Self-regulatory Code of Conduct has widely been adopted by international brands to manage CSR issues in apparel and footwear supply chain for the last 2 decades. Increasingly, more apparel and footwear brands started to expand CSR scope to include environmental management in their supply chain. However, only very few international brands have disclosed their efforts on environmental management in their supply chain. This study aims to find out how apparel and footwear brands implement environmental management in their supply chain. Furthermore, what motivates them to carry out environmental management, and lastly, what challenges the industry encounters in carrying out effective environmental management. Primary and secondary data research were carried out in this study. Primary research, in a form of self-administered survey, was conducted for 11 brands and 15 of their respective suppliers. Secondary research was conducted through desktop research to gather additional information from brands, NGOs, academic studies and news. The study revealed environmental management in apparel and footwear supply chain is becoming more important. However, most of the brands’ approaches on environmental management are loose (i.e. lack industry-wide sustainably environmental management strategy), and small in scope (i.e. first tier supplier only). It is suggested apparel and footwear brands should improve effectiveness of environmental management program in their supply chain, by applying different implementation strategies internally, with both brands’ and suppliers’ governments, suppliers as well as their stakeholders. / published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

M. Tech. Fashion Design / The need to educate consumers about eco-friendly clothing cannot be over emphasized any longer, research has shown that consumers with environmental knowledge are likely to purchase eco-friendly products and would be willing to pay a premium price for such products. Cheap clothing rejects the central ethics of sustainability, and they catalyse unnecessary overconsumption behaviour worldwide. With an increase in purchasing power of many consumers, excessive consumption behaviour suggests that cheap fashion merchandise are purchased and disposed of rapidly by several consumer groups. The current fashion retail industry obtains new fashion styles and supplies new clothing ranges within short span of time enticing fervent consumers' with an impetuous buying behaviour, particularly the younger consumers. The majority of consumers do not understand that their buying behaviour and disposal behaviour impacts negatively on the environment. This is a particularly common in South Africa with very few retail shops offering eco-certified clothing merchandise. This study explores consumer awareness on what constitutes eco-fashion and if their knowledge could, in future, influence them towards sustainable buying behaviour. This study also considers educational measures taken by the South African government and non-governmental organisations to empower citizens with respect to environmental issues.

Thesis (DTech (Design))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / This thesis is an investigation into environmental sustainability in the South African fashion industry, with a particular focus on the role of design therein. The fashion and textile industry is a significant contributor to the South African economy and a major user of human and natural resources. It is through the use of resources – natural, constructed and human – that the industry is also supposedly damaging to the natural environment and the people working within it. Notable authors on environmentally sustainable design and, in particular, environmentally sustainable fashion design, seem to suggest that a holistic approach to environmental sustainability is fundamental to the implementation thereof. Design has the ability to direct change, and thus design and designers have the potential to drive holistic sustainable practices in the fashion system.The question this research therefore poses is what the role of environmental sustainability should be in a design-driven approach in the South African fashion industry; interrogated through an exploratory and descriptive case study. The case study consists of three purposively selected sub-units that operate within an environmentally sustainable focus in their fashion businesses, and that design, produce, and retail fashion products. The aim of the research was to explore, through a snapshot of the South African fashion system, the implementation of environmental sustainability in the fashion industry in South Africa, in order to determine what role fashion design practice can have in developing environmental sustainability in the fashion system.The most notable finding of the research highlights the immense difficulty of operating as a fashion business from an environmentally sustainable focus in South Africa due to the lack (and unsuitability) of resources that can be considered environmentally sustainable. The declining textile industry of South Africa makes it either almost impossible, or very costly, to work within an environmentally sustainable framework, and is a major impediment in the implementation of environmental sustainability in praxis. Therefore, those businesses that decide to operate within an environmentally sustainable framework do so because of inherent personal values and ethics.The second aspect identified in the survey of scholarship and underpinned by the findings, is a need for a transformative approach with regard to design praxis and how design praxis can influence consumer eco-consciousness. The research concludes with a recommended framework that suggests a holistic and integrated approach to design-driven environmental sustainability in the South African fashion industry, and elaborates on the role of the fashion designer in the implementation of environmental sustainability in the fashion system. The holistic and integrated approach should extend into fashion design education, requiring a fundamental shift in current fashion design education in South Africa. / University of Johannesburg

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

This study introduces the Fanonian thought on race and racism, rhetoric of modernity, and new humanism as three constitutive thematic areas in order to enable a new understanding of the South African situation. These thematic areas are examined with specific reference to socio-economic development within the limited context of post-apartheid South Africa. This is done by reading Fanon’s text in the context of South Africa to provide the background against which the unfolding of the post-apartheid era and its political discourses may be analysed. In essence, this study is based on Fanon’s predictions that he made in the text written more than 50 years ago about the future of post-colonial states. Therefore, this study argues that Fanon’s thought has proven to be more prophetic with regard to post-apartheid South Africa and its political reforms which left the fundamental question of structures such as land, economy, and labour unaddressed. What happened on 27 April 1994 is not genuine liberation, but a mere transition from apartheid to democratic dispensation that left the status quo in spatial arrangements uninterrupted. Indeed, it was an elite pact between the African National Congress and white monopoly capital, which betrayed the national liberation movement and the black majority. The contention is that South Africa celebrated the cosmetic reforms that attributed the term liberation incomplete in the absence of fundamental and structural changes. What is therefore recommended is that for there to be success, there must be genuine liberation that is consistent with the needs of society. This means bringing to an end the racially marked structures and reimagining the black condition, through jobs, education, social and economic programmes aimed at empowering the black majority to depend on themselves as opposed to relying on the State. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)