The vuvuzela has made its debut on the catwalk. Its blasts egged on the 64 clothing factory workers competing for the title of Spring Queen in Cape Town’s jam-packed Good Hope Centre.
Rashieda van der Berg is a regular at the annual Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) pageant. ”I’m here every year. It’s exciting,” said Van der Berg, a Mitchells Plain resident who has been a machinist for the past nine years.
As 10 000 workers, their aunties, toddlers and sandwiches filled the centre last Saturday, excitement gave way to nerves backstage. There the contestants — winners of earlier shop floor competitions — teased hair into towers of curls, checked make-up, applied body glitter and looked over the gowns designed and made by themselves and colleagues for the big night.
Skirts were hitched high to negotiate the stairs to the ramp, and once there each contestant was cheered by colleagues dressed in their factory T-shirts, holding sparklers.
Now in its 28th year, the Sactwu Spring Queen competition is not a traditional pageant. ”It’s the day to celebrate … It’s our time to expose what we are capable of,” said Sactwu shop steward Faeza Bassier.
The aim is serious: ”Keeping Jobs in Fashion” is this year’s motto. About 12 000 jobs were lost in the clothing, textile and footwear industry in the first nine months of this year. Since 2003 job losses are estimated to have reached more than 30 000.
It has been a blow for Cape Town, where most of the province’s 85 000 industry workers are employed. Each job supports an estimated five people; the minimum wage is R1 000 a month.
Last weekend’s pageant kick-started Cape Town’s Fashion Festival, a nine-day Sactwu-organised focus on the industry through imbizos, and a fashion and lifestyle expo featuring more than 107 local-is-lekker designers. Some fashion shows were relocated from the usual uppity venues to Cape Flats areas. A fashion map was launched to point buyers to Proudly South African manufacturers, retailers, factory shops and home boutiques.
”There is a … misconception that good clothes are imported. [The Fashion Festival] is about challenging this,” said Ebrahim Patel, Sactwu general secretary and festival convener.
As the country is celebrating its first decade of democracy, clothes are part of the national identity that should be celebrated. ”Not simply as an act of patriotism, but also for value and innovation, buy local,” he added.
The festival’s focus is strictly on local — local jobs and local workers. It aims to highlight the often unnoticed links between consumer decisions, such as buying a cheap imported garment, the industry’s well-being and jobs.
For the second year running the Department of Trade and Industry is supporting the event. The wholesale, retail and clothing, textile, footwear and leather sectoral education training authorities timed their graduation ceremonies to be part of the festival. And it’s the first time the province has thrown its weight behind it.
At an imbizo on Tuesday it emerged that a local company, SANS Fibres, supplies 70% of the thread that makes Nike and Adidas products. But it was raised that management and workers appear to be talking past each other in the search to cut costs and produce quality.
”A machinist who worked for 20 yeas on a machine knows better than a manager. But the manager doesn’t listen when workers are saying: ‘I can turn the thread this way so there’s a better product,” said a shop steward. ”Stop focusing on China [and cheaper imports] and concentrate on what we can do here,” said another.
Last year the value of Chinese imports to South Africa increased by 110%; it increased again by 94% in the first three months this year. Such imports will remain a challenge, said Patel.
Another issue is the need to regard workers as resources, not ”a hassle factor”, while the South African industry finds its niche in the world market. Good branding linked with innovation will secure this place, he maintained.
At home the focus stays on ”buy local”, a bone of contention between Sactwu and four major clothing retailers, which posted profits of R7,5-billion as jobs continue to haemorrhage.
This Friday discussions with Truworths, Woolworths, Foschini and Edgars will continue over the union’s Section 77 notice to the National Economic Development and Labour Council of a forthcoming protest over job losses. The Labour Relations Act allows protest action to promote and protect the social and economic interests of workers, such as job losses.
Despite this, Sactwu has drawn the retailers into the fashion festival. Woolworths was part of Wednesday’s imbizo on buyers and orders and a Truworths senior official was a judge at the Spring Queen pagent.
And in the early hours of last Sunday Janine Rosenberg, a 20-year-old mother of one working at Monviso, was crowned Miss Spring Queen. It was time to celebrate.