Model communities and respectable residents? Home and housing in a low-income residential estate in the Western Cape, South Africa

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 31, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 631-648

  Ross, Fiona C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN   (South Africa)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HOUSING PROVISION; LOW INCOME HOUSING; POST-APARTHEID;

AFRICA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; WORLD;

EID: 25144488044     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070500203038     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. See J. Beall, O. Crankshaw and S. Parnell, Uniting a Divided City (London, Earthscan, 2002);
2. A. Mbembe and S. Nuttall (eds), 'Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis', Public Culture, Special Issue, 16, 3 (2004).
3. N. Rapport and J. Overing, Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 154-62; quote from p. 157.
4. E. Ngxabi, 'Houses or Homes?' (MSocSci dissertation, UCT, 2004);
5. C. Yose, 'From Shacks to Houses: Space Usage and Social Change in a Western Cape Shantytown' (MSocSci dissertation, UCT, 1999);
6. M. Ramphele, A Bed Called Home (Cape Town, David Philip, 1993).
7. The place names used in the article are pseudonyms.
8. Residents' fears that the move from an unplanned shantytown to a formal residential suburb would affect sociality in negative ways were not unfounded. Anecdotal evidence indicates that as people move to formal houses from shack areas, their elaborate inter-household sharing patterns break down and malnutrition rates increase over the short term (Bourne, Medical Research Council, June 2001, personal communication).
9. Ordentlikheid is considered an old-fashioned word, Victorian in tone, with connotations of gentility and restraint. It is in common use in The Park.
10. W. Rybczynski, Home: A Short History of an Idea (London, Penguin, 1987), pp. 39-75;
11. see also Rapport and Overing, Key Concepts;
12. J. Carsten and S. Hugh-Jones (eds), About the House - Lévi-Strauss and Beyond (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995);
13. L. Waldman. 'Houses and the Ritual Construction of Gendered Homes in South Africa', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 9, 4 (2003), pp. 657-79.
14. G. Wright. 'Prescribing the Model Home', Social Research, 58, 1 (1991), pp. 253-86.
15. J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution. Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness on the South African Frontier. Volume One(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997).
16. Comaroff and Comaroff, Revelation and Revolution, p. 275.
17. Ibid., p. 275.
18. H. Broadbridge, 'Negotiating Post-Apartheid Boundaries and Identities: An Anthropological Study of the Creation of a Cape Town Suburb' (PhD thesis, University of Stellenbosch, 2001), p. 243.
19. The term is considered pejorative, one of many insults aimed at those who had no fixed abode. Another is bergie ('mountain person'), a common descriptor for indigent people, and one that was frequently applied to inhabitants of The Park by residents of Somerset West. Those living in The Park, concerned not to be seen as weggooimense (lit.: 'throw-away people'), identified themselves as plakkers (squatters). To them, bergie and bosslaper imply an inability to care for oneself and others, or to nurture the kinds of social relations that would enable one to be cared for in dire circumstances.
20. T. Emmett, Squatting in the Hottentot Holland's Basin (Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council [HSRC], 1992).
21. F.C. Ross, Houses Without Doors: Diffusing Domesticity in Die Bos (Pretoria, HSRC, 1995).
22. Personal communication regarding consortium survey data.
23. Data are based on counts of built structures rather than identified in terms of social relations. As I show below, strategies to manage poverty in The Park generate intricate social relations, often making it difficult for urban planners and bureaucrats to identify with certainty the number of households - defined as units of production, reproduction and consumption.
24. A local health worker interviewed in 2001 stated that 60 per cent of the adult population was HIV +. This figure is not empirically verifiable, and owes much to negative stereotypes of residents in the shack settlement. See unpublished reports by C. Bermudez-Holsten and Z. Wolf on research conducted in The Park (Dept. Social Anthropology, UCT, 2001).
25. Her prediction was accurate: within a few months of the move to formal houses, most residents had indeed fenced their properties.
26. Ross, Houses Without Doors.
27. F.C. Ross, '"Vat Jou Goede en Trek": The Effects of Domestic Violence in Die Bos', in L. Glanz and A.D. Spiegel (eds), Violence and Family Life in South Africa: Research and Policy Issues (Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, 1996).
28. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York, Vintage, 1979);
29. P. Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995);
30. J.C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998);
31. S. Robins, 'Planning "suburban bliss" in Joe Slovo Park, Cape Town', Africa, 72, 4 (2002);
32. L. Bank, 'Xhosa in Town Revisited: From Urban Anthropology to an Anthropology of Urbanism' (PhD thesis, UCT, 2002).
33. Indlu (Xhosa, singular form of iindlu) does not carry either the same emotive appeal or social obligation as umzi (plural imizi; homesteads), which is replete with ideas about customary obligation, tradition and convention. See Ngxabi, 'Houses or Homes?'. Xhosa-speaking migrants and new residents, argues Yose, 'Shacks to Houses', view shacks in the light of imizi - which entail social relationships associated with those incumbent on strong links with the countryside.
34. See Ramphele, A Bed Called Home;
35. D. James, Songs of the Women Migrants (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 1999);
36. S. Jones, Assaulting Childhood (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 1993);
37. Z. Ngwane, '"Christmas Time" and the Struggles for the Household in the Countryside: Rethinking the Cultural Geography of Migrant Labour in South Africa', Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 3 (2003), pp. 681-99;
38. H. White, 'Tempora et Mores: Family Values and the Possessions of a Post-Apartheid Countryside', Journal of Religion in Africa, XXXI, 4 (2001), pp. 457-79.
39. Jessica Ogden describes a similar model operating in urban Kampala. Women were expected to be respectful and of a pleasant demeanour. Marriage and childbearing were considered to be central to the production of their propriety. See J. Ogden, '"Producing" Respect: The "Proper Woman" in Postcolonial Kampala', in R. Werbner and T. Ranger (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London, Zed Books, 1996), pp. 165-92.
40. F. Nyamnjoh, '"A Child is One Person's Only in the Womb": Domestication, Agency and Subjectivity in the Cameroonian Grassfields', in R. Werbner (ed.), Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa (London, Zed, 2002), pp. 111-138.
41. See also P. Henderson, Living with Fragility (PhD thesis, UCT, 1999).
42. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997).
43. There has been little attention to children's moral decision-making in South Africa. Important exceptions are P. Reynolds, Paring Down the Family: The Child's Point of View (Pretoria, HSRC, 1995);
44. P. Reynolds, 'Youth and the Politics of Culture', in S. Stevens (ed.), Children and the Politics of Culture (Cambridge MA, Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 218-42;
45. P. Reynolds, 'The Ground of All Making: State Violence, the Family, and Political Activists', in V. Das and A. Kleinman (eds), Violence and Subjectivity (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000);
46. and Henderson, 'Living with Fragility'.
47. H. Meintjes, 'Poverty, Possessions and "Proper Living": Constructing and Contesting Propriety in Soweto and Lusaka City' (MSocSci dissertation, UCT, 2000)
48. and H. Meintjes, 'Washing Machines Make Women Lazy: Domestic Appliances and the Negotiation of Women's Propriety in Soweto', Journal of Material Culture, 6, 3 (2001), pp. 345-63.
49. S. Bayi-Bayi, personal communication, May 2001;
50. see also Yose, 'Shacks to Houses';
51. Meintjes, 'Poverty' and 'Washing Machines'.
52. Rastafari act as local mediators and peacekeepers. Their model of conflict is that excess passion (such as rage) generates heat and friction in the body and social relations, and Rastafari intervene to 'reason' coolness back into both.
53. This clause is modified later in the form (p. 3) to refer to 'persons who are financially dependent on the applicant'. 'Spouses' are required to sign an affidavit that acknowledges that the details are correct and that s/he recognises her/his liability for prosecution if the details are incorrect or fraudulent (p. 10).
54. Such fluidity in relationships is not uncommon in postcolonial Africa. Ogden, '"Producing" Respect', describes the range of possible subject positions that house-holding and sexual relations generated in Kampala and shows that a rich local taxonomy exists to describe these.
55. In making decisions about housing allocation, the committee held that prior residence in The Park was paramount in determining access to housing, even where this overrode children's rights to inherit.
56. Spiegel, 'Dispersing Dependants'.
57. An intanga - Xhosa: traditionally a separate structure in a homestead which is given to a young person of marriageable age so that s/ he remains part of the household but has a degree of privacy.
58. J. Steinberg, The Number (Cape Town and Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 2004), pp. 128ff.
59. M. Douglas, 'The Idea of Home: A Kind of Space', Social Research, 58, 1 (1991), pp. 287-300.
60. Ibid., p. 288.
61. Ibid., p. 294.
62. Ngwane, '"Christmas Time"', p. 688.
63. A.D. Spiegel, V. Watson and P. Wilkinson, 'Housing Policy and Differences in African Domestic Consolidation Strategies in Cape Town, South Africa', in A. Awotona (ed.), Housing Provision and Bottom-Up Approaches: Case Studies from Africa (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999), pp. 145-60.
64. Ngwane, '"Christmas Time"', p. 635.