Emeka Nwandiko
Street hawkers in Johannesburg are threatening to “cleanse the streets” of foreign traders whom they blame for disease and decay.
Amid chants of “chase the makwere-kwere out” and “down with the foreigner, up with South Africans” a 500-strong crowd of informal traders toyi-toyied to the Department of Home Affairs in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
They delivered a memorandum which demanded an immediate halt to the issuing of work permits to foreigners.
It was the second time in as many months that hawkers have blamed foreign traders of robbing them of their livelihood. Violence flared in August when local traders meted out street justice to foreign traders, assaulting them and destroying their wares. This week’s march was peaceful.
Manikis Solomon, a representative of the Greater Johannesburg Hawkers’ Planning Committee which organised the demonstration, stoked the crowd that had assembled at the Library Gardens into a xenophobic frenzy when said: “These people are not welcome. No city in the world will allow the mess Johannesburg has come to. We must clean up the streets of Johannesburg of foreign hawkers.
“The pavements of Johannesburg are for South African citizens and not for foreigners.”
Urshula Dhalimi, who sells footwear, vases and disposable nappies in Hillbrow agreed: “We are the people who voted and suffered for this country and we can not even eat our sweat. Foreigners have taken our jobs.” She said South Africans could not compete with foreign hawkers who she claimed had flooded the market with cheap Chinese goods.
Honey Mamshila, who sells confectionery and tobacco in Hillbrow, said foreign workers had an unfair advantage as they sold less expensive goods which she claimed had been stolen. She demanded the immediate repatriation of Zimbabweans and Mozambicans who she accused of being the source of friction between locals and outsiders.
The protest ended with the handing over of a memorandum to Gavin Strachen, acting district representative of refugee affairs.
A senior immigration official predicted that further clashes would erupt between locals and foreigners as his department was unable to deal with the increasing weight of asylum applications which he said were as many as 100 a day.
“Anywhere else in the world an application for asylum is dealt in a short period of time. Here we have cases stretching back over three years. The hawkers are getting impatient. They want action and I can’t say I blame them. We have a very high unemployment rate in this country and we have to deal with our own first,” he said.