ABSTRACT
For the whites there are the familiar suburbs of single-family homes, distinguished from those of Western Europe and North America only by details of house design and garden flora, by the density of swimming pools, tennis courts and Mercedes in the more affluent areas, and by the adjoining huts built for domestic servants. By the criteria of sanitary standards and orderly design that tend to predominate in state housing provision, the townships are a great improvement on what they replaced. The dual imperatives of the South African state are the preservation of white privilege and the perpetuation of capitalism. Pursuit of these objectives and the resolution of possible conflict between them involves both the racial identity encouraged by apartheid ideology and the class affiliation that is fundamental to capitalism. The development of a black ‘middle class’ is widely viewed as being in the interests of the perpetuation of a white-dominated capitalist system in South Africa.
