South Africa: The First World, with slavery!

Where else but in South Africa can one have all the benefits of First World living, with the equivalent of slave labour to clean up after us?

If this sounds like either an oversimplification or merely a provocation, think again. Having recently travelled down to Port Elizabeth — perhaps the most awful city in the country — I was struck upon my return to Jo’burg how good we actually have it here. Shopping centre after shopping centre, packed with all the glitzy, glittering, flavoursome, gadgety stuff you’d find in any other First World city.

Sure, it’s not New York or London or Sydney, but those are unfair comparisons. Our restaurants, stores, homes and cars (and by “us” I do, of course, mean the relatively well-off middle class) are the same or better than what many Australians, Americans and Europeans have.

But South Africans have what none of these other countries can boast: a fantastically cheap labour force that is economically enslaved to serve not just the wealthy, but also almost everyone who can hold down a reasonable job. The ubiquitous maids, gardeners and other labourers are so accessible that they, in effect, define South African life.

The hordes of emigrants that have flocked to places such as Perth, Toronto and London, bar none, miss this aspect of South African life the most. Yes, it rains in London and Toronto is freezing cold most of the time. Yes, they miss their family and friends. But their domestics they miss the most of all.

Not the actual people, you understand. It’s the service. You can pick up a Mexican or Filipino if you have some means in the US and Canada. And some young thing will be available as an au pair in the UK if needs be. But the fact is these services come at a price out there, far more than the average person can afford.

We South Africans do not have that problem. For literally a few hundred rands a month, we can have a full-time servant to cook, clean and look after the kids. They’re willing to live in whatever dwelling they’re given, eat the cheapest meat and starch we can find, be separated from their families for months at a time, be denied having partners sleeping in their rooms with them and generally do whatever is required of them to maintain their meagre lives.

This is not guilt-mongering on my part. In fact, like most of the people reading this piece, I employ a domestic worker who arrives at my house twice a week, after having commuted from some distance away in dangerous public transport to clean up. I leave dirty dishes for her, dirty clothes, dust and general disarray, and I come home to find all that sorted out while I’m off working or otherwise occupying my time. I spend exactly no time on housework, apart from the occasional sinkful of dishes between maid visits.

And for this I am extremely grateful, a little guilty and, apart from that, I don’t even stop to think about it. The ex-pats, at least for the first few years, do little other than think about it.

Use to be the whites had it good, but nowadays the rising black middle class enjoys the same privileges. Perhaps there is more complexity there in that some of those people are the children of the very domestics now accessible to them as workers. But that’s just a passing phase while class sorts itself out from race.

Fortunately for us, there are enough poor, desperate people who will reproduce, and who are already becoming, the next generation of cheap labour to continue to serve the wants of the haves for a long time to come.

As a footnote, I should, of course, mention that emigrants leave because of security concerns and opportunities offshore. Few, apart from the young travellers experiencing a bit of London before their 30s, cite quality of life as the reason to leave. When Talk Radio 702 listeners say “crime must end”, they don’t say “and there must be an end to poverty and virtual slavery”.

And why should they? We have it so good.