The Help

Funny how one country's luxury is another country's essential.

For all the North American things that SA lacks, it certainly has a one-up on us in this domain: domestics.

Maid service in Canada will set you back anywhere from $20-45 an hour. Tell that to a South African and they'll choke on their vors roll.

Likewise, a Canadian is sure to choke on their forkful of poutine once they get the low-down on housekeeper wages here in SA. The minimum wage for a maid who works 27 hours a week or more, by law, is only 7.72R an hour.

That is $1.10CAN.

Thankfully, most South Africans pay far above this standard. My friends who have maids come in only once a week pay around 130R for the day, which works out to around double the minimum wage.

Employers are also expected to provide their domestics with taxi fare and lunch, as well as a uniform or two to wear while working.

If your maid lives with the family then 10% can be deducted from their salary to cover accommodation costs. You Canadians may scoff at the thought of having a live-in maid, but it is more than common here. The Wright family has had their domestic, Patricia, working and living with them for the last 20+ years. Nick's maid has also raised him from a baby and still to this day brings him tea at his bedside each morning.

With maid service so affordable, you'll rarely (if ever?) find a white well-to-do South African who does their own ironing, floor washing, or bathroom cleaning. I mean, who would if you could employ someone else to do it for less than $20 a day??

Patricia and I from way back in December :)

Personally, I still haven't warmed up to the idea. I find the whole thing a bit uncomfortable. Here I am, a young, healthy, privileged, white 24 year old, and I am side-stepping out of the way so that a 50+yr old black woman who has had to struggle her whole life can continue scrubbing away at the floor.

Being Canadian adds a whole other dimension to the awkwardness. To know that I made five times as much as her per hour back in 2002 when I worked at A&W kills me.

For all the hard, physical work involved, what domestics get paid here just seems... wrong. Yet because of the high unemployment rate, sadly this will never change. There will always be someone willing to do the work at that price. A job is a job.

The heartbreaking thing is that it is these women who deserve to see the most success. They are so hard working and such good people. The long conversations I've shared with Patricia and Didier's maid, Veronica, have been some of my most cherished moments here in SA. These women are such rich sources of wisdom and experience.

Both women are in their fifties and stand as the primary financial pillar of their large extended families. As is the case is with many domestics, they work while ailing family members stay at home. During my time here, each woman has had a family member battling to survive in a government hospital. Veronica and Patricia battle to juggle the burden of working full time while also taking care of their own house and home, as well as managing the increasing medical and hospital visiting costs.

Veronica is the sole bread winner in her family. Her husband is disabled but his application for government disability did not get approved so he receives no aid. Her three children are grown adults but cannot find work. Between them, there are three grandchildren all under the age of 5. All eight of them live together in a one-bedroom government house with no indoor bathroom. Electricity is never reliable.

Yet Veronica is so humble and thankful for what she has. When I was speaking to her about her living conditions, she just smiled and told me she was happy to have her family under one roof and feels blessed to have been gifted a government house -- even if it leaves much to be desired. I just can't help but feel she deserves so much more.

In regards to what I have witnessed first hand, I can honestly say that all the domestics I have met have been well taken care of. All my friends here go out of their way to support their maid. Gifting clothes and household items, offering extra taxi fare to visit extended family, giving out small loans when they needed it, offering to pay for doctor's visits and medical care... Leah and Kern have even gone so far as pay for their domestic's, Zenele, schooling and are working to raise money so that they may build her a house of her own. Clearly there is a lot of good going on.

But there are always two sides to every coin. In my chats with these three women, some pretty nasty realities came to the surface.

One woman told me that she recently worked for a family who asked that never eat at the family's dinner table. She must have her lunch on the back porch. She was also given her own set of cutlery and dishware. She was not allowed to put her dishes in the dishwasher, but had to rather wash them immediately in the sink. This is in 2010, people!! Freaking disgusting behavior.

Some have worked for families that insist they be addressed as "boss", "sir", and "madam".

I was told another story involving one woman's clients: a young couple, one of which was a pastor (both he and his wife are Black, for the record). She had been working for them for over a year and it was winter. It was especially cold and keeping up with the electricity bill that month had been tough. Money was tight. So for lunch that day, she took six slices of bread instead of her usual four.

The missus found out and told her husband. He flew into the kitchen, slammed his fist on the table, and yelled at her for taking extra bread. He told her she was not to ever eat their bread ever again. To this day, she is forced to bring her own lunch, even though they are legally bound to provide her with food. She is too intimidated to speak up and cannot find any other work and therefore cannot leave them.

All that over two slices of plain bread.

It's just sad that people are still being treated as second class citizens. Remnants of Apartheid are obviously still lurking around.

When I was in Richard's Bay, Zenele refused to eat lunch with Sarah, Jason, and I. She's young and a really sweet girl, we all just wanted to spend some time getting to know her. But she took her food to the garden to eat alone. Leah went to talk to her but was unsuccessful in convincing her to join us. Zenele told her that us young white people intimidated her and that she just wasn't comfortable.

It was easier to connect one-on-one. Zenele and I shared a couple lunches together on the deck when I was home alone. We enjoyed some good laughs about men, school, and marriage. I've also had amazing chats with Veronica about children and the crazy taxis, and with Patricia about cultural ceremonies and family.

It breaks my heart to think that such great people get overlooked or are treated like animals simply because they are Black and work as domestics. It's not fair.

The more I think about it... as much as never having to do ironing or dishes is nice, I'm not sure it's worth it.

I'd rather have no maids in Canada then have to navigate the tangled web of post-Apartheid awkwardkillness/social inequality of having domestics here in SA.

*P.S Does anybody know what the politically correct term for "maid" is? Here it's called maid, domestic, housekeeper, the help... but I've yet to figure out what is the most polite.