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

The racial ideas are alive and well in today’s South Africa. Apartheid
dies hard, as Christopher (2000: 8) has pointed out. Racial classification
is still in official use, although now in the interest of affirmative action
and reversing the effects of segregation. In everyday life, an individual is
still forced to be very aware of his ‘race’. The absurdity of the situation
struck me when I, after my arrival in South Africa in 1997, found that I
was defining myself as ‘white’ in an official document. Far from abandoned,
the racial ideas have transformed to suit the new social order. 175
In Epping Garden Village, the changes already became visible towards
the end of the 1980s, although the really drastic changes took place after
1991 when the government ended the colour bar. For the first time people
of colour were officially allowed to move into the suburb. They were often
aspiring young families who brought a particular middle-class flavour
to the suburb. At the end of the millennium a visitor could see an equal
number of coloured and white residents on the streets. The area seemed
peaceful and ‘multicultural’, and the interaction between old and new
residents took place in a relaxed, informal manner that could only rarely
be seen in other suburbs.
Despite the relaxation in the general atmosphere, the white middleclass
ideals were strong, and a well-internalised embodied (keeping bodily
and social boundaries, showing bodily discipline) control was still a
sign of belonging to the middle-class. It was not extraordinary to see a
well-dressed coloured man on a Sunday afternoon polishing his treasured
new Toyota Corolla in the driveway of his house. He would chase off
the coloured squatters who pushed their shopping carts past his house in
search of cardboard or metal to sell to a scrap yard. He would politely
greet the passing old white ladies who might nod back at him, but he
would sternly ignore the overweight young white woman begging for
money for cigarettes.
In 1997 the use of space in Ruyterwacht was different from the middleclass
white areas. Because some of the houses and yards were filled with
junk and were very dilapidated, there was a general feeling of poverty
everywhere, although some of the houses appeared carefully renovated.
During my fieldwork (1997-2001) the area began to look less and less
rundown. It was clear that due to the aspirations of the new coloured resi-
175 At present the new democratically chosen elite is in power. While the whites still
have most of the economic power and largely own the means of production, the new black
elite has taken over the keys to the political power. During the new regime, the size of the
African middle class has doubled, but the poorest Africans’ standard of living has barely
improved (Terblanche 2002: 64-65).
203