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

enough, and when she left, Mrs. Mulder felt that the visit had gone well.
A few weeks later the selection committee invited the Mulders to a personal
interview, a further verification of the respectability that the CHL 50
wanted to foster in the area. There were only a few exceptions to these
rules during the first years.
After a successful interview, the officials granted the Mulders a house,
and they moved to Epping Garden Village in July 1947. The houses were
spacious, new, and whitewashed. Every house stood on a big plot, where
residents could cultivate vegetables and fruit to enhance their diet. Gardening
and the work it entailed were seen as beneficial for the body and
rehabilitation of the residents. Mrs. Mulder loved the gardening. She was
happy to decorate her house and create a good home for her children.
The social housing scheme served several purposes of upliftment simultaneously.
Cheap rent gave people a chance to save money to buy
their own homes. The spatial layout and social services in Epping Garden
Village were particularly designed to further the upliftment and surveillance
of the population that was chosen to live in the suburb.
Three days after the Mulders had moved in, a social worker visited
them to explain the rules of the suburb and see that everything was in
order. The Mulders were young, in their early twenties, and did not mind
the social worker popping in occasionally. Mrs. Mulder, who always
wanted to do her best, was appreciative when the social worker gently
pointed out shortcomings in her housekeeping, and was able to help her
with good advice. Mrs. Mulder became friendly with the social workers,
and soon they stopped visiting to check if the Mulder home was neat, and
simply came around for a cup of coffee and the news.
In the first years the social workers dealt mainly with poverty. Many
of the residents came from impoverished backgrounds in the countryside,
and were first generation city-dwellers – only 25 per cent of the first generation
had been born in Cape Town. The Mulders, and many other young
people in EGV, did their best to graduate to the ranks of the middle-class.
A house in a new area was a big step up on the social ladder.
After a few months in EGV, the Mulders’ son was born, later a daughter
followed and another son. Mrs. Mulder stayed at home with the chil-
50
CHL has had many different names through the years. It is sometimes referred to in
this thesis and by my informants as the Company, although its first name was the Citizens’
Housing League Utility Company. Later, the last two words of the name were omitted.
After 1991, the Company existed under name Communicare, a name that won the naming
competition that the Company had arranged to proclaim their new image (and their new
multicultural agenda) in post-apartheid South Africa.
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