Swimming with Cobras by Rosemary Smith

Her employers were well-known members of the Grahamstown community with a high profile in the Progressive Party, so it was a tricky interview the advice office worker had with them, but more free Sundays were negotiated. Years later, when this employer was old, widowed and quite disabled, he told me during a bedside visit of his gratitude to this same domestic worker, not only for her years of service but also for the many intimate things he now needed her to do for him.
    The house I’d grown up in had a small maid’s room upstairs and electric bells, even by the bath, wired to numbered hammers in a glass-fronted box in the kitchen, but these belonged to a bygone age. There was no maid and no ringing of bells when we lived there. My mother employed a series of chars with whom she often sat down and had a cup of tea. There was Mrs Shaw, whose husband was a lorry driver and whose passion was ballroom dancing. And Agnes who had spent her early life “in service” in a large country house. I think I grew up respecting them as I would anyone else who came to tea. And yet – I have an embarrassing memory. When Agnes was new in our employ I once unpacked our silver and glassware from the dining room cupboard and proudly displayed it for her benefit. It seems a strange thing to have done.
    Still, when I arrived in South Africa I had very idealistic intentions as an employer of domestic help. I vowed never to use the word “servant” or to demean older women and men by calling them “girl” or “boy”. I was determined that my employees would be treated as equals and regarded with dignity. I fear that my practice did not always match my principles.
    Once when English friends came to visit, they confided in us about a conversation they’d had with Hilda. When they had remarked to her that she must be very glad to have such good employers, her response had been rather lukewarm. I was taken aback. Was it just a bad day, or did I have cause to be ashamed? I reflected on how hard it must be to care full time for someone else’s home and children. On top of these demanding duties, domestic workers still had their own homes and families to care for and their own worries to contend with. Considering the indispensable contribution they made to the middle-class lives of others, one had to concede that the wages they earned and acknowledgement they received were nowhere near an adequate recompense. Small wonder that Hilda sometimes arrived at work in a dark mood, which our children called a “munch” and I confess I found irritating. Other friends from England once pointed out that I often had conversations in front of Hilda without including her. No doubt Hilda’s dignity sometimes hindered her from speaking up, but at other times she was not, as my mother would have said, “backward at coming forward,” and she told me in no uncertain terms when she felt something was not right. This could lead to a robust debate, or it could make me feel annoyed and guilty.
    In 1980, Black Sash member Jacklyn Cock produced a book about domestic workers called Maids and Madams . Her research was done mostly in the Eastern Cape, which she called “the Deep South”. The book contained some revealing interviews. “They call me one of the family,” said one worker. “How can they say that?” “Holidays?” said another worker sardonically; “I go with the family to the seaside and work harder there than I do when they’re at home!” “I live on the smell of their meat,” said yet another. Discussion of Jackie’s book at a Grahamstown Black Sash meeting caused quite a furore, as some members became defensive about their own treatment of the women who worked for them. A slide and tape show of the book was aired around the country, and abroad by organisations such as Christian Aid. My voice, with its English accent, was used to represent the