Focus is too narrow
Those who invoke Newcastle’s clothing industry to insist that slashing wages and changing labour regulations will attract significant new investment are singularly cavalier with the evidence.
An influential report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise, titled “A Fresh Look at Unemployment” (June 2011), cheerfully asserts that workers in Newcastle have attracted more clothing factories as a result of their willingness to accept wages below the minimum levels prescribed by the bargaining council. This claim is unencumbered by any evidence.
While also highlighting the alleged evils of the bargaining council, Mail & Guardian reporters tell a story of radical decline in the past decade.
In “High wages unravel Newcastle’s industry” (July 22), Teigue Payne asserts that, prior to intervention by the bargaining council, “total employment in the clothing industry in Newcastle was about 16 000. By 2005 it had dropped to 8 000. Today it is down to between 6 000 and 7 000.” Similarly, in “Raid highlights factory abuses” (October 14), Qudsiya Karrim claims that cost pressure associated with the bargaining council resulted in the clothing industry shrinking from 16 000 workers in 2000 to 7 000 today. Neither cites sources, let alone any indication of whether the facts were checked.
In the second half of 1994 Alison Todes and I surveyed every factory in Newcastle and documented just less than 9 000 clothing workers. Since then, we and others have tracked secondary data, which we have found to be contradictory and unreliable.
What is clear is that the Taiwanese jersey industry collapsed when identical knitwear came flooding in from factories in China in the mid-1990s at prices below the cost of production in Newcastle. At the time, I estimated that clothing wages in Newcastle were 40% lower than comparable industries in China in terms of workers’ purchasing power, even though money wages were higher.
There may have been some export-led expansion in clothing production in Newcastle in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the figure of 16 000 workers in 2000 seems absurdly high. Even if there was an increase in employment after the mid-1990s, this cannot be explained simply in terms of workers’ willingness to accept rock-bottom wages. In the past decade clothing employment in Newcastle probably has declined, but for reasons that go well beyond wages and labour regulations. In addition to continuing pressure from cheap imports, they include fluctuating but relatively high exchange rates, the disappearance of export-incentive schemes and rising utility costs, to name but a few.
In short, the assertion that the key to solving employment problems lies simply in lowering wages and doing away with labour regulations is at best irresponsible.
The narrow focus on the Newcastle clothing industry is also dangerously misleading. It diverts our attention from the deeper structural forces responsible for escalating inequality, poverty and unemployment. — Gillian Hart, Durban
Union’s tactics place jobs in danger
In the Right to Reply article “Newcastle: The Payne of bad journalism” (October 14), the South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union’s Simon Eppel refers to me as a “mad dog” and makes a lot of accusations about Teigue Payne’s article containing half-lies and innuendo (without any specifics of what they are).
In fact, Eppel is obviously a master of innuendo himself. For instance, he infers that all or many Newcastle clothing makers use fabric off-cuts as toilet paper. In fact, in the raids on 12 factories, only one used them — and it only did that in desperation because as soon as toilet paper was put out, it was stolen.
Nowhere in Eppel’s piece, or in the article in the same edition by Qudsiya Karrim, “Raid highlights factory abuses” (presumably written to pacify the union further), is it mentioned that immediately after writs of execution were served on two factories (following, and independently from, the raids), my association obtained an interdict preventing further writs being executed for 30 days. Not bad for a mad dog!
The bullying tone of Eppel’s article and the personal attacks should be no surprise given the union’s standard tactic of intimidation.
One other thing: the raids on September 29 were done by big teams (you could call them lynch parties) consisting of union and bargaining-council members, as well as representatives of three government departments (the police and the departments of labour and home affairs). In the press release the department of labour issued the instant the raids were finished (and which was dated September 12, two weeks before the raids), it talked about conducting the raids in tandem with its “social partners”.
Obviously we manufacturers are not such lucky “social partners”, because when does even one government department assist us? For instance, in the many strikes the police stand by and offer no assistance to us or resistance to ongoing, pervasive intimidation of non-strikers by union members.
Obviously, the Newcastle factories that contravened the law, as discovered in the raids, must be prosecuted. They must get their houses in order. But the union and bargaining council are putting thousands of jobs in jeopardy because of their closed-shop system, which threatens to eliminate Zama Mkhize’s option (quoted by Karrim) to work at all and throw her into absolute penury. Their denying her the option of deciding whether to work at the low-wage rates offered is a much deeper immorality than contravening factory regulations. — Ahmed Paruk, United Clothing and Textile Association, Durban
Stop looting and give to the poor
South Africa is losing as much as R30-billion every year through incompetence, negligence and corruption within the public service — this according to the head of the special investigating unit, Willie Hofmeyr.
For many years now unions such as Cosatu have rightly been demanding that government pay a basic social grant to the millions of South Africans who are unemployed, thus alleviating the poverty and sheer despair so prevalent in those communities.
The government has always maintained, however, that there is no money to spare to pay such a grant. We now know that it would have been affordable had government prevented the massive corruption and wastage of taxpayers’ money in its departments at all levels of government. “Looting” is a frequently used word when the South African government and corruption are mentioned in a single sentence by many South Africans these days.
This government should be utterly ashamed for allowing such a state of affairs.
There can no doubt that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is not the only person who will be praying for its speedy downfall. — Frank Hartry, Kingsburgh
Whites must join black parties
South Africa has come a long way from the repressive apartheid era that was brutal to blacks and benefited the white minority at the expense of the black majority. Apartheid dispossessed black people of their land, wealth and dignity and the majority of white people voted for the National Party in election after election. To write off the legacy of apartheid would take millions of years.
In South Africa now we have white opposition parties such as the Democratic Alliance and Freedom Front Plus, for which the majority of whites vote — the same whites who returned the National Party to power in the apartheid years, who went to good schools, had health systems and nice jobs and are still well off today. Statistics pertaining to employment and unemployment figures in South Africa will show that blacks comprise the majority of the unemployed.
It proves that white opposition parties cannot offer any solution to the issues besetting black people. Taken from a historical perspective, white opposition parties cannot fully understand the needs, suffering and aspirations of black people. Reactionary whites will always feel threatened by black leadership.
I am aware that there are many whites who stood up and fought against apartheid, but they did it while understanding well that any struggle in South Africa needed the embrace of the oppressed black majority. One notes the appointment of a few blacks to the DA leadership.
Maybe the big question is: Why can’t we have white people joining black political parties? Any whites in South Africa who want to participate in politics should be joining a black political party to help fight the enemies of the people.
The struggle for liberation was not about dividing the people of South Africa, but about achieving unity and one human race. The presence of the DA and Freedom Front Plus in our political landscape is unjustified. — Muntonezwi Khanyile, Roodepoort
DA is nonracial
Your editorial (“Mazibuko no laughing matter“, October 14) reveals your fear of being labelled a white, racist supporter of the Democratic Alliance, while you know perfectly well that the DA is not a “white” party. It is the only truly nonracial party in the country and the only one that can turn South Africa away from the pit of corruption, governmental criminality and general incompetence that is being dug for it by the ANC. — Oliver Price, Cape Town
Bigger jerseys needed
It was nice to get a mention of my book, Foul Play: What’s Wrong with Sport, in Percy Zvomuya’s column (“Don’t make the rugby jersey a commodity“, Business, October 14), but I must make a correction for your readers. The comments cited in the article were not mine but those of British journalist Rod Liddle — and in my book I take him to task for his irrational sporting prejudices.
On the debate about the proliferation of Springbok jerseys, I think the South African Rugby Union might have something to learn from Zvomuya’s article. People could find it easier to outwardly display their support for the national team if only those shirts were not so darn figure-hugging.
Incidentally, I recently spent a few really great years living and working in South Africa and, among other things, I still miss my copy of the Mail & Guardian each Friday morning. — Joe Humphreys, Dublin, Ireland