The Agency of the Servant : Reframing Domestic Service in Contemporary South African Popular Forms

Abstract

Representations of domestic workers and their relationships with employers occur in several fictional/non-fictional post-apartheid narratives in South Africa, including chick-lit, self-help literature and television series. This study explores how popular genres reinforce, challenge or reframe existing depictions of domestic workers (which have historically often been one-dimensional and superficial), by analysing Zukiswa Wanner’s chick-lit novel The Madams (2006), Zukiswa Wanner’s self-help text Maid in SA: 30 Ways to Leave Your Madam (2013), and the television drama Housekeepers (2018) directed by Grant Atkinson and produced by Portia Gumede. These works are examined against their genre conventions to investigate what these popular forms might open up for the representation of domestic workers and their relationships with employers. The study aims to highlight unique ways in which popular genres such as chick-lit and self-help engage with the subject of domestic service, opening up new spaces for previously marginalized characters and complicating stock figures. Including analysis of a television series underscores similar innovations in South African television, focusing on crime drama’s distinctive contribution. This dissertation shows the expansion from representations of domestic workers in South African apartheid literature as silent, peripheral figures to multi-faceted depictions that underscore their identities and experiences outside of their jobs as domestic workers. It demonstrates a shift from focusing on the intimate nature of domestic work to acceptance that it is essentially a job and should be treated accordingly. Moreover, it demonstrates how the portrayal of the domestic worker/employer relationship now showcases the possibility of friendship rather than simply depicting them in pseudo familial terms. Popular forms, adapted to the South African, and wider African context, are thus clearly able to engage with social and political themes in complex and dynamic ways.