Employing more than one million people, domestic service is one of the largest sources of employment for black women in South Africa. In this article, we contend that, historically, the impact of apartheid has been to skew the analysis of employment relationships in domestic workspaces in South Africa so that the power asymmetry and exploitation that so characterise these relationships have been labelled an artefact of the racist apartheid regime and its legislation. By reviewing literature on domestic workers globally and drawing on a study into the impact of the Sectoral Determination for the Domestic Worker Sector, which was promulgated in 2002, we argue for a broader understanding of this relationship: one that takes into consideration its global similarities.

Subject area Sustainable development; business, government, and society. Study level/applicability The case is designed to be taught to students at MBA and MA level. Case overview In February 2009, Justin Smith, manager of the good business journey at Woolworths, a leading South African department store, was a worried man. Woolworths had launched its five-year sustainability strategy just under two years before. After undertaking an impact assessment, Smith was concerned that the original targets – which covered transformation, social development, the environment and climate change – had been set without a clear understanding of exactly what it would take to achieve them. Woolworths had recently identified ten key risk areas that impacted on the achievement of its original goals. If the sustainability goals were not reached, Woolworths could lose credibility among its shareholders, staff, and consumers. What did Woolworths need to do to ensure that it achieved its sustainability goals? And had the company been too ambitious in the targets it had set initially, he wondered? Expected learning outcomes To examine the differences, if any, between sustainable development in South Africa and other developing nations and sustainable development in developed nations; to impart an understanding of sustainability in its broadest sense; to investigate the challenges in implementing sustainability strategies in business; to look at ways of measuring the success of sustainability strategies; and to explore whether and how sustainability strategies should differ across industry sectors and across companies. Supplementary materials Teaching notes.

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The informal sector in South Africa is a significant, but not well understood phenomenon. One important question relates to the nature of the relationship between the formal and informal sector. This article uses Porter’s five forces model to interrogate the linkages between informal fruit and vegetable traders in the Natalspruit Market (Ekurhuleni) and their formal suppliers, primarily the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market. While the threat of new products is low, the street traders’ position is weakened by the threat of new entrants, consumer bargaining power and lack of cooperation among street traders. In relation to supplier power, we conclude that while this varies according to a number of factors, the formal sector is dominant over informal fruit and vegetable sellers in this market. This finding rests primarily on the observation that, because of their fragmentation, the informal traders’ collective buying power is not being used in the same way as large formal retailers of fruit and vegetables to obtain better terms of trade with the formal economy supplier.

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