/ 22 October 1997

Street vendors threaten vigilante action

WEDNESDAY, 4.00PM

MORE than 700 of Johannesburg’s street vendors took to the streets on Wednesday to demand government action to halt the influx of foreigners, whom they blame for crime the decline in trade.

Amid chants in Zulu of “Chase the Kwere Kwere out” and “Down with the foreigner, up with the South Africans,” the demonstrators handed in a memorandum to the Department of Home Affairs which called for the immediate halt to the issuance of work permits to foreigners.

The hawkers have threatened to take action to clean the streets of Johannesburg themselves if the government fails to act.