From: Philip Mone
-------------------- In Lesotho, casual clothes for U.S. are serious matter -------------------- Industry: Jobs stitching T-shirts and jeans energize the tiny African country's economy. By John Murphy Sun Foreign Staff January 15, 2003 MASERU, Lesotho - Residents of this southern African kingdom already know what Americans will be wearing this summer. In the capital's industrial zone set in the foothills of the Maluti Mountains, Raytex Garments' 600 employees sit hunched over sewing machines stitching blue and yellow baseball shirts for the shelves of Gap stores in the United States. Nearby, J&S Fashions is producing a line of knit pants and tops for Wal-Mart and Kmart. And on the factory floor of Nien Hsing International, several thousand workers are cutting and sewing ribbons of denim fabric into a fresh supply of America's fashion staple - blue jeans. All these garments sport a label Americans can expect to see more often on their clothing: "Made in Lesotho." It's a phrase as unfamiliar to residents here as it will be to most Americans. Up until a few years ago, this nation of cattle herders and maize farmers was not known for producing much of anything. Its main export was water to South Africa. But thanks to a little-known U.S. trade initiative, this country's sleepy economy has awakened - turning it into the largest African supplier of clothing to the United States. A relatively obscure action by the United States has brought, as intended, significant changes thousands of miles away. Passed by Congress in 2000, the African Growth and Opportunity Act slashed duties and quotas on thousands of African-produced goods - from car parts to T-shirts - for export to America. In the United States, the act received little attention. But here, thousands of miles from Washington, the law has transformed the country's economy. In the past two years, 11 new factories have opened for business here and eight others have expanded, creating more than 15,000 new jobs. By the bootstraps "The initiative is there to try to pick us up by the bootstraps," said Mpho Malie, Lesotho's minister of trade and industry. Bush administration officials point to Lesotho's achievements as one of the primary examples of the United States' new relationship with Africa - a relationship that promotes economic development through increased trade rather than aid. But Lesotho's progress has come at a price, residents here say. As investment has rushed in, so too have challenges to the country's traditional society. The capital, Maseru - a rough-hewn city where residents do not look out of place walking down the street with a pitchfork or a donkey in tow - is now home to traffic jams, increasingly crowded living conditions and a burgeoning sex trade as thousands of rural dwellers migrate to the city with dreams - often unfulfilled - of finding work. In the factories, workers regularly complain about low wages and poor working conditions. One union leader recently compared the jobs, which pay about $80 per month, to slavery. Family disruption The economic changes have also been felt in Lesotho's traditionally male-headed households. Under the law in this former British colony, women are treated as minors who do not have the right to own land, have access to bank loans or even buy contraceptives without their husbands' permission. But the textile factories - which hire women almost exclusively - have made thousands of women the family breadwinners. Consider the case of the Hequo family. Johannes Heqou worked for more than a decade at a coal mine in South Africa, sending home about $300 a month before he was laid off in 1999 along with thousands of other Lesotho miners. Hequo returned to his cinderblock house set in the rock hills outside Maseru, where he lives with his wife, Anna, and their five children. Hequo looked for work unsuccessfully. Last year, Anna Hequo landed a job at a local T-shirt factory, working the 7 p.m.-to-6 a.m. shift. She is paid about 40 cents per hour, a fraction of what her husband earned but enough to keep the family afloat. Johannes Hequo now stays at home tending a small garden, swallowing his pride as he watches his wife bring home her wages each month. "It's so painful for me," he said as he sat at his kitchen table on a recent afternoon. "According to Lesotho custom, the men should support the family." The Hequos said they have adjusted to the change, but social workers say violence against women is on the rise as husbands become dependent on their wives. "The men feel like they have lost some respect. There is family turmoil," said Washi Mokati, a social worker for a sexual health group sponsored by CARE. Foreign investors Nearly all the factories that have opened in Lesotho are owned by Chinese or Taiwanese investors who have moved their operations here because of quota restrictions on exports to the United States from their own countries. Jennifer Chen, president of the Lesotho Textile Exporters Association and owner of the Shining Century clothing factory, said she expects Africa to become a major textile center as more companies take advantage of the continent's labor force. "All countries that are developing have to start in the textile industry," said Chen, whose factory makes T-shirts for the Gap and Old Navy stores in the United States. Lesotho, like most of Africa, will start out on the bottom rung of the textile industry, producing simple garments such as T-shirts and jeans. Anything more complicated is out of the question. The "Made in Lesotho" labels for Gap products, for instance, are made in Singapore because no company in Lesotho is yet outfitted to do the work. Time to build skills Chen, however, is optimistic that over time the country will develop the skills and expertise of other textile-producing countries. That will take time. There is no history of textile work here. Not much interest in fashion, either. Traditional dress for both men and women is a thick woolen blanket wrapped around some underclothing, and a straw hat that looks like a lampshade. Labor leaders are afraid that the country's shift to manufacturing will mean poor working conditions and low wages for the workers. The minimum wage for textile workers in Lesotho is about $80 a month. In a typical day, a worker makes 1,200 pairs of jeans, each selling for about $49 in the United States, according to the Lesotho Clothing Allied Workers Union. But she will take home enough money to buy one pair of those jeans a month, says Bahlakoana Lebakae, the union's assistant general secretary. Worker complaints A recent union-sponsored study of Lesotho's textile industry found that in some factories the workers were forced to work overtime, suffered verbal abuse and sexual abuse from their supervisors, and were subjected to strip searches at the end of the day. What's more, union leaders complain, companies' profits are taken to Taiwan, China and other parts of Asia by the business owners. "The country is getting nothing. All the money is going to Hong Kong," Lebakae said. Malie, the Lesotho minister of trade, bristles at the accusations made by the labor leaders. The government, factory owners and union have worked together to inspect factories and resolve disputes, he said. "You find there is an exaggeration of issues," he said. Malie has filed a defamation suit against the union for comparing the working conditions to slavery and suggesting that Malie was a stockholder in the textile factories. Still, no one - not even the union - argues that the country would be better off without the factories. The burgeoning textile industry is one of the few bright spots in a country ranked as one of the poorest on the planet. One-third of the population is infected with the AIDS virus, about 35 percent of the population is unemployed, and thousands of families are faced with food shortages this year. "Trade, open markets and economic reforms offer Africa the surest path to hope, opportunity and prosperity," U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick said in a statement, as he prepared to meet with investors and African leaders in Mauritius to discuss how to increase U.S.-Africa trade and repeat the economic achievement of Lesotho in other nations. (President Bush had planned to speak at the trade conference before canceling his trip to Africa.) Carrot and stick The African trade initiative employs a carrot-and-stick approach, rewarding African countries that practice good governance and protect human rights with access to the U.S. market. Almost 40 countries participate in the program. Critics of the trade deal, however, say the bulk of African exports to the United States are oil and energy-related goods that benefit U.S.-owned companies rather than Africans, and government subsidies to American farmers make it impossible for African agricultural products to compete in the U.S. market Still, African exports of apparel, cars, iron, steel and other nonfuel products to the United States increased 50 percent last year to $900 million. In a number of countries - Kenya, Madagascar and Swaziland - the trade act has helped to jumpstart textile and apparel industries. Few countries, however, can boast of the success of Lesotho. The textile jobs are so prized here that each morning in the drab industrial zone of Maseru, men and women stand outside the entrances of the factories in hopes of securing temporary jobs. On a recent morning, a riot broke out at one factory as job applicants jostled to be at the front of the line. Copyright (c) 2003, The Baltimore Sun Link to the article: http://www.sunspot.net/bal-te.lesotho15jan15.story Visit http://www.sunspot.net
