Source: A Government That Cannot Follow Its Own Plan Has No Business Enforcing One – Zealous Thierry
Zimbabwe has a problem with informal work. It also has a problem with pretending that its policies are solutions.
This year, the government adopted the National Informal Economy Formalisation Strategy. The strategy recognizes what successive governments have often preferred to ignore: Informal work is not a temporary nuisance or an obstacle to urban order. It is a central part of Zimbabwe’s economy.
The strategy calls for inclusion, infrastructure and social protection. It explicitly rejects enforcement as the sole answer.
Then came 27 August.
Daniel Garwe, the minister responsible for local government, gave Harare’s street vendors seven days to leave or face a “zero-tolerance clean-up operation.” Municipal police were deployed to prevent traders from returning.
The sequence is quite troubling i suppose. The government did not first build the markets to which vendors were expected to move. It did not publish a credible transition plan. It did not demonstrate that alternative trading sites could support the businesses being displaced.
It issued an ultimatum.
That is difficult to reconcile with a formalisation strategy that says the informal economy must be brought into the formal economy through infrastructure and inclusion.
A government can change its policy. It can also abandon a policy. What it cannot reasonably do is claim to be implementing one while pursuing its opposite.
VISET, the Vendors Initiative for Socio-Economic Transformation, made this point on Sept. 4. The organization warned that removing vendors without viable alternatives would disrupt livelihoods and push vulnerable workers into greater insecurity.
It also made a more fundamental point: Formalisation cannot simply mean removing people from the places where they currently earn a living.
That should not be controversial.
The government is asking people to leave one economic system without demonstrating that another is ready to receive them.
Consider Cephas Muchegwa, who has traded on the same Harare pavement for a decade. His response to the government’s deadline was telling: “There are no jobs in the industry. We have graduates at home.”
This is the context in which the policy must be judged.
Zimbabwe does not have enough formal employment to absorb the people the government is ordering off the streets. The informal economy exists partly because the formal economy cannot provide sufficient work.
That does not make every pavement stall desirable. Cities need rules. They need functioning roads, sanitation, pedestrian access and public spaces.
But urban order cannot be separated from economic reality.
If the government wants traders to leave the streets, it has to provide somewhere viable for them to go.
That means markets that are built, serviced and accessible. It means locations where customers actually go. It means transparent allocation procedures and protection from harassment. It means giving traders enough time to move without destroying their incomes in the process.
The government has not demonstrated that these conditions exist.
Instead, it has demonstrated its ability to enforce a deadline.
Zimbabwe has seen this approach before.
In 2005, Operation Murambatsvina destroyed informal businesses and homes across the country in the name of restoring order. The operation produced enormous social disruption. The Zimbabwe Council of Churches condemned its human cost, while a visiting South African church delegation compared the removals with apartheid-era forced evictions.
The informal economy survived.
In 2017, Harare again moved against informal traders. VISET argued then that authorities should build adequate markets before removing vendors.
The same argument is being made today because the underlying problem has never been resolved.
People returned to the streets because the streets remained connected to customers and income. Removing them did not create formal employment. It did not create viable markets.
It did not make poverty disappear.
It simply displaced the problem.
There is a lesson here for the government. Enforcement can change where informal trading happens. It cannot, by itself, change why people trade informally.
The government is now confronting the informal economy at a time when household incomes are already under pressure. Rural livelihoods face their own difficulties, and climate conditions could intensify them.
A street vendor whose stall is removed does not cease to need an income.
The family still needs food. Rent still has to be paid. School fees still have to be found.
The economic activity simply moves somewhere else.
This is why the government’s own formalisation strategy matters. It offers a framework for dealing with the problem without pretending that the people working in the informal economy are the problem.
The government should follow it.
If alternative markets are ready, it should show the public where they are. If they are not ready, it should build them before displacing the people expected to use them.
And if the government has abandoned its formalisation strategy, it should say so.
What it should not do is publish one policy and enforce another.
Garwe’s deadline expires Wednesday.
That will be a useful test.
If the government clears the streets without providing viable alternatives, it will have demonstrated that its commitment to formalisation ends where enforcement begins.
That is more than a contradiction in policy.
It is a choice about whose interests the state is prepared to protect.
Zimbabwe does need orderly cities. It needs functioning markets. It needs regulation.
But it also needs a government capable of understanding that people cannot be regulated out of poverty.
A strategy document is not a policy until the government is willing to follow it when doing so becomes inconvenient.
Wednesday will show whether this one is.
Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo || Social Justice Activist
Email: kumbiraithierryn@gmail.com
Portfolio: https://muckrack.com/kumbirai-thierry-nhamo/
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