Respectable mothers, tough men and good daughters. producing persons in Manenberg township South Africa.
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Date
2004
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Western Cape
Abstract
This ethnography explores the meanings ofpersonhood and agency in Manen�berg, a
township located on the Cape Flats, in Cape Town South Africa. The township was a
site of relocation for people who were classified coloured during the apartheid era and
who were forcibly removed from newly declared white areas in the city in the 1960s. I
argue that despite the old apartheid state's attempts to reify the meaning of
colouredness through racial legislation, the residents ofManenberg created their own
meanings of personhood, agency and community within the bureaucratic, social and
economic interstices of the apartheid system. Yet at the same time they also reinstated
the very structural processes at the heart of their racial and gendered subjugation. I
indicate how the cohesiveness of the Rio Street community in Manenberg, the
survival of its residents and their validation as respectable mothers, tough men and
good daughters hinged on and effioresced from a moral economy that articulated with
the structural location of coloured women in the apartheid economy and racial
bureaucracy.
Description
Philosophiae Doctor - PhD
Keywords
Manenberg township, Personhood, Coloured, Apartheid era