Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note for Readers
- Introduction: Searching the Archive
- 1 Representations of Domestic Workers
- 2 Enslaved Women at the Cape: The First Domestic Workers
- 3 Migrant Women and Domestic Work in the City
- 4 Legislation and Black Urban Women
- 5 Domestic Workers in Personal Accounts
- 6 Oral Testimonies, Interviews and a Novel
- 7 Domestic Workers and Children
- 8 Domestic Workers and Sexuality
- 9 Domestic Workers in Troubled Times
- 10 Domestic Workers in Post-apartheid Novels by White Authors
- 11 Domestic Workers in Post-apartheid Novels by Black Authors
- 12 Domestic Workers Bridge the Gap
- Notes
- Artists and Photographers
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Domestic Workers in Personal Accounts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note for Readers
- Introduction: Searching the Archive
- 1 Representations of Domestic Workers
- 2 Enslaved Women at the Cape: The First Domestic Workers
- 3 Migrant Women and Domestic Work in the City
- 4 Legislation and Black Urban Women
- 5 Domestic Workers in Personal Accounts
- 6 Oral Testimonies, Interviews and a Novel
- 7 Domestic Workers and Children
- 8 Domestic Workers and Sexuality
- 9 Domestic Workers in Troubled Times
- 10 Domestic Workers in Post-apartheid Novels by White Authors
- 11 Domestic Workers in Post-apartheid Novels by Black Authors
- 12 Domestic Workers Bridge the Gap
- Notes
- Artists and Photographers
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Like most of my school friends, I simply accepted that black girls went barefoot, wore worn-out clothes and later worked as servants in white homes.
Marike de Klerk — Marike: A Journey through Summer and Winter (1997)For many years after the British victory in the South African War (1899–1902), relations between the Afrikaner and English ‘races’ were considered a far more important matter than that of political rights for black South Africans. There was one thing upon which white people agreed: they should retain political power. Colonial conquest, the habits and institutions of a rigid class-based British society, and the relations forged on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony by British settlers in the 1820s lay the foundation for the behaviour of many English-speakers, which tended to reflect that of most Afrikaners with their VOC heritage. This became clear from the segregation policy in Natal, which was later mirrored in the Union of South Africa.
The Lagden Commission, appointed by Lord Milner in 1903 to report on ‘native affairs’ in the four colonies, made wide-ranging recommendations regarding the division of land which were later incorporated into the Natives Land Act No 27 of 1913. According to Sher, ‘In many ways the Lagden Commission's report became the blueprint for the course taken by the segregation policy in South Africa.’ The aspirations of black people were ‘simply side-lined’. In the aftermath of the formation of the Union in 1910, a process began that would eventually lead to the disenfranchisement of black and coloured people in the Cape Province and Natal, ending their representation in parliament. Although black political leaders petitioned and struggled against blatant injustices, for the greater part of the twentieth century very few escaped doing manual labour for white people. In 1922 the Stallard (Transvaal Local Government) Commission was established:
From the outset this commission took the view that white people had the exclusive right of residence in urban areas and that black people were merely there to ‘meet the needs’ of the whites. This stance was embodied in the Group Areas Act (1923) which laid the foundation for residential segregation and bolstered the idea that black people did not have the right to live permanently in the towns.
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- Like FamilyDomestic Workers in South African History and Literature, pp. 83 - 117Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2019