The Self Employed Women's Union (SEWU), set up in the early 1990s in Durban, South Africa, is modelled closely on SEWA. Following a visit to Ahmedabad and discussions with leaders from SEWA, women with a background of trade union organising set up a pilot project, followed by the launching of the trade union, initially in the Durban region, and later as a national organisation. By 1997, SEWU had around 4,000 members in both urban and rural areas.

SEWU follows SEWA closely in its general scope which it defines as organising informal women workers. In its early organising, the union covered two main groups of women workers, street vendors and homebased workers, with a majority coming from the first group. SEWU found that very few homebased workers were working for an employer on a piece-rate basis, with most being own-account workers, doing such work as dress-making for individual customers. As the union has expanded its organising outside the cities to rural areas, more homebased workers are joining, such as women who make mats from locally grown materials. In many cases, too, SEWU has found that women moved from homebased work to work outside the home where possible, and the distinctions are not rigid.

For example, one of the demands of homebased dress-makers is for a collective working space. With the support of SEWU, it has been possible to negotiate with local authorities for a common working place. So, women can shift from being purely homebased to using space outside the home. Some women also do both producing and selling, for example, in traditional bead work which is sold by women on street stalls, but also made by them, at home or while they are working at their stalls.

SEWU has found that for the poorest women workers, collective organisation is needed in order to give them strength to negotiate for better conditions in order to improve their living and working conditions. SEWU does not itself organise business training for individual women although the union refers people to other groups who provide this service. in general, SEWU considers that for most of the poorest women workers, setting up an independent business is not a viable option and that collective organisation is the main way in which they can make a better livelihood.

SEWU is also looking at training in occupations that are non-traditional for women. It is difficult for women to compete in some sectors such as garmetns, wehre there is an oversupply of skilled women workers. They are encouraging women to train in skills such as electrcian and plumber and ther have now been examples of women doing homebased work in these non-traditional skills, having moved out of a sector seen as traditional women's work.