Business squatting needs workable outcomes

Accommodating street vendors – or not – remains a persistent challenge authorities prefer to shy away from.

Street vendors inevitably create a specific set of problems, and municipalities are placed under consistent pressure to act and execute bylaws to maintain order.

When they do act, however, they are accused of insensitivity and brutal police state tactics.

Last week’s protest action by eSikhaleni vendors is a case in point.

Operating at the township’s shopping mall, the angry group handed over a memorandum to the uMhlathuze Municipality Speaker Mvuseni Mnqayi and the eSikhawini police, complaining about police harassment.

They claim the police ‘come here and take our stock as if we are animals’ and ‘the police always want us to pay a R50 fine… and we don’t understand what this payment is for’.

They are also unhappy about being sworn at by the ‘company owner’ who says they don’t belong there and being harassed by the mall’s security staff.

The sympathy card then also comes in play – ‘We are just trying to feed our children’ and ‘If they make us leave here, where will we go because there are no shelters where we can conduct our business’.

That’s the vendors’ side of the story, but what about the other parties involved?

One assumes the police are merely doing their job, being the executing agents to maintain order as bylaws demand – and then vilified for it.

Business owners rightly expect protection of their turf.

Paying high rental fees, why should they be expected to tolerate ‘freebie’ business squatters on their doorsteps?

This national problem will not go away. Desperate for an income, vendors will not stop squatting at major shopping centres where the consumer ‘feet’ are.

There is much more to the issue than simply erecting vendor stalls somewhere.

In-depth research by knowledgeable people is required to investigate this thorny issue, hopefully leading to workable outcomes to the satisfaction of all parties.