”Metro is killing me,” cries informal trader Lydia Masongo. The sole provider for her family of eight, Masongo says continued harassment by the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) in the inner city is making it impossible for her to eke out a living on the streets.
Since 1994, she has travelled from the East Rand every day to sell fruit and vegetables in De Villiers Street in downtown Jozi. She says police regularly harass her and steal her stock, leaving her with no proof of what has been taken. There have been days when she has lost as much as R1 500.
Numerous hawkers told the Mail & Guardian that their livelihoods are being destroyed, because their stock is stolen or rots in police custody. The South African National Traders Retail Alliance (Santra) says that members of the JMPD are stealing unlawfully confiscated goods while city authorities turn a blind eye.
”I am so tired of having my stock taken that when I see them [police], I hide my stock,” says Masongo. She points to a nearby alleyway which she uses as a regular hiding spot. She says anything she cannot hide vanishes into the back of a police truck, leaving her with no proof of what she has lost.
Excluding the poor
Edmund Elias, Santra’s spokesperson, says the drive to turn Johannesburg into a ”world-class city” and regenerate the CBD in the run-up to 2010 is an excuse. ”Their agenda is social exclusion of the poor,” he argues, adding that the city does not make proper provision for the thousands of micro-retailers who earn a living in the heart of Johannesburg.
Elias blames what he calls ”unconstitutional” bylaws, which allow poorly paid police officers to grab private possessions without a warrant or court order, resulting in a ”chaotic state of affairs”.
The bylaws, he says, are derived from an apartheid era law, Business Act no 71 of 1991, which allows local authorities to ban street trading in entire suburbs such as Rosebank, Norwood and Braamfontein. The result is that trading is confined to people with the resources to open formal shops, while poor people are forced to trade illegally to survive.
But Metro spokesperson Wayne Minnaar says hawking in the city centre is an ongoing problem and controlling it is part of the drive to turn Johannesburg into a world-class city.
”We don’t stop people trading in Johannesburg, but it must be done so people do not contravene the bylaws,” he argues. ”Trading is a part of South Africa, which is why we allow it.” Minnaar says traders’ goods are confiscated for transgressions such as trading that obstructs the pavement, trading next to an ATM and trading beside a government building or a place of worship. ”Any traders who contravene the bylaws get their goods confiscated and must pay [a fine] to get their goods back,” says Minnaar.
In terms of section 10 of the City of Johannesburg’s municipal bylaws, police are required to issue traders with a receipt recording the date, the name of the trader and a description of the goods confiscated. These items are taken to the JMPD pound in Loveday Street, where they are stored until traders come to claim them.
Minaar says it is ”not possible” that police are stealing goods from traders. He says every item impounded is recorded and there are records of every item placed in storage. He adds that the police donate goods to charity if they are not claimed after three months. Perishable items are stored for only three days.
But the traders paint a much murkier picture. Richard Mokhantso Dlamini has sold shoes in the inner city for the last five years. He says on May 8 this year, police raided his stall in Noord Street, where he trades at a local market. He was given permission to trade there by the management of the nearby Jack Mincer Park Shopping centre, which owns the ground, according to Santra chairperson Livingstone Mantanga.
The police apparently confiscated 20 containers of shoes, one of which Dlamini says contained more than R20 000 in cash he had squirrelled away.
Dlamini claims that he was not issued with a receipt until the next day, when he went to the Johannesburg central police station, accompanied by Mantanga. He says that while some of the goods were returned, several pairs of shoes and all his cash were missing.
Minnaar denies the claims about the issuing of receipts, saying that traders often abandon their goods when they see the police and the JMPD is forced to confiscate them without issuing receipts.
Traders here to stay
The City of Johannesburg denies that it is taking punitive measures against informal traders in the run-up to 2010.
”That is simply untrue and unlikely to happen for an event that will come and go, whereas street trading is here to stay,” says Jason Ngobeni, acting director for the City’s economic development department.
Virgil James, speaking on behalf of the city, says it ”condemns any corrupt activities and irregularities” by the Metro Police and says that traders’ associations are encouraged to gather evidence of misconduct and file a complaint with the JMPD’s internal affairs department.
Permit problems
The battle for the right to trade in the inner city is not confined to Johannesburg. In Durban, city bylaws that severely limit street trade have been in place since 1995. According to advocacy group StreetNet International, a global alliance of street vendors, a permit system governs who may trade in the inner city.
”The process of obtaining a permit is very inconsistent and not at all transparent,” says StreetNet co-ordinator Pat Horn. She says the city does not have proper or consistent procedures in place through which traders can apply for permits. When traders do apply, says Horn, they often do not get a response from the city, or they are simply refused a permit.
”This is causing a huge problem, because there is huge demand by the poor to engage in economic activity,” says JP Purshotam, an attorney with the Legal Resources Centre (LRC). He says people are forced to trade without permits and this has led to ”brutal enforcement” by authorities who regularly confiscate their goods. ”For many, street trade is often the only viable alternative other than crime,” argues Purshotam.
In 2005, the LRC launched a case in the Durban High Court on behalf of Mr Perumal Naidoo and the Phoenix Plaza Street Traders Association, challenging the constitutionality of the city’s bylaws that allow the confiscation of a trader’s goods.
Section 34 of the Constitution provides for legal disputes to be heard in court. The LRC argues that disputes about confiscated goods are dealt with by the metro police, who act as both judge and jury. They say that, while the courts are not closed to hawkers, the enormous cost of litigation makes it impossible for the poor to challenge the police in court.
The LRC further argues that the impounding of street traders’ goods flouts section 25 (1) of the Constitution, which states that no-one may be arbitrarily deprived of his or her property.
Tragically, says Purshotam, Mr Naidoo, the main applicant in the case, committed suicide after his stock was confiscated yet again. While this has obviously delayed the case, the matter is still being pursued in court.
