Model Communities and Respectable Residents? Home and Housing in a Low-income Residential Estate in the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract

Recent work on the post-apartheid city has paid little attention to how people grapple with new opportunities for urban living. This article explores the ways in which housing provision precipitated complex moral reasoning and social reorganisation among impoverished residents of a Cape Town shantytown as they attempted to actualise their ideals of respectability. These ideals overlapped with those of the state and planners associated with the housing project, but also differed in significant respects. For residents, ordentlikheid (decency, respectability) is concerned with appearances and with cementing reciprocal relationships, while for bureaucrats, respectability is an individual characteristic, fostered and manifested via education, responsibility and appearances. Tracing out the relationship between material conditions and ideational constructs, this article argues that, at certain moments, ongoing processes crystallise discursive forms and material practices in ways that draw attention to the grounds of their making and simultaneously make clear their unfinished nature.