Maid in Heaven...Makoti Madness.. Romanticizing the perfect fit to Cinderellas glass slipper is a mammoth task to every Madam in search of the ideal Eve. As we take a look into the real life drama of this age-old satirical cartoon, while the humour remains, beneath the ludicrous outbursts and laughable exchanges there is an important message that needs to be drawn. Our modern day Madam ranges from those who couldnt care less whether the help has swept the room with only a glance, to those who demand countless futile attempts to resist the August winds and keep the stoep clean. Whether you find yourself among those who are obsessive compulsive or part of the ones who keep the dust on the coffee table as a convenient notepad for quick notes, its all the same to me. My problem arises with those of us who bear the attitude, Keep my toilet clean... But beware should you choose to use it! I deliberately make reference to the lavatory as I find no better place to start. I can almost hear the retorts among readers, up in arms at the audacity to even suggest in-house toilet usage. In response to ridiculous thoughts and allegations that the help does not share our same level of cleanliness let us accept a challenge to justify why we then chose that same helper, who does not share our version of clean, to clean our houses to our satisfaction. We have no qualms with sharing toilets at malls, hotels and restaurants with the general public, but we cannot even lend a guest toilet to the helper that cleans up behind our toddlers failed attempts at potty training. We rejoice at the discovery of a helper that cleans well and then have the cheek to have him or her eat out of seperate cutlery designated for housecleaners and garden workers. The same workers who wash our dirty dishes and the same helper who occassionally peels patatoes and slices onions. If you feel that the helper, as a person, does not share your level of fussiness with regard to cleanliness, bring him or her up to speed with kitchen usage and as for the lavatory usage, a quick if you sprinkle and you twinkle.. tutorial should be enough to put your mind at ease. Just dont be brazen enough to entertain a racist mentality! In many Madam and Eve situations there are many of us who categorically place our helpers habits and affix to it the so-called mentality of a race or class of people. That is unacceptable on any level. It is morally, lawfully and socially repulsive. When the workers ask for leave to attend a funeral, before we even express our condolences, we immediately ask for the date on which they expect to return to work. When we are met with the same response from corporate firms we categorically label our seniors as cold and heartless. When the workers ask for time to go the hospitals or local clinics we become annoyed and double the workload the following day to make up for the day they had taken off. Do you really think they want to leave early, wait in never-ending queues for medication and be tended to like just another number in the line? When some of us are ill or require chronic medication, we have the luxury of going to our local chemist or GP, have a quick catch-up session with the doc, get seen to and be out within the hour. Do we not think that every person, if they had it their way, would like to share the same experience when they are ill? How many of us ask our workers on the day after hospital or clinic visits how they are feeling or enquire about the state of their health as diagnosed by the doctor? Instead, many of us are quick to have our help spring into action and have the backlog of work tended to. Perhaps one of the saddest ways in which we ill-treat our helpers is by the left-over food and half rotten fruits that we toss into a plastic bag and feel so proud to send them home with. If something is not good enough for a Madam, its not good enough for an Eve. If something is beyond its expiry how can we possibly feel that it is okay to pass it on to the helpers if we fear falling ill consuming it. Should we not fear the same for him/her? More often than not, it is not the workers choice to become the help. They are victims of social circumstance. Many of us have the luxury to follow a career path of choice. What would the lady or man who works for you, if given half a fair chance, choose to do? The time is long overdue to bury the fragments of apartheid. It is time to step out of our bubbles and into a world where racist and condescending attitudes are seen as completely backwards and can only survive in insular, narrow-minded societies. We are all equal in the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colours and all cultures are distinct & individual. We are harmonious in the reality that we are all held to this earth by the same gravity. We dont share blood, but we share the air that keeps us alive. I will not blind myself and say that my black brother is not different from me. I will not blind myself and say that my brown sister is not different from me. But my black brother is he as much as I am me. But my brown sister is she as much as I am me. C. JoyBell C. Fatima Ismail LLB(Wits) LLM(Labour Law)(Unisa) FEEDBACK AND COMMENTS: fatzunplugged@gmail
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 08:43:55 +0000
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