MUTARE, Zimbabwe, October 23 (IPS) – Shamiso Marambanyika assists a male buyer in deciding on a pair of denims on a Saturday morning in Mutare, a metropolis within the jap a part of Zimbabwe.
The 38-year-old mom of three confirmed the client a model of Marks and Spencer, generally generally known as M&S, a British retailer primarily based in London.
“I can provide you this for five {dollars},” Marambanyika screamed to the client, who later picked out a distinct pair of denims. She is a vendor at a well-liked marketplace for secondhand garments in Sakubva, a densely populated suburb in Mutare, close to the border with Mozambique.
A number of the fashionable manufacturers of denims Marambanyika had in her inventory embody Hennes & Mauritz, generally known as H&M from Sweden, and Levi’s and Outdated from the US. These secondhand garments are dumped in Western international locations like the UK, shipped to Africa, and smuggled into Zimbabwe via Mutare, the gateway to the Indian Ocean in Mozambique.
The garments are so low-cost that one can get three T-shirts for USD 1. This has had repercussions not solely on the native textile business but in addition on the atmosphere in Africa.
Pushing Native Clothes Producers and Retailers Out of Enterprise
Some clothes corporations left by the British are struggling due to secondhand garments and Zimbabwe’s ailing financial system. Truworths Zimbabwe, a trend retail chain established in 1957, closed about 34 of the 101 shops it operated within the late Nineteen Nineties. To chop its working prices, Truworths additionally decreased its workforce at its manufacturing division within the capital, Harare.
Bekithemba Ndebele, chief govt officer at Truworths Zimbabwe, confirmed to IPS that the corporate was bought as a result of it was struggling. After going bancrupt, Truworths was bought for USD 1 and formally delisted from the Zimbabwe Inventory Change in July 2025.
Final 12 months, Truworths launched a press release that the corporate couldn’t compete with low-cost imports. Ndebele declined to offer additional particulars. These formal clothes companies can’t compete with hundreds of people who promote smuggled secondhand garments at markets in cities throughout the nation, within the streets and from automobile boots.
At Marambanyika’s market in Sakubva, there are greater than 1000 merchandising stalls, every vocally promoting their items to draw potential prospects. In Mutare metropolis heart, tens of distributors pay USD 6 per day to promote secondhand garments on weekends. In contrast to these distributors who don’t pay taxes, retailers like Truworths pay taxes and are compelled to make use of risky native foreign money.
Rashweat Mukundu, a social commentator primarily based in Harare, says financial hardship forces many to resort to secondhand garments. “That is an total financial problem. Many individuals don’t have any alternative however to go and purchase secondhand garments as a result of they can’t afford the brand new garments bought within the organized retail sector,” he says.
In stores, a pair of denims prices not less than USD 20.
Marambanyika, who hails from Buhera in Manicaland Province, was pushed into the secondhand clothes commerce in 2023 after failing to safe a job. She pays USD 115 to a intermediary generally known as a transporter who will purchase a bale weighing 45 kilograms from Beira, a metropolis and one of many enterprise ports in Mozambique. “Costs range with the standard of the denims. There are about 100 pairs of denims in a bale. I make a revenue of USD 55 from every bale, and it takes two weeks to promote all of them,” Marambanyika says, including that she pays USD 22 month-to-month to the native authority.
Anesu Mugabe, a clothes designer and producer primarily based in Harare, says these secondhand garments are sometimes bought at extraordinarily low costs, making it unimaginable for native producers to compete.
“As an example, you could find a pair of denims for as little as USD 2. That is unprecedented in native retail shops. This has led to a major decline in gross sales for us, forcing us to scale down our operations and even shut down altogether,” says Mugabe, who’s now focusing on corporates as a survival technique.
Risk to the Atmosphere
Throughout Africa, from Kenya to Nigeria, low-cost secondhand garments are polluting the atmosphere, in accordance with a brand new report, Trashion: The Stealth Export of Waste Plastic Garments to Kenya, printed in February 2023.
Different recycling corporations argue that the commerce reduces waste within the World South, however some environmental specialists imagine the commerce is doing the other. Analysis exhibits that in Kenya, secondhand garments are dumped in rivers and landfills. “What we’re seeing is just not recycling however dumping second-hand clothes from the West,” says Nyasha Mpahlo, govt director at Inexperienced Governance. “Sadly, there isn’t any mechanism to get rid of the waste from secondhand garments. Secondhand clothes is present in landfills. The business can also be inflicting carbon emissions.”
Amkela Sidange, an environmental training and publicity supervisor on the state’s Environmental Administration Company, says the textile waste could be very minimal in Zimbabwe, contributing an estimated 7% to the whole waste generated on an annual foundation.
“An evaluation of the supply of the textile waste signifies it’s coming from numerous sources, principally coming from the textile business and nothing on document is linked to secondhand garments,” she tells IPS, citing a Strong Waste survey carried out in 2023.
Makes an attempt to Ban Secondhand Garments
Different international locations, like Rwanda, efficiently banned secondhand garments in 2016 to guard the native textile business. Zimbabwe did the identical in 2015 however launched import taxes in 2017 after strain from the locals. However these measures and arrests by police didn’t tame the smuggling of secondhand garments.
Native textile business gamers are calling for the federal government to ban the importation of secondhand garments and to cut back taxes on native suppliers to guard the native textile business. In August, Native Authorities Minister Daniel Garwe instructed native authorities to implement the ban on the sale of secondhand garments. However merchants have defied the minister’s efforts.
Marambanyika says if she is compelled to pay import obligation and different taxes, she’s going to exit of enterprise. “I feed my one son and two daughters and pay college charges for them utilizing proceeds from this enterprise. I can’t afford to pay these punitive taxes,” she says. “I’ll shut and relocate to the village.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
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