The House I Built for Our Dear Old Friend Joyce ; Earlier This Year, the Standard's David Cohen Wrote About the Debt He and His Family Owed Their Domestic Servant in South Africa. Now He Tells How They Gave Her the Home She Always Wanted

Summary

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I FIRST met Joyce Mfolo 40 years ago.

I was a boy living in Johannesburg and Joyce, then 18, came to work for my parents as a domestic. Her job was to wash our clothes, scrub the floors and clean the house and, when my parents went out at night, to look after my three younger sisters and me.

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The House I Built for Our Dear Old Friend Joyce ; Earlier This Year, the Standard's David Cohen Wrote About the Debt He and His Family Owed Their Domestic Servant in South Africa. Now He Tells How They Gave Her the Home She Always Wanted

It was the Sixties and apartheid affected every facet of our relationship. For example, Joyce would never sit on our sofa or eat with us at our dinner table. This was the way, despite my parents supporting the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party. If you had told me then that in the summer of 2008 I would spend four weeks building Joyce the house of her dreams, I would have laughed in disbelief.

I grew up knowing little about Joyce, not even her surname. But she had a brilliant sense of humour and could ...

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