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

times and had nowhere else to go. The CHL now had to accommodate
those people whom they had initially rejected. In fact, they had to accept
almost anyone who wanted to move in.
Apartheid and Suburban Space
While the residents changed, and the dependency rates increased, the external,
physical boundaries of the suburb were protected more vigorously
than ever. After the introduction of the Group Areas Act in 1950, the insufficiency
of the buffer strip on the eastern side of EGV was noticed, and
spatial changes were seen as inevitable. Also some residents complained
about the proximity of the coloureds.
The plans to create a buffer strip proceeded slowly. In 1966 the coloured
area adjoining EGV, on the Elsie’s River side, was declared a
slum. 151 This placed it under the Slum Clearance Act, and it could now be
demolished. The CHL helped Goodwood Municipality to find accommodation
in the nearby Bishop Lavis Township for those coloured families
rendered homeless. The demolished area became a middle-class, coloured
area, but to emphasise the separateness between the coloureds of Elsie’s
and the whites of EGV, fences were erected at the end of Rhodes Street
and Settler Street in 1966. The isolation from the surrounding coloured
areas became an integral part of being a good white. The residents were
safe from their own racially ambiguous position through the fence and a
buffer strip between EGV and Elsie’s River.
In the interviews the residents told me how safe life in the suburb used
to be during apartheid. One could leave the front doors open and things
in the yard, and nothing would vanish. It was safe to walk outside, even
in the evenings. Most of the crime in the white areas was petty crime,
whereas coloured Bishop Lavis Township was increasingly unsafe. 152
(CHL, SWR: 1955.)
These problems did not affect Epping Garden Village, which had its
own form of vigilantes. In conversations with the coloured people who
lived in the vicinity during apartheid, it became clear that the neighbour-
151 This area is known by the Land Claims Commission as ‘Epping Forest Buffer Strip’.
It was pronounced a buffer strip under the Group Areas Act Proclamation 14/1958 and
in the Amendment of the Proclamation 48/1963, and in 2001 there were a dozen pending
land claims to it. (discussion with Don de la Harpe.)
152 The first serious problems in Bishop Lavis were reported in 1955, after which the
problems with gangs and drugs only increased (CHL, SWR: 1955).
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