Domestic workers are often described as the most essential labourers in our economy because of the way they provide upward mobility for modern families who seek to realise their dreams. 

On a philosophical level, and as service workers, they can also be seen to embody humanity’s capacity to aid others, even in spaces of unfamiliarity and strangeness. Still, while holding prominent positions in the intimate spaces of households, they tend to be hidden in people’s homes where they can be subjected to abuse and exploitation by those who employ them.

Despite the fact that domestic workers should be earning a monthly wage of R3 710 if they’re working a 160-hour month, according to minimum wage rates, data suggests one in five earns less than R1 500 monthly. 

Even as South Africa boasts some of the most progressive labour laws for domestic workers in the world, these statistics paint a harrowing image of the lives of black women, who make up 97% of the one-million domestic workers in the country. 

They also speak to the moral turpitude of the society that employs them. As a black woman myself, who comes from a long line of women who worked as domestic workers for white families during the apartheid era, it’s difficult to grapple with the degradation domestic workers’ experience in society. 

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