PicknPay store’s maid and gardener mugs brew up a storm

Oct 30th, 2018 Sandisiwe 906 Views

JOHANNESBURG: A Pick n Pay franchise has been forced to stop selling mugs emblazoned with the words “The Maid” and “The Gardener” after members of the public complained that they were offensive and disrespectful.

Twitter user @toni_verna was the first person to tweet a picture of the mugs saying she had seen the mugs at the retailer’s Observatory branch and that she found them “hella problematic.”

Many other social media users were also shocked by the mugs saying they could not believe what they were seeing in South Africa in 2018.

In the apartheid-era in South Africa, many white employers did not want to share utensils with their black workers. Therefore, domestic workers and gardeners had their own utensil, in most cases enamel ones.