Meet Benny, a UCT stalwart

Babalwa Dumezweni, known affectionately as Benny, has been a part of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) story for 21 years. Many would recognise her as the woman with the big smile working behind the counter on the computer in the Barnard Fuller canteen. Here, she is the supervisor of the Food & Connect canteens in the Barnard Fuller Building as well as in the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM) Building on the Faculty of Health Sciences’ campus.

Born and raised in the Eastern Cape, Benny moved to Cape Town after completing standard nine (grade 11) in 2002. In 2003, she began as a general worker for Big Chef, the canteen that operated in the IDM Building. She held this position for two years and subsequently spent a year learning how to cook. After that year of training, she secured the position of supervisor of Big Chef.  

At Big Chef, Benny became familiar with regular customers (predominantly IDM staff) and felt valued as she began to develop connections with them.  

However, from 2014, Benny and her colleagues “had that problem where we didn’t get wages. I think at that time it was almost December time then Felix* [the owner] informed us that there’s no money to pay us.” The situation came to a head in December 2015 when Felix notified his employees that he would not be paying them during the holiday season due to slow business. 

Benny and her colleagues, which she admits was without Felix’s consent, asked an IDM staff member to print signage communicating that the shop would be closed for the holiday period. Benny says she did this because she and her colleagues had formed a relationship with the IDM staff and they felt that their customers deserved transparency.  

In January 2016, Benny was dismissed without warning due to participating in a "strike", which she had not. Felix claimed that partaking in strike action was a violation of her contract, particularly because she was a company shareholder. He also felt that Benny was embarrassing him by putting up the signage that the shop would be closed for the holidays. 

“Unfortunately, for one year in 2016 I was not here”, Benny says. “But the IDM staff, they fought for me. All of these professors — Professor Leslie London and everyone — asked, ‘Where’s Bennie?” She singles London out for spearheading a financial relief mechanism for staff to voluntarily support her following her dismissal and during the CCMA (Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration — an independent labour dispute body) case. The IDM staff asserted that it was only right that Felix buys Benny out of the company and eventually he paid her out.  

“That was a sad time and a good time because all the clients [IDM staff] paid me on the 25th [of each month while I was unemployed].” 

She was out of work from January 2016 until mid-2018, when Food & Connect took over the lease of the canteen space. Her canteen colleagues advocated for her to come back to Food & Connect in mid-2018 and relayed her hardship under Felix to the Food & Connect ownership.  

The IDM staff voluntarily supported her out of the gooodness of their hearts from January 2016 until she returned to work for Food & Connect. When she returned to UCT it felt like she was returning to her family.  

“I will even climb to the mountain and shout about what they did for me....They were more than my parents. And to give bread to someone you don’t know means a lot to that person.”  

“Another thing is that they never judged me because I got fired...When you get fired, you’re stressing, but I never stressed.” 

*a pseudonym has been used for anonymity