Continuing our exploration of clothes, we look at what happens to our secondhand garments. In total, 100 billion pieces of clothing are manufactured each year.

Some of these clothes get donated, we are all familiar with the various clothing drives and bins out there:

But what happens to those clothes after they are donated?

Secondhand Clothing: A $4 billion Industry

It turns out there is a pipeline of used clothes from the wealthy Capitalist nation back to the colonies. The trade is worth about $4 billion (author sourced it from here; check code 630900). Andrew Brooks published the sordid tale of how secondhand clothes is a tool for colonialism, in Riches from Rags or Persistent Poverty (and he goes into more detail in his book).

My five key takeaways were:

The Portuguese clothing industry was subsidized by African blood: The Portuguese basically enslaved the Mozambicans during the colonial era. Even up to the 1950s, the Portuguese were extracting cotton from Mozambique at an exploitative price. They paid half-a-million to a million people $11.17 per year. That cotton was then taken to textile factories in Portugal that employed a third of the country's industrial labour and accounted for a 1/5th of Portuguese exports.
Secondhand clothes helped destroy the African domestic clothing industry: The fancy term for this is dumping. It is not the only reason: Africa was going through IMF-imposed austerity policies that were destroying the continent by forcing countries to pay off debt. That means money was cut from the salaries of government workers, social programs, schools, etc. Such austerity measures ruined the average Mozambican, who then could no longer afford to buy expensive clothes (e.g. such as those made locally) and had to find the cheapest option. With that in mind, the clothes piling up in the elite Capitalist nations are then sold back to Africa (as well as Pakistan, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and other places) for billions of dollars. This is where the dumping comes in. It undercuts an African entrepreneur to compete with these cheap goods coming into the country. Countries like Nigeria, who attempted to protect the domestic industry through tariffs, were still impacted. Smugglers were able to get used clothing into the country and undercut the local producers. Consequently, the local industry never develops thereby making the economy dependent on the “former” colonizers.
Africans are exploited by selling “blind bales” of secondhand clothes: Profits are made using a "lottery system": the clothes are bought in 45 kg bales. The bales are sorted into clothing type (e.g. jeans vs t-shirts). However, the buyer gets some saleable clothes and some items that they must throw in the trash. The buyers refer to this as “toda bola” in the Mozambican language or “lottery”. It's also an all too convenient way for the elite Capitalist countries to dump clothing trash in Africa instead of their own backyards (see here a dispute between Canada and the Philipines).
Uncertain supplies inhibit entrepreneurship: Every retailer will have a strategy. I sell high-quality merchandise, I sell fruits, or I sell cheap cell phones. But to do this, you need to have a stable supply of merchandise. You can't do that selling secondhand clothes in Mozambique because of the lottery approach used to sell clothes in these bales of unknown garments.
Selling secondhand clothes averages about $5 a day: The average wage was $5.38 USD per day. However, the study found that 2 out of 9 individuals lost money, while some went hungry some days because of insufficient earnings. The businesses can support a single person but are not enough to support a family. Furthermore, few businesses graduate into a more sizable shop that could support a family.

How does capital continue colonialism within the clothing industry?

Think about the fact that Africa produces nearly 10% of the world’s cotton. Yet, there is no clothing manufacturing in Africa. Why? Big capital. Zara had about 740 million Euros worth of debt when it issued stocks for the first time in 2000. Meaning Zara can raise giant volumes of money and monopolize the market. All the cotton and other raw materials required for textile manufacturing. Capital raising privilege of the companies headquartered in the elite Capitalist nation is the key to the whole mess in Africa, the Muslim world and elsewhere. They can continue to colonize the continent. However, they now do it through "market mechanisms" and agent rulers, instead of standing armies. They can use their buying power to price out Africans from buying their own cotton, making their own clothes, etc.

Islamic Economics: Can’t hide garbage clothes from the buyer

The practice of selling “blind bales” of clothes is not allowed in Islam. The seller is obligated to show the defects in what he or she is selling:

“The Muslim is the brother of the Muslim, and it is not allowed for a Muslim to buy a faulty thing from his brother without him being shown that fault." [Ibn Majah]

Failing to be transparent about the quality of clothes is cheating the buyer:

The Messenger of Allah (saw) passed by a heap of food. As he put his hand inside it his fingers got wet, so he said to the vendor: “What is this?” He said: “It was dampened by the rain O Messenger of Allah.” He (saw) said: “Why don't you put it on the top so that people can see it? He who cheats us is not one of us." [Muslim]

The victim of such transactions have the right to return such merchandise:

"If you purchased say there is no deception, then in every commodity you purchased you have the choice after three nights to accept (the commodity) and thus hold it or to return it back to its owner." [Ad-Daraqutni]

Why is this so important? One of the British secondhand clothing exporters noted that the practice of sending the trash mixed with good clothings was key to “vast profits”. Consequenty, the Islamic requirement to properly identify each item and allow the purchaser to return items would give more bargaining power to the purchaser. That being said, the real solution is for Africa is to go back to Islam, which would eliminate the need to be reliant on the Capitalist colonial nations altogether.

What does Mansa Musa have to do with all of this?

Under Islam, Africa produced a man wealthier than Jeff Bezos. Arguably, Mansa Musa’s wealth is incalculable. Others have estimated worth $400 billion today, making him twice as wealthy as Jeff Bezos. But Islam did more than just make Mansa Musa a rich man, he made into a generous and charitable man. He gave away so much money he caused inflation along his pilgrimage to Makkah. Jeff Bezos, in contrast, made his money through "prime gouging." Here are some examples based on a report put out by Public Citizen:

Africa: Rich under Islam, poor under Capitalism

When we think of Africans as impoverished, we should remember that it's Capitalism that has decimated the continent. Islam empowered people to build a vibrant economy. However, Islam didn't just produce just rich people who cared only about themselves. For example, Bezos wants to use this money for space travel; not his workers who take bathroom breaks in a bottle or the nearly 1-in-5 American kids who are impoverished. In contrast, Islam made Mansa Musa rich and humble: willing to go on the pilgrimage (hajj) to Makkah as well as someone who shared his wealth with society.

In sha Allah, the next post will explore how clothing consumerism has spawned an ecological catastrophe.