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(Mokopanele, 2006). Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Rob Davies, added that
“government would not hesitate to take action against such threats” (Stephen, 2006).
Were South Africa’s large retailers to fulfil their recent threats in response to quota
restrictions on Chinese imports, by moving their orders to other countries, the discrepancies
between wages will widen even further, depending on the country of choice. In a 2006
report, the NGO called Labour-Behind-The-Label indicated that wages in Bangladesh’s
clothing industry were a pitiful £7 per month in some factories. The same report cites wages
in Cambodia’s clothing industry as £25-30 per month, while workers in Turkey earn on
average of £220 per month (Labour-Behind-the-Label, 2006: 7).
A more perplexing reaction came from local clothing manufacturers, whom the new
restrictions had been aimed to assist: they were either silent, or in agreement with the
retailers that such quota impositions would not be helpful to the industry. This response
conflicted fundamentally with sentiments expressed by representatives from retailers, the
clothing and textile industries and from labour in a media report just one month earlier
(August 2006), which quoted these stakeholders in referring to the quota restrictions as
finalisation of the “blueprint for the rescue of the clothing and textile industries”. The report
quotes Mr. Brian Brink, Textile Federation Chief Executive saying that the agreement would
“revitalise” the industry, with the general view from interested parties being that it was vital
to “roll back” imports from China (Inggs, 2006l).
A month later, Mr. Davies of the DTI alluded to the fact that large retailers had placed
pressure on the manufacturers to side with them against the quotas, possibly through
threats to cancel or limit future orders from those manufacturers who did not do so
(Stephen, 2006). Mr. Ebrahim Patel, General Secretary of the Southern African Clothing
and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU), said that the quota restrictions, which end in 2008,
could create 50 000 jobs in both the textile and clothing industries. The question arises as to
how sustainable such jobs would be once the quotas ended, and moreover, whether this
employment could be created at all were large retailers to source their stock from other
countries during the interim period of quota restrictions on Chinese imports. Unless details
of how the State and industry would monitor these imports and plans devised to manage
the problems of under-invoicing are made public, the agreement might, in the end turn
out to be little more than political rhetoric.
Whilst both the retailers and manufacturers were critical of the implementations of the
quota agreement, no reaction has been recorded from South African fashion designers,
nor from the owners and organisers of the various Fashion Week events (who work to
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