Nuance in the feudal state

“M’e Mpho, where is the laundromat?

“What is this thing you ask?”

“The place where you go to wash your dirty clothes. You know, a room with many washing machines. You put money in, the machine washes them.” 

“You have these things in America?”

“Sure. Some people have washing machines in their houses, but if you don’t have a machine at your house, you take your clothes to a Laundromat.”

I was nearing the end of my first week in Lesotho, and my suitcase was filling up with dirty laundry. I shared a small, cramped office with another visiting professor, but I found it more comfortable to work at the Guest House and had become accustomed to M’e Mpho’s company as she mopped the clean floors and dusted spotless window sills while I prepared lectures and worked on a grant application. She pulled herself up tall and slapped her hand on the table for emphasis,

“We have no such thing in Lesotho! A very bad idea, this machine.”

Dumbstruck, I asked why.

“Because women need work. How can you give money to a machine when there are people whose children are hungry?” A silence opened up between us. I didn’t get it. “You must pay someone to do the washing, my dear. When people stay in my guest house, they pay me to do their washing. I was looking, looking. I say where is her washing.” 

“I can do it myself,” I stammered, verging on a whine, “in a Laundromat.”

Exasperated, she looked out the window and spoke slowly and deliberately, punching her words. “We. Do not. Give money. To machines.” She searched for words and finally collapsed into the truth. “I need your washing to feed my children. I have many grandchildren at my house. I am the only one working.”

It was my first glimpse into the terrible feudal labor system that pervades southern Africa. Deeply embarrassed, I handed over my dirty laundry to M’e Mpho, and while she began doing my washing I raced off to talk to my office mate about the going rate for laundry, about how the system works, what was expected of me.

Basically it came down to this: middle-class people are expected to hire poor women, called, in English, “helpers,” to do their housework, laundry, cooking, and errands. The going rate is only a bit more than nothing at all. But that is just the beginning. The helper then continually pleads with the employer for additional help: school fees and school uniforms in January, medical costs if someone is ill, eye-glasses if needed, a contribution to funeral costs if anyone in the family dies, shoes or a jacket if critical (and if the employer has none to hand down), and on and on. The helper is always a supplicant; there is continual bargaining and pleading; the employer can refuse at any time and therefore maintains power and control. 

There is nuance in the system. Part of the process of interviewing a helper is determining how many children she has. If she has more than five, an employer who earns relatively little money (an office assistant, say) will politely explain she cannot afford a helper with that many children. Professors and high-level administrators are expected to hire women with larger families. For a person who is well-off not to hire servants is considered miserly, lacking in basic humanity and kindness. People of very high status and income, like a university dean or upper-level administrator, are expected to employ two housekeepers, a gardener, and a driver, and they will be expected to field constant requests for additional needs. 

If we must have a servant-economy, I demanded of my office-mate, why not just pay a living wage and let people manage their own money? 

“It just isn’t done,” she explained. “You can’t change the system.” There was, at that time, no medical insurance in Lesotho, no old age pension, no free education, no safety net. There were “Burial Societies,” about which I will say more in a bit, but even Burial Societies did not cover the full cost of death. There were possibilities of financial disaster and family collapse at every moment. 

Writing this memoir in 2018, when American safety nets and unions are threatened and the USA has shifted to a “gig economy”--with Uber drivers, part-time servers, adjunct professors, and the like, I see that the feudal system is once again spreading throughout the world. But in 1992, when I touched down in Lesotho, I was shocked by it. 

Note: this is a continuation of a memoir begun here, continuing here, the most recent preceding episode here.