‘Buying the Maid Ricoffy’: Domestic Workers, Employers and Food

ABSTRACT This article focuses on employer accounts of their relationships with domestic workers in their employ. It examines, in particular, discussions about food provision for domestic workers within the household – an integral part of the complicated employment relationship – and points to a number of wider dimensions and power relations characterising the relationship. The discussion is based on ten focus group interviews at employers' book clubs in Cape Town. The findings are corroborated using 171 questionnaires, ten home observations, and interviews. While the findings are neither generalisable nor conclusive, they suggest that food provision is a dense site for investigating the complexities and micro-relations of power between ‘maid’ and ‘madam’, and that the rules governing domestic workers' access to food index the intimacy and estrangement (as well as other contradictions in the attitudes and behaviour of employers) that characterise the domestic employment relationship. This contradiction is exacerbated by ambiguous communication, employer discomfort, and feelings of guilt about past and present inequalities, ensuring that while relationships have changed since apartheid, employers use covert codes and norms to maintain a skewed power structure.