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

She already had four siblings at the time when they moved, and in Epping
Garden Village her mother gave birth to four more babies. In the end
there were nine children.
”I remember when the midwife came to help my mother to deliver the
baby. And after the baby was born she would always make us milk pudding.
Then we could see the new baby and have our pudding. I still hate
the thought of that milk pudding.” (Ronel, 50.)
In their family the father was an autocrat. He had decided that even if they
were poor they were to be respectable. Boys had relative freedom, but the
girls were not allowed to go out by themselves, or wear trousers. The girls
were only permitted to go to movies with their father. After her matriculation
Ronel went to work. Every Friday her father took her salary and for
years she never saw a glimpse of the money she earned.
She hated her lack of freedom and choice. The day she turned 21 she
left home for good – through marriage. The wedding was celebrated in
Epping Garden Village’s Garden of Remembrance, and Ronel wore her
virginal white dress proudly.
Ronel’s professional career turned out reasonably successful, and so
did her husband’s. They and their children live in a large house in the
northern suburbs of Cape Town. Her father died a few years ago, and
Ronel visits her elderly mother in Ruyterwacht every week.
Today she proclaims her pride in her roots. Despite the occasional
bouts of nostalgia, Ronel did not stay to live or bring up her children in
Ruyterwacht. Neither did her sisters or brothers, with the exception of
one sister who returned after her divorce to live with their mother in Ruyterwacht,
the only one of the nine children who did not ‘make it’.
Ronel’s father was harsh for a reason. He wanted to raise his daughters
to fit in a middle-class life. Emphasising his commitment to middle-class
values and social boundaries, bringing up his daughters to be proper
women, interfering with their embodiment was just what was expected
of him. It helped them all to avoid the stigma of being a poor white, and
instead allowed them to be ‘poor but honourable’ – a theme Ronel repeatedly
brought up when we talked. Ronel’s mother, whom I interviewed
separately, was on the same lines with her late husband and her daughter.
Every time I met her, she emphasised how she kept to her self, how disinterested
she was. ”I mind my own business. I do not have much to do with
these people here, I never had.”
As Ronel’s story shows, children did not only survive while growing
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