JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 16—
A desperate call came into the drab offices of the
domestic workers' union here one recent afternoon. It was from a maid
who had worked 10 straight years without a day off and was being
dismissed after asking for a day to herself.
A roomful of domestics, in their third-hand clothes
and trademark berets, overheard the conversation. They were tired and
far from their homelands and had not seen their families since
Christmas. They ate, slept and talked to their children at the pleasure
of their employers. Some fretted that they had to get back to make
supper for the bosses and wash their dishes and pick up their shoes.
Some could lose their jobs if their employers knew they were dallying
with the union. Indeed, some already had.
And so when the call came in from a maid in trouble,
the domestics had few tears left to shed for her. They looked down at
the carpet in painful recognition.
In the months since South Africa's humblest workers
went to the polls for the first time, many defying their employers to
vote for Nelson Mandela, life has changed little for the people who form
the human scaffolding of South Africa's white elite.
Earlier this year, in a bid to get their votes, the
former Government expanded the labor laws to give basic protection to
domestic workers for the first time, entitling them to things like sick
leave and lunch breaks. But because there appears to be little in the
way of enforcement, and because domestics often work in gated isolation
and in perpetual fear of losing their jobs, the rules are usually
ignored, Government officials concede.
"It's even worse than it was before," said Selina
Vilakazi, an organizer for the 70,000-member union. "When you ask for a
raise, they say, 'Go and ask Mandela.' It's revenge. They're trying to
show us they do not recognize him."
In the harshest cases, where live-in domestics are
viewed as family property, they are not permitted to leave the premises
unless the boss says so or else they are sometimes beaten, raped or
killed, human rights lawyers say. In one case shortly after the
election, a domestic was shot and killed by her boss after she admitted
to voting for Mr. Mandela, human rights lawyers said.
"Wherever these people can be abused, they are
vulnerable," said Aubrey Lekwane, deputy regional director of Lawyers
for Human Rights, a South African advocacy group. "They can't leave
because it's the last stop. Some are illiterate. There are no other jobs
for them."
For generations, the master-servant relationship has
been the main meeting point for blacks and whites. The country was
built with the expectation that the average middle-class white family
would have live-in servants. Many otherwise modest, three-bedroom homes
in the suburbs include maid's quarters in the back. The most popular
comic strip in the country concerns a white householder and her black
maid.
"Domestic servants are ubiquitous in South Africa,"
said Harry Dugmore, a co-writer of the comic strip, "Madam and Eve." "If
you have money, you have a servant. It is the South African way."
There are at least one million domestics in the
country, or about one in every five black adults in the labor force.
Many leave their own children behind in poor townships or rural
homelands a day's bus ride away to scrub somebody else's floors and
change the diapers of somebody else's children. They are often their
family's only breadwinner, usually divorced or separated, because, they
say, most marriages wither in their absence from home.
Many work Sunday to Sunday with indefinite hours,
resting when their employer says rest, as one domestic put it. Some get
only a few hours off every Thursday. They usually eat the family's
leftovers and live free of charge in a tiny back room.
If they are lucky, they make $150 a month, most of
which goes to feeding and clothing the children and grandchildren they
do not get to raise. Most go home once a year at Christmastime and hope
the youngest children will remember them.
"I do not have dreams, only worries," Antoinette
Dlungwana said of the weight she carries as sole provider to four
children and three grandchildren back home in Transkei. "As I am eating
this meal, I am thinking about them."
She rarely speaks to her children because her
employer will not permit her to call home. To reach her family, she must
get a friend in the post office to relay messages for her.
That is the lesser of her indignities. She dusts the
sofas and chairs but is not permitted to sit on them. She must move
from room to room the one kitchen chair she is allowed to sit on,
placing newspapers underneath before setting it down.
"If I want to sit and talk with the madame, I have
to bring my chair," she said. "I cannot sit on her chairs. My things
must not mix with her things. I must use my own spoon, my own plate, my
own cup."
A hard life has gotten harder since the campaign
last April. A few days before the election, Delsie Sedibe recalled, her
employer showed her a copy of the ballot and pointed to the picture of
F. W. de Klerk, the former President, and gave instructions: "This is
what you vote for. Don't make a mistake. There is de Klerk. There is
Buthelezi below him. You must be careful. Mandela is light in
complexion. Don't confuse him with de Klerk."
The employer took her maid to the polls, as many
did, and warned her again about what she must do. Mrs. Sedibe nodded and
stepped inside. She took a deep breath.
"When I was in the voting booth, it was only me and
my God," she said. "So I put an X next to Mandela."
Afterward came the questions. "Are you sure you
didn't make a mistake and vote for Mandela or Buthelezi?" the employer
asked her after she got home.
"She asked me so many times, she was so worried," Mrs. Sedibe said.
Some time after Mr. Mandela won, Mrs. Sedibe was
watching the news, after finishing the ironing, when she was asked what
she was doing.
"I want to hear what Mandela is saying," Mrs. Sedibe said.
"Why are you listening?" the master said. "That means you like him."
"He's the President," she said. "He was voted by the people."
"Oh, that means you voted for him, too," the master said angrily.
A few weeks later she was dismissed. The job had been paying her $100 a month.
In the world of live-in domestics, the employers
have control over the comings and goings of their maids and over whom
they may or may not see. Rebecca Manong's employer forbade her to have
any visitors, including her boyfriend.
"The madame said my boyfriend must not come anymore
because I will be pregnant, and she doesn't want any trouble," Miss
Manong said.
Hearing this, Sophie Zwan, a sharp-tongued union
organizer, described what she did when her employer barred her boyfriend
from visiting. After washing and ironing into the evening, she put on a
negligee that showed plenty of leg and went into the den where her
employers were watching television. She sat right down next to the
husband and watched both their mouths drop.
Then she said what she had been waiting all day to
tell them: " 'Madame, just as you are sitting with the boss, I feel I
should sit next to a man, just as you are.' After that, there was no
problem. I fixed madame."
The Government's general response to labor issues
has been that the Reconstruction and Development Program will help set
the country on the right course to the benefit of all citizens, half of
whom are unemployed. Mr. Mandela has put a priority on improving the
economy, creating more jobs and raising the level of education so that
people like domestics can get better jobs.
The union, whose leadership has limited education
and experience, says it wants to lobby for a minimum wage for domestic
workers and start literacy classes. In recent months, there have also
been signs of scattered militancy, like occasional picketing outside the
walled homes of some employers. Some domestics have even gotten up the
nerve to take the revolutionary step of calling their bosses by their
first names instead of madame or boss.
After hearing of Mr. Mandela's inauguration, Mrs.
Dlungwana was as euphoric as anyone. A man who looked like her, was
Xhosa like her, has her high cheekbones and regal, handsome face, was in
charge of the country.
But after it was over, she walked up the fire escape
to the 6-foot-by-8-foot cell-like room, lighted by a naked lightbulb,
that is her home 11 months of the year. There is room for only a bed and
the boxes she has made her closet, and if she stands in the middle and
stretches her arms out, she can almost touch the walls.
She taped a poster-sized picture of Mr. Mandela
above her hot plate. Then she thought about her life.
"There is no change," Mrs. Dlungwana said upon
reflection. "We are still treated exactly like slaves."
Photo: Despite an expansion of labor laws to protect
South Africa's domestic workers, many work under harsh conditions. Ann
Dlungwana lives in a tiny room in the home of her employer in
Johannesburg. (Peter Nkomo for The New York Times)
