In 2011, Ronelda S Kamfer included a poem called ‘Katie het kinders gehad’ (Katie had children) in her second volume of poetry, grond/ Santekraam (land/ the whole caboodle). By quoting Kombuis in an epigraph Kamfer refers directly to his song, providing a completely different perspective on women like Kytie who inevitably neglect their own families while caring for white children.17 Women like Kytie, or Auntie Katie as Kamfer calls her, and people like her own mother, are everywhere in white suburbs. In the early morning they alight from combi taxis and walk the streets to front gates behind which they disappear for long hours, except when they walk the dogs on the pavement, push toddlers to the park, or accompany an elderly person to the local supermarket. Although these women have huge responsibilities, their work is rated as the lowest sector of the labour market and is hardly ever adequately rewarded. A quarter of a century after the ANC came to power, a million black women are still employed as domestic workers in predominantly white neighbourhoods.
Although men were the first domestic workers in Johannesburg during the early part of the twentieth century, few white South African households nowadays employ black men, except as gardeners. The most well-known black male ‘literary servant’ is probably July in Nadine Gordimer’s novel July’s People (1981), and his story is told in a subsequent chapter.
Mere Tools
Discussions about domestic workers have been part and parcel of the South African way of life since the seventeenth century, and issues concerning such workers continue to flare up. In August 2009, journalist Jaco Kirsten, for example, started a debate in the Sunday newspaper Rapport when he used the pseudonymn ‘Wit Umfaan’ (white boy) to write about the ‘unique relationship’ between employers and domestics. He remarked on the fact that young white South Africans consider ‘having’ a domestic worker as a ‘logical step’ the minute they can afford to employ one. Kirsten noted with indignation that such young ‘madams’ and ‘bosses’ are fastidious about the way things should be done, but wouldn’t even consider taking a worker to the bus stop when she works late.
A week later, Nico Smith responded. Formerly a professor of theology at the University of Stellenbosch, Smith was at the time an ordinary Dutch Reformed minister who had taken the extraordinary step of bringing his family to live with him in Mamelodi, a black township outside Pretoria. Many domestic workers were members of his congregation and told him about their hardships, and he came to the conclusion that employers considered these women to be tools rather than human beings. ‘They are like buttons you press to make things work, like stoves and kettles. Who these women are, where they live, what their personal circumstances are, what they dream of and hope for – these aspects of their lives are hardly ever discussed.’ Each time a woman told Smith about inconsiderate and even cruel working conditions, about her disappointment at always only having to listen to her employer’s worries and stories and not being asked about her own life, she begged him never to tell her employer about her complaints. When, on one occasion, he did so, the woman was immediately fired.
The Girl, the Maid, the Help or the Domestic Maintenance Assistant
South Africa has a long tradition of derogatory words directed at people of other races. The same goes for words that refer to people doing paid housework. A derogatory word which English-speaking South Africans often use when referring to even an older servant, is ‘girl’. Although most people deny that they mean anything nasty, this term, like ‘boy’ for black men of all ages, is certainly not neutral.
In much the same way, the Afrikaans word meid objectifies and belittles black women. Though the Dutch meid means ‘girl’ and ‘servant woman’, it does not have the negative connotations the term acquired in South Africa. In Afrikaans, a language derived from seventeenth-century Dutch, the term meid was never used in relation to a white woman. Only a black woman was referred to as meid because of the assumption that black women, irrespective of their age, were servants. However, the term has, for some time now, been regarded as a racial slur and is seldom used – in public, at least. The fact that the term meid appears in the work of Koos Kombuis as well as Ronelda Kamfer shows how widespread its use was during the 1950s when the singer grew up, and how negatively it is viewed by women such as Kamfer and the aunt in her poem.
While the word meid has begun to disappear from everyday Afrikaans, terms such as aia and ousie are still used, especially by rural Afrikaans-speaking people, whether black or white. Poet Antjie Krog, who grew up in the Free State, often uses the term ousie in her writing, and her respect is evident. In Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut (2006), the young black girl Ofilwe refers to the woman who does her hair as ‘ous Beauty’ – here, the respectful term acknowledges that Beauty is her elder.
Although Jacklyn Cock’s Maids and Madams (1980) is considered the most influential book about domestic workers in South Africa, the word ‘maid’ is no longer used in academic discourse. When in 2010 I typed ‘maid’ into the search engine of the library catalogue at Wits University, I was informed that the library does not use the term and advised to search ‘domestic worker’ instead. Though this is currently the most acceptable term, Eve’s preference in Madam & Eve is ‘domestic maintenance assistant’! And while some might think they are being civil in referring to ‘the help’ (huishulp), Nico Smith has argued that such terms in fact denigrate domestic work.
If someone is only considered to be a help, this is degrading. She is then not considered to be part of the management of the household, not seen as a person who has a co-responsibility for the maintenance of the factory which the household is.18
The Afrikaans word bediende carries much the same slight as ‘servant’, and while neither word may be regarded as abusive, they are perceived to be less acceptable than huiswerker or ‘domestic worker’. It was in fact Nico Smith who initiated the shift from bediende and huishulp to huiswerker. The latter is today considered the most apt translation of ‘domestic worker’ by unions and in government publications.
For the greater part of the twentieth century – and often still – the person working for a typical white South African family would clean the house, look after the children, do the cooking, wash and iron clothes and act as ‘general factotum’. Usually she would sleep in a ‘servant’s room’ in the backyard, and, in contrast to ‘live-outs’ or ‘sleep-outs’, be called a ‘live-in’ or ‘sleep-in’ domestic. She would prepare breakfast for the family and be on call for most of the day until the dishes were washed after supper. Because of her constant presence, she is soon considered to be ‘part of the household’, often even described as ‘like family’.
Like Family
While considering a suitable title for this book, I noticed that family relationships are often used in descriptions of domestic workers: ‘she is like family’, ‘she was like a mother to me’ and ‘she knows me better than my own sister’. Employers may consider this flattery, but it is in fact the direct effect of workers spending long hours in their homes, often for years on end, with the result that employees have little time for their own families. This is not only the case in South Africa; it happens also in a country such as Chile. In the film La Nana/ The Maid (2009), which screened for weeks in South Africa, the nana is getting older. She is often ill and fears being dismissed. In vain she keeps repeating to herself: ‘I am part of their family.’ She has based her identity entirely on the love she presumes the family’s children will forever have for her, and refuses to believe that one day she will simply be dismissed and replaced.
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