Author: Felicia Mkhize

An Entrepreneur is someone that identifies an opportunity in the market and provides a solution to bring supply and demand together, acting as an intermediary between Capital and Labour. These are the livewires of a free-market society, wherein the theory of “willing buyer willing seller” reigns supreme. The fact that women are now career oriented has opened opportunities for nannies and domestic workers alike, as much as it has for gardeners and car-washers.

I work from 8 to 6, hence I hardly find time to clean and do laundry. My first helper, Ntsoaki, I got as a referral from Pinky, my neighbours’ helper. Ntsoaki was great, she would wake up early and and even do stuff I did not expect her to do, like polish my handbags and arrange my books in colour-coordination. She would change my bedding every 2 weeks and my pots always had a twinkle in them.

It wasn’t surprising that she was always exhausted, in the evening. All she would want was her Ntsu Snuff and a roll of tissue paper while she tells me stories of how men she previously worked for would cheat on their wives and how she pick up condom wrappers under their beds because their lazy wives woulod not clean even their own bedrooms. I wonder what she is saying about me wherever she is.

She always spoke ill of men and their cheating ways. How they mistreated their wives while spending all their salaries with concubines.

“Mpesi o kgola faef tao, o fa mampesi seben handerete. Ha qeta a be a nka 4 tao e setseng a lo e ja matekatsi ane a renkeng”

It was quite interesting to note how she always knew everything about everybody, in our neighbourhood. The cheap curtains the Nkosi’s have and the apoilt brat that is the Smith’s son.

One evening, I came back from work to find her ticking names off a list on a notepad.

                “Hey Mamokoena, what names are those, society members?”

“No, ke ba nkolotang, or did you think I only worked for you? This whole neighbourhood is full of my clients.”

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