News24 | Clothing industry ‘being hammered from all sides’

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.

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.

“MK Party, 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.

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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 the SA Police Service (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 med