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

tenant, who behaved and managed his finances correctly, who appeared
neat and civilised, could be of darkish complexion, although too obvious
blackness was frowned upon.
The Second Generation: after 1948
Contrary to what was happening in Europe, the idea of a welfare state
for everyone was rejected when the National Party gained power in 1948
on the grounds that there was a need for ‘separate development’. While
the trauma of concentration camps had made the idea of race as a basis
of social engineering thoroughly unpopular in Europe, ‘race’ became
an unbending rule in South Africa. In fact, racial ideas had grown more
radical during the Second World War, and there was an enthusiasm for
social engineering. This forced the state to look after the well being of all
Whites merely because of their assumed racial superiority.
The moment of change in the Citizens’ Housing League’s racial policy,
and key moment in the history of Epping Garden Village, began in the
early 1950s, right after the onset of apartheid. At this time the combination
of spatial layout and social services was adapted for the purposes of
apartheid urban planning and total segregation via the Group Areas Act.
The apartheid state put a different face on its ideology, namely ’separate
development for separate cultures’. In Epping Garden Village, the
selection of residents changed. The emphasis was shifted to the racial
purity instead of the social quality of the people. In practice, this meant
that the Citizens’ Housing League lost their right to choose those who
would be included in the white race, as the racial status of a person was
now defined by the state.
The more clearly defined the boundaries of the category of a proper
White became (especially after the 1948 election), the more the existence
of poor whites conflicted with the prevailing order, and the more marginal
and less respectable they became.
Control of the social body and urban space became state-regulated as
well. The hardening of the category White brought social changes in the
life of those seen as poor whites. In Epping Garden Village these changes
were manifested in the ways the bodily control shifted from the control of
neatness and appearance to the rigid, official control of racial and social
mixing and use of space. Since failed whites could no longer be re-interpreted
as coloured and since the rising white affluence in South Africa
increased the expectations in respect of whites, the bodily and spatial
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