Authors - Mr Mokong Mapadimeng Regent Business School and Dr Fathima Rasool Management College of South Africa (MANCOSA) Photo this page © Hannelie Coetzee and
www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com Next page © Graeme Williams
informal activities, which they argue, fails to acknowledge the integrally and structurally linked nature of both the formal and informal economies.
In South Africa, the proliferation of informal garment making enterprises in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in particular is the result of a decline in employment in the formal clothing sector from 49 967 to 32 060 jobs between 2005 and 2007 (Clothing, Textile, Footwear and Leather Sector Education and Training Authority Report, 2006; Palmi, 2007).
Research Methodology and Results: Newlands West is a former apartheid residential suburb within the eThekwini Municipality. For the purposes of this study, a total of 10 female owner/operators of dressmaking enterprises were selected and interviewed in the Westrich area adjacent to Newlands West, which was part of the post apartheid municipality’s project of providing low cost housing to the homeless. This sub- district was chosen because of the strong presence of dressmaking home-based micro-enterprises amongst its residents.
Westrich is a small community made up of low cost houses as provided under the government’s Department of Housing Policy in line with the original Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). Most of the women started their home-based businesses after being retrenched by the formal clothing and textile factories or after giving up on searching for employment in a context of high unemployment. The operational costs are kept low as they do not have capital. The age range of the respondents was between 22 and 35 years old suggesting that almost all of the participants in the study are classified as youth in keeping with the official national definition. Such a youthful population engaged in home-based dressmaking micro-enterprise highlights the dilemma faced by youth in finding formal employment in South Africa, and is consistent with findings undertaken by the Department of Labour (2005) that the highest levels of unemployment are to be found in the age categories between 20 and 30 years. Not surprisingly, all owner-operators in the study are women as is typical of home-based micro-enterprises in the country.
January 2012 | Management Today 17
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