Reflections on Africa, by Katie Fuller

December 2005

Cape Town, South Africa is a beautiful city with a violent past.  From January 29^th to June 19^th, Elizabeth Mengesha, a former ADBAR volunteer, and myself lived in Cape Town.  The new brightly rainbow-colored South African flag could be seen flying all over, as well as the bustling of many different races and ethnicities.  But one must not forget.  South Africans have only lived in a free and democratic society for ten years, and there is still much work to be done.  What we did witness, however, was the pivotal role women were playing in the rebuilding of their society.

One way in which we personally experienced the hard work ethic and the limited economic opportunities for women in South Africa was by witnessing the daily struggle of domestic workers.  Nearly every South African home that can afford a domestic worker has one.  Before traveling to Cape Town, I completed a research project on domestic work in South Africa.  There is a minimum wage for domestic workers in South Africa now, and it is 100 rand a day, which is approximately a little less than 17 U.S. dollars.  Prices in South Africa, despite the fact that the dollar is stronger than the rand, do not vary much from American prices. What this means for domestic workers, a female profession, is that upward mobility in their profession is virtually impossible. 

Their work helps puts food on the table, but it also limits their ability to improve themselves economically because they depend upon their meager salaries to feed and care for their families. 

An amazing movie I have watched on this subject is called “Maids and Madams.”  It was made in the eighties and chronicled the lives of a small number of domestic workers in urban South Africa.  Some domestic workers still refer to their employers as Master or Madam.  I was placed with a homestay during my time in South Africa.

My second homestay was with a white South African family who lived in a beautiful home in a very well-to-do suburb of the city.  Around four o’ clock everyday I witnessed the return of hordes of domestic workers and gardeners back to the train station or minibus station where they would commute back to the townships.  Almost every house in the neighborhood had a domestic worker and gardener.  And most of these workers depended on public transportation because of their wages.  It was hard seeing such inequality. 

Often at night, Elizabeth and I would sit around pondering the best way to fight the inequality we see all the time, whether in South Africa or America.  Was the best way to continue our education and gain influence in the world?  Was it better if we did volunteer work straight out of college?  Were we doing enough currently?  We determined the answer was probably a combination of things.  And we also thought that gaining higher education, even if that meant graduate school, would be key for helping the women not only in South Africa, but in our own communities as well. 

One forum in which one did see a lot of racial and cultural diversity, representative of the goals of the “new” South Africa, was just by walking through the campus of the University of Cape Town.  South Africa has really pushed for diversity in the educational realm, and while the makeup of their universities doesn’t exactly mirror their population demographics, it is one arena that has really diversified since the end of apartheid.  In my classes were students from all over Africa, including Ethiopia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Gabon, Nigeria, and many more countries.

 I took a class that looked at male/female relations on the continent, and the spirit of the women not only in South Africa, but the entire continent, was truly an inspiring thing.  South Africa’s new government actually has a Gender Equality Commission in place to ensure peace between men and women, but even the GEC has encountered tricky territory.  For example, a tradition in some Xhosa villages in the Eastern Cape hold communal tests to see if girls have been sexually active or not. 

The GEC viewed these tests as encouraging gender inequality, but the women and girls were vehemently against any ban on such testing.  They saw them as a pivotal part of their culture, and as a source of empowerment for girls and women.  In many respects, finding the balance between respecting culture and upholding equal rights for women is not easy at all.