The Making of a Good White - E-thesis - Helsinki.fi

Social Services in the CHL Housing Project
At the beginning of the twentieth century members of the public became
interested in social work among the white working class in Cape Town,
and the ACVV showed a keen interest in these issues as well.
In 1934 the social services in the housing estates became professionalised.
The Citizens’ Housing League hired two young ladies who had
graduated from Department of Sociology and Social Work of the University
of Stellenbosch to become their first housing estate social workers. In
February 1935 the board of CHL decided at a meeting to ”appoint a subcommittee
to control and supervise the work of the Social Workers”. 119
This sub-committee had its first meeting, chaired by Zerilda Steyn, on the
8 th of March 1935. At this first meeting a suggestion regarding the social
workers’ list of duties was formulated. (CHL Board minutes: 1935.) Later
this committee became known as the ’Social Welfare Committee’.
By that time the Cape Town City Council was also interested in ’housing
management’. For the municipal housing schemes, the model for the
housing management was imported from the United Kingdom. The Octavia
Hill system emphasised the meaning of personal contact and trusting
relationships between the tenant and the landlord. A female housing
manager was to supervise both the payment of the rent and the social
conditions of the tenant. (Robinson 1998: 460-461.)
The Octavia Hill system was introduced in Cape Town in 1934 when
the city council decided to apply this method in order to bring upliftment
to municipal housing schemes. (Bosman 1941: 259-268.) The first Octavia
Hill Housing Manager in Cape Town, Margaret Hurst, was imported
from the United Kingdom.
At the end of the 1930s, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and East London
also nominated Octavia Hill housing managers, who then began training
South African women in this method. In 1939 the government decided
to spend £660 on the training of female housing managers in the Octavia
Hill system. They would then be employed in the housing schemes
throughout South Africa, the building of which had first been supervised
by the public health departments. Over 50 Octavia Hill housing managers
were trained in South Africa between 1938 and 1960. (Robinson 1998:
463-467; Britten 1942: 23.)
119
The members of this committee were Mrs. H.P.M. Steyn (Zerilda), Mrs. Harold
Jones, Bishop Lavis, Rev. F.X. Roome, Mrs. F.H.P. Creswell, Miss D. Syfret, Rev. W.
Mason and young professor H.F. Verwoerd.
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