Evading lions, crocodiles - and the authorities - may seem bad enough, but many hawkers in South Africa have been facing the often violent wrath of their fellow street traders.
- article from the Volume 7 no. 1 issue of Microenterprise News (1997)
website provided by OPENAIR-MARKET NET
Street traders can get very angry when their fragile livelihood is threatened. September saw Johannesburg city centre traders taking up sjamboks and sticks, attacking fellow but foreign street sellers.
The streets of the city, if not exactly paved with gold, have been seen by hawkers from several other South African countries as providing richer pickings than their home markets, and there has an influx. Their true numbers are extremely hard to determine, demonstrated by the widely differing estimates - from 500,000 to 6 million. Most come from relatively nearby Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but some from as far away as Ethiopia have been detained.
Getting into South Africa, though in some ways easy - it has a huge border which, some argue, simply cannot be satisfactorily patrolled - is fraught with dangers. One Mozambican was eaten by lions, one of several victims of the lions, while other wild animals have eaten 11 others including a mother and two year old child. The route from Zimbabwe via the Limpopo river has claimed lives when crocodiles have attacked.
Those that do make the hazardous journey can quickly find themselves involved in a circular, and tiring chirade of being expatriated, only to try and return again -and further confusing the figures as to how many incomers there are. Last year over 180,000 were repatriated, but, argue some observers, these figures often included the same determined people.
While South African traders have shown no reticence about labelling these interlopers as 'leeches' - AWe did not fight in the liberation struggle to let this happen", said one spokesman - others take a very different view.
Christian Rogerson and colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand argue that the immigrants are not in fact a drain on the system, rather they create employment through their small businesses.
At the micro-level however, it is clear why street traders are nervy. With unemployment at over 35 percent, and little chance of that changing in the short term, the South Africans are jealously guarding what they see as 'their' domain. Religious leaders too have attempted to engender some more generous instincts AWhile unemployment is a crisis for South Africa, that is no reason for the callous ill treatment of economic refugees" said one Methodist Bishop while others reminded traders that several African states, original home to some of the incoming traders, provided protection, housing and employment to many South Africans before the transition to multiracial rule.
...and a recent survey suggests that hawkers are not just tolerated they are an accepted way of life in South Africa - for everyone
Before the furore this month, a survey undertaken in June by Market Research Africa (MRA) for the South African newspaper Business Day found that eight in ten South Africans felt that there was a place for them on the streets of the towns and cities. The area-stratified sample of over 2,500 people is believed to represent the views of the urban adult population in the country. The findings also revealed that nearly five out of ten people do buy goods from the street traders at least once a month, many from low-income groups, but not exclusively so, a significant percentage of middle-class buyers were discovered. While a quarter of whites buy from street traders once a month some 66 percent of the black population do, a similar proportion of the Coloured population (63 percent) and 41 percent of Indians. Some 97 percent of white buyers said they would buy food from street traders, compared with 41 percent of all white respondents.
AThere seemed to be no support for the view that hawkers should be removed from the streets or corralled into special market areas@, remarked Hanna Fourie, MRA's MD. ALocal governments should heed the public=s opinion. Much as they might wish to resolve the many civic issues resulting from hawker activity, it is clear that confining street sellers to special trading areas, as proposed by various CBD authorities would put them out of business".
The support for hawkers did not extend to a 'free-for-all', with over a third favouring restriction to particular parts of the pavement, another third favouring off-street spaces, and only 15 percent believing that hawkers should have the freedom to set up anywhere.
The role of price was important regionally, and in those areas such as the North West province and Northern Cape, where it was believed that hawkers' goods were not cheaper than those of formal sellers, and as a consequence seldom bought from them. Correspondingly in the Western Cape where the majority of people felt that hawker prices were lower than those of other outlets some 63 percent of respondents bought from hawkers.
The Johannesburg area suggested that in some cases, other factors came into play. In the Gauteng region as a whole only 18 percent of whites regularly bought from street traders, although more than sixty percent of blacks did. While buyers still favoured pavement operations, the general public were less keen.
"Considering that there are an estimated 25,000 street traders in greater Johannesburg alone, it is not surprising that Gauteng residents attach greater importance to uncongested pavements, than to any convenience or savings they make in buying from hawkers" said Fourie.
For more information about Microenterprise News, contact Gwenda Brophy, Editor, 6 Mosslea Road, Bromley Kent BR2 9PS, UK. Tel/Fax 0181 460 2280. email<mentnews@netcomuk.co.uk> or <gbrophy@netcomuk.co.uk>