Lesotho: The Garment Industry in its Economic, Political and Social Context

This special CBDS Working Paper originates from a longer-term collaboration between Associate Professors Søren Jeppesen, CBS and Andries Bezuidenhout, UFH. The collaboration started more than 10 years ago and will have its main output with the forthcoming book (preliminarily) titled, ‘Enclave Development: State, Market, And Society in Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland’s Garment Manufacturing Industries’. The collaboration has benefitted from primary and secondary data from two research projects and support from our institutions. The first project was part of a large research project, titled ‘The Outsourcing for Development project’, based at CBS and Aalborg University, Denmark. The project was funded by the Danish Development Research Council and investigated different aspects of the contemporary situation among firms from developing countries in an era of globalisation and outsourcing of production from North to South. As part of a sub-study on ‘CSR, Development and Outsourcing’ we undertook a comparative investigation of the impact of codes of conduct on working conditions in garment factories in different countries in Southern Africa. The second project was part of a large comparative study on the role of Labour movements in Southern Africa, anchored at the Sociology at Work Unit, Witwatersrand University, South Africa. The project also supported the comparative study of the impact on codes of conduct, with funding from the Norwegian Development Agency (Norad). Over the years, our respective institutions (Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, later renamed Department of Management, Society and Communication (MSC) at CBS and Sociology of Work, Wits University, Department of Sociology, University of Pretoria and lastly Department of Development Studies (DDS), University of Fort Hare (UFH)) have supported us collegially and with funds for travel, student assistance and more. We highly appreciate this. During the project, we have benefitted from the work of numerous student and research assistants. They include; Lasse B. Jensen, Alvin P. Ljosa, Sameer Azizi, Amanda Haarmaan, and Zartashia Ahmed (CBS), and Hamadziripi Tamukamoyo, Wits University (and other SA assistants). We would like to thank all for the great help.