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.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS