Alex T. Magaisa
Back in 2004, I went on my first and only visit to Accra, the capital of Ghana, a land of warm-hearted and welcoming people. Ghana holds a special place in the history of sub-Saharan Africa, being the first country to gain independence in 1957. And being a lifelong student of history, that trip to Ghana was a pilgrimage of sorts.
Arriving in Accra, I was struck by three features – first, it was the heavy coat of heat that enveloped my person as soon as I stepped out of the aircraft, giving clear notice that it was indeed, excessively hot on the West African coast. It didn’t take long before I started sweating. The air-conditioning system would be on at all times throughout my stay in Accra. I marveled at locals as they walked briskly and ran around in the heat. Clearly, they had adapted.
The second was the realisation that the warmth was not confined to the weather, but that Ghanaian people are generally blessed with warm and endearing hearts and personalities. Everywhere you go it’s ‘Akwaaba’ (You’re welcome). And you do feel welcome. For that reason, I developed an ever-lasting bond with the country and its people. I love Ghana a lot.
The third were the less flattering scenes on the streets and pavements of Accra. It was hectic, if not completely haphazard. It looked like there was a swarm of vendors everywhere. The vendors sold all sorts – unsurprisingly, in the warm temperatures, ‘ice-water’ was a very popular commodity especially at road intersections.
Coming from Harare, I had never seen so many vendors in the city centre. When I raised the topic with my amiable taxi driver, he just laughed – a very loud, hearty and warm laugh! He must have found my enquiry rather odd. He immediately veered off the road without notice before stopping and yelling at a young woman walking in front of us, carrying a very large dish full of large, oily buns.
The taxi driver bought two of the large buns, one of which he generously handed over to me and insisted I must try because it was so good. The name of the bun now escapes me but, yes, it got my approval, despite my initial doubts. It was rather tasty, although I could not finish it in one go. He scoffed his bun very quickly, which I put down to experience and an empty stomach.
I found the whole experience in Accra quite fascinating and an eye-opener. We were having trouble in Zimbabwe, but city centres were still largely regulated in strict style. It was unusual to see vendors in Harare’s central business district. There was order and vendors were generally prevented from plying their trade in competition with licences operators. When I later raised the subject with other colleagues, they laughed and said, “Welcome to Africa!” You should go to this and that country, they said, recommending various African capitals.
At the time, I wondered whether Harare, and Zimbabwe in general, would go down the same route. Looking back now, with the obvious advantage of hindsight, I should have seen that we were firmly on our way there. Just a decade after that trip, central Harare has truly become Vendors’ City, as I discovered during my March trip to the capital.
How did it get to all this for Harare?
The answer lies, at least in part, in the state of the economy and politics of populism, in which local authorities powers are emasculated by a paranoid state. This in many ways is the familiar story in the evolution of African cities. Population grows, the formal economy crumbles, the informal sector grows as everyone tries anything to eke out a living. At the same time, the operation of city by-laws and rules is suspended in the interests of political convenience.
Rising Unemployment
Sometime in mid-April this year, Zimstats, the national statistics agency announced that the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe stood at a lowly 11,3%. This was said to have risen from 4,8% in the previous year.
These figures were shocking given the obvious terminal decline of Zimbabwe’s industry and economy over the last few years. More companies have closed, industrial plants lie idle and formerly vibrant industrial cities like Bulawayo have turned into museums of 20th century industry. The truth is that there are far less people in formal employment than there were ten years ago. There is less industrial activity than there was 40 years ago, during the colonial period.
In addition, these figures came at a time when companies, including banks and media organisations, were actually closing shop. In response, Zimstats explained that their statistics included persons who had moved into the informal sector and justified their methodology on the grounds that it was consistent with ILO standards.
Be that as it may, it was plain that these official figures obfuscated the dire reality of a dying economy and rising formal unemployment. The government’s tax revenues have declined partly because the income tax base has shrunk drastically over the last few years thanks to rising unemployment in the formal sector. The real unemployment rates have been pegged at 80-85% and the bulk of the 15-20% who are formally employed are civil servants.
Where has everyone gone to?
Some have gone into agriculture but by far the majority of those who have become redundant or cannot find work after completing their education have found themselves doing informal activities (kukiya-kiya) and vending in the streets. Some refer to it as Zimbabwe’s Kiya-kiya Economy – you do what works to earn a living. Others have simply referred to it as a Vendors’ Economy. A trip across Harare gives the impression that everyone is selling something to someone but you wonder who is actually doing the buying.
The wares on sale are as diverse as the vendors themselves. Tomatoes, rat poison, second-hand shirts and underwear, axes, second-hand books, cheap aphrodisiacs – everything is on sale in the streets of Harare. Like other cities, Harare has always had vendors. But they were confined to the periphery of the central business district and often in designated spots.
Mbare Musika, the big market in the bustling high-density suburb of Mbare was the hub of fresh-produce vending. It was conveniently located near the city’s main bus terminus for long-distance buses going to rural areas. Every shopping centre dotted across Harare also had a section where women put up their stalls and sold fresh produce, from vegetables to bananas and whatever fruits were in season. But the CBD was generally free of vendors.
First Lady for Vendors
Over the years however, the vendors moved closer and closer to the CBD, until more recently when they found a home on the pavements in the heart of the city. When the city council, which runs the city threatened to remove the vendors earlier this year, arguing that they were unregulated and were inconveniencing established shop-owners and licence-holders, the First Lady Grace Mugabe stood up for them.
She had just completed her controversial campaign, which had culminated in the unceremonious dismissal of the then Vice President Joice Mujuru and her allies and her rise to the leadership of Zanu PF’s Women’s League. She was flexing her political muscle. So when she spoke, the authorities listened. In any event, she had spoken a language that is well-understood in the vending community.
She had spoken in typical populist language – let the people do what they can to survive, do not remove them from the pavements. Who could dispute that without appearing out of touch and uncaring?
But as with all things populist, this support of the vending community has also backfired. Now the same state media which did not dare to question the First Lady’s call just a few months ago is carrying narratives that describe vendors in disparaging terms. Now the vendors are being characterised as the problem. The real reasons that drove them to the city centre and the fact that they gained their confidence from the backing of the First Lady are simply ignored. What has caused this change of narrative in the state media and within the corridors of power?
Vendors and the Security Question
The answer lies in the security question and the paranoia of a regime that has failed to deliver on its promises and is scared of its people. This is a regime that promised 2 million jobs and has delivered very little, if anything, to write home about. Interestingly, this fear and the approach of the government towards control of the city centre is one that also demonstrates the continuity between the colonial and post-colonial eras.
Harare was built in such a way that the high-density areas are largely located away from the centre of the city with easy-to-control arterial routes. The logic of the urban geography of the colonial city was that the best way to quell protests was to do it at source; by restricting the potential threats as far away from the city centre as possible or if close, where there were sufficient tools to block entry. Hence, arguably the city centre of Harare is relatively easy to seal off in the event of trouble. If there is trouble the security forces simply seal off the arterial roads from the Western and Southern sides. The colonial state knew this and the post-colonial regime did not forget these lessons.
This, in part, also explains the various pieces of legislation which restricted the entry of black Africans into certain areas of the city. Anyone who has read The Lift, a story in Charles Mungoshi’s Coming of the Dry Season, a beautiful collection of short stories will remember the vivid portrayal of life in the city centre for unemployed young Africans in the colonial times. Back then, black Africans had to get passes to enter certain segregated areas of the city. Controlling entry was an important tool of regulating public spaces and therefore controlling the population.
For the state, from a security perspective, this notion of creating barriers of entry into the city remains relevant today, as it was then. This is why vendors are seen as a problem. Allowing vendors into the city centre was a lapse in concentration on the part of the state. The First Lady may not have had the political judgment of The System. She saw a vending community that needed to be pleased, but she did not appreciate that the large population of vendors in the city centre could be seen as a political hazard in waiting. Unbeknown to her, she had opened the floodgates to vendors, and created a security problem, and I suspect, much to the displeasure of the security establishment.
And this is the real reason why the vendors have been given an ultimatum to leave the city centre within seven days or face the wrath of the army. The very fact that the army has been roped in to deal with the ‘problem’ demonstrates the validity of the argument that the presence of vendors in the city is seen as a security threat to The System, that we have discussed fairly extensively on this site.
Readers of this website will recall the following paragraph in our article entitled, “Understanding ‘The System’ in Zimbabwean Politics”:
“The System and Vendors
The System is also there among vendors, gathering data and understanding social movements. Soon Harare’s multitudes of vendors will be flushed out, not just because of the need to restore order in the CBD but because The System has by now, already calculated that too many people in the city pose a serious threat. Their presence in the CBD is creating a huge reservoir which could break the floodgates and cause a flood of protests that would be hard to control. My prognosis is very soon, the vendors will be gone, although other benign-looking reasons will be given for driving them away”.
It turns out that the prognosis was absolutely correct. The Minister of Local Government, Ignatius Chombo was yesterday threatening vendors and giving them an ultimatum to leave their city centre or risk military enforcement of their removal. As Achebe wrote in that all-time classic, the lizard that jumped from the high Iroko tree said it would praise itself if no-one else did!
They will give all sorts of reasons but the truth is that the increasing numbers of vendors in the city centre were now being seen as a security threat by The System. They vendors may not have had any sinister thoughts, thinking only of survival in a tight economic environment, but the security establishment would have been worried. In Tunisia, where the so-called Arab Spring began, the popular story is that it all began with the plight of a vendor at the hands of the establishment.
The huge numbers in the city centre, some of whom had set up permanent stalls and were sleeping in the city centre overnight, the growing disgruntlement with the declining economic conditions must all have been seen as a clear recipe for disaster. The System would have got worried by the potential threat, hence the decision to risk unpopularity in the short-term but having removed the source of a long-term problem which would be harder to contain. They saw the vendors, the tough environment, the growing disgruntlement with government as the proverbial powder-keg that only required a charismatic individual or group to create a spark.
This may have been motivated by paranoia, as there does not seem to be any opposition group or individual with that capability. The disappearance of activist Itai Dzamara is most likely explained by the same fear. He might not have been an immediate threat at the time but his stance might have been regarded as a potential threat in the future. The vendors are not demonstrating. They have not threatened The System. But for The System it is better with them out of the way than creating masses of loitering, hungry and angry men and women in the streets of the capital.
Yet all having been said and done, the removal of the vendors will not solve the problem that caused them to migrate to the CBD in the first place. Shop-owners, city workers and the pseudo-middle class will, no doubt, be relieved that they are now getting their space back. After all, they regard the vendors as no more than a nuisance. They sneer, looking at vendors as undesirable miscreants who are taking away the sunshine from the Sunshine City. They want their pavements back. And yes, the army can and should come to remove these people. Vendors must go! they will say.
This attitude of the pseudo-middle class is not unfamiliar. The removal of the vendors will probably scratch of the symptoms, but it will not solve the real problems that brought them to the pavements of the city centre. To use a cliché made famous by former US President Bill Clinton in the nineties, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
You can drive away the vendors from the city centre, but it’s the economy that needs a solution and that solution can only emerge from the resolution of the long-standing political question. In a future piece, we shall touch on this connection between the political and the economic questions.
Wamagaisa
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