From domestic worker to doctor

UNIVERSITY of KwaZulu Natal graduate warms hearts.

Thobeka Ntini Makununika, a former domestic worker, warmed a lot of hearts when she accepted her PhD wearing her domestic worker uniform with her graduation gown.

The 32-year-old said her journey was not easy as she is the third generation of domestic workers in her family.

Her father died when she was four years old, while her mother died when she was nine years old. Her maternal aunt, who was a domestic worker, raised her and was like a mother to her.

“My mother was a domestic worker, my grandmother was a domestic worker as well as my aunties and myself,” she said.

She said when other kids were playing, she was already working as a domestic worker at the age of 13 and did so until she was 20 years old.

Thobeka obtained a Doctorate in Philosophy (social worker) on 6 May and titled her study: Unraveling the dynamics of power in the employer-domestic worker relations in contemporary South Africa, Kwazulu-Natal: Praxis-oriented research.

She said her study was personal.

“I wanted to humanise domestic work, redefine its societal value and inspire reflection and action. It’s a call to reconsider whose labour we honour and whose voices we center on and what justice truly looks like.

“I wasn’t writing for an academic study, I was writing for the daughters of domestic workers who may read my work,” she said.

Thobeka’s sister, Asanda Charlotte Ntini (28) said: “I’m proud of my sister. She did not just write about domestic workers, she wrote for them. Her study was about reclaiming stories that were never meant to be heard and centering the women who are expected to remain invisible.”

Asanda said they received mostly leftovers growing up and the lasagna she grew up to love as a child wasn’t something their grandmother learned from a recipe book, but by watching white families in the kitchen.

“We are children of domestic workers and that is the story that shaped us before we had the language to name it. We were raised from shadows of other people’s homes, the tiled floors our mothers cleaned, linen closet they organised and the cooked food we never sat down to enjoy,” she said.