The South African Communist Party (SACP) on Friday came out in support of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Federation of Unions of South Africa and the National Congress of Trade Unions in their backing of the clothing and textile deal between the South African government and the People’s Republic of China.
The SACP also lashed out at the bosses — the major retailers in the sector.
“This goes to show the extent to which clothing retail bosses are only concerned about their mega-profits, and not the broader developmental goals of our country.”
The party — which is in alliance with the ruling African National Congress — noted that “thousands of jobs have been lost” in the clothing, textile and leather industry mainly because of the unregulated imports from China and other countries.
“It is our view that the imports of clothing in our country have always been done at the expense of our own domestic clothing industry,” said SACP spokesperson Malesela Maleka.
“As the SACP we call on the bosses of the clothing industry in our country to stop their attitude of wanting to sacrifice our own industry and jobs by importing more than 60% of their products from foreign countries.”
“The regulations or quotas as proposed by government will go a long way towards protecting existing jobs and creating new ones, as well as improve this industry. We also support the government’s warning to clothing and textile industry bosses not to abuse these regulations and further exploit consumers.”
“We also call upon government to urgently move towards developing an industrial strategy for this sector, in order to ensure that it creates sustainable and quality jobs in the medium to long term.”
On Thursday, Department of Trade and Industry acting deputy director general Iqbal Sharma said the five biggest clothing retailers in South Africa had seen aggregate profits grown from R1,7-billion in 2002 to R6,6-billion in 2006, which he said was partly attributable to increased sources from markets such as China.
He suggested that retailers could “absorb pain” from the proposed import restrictions from China.
Edcon, Truworths, Woolworths, Foschini, Pepkor and Mr Price expressed concern about the proposed restrictions — gazetted last week — on 31 products from China. They argued that there could be an inflationary impact of some 20% to 25% and shortages of stock.
The period of comment on the restrictions — which could kick in from the end of the month and run through to 2008 — ends on Friday. — I-Net Bridge