“If you take away his trade, you are killing him”

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED

Mor Fall grew up in Senegal and used to watch videos of the Soweto uprisings in primary school – and he would donate five francs each day to help South Africans achieve freedom.

Now an informal trader at Greenmarket Square, Fall adjusts his racks of tapestries and necklaces and calmly says that freedom is still a distant dream.

“Freedom means having a nice life like everyone else,” Fall says.

“Each trader is poor with no schooling, no qualifications and a family to support. If you take away his trading, you are killing him.

“This is not freedom. Let him get his bread, it is better than making crime.”

Fall, 46, is referring to the draft Informal Trading Bylaw, which will seek to regulate and demarcate informal trading sectors throughout Cape Town.

The proposed bylaw in-cludes new requirements for receiving trading permits.

It was approved unanimously by two city committees on Thursday, and will be subject to a public participation process before being submitted to the full council by August.

Fall traded on the Cape Town station deck before moving to Greenmarket Square six years ago. He pays R100 daily rent to Buddy Chabaan, who is a member of the African Muslim Party which leases Green-market Square from the city council.

Fall now rents a workshop on Long Street where workers produce the tapestries he designs. He says he is worried about the regulations forcing traders with similar goods to change their wares or face eviction.

“I produce my own goods so if they say I must stop making a type of tapestry, then four people may lose their jobs,” he says, pointing to a zebra stripe pattern on mahogany fabric.

“I will survive if they crack down, but what about the others? Some of them I have taken drunk off the streets and given them jobs, because I wanted to contribute to this country.”

Zimbabwean trader Fanuel Fish worked on Long Street and Greenmarket Square for four years before moving to St George’s Mall.

He rolls his eyes and idly fiddles with his bracelet while he reads an article on the bylaw.

“Why is it that the government always tries to oppress and force out the foreigners and working people?” Fish asks.

“The system is not on our side.”

On the other end of the square, IG Ebden grins through a mess of greying dreadlocks as he sells a red, green and yellow lighters embossed with a dagga leaf. Ebden and his brother live in District Six and are members of the reggae band Roots Rockers.

They have each run Rasta stands on Greenmarket Square for more than two years.

Ebden says he believes the bylaw provision that states that no member of the same family may apply for more than one trading bay in one area is unfair.

“Under the new law, one of us will have to stand down and will probably have to go trade in Claremont,” he says, frowning.

Ebden says that Chabaan will most likely be sidelined by the city, and this will result in increased rents and stricter regulation of goods.

“Because the trading has become very much a mass production culture, if something sells well then people often imitate it,” Ebden says.

“Luckily we are the only shop that sells Rasta goods. But I don’t know how they will work out who gets to keep selling and who has to leave. It’s not like they know who was here first.

“It’s troubling that the city is doing this as winter approaches because trading is very much a summer-oriented business,” he says.

“Many traders make money during the summer to live on until the next summer,” he adds.

“It’s a means of survival.”

“It is not the traders who are doing the crime”

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED

In the vacant lots of the Cape Town station deck, where informal traders once hawked their goods, there now stands a lone bundle of barbed wire, like a grotesque tumbleweed. Further down, one of the 88 legal trading bays sits apart from the bustle of human traffic entering and exiting the cluttered minibus line.

Following Ward 54 councillor J P Smith’s claims that the station deck clean-up has led to a “spectacular decrease in crime”, the Cape Argus visited the deck to see the effects at first hand.

“There are fewer crimes now,” says Stewart Otu, leaning against a makeshift trading booth.

“Before, in the midday, you would see people grabbing each other’s cellphones. But believe me, the prostitution and drug dealing will continue.

“It is not the people trading who are doing the crime.”

Otu sold cellphone accessories on the station deck for more than two years before moving to the southern Cape and handing his business over to a friend. Now that friend wants to move as well, as the new regulations have compelled him to move off the main stretch of the deck.

“People do not come to this place, there is a huge loss of business,” Otu says, while another trader, who refuses to be named, leans in and nods.

“Our business is much worse because we are now far away from the taxi rank.

“The government does not care that we cannot support ourselves any more,” he says, shaking his head.

“They do not respect us.”

Otu believes that the new regulations for traders may lead to an increase in crime.

“The idle man is a devil’s workshop,” Otu says.

“Eighty to 90% of these traders are refugees and they have to get their hands on something – R20 or R30 – to buy bread for their families.

“If they cannot sell their wares, then they have to turn to crime.”

Otu says the legitimate traders close their shops at 5pm and leave to sell their wares on the streets before returning to their homes in the townships. That is when the drug dealing and prostitution begin, Otu says. He ascribes these activities primarily to refugees from Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

“People don’t want to be involved in crime, but no one will fight the government,” Otu says. “The government should be more considerate.

“In America, in the UK, these are illegal structures to them,” Otu says, gesturing towards the ramshackle shops. “But this is Africa. We are one nation. It is for all the world and it should have open doors.”