South Africa’s Garment Industry Unravels as Xenophobic Protests Expose Deep Labour Crisis

Rows of idle sewing machines in Newcastle, a manufacturing hub in KwaZulu-Natal province, tell the story of a sector in freefall: weeks after xenophobic protests orchestrated by the anti-immigrant group March and March drove thousands of migrant workers out of South Africa, clothing factories that once hummed with activity now struggle to keep their production lines moving, exposing a structural dependence on foreign labour that neither factory owners nor policymakers had adequately prepared to address.

When Reuters visited three Newcastle factories in late July, each owner reported losing between 12% and 19% of their workforce during the protests — workers who possessed sewing skills that are genuinely scarce in the local labour market, and whose low-paying positions few South African residents have shown willingness to fill. March and March, which drove the campaign, argues that immigrant workers are the primary cause of South Africa’s chronic unemployment crisis, a country where roughly one in three people cannot find work, though labour researchers consistently dispute this framing, pointing out that migrants tend to occupy roles that local workers actively avoid.

The Newcastle garment district sits at the heart of the cut, make and trim (CMT) business in KwaZulu-Natal, home to somewhere between 140 and 300 factories depending on the source, almost all of which are owned by citizens of Taiwan and China who hold permanent South African residency and have operated in the country for decades. These factories produce clothing for domestic retailers, forming a pillar of an industry that the South African government has actively championed as a means of reducing the country’s heavy reliance on imported garments — making the current crisis not merely a local labour dispute, but a challenge to a broader national industrial strategy. Factory owner Alex Liu captured the bind plainly: “We can’t immediately replace these skills with locals.” His peer Ronghua Yan, having lost roughly 40 foreign workers in June, responded by launching a training course for seven local employees — a small, telling gesture at the scale of the gap.

The sector was already under severe pressure before the protests intensified its difficulties. Government inspections carried out in September 2025 and February 2026 had revealed conditions that drew sharp public condemnation: wages considerably below the national minimum, dilapidated worker housing, unsafe factory floors, and a structural dependency on migrant labour from neighbouring Southern African nations. Many clothing retailers had already begun withdrawing business from Newcastle factories following those February raids, which exposed what investigators described as sweatshop-like conditions in several facilities. “Since February, nearly all factories have been functioning with reduced hours,” Liu noted, pointing to a combination of rising input costs, depressed CMT pricing, and the reputational damage that has followed the inspections.

The wage question sits at the centre of the crisis and resists easy resolution. Workers in the CMT sector are typically paid per piece completed, a system that means only the most productive employees are likely to reach the national minimum wage of 30.23 rand — approximately $1.83 — per hour. Factory owners argue that they cannot unilaterally raise wages because retailers pay so little per garment that there is virtually no margin left to absorb higher labour costs. Mpho Nkosi, a 29-year-old South African administrator at one of the firms, offered a candid assessment of the recruitment challenge: “People don’t want to work in factories.” Labour market researcher Siphelele Ngidi reinforced the point, arguing that drawing South Africans into manufacturing would require more than a wage adjustment alone — it would demand a government-led effort to rehabilitate the sector’s conditions and career prospects. “It’s not just the wage alone, it’s also the working conditions and the possibility of upward mobility,” he said.

The stakes extend well beyond Newcastle’s factory floors. Iqbal Ismail, a third-generation clothesmaker and chairperson of the eThekwini Clothing and Leather Association — who employs 150 workers, only 30 of whom are South African — issued a stark warning that encapsulates the sector’s existential dilemma: “Our sector will 100% collapse if migrants suddenly disappear from our factories.” His association had called for a complete CMT shutdown in late June to spotlight this dependence, a shutdown that ultimately did not happen — but factories are closing regardless, as migrant workers continue to flee. The lesson emerging from Newcastle is an uncomfortable one: displacing skilled migrant workers without simultaneously fixing wages, closing training gaps, and strengthening industrial competitiveness risks destroying the very jobs that anti-immigrant campaigners claim to be protecting.