via Min, Mayor have coffee as vendors brutalised – New Zimbabwe 09/07/2015
NEWLY appointed local government minister Saviour Kasukuwere posted a picture of himself on Twitter Thursday morning enjoying coffee with Harare mayor Bernard Manyenyeni who is a member of the opposition MDC-T.
Kasukuwere told New Zimbabwe.com after meeting Manyenyeni that they agreed to remove all vendors in the city centre.
“They will go; we will not allow petty political statements and emotions to override reason,” he said.
“What kind of a city are we building when we don’t deal with such issues as vendors. We have to clear it and the mayor agreed that we do so.”
Later, truncheon-wielding police descended on the vendors, forcibly driving them out of the city centre, resulting in several being arrested while a handful were injured.
“The municipal police launched a pre-dawn raid on [the vendors’] booths which are near the Rezende Street Parkade,” said Kumbirai Mafunda of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.
“I think they tried to resist, that’s why they could have been arrested,” Mafunda added.
As Zimbabwe’s economy constricts, thousands of people have taken to selling goods like vegetables, second-hand clothes and peanut butter, on the pavements.
Some of the vendors are unemployed, others are supplementing their income. Figures of the total number of vendors in Harare are difficult to gauge, but some estimates put the number as high as 20,000.
Alarmed by the ugly scenes, the Zanu PF government has ordered the vendors to vacate the CBDs and, on Thursday, started to forcibly drive them out.
But the vendors say they will stay put.
“Right now there are running battles. It’s not defiance; we want to define it correctly… There are no jobs,” said Promise Mkwananzi, director of Zimbabwe Informal Sector Organisation, a prominent grouping of vendors.
Kasukuwere however vowed that all illegal vendors would be removed, saying “we cannot allow lawlessness to continue just because of politics”.
“City council agreed to deal with the issue and he (Harare mayor) requested that if his people fail … government should always be there to support him.
“I made it clear that he will get my total support in ensuring that this issue is addressed amicably,” said Kasukuwere.
On Wednesday vendors in the city centre demonstrated against the move to relocate them to designated sites, challenging council and government to reconsider the decision.
The street hawkers numbering into thousands said if the Zanu PF government goes ahead with plans to remove them from the city, they would sabotage the party at the 2018 general elections.
COMMENTS
This matter makes my heart bleed. How come the authorities suddenly woke up to the reality of vendors in the city? Why has it become necessary to move them so hurriedly so forcibly after tolerating them for many years, even having authorizied some of them? Was it necessary to burn their wares at the Nyerere bridge, or destroy their stalls? Now it seems the so-called designated places do not have basic amenities. …. How is it the MDC council has found common cause with ZANUPF on this?