As South Africa’s unemployment lines keep growing in its first post-Apartheid recession, Johannesburg’s downtown sidewalks are increasingly crowded with street vendors hawking their wares.
Unlike many African cities, where curbside hawkers form part of life’s daily rhythm, South Africa tends to frown on street vendors in favor of its ever-expanding mall culture and efforts to create more formal employment.
“Informal trading is seen as a sign of underdevelopment and primitive — a sign of weakness,” said Thabo Koole, spokesman for the Ecumenical Service for Socio-Economic Transformation, a church group that works with the poor.
“Most of the informal traders are illiterate and poor and therefore treated as nuisance and eyesore that has to be wiped off the streets of the city,” he said.
But with unemployment swelling to 23.6 percent in statistics out last week, South African President Jacob Zuma and his ruling African National Congress (ANC) are already backpedaling on promises to create 500,000 jobs this year.
“We will die of hunger if we are going to wait for the ANC to create jobs,” Sthabile Mahlangu said as she pleaded with passersby to buy from her stall in downtown Johannesburg.
She lost her job as a domestic worker in 2007 and turned to street trading to make ends meet. She briefly gave up after being slapped with an 800 rand (US$100) fine.
“I couldn’t afford to pay it so I stopped. I stayed at home for about two months then decided to do this again,” she said.
The mother of four from Diepsloot township sells everything from hats, gloves to sweets and cigarettes, but has to compete with six other traders within a block.
“Look around you, there is more of us ... the number has more than tripled within the past three years alone,” she said.
An International Labour Organisation report estimated in 2000 that the country had 500,000 street vendors. A South African government survey estimated the number had nearly doubled to 987,000 in 2007.
University of South Africa researcher Andre Ligthelm said more and more people see street trading as their only hope to escape poverty.
Ligthelm said street trading contributed between 7 percent and 8 percent to the country’s economy.
But many big cities are pushing out vendors to make way for roads, trains, bus stations and other projects, leading to sometimes violent clashes.
Last month, Durban authorities tried to forcibly evict traders around a proposed new development to demolish a 99-year-old market and 10 surrounding informal markets, where more than 7,000 traders make a living.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait share a political foundation based on the “1992 consensus” and opposition to Taiwanese independence, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today said during her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Both sides of the Strait should plan and build institutionalized and sustainable mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation based on that foundation to make peaceful development across the Strait irreversible, she said. Peace is a shared moral value across the Strait, and both sides should move beyond political confrontation to seek institutionalized solutions to prevent war, she said. Mutually beneficial cross-strait relations are what the
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
RSS