STREET TRADERS - Contemporary Histories

STREET TRADERS Contemporary Histories

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MIMI MATUSSE 46 - 57

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PRETTY NTULI 32 - 43

THOKO ZWANE 18 - 29

INTRODUCTION 9 CLEAN SWEEP 12 -15

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INTRODUCTION Street Traders – Contemporary Histories is focused specifically on three street traders operating in Joubert Street, which crosses diagonally with the Kerk Street linear market.

Through a series of dialogues throughout the year, Thoko Zwane, Mimi Matusse and Pretty Ntuli, have shared personal stories about the factors that impact their businesses. Each reflected on their shifting relationship to a city that grapples with the disconnect between its two contracted identities, that of world-class city and African metropolis.

By way of the conversations it was apparent that strong bonds have developed and exist between each of the women and the city.

These are informed by their individual choices to come to Johannesburg for work, which ultimately brought them to Joubert Street.

Each of the traders have compelling stories of what it means to be small business owners in Johannesburg and the changes that they have seen over the last 15 to 20 years.

Their narratives personalise the experience of a changing city and how individuals are impacted by the implementation of trade policy.

The publications serves as an entry point to a street level perspective upon how the city is

understood and experienced on a day-to-day basis.

Clean Sweep by Niren Tolsi investigates the impact and complexities of Operation Clean Sweep, which was implemented in late October 2013. This brought about the clearance of all the street traders from the CBD for three months. The intention is to give an overview of the various role players at that time and the effect it had on traders in other areas of the CBD. Mandla Mabaso, who was interviewed by Niren, did not return in December that year.

Each of the three sections starts with a brief biographical introduction to one of the three traders, followed by a map that shows their individual reach. A selection of quotes follow, which speak to each trader’s understanding of the city and their place within it. The photographs by Fulufhelo Mobadi give a glimpse into the specific spaces along Joubert Street that each of the traders occupies and focuses on the products that they sell.

The project was made possible through funding by the National Arts Council of South Africa.

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CLEAN SWEEP Standing on the corner of Kerk and Joubert streets in Johannesburg’s inner city on Tuesday morning at the end of October in 2013, Mandla Mabaso said he was ready to die.

“I’m going to toyi-toyi [against the evictions of inner-city informal traders] and I hope I die,” said the street cobbler, tears forming in his eyes. “It is better that I die than see my children suffer.”

Earlier that morning, Mabaso had kept R13 for the taxi fare he needed to get from his home in Soweto to Johannesburg’s city centre where he fixes shoes from 07h30 until 19h00 at night. Mabaso had given the rest of his money to his wife to take their two children, Sicelo (5) and Ntombizodwa (5), to the local crèche.

But when Mabaso (32) arrived at his usual spot he was told by members of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department that neither he nor the almost 100 traders who eke out a living at the Kerk Street linear market would be allowed to trade there. There was no indication given to them, of when they might be allowed back.

Mabaso, like many of the traders, had no money to return home. Nor could he imagine 12

how he was going to find the R450 for next month’s rent, or the R600 to keep his children in crèche during October. He was inconsolable.

“I’m not feeling good, man,” he said. “Even inside I am crying. I suffer for my children and I just don’t understand why this government is doing this to us. They say ‘vukuzenzele [get up and do something for yourself]’; we do that and earn an honest living and then they send the police to stop us … It’s better that I die now,” said the cobbler, who had worked that part of pavement for the past 10 years.

Across town at Delvers Street, in what is commonly known as Johannesburg’s Ethiopian quarter, Frank Okorie (19) is a bitter man. He had let his guard down earlier that morning and the police had pounced – confiscating 30 of the 40 designer-labelled jeans he had in stock and that he sold for R100 each.

“I am a law-abiding person” He had evaded the police and South African Revenue Service (SARS) officials who were raiding the area around Delvers Street in the mayhem of fleeing Ethiopian traders, but his stock had not.

“I sell my jeans for R100 and you can count how much I have lost already,” said Okorie, a Nigerian national.

“I am a law-abiding person. I sell these jeans so that I can feed my family back at home, pay for rent here as well as find something to eat. I am now left with only these jeans. I have lost so much. My customers also do not know where to find me now,” Okorie said as he set off to try to sell his remaining 10 pairs of jeans.

Although the police evicting traders who are registered with the city in Kerk Street gave them 10 minutes to clear away their stock, those in the Ethiopian quarter appeared to have been caught in a maelstrom of police brutality.

Foreigners were searched for asylum papers, their wares were confiscated and the police threatened to assault several traders.

The fleeing traders left behind the debris of their survival: CDs, clothes, vegetables and other food, which were spirited away by the police to locations unknown, according to traders.

The crackdown on informal traders has been taking place since October 10 – an initiative the City of Johannesburg has called “Inner City Clean Sweep”, or “Operation Clean Sweep” which was an indiscriminate attack on traders. Even traders who were registered with the municipality, were also removed.

According to a statement released by city spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane “Clean Sweep” was the brainchild of councillor Ros Greeff, the mayoral committee member for the inner city. It was described as a “strategic intervention” to address “challenges” such as illegal trading, dumping and littering. It was to also target land and building invasions in the inner city, illegal electricity connections and to respond to the “lack of a civic pride and ownership”.

According to emails between city officials leaked to me during an investigation into “Clean Sweep”, the clampdown was a “directive” from the mayor, Parks Tau.

Modingoane did not respond to specific questions, including what the plan entailed and what time frames the city was adhering to regarding the expected outcome. In hindsight, the city’s approach appeared to have been scatter-gun and rushed. Years later there is still very little evidence, on the streets, of a concerted effort by the city to create the “civic pride and ownership” that it had identified as lacking. People sell and work in similar conditions to those of 2013.

The informal traders had enlisted the legal aid of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (Seri), which had won them their return to the streets two months later after an urgent application to the Constitutional Court.

Seri’s Dennis Webster said the root of the problem was the manner in which the city “imagined” informality and its repressive approach at attempted regulation of the sector.

“Seri’s experience in working with traders in Johannesburg’s inner city reveals that the regulation of informal trade is restrictive, non-consultative, and orientated towards enforcement rather than development,” said Webster. “The City of Johannesburg, through this restriction, is instrumental in producing illegality. The City’s restrictive approach, which limits spaces in the inner city for informal traders, and continues in its latest ‘designation’ plans for informal traders, coupled with the fact that its regulatory mechanisms are currently in disarray, mean that the City is complicit in producing the kinds of unregistered trade which Operation Clean Sweep ostensibly set out to end.”

This sort of disarray kept many breadwinners off the streets, and without an income for almost two months. Two vital months that led up to the December holidays when Johannesburg usually shuts down and people return to their rural homes, and for which additional income is saved for gifts.

The uncertainty had exacerbated an already precarious financial situation for most traders.

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“Trading has been very slow the last five years, because people have been losing their jobs,” said Theresa Bandura (55) at the time. Bandura was a hairdresser who has been working in Kerk Street since 1996.

“We usually make money for our rent and groceries closer to month end, which is now.

If we don’t return soon, I will be kicked out of my home and I am supporting 10 people who will go hungry. We are dead.”

The municipality’s aggressive approach towards the traders also appeared to go against its official policy, such as the Inner City Charter of 2007, which calls for “extensive consultation” with stakeholders such as traders in any inner city rejuvenation plans, and the Jo’burg 2040 Growth and Development Strategy, which also calls for inclusion regarding decisions and actions in the inner city.

For May Pela (41), who sells traditional clothing on Eloff Street, her concern was much more immediate. Her 23-year-old daughter, Vuyokhazi, was in the middle of her third-year marketing exams and needed R30 for transport every time she travelled to exam centre.

“If I don’t find the money, my daughter can’t write her papers. If she misses her exams, she will repeat it next year, instead of looking for a job.”

Pela said she was paying R830 a month for her daughter’s courses.

There were other knock-on effects too: Mohammed Mia, a local Bangladeshi shopkeeper, says most of the street traders buy stock from him. He estimates that he will lose about R20 000 a month if the blanket ban continued and that he would have very little money to provide for his family and his own survival.

“The traders also keep the tsotsis away because they take care of their stock on the street. Now they will come back. And if traders are going hungry, if they have children to feed, maybe some will also turn to crime because they are desperate,” Mia said.

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Edmund Elias, a book trader on Joubert Street who belongs to the South African National Traders’ Retail Alliance, estimated that, conservatively, about 25 000 people are dependent on the traders and were affected by the police action, which he said is “perplexing” and has turned the city centre into a “war zone”.

He said traders were also worried about confiscated stock because police had been unable to record and audit it, and there were threats that traders’ storerooms around the city would also be raided, costing people everything they have.

The city’s street purge has far-reaching consequences: according to a 2011 quality of life survey conducted by the Gauteng CityRegion Observatory, 35% of respondents said at least part of their income was derived from the informal sector.

A lack of coherency characterised the mayoral plan to “clean up” the inner city, even though it was hatched more than a year before Operation Clean Sweep was unleashed.

A leaked report compiled by the office of Roslynn Greeff, the member of the mayoral committee in charge of development planning, was completed on October 10 2012, and presented to Mayor Parks Tau’s mayoral lekgotla six days later.

The report called for a “new broom” to respond to the challenges of pollution and criminal activity in the inner city. It identified “challenges” that place the inner city “on a slippery slope to potentially becoming a slum”, including cleanliness levels, the invasion and hijacking of buildings, illegal trading, migration and influx management, poor management of city properties and neglected, empty potholes.

Yet, while it also calls for every city department and stakeholder involved, including the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD), the Johannesburg Roads Agency and Pikitup cleaning services, to come up with a programme of action that

includes medium- and long-term targets, “with emphasis on the short term”, the city only went as far as removing vendors from the streets.

City spokesperson, Mamonyane said that the removal of the estimated 5 000 to 6 000 traders, which started at the beginning of October, dovetailed with a “simultaneous” cleaning of the streets and fixing of potholes.

However, an inspection of the area between Park Station and Albertina Sisulu Street found uncollected rubbish and unrepaired streets.

As the weeks trundled on evicted traders, the majority of whom had legal permits from the city to trade, remained unsure where their next meal would come from, or whether their children can continue to attend school and write their upcoming final examinations.

“I ate only white bread last night [Wednesday],” said Mandla Mabaso a week after his eviction.

Mabaso, who has two children, aged three and five, said that he had decided to sell his computer “so that I can hopefully make about R700 to send my children to crèche and buy some food for the month”.

He said he had borrowed money to pay his November rent and with his children’s crèche costing R600, he hoped to use cash from the computer sale to buy food and groceries.

Mabaso is also worried that customers who left their shoes with him to repair would not be able to reclaim them because he was no longer trading from his usual spot; and he may not be allowed to return until next year.

This was confirmed by Mamonyane, who said that police were “going to maintain the streets like this until January next year”.

With its streets cleared of people for over two months, Johannesburg’s vibrant hustle and bustle had diminished.

On December 5 the Constitutional Court ordered that street traders be allowed to return to the streets immediately. Later that Thursday afternoon they did so, only to be met, again, by police who were intent on forcing them back off with threats, intimidation and violence. Seri’s lawyer, Nomzamo Zondo, had intervened, attempting to bring to the attention of the Johannesburg Metro Police Department the ruling by the country’s highest court which safe-guarded the traders’ return to the streets. She was arrested and detained late into the night.

We exchanged text message conversations during her detention, Zondo expressed concern that she was unable to breast-feed her recently-born baby due to the detention, and her exasperation over how the law appeared to elude those who were meant to interpret and maintain it. Subsequently, the law was also proving elusive for those who it had sought to protect.

Her colleagues and her clients were at Johannesburg Central Police Station, petitioning and arguing for her release. The traders had still not been allowed to return to the streets. News started filtering through of the death that evening of former President Nelson Mandela. Zondo remained behind bars. The traders went another day without vital income.

A version of the article was published in the Mail and Guardian on 23 October 2013.

Niren Tolsi believes journalism is always in need of a defibrillator. His areas of interest include citizen mobilisation and protest, state violence, Constitutional law, social justice, Test cricket, football and satire.

The Constitutional Court victory highlighted the chasm that existed between South Africa’s progressive legislation and jurisprudence and its articulation in the everyday lives of ordinary citizens.

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THOKO ZWANE THOKO ZWANE, was raised in Utrecht (KwaZulu-Natal). During her school, higher primary, she was taught to make beadwork. This was before she received her Junior Certificate in 1976. She worked in a shirt factory in Newcastle for seven years before moving with her family to Johannesburg in 1988. They settled in Orlando West (Soweto) moving in with her cousin. Thoko started work at Lionel’s Butchery on Rissik Street. She left in 1990, because of poor pay, to join her husband at a waste paper company in Braamfontein. In 1994 she started Calprin Panel beaters, in Booysens only to leave in 1996 to start selling traditional

garments and beads at a bus stop on Eloff Street in the Central Business District. After Metro Police chased her away, she moved her stand to the current location on Joubert Street, where she has been trading for 20 years.

Her husband passed away in 2000. She has raised two children. Her daughter is 32 and has two children of her own, a boy and a girl. Her son is 22 and is currently attending a College in Newtown.

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The thing that I have seen change ‌ it was just this paint, the yellow paint here. The other thing that I see is the paving, they made it bigger. We are still here‌ we are outside.

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T RISSIK S

) ST

A (JEPPE

MOOS RAHIMA

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STALL Stand 53

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HOME Orlando West, Soweto

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STORAGE Cnr Von Brandis and Pritcard St

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PRODUCT - BEADS Diagonal St

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PRODUCT - BEADS/FINISHINGS Ismail’s, Cnr End and Albertina Sisulu St

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PRODUCT - FABRIC/FINISHINGS Material Centre, Albertina Sisulu St

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COSTUMERS Areas in which costumers are based

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ULU ST

INA SIS ALBERT

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SOWETO

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END

TROYE S

RD ST

PRITCHA

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LLIGH VON WIE

KERK ST

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JOUBRT

MAIN ST

NUGGE T ST

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MOOI ST

IS VON BRAN

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CITY DEEP

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ROSETTENVILLE

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It’s not the same as before. At least I managed to build my house, with money from my business. In 2010, I built six rooms.

I was buying my own stand and built my house.

I bought my stand in Osizweni in KZN.

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When I am making these things for the weddings they were calling me to be there. Some times they want me to a Matron of Honour, to fit them.

Before it was plenty of weddings. Now it is dropping down because plenty of people are making the same thing in town.

But before there were plenty of the weddings that I was making for, they were inviting me. Some were in KwaZulu-Natal: Newcastle inside the town, Osizweni and Mthandeni. Some were in Rosettenville and some in Soweto.

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When I came here there was no Game store, there were no ... there was no Edgars here. Big shops came to Joubert Street. They are not coming in the same year. At least Edgars, it was founded here in 2004. Game at least ‌. at least 2006. Woolworths was there.

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PRETTY NTULI PRETTY NTULI worked as an assistant secretary to a lawyer, before leaving Botswana in 2000, to help her sick sister run a fruit and vegetable stand. Her sister had come to Johannesburg in 1994 and started selling fruit and vegetables. Over a two year period she worked under her sister learning the business. Once her sister recovered, she started a food stall in the adjacent stand and offered Pretty the fruit and vegetable stand.

She is a part of the Inner City forum, which assist the traders with the correct implementation of the by laws and managing of stalls. She is also a block

leader for the Central Johannesburg Partnership (CJP) and is a member of Johannesburg Wellness of Development (JOWDET) co-operative.

First living in Germiston, Pretty then moved to Manor Mansions in 2003 where her husband joined her from Botswana.

He passed away in 2008. Her children are all out of school. Her youngest son is 20 and studies Medical Emergency at the University of Johannesburg. Her daughter is 25 and manages a restaurant.

The oldest son works in security and is married with a daughter.

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On my side of view, before the business was booming, it was fine, but now it seems that the business is going down.

It is going down with the traders.

It’s the development of the street and the city ‌ at least the city has developed.

Most of the flats were buggered and old, now they have been renovated, the roads have been renovated.

There is much of improvement in the city.

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3 T RISSIK S

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A (JEPPE

MOOS RAHIMA

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STALL Stand 27

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HOME Manor Mansions, Joubert St

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HOME - STAFF Rampton Court, Rissik St

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STORAGE Joubert St, next to Ernest Oppenheimer Park

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PRODUCE Joburg Market, City Deep

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COSTUMERS Areas in which costumers are based

INA ALBERT

SISULU

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SOWETO

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EN D

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LLIGH VON WIE

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KERK ST RD ST

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PRITCHA

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SIONER

COMMIS

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NUGGE T ST

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MOOI ST

IS VON BRAN

ST JOUBRT

MAIN ST

M2

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CITY DEEP

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ROSETTENVILLE

N1

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Since from 2010, I think most of the things that has stopped the business is the malls. There are most of the malls, which are built in the locations in different ways because most people used to come to town to do their banking, shopping and what have you.

Now since there are malls, everything is there next to them. Some don’t even bother, they just walk to the shop because its next to them.

So there are no longer many people coming town.

There are more fruit and vegetables that are built in the locations … the only people who are coming now are those who working in town, but for their business and shopping they just go to malls.

It cheaper to go to malls because it’s next to them. Unlike boarding the taxi coming to town, it’s more costly and more expensive.

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For those three months [2013], since I’m staying here and selling next to where I’m staying, I used to go early in the morning to the market. Then I spoke to the manager of the flat and they allowed us to put stock in the foyer there. So most of my costumers they will phone and say, “we want this, this and that.”

Then I would make the orders, then I’ll go out give them their orders and they would pay me.

Then when it was during the day or in the afternoon, by that time when the metro were not around, we would take a little of the stock, put it on the floor, just on a piece of plastic and sell it bit by bit. That’s how I managed to buy bread for them.

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I don’t have any negative side on the city because I think the city was doing what it is supposed to do. But actually it did it in a wrong way, because when ever we are supposed to be removed from the city we are supposed to be given notice and we are supposed to be given why we are we being removed on this street.

So that time we weren’t given any reasons why. It was just pack and go. The stock, you know, you don’t stock for one day. You stock … maybe sometime the stock will be there for two days. That stock it went bad all of it, so that again was a loss of money. After that, we were not allowed to sell.

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MIMI MATUSSE MIMI MATUSSE was born in Maputo, Mozambique. She moved to Johannesburg in 1996, with her firstborn, a year after she got married. As a family they were renting room to room and found it difficult, so they sent her son back to live with his grandmother. Before starting the burger business with her sister Florence Majola Khayise in 1999, she worked in several places. A friend found her first job, which was selling clothes in a Nigerian shop on Noord Street. She later worked at Cambridge Food (then Asto).

The first burger stand was set up in front of the delivery entrance of Ackermans, and in 2000 they were moved to their

current position, just before the corner of Kerk and Joubert Street. Mimi, controls the stand and makes the burger, while Florence runs and manages the business.

They have recently expanded, by opening a small restaurant on End Street.

As a family they rented two rooms in Rosettenville, since 2000. This year they bought a house in Protea Glen in Soweto, so her children could be closer to their school. Both parents now commute to work. Mimi’s husband works in at Foam House in Benoni and has a three-hour journey in morning and in the evening.

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But since then, it’s better than before.

Before it was… Even the money we used to make, we couldn’t see what we were doing with money, because tomorrow metro comes takes that trolley.

You have to take out R 1100 to take out the trolley.

They used to take the chairs. They used to take the gas.

So I mean in a week, sometimes they used to take that trolley twice. If they didn’t take Monday they would take Friday. And you have to take on Friday, it’s a busy day. If you don’t make that money back on a Friday and Saturday it means we didn’t work.

So know its really much better than before.

Since they gave us permission to work freely, really it’s much than before.

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T RISSIK S

9 RAHIMA

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STALL Stand 45

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HOME Protea Glen, Soweto

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HOME - FLORANCE MAGOLA Klip Town, Soweto

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HOME - Staff Pimville, Soweto

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HOME - Staff Baragwanath, Soweto

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STORAGE Joubert St, next to Ernest Oppenheimer Park

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PRODUCE, MEAT, CONDIMENTS & SOFT DRINDKS Joburg Market, City Deep

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BREAD ROLLS Fontana KwikSpar, Rahima Moosa (Jeppe) St

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ICE Cambridge Food, Ntemi Piliso St

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COSTUMERS Areas in which costumers are based

MOOSA

INA ALBERT

(JEPPE)

SISULU

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ST

N1

SOWETO

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3

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N

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12

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8

EN D

T TROYE S

ST

LLIGH ST VON WIE

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KERK ST RD ST

PRITCHA

6

T

IONER S

S COMMIS

NUGGE T ST

ST

MOOI ST

IS VON BRAN

ST JOUBRT

MAIN ST

M2

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CITY DEEP

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ROSETTENVILLE

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Every day we have new customers, but even the old costumers are still supporting us. People that were still going to school and now are working are still coming to support us. It was last week, another lady, she came with her daughter. She is now ten years. Then she started telling her “I started eating these burgers before I started working and now that I’m having you, we are still eating the same burger.”

I said, jo, its been long. Its been long, I’m telling you.

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There is another guy, another family, now they moved to Cape Town. They were staying in Lens. Every Saturday ‌ every Saturday he used to come with the family and eat twelve burger in the morning.

When they come, they eat twelve burgers in the morning. When they are going home they are buying twelve burgers for supper.

Every Saturday. Now that they moved they just come some times. I think when they come to visit the family, the pastor says he missed his burgers.

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We are foreigners, all of us. If you look at all of those people… lets say Pretty… lets say that first lady that side.

The owners of the country are very few.

They are very few, but our relationship so far, is good.

I mean business it’s business.

We all want money… we are all here to make money.

Since we are here our relationship is good and we are all foreigners.

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We did suffer, because that year they stole our trolley. This one is a new one. They stole our trolley where we used to put there.

We lost a lot because we had to start from scratch. And to start from scratch we had to spend about R 15 000, because this trolley is about R10 000.

So it was R10 000, plus all the small stuff that we are using: gas, the dishes and to start the stock again. It was about R 15 000 that we lost in that first week of December. Without having that money we had to collect it here and there and there, so we lost a lot that year.

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PHOTOGRAPY: FULUFHELO MOBADI

VAUGHN SADIE THANK YOU: LESTER ADAMS THOKO ZWANE

MIMI MATUSSE

PRETTY NTULI

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