 1947. Each time she maintained that her husband had ill-treated her and each time she worked herself up into an intense emotional outburst threatening suicide and the like.
It became evident that she was very nervous and emotionally unbal-anced and if her husband had ill-treated her, which he denied, he was probably driven to it by her nagging and unpredictable behaviour.”
(CHL, SWR: 1949.)
Towards the end of the 1940s the attitudes towards women in diffi cult marriages grew more sympathetic. The social workers helped the women greatly, since the latter were able to keep their wayward men at bay by reporting them. Social workers were often the fi rst ones to discover mari-tal trouble.
“...Mr. B. was reported to be ill-treating his wife. The matter was only investigated after Mrs. B. came to the offi ce for advice.” (CHL, SWR:
1950.)
Alliances developed between the women of Epping and the social work-ers. In the case of divorce, a woman who divorced a philanderer, an al-coholic or a work-shy person, could rely on the social workers’ help. If a man deserted his family and just disappeared, the police were sent after him since ’non-support of a family’ was a criminal offence.
The CHL not only settled family disputes, but also in the case of di-vorce often decided the future fate of the house and children, and admin-istered families’ maintenance grants. It exerted power over the residents’
family relations, regulating the children’s life in the families and the ways parenthood occurred in family life.
The Company’s power was increased by the fact that the families com-peted against one another. In the race towards whiteness, it was in eve-rybody’s interest to get rid of, or re-orientate those families perceived as problematic. This regulation was further fuelled by the fear of degenera-tion that would spread like a contagious disease through the neighbour-hood if the ‘weaklings’ were allowed to stay.
“The social worker has again received complaints from neighbours about the N. children and the Secretary Manager has received a peti-tion signed by 10 neighbours re the matter . . . The Principal of the Epping Garden Village school reports that these children have a very
deteriorating infl uence on other children especially those in their own neighbourhood . . . Mrs. N. refused to allow the children to be removed from the home. The social worker considers that unless these children are removed from the home the family must be moved away for the sake of the surrounding tenants. Because the family has responded from one aspect of the social work, social worker feels that it is unfair to deprive them of a cheap home and allow their environment to degen-erate.” (CHL, SWR: 1940.)
The Company is the Mother, the Company is the Father
From early on the taking of the children from their parents and placing them in foster homes and institutions became the trademark of social work in the eyes of the residents – a situation which lasted up to the 1980s, and was still refl ected in my informants’ accounts.
“When I came to this area people seemed to think I had two things to do: hand out food parcels and take their children away.” (Social worker.)
As the poor white adults were often seen as being beyond redemption, the emphasis was on the upliftment of the children. The education sys-tem promoted rehabilitation. Schools in the area carried out this task, but sometimes it was not enough. Parents of problematic offspring were given a chance to send their children to boarding schools at government expense. These boarding schools were in the countryside where chil-dren, ’corrupted’ by their urban environment, were supposed to learn a healthier way of life. During the holidays children could be sent away to the Company’s holiday camps.
A family whose children were not educated to be hard working, sexu-ally controlled and neat citizens ran a real risk of losing them altogether.
“As the B. children’s upbringing has been totally devoid of even the most elementary training in personal habits and cleanliness, it was suggested to Mr. B. to place them in the care of a suitable foster mother or in an institution.” (CHL, SWR: 1942.)
Moreover, if the child did not turn out a proper white, the record of the parents would be negatively affected. If the children were troublesome,
the whole family was easily labelled as bad. The failure to bring up good citizens meant that the parents had failed to exert proper discipline over their children, or had even set a bad example for their children in the fi rst place.
“The mother is not a strong character and have no control over the children although she has shown remarkable response to the supervi-sion of the social worker. The home is kept in a very satisfactory condi-tion.” (CHL, SWR: 1940.)
A result of the failure to be effective parents meant that institutions took over their role. Sometimes the families contacted the authorities them-selves in order to put their offspring on the right path before their records were affected. If the CHL was responsible for the children’s upbringing, the parents were blameless.
In the suburb, the Company had the authority of an omnipotent parent.
There were, however, unexpected dangers in relying too much on the au-thority of this parent. The Company wanted to teach the children how to respect their parents and the authorities, but it occasionally happened that after the children had been temporarily removed from their parents, they no longer wished to return. A rift was thus created between the parents and the children, the latter only being aware of their parents’ helplessness and the humiliation of their poverty.
“The children appear to be discontented with their home since their return and this has made Mrs. H. antagonistic towards all help from outside, e.g. sending them to a clinic or a children’s institution.”
(CHL, SWR: 1944.)
In these institutions, such as a boarding schools or children’s homes, the children were not only taught practices of ‘proper’ embodiment, but ob-tained a glimpse of a lifestyle that was not possible at home, and where the embarrassment of being poor was not present. Even in the earliest archival material the alienation of children occasionally manifested itself.
In the 1940s there were already cases where children were dissatisfi ed with their home-lives, and would discuss their parents with social work-ers. It was not unusual for the social workers to fi nd themselves in the middle of a family power struggle.
“Investigation of the family circumstances has proved that Mrs. B., the stepmother of the children, is a most diffi cult person. She is emotion-ally unstable and lacks self-control. Under the circumstances she is not a suitable person to be entrusted with the upbringing of the seven stepchildren. During the Christmas holidays when they were all home on leave, one of the children came to the offi ce to complain about their stepmother and stated that they were most unhappy with her.” (CHL, SWR: 1949.)
One could not even rely on one’s children. This was consequently refl ect-ed in the social relations. The most ambitious parents exertect-ed extremely strict discipline in respect of their offspring. Knowing the potential dan-gers of unlimited social mixing, the parents kept their children’s social relations under control. They were not allowed to socialise with kids from unsuitable backgrounds.
“Another tenant of a respectable type has stated that they have also considered leaving as Mrs. W. and her children have a very undesir-able infl uence over the children of the neighbourhood.” (CHL, SWR:
1942.)
If not carefully looked after, a child of an aspiring family could drift into
‘bad company’, which was plentiful in the Village. These aspiring fami-lies tended to become very exclusive units, striving to keep the evils of outside world at a distance.
Not only did isolation from the social environment benefi t a family by preventing the ever-present danger of racial downfall, but it was then also possible to indicate detachment from the stigma of the place, and set one-self above other poor whites. It was therefore important to choose friends very carefully, and not to trust anyone easily.
By keeping a social distance it was possible to save face and have pride. From the residents’ perspective, the tactic of an ideal family in Ep-ping Garden Village was a closed unit that minded its own business, and kept to its own. The theme of nuclear families isolating themselves from the other tenants was a recurring theme in both the interviews and in the archival material.
The social order in Epping Garden Village was rigid and hierarchical.
At the top of the hierarchy were the people with the most successful mid-dle-class aspirations, and at the bottom were those who never managed to look or behave white enough. They had to be excluded, since there was
no space for the anomalies in a suburb struggling to remain within the social boundary that separated the Whites from the Other.
Pass-whites and the Company’s Dilemma of Colour139
“We all had to be so white, white, white.” (F., 90 years.)
As the Company struggled to secure the racial boundaries in Epping Garden Village, pass-whites and coloured servants were two unwelcome groups that constituted a tricky problem for the Housing League. A third of the fi rst residents in EGV had until that time lived in the ‘Non-Euro-pean’ or racially mixed settlement areas, such as Observatory, Elsie’s River or Woodstock (CHL, SWR: 1942).140
The spatial connection between poor whites and coloureds was old and well known in Cape Town, and racial intermingling was known to take place in the white working-class areas (Watson 1970: 2-11; Western 1997: 208-214). The racial ideals and practices were often contradictory.
During my fi eldwork I often heard the claim that the poor white areas such as EGV were havens for pass-whites. From the archival material it becomes evident that the uplifters knew that not every apple in the basket was the kind of fruit they wanted. Although the Company formally pro-moted the benefi ts of racial segregation from the very beginning (Bosman 1941: 270-273), it was more ambiguous and fl exible in this regard than the apartheid government.
The offi cial rule was that the residents had to be White – or at least appear to be – but the way the racial purity in the area was monitored was full of inconsistencies and ambiguities. The rules were strict: per-sons classifi ed as non-whites were not even allowed to stay overnight. If someone was caught trying to pass for white, or had too dubious-looking relatives, they would have to leave the suburb for good. This monitoring also covered the children who were born in the area.
In reality, while proclaiming their commitment to the upliftment of the white race, the fi rst selection committee was not very strict about racial
139 This and following sub-chapter on domestic servants are based on the information ob-tained by combining the following codes: Ethnicity and Appearance; Ethnicity and Social Relations; Ethnicity and Space-exclusion; Pass-Whites.
140 Families moved from, for instance, Parow-Bellville area (27%), Vasco - Elsie’s River (12,5%), Maitland (12,5%), Woodstock (10,15%) and Goodwood (8,94%).
purity. They accepted people with a slightly coloured background who were then immersed in whiteness with the Company’s silent consent.
In this era, as shown earlier in the fourth chapter, there was no standard defi nition for a real White. Occasionally, the professionals in Epping Gar-den Village disagreed on the defi nition of a White. The church, the social workers, the principal of the primary school and the residents all had their own agendas and defi nitions. Inclusion in and exclusion from whiteness were therefore processes of endless negotiation.
Pass-white people lived under the constant fear of being discovered. In Epping Garden Village this lead to classic witch-hunt situations at times as is described by Cardozo (1970), when no one could be trusted and the neighbours would blame one another to save themselves from persecu-tion. These situations, together with the other tensions, impaired the so-cial relations in the suburb.
A power struggle around the question of the pass-whites is a concrete illustration of how the category White was socially constructed and de-fi ned, and how ambiguous the professional uplifters were.
At the end of the 1930s and in the 1940s the headmaster of the primary school orchestrated hunts to fi nd the pass-whites. He would compile lists of ‘doubtful’ children, requesting the Housing League to research their backgrounds. He would also refuse to take in children who were too dark, and attempted to have families regarded as white evicted if their offspring did not look white enough. This did not please the offi cials of the Com-pany who had already accepted these families.
“COLOUR QUESTION AT EPPING GARDEN VILLAGE: Family S.
The children of these tenants, as well as the mother, are so noticeably coloured that the principal of Epping Garden Village school is unwill-ing to register them at his school. He is in a diffi cult position, however, as the fact that the family was admitted to the Village was a tacit as-sumption that they were European. The following children were also mentioned as being doubtful . . .” (CHL, SWR: 1939.)
Consequently, these families were permitted to stay in the suburb, but their children had to attend school elsewhere. The principal’s ad hoc us-age of personal power and the local character of this racial boundary are well illustrated by the fact that the same children were well accepted in white schools in the neighbouring, more middle-class areas.
In the archival material there were several mentions of the principal having pointed out a family, or having refused children as coloured, but
only one of these families had to leave the suburb. In reality there must have been many more, for, as discussed earlier, the data of this study does not cover every individual social work case.
The decision of the 1941 Social Welfare Committee as quoted below, refers to the Company’s continuous co-operation with the headmaster, and refl ects tiredness and disillusionment with his mission for racial pu-rity.
“The social worker reported on the fi ve cases which were investigated by them and stated that they were not prepared to make any recom-mendations in connection with the colour of the various families
“The social worker reported on the fi ve cases which were investigated by them and stated that they were not prepared to make any recom-mendations in connection with the colour of the various families