Local Government Minister Daniel Garwe has urged informal traders in Bulawayo to operate from designated vending sites, while calling on the city council to treat them humanely when clearing pavements and streets.
Garwe said vendors should comply with laws governing public trading, but warned law-enforcement and regulatory officials against confiscating their goods during enforcement operations. The seizure of wares has become a common feature of the cat-and-mouse encounters between vendors and authorities, leaving traders facing sudden financial losses and deepening tensions in the city.
The minister’s position seeks to balance two competing realities. Vendors need access to safe and legal places to earn a living, while residents, formal businesses and city authorities are increasingly concerned about congestion, hygiene and the use of public spaces.
Streets turned into sanitation hazards
Some streets and alleyways in Bulawayo have effectively become open toilets, with faeces and litter creating an unpleasant and potentially unsafe environment. The stench in certain areas has become so severe that pedestrians and nearby workers struggle to breathe comfortably.
The sanitation crisis has added urgency to calls for vendors to move into properly managed sites with access to toilets, waste collection and other basic services. Trading areas without adequate sanitation do not only affect vendors. They expose residents, shoppers and workers to unhygienic conditions and undermine efforts to keep the city clean.
The city council must therefore ensure that designated sites are more than empty spaces marked for relocation. They should be accessible, secure and equipped to support daily trading. If authorities expect vendors to leave pavements, they must provide practical alternatives that allow traders to continue earning a living legally.
Formal businesses feel the impact
Formal businesses are also bearing the cost of unregulated street trading. Vendors who block shop entrances can make it difficult for customers to enter premises, while congestion around storefronts can disrupt deliveries and restrict access for people with disabilities.
Business owners argue that they are being forced to compete with traders who do not face the same costs for rent, licences, rates, utilities and compliance. That concern cannot simply be dismissed. A functioning city must protect both livelihoods in the informal economy and the businesses that operate within the formal regulatory system.
However, enforcement that confiscates goods without offering workable alternatives risks making the problem worse. For many vendors, their stock represents their entire livelihood. Losing it can push households further into poverty and create greater hostility towards municipal authorities.
Humane enforcement must include accountability
Garwe’s call for humane treatment should not mean abandoning regulation. It should mean enforcing the law in a consistent, transparent and lawful manner.
Authorities should clearly identify where trading is permitted, communicate relocation plans in advance and provide adequate sanitation and waste-management services at designated sites. Enforcement officers should also be identifiable, and complaints about harassment or unlawful confiscation should be investigated.
At the same time, vendors must accept their responsibilities. They should keep their trading areas clean, avoid blocking entrances and roads, comply with health requirements and refrain from returning to prohibited locations after relocation.
A clean city and a humane city are not opposing goals. Both depend on clear rules that are fairly applied.
Council urged to lead a lasting solution
The Bulawayo City Council now faces the task of turning the minister’s call into a practical plan. Repeated clearances followed by the return of vendors have failed to resolve the problem. The pattern will continue unless authorities address the economic pressures that drive people onto the streets and provide sites that traders and customers are willing to use.
The council should work with vendors’ associations, formal businesses, residents and public-health officials to map suitable trading areas and establish realistic operating rules. It should also set out how waste will be collected, how toilets will be maintained and how access to shops and public walkways will be protected.
Vendors should not be treated as criminals simply because they are trying to survive. But survival cannot justify turning streets into open markets, shop entrances into trading stalls or alleyways into toilets.
Bulawayo needs an approach that protects livelihoods without sacrificing public health, dignity and the right of formal businesses and residents to use the city safely.
Designated trading sites, reliable municipal services and humane enforcement offer a better path than endless confrontation.