Failing the poor
South Africa’s clothing manufacturing industry is in a crisis. The stronger rand has affected export opportunities, while the local market is flooded with imported garments, especially from East Asia, that are cheaper (and often of inferior quality to locally produced goods).
It is therefore reasonable and right that the government should find ways of protecting an industry which has been on a decline for many years, with attendant job losses running into the thousands.
One such way has been a ban on the import of second-hand clothes, introduced by the department of trade and industry in 2000. This is aimed not only at the commercial second-hand clothes market, but also at charitable organisations that seek to distribute used clothes to the poor.
Not without reason, the department argues that some unscrupulous operators had abused the previous system by importing clothes intended for sale under the guise of these being intended for charity.
Clearly, this was not so when the parish of Batley in England sent 100kg of second-hand clothes for the benefit of impoverished people served by a Catholic Aids outreach programme in Khayelitsha, Cape Town.
As we reported last week, the consignment was impounded by customs, and is likely to be incinerated.
While the rationale behind such a policy is obvious, it is difficult to understand how 100kg of garments that could clothe many people who have little, or indeed nothing, can be burnt by bureaucratic decree. Surely the suffering of the poor precedes the finer points of an across-the-board trade policy. Indeed, a good case could be made to characterise the department’s intransigence in this case as sinful.
Surely the Catholic Church, which has a track record going back two millennia, can be trusted not to import clothes under false pretences. Surely an institution so profoundly and visibly involved in poverty relief as the Catholic Church should qualify for exemption from the ban, especially since the embargo was introduced only to counteract unethical business. In this light, the law may well warrant a review.
The needy people of Khayelitsha, however, cannot wait for this. Their wants must be met now.
Bureaucracies may not be renowned for pragmatism, yet here is an opportunity for the department of trade and industry to show that the government is serious in its aims to alleviate poverty and in its call on the churches and civil society to play a part in that endeavour.
One solution may be to deploy those civil servants who would supervise the incineration of the garments to oversee their distribution instead.
It is commendable to protect local industry. Indeed, South Africans should be encouraged to buy locally produced clothes, and stores to stock these. However, the poor in Khayelitsha, for whom the people in an English parish so diligently and lovingly collected clothes, cannot concern themselves with trade policy. Their needs are desperate and immediate.
A government, and its civil service, should never fail the poor. In this instance, unless the 100kg of clothes from Batley are released for distribution, it will.
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