Socio-economic impact of OM on vendors: one year on We sit on the Lobengula Street Mall, and watch our members visibly getting poorer and sicker by the day. We see more and more children who should be in school joining their parents daily because there are no fees for them. Their clothes are falling into rags as we watch. We see those children becoming thinner and dirtier every week. They eat rotten food from dustbins because they can’t afford even food. So many of our members are sick, and they are just dying and dying. We used to go to the funerals but now we can’t afford taxi fares to attend. Now we just send our condolences… [Member of BUTA executive, 3 August 2006] One year ago, BUTA was a flourishing association with 3,000 vendors on their books and another 7,000 signed up for vetting procedures. BUTA used to provide a multitude of services to their members, including the option to join one of several housing co-operatives, an AIDS support programme and several burial societies. A year on, executive officials say the association and its members are devastated. All BUTA support programmes and services have been effectively destroyed; their members operate on the run, and they all lose thousands (millions) of dollars-worth of goods weekly, making the possibility of anyone earning a half decent living non-existent.39 The association can no longer pay rent for its one small office, relying on well-wishers. They cannot pay legal bills to take the police back to court to get the original court order enforced, to prevent police from their continual raids. BUTA says its members continue to trade as an act of defiance – and of desperation. The act of vending is now effectively illegal, with vendors operating in constant fear and on the move. Some of those we spoke to have “illegal” bays on Lobengula Street Mall - where they used to trade legally last year. They know that they have to expect to run and abandon their goods almost daily. This means displaying only a few goods at one time. Some of their members are old, many are ill, and many have young children, so the process of running away from the police is traumatic – but they have no option. The constant theft of their goods means that they have to continuously borrow money to recapitalise in the hope of making some profits before losing everything to the police again. Many are in dangerous levels of debt to loan sharks as a result. Life is exhausting and stressful, with vendors now all balancing on a precarious line between poverty and total demise. On 21 July, the vendors organised a demonstration and marched on City Hall with a petition of their grievances.40 220 were detained by the police and later released. On the whole, however, the vendors are now seldom arrested and formally charged – yet their goods are seized daily. In conclusion – 80% of families in Bulawayo survive from the informal sector – and yet this sector remains criminalised and un-regularised. This has to change. Obviously this is a senseless and cruel situation, one that has driven thousands of families that were barely coping with extreme economic hardship into the realms of terrible poverty. 39 One executive member we spoke to said that in the previous week he had had seized: a box of apples worth Z$ 10 thousand (10 million), three boxes of bananas at Z$ 4 thousand (million) each, 4 pockets of oranges at Z$ 800 (thousand) each and naartjies at Z$3,200 (Z$ 3,2 million). This is a total of Z$ 28 thousand (million) dollars worth of goods basically stolen in one raid – by the police - without recourse. A vendor can optimistically expect to make 50 million a month in total in sales, so this theft constitutes a loss of more than 50% of a month’s profits. 40 Letter from BUTA: Re: Lists of concerns, sent to the Mayor of Bulawayo on 21 July 2006 25