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The Contradictions of Formalization: Domesticity and Paid Domestic Work in Mozambique and Angola*

As contradições da formalização: domesticidade e trabalho doméstico remunerado em Moçambique e Angola
Ruth Castel-Branco

Resumos

Entrelaçado com a história da colonização, o trabalho doméstico remunerado tem-se tornado uma marca da vida moderna. Apesar da sua centralidade na vida social e económica, é geralmente considerado algo para além de emprego. Na última década surgiu um movimento global pelos direitos dos trabalhadores domésticos, que tem conquistando vitórias regulamentares importantes, incluindo a Convenção 189 da OIT, o Decreto 40/2008 em Moçambique e o Decreto 155/16 em Angola. Este artigo analisa as contradições das recentes tentativas de regular este setor íntimo e melhorar as condições de trabalho. Demonstra que os trabalhadores domésticos se encontram na interface de um conflito sobre os termos da domesticidade e que as estratégias para alargar as proteções laborais e sociais a este setor, requerem desafiar as noções patriarcais de domesticidade.

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Notas da redacção

Edited by Scott M. Culp

Received on 17.02.2021
Accepted for publication on 01.09.2021

Texto integral

  • * Acknowledgments: the author would like to thank the International Domestic Workers’ Federation for (...)
  • 1 All translations are by the author.

I’m tired of having a “woman-man”; one who can do everything I can. God made each person with their own qualities. If we are equal there will be repulsion. Continue as a overbearing woman with European airs.1 (Mabjaia, 2019)

  • 2 Oral communication by the Pastor of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God during a Marriage Ce (...)

To be submissive is not to be enslaved. The man is the head of the household, as Christ is the head of the Church. The woman may conquer everything, but the man is the commander, as she is the housewife.2

1In the popular WhatsApp series Lares de Hoje, Mozambican essayist Mabjaia (2019) recounts the story of the dissolution of the marriage of Érica and Martins. Érica is the epitome of the modern working woman. She dislikes eating pumpkin leaves and wearing a cloth wrap, outsources care responsibilities to a paid domestic worker, and disregards her husband’s orders. Feeling emasculated, Martins begins a torrid affair with his wife´s coworker, who seduces him with sweet words, sumptuous fish curry, and submissive pornographic poses that supposedly harken back to the sultry women of past ages. The moral of the series is that the modern working woman must master the art of submission or risk jumping from branch to branch or man to man. Although Lares de Hoje amounts to little more than mediocre fiction, it reflects contemporary attempts to discipline working women into patriarchal constructions of domesticity as they enter the labor market in unprecedented numbers.

2The enforcement of patriarchal notions of domesticity has long been a terrain of struggle, marked by expropriation and exploitation, contestation and resistance. In Europe, this process took place through the enclosure of the commons, the circumscription of bourgeois women to the private sphere of the home, and false accusations of sorcery against the recalcitrant (Federici, 2004). The making of domesticity was closely intertwined with the European imperialist project, which transformed bourgeois women into housewives and conspicuous consumers of colonial loot. Ironically, this process of housewifization hinged on the labour of the enslaved, colonized, and working classes, who were denied their right to womanhood, wifehood, and motherhood (Mies, 2014). In colonial Africa, Baderoon (2014) argues, the fantasy of the white housewife hinged on the toil of black servants, who bathed white bodies and polished white property. Despite or perhaps because of this physical and emotional proximity – which transgressed the boundaries of race, even as it entrenched them – black women were invisibilized, infantilized, and subjected to high levels of scrutiny. Although the colonial state and the Church subsequently deployed domesticity as a mechanism of labour control – reframing African women as Christianly wives, mothers, and servants – the material conditions of colonialism ultimately undermined the consolidation of a patriarchal nuclear family (Baderoon, 2014).

3Importantly, Ally (2009) points out that the notion of devout domesticity was leveraged by African women to reclaim their right to wifehood and motherhood under colonialism. The Manyano movement in South Africa, for instance, was a key source of resistance to the expropriation of property and fragmentation of the family, even as it emphasized collective prayer over action. The notion of the family as the fundamental basis for the organization of society and of marriage as the glue that held it together became central to the postcolonial imagination across much of Southern Africa, including Mozambique and Angola (RdM, 2018; RdA, 2010). Although both states espoused equality between the sexes, the focus on the family as the primary unit of support ultimately required the submission of women within the household. With the advent of neoliberalism – marked by the liberalization of the economy, mass retrenchments, and privatization of care – women faced an even more significant burden of productive and reproductive responsibilities. As women assumed a more prominent public role, warnings against becoming a “woman-man” with European airs have proliferated. This “cult of femininity”, Gqola (2007) argues, based on the case of South Africa, has enabled the violence of masculinities to remain unchallenged.

  • 3 Interview by the author with Fátima, a domestic worker, 14 June 2012, Maputo, Mozambique.
  • 4 Interview by the author with a representative of Rede Mulher, 4 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

4This paper suggests that paid domestic work lies at the interface of a conflict over the terms of domesticity in contemporary Mozambique and Angola. On the one hand, it provides an avenue for poor and working-class women to enter the labour market, which can foster intra-household tensions. As Fátima, a paid domestic worker in Maputo recalls: “When my husband became unemployed, I saw that it would be better for me to do something […] but ohhh he felt really bad [laughs]! I told him: ‘I have duties to fulfill. I am now the wife and husband!’”.3 On the other hand, the framing of domestic workers as temptresses in waiting is often leveraged to discipline middle-class women into patriarchal forms of domesticity. Indeed, tales abound about the aloof wife abandoned by her husband for the attentive domestic worker. As a representative of the Angolan Rede Mulher [Women’s Network] explains: “If the domestic worker makes your husband’s bed, cooks his food, heats his bathwater and takes care of his children, what use does he have for you?”.4

5The paper explores recent attempts to formalize paid domestic work in Mozambique and Angola, locating these within broader debates about the terms of domesticity. It draws on research conducted in collaboration with domestic workers’ and women’s organizations in 2012, 2016, and 2018. In Mozambique, organizations included the Sindicato Nacional de Empregados Domésticos (SINED) [National Union for Domestic Workers], the Associação das Mulheres Empregadas Domésticas (AMUEDO) [Association of Women Domestic Workers] and Fórum Mulher [Women’s Forum]; in Angola, the União Nacional dos Trabalhadores de Angola (UNTA) [National Union of Angolan Workers], Sindicato dos Trabalhadores, dos Servicos de Portaria, Vigilancias, Limpeza, Jardinagens, Domésticas, Profissões Similares e Actividades Diversas (STAD-Angola) [Union for Porters, Security, Cleaning, Gardening, Domestic Workers, Similar Activities and Professions] and Rede Mulher were involved. In addition to semi-structured interviews with organizational leaders and focus group discussions with two dozen union members in the capital cities of Maputo and Luanda, the paper draws on interviews with representatives of state institutions responsible for the implementation of labour and social protections. The first section locates paid domestic work within a racialized and gendered history of colonial capitalism and explores its evolution with the transition to a market economy in Mozambique and Angola. The second section compares the movement for domestic workers’ rights in both countries and the practices of power that workers have used to claw back concessions from employers in the affective and moral economy of paid domestic work. The third section compares attempts by the state to formalize this historically marginalized sector through the extension of labour and social protections to domestic workers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of formalization in this intimate sector.

The Evolution of Paid Domestic Work in Mozambique and Angola

6Rooted in a violent history of dispossession and forced labour, paid domestic work has become a hallmark of modern urban living in Mozambique and Angola. According to national statistics, there are half a million domestic workers in Mozambique: half of whom are women and half men, two-thirds of whom work in rural areas, and one-third in urban centres, and almost all of whom are black (INE, 2019). While there are no similar statistics for domestic work in Angola, union membership numbers suggest a more feminized and urbanized labor force (Castel-Branco, 2018). Notably, labour force surveys tend to underestimate the scope and scale of domestic work. On the one hand, tasks are associated with women’s unpaid care work – cleaning the house, washing the laundry, cooking for the family, and taking care of children or the elderly – and thus considered something other than employment. Furthermore, the contractual relationship is often embedded in familial practices of reciprocity and interdependence and therefore not declared as employment (ILO, 2016). On the other hand, domestic workers generally rely on complementary sources of livelihood – petty trading, small-scale cultivation, etc. – and so the primary activity identified ultimately reflects enumerators’ subjectivities. This is particularly true in rural areas, where domestic workers may be misclassified as peasants because they own a piece of land, even if it is not their primary source of subsistence (Cramer et al., 2015).

  • 5 Interview by the author with a representative of the Centro de Formação Profissional (CENFOC) [Cent (...)

7Although paid domestic work consists primarily of tasks associated with women’s unpaid work, it also involves a range of activities outside of the home, including in the security, commerce, agriculture, and transportation sectors (INE, 2019). Within paid domestic work, there are a diversity of arrangements, from day labour to full-time live-in work and agency contracts. In Angola, private training and placement agencies became particularly prominent during the height of the economic boom, sourcing domestic workers from as far afield as the Philippines. Although national statistics suggest that most domestic workers have little to no schooling, prospective domestic workers who apply to training and placement programs tend to be secondary school graduates.5

8In colonial Mozambique and Angola, paid domestic work was a primarily male profession (Zamparoni, 2000). For young men from rural areas, it provided an opportunity to learn Portuguese, network with potential employers, and access better-paid positions in industrialized sectors. The lowest position was that of a general worker and the highest that of a nanny or chef. A highly paid worker not only earned more than most Africans but could remain reasonably independent (Penvenne, 1994). During the colonial period, few women performed paid domestic work. On the one hand, Portuguese employers perceived men as better skilled and more reliable, for they were unencumbered by competing reproductive responsibilities. On the other, African families were reluctant to submit women to the risk of sexual assault – a fear shared by their female employers (Chipenembe, 2010). Of course, male domestic workers too were subjected to sexual exploitation. Although Zacarias maintains that he was treated well, he was forced to “play husband” to his female employer:

  • 6 Interview by the author with Zacarias, a former domestic worker, 19 September 2016, Inhassoro, Inha (...)

They [employers] treated me well. They bought me clothing, and I began to change. They registered me as an assimilado, I was no longer considered indigenous, and I received an identity document […]. In 1958, they moved to Portugal. The boss was a pilot for TAP and was absent for long periods. When he was gone, she forced me to be her husband. But it became complicated, and I returned to Mozambique. It took 28 days and 28 nights. When I arrived in Beira, I pretended I was a railway worker and was hired as a typist.6

9Not all domestic workers experienced the same degree of upward mobility, however. After all, they were strictly regulated under the political system of the Indigenato, which made unemployment a criminal offense for all defined as indigenous (Guthrie, 2018). Under the threat of recruitment into forced labour, African domestic workers had little bargaining power. Their mobility was further constrained by pass laws, their wages kept purposefully low by the local administration, and they were subjected to arbitrary forms of corporal punishment (ILO, 1962). Even the most minor infraction, from breaking a glass to burning a sheet, could result in vague accusations of disobedience, punishable by a beating at the administrator’s office using a palmatória or wooden bat (Penvenne and Manghezi, 1981).

10Under pressure from national liberation movements and international organizations, the colonial state eventually abolished the Indigenato and introduced new regulations for domestic workers, which included the right to a minimum wage and paid leave. In return, domestic workers were expected to be loyal and obedient, protect individuals and private property, and carry a passbook. As the armed struggle for independence intensified, home inspections increased under the pretext of enforcing domestic workers’ rights, but with the ulterior purpose of rooting out anti-colonial activity. It was during this late colonial period that domestic work became increasingly feminized, as women migrated to urban centres and men were funneled into emerging industrial activities. Catholic Missions played an essential role in preparing African women for a life of servitude, recalls Ana Matilde, who began working as a domestic worker after the fourth grade. Despite improvements in labour protections, she maintains, domestic workers were treated as little more than appendages to a machine:

  • 7 Interview by the author with a representative of AMUEDO, 1 July 2011, Maputo, Mozambique.

I had to eat their leftover food. I had to drink tea from a jam jar, on the water tank where I washed clothes. I slept in the kitchen. I had nowhere to put my clothes. When it rained, my clothes got wet. They treated me as though I was a remote control who would provide anything at the push of a button. It was inhumane.7

11Following independence, the colonial settler class fled en masse, and the number of domestic workers dramatically dropped as men found new opportunities for wage employment in the formal sector. Nevertheless, the subsequent influx of refugees to urban centres during the civil war in both Angola and Mozambique increased the supply of female labour, many of whom became domestic workers. Notably, domestic workers were never incorporated into postcolonial trade union structures. Considered a relic of a colonial past to be eradicated rather than protected, they were perceived as lacking sufficient class consciousness to constitute a revolutionary force. Concerned primarily with increasing production and productivity in the industrial sectors, the emerging trade union federations – the Organização dos Trabalhadores de Moçambique (OTM) [Organization of Mozambican Workers] and UNTA – did not challenge this position. After all, they operated as a conveyor belt for vanguard party decisions (Webster et al., 2006). Of course, the grand modernist narratives of economic development did not materialize, and domestic work ballooned amidst widespread unemployment. In the absence of an explicit regulatory framework, conflicts between workers and employers were most frequently arbitrated at the police station, where employers had a monopoly on power. Isolated behind closed doors, domestic workers ultimately turned to affective and individualized practices of power to secure concessions from employers.

12The prevalence of paid domestic work poses a dilemma for feminist scholars and activists. While it facilitates women’s entry into the labour market, both as workers and employers, it does so along sharply asymmetrical lines (Castel-Branco, 2018, 2019). In both Mozambique and Angola, paid domestic work is characterized by long working days and strenuous schedules, low wages and irregular pay, drudgery and poor safety conditions, exposure to physical and emotional violence, the lack of paid leave including weekends, holidays, sick days and maternity, the absence of social protection, and the insecurity of employment (ibidem). In 2011, member states of the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted the Domestic Workers’ Convention 189, which outlines legally binding international labour standards for this historically marginalized sector, including maximum working time, a minimum wage, paid time off, occupational health, and safety provisions, social security benefits and protection from discrimination (ILO, 2011). Although neither the Government of Mozambique nor Angola has ratified the Convention, both adopted sector-specific regulations. In 2008, Mozambique approved the Regulation on Domestic Work (RdM, 2008); and in 2016, Angola adopted the Legal Framework for Domestic Work and the Social Protection of Domestic Workers (RdA, 2016). The following section explores the growing movement for domestic workers’ rights in Mozambique and Angola.

The Movement for Domestic Workers’ Rights in Mozambique and Angola

13The movement for domestic workers’ rights in Mozambique and Angola was a product of the reconstitution of the trade union movement with the transition to a market economy. The privatization of public enterprises resulted in mass retrenchments as companies struggled to compete in global markets. During the 1990s, union membership in Angola dropped by a third, while in Mozambique, it dropped by two-thirds (Artur, 2004). Although trade union leaders assumed a claim-making discourse, their historical and institutional ties to the ruling party hindered their ability to make effective claims on the state. Frustrated by their leadership’s seeming incapacity to respond to the repressive actions of newly privatized companies, workers in Mozambique and Angola began to organize outside the established labour movement.

  • 8 Interview by the author with a representative of UNTA, 2 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

14The subsequent shift to a multiparty democracy in Mozambique and Angola created the space for new trade union federations to emerge. In Mozambique, a group of disaffected national unions formed the Confederação Nacional dos Sindicatos Independentes e Livres de Moçambique (CONSILMO) [National Council of Independent and Free Unions of Mozambique] in 1992, while in Angola, they founded the Central Geral de Sindicatos Independentes e Livres de Angola (CGSILA) [General Centre of Independent and Free Unions of Angola] in 1996. In 2001, another group of workers split from CGSILA to create the Força Sindical Angolana [Angolan Union Force]. OTM and UNTA have remained the largest union federations – with 245,152 and 312,925 members, respectively (Ulandssekretariatet, 2017; Castel-Branco, 2018). Nevertheless, competing federations propelled them to reorient towards the informal economy. The creation of women’s specialized commissions within the trade union movement in both countries – the product of prodding from international solidarity organizations on which federations had become increasingly reliant with the delinking between the socialist state and organized labour – was also instrumental in driving the movement for domestic workers’ rights.8

  • 9 Interview by the author with a representative of UNTA, 2 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

15In 1998, the first domestic workers’ organization was established in Angola. Named STAD-Angola, its primary objective was to organize precarious and unrepresented workers into trade unions. Although founded independently of UNTA, the formation of STAD-Angola coincided with the creation of the Comité das Mulheres Sindicalizadas (CNMS) [National Council of Women Trade Unionists], whose primary objective was to promote gender equality in the workplace and the union movement. Initially, there was little traction both within UNTA and the Government, who saw domestic workers as simultaneously subhuman and superhuman.9 Furthermore, male leaders perceived the CNMS, its female leadership, and its focus on domestic workers as intruding on more important affairs associated with Angola’s booming extractive economy. However, through an alliance with Rede Mulher – a national forum of non-governmental organizations committed to gender equality also founded in 1998 – CNMS was able to gain political traction.

  • 10 Interview by the author with a representative of Rede Mulher, 4 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

16Embedded within the ruling party’s Organização da Mulher Angolana (OMA) [Organization of Angolan Women], Rede Mulher had privileged access to decision-makers and played a pivotal role in strengthening CNMS’ position within and outside the labour movement. Following the Beijing Conference, the ruling party became increasingly concerned with appropriating the emerging gender justice space and even granted Rede Mulher a seat on the central committee.10 Together, CNMS and Rede Mulher convened workshops, produced informational materials, collected hundreds of petitions, organized media-savvy actions, and submitted numerous declarations to highlight the plight of female domestic workers. In 2000, the Angolan General Labour Law was amended, and a stipulation was made for a separate regulatory regime for paid domestic work.

  • 11 Interview by the author with a representative of UNTA, 2 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

17With support from the ILO, the CNMS conducted research on domestic workers’ working conditions and found evidence of the widespread use of child labour, forced labour, unpaid wages, discrimination, physical and sexual abuse.11 In 2004, the Social Protection Law (RdA, 2004) was approved, stipulating the extension of contributory social security to domestic workers. Following the approval of Convention 189, CNMS convened a dynamizing commission to promote the formation of domestic worker unions and put pressure on the state to ratify the Convention and approve national regulations for the sector, per the terms of the General Labour Law (RdA, 2000). In 2016, nearly two decades after the first domestic workers’ union was formed, the Angolan Government approved the Legal Framework for Domestic Work and Social Protection of Domestic Workers by Presidential Decree 155/16 (RdA, 2016). Meanwhile, STAD-Angola continued to organize precarious workers. STAD-Cabinda’s General Secretary was only 18 when she joined STAD-Angola as a union activist:

  • 12 Interview by the author with a representative of STAD-Cabinda, 12 October 2018, Cabinda, Angola.

We would go to companies and ask to speak to workers. Companies would refuse […] not outright, but they would say: “there’s no time”, switch meeting times, hoping we’d give up. But we persevered: “We’re not asking for your time; we’re asking for workers’ time”. It’s important to be focused, to have hope and strength, to believe that anything is possible, that you will succeed.12

18When the General Secretary returned to Cabinda in 2005, she set up a STAD affiliate, which has outlasted the National Union. Today, STAD-Cabinda is an affiliate of UNTA and has 635 domestic worker members. Although the approval of Decree 155/16 created a spike in union membership, delays in its implementation demobilized workers, and the number of active members dwindled. As a result of CNMS’s dynamizing work, there are now six domestic workers’ unions in Luanda, Benguela, Cabinda, Huambo, Huila, and Namibe, with a total of approximately 2,500 members. While insignificant in relation to the total number of domestic worker organizations, it provides the basis for growth, as the case of Mozambique will illustrate.

19Angola’s emerging domestic workers’ organizations face a myriad of challenges, some of which are particular to the Angolan context and others that are common to this sector. The isolated and dispersed nature of domestic work means that organizers struggle to access workers, particularly in Luanda’s new condominiums, which are highly securitized. Due to the difficulty of collecting dues, domestic workers’ unions do not have the resources to hire staff, relying instead on a network of volunteer members. Given workers’ rigorous schedules, members struggle to find time to organize workers. Furthermore, the training they received from other union leaders is inappropriate. Given UNTA’s lack of experience organizing domestic workers, interactive trainings would be more effective in co-creating a training curriculum. They are particularly interested in how to negotiate with employers one-on-one, what to do in case of labour violations, including physical and sexual violence, how to build unions of isolated and dispersed workers, and how to develop leadership among a membership of largely marginalized women. In short, a new epistemology of organizing is necessary.

20Ultimately, sexism within the labour movement and classism within feminist organizations means that domestic workers remain subaltern actors within their institutions. For instance, UNTA and the CNMS established building commissions to organize workers. However, instead of allowing domestic workers to elect their own leaders, they appointed leaders from above. Ill-prepared to organize domestic workers and lacking the legitimacy to do so, appointed leaders proved ineffective, and the building commissions ultimately failed to recruit any members. Meanwhile, classism within the feminist movement has meant that women’s organizations have tended to focus on professional development rather than the enforcement of labour and social protections. This approach is at best patronizing, and at worst, undermines domestic workers’ rights because it places the burden of non-compliance with labour protections on the worker rather than the employer. While domestic workers appreciate professional development opportunities, they should not be a prerequisite for accessing labour protections. Ultimately, the movement for domestic workers’ rights reflects the institutionalized forms of discrimination and asymmetrical power relations, even as they struggle to overcome these. As the case of Mozambique illustrates, many of these challenges are not unique to Angola.

21In Mozambique, the first domestic workers’ organization was founded almost a decade after STAD-Angola, by a leader of OTM’s Comité Nacional da Mulher Trabalhadora (COMUTRA) [Working Women’s Committee]. Frustrated by the lack of action among the OTM leadership and inspired by organizing drives elsewhere, the General Secretary of AMUEDO began to clandestinely organize domestic workers, eventually registering the association in 2006. In response, OTM suspended her, and she affiliated with the rival CONSILMO, an action she defends on the basis of OTM’s recalcitrance:

  • 13 Interview by the author with a representative of AMUEDO, 1 July 2011, Maputo, Mozambique.

When we had regional seminars, the issue always came up. [OTM would say] “It would have been easier if there were three or four companies”, they said “But imagine organizing domestic workers flat by flat, in all these buildings in Maputo?!”13

22In response to the creation of AMUEDO, OTM created its own, now defunct Associação da Empregada Doméstica Moçambicana (AEDOMO) [Mozambican Domestic Workers’ Association]. Unbeknownst to them, a third organization, SINED, was formed by domestic workers that same year. In contrast to the other two organizations, which were founded by former and current OTM leaders, SINED was founded by a group of street traders and domestic workers who attended the same Church in the working-class suburb of Urbanização. SINED experienced substantial growing pains, and by 2007 the majority of members left because they felt that the group had neither the capacity nor competency to create a union. Nonetheless, a few members persisted and in 2008 managed to formalize the union with the assistance of two young male organizers who had taken a vocational course at the OTM training school.

23In comparison with Angola, the adoption of a regulation governing domestic work was quick. In 2007, the General Labour Law was amended, and a stipulation was introduced that stipulated that paid domestic workers should be covered by a separate legislative instrument (RdM, 2007b). This amendment was part of a global trend towards the precaritization of working conditions on the one hand; and the extension of social protection to informalized workers on the other (RdM, 2007a). Supported by funds from international solidarity organizations, AMUEDO began to mobilize around the introduction of a regulation for domestic workers; and the Ministry of Labour drafted a proposal. In 2008, the Regulation of Domestic Work was approved by Decree 40/2008 (RdM, 2008). Upon closer inspection, however, the Decree turned out to be a replica of the colonial Domestic Workers’ Regulation (Castel-Branco, 2017). While government officials and labour movement leaders supported its adoption, negotiators from all sides of the tripartite Comissão Consultiva do Trabalho (CCT) [Labour Consultative Commission] employed domestic workers, and thus negotiations took on a personal tenor.

24One of the most contentious debates was around whether to establish a minimum wage for domestic workers. Negotiators concluded that the absence of a minimum wage protected both workers and employers. On the one hand, setting a minimum wage could have disemployment effects because some employers also earned a minimum wage. On the other, it could put vulnerable populations at-risk – children, the elderly, people with disabilities – who relied on low-wage domestic workers for care. Ultimately, negotiators concluded that some payment was better than nothing. However, as the General Secretary of AEDOMO points out, domestic workers were largely excluded from negotiations:

  • 14 Interview by the author with a representative of AEDOMO, 9 July 2011, Maputo, Mozambique.

After the elaboration of the regulation, we received a document from the Ministry asking for feedback [...] The Ministry gave us very little time, which meant that we were not able to consult our membership […] There were a number of points where our colleagues [trade union leaders] had to be reminded that they were fighting in the interests of domestic workers. I had to tell them: “don’t forget that there is a domestic worker here among you”.14 (Interview with AEDOMO, 2011)

Table 1 A Comparison of ILO Convention 189, Decree 40/2008 in Mozambique and Decree 155/2016 in Angola

Convention 189

Decree 40/2008 in Mozambique

Decree 155/2016 in Angola

Written contracts

Written contracts are not mandatory. Verbal agreements are accepted, though rarely recognized by the Law

Domestic Worker Card, which must be registered with the National Institute for Social Security (INSS, in the original acronym). Verbal contracts are still valid

Minimum age

Minimum age of 15 years; and 12 years, with parental approval

Minimum age of 18 years

Minimum wage

No minimum wage

A minimum wage is tied to the national minimum wage. Right to 50% of a 13th salary

Working hours and overtime

A maximum of 9 hours a day and 54 hours a week, with no overtime pay

For live-out: a maximum of 8 hours a day and 44 hours a week, with overtime pay of 110%. No stipulation for live-in workers

Daily rest

Thirty minutes, no stipulation for live-in workers

One hour for live-out and 2 hours for live-in workers (in addition to mandatory 8-hour rest)

Weekly rest

Weekly rest of 36 hours, usually on Sunday

Weekly rest of 24 hours, usually on Sunday

Public holidays

Right to public holidays

Right to public holidays

Leave, consistent with other labour laws

Right to 12 days of annual paid vacation in the first year, 24 days in the second year, and 30 days in the third year and thereafter

Right to 22 working days of annual leave, and a bonus of 50% of their monthly remuneration

Occupational health and safety

Adequate conditions that guarantee health, safety, and hygiene – but no specifications as to what these entail

Adequate conditions that guarantee health, safety, and hygiene – but no specification as to what these entail

Social security benefits, consistent with other labour laws

Domestic workers are treated as own-account workers, registration is voluntary, and the responsibility for contributions is the sole burden of workers

The employer is required to register the worker with the INSS. Option of registering for a basic or expanded contributory scheme

Effective access to dispute resolution mechanisms

Mediation and conciliation through the General Labour Inspectorate, and access to Provincial Labour Courts

Mediation and conciliation through the General Labour Inspectorate and access to Provincial Labour Courts

Mechanisms for labour inspection/fines

Currently no mandate to inspect private homes

Currently no mandate to inspect private homes

Source: Compiled by the author based on RdM (2008), ILO (2011) and RdA (2016).

25As Table 1 illustrates, the hasty adoption of a regulation for this historically marginalized sector in Mozambique ultimately led to a separate and inferior labour regime for domestic workers. The following section compares the domestic worker regulations in Mozambique and Angola.

The Regulation of Paid Domestic Work in Mozambique and Angola

  • 15 Interview by the author with a representative of MULEIDE, 13 September 2019, Maputo, Mozambique.

We like to discuss branches, fruits, and leaves, but never the roots. These are mere legal proclamations. If there is no political commitment to enforcement, society will not follow suit.15

  • 16 Interview by the author with a representative of CNMS, 3 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

26The Associação Mulher, Lei e Desenvolvimento (MULEIDE) [the Association of Women, Law and Development] is a human rights organization that provides legal aid to domestic workers in Maputo. Their lawyer spends at least half of his time in backyards and street corners doing outreach, “Know your rights” training, and collecting depositions in partnership with the domestic worker organization, AMUEDO. He mediates an average of ten domestic work-related labour disputes a month, which ultimately comes down to negotiating severance pay. Negotiations generally center on the level of severance, irrespective of whether the domestic worker was fired with or without just cause. Once trust is broken, he argues, it is difficult to repair the relationship. Some employers resort to conniving strategies in order to avoid paying severance, such as false accusations of theft. Indeed, it was precisely such an accusation that prompted CNMS in Angola to move to regulate the sector. Annually, thousands of domestic workers are reported to the police, and given the asymmetrical power relations, their accounts generally carry less weight.16 The threat of prison not only dissuades domestic workers from filing complaints against unscrupulous employers but fosters a deep sense of distrust between domestic workers, undermining the basis for solidarity and collective action.

27Like most mediators in both Mozambique and Angola – whether non-governmental legal aid organizations, state institutions, or domestic workers’ unions – the lawyer begins not with the letter of the Law but by facilitating a conversation between the employer and domestic worker. The objective is to broker a binding consensual agreement, which ideally affords domestic workers better benefits than the Law. Extrajudicial conflict resolution is crucial in Mozambique, where the regulation provides fewer protections than the General Labour Law. In Mozambique, domestic workers are excluded from minimum wages, forced to work longer hours than other workers, and have access to only 3 paid sick days a year. The regulation stipulates that the employer must guarantee workers’ health, safety, and hygiene but does not establish enforceable norms. For the purposes of Social Security, it designates domestic workers as own-account employees, effectively absolving employers of contributory responsibility. Furthermore, domestic workers only have the right to severance pay if they resign with just cause, allowing employers to freely fire workers without just cause (RdM, 2008).

28In Angola, the regulation guarantees protections that are equivalent to those provided under the General Labour Law. In some instances, it even offers stronger protections, such as the right to severance pay regardless of whether workers are dismissed with just cause. In other cases, protections are weaker, such as the requirement to undertake periodic medical tests. According to the regulation, all contracts should be drawn up in writing, and employers must register workers with the Instituto Nacional de Segurança Social (INSS) [National Institute for Social Security]. Contracts can be full-time or part-time and for a determined or indeterminate period. After 120 consecutive months, the contract becomes permanent. Upon termination, workers are entitled to between 1 and 5 months of severance pay, depending on the length of the contract. In the case of migrant domestic workers, employers are responsible for covering repatriation costs (RdA, 2016).

29The number of working hours is regulated by the General Labour Law and corresponds to a maximum of 8 hours a day and 44 hours a week. Overtime for live-out workers is capped at 2 hours a day, 40 hours a month, and 200 hours a year, paid at a rate of 110%. Working time and overtime pay for live-in workers, however, is not clearly stipulated. All domestic workers, live-out and live-in, are entitled to 24 hours of weekly leave (usually a Sunday), public holidays, and 22 working days of annual leave. Ahead of the leave period, domestic workers are also entitled to a bonus equivalent to 50% of their monthly salary. Finally, domestic workers are entitled to 8 days of leave for weddings or bereavements of close family members, one day of paternity leave, and eight days of family leave. Maternity leave is covered by the INSS’s expanded Social Security package (RdA, 2000).

  • 17 Interview by the author with a representative of the Instituto Nacional de Segurança Social (INSS), (...)

30Employers are required to register domestic workers with the INSS within 30 days of the start of the contract. Failure to do so can result in fines equivalent to between 1- and 3-months’ wages. Domestic workers and employers have the option to register for a basic or expanded contributory scheme. The former requires an employer contribution of 6% and a worker contribution of 2% of total remuneration, while the latter requires an employer contribution of 8% and a worker contribution of 3%. Benefits under the basic contributory scheme include a disability pension, old age subsidy, old age pension, short-term and permanent survivor’s benefit, and funeral benefit. The expanded contributory scheme also includes pre-maternity and maternity benefits, a breastfeeding subsidy, a family subsidy, and a funeral subsidy, in addition to the benefits provided under the basic scheme. Employers are responsible for depositing contributions by the 15th of every month. The late payment of contribution is currently fined at a rate of 2.5%. Contributions can be made in person, via bank transfer, or MultiCaixa, an ATM network.17

31As mentioned earlier, protections for Angolan domestic workers are equal to or better than those in the General Labour Law. However, there are exceptions: the minimum wage for domestic workers is set at the lowest sectoral wage rate, which corresponds to the agricultural rather than service sector; the ordinary hours of work and overtime pay for live-in domestic workers are not adequately stipulated; domestic workers registered under the INSS’s basic contributory scheme do not have access to maternity and breastfeeding benefits, and labour inspectors do not currently have the mandate to enforce working conditions in the private sphere. Up to 20% of remuneration can be paid in-kind, with workers’ consent. At the end of each year, workers are entitled to 50% of a 13th salary.

32Both Mozambique and Angola have a budding enforcement framework that includes the labour inspectorate, mediation and arbitration centres, and the labour courts. Under both regulations, the labour inspectorate is responsible for enforcing labour and social protections. However, it neither has the mandate nor the capacity to do so adequately. In contrast to South Africa, labour inspectors in Mozambique and Angola do not have access to private homes. Therefore, their role is limited to mediating labour disputes lodged by domestic workers. In Angola, approximately a fifth of all complaints lodged at the inspectorate are from domestic workers, the majority related to dismissal without just cause. In contrast, in Mozambique, complaints are generally lodged with the Comissão de Mediação e Arbitragem Laboral (COMAL) [Commission for Labour Mediation and Arbitration].

  • 18 Interview by the author with a representative of COMAL, 8 April 2012, Maputo, Mozambique.

33Once a case is lodged with the inspectorate, the employer is summoned to their offices via a courier in the case of Angola or the worker in the case of Mozambique. Notifying the employer is no easy feat: workers often do not know the employer’s exact details, and employers often reject the summons – particularly if delivered by the worker.18 Given employers’ general lack of familiarity with the regulation, the inspector plays both a didactic and mediating role. The goal, explains one inspector, is to reach an agreement extrajudicially in order to avoid the morose legal system:

  • 19 Interview by the author with a representative of the General Labour Inspectorate, 6 October 2018, L (...)

The role of the inspectorate is to educate and foster trust between the two parties. Many times, the breakdown of trust has antecedents, which reached a boiling point. We draw on extrajudicial mechanisms to try to resolve the problem here so that we don’t cause further constraints.19

34In Mozambique, the inspectorate deals with few domestic work disputes. Instead, workers prefer to lodge complaints with COMAL – a tripartite mediation and arbitration institution, which provides a quick and affordable dispute resolution mechanism. Workers do not have to pay a fee, employers are summoned within three days, and a resolution is usually agreed upon within a month. Mediation is considered more favorable for the worker because the Law is not applied rigorously, and given the relative weakness of the regulation, workers are able to secure better concessions, explains one mediator:

  • 20 Interview by the author with a representative of COMAL, 8 April 2012, Maputo, Mozambique.

Before picking up the legislation, I first work with the people. Because in the Law, there are many things that are not well. If I realize that the conversation is going in a direction that will disfavour the worker, I return to the Law. We resolve 100% of the cases because we take into account the needs of both parties. We are aware that not all employers have the conditions to pay the full severance pay at once, so we create the possibility for installments.20

35Non-governmental legal service providers such as MULEIDE and trade unions also provide mediation services. As with the inspectorate and COMAL, their primary goal is to safeguard the employment relationship and come to an extrajudicial agreement. Given the intimate nature of domestic work, it is rarely possible to negotiate workers’ reinstatement. As one lawyer for MULEIDE puts it: “Reinstatement is like trying to resurrect a dead man”.

36The Labour Court is the place of last resort, but few cases get to this point due to the cost, the tremendous backlog in cases, and effective mediation. In order to lodge a complaint, the plaintiff must pay a fee, and given the complex process, they generally prefer to seek legal representation. In Mozambique, free legal services are available through the Instituto do Patrocínio e Assistência Jurídica (IPAJ) [Institute for Legal Aid and Advocacy], but underpaid lawyers often exact informal payments, and if unsatisfied, do not file the necessary paperwork or systematically miss hearings. Furthermore, decisions are made according to the letter of the Law, and the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff. In a context where the Law favours the employer and written contracts are at best rare, plaintiffs struggle to make their case, and rulings tend to favour the employer.

  • 21 Interview by the author with a representative of the General Labour Inspectorate, 6 October 2018, L (...)

37Although registration with the INSS is mandatory in Angola, little more than a thousand domestic workers had been registered since the approval of the Decree. The INSS has faced a number of challenges. First, there was a long lag period between the dissemination campaign and the rollout of the contributory system for domestic workers. After multiple failed attempts, many workers gave up and are unaware that the system is now operational. Second, wages are so low and short-term benefits so limited that workers may be swayed by employers to resist registration. Third, there is a lack of trust in the INSS, despite attempts to improve transparency by allowing workers to access contribution records online. Fourth, registration with the INSS requires the submission of ID documents. However, civil registers were destroyed during the war, and many Angolans do not have valid IDs. Although the INSS has the power to exact contributions, it is unlikely that this will extend to domestic work. With an average of one inspector for every 230,000 residents, it simply does not have the capacity to inspect private homes, even if given the mandate.21

  • 22 Kwanza is the currency of Angola.

38While it is still too early to tell what the impact of the regulation in Angola will be, early indications suggest that it has been negligible. While some workers earn as little as Kz10,000 a month, others make as much as Kz 70,000.22 Laundry workers are paid the least, followed by day labourers, gardeners, cooks, nannies, drivers, governesses, and foreign migrant workers. During the economic boom, some domestic workers earned as much as Kz 100,000. Maria, for instance, traded in her job as a primary school teacher to become a governess. The economic crisis, however, reduced both nominal and real wages. Maria now earns Kz 70,000, and her workload has increased. Ultimately, the financial crisis strengthened employers’ power to drive down working conditions:

  • 23 Interview by the author with Maria, a domestic worker, 7 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

Employers are crafty. They hire you to do one thing, then they start to add to your tasks, and when you request an increase, they make it seem like you’re a terrible person […] They accumulate wages for two, three, even four months, while we are expected to fork out money every day to pay for transport. Then they pay one month in cash, one month by bank transfer, hoping that we’ll get muddled and forget what we’re owed.23

  • 24 Interview by the author with Maria, a domestic worker, 7 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

39Domestic workers complain of strenuous work schedules. Many leave their homes at dawn in order to arrive at their employer’s house before they leave for work. Workers work well into the evening, without any overtime pay. Their time is perceived as elastic, to the detriment of their children and loved ones, who they lament having to abandon. Saturday is a full workday. Known in Angola as a “general cleaning day”, it is the only day of the week when employers are home and workers can expect to be closely scrutinized. Sunday is domestic workers’ only day off – unless their employer is hosting a party, in which case they are often forced to work Sunday too. While employers assert that domestic workers are part of the family, humiliation, harassment, and violence are rife. Domestic workers are given tremendous responsibility yet infantilized. They are called “tias” or aunties yet are constantly reminded of their expendability. They are expected to take the initiative yet are heavily scrutinized. They are subjected to racist slurs and forced to eat from separate plates and cups. They must perform revolting tasks like scrubbing toothpaste-laced saliva off the bathroom sink, washing bloody underwear, and unclogging feces-filled toilets without appropriate tools. All the while, they are told that they are dirty, forced to take medical tests (HIV, TB, and Hepatitis), and to be vaccinated. Sexual harassment is commonplace, and many domestic workers have been raped; some even killed. The narrower the social difference between workers and employers, the deeper the humiliation, argues Maria: “They want to feel superior. They’re scared that if they get too close, they will stop being what they are and become one of us. It’s not work; it’s slavery”.24

  • 25 Interview by the author with a representative of the General Labour Inspectorate, 6 October 2018, L (...)

40Tensions are particularly sharp between domestic workers and their female employers, who, having been ascribed the role of housewife, are responsible for supervising work within the home. Anecdotes abound about the husband who traded his aloof wife for the attentive domestic worker. In a context where male promiscuity is permissive, discrimination against domestic workers is widespread. It is precisely the intimacy of domestic work that exacerbates conflict. Once trust is broken, regardless of how insignificant, it is difficult to maintain the employment relationship.25 Given the asymmetric power relations between workers and employers, domestic workers’ primary practice of power is to withhold their labour by leaving. Yet, many remain bound to a job not because of their material needs but because of the patronage networks which helped them to secure the job in the first place, as Joana explains:

  • 26 Interview by the author with Joana, a domestic worker, 7 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

Our problem is that we don’t establish expectations from the beginning. In the past, if they proposed a salary that was too low, I wouldn’t refuse. I would think about my cousin who got me the job [...] But now I tell my cousin, if the salary is too low, I won’t work, that’s it.26

Conclusion

41Paid domestic work is intimate work. It takes place in isolation, behind the closed doors and high walls of private homes. It consists of intimate tasks, and working conditions are generally negotiated directly between workers and employers. Despite, or perhaps because of the intimate nature of domestic work, power relationships are sharply asymmetrical and underwritten by rigid rules and protocols to ensure that domestic workers do not conflate physical intimacy with social proximity. Paradoxically, employers often assert that domestic workers are one of the family and teach their children to refer to them as tia (aunt). On the one hand, this familial construction makes it easier for employers to accept strangers into their own homes, and on the other, to assert control and obscure workers’ own needs beyond the workplace.

42For domestic workers’ organizations, the adoption of Convention 189 marked an essential step in the struggle for the recognition of domestic workers’ rights. Although the Governments of Mozambique and Angola have yet to ratify Convention 189, they did adopt a national regulatory framework for paid domestic work. Proponents of regulatory instruments contend that labour protections transform domestic work into skilled employment, made up of clearly defined tasks, governed by contracts, rights, and responsibilities. While weak enforcement mechanisms and institutionalized power relationships may curtail their impact, labour protections provide a focus of mobilization around which domestic workers can engage in individual action on a collective basis. However, in a context where labour protections are poorly enforced, formalization can undermine workers’ historically cultivated practices of power – including the deployment of intimacy – to advance their interests.

43Through a comparative study of paid domestic work in Mozambique and Angola, this article explored the progress and the challenges in the de facto extension of labour and social protections to paid domestic workers. In comparison with countries in the region, the Angolan regulation provides strong labour and social protections for domestic workers. Furthermore, there is an incipient integrated system of enforcement, which includes the INSS, the inspectorate and labour courts, mediation centres, professional training, and workers centres and trade unions. However, in 2018, only 1,170 domestic workers had been registered with the INSS, out of hundreds of thousands. The isolated and intimate nature of domestic work, the weak dissemination of the regulation, the long lag time between its approval and the institution of mechanisms for registration, and the inability of the INSS or inspectorate to enforce the registration and payment of mandatory Social Security contributions, have meant that so far, the regulation has had little impact on the lives of domestic workers.

44In Mozambique, the regulation of paid domestic work has led to some positive changes, including the definition of a regulatory framework for domestic work, the proliferation of domestic workers’ organizations affiliated with the trade union movement, and societal recognition of the importance of paid domestic work. However, challenges remain, including a weak and weakly implemented regulatory framework; the difficulty of collective mobilization in an intimate, dispersed, and ultra-exploited sector; a low level of collaboration between domestic workers’ organizations; and the marginalization of organizations in the context of a sexist trade union movement and a classist feminist movement.

45Aware of their vulnerability, domestic workers often resort to contradictory practices of power, such as the cultivation of intimacy, to claw back concessions from employers (Constable, 2007). The cultivation of intimacy requires endurance and patience, as the nickname “the Patience Industry” attributed to the sector by Mozambican domestic workers suggests. Far from passive, the performance of patience requires high levels of self-discipline. Recognizing these historically cultivated practices of power in the affective world of paid domestic work is key to ensuring that attempts at formalization empower, rather than disempower, domestic workers (Ally, 2009). Although paid domestic work can entrench patriarchal control within the household – resolving cooperative intrahousehold conflicts by outsourcing care responsibilities to working-class women – attempts to improve the conditions of domestic workers must seek to overthrow this “cult of feminity” to borrow from Gqola (2007). After all, preserving patriarchal forms of domesticity rest on the continued dehumanization of domestic workers and their transformation into mere appendages to a machine.

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Notas

* Acknowledgments: the author would like to thank the International Domestic Workers’ Federation for their support; and also to Arabo Ewinyu, Sandiswa Mapukata, and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

1 All translations are by the author.

2 Oral communication by the Pastor of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God during a Marriage Ceremony on 10 August 2019, in Maputo, Mozambique.

3 Interview by the author with Fátima, a domestic worker, 14 June 2012, Maputo, Mozambique.

4 Interview by the author with a representative of Rede Mulher, 4 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

5 Interview by the author with a representative of the Centro de Formação Profissional (CENFOC) [Centre for Professional Training], 4 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

6 Interview by the author with Zacarias, a former domestic worker, 19 September 2016, Inhassoro, Inhambane, Mozambique.

7 Interview by the author with a representative of AMUEDO, 1 July 2011, Maputo, Mozambique.

8 Interview by the author with a representative of UNTA, 2 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

9 Interview by the author with a representative of UNTA, 2 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

10 Interview by the author with a representative of Rede Mulher, 4 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

11 Interview by the author with a representative of UNTA, 2 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

12 Interview by the author with a representative of STAD-Cabinda, 12 October 2018, Cabinda, Angola.

13 Interview by the author with a representative of AMUEDO, 1 July 2011, Maputo, Mozambique.

14 Interview by the author with a representative of AEDOMO, 9 July 2011, Maputo, Mozambique.

15 Interview by the author with a representative of MULEIDE, 13 September 2019, Maputo, Mozambique.

16 Interview by the author with a representative of CNMS, 3 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

17 Interview by the author with a representative of the Instituto Nacional de Segurança Social (INSS), 5 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

18 Interview by the author with a representative of COMAL, 8 April 2012, Maputo, Mozambique.

19 Interview by the author with a representative of the General Labour Inspectorate, 6 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

20 Interview by the author with a representative of COMAL, 8 April 2012, Maputo, Mozambique.

21 Interview by the author with a representative of the General Labour Inspectorate, 6 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

22 Kwanza is the currency of Angola.

23 Interview by the author with Maria, a domestic worker, 7 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

24 Interview by the author with Maria, a domestic worker, 7 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

25 Interview by the author with a representative of the General Labour Inspectorate, 6 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

26 Interview by the author with Joana, a domestic worker, 7 October 2018, Luanda, Angola.

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Referência eletrónica

Ruth Castel-Branco, «The Contradictions of Formalization: Domesticity and Paid Domestic Work in Mozambique and Angola»e-cadernos CES [Online], 35 | 2021, posto online no dia 10 dezembro 2021, consultado o 24 janeiro 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/eces/6349; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/eces.6349

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Autor

Ruth Castel-Branco

Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
2 St Davids Place,Parktown, Johannesburg 2193, South Africa
ruth.castel-branco@wits.ac.za
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9907-2503

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