In brief
On 05 February 2026 the Department of Employment and Labour, with the police, the Newcastle metro police and Home Affairs, inspected six clothing manufacturers in the Newcastle Industrial Park in KwaZulu-Natal. Five were not compliant with the Occupational Health and Safety Act. One received a prohibition notice for unsafe electrical installations and for failing to register and produce a certificate for its steam generator, and was told it could not resume until the risk was removed or controlled. [1][2] Within a week the Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour said it would summon national clothing retailers, because merchandise for them had been found produced and packaged for delivery at the factories. [3] The retailers' public answers turned on their supplier codes, their factory audits and the sites their suppliers had declared to them. [4][5] For any business that makes goods for a larger buyer, that sequence is the point of this article: an inspector's finding at your premises no longer stays at your premises, and the buyer's next question will be whether your file was current on the day the inspector arrived.
What the inspectors found in Newcastle
The operation was led by the Department with the Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour in attendance. Of the six manufacturers inspected, all six were non-compliant with Unemployment Insurance Fund requirements, five with the Occupational Health and Safety Act and five with the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act; four were compliant with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. [1][2]
The prohibition notice went to one factory for two items: electrical installations that were not safe, and a steam generator that had not been registered and for which no certificate could be produced. The factory was told it must not resume the prohibited activity until it had taken action to remove or control the risk. Workers living in on-site accommodation were told to leave it, because inspectors described the quarters as unhygienic and a fire risk. Thirty-four undocumented workers were found and two employers were arrested. [1][2]
None of this was exotic. Electrical faults are the single most often named OHS finding on our Blitz Tracker, and KwaZulu-Natal clothing and textile factories are the setting the Department has returned to most often since April 2025.
What happened next: the buyers
Days after the operation the chair of the Portfolio Committee said that merchandise had been "produced and packaged for delivery to the big retailers as confirmed by the factories", and that the Committee would summon those retailers to Parliament. [3] That report comes from one press group and we mark it accordingly; we have not found a record of the hearing itself.
The retailers that answered publicly did so in the language of supplier management. One group said all of its suppliers are contractually required to comply with its supply chain code of conduct, which covers labour practices, health and safety and working conditions; that suppliers must declare every site used to make its merchandise; and that it carries out both announced and unannounced audits of supplier production sites. Another said the factory concerned had not been approved to produce for it and had been stopped, adding: "We outsource production but never our integrity or responsibility." [4] A third met the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition in June 2026 and committed to work with it on transparency, compliance and accountability in retail and manufacturing. [5] Each statement is reported by one outlet; the pattern across them is the point, not any single company's words, and we do not name them here.
What the law places on whom
The Act's general duties attach to an employer and its own activities. Section 8(1) requires every employer to provide and maintain, as far as is reasonably practicable, a working environment that is safe and without risk to the health of its employees. Section 9(1) extends a comparable duty to persons who are not its employees but who may be directly affected by its activities. [6][7] We covered that wider duty in Your Safety File Counts Employees. Section 9 Counts Everyone Else.
The electrical finding has a specific instrument behind it. Regulation 7 of the Electrical Installation Regulations, 2009 (Government Notice R242) requires every user or lessor of an electrical installation to have a valid certificate of compliance for it, and to produce that certificate to an inspector on request, subject to a limited exception for older installations. [8][9] A factory that cannot produce one on the day is in breach before an inspector has looked at a single cable.
For organisations certified to ISO 45001, clause 8.1.4 (procurement) requires processes to control the procurement of products and services so that they conform to the occupational health and safety management system, and it extends expressly to contractors and to outsourced functions. [10][11] That is the clause a buyer's auditor is working from when it asks a supplier for evidence.
There is no grace period
On 12 October 2026 the Labour Court in Durban recorded a settlement in which 24 Newcastle clothing manufacturers agreed to an order confirming that they hold no exemption from labour law, after the clothing industry's bargaining council had argued that a departmental pilot project had been treated as a shield against its inspectors. The Minister did not oppose the application. [12] The dispute concerns the bargaining council's collective agreement rather than the OHS Act, and the report is single sourced, so we treat it as provisional. The background to the application, including the council's account of inspectors being refused entry, was reported in September. [13]
Five checks a supplier can run this month
- Electrical certificate of compliance. Find it, confirm it covers the installation as it stands today rather than as it stood before the last extension, and confirm someone on site can produce it on request. [8][9]
- Pressure equipment. If you run a steam generator, boiler or other pressure equipment, confirm its registration and its most recent inspection record are on file and producible on the day. The Newcastle notice turned on exactly that. [1][2]
- Exits and accommodation. Walk every escape route during a night shift. Locked doors with people inside have been reported at Mandeni in October 2025 and at a Tshwane textile factory during the July 2026 national blitz. [14][15] If anyone sleeps on site, treat the accommodation as part of the workplace for fire purposes.
- The dated risk assessment. Confirm there is one, that it is dated, and that it names the hazards in the building you now occupy. "No risk assessment" has appeared in findings at Mandeni, Johannesburg and Rustenburg on our tracker.
- The site list you gave your buyer. If a customer asked you to declare your production sites, confirm the list is still true, including any site where you subcontract work. A buyer that learns of an undeclared site from a newspaper will not ask how good the declared one was. [4]
GRC Shop view
This section is interpretation, kept separate from the sourced facts above.
In our view Newcastle marks a change in who reads an inspection report. Until now a prohibition notice was a matter between an employer and the Department. Once a parliamentary committee asks a retailer to explain a supplier's factory, the notice becomes a commercial document as well, and the supplier's file starts being read by people who can cancel an order.
Our reading of the Act, which is interpretation and not legal advice, is that a buyer does not ordinarily become the employer of its supplier's workforce, and that sections 8 and 9 do not, on their own, move a supplier's factory duties onto the buyer. That is precisely why buyers manage the risk by contract and by audit instead, and why the burden of proof lands on the supplier.
Audits expire. Our system keeps your compliance current. A buyer's audit, like a certification audit, is fine on the day it is done. What fails is afterwards: the electrical certificate predates the new line, the pressure vessel inspection falls due between visits, the risk assessment describes last year's floor plan, and the close-out of each audit finding happens in email while the evidence scatters across folders. That is not neglect. It is that nothing holds the pieces together between audits, and an unannounced visit, from an inspector or from a customer, arrives in the gap.
The GRC Shop platform does one thing, and its OHS app is currently the only app on it: it keeps a single managed, live record of a business's OHS obligations and the evidence for each, with a date on every item, so that a certificate, an inspection or an assessment due is visible before it lapses and can be produced on the day it is asked for. If you would like to see what that looks like for your factory, request a quote at https://www.grcshop.co.za/get-a-quote
Abbreviations
- BCEA: Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997
- COIDA: Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act 130 of 1993
- EIR: Electrical Installation Regulations, 2009
- OHS: occupational health and safety
- OHSA: Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993
- SAPS: South African Police Service
- UIF: Unemployment Insurance Fund
References
The sources below are external links to third-party websites. We link only to publicly accessible pages and check periodically that the links still work.
[1] The Mercury, "Labour blitz: Two Chinese nationals arrested in Newcastle textile factory inspections", 06 Feb 2026. https://themercury.co.za/news/2026-02-06-labour-blitz-two-chinese-nationals-arrested-in-newcastle-textile-factory-inspections/
[2] The Citizen, "Undocumented workers evacuated after unsafe Newcastle factory shut down (PICS)", 06 Feb 2026. https://www.citizen.co.za/news/undocumented-workers-evacuated-after-unsafe-newcastle-factory-shut-down-pics/
[3] IOL, "Parliament to hold major retailers accountable over Newcastle factory compliance failures", 11 Feb 2026. https://iol.co.za/news/2026-02-11-parliament-to-hold-major-retailers-accountable-over-newcastle-factory-compliance-failures/
[4] The Citizen (Northern Natal News), "Retailers respond as video exposes alleged Newcastle sweatshops", 10 Feb 2026. https://www.citizen.co.za/northern-natal-news/news-headlines/local-news/2026/02/10/retailers-respond-as-video-exposes-alleged-newcastle-sweatshops/
[5] The Newcastillian, "Mr Price Group Commits to Greater Supply Chain Transparency After Newcastle Factory Compliance Findings", 23 Jun 2026. https://newcastillian.com/2026/06/23/mr-price-group-supply-chain-transparency-newcastle-factory-findings/
[6] Republic of South Africa, "Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993, sections 8 and 9", 1993. https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/act85of1993.pdf
[7] Republic of South Africa, "Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 (Laws.Africa consolidated text)", 1993. https://media.lawlibrary.org.za/media/legislation/369/source_file/d1068c7e542ae5f5/1993-85.pdf
[8] National Institute for Occupational Health, "Electrical Installation Regulations, 2009 (Government Notice R242)" (gazette text), 06 Mar 2009. https://www.nioh.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/eir2009.pdf
[9] Acts Online, "Electrical Installation Regulations, 2009, regulation 7: Certificate of compliance", 2009. https://www.acts.co.za/occupational-health-/gnei_n258_2_6_regulation_7_-_c
[10] Auditor Training Online, "What is Clause 8 in ISO 45001:2018?", 18 Apr 2022. https://blog.auditortrainingonline.com/blog/what-is-clause-8-in-iso-450012018
[11] Ecesis, "ISO 45001 Operational Planning and Control". https://www.ecesis.net/ISO-45001/Operational-Planning-and-Control.aspx
[12] GroundUp (via allAfrica), "Newcastle Clothing Factories Back Down in Court Battle", 12 Oct 2026. https://allafrica.com/stories/202610130052.html
[13] Bizcommunity (republishing GroundUp), "Labour department accused of shielding sweatshops", 01 Sep 2026. https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/labour-department-accused-of-shielding-sweatshops-308018a
[14] SAnews, "Nationwide labour blitz uncovers widespread worker exploitation at Tshwane textile factory", 24 Jul 2026. https://www.sanews.gov.za/node/83083
[15] Sunday Tribune, "Employers warned against locking workers inside factories", 31 Oct 2025. https://sundaytribune.co.za/news/2025-10-31-employers-warned-against-locking-workers-inside-factories
The full list is published free as the OHS Inspection Register: the forty two items an inspector can ask an employer to produce, each one against the provision it comes from. No cost and nothing to sign.