684 700 600 500 337 400 300 186 200 No. of Vendors Registered Vendors 189 75 41 100 0 Arrest Confiscation Assault Goods Burnt Figure 2: VISET Chart on State of Vending in Zimbabwe in July 2015 2 The table below shows the violated human rights of vendors; the table also indicates that it was vendors in the major cities who were most affected. Arrests Confiscations Locality Registered Nonregistered Harare 75 57 Value of Confiscated Goods Value of Burnt Goods Assaults Registered Nonregistered Displaced Vendors 168 116 $195 908 $690 000 123 136 140 Bulawayo 43 164 $169 000 81 Gweru 32 90 $89 650 54 Masvingo 19 67 $104 681 28 Mutare 28 79 $20 000 51 37 322 Domboshava 7 516 $579 239 337 173 462 TOTAL 75 186 168 $690 000 Figure 3: VISET Figures on the Human Rights Violations for July 2015 The assault of the vendors was reportedly carried out by the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), municipal police officers and space barons. As of July only Harare and Mutare had managed to remove vendors from the CBD. The vendor crisis coincided with the dismissal of thousands of Zimbabwean workers following a Supreme Court judgment of 17 July 2015 which set a precedent to allow companies terminate workers contracts on three months’ notice. By the end of July thousands of workers across the country had been laid off. Unemployment is increasingly recognized as a driver of instability and a root cause of conflict. A study by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 2013 on the effects of youth unemployment on political instability proved with empirical evidence that youth Figure 4: Vendors milling around Department of Works offices 2 VISET – Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation 3 unemployment is significantly associated with an increase of