South Africa: 'The Clothing Industry Is Being Hammered From All Sides'

Factory raids in KwaZulu-Natal and court cases have exposed the rot, but what are the solutions?

High-profile government raids on clothing factories in KwaZulu-Natal have focused attention on "sweatshop conditions" and on undocumented immigrant labour.

Although 40 Newcastle factory owners and more than 500 workers have been arrested since September last year, very few cases were ever enrolled in court.

Only three owners are currently facing criminal charges.

Factory owners say they cannot afford to pay the wages set by the National Bargaining Council because of the low prices they get for their products from the big retailers.

The SA Clothing and Textile Workers' Union says retailers should come under the spotlight.

The clothing industry in KwaZulu-Natal is being hammered from all sides, says eThekwini Clothing and Leather Association Chairperson Iqbal Ismail, "but nobody is willing to sit down and discuss real-world solutions".

High-profile government raids have exposed "sweatshop" type working conditions in some of the Cut Make and Trim (CMT) factories in which clothes are made on behalf of retailers. Meanwhile, factory owners complain that the prices they get for their goods from retailers make it impossible to comply with labour laws.

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Ismail says the focus on "sweatshops" dates back to 2024 with the establishment of political party labour desks focusing on undocumented immigrants working in factories.

"MKP particularly has been going around calling for foreign workers to be replaced by South Africans. This appears to have spurred both the local and the national government to start conducting raids, and those raids have caught the attention of the media. Now we face a situation where we are being hammered from all sides, but nobody is willing to sit down and discuss real-world solutions," he said.

See: Clothing factory owners warn of collapse as immigrant workers leave

The industrial town of Newcastle, home to between 140 and 300 clothing factories (the municipality lacks basic data on this sector), has come under particular scrutiny. In March 2024, ActionSA led a march to the Department of Labour in Newcastle, demanding immediate action and inspections of factories in eMabodheni, the town's industrial precinct. This was followed by factory raids by the police in November 2024, during which 268 "illegal immigrants" were reported to have been arrested.

After an "inspection blitz" from 23 to 25 September 2025 by the Department of Employment and Labour, the Department of Home Affairs, and SAPS, deputy labour minister Jomo Sibiya took to social media, claiming, "We arrested...about 150 illegal foreign immigrants working in these companies". The Chinese factory owners, he declared, "treat black people like animals, and they are heartless."

An oversight visit from Parliament's employment and labour portfolio committee on 5 and 6 February 2026 made national news after videos taken by Patriotic Alliance MP Juliet Basson showed the labels of major retailers in a factory said not to comply with labour laws.

The most recent "multidisciplinary raid" on a Newcastle factory took place on the night of 4 June, observed by Sibiya and his counterpart at the ministry of Home Affairs, Njabulo Nzuza. Afterwards, Sibiya again took to social media, posting videos in which a woman - reportedly the wife of a factory manager - can be heard moaning in the background, while workers are marched into police cruisers.

"Another successful Operation ... Night Shift," he wrote.

Questionable impact

While the raids have certainly made headlines, factory owners and workers told GroundUp they achieve little beyond creating a climate of fear, making it difficult to operate, and leading to factory closures and job losses.

"They come and they break down doors without asking. They smash our cameras, steal cash and arrest us in front of our children. Nobody makes any case because people [are] too frightened. A lot [of business owners] are thinking about leaving," said one Riverside factory owner, scrolling through videos and photos taken during and after a recent government raid, showing broken locks, trashed living spaces and a policeman striking a factory floor manager.

GroundUp has established that nearly 40 Newcastle factory owners and more than 500 workers have been arrested since September last year, yet very few cases were ever enrolled in court. Only three owners are currently fighting criminal charges.

"What tends to happen is that these arrests are made under the wrong Act, or the managers are arrested and charged as owners," said a Newcastle-based attorney who did not want to be named.

GroundUp spoke to a warrant officer with the Newcastle SAPS, who said statements had been taken from hundreds of people in the September raids, but in the end "most of those arrested had to be released, because we didn't get to them before 48 hours elapsed", he said. (SAPS cannot detain people for longer than 48 hours without charging them.)

On 6 May, GroundUp sent Home Affairs spokesperson David Hlabane questions about the outcome of the raids on clothing factories in Newcastle and Pinetown in which Labour and Home Affairs officials claimed to have arrested hundreds of undocumented workers. We asked how many of those arrested were found to be in the country unlawfully, but despite weekly follow-ups, no response has been shared with GroundUp.

Constructive dialogue or political presentism?

On 10 March, Sibiya had a meeting with 31 factory owners in Newcastle about compliance issues. All were connected to a single supplier of clothes to major retailers, notably Pepkor and Ackermans.

Departmental spokesperson Teboho Thejane said the 31 non-compliant companies had made a request "to be assisted in understanding the Labour and employment laws that are administered by the Department". He said the parties had discussed a plan that would require factory owners to "periodically report on progress being made around improvements in compliance" over a period of time.

But Fachmy Abrahams, national bargaining officer at the SA Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (SACTWU), told GroundUp, "The government is simply not empowered to negotiate a phased approach to compliance with random groups. Those factories are bound by the collective agreement, which is gazetted and extended by the Minister of Labour to all employers across the country."

One observer told GroundUp: "It's pure political presentism. In fact, it was made clear that nothing will happen until after the [municipal] elections, as the issue of undocumented workers is too hot, and the politicians involved have their own constituencies to worry about."

Senior members of the People's Republic of China Diplomatic Corps, including Li Zhigong and Ma Jun from the Durban consulate-general, have also travelled to Newcastle recently to meet with factory owners, warning that those who fail to comply with South African laws risk being deported and criminally charged back in China.

The embassy did not respond to GroundUp's questions, but Thejane said the labour department "has noted the large-scale non-compliance of the Chinese-owned companies with employment laws. The Diplomatic Corps [of the People's Republic of China] undertook to play their part in ensuring an improvement in compliance levels."

The role of the Bargaining Council

Factory owners in eThekwini and Newcastle told GroundUp they expect government raids to happen less frequently following municipal elections on 4 November, but that other business pressures, including low prices for the goods they sell, rising input costs, and union pressure over non-compliance with minimum salary rates, will remain.

A factory owner based in Madadeni told GroundUp that the National Bargaining Council for the Clothing Manufacturing Industry (NBC) "is mostly responsible for the situation we are in."

"What do they do? Nothing! They come here and count heads [of workers], so that they can get their weekly levy from them, and from me, but the workers get no benefit, and I get no benefit. It is impossible for me to comply with their terms without making a loss. The only way to comply is to replace workers with machines, and for that I need investment, but I cannot apply for finance without a certificate [of compliance] from the Bargaining Council. The Bargaining Council has made us slaves of the value chain, and the value chain is broken," he said.

According to Abrahams, the bargaining council's minimum rates tend to be higher than the national minimum wage, which in March 2026 was raised to R30.23 per hour. The bargaining council's current minimum rate for an experienced mechanist working in a clothes factory in a non-metro area like Newcastle is R1,443.50 per week (45 hours), or R32 per hour, which factory owners say is unaffordable.

Lawyer for the bargaining council Richard Erasmus told GroundUp that 92% of clothing factories in Newcastle are non-compliant, meaning they are not in possession of a Certificate of Compliance from the bargaining council.

The tensions have a long history.

In 2003, the NBC enforced a phased schedule of minimum wage increases in non-metro areas like Newcastle and Madadeni, which many factory owners identified as the moment it became difficult to be both compliant and profitable.

Academics Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings have recorded how, between 2000 and 2011, minimum wages in the clothing industry in Newcastle went from being half those in Cape Town to two-thirds the Cape Town level, "destroying jobs in non-metro areas and sparking widespread refusal to comply with the rising wages".

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In 2010, after the NBC launched a "compliance drive", using the labour courts to close down non-compliant factories, a group of Newcastle factory owners took legal action against the Minister of Labour and the NBC, and won, exempting businesses that had not registered with the NBC from complying with NBC terms.

But Newcastle factory owner and local councillor Alex Liu, who was involved in the case, explained the decision only applied to the collective agreement at that time, and since the agreement is renegotiated every three years, "we would need to re-litigate, but there is no money for this".

Asked to respond to the claim that NBC rates are unaffordable, Abrahams said more attention is needed on retailers and their "notoriously poor supply chain control".

"You have a situation where procurement staff working in big clothing retailers and in the companies that supply them, get rewarded to pay the absolute smallest amount for a product, and the consequence of this is CMT operators cut costs, and the one area they can cut is wages.

"We have reports of people paying R8 an hour, and this in an industry that predominantly employs women, and a lot of those women are single mothers. So the top half of the value chain needs to be held accountable, and for the rest we need the institutions and agencies that are supposed to uphold the law to work".

This year the NBC has brought pressure to bear in a different way, opening cases against two prominent suppliers to South African retailers: Drake Clothing and Gemelli. The NBC alleges that "in order to become preferred service providers to the retailers", the suppliers are "knowingly engaging manufacturers who operate unlawfully [and] this conduct leads to the exploitation of vulnerable employees."

Most of the manufacturers identified in the NBC affidavits are based in Newcastle. Sources working for retailers told GroundUp the NBC cases have had a major chilling effect, with suppliers being directed to avoid Newcastle and instead place orders with factories elsewhere, including eSwatini, Lesotho, Madagascar and China.

This is the second of two articles on the clothing industry in KwaZulu-Natal. Read: Clothing factory owners warn of collapse as immigrant workers leave