Serving apartheid? Domestic workers and the racial geographies of white suburban households, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1960s-1970s

Historical Geography

Volumn 27, Issue , 1999, Pages 56-72

  Ginsburg, Rebecca ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

APARTHEID; DOMESTIC WORK; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; RACIAL SEGREGATION;

SOUTH AFRICA;

EID: 0032738459     PISSN: 10916458     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. Because most domestic workers in Johannesburg were African South Africans, that is, members of native Bantu-speaking groups, in this paper I address relations between White South Africans and African South Africans only. Though not normal usage, I apply "Black" and "African" interchangeably. I ignore the roles of Coloureds and Indians - though a more comprehensive analysis even of White-African relations would have to acknowledge them - because their presence in the suburbs, except perhaps as traders, was very minimal.
2. On the history of domestic service in South Africa, see Charles van Onselen, "The Witches of Suburbia," in New Nineveh: Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1982), 1-73;
3. Jacklyn Cock, Maids and Madams: A Study of the Politics of Exploitation (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1980);
4. Eleanor Preston-Whyte, "Race Attitudes and Behaviour: The Case of Domestic Employment in White South African Homes," African Studies 35 (1976): 71-89;
5. Deborah Gaitskill, "Class, Race and Gender: Domestic Workers in South Africa," Review of African Political Economy 27/28 (1983);
6. Michael Whisson and William Weil, Domestic Servants (Johannesburg: Sairr, 1971).
7. Rachel Ndabezitha, quoted in Suzanne Gordon, A Talent for Tomorrow: Life Stories of South African Servants (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1985), 119.
8. I conducted most of the interviews myself, many of them with volunteers from the South African Domestic Workers' Union (an organization founded in the 1980s). My research assistant, Peggy Twala, joined me on about one third of the African interviews and conducted a handful herself. She also helped to put me in contact with former domestic workers currently living in Soweto. I reached white informants through word of mouth and helpful friends. I interviewed, alone, two sets of Whites, those who had been children during the years in question and those that had been adults. I conducted all White interviews in English. Most African interviews were also conducted in English, but where this was not possible Peggy Twala served as translator and/or interpreter. Peggy Twala is a Southern Sotho speaking African and I am a mixed race American, or "Coloured" by South African standards, but identified myself as African-American. By agreement with the informants, I do not provide their real names here.
9. The most comprehensive analysis of Johannesburg's domestic architecture is Clive Chipkin, Johannesburg Style: Architecture and Society 1880s-1960s (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1993).
10. Anonymous housewife quoted in Cock, Maids and Madams, 137.
11. Albert F., interview by author, tape recording, Rivonia, 12 August 1996.
12. Norman S., interview by author, tape recording, Johannesburg, 13 August 1996.
13. See especially the many interviews cited in Cock, Maids and Madams, which provide a strong sense of white people's anxiety over "black" germs.
14. Suzanne Gordon, interview by author, Sandton, 19 January 1998.
15. Anonymous housewife, quoted in Cock, Maids and Madams, 162.
16. Patricia N., interview by author and Peggy Twala, tape recording, Soweto, 21 January 1998.
17. Cynthia N., interview by author, tape recording, Johannesburg, 14 February 1998.
18. Zelma K., interview by author and Peggy Twala, tape recording, Soweto, 26 January 1998.
19. Zelma K., interview.
20. Sandra M., interview by author and Peggy Twala, tape recording, Soweto, 10 July 1995.
21. Belinda M., interview by author and Peggy Twala, tape recording, Johannesburg, 14 February 1998, trans. Mandla.
22. Jacklyn Cock, "Deference and Dependence, A Note on the Self-Imagery of Domestic Workers," South African Labour Bulletin 6 (July 1980): 9-21.
23. Cynthia N., interview.
24. Patricia N., interview.
25. Brenda M., interview by author and Peggy Twala, tape recording, Soweto, 24 January 1998.
26. Laura M., interview by author, tape recording, Johannesburg, 6 July 1996.
27. Brenda M., interview.
28. In his article on slave/slave owner landscapes, while he does not dwell on conflict and contestation over spaces, Dell Upton delineates separate cultural landscapes that co-existed for different users within the same environment. See "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Places 2 (1985): 59-72.