Second hand clothes are they good or bad

Nali · Member

Second hand clothes are they good or bad

Ankhaze · Member

I think this salaula thing can not be labeled bad or good coz it doesn’t have a general impact or output on individuals be it consumers or sellers.

Ku South Africa kaunjika ndi lololo. Ndiye kuti amagulitsa mwa illegal eti? mpaka ma underwear mkati.

btwn, I heard David Whitehead is coming back on the market?

abre les ojos · Guru

Bad, definitely bad for the local industry. How can an already fledging textile industry compete with second hand clothes from the west. A lot of which are actually donated to charities.

amdala · Senior Member

yu know what kaunjika is a bad idea to the textile industry but so good to the average malawian. most of my pple cant afford these clothes and shoes. but look at them nicely dressed puttin on some good shoes. nsapato ranges in MK, around 8 - 12, 000 for decent wear, i mean this is just unreachable to some. ngati masalaries are ranging in the same bracket, ndiye fans iziyenda muzitenjetu basi...

abre les ojos · Guru

Well, I guess it is a debate of whether it is better they wear, cheap, secon hand clothes from the west and destroy their local industry, or support their local industry and wear it's material brand new.

No one's going to start a textile industry unless Malawi bans or limits the importation of second-hand clothes; which I think they must do at some point. Its the west that are laughing. To them it is cheaper to seel these clothes to Africa than recycle them in their own countries. And more convenient too. And at the end of the day, our local industry is destroyed, we keep on relying on them for second hand stuff and we're screwed basically.

Pope · Guru

AMDALA, what about the saying;teach him how to catch fish

Nali · Member

Ankhaze when something is banned it doesnt mean that people are not going to try to find some illegal means to import and sell the product for example drugs they are illegal in most countries but yet they are still sold on the streets.

I think that the policy to uplift the ban on second hand clothes was ashort term solution. They who did it didnt see the long term damage this does to our country. We talk about becoming self reliant not relying on aid from the west this could have been the beginning. We had companies like David whitehead and Bata shoe making company which were able to locally produce and even export. One might argue that they were or are too expensive for the average malawian thats where the government should step in and reduce tax on these companies, increase custom duty on imported shoes and materials and in return demand that the companies produce large quantity of materials and shoes and it be available to the locals at a reasonable price and thats making it friendly for local or foreign investors to invest in this or other field in our country. Malawi has very hard working people and labour is cheap comparing to other african countries, this can be attracive to foreign investors.

Kaunjika is part of our problem. I think for a country to become self reliant its people must have jobs. People are spending their little hard earning money on Kaunjika which only afew people really benefit from it. No long term jobs only small little survival businesses. We are the ones who lose out more than we think.

You might argue, "how do i lose when i am buying clothes shoes at a very cheap price that without kaunjika i wouldnt have been able to afford"? My answer to that would be. When you buy kaunjika you are not helping create jobs all you do is help people to survive on day to day basis. On the other hand if you were buying from localy produced goods you are helping someone keep his job or you are creating a job. When you dont buy from localy produced stuff people lose jobs, when they lose jobs they dont have money to spent, thus other industries become affected, some may end up closing their doors thus more jobs lost, so it all becomes a vicious circle , the govenment doesnt get tax, it doesnt have money to spend on schools, hospital etc. In the end we go back and beg to our masters for more loans. So where their is a chance of creating jobs our country should go for it. Poeple need security, food in their stomach, not to dress up in second hand clothing. Textile industry can just be the beginning because we all need to dress up and this we can do. We must be a laughing stock to the west we cant even dress ourselves, and yet we talk about self reliance.

Jobs Jobs jobs if one job is created one whole family is saved. For change to happen it has to start from some where and it also takes time for the results to be seen.

Like Abre i believe most of the second hand clothes are meant for charity and they should be given out to the most destitute families for free or sold to these families for afew cents.

MISS THANG · Senior Member

The problem is just not in Malawi but here in the UK as well. I know loads of people here who waste their hard earned £'s on second hand clothes from these charity shops. Coz i don't belieave they are actually helping themselves but the charity shops they buy from. And most of these charities are UK based so they can't argue that they are buying these things coz the charity supports Malawians.

I think it's just something that they were used to in Malawi and they find it hard to stop.

Now about Kaunjika in Malawi, well basically it's quality and the benjamins. David Whitehead made cloths not clothes(i think so anyway). Big difference, So you buy the cloth and then you have to take it to a tailor, now that involves quiet a bit of money but it's not guaranteed that it's going to be of good quality. Where as with Kaunjika you could get very good quality clothes at low down prices.

Quality clothes in Malawi are very expensive and only a handful can afford these. But people have got no excuse buying secong hand clothes in the west, none at all.

Nali · Member

According to me i think its okey to buy second hand clothes that were localy made but not the ones that are imported. May be it should have been is it good for a country to import second hand clothes.

Miss Thang you made me think when you wrote some people in the UK do buy second hand clothes. I think there is nothing wrong with this for them its good so long as its made in the UK not made in China. People everywhere in the world do buy second hand clothes but in most of these countries these clothes are localy made. In most countries the import of second hand clothes is banned but it does not mean that they have also banned the sell of second hand clothes that the local citizens have. I see nothing wrong with buying or selling second hand clothes in Malawi as long as its MADE IN MALAWI.

-- Edited by Nali at 23:19, 2005-08-31

abre les ojos · Guru

????

All the clothes in second hand shops are made in China. In fact the majority of clothes everywhere in the world are made in China. Funny thing is, the Chinese don't even wear most of them and they don't moan that they are too expensive and all that crap. In Malawi there is this stupid notion that if you wear something with a label you are better than your peers (living beyond your means). If the government had any guts and stopped the import of second hand clothes the local industry would have grown. Now it has been destroyed before it was given a chance.

We are accepting rejects from the west because the west cannot be bothered to spend the billions it takes to recycle them (why with EU laws stating that countries should recycle a certain percentage). So the next best thing is to ship them out to poor Africans.

CJ · Newbie

A nali, second hand clothes made in malawi, picture that, you gotta be kidding!

sepusepu · Senior Member

Word Cj second hand clothes made in malawi ndi masanza.

On the other hand i think most malawian industries were run with the mentality that there wont be any competition ( grain and milling due to the rising of Rab processors) . As the economy has changed to a global economy most of our industries have not stepped up to international standards.

The other thing is, although malawi is a poor country any consumer is intitled to get the best for their money. We cannot buy stuff from malawian companies just because they are of malawian origin but rather have some quality.

sepu

abre les ojos · Guru

What exactly do you mean by quality? Second hand clothes? Clothes made by some poor Chinese peasants for a dollar a day but sold for 100 because it has some American guys name stitched on it?

You fail to see that for America or even China to have a clothing industry it never had to buy second hand clothes. The ONLY, and I repeat ONLY reason Kaunjika comes to Malawi is because it is cheaper to send them abroad than it is to recycle. After all American don't DO recycled clothes.

The chinese knew that they couldn't initially afford the Nikes they made so they stuck to their national attire; also as a defiant statement to American imperialism. Look at where they are now?

You have to see, politically where your priorities lie by looking at the long term picture. Policy has to be established as a LONG term strategy. I say ban them or regulate them heavily.

Kaunjika has completely destroyed the possibility of creating a clothing industry.

The British did the same when they ruled India. They "took" Indian superior cotton to Liverpool to service their industry (create jobs and wealth) and sold the inferior quality product cheaply to the Indians, completely undermining the possibilty of an Indian industry (which we KNOW makes the best cloths on the planet).

It is the same story now in Africa. Just a different script that's all...

-- Edited by abre les ojos at 10:29, 2005-09-02

Nali · Member

I find it hard to believe that a country which cant afford to feed or cloth itself, one of the poorest countries in the world demands good quality of clothes. And you call Kaunjika good quality. The only reason people buy Kaunjika is because its cheap. If localy made clothes were cheaper people would go for them. We Malawians have a very negative attitude. We got a tendency to think that what ever is localy made is not good enough thus undermining ourselves. We think we are not good enough and we will never be good enough to compete with the mnzungus. We think that we are inferior to them. That is exactly what the West want us to think. Thats exactly what Apartheid in South africa wanted to do, to create doubts among black people, that they can never be equals with the whites, that some things can only be successfuly done by a white man. Psychologicaly we havent goten over the master -servant relationship. With that attitude we will never get anywhere.

Date: Sep 2, 2005

Way too many Malawian companies, especially David Whitehead & Sons, are (were) so inefficient they deserve to go down. They do more harm than good and encouraging their pathetic performance with protectionist policies would destroy any chance Malawi has of economic recovery. Protectionism does not solve problems. It simply matures them for the future.

We missed the textiles boat (big time) when the quotas were still in effect. The Malawian textile industry should have recognised an opportunity to re-invent itself when the Kaunjika problem first materialised. What it should have done was to focus, and maybe carve a niche in the export market eg by specialising in ethnic prints as oppossed to fighting for domestic turf with second hand imports. Come to think about it, that could be feasible today if carefully thought through...

abre les ojos · Guru

But awmygawd it did. That is exactly what the industry did or was trying to do. Before of course the IMF "advised" (more like forced) Malawi to liberalise its industry.

Protectionism works. Infact for any growing industry it IS essential. No local industry ever grew without a certain level of government protection. From the automobile industries in Japan to the textile industries in China and every other major industry of the century. You have to nurture an industry before you open it up to competition abroad. How else is it to grow. How on earth can say David Whitehead compete with second hand clothes that are actually free. No manufacturing costs. No overheads, just transport costs to get them to Africa.

And lets not forget that the governments are discouraged to promote local industry too. So we can't promote traditional wear. Our media is saturated with "western" programmes. Cheap, made in China Nikes worn by rich American "stars". The youth can't see it otherwise. To them Nike (made from rubber and plastic) is superior to those beautiful, carefully printed, hand designed, African cloth. The government has other issues on its plate, not to mention a little bit of corruption on the side to worry about promotion of its local textiles.

Lets face it. Globalisation is a one way street. For the benefit of Multinationals and rich white men in suits. Thanks to it Africa is a dumping ground for al kinds of crap especially kaunjika.