In the wake of President FW de Klerk's 1990 announcement that liberation movements such as the African National Congress and the Pan-African Congress were unbanned, writers began to shift their focus from the struggle against apartheid – which was, until then, the grand narrative of twentieth-century South African literature. Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were released, and exiles were free to return home. Amid huge social turmoil and a difficult negotiation process, stakeholders began to prepare a new constitution for the country, and the first democratic elections were held in April 1994. The ANC won by a large majority, and Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president. At the newly renamed presidential residence, Genadendal, several of the staff were white people, and among them was a young Afrikaans woman, Zelda la Grange, who became President Mandela's personal assistant and with whom he developed a close relationship.

In spite of these changes, one of the most traditional aspects of South African life continued as before: the demography of cities, and the fact that black domestic workers continued to be employed by white families. To this day, over a million workers remain in domestic employment. However, as in similar situations elsewhere and in other times, the literary representation of domestic workers began to change: ‘Instead of indistinguishable genies-in-a-bottle lingering obediently in the background until summoned, they (momentarily) appear as discrete subjects with bodies, voices and names of their own, entitled to recognition and respect.’ This description relating to the portrayal of servants in England after World War II is applicable to South African writing also. Ever since 1990, black female characters may be said to have stepped out of the shadows, with their own names, distinctive voices and identities.

As discussed in chapter 10, in post-apartheid South Africa white novelists such as Andre Brink, Ingrid Winterbach, Damon Galgut and Jo-Anne Richards have continued to project repressed fears, desires, shame and guilt concerning black people onto those they know best: domestic workers. Black authors, on the other hand, have opened new spaces, as if in response to the call of Njabulo Ndebele to ‘rediscover the ordinary’.