Hawkers will march to Johannesburg council offices on Wednesday in protest against being removed from streets in the inner city, the African Council for Hawkers and Informal Businesses (Achib) said on Saturday.
Achib general secretary Livingstone Mantanga said the planned march follows Achib not having received a reply to a request by street vendors to meet with Sol Cowan, the councillor responsible for informal business issues, to discuss the removal issue.
”Since last week, people have been removed from Bree and Wanderers streets,” said Mantanga.
He said that in May Achib had been promised that the council would host a ”policy dialogue workshop” with the hawkers to debate and review council policies on their businesses. However, hawkers said they had not been given the opportunity to debate the policy documents before the council embarked on the ”daily mass attacks on hawkers”.
Council spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane denied the hawkers were not invited when the city’s new by-laws were formulated.
”This argument does not have a base. Everybody was consulted when the new by-laws were promulgated,” he said.
He also said the council has a forum meeting monthly, chaired by Cowan, in which informal traders can raise their concerns. Achib is ”approaching matters wrongly” if it requests meetings other than the forum.
Modingoane said there is no intention of the city’s law-enforcement officers to harass hawkers.
”If there is any evidence [of harassment by law-enforcement officers] people should come forward,” Modingoane said, but also warned that law enforcement will continue.
”You cannot say because you are unemployed, you can just break the law,” he said.
Mantanga said Achib was surprised at the fines being given against people found trading on the street — some of whom have been ”making a living on the streets for more than 20 years”.
”We were not consulted about the fines [ranging from R350 to R740],” he said.
He said the council did not consider that the Fresh Produce Market, which is council-owned, makes about R800-million a month from the city’s hawkers who number more than 10 000. — Sapa