Poverty and respectability in early twentieth-century Cape Town

Dooling, Wayne

Abstract

Cape Town's black population of the early twentieth century actively pursued lifestyles that might be described as respectable. But respectability was expensive, and poverty —characterised by poor housing, ill health and shortened lifespans — stood in the way of some of its most essential elements: cleanliness, sexual restraint, sobriety, and the creation of nuclear and gendered households. Black respectability, therefore, could not simply replicate that of the dominant white bourgeoisie. Most challenging was the development of rampant black criminality, often seen by contemporary observers as the result of the failure of black women to realise respectable households. Even attempts on the part of the state to create respectable citizenries floundered, partly because these initiatives were incompatible with the policies of racial segregation. The state and the dominant bourgeoisie put their faith in the black elite as the standard-bearers of respectability, but the reality was that the respectability of the ‘superior’ class was frequently indistinguishable from those below, a consequence of the fact that the boundary between these classes was highly porous.

Citation

Dooling, W. (2018). Poverty and respectability in early twentieth-century Cape Town. The Journal of African History, 59(3), 411-435. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853718000786

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 20, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Jan 30, 2019
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jun 16, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 16, 2018
• Journal: The Journal of African History
• Print ISSN: 0021-8537
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-5138
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 59
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 411-435
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853718000786