The bales arrive by the truckload at the market in Johannesburg at dawn, squat white bricks weighing upwards of 600 pounds, each one as big and unwieldy as a dishwasher. Inside are thousands of pieces of secondhand clothing that have been pressed and shrink-wrapped into cubes by textile recyclers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Every morning, the dozens of traders who work a stretch of three downtown blocks known as KwaDunusa — a Zulu word that translates more or less to “the place of bending over and sticking your backside out” — slice the thick plastic coverings from these bales and spread their wrinkled contents into double-bed-sized bins. Depending on the item and its quality, they pick a price from 3 rand (about 20 cents) to 60 rand ($4). And then, as morning light slants through the surrounding art deco high-rises, they begin shouting.
“Cheapcheapcheapcheap!” they call to passing commuters, plunging their hands into piles of polyester and Lycra and flipping the contents of their bins again and again to catch
— source expmag.com | Ryan Lenora Brown | Jan 14, 2022