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Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga

This is the second part of a letter written to me by Nomazulu Thatha on the plight of domestic maids. She had read one of my articles, “Where have the good maids gone?” The subject of maids in Zimbabwe is one of her most researched topics.

The letter, Nomazulu wrote, was from a topic taken from her book, Meme no cry. Research was done by her comparing her notes with her daughter Zothile. It’s been two years since she wrote the letter that was published elsewhere. I feel obliged to share it here.

“There would be some things that go missing in the home. The items would range from money, clothes, body lotions, food items, jewellery. The first suspect would be me. Where is it? To tell them that I do not know is not a satisfactory answer for them.

Searches would be conducted in my room first, even my mien would be searched! They would examine if my mien carried any guilt in it. If it did then it was taken to be an indication of my guilt. The suspicion is that I would have stowed the missing items away from the home.

It would be this accusation and the missing items that would be the subject of conversations with their relatives and friends who come to visit the home. All this would be done in your presence.

How do you continue to work in a home where you are accused of theft? When the mother leaves the home for work she would examine her fridge to the extent of “marking” the items inside! The first thing she does when she comes back would be to take close look again to see if all items were still there.

Otherwise, bazazitika nje ngokudla kwakho. The eggs are counted every time while being interrogated on how many were cooked and for whom? A domestic worker will eat bread without margarine and forget about eggs or bacon. That you cannot have and if you are lucky you are offered the cheapest jam and never the expensive marmalade.

If you ask most of the domestic workers, you will find that their stories are more or else similar. They vary slightly. You would be lucky to get a good black employer who would empathise with you and appreciate the work you do in her house. A person who would give you enough to eat as the work is hard and needs a lot of energy.

All those chores in the home are not clearly defined. You just work and work and give the best hoping it would be appreciated with at least a “thank you!”

Most of the employers do not know the meaning of the word. They think it is all part of the payment package. They just do not see the need to show appreciation. When a simple “thank you” goes a long way in motivating and building a good relationship with a domestic.

I sleep in a room meant for storage meaning that anybody can get in anytime of the day or night. A mattress was put in there for my use, a sign that my stay in that home is  just temporary.

My clothes are always in the suitcase. There is a complete absence of privacy because they think a domestic servant does not need it. I am spoken to differently from the rest of the family. The tone is always different.

There is very little chance to tell them that you are sick. That means you are not a good servant because we are not supposed to fall sick and stop working. The children are sometimes very rude to me and make faces to show absolute disrespect towards me.

Children pick it up very early that this person is second class in this family and treat you with the same contempt as their mother or father.

We also endure sex advances from the father of the house. I was told I would lose my job if I refused to have sex with him. I had to make that decision one time and lost the job.

I was stupid so as not to tell his wife that he was making sexual advances on me. I told the man of the house that I could not possibly have sex with him. I had a boyfriend who was a gardener just two houses away from where I worked.

To say that much was to be rude as I was not supposed to have a boyfriend and to say it so openly. The fact that I had one was to be insolent according to them. I did not see how I could continue to work for this family under such conditions.

It was easy to find one job from the other because I had a wide range of experience as a domestic worker. I had worked for various white people before.

There are two employers who after releasing me, came looking for me again and persuaded me to come back.

If you have been as low as was the case with me, there is no need to go any lower. Because physically there is nothing lower than rock bottom rock anyway.

I simply told them that I had found another job and moved on.

The irony of it all is that Zimbabwe has a history of revolution. Our parents fought a bitter war for this country so that we are free from all forms of oppression. How does a country like my own become comfortable with vestiges of colonial practices and adopt them without any conscience?

Domestic service in this country is the most abhorrent form of oppression that reduces one from a human to a subhuman. I wonder if they know how we feel about being subject to that kind of treatment with employment terms that are so fluid.

Abuses relating to domestic service are not spoken. Few have ever spoken about them, yet how many times have we heard about members of parliament speaking on how prostitution should be legalised?

We have a legal framework for conditions of employment, but we are surprised that no representative at parliament level has spoken about our plight as passionately. The minimum wage of domestic servants has been revised yet there has never been a follow up as to whether it was put into practice.

Domestic servants are blackmailed by their employers if they demand that bare minimum. There is no worker in Zimbabwe, let alone people of my bracket, who have no basic education. If we were to leave employment, what would happen to our children who are dependent of us? It is a Catch 22 situation.