Street vendors and hawkers flood Bulawayo’s streets again

By Tichaona Sibanda
09 May 2006

One year after the government cleared the streets of urban centres across the country of vendors, beggars and street children, informal traders are trickling back but are forced to play hide-and-seek as police prowl the streets of Bulawayo. The city has witnessed an upsurge in the number of vendors and hawkers who are back on the streets. Street and market vending offers a means of earning an income for growing numbers of the unemployed and  since last year, hundreds of thousands of vendors have struggled to earn a living.

Themba Nkosi our correspondent in the city said vendors are once again a visible and distinctive part of Bulawayo’s landscape, offering a range of goods from small informal stalls, mats on the pavement, baskets that they carry on their heads and pushcarts and wares in baskets. Nkosi said although most traders are fighting for a right to earn a living, they face harassment by police, being chased off the streets and frequently have their goods confiscated.

Last year, government nearly obliterated street vending when heavily armed police blitzed stalls in all the country’s cities and towns as part of a slum clearance campaign dubbed ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ (Drive Out Trash). ‘Informal traders are back in numbers, driven by deepening economic hardship to try and eke out a living. It seems the police have lost hope in trying to contain the situation and seem to be looking the other way,’ Nkosi said.

Since the clean-up operation, the vendors had gone underground; some turned their homes into clandestine mini-shops, while others set up along the streets of working-class suburbs, ready to whisk their fruit and vegetables indoors at the slightest hint of an impending police raid. But reduced business due to overtrading in the suburbs eventually prompted them to go back to the city streets and avenues where business had always been brisk.

As a part of the self-employed sector, street vending has provided a means of livelihood for many thousands of workers who have lost their jobs in the last six years.