ABSTRACT
The chapter analyses the Rhodesian state’s aggressive paternalism over the white working class regarding youth education and maturity in the period 1930–1952. It reflects on state fears and ideas, and the extent it was prepared go in order to preserve a racialised system. The state saw it necessary to act as “parent” to certain groups of whites who failed to meet its expectations. However, by shepherding these groups, the state subverted its own legitimising ideology of white supremacy / minority rule by demonstrating that not all whites were superior and autonomous. This chapter also speaks to broader debates about how states intervened in the lives of children in colonial settings by forcibly removing white children from the parents. Social control methods like the force removal of children which had been employed for indigenous children elsewhere in the Empire, were adopted for white children in Rhodesia. The overarching state goal to reproduce white supremacy for successive generations made it imperative to pursue paternalistic policies and directly determine the future of white children.
