Desegregating Minds: White Identities and Urban Change in the New South Africa

Desegregating Minds: White Identities and Urban Change in the New South Africa Richard Ballard PHD Thesis, Geography Department, University of Wales, Swansea April 2002 Desegregating Minds ii DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed ……………………………………. Date ……………………………………. STATEMENT 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended. Signed ……………………………………. Date ……………………………………. STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ……………………………………. Date ……………………………………. Desegregating Minds iii Summary This thesis examines perceptions of social difference by white residents of South African cities in general, and Durban in particular, with regard to urban racial desegregation. Under apartheid, segregated cities were created by a white hegemony that was driven by what can be called a segregationist mindset, a belief in the existence of discrete racial groupings, and the importance of keeping such groups apart. As cities have undergone a process of desegregation over the last two decades, the people who believed in the appropriateness of racial segregation have been thrown into crisis. This crisis revolves around the mismatch between old beliefs about the best way to plan and manage an ordered, modern city with homogenous zones created through the use of strong boundaries, and contemporary realities of mixing, free transgression across boundaries, creating for some the impression of disorder. This thesis concentrates on white responses to three forms of desegregation: the arrival of street traders in the CBD, the arrival of squatters alongside suburbs, and the arrival of non-white middle class groups in suburbs. Discourse analysis of interviews with residents and newspaper material explores the way in which segregationist mindsets have adapted to the new non-racial atmosphere, where separation is no longer justifiable on racial grounds. In an attempt to avoid the impasse that usually results from debates around the relative importance of race and class, this discussion argues that the use of both race and class by whites has to be understood within the broader attempts by white people to achieve certain senses of themselves through the manipulation of identity and space. Desegregating Minds iv Acknowledgements The greatest debt of gratitude for this thesis is for the patient and insightful supervision of Gareth Jones who provided many forms of support without which this would not have happened. I thank him for striking the perfect balance between my freedom and his guidance which was always comprehensive but never prescriptive. This was one of those supervisor-student relationships that is also a special friendship. Likewise, I am extremely grateful to Pyrs Gruffudd, my friend and supervisor for the last period of the PHD for his valuable comments on the full draft and for liasing with the university on my behalf. Thanks also to Kavita Datta for valuable comments and discussions in her capacity as second supervisor for the first year of my studies before she moved away from Swansea. This Ph.D. was funded entirely by the Geography Department at the University of Wales, Swansea in the form of a three year tutorship. I would like to thank Dave Herbert, Vaughan Robinson, Rosemary Bromley and Colin Thomas in particular for this funding and the most welcome “top ups” throughout which made transit to and from South Africa viable. As well as financial resources and great supervision, Swansea also provided a wonderful social, intellectual and structural support network and I would like to acknowledge friends and colleagues: Paul Hobson, Mike Barnsley, Caroline Coleman, Keith Halfacree, Mary Gagen, Denis Linehan, Ian Maxey, Sophie Mills, Alison Porter, Debbie Rosen, Jo Shaw, Steve Toole, Matt Woller, and all others at the department. Swansea was also a home thanks to my surrogate families Rose Pearl, David Pearl, Amber Hiscott, and Annebelle Fenwick, Huw Jones and Gareth Jones. On the South African side, I would like to thank the Department of Geographic and Environmental Sciences at the University of Natal not only for taking me through my undergraduate degree but for allowing me to base myself there while conducting field work. Thanks to Di Scott, Cathy Oelefse, Shirley Brooks, Jeff Popke (often visiting), and others for the stimulating academic discussions. Maps were drawn with the assistance of Hem Hurrypursad at UND; many thanks to him. The fantastic photos of street trade were taken by Jo Block, and are used with the permission of Caroline Skinner. I would like to thank my employers, Aki Stavrou at DRA Development, Mike Morris and Justin Barnes at the School of Development Studies, UND, for their patience while I completed this thesis. I would also like to thank friends and colleagues in South Africa: Cathy Calf, Anthea Dallymore, Andrew Johnson, Anthony Gannon, Alex O’Riorden, Rob Stewart, Kerry Vermaak and Clare Wiley. Jenny Robinson played a key role in putting me in contact with Swansea and was central to the decision to study this topic. I greatly value her friendship and guidance. Many residents of Durban gave up their valuable time for me to interview them and I would like to thank them for giving so generously and hospitably. I am fortunate to have a close and supportive family to whom I express love and gratitude for everything: John and Gaye Ballard, Ken & Rae Mitchell, Laura and Mark Neville. Finally, thanks to all teachers and lecturers who inspired my interest, especially Rob Holding, my history teacher at high school who first got me thinking critically about the white regime in South Africa. Desegregating Minds v Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION: IN SEARCH OF THE “RAINBOW NATION”..........................1 1.1 RACE, SPACE AND URBAN DESEGREGATION......................................................... 10 1.2 RESEARCH AIMS AND APPROACH ......................................................................... 14 1.3 DRAGGING WHITES FROM THE SHADOWS ............................................................. 21 2 KNOWING WHITE IDENTITY: ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY .............26 2.1 ONTOLOGY: THE NATURE OF WHITE IDENTITY..................................................... 27 Realist ontology and essentialism.................................................................................27 Constructionist ontology and non-essentialism .............................................................30 Categorisations and the constitutive outside .................................................................37 2.2 SOCIAL DIFFERENCE AND SPACE........................................................................... 43 Self-conceptions draw on attachments to place .............................................................44 Creating spaces to support an identity through exclusion and inclusion .........................46 The undoing of spatial orders ......................................................................................50 2.3 IMPLICATIONS FOR EPISTEMOLOGY...................................................................... 52 The treatment of material............................................................................................56 The fieldwork process: collecting and coding primary material.....................................57 Interpretation of primary material...............................................................................59 2.4 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 63 3 BEING CIVILISED IN AN UNCIVILISED LAND: IDENTITY AND SPACE DURING WHITE RULE .................................................................................................65 3.1 PERIOD 1: COLONIALISM PRIOR TO THE 1910 UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA................. 69 3.2 PERIOD 2: THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA, 1910..................................................... 73 Scientific racism and ideas of “civilisation”.................................................................78 3.3 PERIOD 3: APARTHEID......................................................................................... 82 English speaking whites and the liberal opposition .......................................................86 3.4 PERIOD 4: THE DE-RACIALISATION OF APARTHEID, 1978-1990 .............................. 89 3.5 PERIOD 5: RACIAL DISCOURSES AFTER APARTHEID .............................................. 93 3.6 INTERPRETING THE PERIOD OF WHITE DOMINANCE: BEYOND THE RACE-CLASS DEBATE......................................................................................................................... 98 Beyond class analysis to a critique of apartheid as modernity......................................102 Identity construction by whites ..................................................................................104 3.7 CONCLUSION: ASSIMILATE OR SEGREGATE......................................................... 108 4 FROM MODERN BUSINESS DISTRICT TO THIRD WORLD MARKETPLACE: THE CHANGING CBD.................................................................................................112 4.1 DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CBD..............................................................................

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