Cheap Used Clothes from West Cripple Zimbabwe’s Textile Trade

A vendor speaks to a customer at a second-hand clothes market in Mutare, Zimbabwe. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

Shamiso Marambanyika assists a male customer in selecting a pair of jeans on a Saturday morning in Mutare, a city in the eastern part of Zimbabwe.

The 38-year-old mother of three showed the customer a pair from Marks and Spencer, commonly known as M&S, a British retailer based in London.

“I can give you this for 5 dollars,” Marambanyika shouted to the customer, who later picked out a different pair of jeans. She is a vendor at a popular market for secondhand clothes in Sakubva, a densely populated suburb in Mutare, near the border with Mozambique.

Some of the popular brands of jeans Marambanyika had in her stock include Hennes & Mauritz, known as H&M from Sweden, and Levi’s and Old Navy from the United States. These secondhand clothes are discarded in Western countries like the United Kingdom, shipped to Africa, and smuggled into Zimbabwe through Mutare, the gateway to the Indian Ocean via Mozambique.

The clothes are so cheap that one can get three T-shirts for USD 1. This has had repercussions not only on the local textile industry but also on the environment in Africa.

Pushing local clothing manufacturers and retailers out of business

Some clothing companies left by the British are struggling because of secondhand clothes and Zimbabwe’s ailing economy. Truworths Zimbabwe, a fashion retail chain established in 1957, closed about 34 of the 101 stores it operated in the late 1990s. To cut its operating costs, Truworths also reduced its workforce at its manufacturing division in the capital, Harare.

Bekithemba Ndebele, chief executive officer at Truworths Zimbabwe, confirmed to IPS that the company was sold because it was struggling. After going insolvent, Truworths was sold for USD 1 and officially delisted from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in July 2025.

Last year, Truworths released a statement that the company could not compete with cheap imports. Ndebele declined to give further details. These formal clothing businesses cannot compete with thousands of individuals who sell smuggled secondhand clothes at markets in cities across the country, in the streets, and from car boots.

At Marambanyika’s market in Sakubva, there are more than 1,000 vending stalls, each vocally advertising their goods to attract potential customers. In Mutare city centre, tens of vendors pay USD 6 per day to sell secondhand clothes on weekends. Unlike these vendors, who do not pay taxes, retailers like Truworths pay taxes and are forced to use volatile local currency.

Rashweat Mukundu, a social commentator based in Harare, says economic hardship forces many to resort to secondhand clothes. “This is an overall economic challenge. Many people have no choice but to go and buy secondhand clothes because they cannot afford the new clothes sold in the organised retail sector,” he says.

In retail outlets, a pair of jeans costs at least USD 20.

Marambanyika, who hails from Buhera in Manicaland Province, was pushed into the secondhand clothing trade in 2023 after failing to secure a job. She pays USD 115 to a middleman known as a transporter who buys a bale weighing 45 kilograms from Beira, a city and one of the business ports in Mozambique. “Prices vary with the quality of the jeans. There are about 100 pairs of jeans in a bale. I make a profit of USD 55 from each bale, and it takes two weeks to sell them all,” Marambanyika says, adding that she pays USD 22 monthly to the local authority.

Anesu Mugabe, a clothing designer and manufacturer based in Harare, says these secondhand clothes are often sold at extremely low prices, making it impossible for local manufacturers to compete.

“For instance, you can find a pair of jeans for as little as USD 2. This is unheard of in local retail stores. This has led to a significant decline in sales for us, forcing us to scale down our operations or even shut down altogether,” says Mugabe, who is now targeting corporates as a survival strategy.

Threat to the environment

Across Africa, from Kenya to Nigeria, cheap secondhand clothes are polluting the environment, according to a new report, Trashion: The Stealth Export of Waste Plastic Clothes to Kenya, published in February 2023.

Other recycling companies argue that the trade reduces waste in the Global South, but some environmental experts believe the trade is doing the opposite. Research shows that in Kenya, secondhand clothes are dumped in rivers and landfills. “What we are seeing is not recycling but dumping secondhand clothing from the West,” says Nyasha Mpahlo, executive director at Green Governance. “Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to dispose of the waste from secondhand clothes. Secondhand clothing is found in landfills. The industry is also causing carbon emissions.”

Amkela Sidange, an environmental education and publicity manager at the state’s Environmental Management Agency, says textile waste is minimal in Zimbabwe, contributing an estimated 7% to the total waste generated annually.

“An analysis of the source of textile waste indicates it is coming from various sources, mostly from the textile industry, and nothing on record is linked to secondhand clothes,” she tells IPS, citing a Solid Waste survey conducted in 2023.

Attempts to ban secondhand clothes

Other countries, like Rwanda, successfully banned secondhand clothes in 2016 to protect the local textile industry. Zimbabwe did the same in 2015 but introduced import taxes in 2017 after pressure from locals. But these measures and police arrests did not stop the smuggling of secondhand clothes.

Local textile industry players are calling for the government to ban the importation of secondhand clothes and to reduce taxes on local suppliers to protect the domestic textile industry. In August, Local Government Minister Daniel Garwe instructed local authorities to enforce the ban on the sale of secondhand clothes. But traders have defied the minister’s efforts.

Marambanyika says if she is forced to pay import duty and other taxes, she will go out of business. “I feed my one son and two daughters and pay school fees for them using proceeds from this business. I cannot afford to pay those punitive taxes,” she says. “I will close and relocate to the village.”