3. Update on informal trading in Bulawayo: June 2006 27 “Ten years of rejection by those mandated with ensuring the well-being of the weak as well as the strong, has seen our members in the informal sector eking out a living in situations which ensure only abject poverty and despair.”28 Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Sithembiso Nyoni, grandiosely promised 41,000 vending bays by the end of 2005 – yet by August 2006, the number provided under the rebuilding scheme in Bulawayo is 120! A further 120 bays still await completion in this same vicinity. Bizarrely, vendors continue to be vetted and registered: around 9,000 vetted vendors exist 29 – but there are no legal bays for 99% of them to use! The promises continue to be made, but not delivered on. Who got the vending sites? Minister Sithembiso Nyoni recently opened this 120-bay vending mart in the Lobengula Street/4th Ave area – where vending used to be legal, with shelters previously supplied by City Council – and destroyed by OM. However, the authors were informed by vendors and also by Bulawayo City Council (BCC) officials, that predominantly women belonging to the ZANU PF women’s league were given licences to operate from this small mart. The Bulawayo Up-coming Traders’ Association (BUTA), which successfully sued the police for illegal arrest and loss of goods during OM, state in a document sent recently to the Mayor, that: “a top official in the Ministry of SME admitted clearly in the presence of the Minister Sithembiso Nyoni… that instructions were issued in Harare which ordered BUTA members to be excluded from being allocated bays at the said site”.30 This bears out the predictions that any meagre benefits out of Hlalani Kuhle would go to ZANU PF supporters in the now-established system of ruling party patronage in Zimbabwe – and would be designed to prevent empowerment of those who have bravely made a stand against the State during OM. A few-score of pre-existing vegetable and curio selling sites have been re-designated “legal”, in the immediate vicinity of the City Hall. Vending here was always legal – except during OM last year. The legal flea markets built and officially opened with pomp and ceremony at Unity Village and Fort Street in the 1990s – and shut down with much self righteous rhetoric in June 2005 - have been allowed to resume trading; again they accommodate a few score only. It is fair to state that, officially, vending in Bulawayo remains almost entirely illegal; at least 95% of licensed vendors are without legal sites. Reduced control of sector Furthermore, there is clearly less control of the informal sector at all levels in the wake of OM. This is ironic as the need to regularise the sector was given as the main motive for OM. The city is in some areas dirtier than before OM, as pointed out to us by BCC officials. The BCC used to get vending fees from vendors using licensed sites; they have lost income since OM, and can no longer offer legitimacy to thousands of people desperately trying to earn a living. The municipal 27 Information following, unless otherwise indicated, all comes from a series of interviews with three senior members of the BCC and with senior officials in the Bulawayo Up-coming Traders’ Association, representing vendors: August 2006. 28 Letter from Bulawayo Upcoming Traders’ Association (BUTA), which represents vendors: Re: Lists of concerns, sent to the Mayor of Bulawayo on 21 July 2006. 29 The Chronicle,15 May 2006, “Govt to construct vending marts for informal traders”. 30 Letter from BUTA: Re: Lists of concerns, sent to the Mayor of Bulawayo on 21 July 2006. 21