The unforgiving work environment of black African women domestic workers in a post-apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT

In democratic South Africa, many Black African women are still subjugated by being employed as domestic workers. Increasing evidence emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic revealing unmistakable signs of modern-day slavery among South African Black domestic workers. This paper proposes a clinical model which examines how gender, class, and race intersections affect the ways in which specifically identified change agents offer new, transforming interventions via clinical intervention. Adopting a clinical approach augments identification of a specific social problem from a scientifically systematic applied approach built on applied theory. We report on the conditions facing vulnerable Black African women using a bricolage research approach. The resulting model explicitly identifies systemic inequalities and indicates how to reduce exploitation and protect workers. The bricolage approach aided the secondary qualitative analysis of complex bonded-labour intersections. The problem of Black African women living as bonded domestic labour is augmented by the girl children’s primary socialisation, Western patriarchal re-socialisation which sustains apartheid, and race, class, occupational, and gender inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Bonded labour
• clinical intervention
• domestic worker
• enslavement
• post-apartheid
• South Africa
• women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In SA, “Black people” is a generic term that includes African, Indian, and Coloured.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Q. Dawood

Dr. Q. Dawood is a research manager of the IIE’s Varsity College. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in 2016. She is a member of the International Sociological Association (RC 52) and the Development Studies Association (DSA).

M. Seedat-Khan

Professor M. Seedat-Khan is a certified clinical sociologist and Head of the Clinical Sociology postgraduate program at the University of KwaZulu Natal. She is a visiting professor at Taylor’s University Malaysia, Vice President, Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology (AACS) and Executive member of the Research Committee Clinical Sociology RC46, International Sociological Association (ISA).