are frequently treated in a way that amounts to sexual harassment, and the endless insults to all are humiliating. When asked by BCC to desist from the continuing arrests, police reportedly stated that as the vendors had dared to take the police to Court and to get a High Court decision in their favour, they should be punished to show them that the police are above whatever the High Court says.32 Relations between BUTA and BCC The BCC has tried to negotiate more space and rights for the vendors, by negotiating directly with the police. The BCC has sent out appeals to sixty businesses in the city to try and encourage them to donate money to build vending shelters. Understandably, they have drawn almost a complete blank – only Ingwebu Breweries, which is in any case council-linked, has expressed a willingness to construct a shelter in return for free advertising on it. Most businesses are battling to survive and are not in a position to be charitable – and if they are, there is a perception that there is no point investing money in building vending shelters when central government may decide to knock them down in a year from now! It is clear that relations between the vendors and the BCC are poor, with the vendors’ perception being that they are constantly under siege from everyone.33 The vendors are apparently not fully cognisant of the fact that the BCC itself is now in many ways under siege – it is in some respects answerable to and has had to give up some of its authority to the Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC), set up a year ago and headed by the military under Lt Col Matavire, who oversees the Hlalani Kuhle reconstruction exercise of the informal sector.34 The BCC walks a fine line in trying not to confront central government on every issue, as government is continually attacking the BCC and looking for any excuse to undertake a coup similar to those in Harare and Mutare, which have seen MDC-dominant local councils being replaced by government imposed committees.35 BCC and raids on vendors The authors have themselves seen BCC trucks taking part in the harassment of vendors and in the blatant theft of their goods. On being asked specifically about this, the Mayor stated that it was true that some council employees had at one time formed a pact with the police, in which council trucks had been used together with plain-clothes police, to confiscate goods from vendors. However, the High Court Order puts council in a difficult position: vendors vending outside of designated marts are illegal. The Mayor stated that he was dealing with it as a matter of priorities - precious council fuel was needed for providing garbage collection and fixing water leaks etc and not to harass vendors. The Mayor clearly stated that the practice of BCC trucks harassing vendors had stopped. However, when the authors spoke two days later to BUTA, they reported that a BCC truck was still taking part in this harassment, and they had personally witnessed the very truck in question undertaking seizure of goods at Lobengula Street Mall the previous evening – the day after we spoke to the Mayor. It is our belief that the Mayor’s concern about vendors’ rights is genuine, but his ability to ensure these rights, is curtailed by the prevailing political atmosphere. It is 32 Senior BCC official reported this, August 2006. Letter from BUTA: Re: Lists of concerns, sent to the Mayor of Bulawayo on 21 July 2006. 34 See previous SPT reports and further ahead in current report for more on the IMC. 35 The Chronicle runs stories on a weekly basis in which government is chastising the BCC on a variety of issues: for example on the very day that the authors are drafting this section of the current report, 5 August, the whole front page is devoted to two stories attacking local authorities, under a main headline of “Mujuru raps council leaders”. 33 23