Shein and Temu sell clothes in South Africa cheaper and faster than anyone else, and the clothing workers' union says that is exactly the problem. "They are selling cheaper and faster than anyone else," Sactwu president Susan Khumalo told COSATU's national congress in Johannesburg last week. "But it is putting enormous pressure on workers and our local manufacturers, including retailers and workers in the public sector as well." The federation's 1,840 delegates went on to endorse a resolution to campaign for banning both, and urged members to delete the apps and buy only from local retailers.
Jobs that never got the chance to exist
The campaign leans on a study by the Localisation Support Fund that tries to put a number on what the two platforms cost local industry. It puts their combined sales in 2024 at about R7.3 billion, which is 3.6% of all the clothing, textiles, shoes and leather goods sold in the country, and more than a third of what that sector sells online.
The study does not count jobs that were lost. It counts jobs that might have existed: about 2,800 in factories and 5,300 in shops between 2020 and 2024, plus R960 million of local manufacturing sales that went to the platforms instead. Its worst case goes further, with more than 34,000 retail and manufacturing jobs displaced by the end of the decade. Refilwe Moloto, an independent economic strategist, told Daily Maverick that figure may be out of date, because it was worked out before SARS changed the tax rules.
The small-parcel gap SARS tried to close
Part of the platforms' edge, the study says, comes from rules that let small parcels in with little tax, from making the clothes offshore, from cheap shipping and from using data to target shoppers. Low-value imports used to arrive without VAT. In August 2024, SARS said VAT would apply to imports under R500, after importers of clothing in particular had not been paying the customs duties and VAT they owed.
Whether that worked is the argument now. Daily Maverick reports that Shein's growth slowed to 11% in 2025, from 30% to 50% a year before. Michael Lawrence of the National Clothing Retail Federation is not yet convinced the loopholes are closed, and told CapeTalk that banning the platforms would be a "single-dimensional response" to a larger issue.
The same congress named the escalating cost of living as one of the biggest problems facing working-class households. The resolution asks those households to delete the two apps that sell to them cheaper than anyone else.
