Page SMME 4
SMME Supplement
Wednesday 25 February - 03 March 2015
Every day is budget day for the street vendor W
ith the business of the national Budget for the year 2015 complete and as the respective industries go forth and ponder what the carving up of the national pie means to their enterprises, for a large number of the country’s unsung heroes of entrepreneurship, this is just another ordinary day. Many are simple men and women with little or no formal education and in the normal scheme of things the lack of these opportunities will have most certainly doomed them to a life of abject poverty. But for Gaborone’s street vendors, hopelessness is not an option. They have
pulled themselves up by the boot straps and created businesses that help sustain them and their families. Gazette Business reporter Tlotlo Lemmenyane delves into the life of street vendor to truly understand what they face with every new dawn and most importantly what keeps them going. Many people within the formal sector are confronted with the challenge of making decisions on a daily basis. However, for such people, such decisions are made almost subconsciously because they really change very little in their lives; just routine corporate employment. The same cannot be said for street
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Even though councils are supposed to protect street vendors' interests, their role is restricted by existing laws that blatantly do not recognize the voice of a vendor.
The Botswana Gazette
vendors, who have to drag themselves out of bed everyday and make decisions that have a direct bearing on their very existence. With every new dawn, street vendors wake up to face the heavy and inescapable burden of having to decide if it is really worth it to set up a table somewhere around town and hope to sell some of their wares. But they soldier on because they have conviction;a survivalist conviction that is evident in their eyes and is obviously etched in their spirits. However, after a deeper conversation with a street vendor, one can’t help but notice a veneer of frustration and disappointment lurking beneath the hope of selling better than yesterday. Many are reluctant to share their names because they don’t want the world to know who they are, or rather what they go through everyday. It is not them they want us to know, but their stories that they believe are worth telling. I met with a frail old woman, probably edging towards her eighties, who shared her life story as a street vendor. She has been religiously working as a street vendor since 1981 and she was never daunted by life’s challenges and the disappointment of a slow day during which she didn’t sell anything. When her business went through trying times she sought divine guidance. Surprisingly, she was very meticulous in the way she did her work and sold her wares with dedication and passion. She has been managing her business since 1981 and by now she knows exactly what her customers want, like which goods move fast and which ones move slowly. She believes she has a duty to make sure that her supplies never run dry and that no customer is turned away because stock is in short supply. Ironically that is challenge many bigger business still struggle to reconcile on a daily. At another corner was a woman who just decided that the new year will begin with new challenges and therefore left her job to set up her own stall. When she spoke, one could sense apprehension and uncertainty because she wasn’t sure whether the choices she had made, to become a self employed woman who sold food on the street, would bear fruit. However she had hope that she would be able to sell her products. That hope was also boosted by the fact that she considered herself to be a good cook. Her voice exuded a mix of hope and fear; the hope of selling the food she had taken time and effort to prepare and the fear of frustration of having to return home with unsold food. She revealed how on some slow mornings she had to deal with the tough decision of having to warm up yesterday’s left overs or prepare a fresh serving. While it made economic sense to warm up yesterday’s food, it was not a viable choice because there was always a danger that customers would not be satisfied with the quality of her serving. And so she chose not to compromise quality, but rather lose a few Pulas in the hope that she will benefit by retaining customers with her fresh food. Asked what the presentation of monday’s budget means to them, Vendors Association Treasurer Mmolotsi Ramphuti answered that government’s lack of recognition of street vendors gives them a sense of detachment from the whole affair. “The only way government can start to acknowledge our existence is if the law is amended to offer us protection, especially that the economy is not what it used to be” lamented Ramphuti. He decried that even though councils are supposed to protect street vendors’ interests, their role is restricted by existing laws that blatantly do not recognize the voice of a vendor. He added that their protection is limited by the fact that councils are bodies that exist but do not have enforcement powers of the decisions they take as evidenced by the major’s faint voice on matters that concern them.