I have recently been faced with a dilemma, and it is one which has left me feeling helpless, sad and horrified.
Picture the scenario of a kind, responsible and reliable woman who has been employed by a family as a domestic worker, and who has, in fact, been well-known to that family for many years. She is originally from Zimbabwe but has lived and worked in South Africa for many years, and all her papers are in order.
The elderly mother of the home-owner has been undergoing treatment for cancer and is not very well. So, as she has been asked to do, this lovely domestic worker stays in the home on the nights when the homeowner is away. Effectively then, she is there alone with the elderly woman on those nights, and bears the responsibility of a carer. They are extremely fortunate that she is willing to do this.
However, on those nights when she is in sole charge, she has to sleep on the floor. Every time. She is no longer young, her knees are painful, and it is getting colder. There is a spare bed in another room, yet she has to sleep on the floor. Not even on a mattress.
The homeowner in question is of Indian origin. The domestic worker is black. How do I, as an observer, offer a mattress on loan to this lovely lady, when the fallout would inevitably be horrific, more particularly for her? Yet I cannot talk to the homeowner either. It is ‘not done’.
Once again, clearly, some are still more equal than others.
