Simon and Frances, Domestic Workers

Johannesburg

Colour Linocut on paper
Norman Kaplan, 1975

In 1975 Black people were bound to their employers and needed ‘passes’ to be in cities, designated as ‘white areas’. Frances worked as a maid (referred to as ‘the girl’), and Simon as a ‘garden boy’. They were a married couple, but they could not live together as she was staying on her employer’s premises in a ‘white’ area. Their children lived with relatives in the rural areas hundreds of miles away. This fracturing of family life was a key tenet of apartheid, prohibiting any form of settled or family life for black South Africans in the cities.

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