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La solidarité comme résistance face à la ville qui se ferme

Resisting to spatial exclusion and fighting for economic inclusion: African immigrant traders in the public commercial spaces of the City of Cape Town, South Africa

Résister à l’exclusion spatiale et lutter pour l’inclusion économique : Les commerçants immigrés africains dans les espaces commerciaux publics de la ville du Cap, en Afrique du Sud
Gabriel Tati

Résumés

En Afrique du Sud, les grandes villes sont racontées autour de l’esprit d’entreprise qui met l’accent sur la compétitivité, l’innovation et le partenariat entre le gouvernement local et les entreprises privées dans le marketing de la ville à l’intérieur et au-delà des frontières nationales. Une grande partie de la population vivant dans ces villes est composée d’immigrants, originaires d’autres pays africains, qui sont fréquemment victimes d’attaques xénophobes violentes de la part de citoyens locaux. Les immigrés africains opèrent principalement dans le secteur informel et restent largement en marge du principal courant économique et du tissu social de la ville. Cet article interroge dans quelle mesure les interventions mises en œuvre dans la ville du Cap en Afrique du Sud par les autorités, dans le cadre de la ré-imagerie de la ville comme ville mondiale, contribuent soit à l’inclusion spatiale, soit à l’exclusion des immigrés africains et celle de leurs activités de petit commerce dans la conception du développement urbain. L’argument central de l’article est que dans la poursuite de la stratégie entrepreneuriale prônée par la ville du Cap, il y a de fortes indications que certaines de ces interventions sont contraignantes et répressives, exacerbant l’exclusion économique et sociale des immigrés africains. En outre, ces interventions ont eu tendance à accroître l’hostilité sociale envers les immigrants. Contre les mesures répressives d’application de la loi pour réguler l’espace urbain, il y a eu cependant un glissement public quelque peu progressif vers des efforts plus accommodants qui ont profité aux propriétaires d’entreprises immigrés africains. L’article est éclairé par la perspective théorique sur la gouvernance urbaine entrepreneuriale et des données provenant de sources empiriques. Les résultats rapportés montrent que, dans la ville de Cape Town, l’occupation de tout espace à des fins commerciales est restreinte par un ensemble de règlements. En réponse à la variété des interventions, les chefs d’entreprise ont manifesté des réactions différentes, allant de la conformité aux actes subversifs, en passant par la résistance, ou des arrangements négociés qui ont parfois été utilisés pour influencer la direction d’autres interventions.

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Introduction

1The article critically examines the depth of spatial and economic exclusion carried by initiatives in good urban governance at work within the City of Cape Town. More specifically, it interrogates ways in which the vision set in motion in the re-imagining of the city might lead to exclusionary arrangements between the authorities and self-established economic operators – such as migrant business owners – around designated commercial public spaces. The urban entrepreneurial governance serves as a guiding theoretical framework for the empirical analysis to follow. Like in many parts of the world, cities in South Africa are increasingly being developed along the narratives of entrepreneurialism. Such narratives emphasise competitiveness, innovation and partnership between local government and private corporates in the marketing of the city within and beyond the national borders [Harvey, 1989; Jessop, 2013: Crossa, 2009; Robert and Schein, 1993; Turok, 2012; Xu and Yen, 2005; Richmond, 2016].

2A large fraction of the population living in those cities is made up of immigrants from other African countries, who are frequently subjected to economic-driven xenophobic violent attacks by local citizens. African immigrants mostly operate in the informal sector and largely remain on the fringes of the city mainstream economy and social fabric. Drawing from Fourier [2018] and Kestelloot and Meert [1999], in the sections to follow, the informal sector designates those enterprises with or without paid employees, which are not incorporated and not registered for taxation. This definition applies to all economic sectors. It, however, excludes domestic workers and subsistence agriculture production for own consumption. The activities run by such enterprises are not declared but this does not mean they are illegal in their nature. Participants in the informal economy are exposed to the lack of legal support and adequate social protection.

3In line with the urban governance agenda, seen by many scholars as a neo-liberal one, urban entrepreneurialism is said to have negative effects on economic operators who are weakly represented in the city in terms of power in the decision-making process. This article interrogates the extent to which the interventions implemented in the City of Cape Town in South Africa by the authorities, within the framework of reimagining the city as a world city, contribute either to the spatial inclusion or to the exclusion of African immigrants’ petty trade activities in the design of urban development. The contrasting experiences of business owners from African origin (migrants and refugees) are examined in relation with the structures of urban governance as the city competes with other cities to become competitive in attracting investments within the framework of the entrepreneurial city. The central argument of the article is that, in the pursuit of the entrepreneurial strategy advocated by the City of Cape Town, there are strong indications that some of these interventions are constraining and repressive, exacerbating the economic and social exclusion of African immigrants. Besides, these interventions have tended to increase the social hostility toward immigrants. Against the repressive law enforcement measures for regulating the urban space, there has been, however, a somewhat progressive public shift toward more accommodating efforts that have benefitted African immigrant business owners. The article is informed by the theoretical perspective on entrepreneurial urban governance and data from empirical sources are used in support of the arguments.

4The study also investigates at an empirical level the processes of collective resistance and collaboration with city authorities among African immigrants. Entrepreneurial patterns and dynamics of individual migrants as well involved in the informal economy (street vending) in compliance with regulations are examined. The study draws upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to assess how the process of learning is shaped by specific factors.

5The following research questions are investigated:

  1. Do the interventions implemented by the city provide an environment for immigrant-owned business in which genuine participation or collective resistance is forged and what are the forms of its operation?

  2. What are the forms of collaboration between the city authorities and the migrant business community?

  3. What are the contributions of the migrant business community to the rehabilitation or revitalisation of commercial places?

Research approaches and methods

6An extensive literature review was carried out. The review focused on material published on the topic of collaboration as a process and its outcomes, urban entrepreneurial management and governance. In gathering information, two types of questionnaires were developed targeting Somali business owners, city officials and other African involved in street vending. A business questionnaire was created to collect information on different aspects of the small business owned by immigrants. The questionnaire targeted immigrants running businesses along the Voortrekker Road corridor in the commercial areas of Bellville, Parow and Goodwood. The questionnaire comprised six modules designed to collect detailed information on the characteristics of the business, the owner’s assessment of the impact produced by the interventions undertaken by the CCT and relationships with similar businesses and with the authorities from the CCT. In total, 126 businesses owned by Somali refugees were surveyed.

7The design of the methods included as well the collection of information from various sections of institutional stakeholders (CCT officials, law enforcement, business owners). The Department of Economic Planning of the CCT was approached to provide information on various interventions implemented by the city along the Voortrekker Road corridor and on the impact of these interventions on businesses run by African immigrants.

Urban entrepreneurialism in the city governance: the South African experience

8Like in most of the emerging economies around the world, the major cities of South Africa have acquired a more cosmopolitan outward-orientated image. As said earlier, these cities are also places of high concentration of immigrants from diverse nations on the African continent. Within the South Africa’s population of foreign origin, African immigrants are represented in large numbers. Varying according to the city, immigrants come not only from war-torn countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Ethiopia, but also from relatively peaceful countries on the continent. With different statuses (ranging from regular migrants, asylum seekers, irregular migrants to refugees), African immigrants are generally not well represented in the formal salaried employment. Most of them start businesses on arrival, and become self-employed immigrant entrepreneurs. Self-employment is therefore a channel that allows immigrants to acquire different roles from those who become either salaried workers or mainstream entrepreneurs. Rath [2006] argues that the definition of ‘immigrant self-employment’ or ‘entrepreneurship’ depends on the regulatory regime, and differs from country to country.

9By its nature, urban entrepreneurialism embraces the movement toward the intensification of interurban competition and the promotion of place-specific development strategies [Jessop, 2013]. Adding to this economic development orientation is the element of boosting the image of the city, to make it into a commodity for sale in the global market. Xu and Yeh [2005 : 283] argued that ‘globalisation has been commonly identified as a strong and growing force in reshaping the production and commercial activities in cities today’. The pursuit of such urban visions and entrepreneurial strategies are questioned by Jessop [2013]. The author argues that the discourses and self-images associated with them find roots in the reorientation of local economic policies toward the promotion of local innovation and other supply-side conditions favouring business enterprise [Jessop, 2013]. Writing about Johannesburg, Herbert and Murray [2015] consider this urban trend to be a dramatic transformation in the relationship between power and space as entrepreneurial municipal approaches replace mainstream managerial approaches to public administration. According to Herbert and Murray [2015 : 481], urban entrepreneurialism has a different meaning to traditional urban management. The difference stems from the fact that city administration gives a prominent role to private management, leaving out municipal governance. Public authorities retrocede their role to private management companies that act as ‘shadows’ or ‘surrogate administration’ [Herbert and Murray, 2015 : 401]. The Voortrekker Road Corridor Improvement District (VRCID), the Safe2Park and the Greater Tygerberg Partnership (GTP) which are examined later in this report, can be regarded as exemplars of such companies playing a major role in this role-shifting.

10The adoption of space-use management systems and comprehensive regulatory regimes enables private companies – which are taking over from the traditional management authorities – to retain total control over the character, shape and pace of property use and space occupation in the entire precinct. The organisation and management of commercial spaces is a strong indication of the key role played by privately owned entities in the management of public space. As an example of such a key role, the three companies mentioned above regulate the economic activities taking place along the Voortrekker Road corridor, especially those with concerns relating to security and safety.

11In their discussion of the entrepreneurial trend affecting Johannesburg, Herbert and Murray |2015 : 473] claim that in post-apartheid South Africa, the new image of metropolitan area development is dominated by private urbanism, which has become ‘an assemblage of sprawling rival edge cities’. The authors contend that:

City building in Johannesburg has increasingly been left to the competitive anarchy of unrestrained market forces, and the resulting patterns of growth and development reflect the dominance of real estate capitalism as the driving force behind the shaping and restructuring of the built environment [Herbert and Murray, 2015 : 473].

12Nationwide, there has been a sustained movement toward the creation of large metropolitan areas under designated authorities. The intention behind this movement is to address the structural weaknesses of South African cities and to put them on a new trajectory [Turok, 2013]. Improving the quality of people’s lives and of the built environment has been central to the metropolitan national project. According to Turok, the metropolitan project has failed to achieve significant urban integration, both in terms of social inclusion and spatial transformation within the urban system. Urban entrepreneurial management drives with it the seeds of uneven urban development, resulting in some sectors being more developed than others. Rath [2006] observes that immigrants tend to gravitate toward retail and catering, although these are sectors frequently excluded from the most privileged activities taking place within the urban core. The author indicates that most immigrants operate at the lower end of these sectors in working-class suburbs, while making some inroads toward the higher end, middle-class suburbs. Immigrants, however, play a major role in the small business economy [Rath, 2006; Collins, 2016]. They build entrepreneurial dynamics by focusing on their human, cultural and social resources and capital, using these to acquire financial capital [Rath, 2006; Collins, 2016]. Writing about immigrants in Australia, Collins [2016] notes that, in response to all sorts of discrimination in the formal labour market, many immigrants establish their own enterprises. Generally, these SEs are a way to provide for their families, educate their children and escape discrimination by becoming their own bosses [Collins, 2016]. In terms of demand for immigrants’ entrepreneurial skills, regulatory institutions play a major role either in promoting or constraining the economic activities that benefit immigrants. Immigrant entrepreneurs operate in quasi-regulated sectors of a diverse nature. These sectors offer various opportunities, while also presenting various institutional obstacles or constraints. Rath [2016 : 6] argues that ‘regulation is not just a matter of repression and constraining, but also of enabling (in the proverbial “stick and carrot” scenario)’. This happens because the relations and the transactions which immigrant entrepreneurs generate are embedded in wider economic activities and politico-institutional structures. This perspective is of interest for this article by looking at the relations between the City of Cape Town (CCT) and the immigrant business community.

A responsive City of Cape Town to accommodating informal businesses owned by African immigrants within the entrepreneurial urban governance framework

13The CBDs of older suburbs of Cape Town such as Bellville, Goodwood and Parow are considered to be poorly controlled informal trading areas. But the situation has improved somewhat over the past few years. Often the era of apartheid is referred to as ‘the glory time’ of the suburbs. Relevant archival records accessed during the fieldwork indicate that public intervention to enforce safety and security in Bellville dates back in November 2010. The archival information gathered indicated that city departments collaborated with the local business community, the police and a non-governmental organisation known as MES Cape Town to undertake operations aimed at rehabilitating the central business district of Bellville. The Bellville CBD was, among other problems at grips with illegal occupancy of buildings, of illegal hawking, and of street littering. Following an assessment of the deteriorating situation, prominent members of the committee for safety and security sent notices to shop owners who were operating without proper documents to compel them to comply with the law. For those vendors who were operating in the open, an operation of bay demarcation took place. Describing the prevailing situation in the Bellville CBD, a member of the mayoral committee (reported in Tyger Burger, issue of 3 November 2010) had this to say: ‘In the 1980s the Bellville CBD was a lunch time venue for all the business people. But it has since disintegrated.’

14From an interview held with one of the managers in the Economic Development Unit, it emerges an increasing positive attitude from the City of Cape Town toward the recognition of immigrant business owners and informal traders as partners in the management of central business district. The top-down approach is not often given preference when it comes to implementing rehabilitating or renovating works in the commercial places. Increasingly, decisions made by the officials to upgrade is always conveyed in a participatory manner to get approval from all the stake holders involved. The information collected indicates that upgrading may include, among others, trader infrastructure, new street furniture, new brick paving, street lighting, repairing the roof of the market and storage. As work may take long to be completed, meetings are held with affected business owners and informal traders in commercial squares to discuss and decide on interim plans. These meetings are important as they provide ways of getting consensus on matters which can result (often fierce) in resistance of the informal traders to the proposed upgrading. An aspect which is emphasised by the management is that work undertaken does not change the existing demarcated informal trading plan as a result of the upgrade. After completion of work, the formal and informal traders regain possession of their existing demarcating trading areas in the trading squares after the upgrade. What often comes from such initiative is an improvement of the squares and enhanced trading conditions. After the upgrade, the informal traders continue their activities in the current demarcated trading areas. The Business Area management, a part of the Economic Development Unit of the CCT, plays a vital role in setting and rolling up the collaborative framework with the economic operators involved. The CCT officials work with them to design and phase the work to be done with the aim to transform the CBD into a shopping destination of choice.

15After many attempts of tried methods, the public authority opted for a development deal that began to make the public entrepreneurship a reality. The following redevelopment initiatives were implemented in the Bellville commercial centre:

  1. Designated trading bays for Somali refugees and other immigrants along the bus-taxi interchange;

  2. Relocation of Congolese female immigrants running hair platting business inside the Golden Arrow buses terminal;

  3. Facilitation of food sellers (mainly vegetables) in an open-air market place inside the Bellstar metro-train station;

  4. Facilitation in the occupancy of buildings for business purposes;

  5. Restrictions to illegal occupancy of public spaces or buildings;

  6. Prohibition through fencing of making use of spaces considered as properties of the CCT and intended for future development.

16The face of the City of Cape Town has been through rapid institutional, spatial and economical changes. It is therefore of interest to address from a scholarship point of view the dynamic patterns and processes of one can see as unabated city transformation. To comprehend this urban process of transformation, a political economy approach can be defined, among the wide-ranging considerations of contemporary urban questions. In line with this approach, a particular attention is given to the recently renewed role of the local government role in urban development within the framework of city governance along the lines of what is termed ‘the entrepreneurial city’ [Harvey 1989] emphasising neoliberal strategies of urban governance. Cape Town is not unique in experiencing such neoliberal propelled changes. Around the world the city is increasingly seen as a growth machine (growth engine) which makes the city a market commodity capable of generating wealth and power for those in position to benefit from it. Associated with the place commodification is the grouping of the diverse interests of urban elites around the so-called financial possibilities. The urban ‘success’ is conveyed through the view that ‘growth is good’ (a term I have borrowed from Robert and Schein 1993), and the capital for investment should drive the attainment of economic growth in the local area. The local government should therefore enhance the ‘climate’ for capital growth. The City of Cape Town, as one of the urban places of this kind, is anxious to retain and to attract considerable of constantly moving capital across competing cities around the world. In fact, globalisation adds a new dimension to the notion of entrepreneurial city framing the narratives of this city. This is not to ignore that local complexities of urban development are at work from both spatial and temporal aspects. Like most cities around the world, the dynamics of the City of Cape Town have varied across time and space; so to say changes have been visible from the apartheid to the post-apartheid era. The city has also experienced substantial erosion of its economic and its fiscal basis, especially during the years running to 2008 with an apex in that particular year. Those periods of economic downturns certainly forced change of the managerial approach in urban governance. A noticeable change is the shift in public endorsement of more innovative and entrepreneurial strategies in their actions. These innovative actions are encapsulated in the strategies around the key industrial areas of Cape Town, of which the Voortrekker Road Corridor is a major focus of intervention (City of Cape Town, 2016). It is, however, surprising to note that only established formal enterprises are included in the industrial zones along the corridor. Businesses run by immigrants are not included. In Harvey’s view, this is ‘the new entrepreneurialism’ [Harvey, 1989]. He made distinction of three characteristics in it: public-private partnership; emphasis on enterprises or business that are actively or speculatively growth oriented under such partnership and; strong public orientation toward place marketing rather than territory or space oriented [Harvey, 1989 : 7-8; Herbert and Murray, 2015]. Thus, the City of Cape Town is one type of place where as Roberts and Schein put it ‘the social and spatial dynamics of the central and spatial dynamics of the central and intimate relationship between risk and opportunity may be brought into focus’ [Roberts and Schein, 1993 : 22]. This is illustrated by various projects engaging public capital in private real estate speculation. One particular area, the Voortrekker Road Corridor, illuminates the interweaving of various actors and institutions in the speculative construction of spatial economic landscape within the context changing economic, social and political conjunctures in the most recent years of the post-apartheid era.

17The present study pays particular attention to the suburbs of Bellville, Parow and Goodwood; all the three are situated along the Voortrekker Road Corridor. They are much like many other suburbs of the City of Cape Town except that they are relatively more endowed in economic activities and affluent. All the three suburbs exhibit some familiar features of urban restructuring, suburbanisation and a concomitant vibrant second economy. However, while the Bellville suburb has experienced a sustained and dynamic economic diversification and economic growth over the past 10 years or so, with the community of foreigner traders contributing to the most of it, the other two suburbs have been losing business, especially in the manufacturing and car selling sectors. Parallel to these trends, there have been usual projects designed to revitalise the three suburbs: alternately promoting the virtues of urban renewal, refurbished public buildings, civic centres, malls, streets and parking areas. To exemplify, the latest city rejuvenation scheme revolves around the rehabilitation of malls respectively in the Central Business District (CBD) of Bellville and that of Parow close to the Salam Centre Office. Long before the occupancy of the area by Somali refugee traders, the CBD of Bellville was in a state of rapid decay as the businesses run by locals (mainly South African shop owners) were closing down and at the same white residents were massively moving out. There were very few residential structures in the inner CBD of Bellville. Most of the buildings served as wholesale stores. Over the past ten years or so, the CBD of Bellville has transformed into a landscape of and for consumption. The first indication of that transformation was visible in the appearance of cleanness and regulated commercial trading spaces for small businesses. The Bell metro rail station was renovated into an exotic commercial space with the presence of foreign business owners. Most of the buildings that once served as warehouses have been converted into residential units for an ever-growing immigrant population. The Somali business community has expanded as such a point that a large area of the CBD has been renamed by the traders as Little Somalia also known as Little Mogadishu, in reference to the origins of those traders. The area is crowded with Somali-owned shops selling footwear, clothing and other textile-made items. Little Somalia has been constructed and developed by immigrants from the old built environment. Those immigrants are self-settled refugees from Somalia and through a process of space appropriation [Tati, 2004]; they have taken over the premises once occupied by local shop owners. For years, what used to be a white-privilege public space, the CBD was left to random and became unattractive to business and to choppers. Even in the early 2000s, some local traders and residents, still present in the area, thought its condition a shame; its potential for good business lost forever. All these are now images of the past thanks to the immigrant business community and the public authority. Joint efforts from the Bellville municipality authorities and the business immigrant community have undertaken initiatives to give back the inner city its glory of the past. Such initiatives have stimulated public and private initiatives investments in and around the CBD of Bellville. Signs of that are visible in the dynamic cloth retailing activity, the occupancy of commercial and residential units in the buildings, the renovation and the rehabilitation of trading spots, the opening of numerous outlets of fast food franchises, to name but a few. The spills over of such a vibrant local economy are also visible in the thousands of road-rail network daily commuters and transit passengers using the metro-rail trains and the taxi transportation systems. What once in the early 2000s of insecurity for commuters and shoppers, the CBD has become an economic hub with mushrooming small business run by foreigners, mostly of African and Asian origins. On the same schedule, long neglected buildings in and around the CBD have gone through rehabilitation and transformation. By naming and incorporating the so-called ‘Little Somalia’ into a public landscape, the distinctions are blurred between public ownership of space and control over that space by business-oriented speculative interests. There are processes at work in the commercial public spaces. The speed of transformation is not the same. However, behind the rapid transformation, one can see the factual result of the working of public-private partnership combined initiatives from public officials, quasi-public agencies, private developers, and many other actors who individually fall into more than one of these categories. However, it must be said there is no well-defined framework in place for partnership or collaboration with the business community in order to promote redevelopment though the rules of engagement are tacitly understood on diverse sides of actors involved in the transformation process.

Responses of African immigrants involved in street vending to urban interventions around the Voortrekker Road corridor

18The previous section has examined the main interventions undertaken by the municipality in the three suburbs under study. Bellville is not, however, the only location where business owners of African origin operate. African foreigners came from different countries. During the fieldwork many other nationalities were identified and these included Ethiopians, Cameroonians, Congoleses, Nigerians, Senegaleses, Malawians, Zimbabeans and Burundians. The distinctive feature of their informal economic activities is the absence of concentration on one traded product; the range of products varies. Most of these immigrants run their small enterprises by the roadside of the streets situated around the commercial centres. Thus, these activities can be regarded as street vending. Within the context of this article, the concept of street vending encompasses several dimensions. From a general standpoint, street vending refers to trading in the street by informal economic operators. The diversity of economic interests and employment relations within this sector should be recognised, along with the wide range of operators found on the street, from affluent to survivalist operators. Because they mostly operate in non-fixed spaces, trading in the streets encompasses differing locations and circumstances under which the activities take place. Citywide, street vending represents an important segment of the informal economy. Statistics from the CCT report that the informal sector employs 146,165 active persons, or 9.5% of the total number of employed in the Cape Town city (City of Cape Town, 2016), of whom more than 50% are women. Several factors have contributed to the growth of street vending. The most important of these are political (lessened regulation), economic (constrained absorption in the formal labour market) and demographic (increased internal and cross-border migration in cities). The magnitude of the population of street vendors varies from year to year.

Making a living from street vending activities and struggling with regulations

19Streets in the commercial centres of Bellville, Goodwood and Parow along the Voortrekker Road corridor are sites where people, mostly African migrants but also internal migrants from South Africa and other parts of the continent, sustain livelihoods for themselves and their families. Those who were interviewed attest that this often comes with daily struggles and negotiated trade-offs with the regulatory framework in place. Scenes of confrontation, protests and physical action from the police are common in areas most populated by street vendors. These scenes have, however, begun to decrease in magnitude and frequency as a more accommodating regulatory framework is gradually being advocated by the city authorities. African immigrants have taken advantage of the lack of interest shown in street vending by locals (South Africans) and by the informal economy.

From the ‘stick’ approach to participation in regulating street vending

20Informal trade plays a vital role in Cape Town’s local economy and the urban landscape of not only the CBD of Cape Town), but other parts of the city as a metropolitan area. A report published in 2016 by the City of Cape Town (cited in The Greater Tygerberg Partnership, 2018) indicated that without income generated in the informal sector the poverty rate in the city would be 25.1%; with the informal sector income taken consideration of, the poverty rate is reduced to 20.6%. This reduction of 4.5% in the city’s poverty rate is equivalent to lifting 186,000 people out of poverty. Such an economic impact clearly demonstrates the place of the informal trade among the strategies to keep growing and economically productive the public spaces in suburbs such as Bellville, Parow and Goodwood (The Greater Tygerberg Partnership, 2018). Yet, the informal African traders are faced with many constraints to running business, among which the lack of trading space and the rental cost. During my fieldworks. The salient facets of these constraints were identified and they are reported in this section.

21In a large proportion (42%), the respondents reported that street vendors had been subjected in the past to different methods of law enforcement. However, they indicated that the intensity of such methods has decreased. Several instruments of control had been used, the most common of which included raids against street vendors and confiscating goods. Law enforcement police officers are consigned on a daily basis (from early to late evening) to move down the streets and patrol the pavements around commercial areas. The entrances of the Midstead Mall in Bellville are well-known sites for such raids to take place. Hawkers are sent into a panic when these patrols are in operation. Narrating similar raids in the city of Mexico, Crosse [2009 : 273] assimilated this approach as a public intention to force hawkers to quit the streets, to make them more ‘aesthetic and pleasant’. In spite of the unlikelihood of this outcome, it has been at the centre of actions taken by the authorities in the three municipalities to determine their own by-laws to regulate street trading. Silence on the part of local government makes the solution more arbitrary at municipal level where certain actions, at times, infringe on the street vendors’ rights to earn a living as instituted in the constitution of the nation. The public statements frequently made about eradication of poverty, exploitation or abuse in the labour market, have had no concrete supportive actions to help the plight of street vendors. This had led to a situation where street vendors have become a visible target for police and municipal harassment. Women are the most prominent victims of this policy as they dominate street vending, selling food products as well as clothing items. These women are predominantly widowed, older, and with no formal education. However men also suffer harassment. Other problems confronting street vendors include crime, lack of infrastructure, unhygienic conditions, trading for long hours and lack of affordable childcare for women. The law enforcement approach is certainly related to South Africa’s ever-expanding male culture and blind pursuit of job creation in the formal employment sector. According to a personality in the religious sector of Bellville:

In South Africa the informal trading is seen as a sign of under development [sic] and primitive, a sign of weakness. Most of the informal traders are illiterate and poor and therefore treated as a nuisance and everyone that has to be wiped off the streets of the City (interviewed 22 June 2018).

22The public image of street vending adds little to its real impact on the economy, in spite of the fees for licences paid to the city. Some observers claim that street trading contributes between 7% and 8% to the city’s economy (as reported in the Greater Tygerberg Partnership, 2017). Far from being supportive, certain public interventions oppose the benefits of street trading for the unemployed. An analyst even noted that street vending along with prostitution is the riskiest economic activity in South African cities. The government is strongly criticised by civil rights protection organisations for not supporting street vendors. The view of a representative of ‘StreetNet’, an alliance of street vendors, summarises this lack of political support.

Our government policy-wise is lacking in terms of recognising street vendors. It seems like the government does not want to acknowledge their existence (interviewed on 13 August 2009).

23The above views suggest some kind of repression and exclusion of street vendors from the mainstream economy. Because street vendors operate outside the formal economy, they are classified as operators to eradicate from the normative urban landscape. These views concur with the narrative of the urban entrepreneurial management seems to be vehement about this exclusion [Dannestam, 2014; Crossa, 2009]. The prevailing argument is that prominence should be given to the entrepreneurial city that focuses on creating the necessary conditions for attracting foreign capital and western tourists (Harvey, 1985). Cities need to become marketable products and safer places for dwellers, visitors, investors, ‘funners’ and consumers [Crossa, 2009 : 345]. In pursuit of these entrepreneurial strategies, many major cities in South Africa have become repellent toward street vendors. Cape Town is one of these, as the city is in pursuit of conveying the image of ‘a well-governed city’ to the nation and to the outside world. Street vendors are forced out to create space for new urban infrastructure, train and bus stations, stadiums, residential units and so on. In the process of these actions, violent clashes have occurred. The hosting of international events are often occasions where street vendors are chased away. This was the case during the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa, when street vendors had frequent confrontations with the police [Morange, 2015]. These clashes resulted from the decision by authorities of the city of Durban to forcibly evict traders around a proposed new sports development. In the process of demolishing a century-old market and surroundings, 10 other informal markets and about 7000 traders were threatened with losing their livelihoods (City of Cape Town, 2016). Speculation over public space is rife in most of the big cities of South Africa as municipalities strive to make their CBDs look modern and attractive to foreign tourists. Informal traders have little voice when decisions that affect their lives are taken regarding the location of new infrastructure.

24The public perception is that the suburbs are deteriorating because of the proliferation of street vending activities. In November 2010, an exhaustive operation was undertaken to clean up the CBD of Bellville. Hawkers were particularly targeted in this operation, being forcefully carried out on a daily basis by the police squads. During the interventions, notices were given to street vendors who did not have permits and to Somali shop owners illegally selling some of their goods on the pavement. Hawkers were asked to apply for demarcated bays to conduct their vending activities. The decision to undertake this clean-up stemmed from a series of meetings between city officials and representatives of residents. Street vendors did not take part in these meetings. Their exclusion did not help to create a channel for constructive dialogue between municipal officials and street vendors in the implementation of the operation. A female vendor from the Democratic Republic of Congo expressed her feelings about the operation as follows:

I sell bags and on quiet days I make two hundred rand for the day. If they can make the area more attractive then it will be good for business. They [the officials] need to inform and involve us, though, then we can work together and not against each other (Interviewed on 3 November 2018).

25With the ever-growing number of immigrants, demarcated bays were not available in sufficient numbers to accommodate all the informal traders. Now there was no more space for trading bays in the concentrated immigrant areas. The lack of trading space has resulted in a considerable backlog which seems to have reached a crisis point. From the observations carried out, it was noted that although the clean-up operation is still in place, it has become sporadic and selective. A representative of ‘StreetNet’ who was interviewed during the fieldwork had a very negative view of the city authorities:

The local government seem to have not taken into account that there is a crisis at the moment, they [municipality] are selling public spaces and then try to throw out the people trading in these spaces’ (Interviewed on 13 August 2018).

26Some analysts have argued that the CCT is more of an exclusionary than an inclusionary city [Turok, 2012]. Sharing this view, others have preferred to use the terms ‘racially divided’ or ‘socially segregated’ to describe the city [Brudvig, 2014]. While these terminologies are contested and vehemently rejected in the discourses of the city authorities, they tend to reflect in the agency of street vendors to consolidate their voices in the city agenda. Within the global arena, street vendors have found some support from the global coalition on the imperative of inclusive states. United Nations – Habitat in its global campaign on good governance promulgates inclusiveness in cities. It is recognised that an inclusive city provides an environment for balancing, reconciling and trading off competing interests and priorities. It is however certain that in most cities, the street vendors and other informal traders compete with formal enterprises over trading spaces. The former is generally disadvantaged in this competition. Depending on the context, the notion of inclusion has different connotations to that of exclusion. Specific groups as economic operators may experience inclusion at varying degrees. Although statements around participation, empowerment and social inclusion are frequently made, economic operators engaged in informal activities are still left out. It is apparent that officials ignore the logic with which these activities operate. Participation in market processes has yet to catch up with the progress made in participatory political processes. The economic insight of street vendors is ignored by urban authorities. A prominent dimension of such logic is that street vending operates in particular sites in cities. The most preferred strategic places are those with heavy traffic – along main roads, streets, bus stations, pavements, within shopping centres, and at prominent corners of streets and roads where traders are visible to pedestrians and motorists. At these places, they operate in groups as a way of protecting themselves against police raids.

27The structures used by street vendors differ in type. Depending on the goods or services offered, they make use of stalls, mats, gunny bags, tables, racks, and plastics for displaying. Unlike street vendors in most cities of sub-Saharan Africa, those in urban South Africa face various constraints over trading space and access to operation sites. In the metropolitan Cape Town, for example, the occupancy of any space for trading purpose is restrained by a bundle of by-laws. Although street vendors are found everywhere in the city, most of the spaces in which they operate are considered illegal. Some positive concessions have been made by the municipality in setting aside spaces for street trading. The authorisation to trade is granted on a temporary basis and the threat of eviction is permanent. The municipal authorities retain the monopoly of power to evict traders from their sites of operation. In some cases, eviction generates direct confrontation when street vendors are required to move in order to make way for planned development or clean-up operations. In cases where spaces have been allocated, such as those in sites around bus and train stations, traders occupy them with no security of tenure, no clarity about the real occupier and the demarcation is not sanctioned by urban authorities. What is noted is that there are more conflicts between traders themselves over space than with formal shop owners concerning infringement of business or premises. Most of the spaces occupied temporarily are managed by the traders themselves, to protect against bad weather. Those who sell fruit, vegetables and clothes are affected when trading during the long winter. The harsh environmental conditions that come with harsh Cape Town weather (from April to September) restrict earnings for the traders, as most of their activities are affected by frequent spells of rain.

Forms of resistance to regulatory measures in the CCT

28One salient feature of entrepreneurial urban governance is the tendency toward spatial exclusion of certain groups seen as deteriorating the ‘good image’ of the city that the authorities want to convey to investors or rich consumers. In the pursuit of entrepreneurialism, political activity may prioritise the aspiration for another kind of city. In his critics of narratives around entrepreneurial cities, Dannestam [2004] calls for an examination of the interplay between entrepreneurialism as a narrative (an ideal or a vision of what the city ought to be in the global economy), and as concrete politics. By looking at vendors as a social group living on the margins or economic fringes, one gets insights into the way entrepreneurialism as a narrative is socialised, legitimised and implemented. This approach also allows one to consider the consequences for the local government and the inhabitants of the city [Dannestam, 2004]. Certain interventions aimed at rehabilitating or restructuring the city for a good image may come with public operations to eradicate certain survivalist activities considered as ‘a nuisance’ for the elites for whom city marketing is being done. The groups targeted by the operations resulting in spatial exclusions may in turn mobilise and resist such interventions.

29From interviews carried out during my recent visits in the trading places it appears, however, that the resistance to coercive operations of eviction around commercial places has diminished in intensity over the past five years. Reminiscent forms of it are still frequently occurring. Within the framework of urban management, street vending activity in Cape Town, as in the other major cities of South Africa, has received a great deal of attention aimed at controlling its expansion (see, for example, Monanges, 2015). Some activist groups claim that the actions taken by the city government have been incited by pro-city elites, allied with the political leadership, ignoring the plight of non-elite groups in the informal sector of whom street vendors represent a major group. In response to the variety of interventions, street vendors have reacted in varying ways, ranging from compliance to subversive acts including resistance. Negotiated arrangements have at times been used to influence the direction of other interventions. To a varying degree, whether in organised groups or ad hoc coalitions, street vendors have managed to exert influence over the direction of specific policies or interventions. A negotiation of this type was observed in the case of the Green market place around the occupancy of the trading space [Monanges, 2015]. The negotiation of new forms of power manifests itself in the daily lives of actors involved in the process of socio-spatial changes affecting the city.

30From the side of street vendors, the various public interventions have generated different forms of interaction with the regulatory measures. This has specifically been the case from the point of view of exerting influence over the direction of intended policy or intervention at the city level. An assessment of the regulatory measures reveals two critical aspects of the practices which tend to use a mixture of exclusionary and inclusionary instruments toward street vendors in the management of the city. From 2009 to 2010, the CCT implemented six programmes within the framework of its clean-up intervention, one of which was ‘eradicating all intersection trading’. Looking at the current situation, this programme has not achieved significant outcomes as the number of street vendors keeps growing despite many of them being fined and goods being confiscated. The option of applying for legal trading permits in specific urban areas in the city is not taken up by most of these traders who are not legally in the country.

31The World Cup event gave way to a programme named ‘the 2010 Vending’. This programme was quite exclusionary as it largely restricted operating rights to only micro- and medium-sized enterprises within a legal framework [Morange, 2015]. Strategies for resisting law enforcement take several forms, depending on the degree of mobilisation. These strategies are context-driven and shaped by the consciousness street vendors have of their actions. Strategies range from cooperation to violent protest, including tactics to deceive police officers. What is remarkable is the capacity of mobilisation, even where there is no sign of it, the street vendors display across the borders. With repeated harassment, street vendors have developed mechanisms of collective resistance, so to speak, to react against or to bend the coercive rules often imposed upon them by the city authorities.

32Networking along the lines of nationhood membership is a dominant pattern of resistance among the African immigrants. It is widely documented that migrants from the same country of origin rely heavily on their community to sustain their livelihoods abroad. This reliance does not necessarily operate according to membership of a particular ethnic group. Sharing the same nationality is often enough to gain access to the resources available within the community of immigrants. Such resources include information about opportunities of all types and facilitation of access to physical space, together with collective protection offered by the group. The spatial activities of street vendors demonstrate patterns of networking around nationality of origin. In this regard, the umbrella offered by a much bigger nationhood-based association is useful. To illustrate this type of networking, a reference is made to the Cameroonian business community. Similar cases can too be drawn from other community of African migrants.

33Street traders of the Cameroonian migrant community have a strong presence among clothes sellers in most of the flea market areas of major cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town. The community is not, however, homogenous as far as ethnic composition is concerned. In terms of numbers, the dominance of Cameroonians from the west, the so-called Pays Bamileke (Bamileke Homeland), is indisputable. This ethnic group is followed by those originating from the Anglophone-populated areas of the south-west such as Bamenda and Buea. At time, these so-called ‘“Anglophones” build a sort of coalition with the Nigerian informal traders, living in Cape Town, from the city of Calabar in Nigeria. These Nigerians are geographically and ethnically close to them. Networking is also structured around the linguistic affinity, with the formation of associations replicating the practices in the country of origin. For example, the Bamileke practice of running rotating savings known as Djongui (a sort of practice known in South Africa as stockvels) to finance businesses is widespread among the street vendors from that ethic group. This practice usually lays the foundation for a much wider networking base for access to many other resources, internal and external to the community. It also serves as a way of mobilising the community members around issues of common interest such as covering the costs of legal protection or personal safety. Such networks based on ethnicity are often difficult to penetrate by Cameroonians who are not from that particular ethnic group. In other words, being a national of Cameroon does not automatically entitle one to membership of such an ethnic-based network. However, this does not prevent the members of the concerned group from rallying with the other street vendors under a much bigger network for the defence of collective interests.

Some concluding remarks

34Urban entrepreneurial governance has been over the past twenty years or so a model of city reimaging and managing pursued by the authorities of Cape Town. Some forms of resistance to new regulations and violation of by-laws among business owners and street vendors persist. There is strong evidence of informal appropriation of space for trading and subletting leading to crowding and traffic problems in the commercial areas (especially Bellville). While preventable, there seems to be an ambivalent public tolerance of spots where street vending activities take place around commercial spaces. Accompanying these trends is an increasing spatial exclusion (enclosed areas for which public use is prohibited, private car parking areas, limited recreational areas where immigrants run business and reside), an increasing competition over trading spaces, and a trend toward multiculturalism in the making within the commercial spaces. Internally, immigrants organise themselves through networking along lines of nationality. It must be emphasised that underlying the sub-processes, the CCT has not been fully responsive to the many challenges facing immigrant business owners while creating more trading opportunities.

35The potential contributions of immigrant-owned businesses to the CCT’s economic development have not received a great deal of attention from the city government. Drawing from observations carried out during my fieldwork, it appears that the partnership the city has formed at different times with non-governmental sectors (the GTP and the VRCID) to support new infrastructure and services along Voortrekker Road has not had a big impact on transforming the economic activities run by immigrants. When one looks at the investments taking place at the Waterfront or, to be more modest, at those once less prestigious suburbs of Woodstock and Salt River, migrants’ activities are more integrated to the whole urban development project than what they are in the three suburbs under consideration.

36Counteracting the image and the process of urban decay necessitates municipal leadership and sustained support. A steady growth in immigrant-owned business means a growing capacity for the city to collect taxes, although not all immigrants are the same when it comes to tax compliance. In aggregate, however, they can pay enough to sustain better public and private services to improve the business environment. Tax contributions provide additional funds for municipal resources. Stimulating the informal and quasi-informal street traders could also spur new dynamic and innovative enterprises. Indeed, in the CBD of each of the three suburbs, there is strong evidence of novel entrepreneurial-driven forms of investment among immigrants of African origin. Such innovative forms range from networked Somali and Ethiopian owned micro-enterprises to branches of Chinese and Pakistani retailers. This is in addition to the steady growth in commercial venues and concentrated informal trading places developed along the Voortrekker Road corridor by those immigrants over the last decade, as most of them are moving away from the township because of the xenophobic threat. The challenge is clearly to attract, nurture and develop more value-added street vending activities in those places.

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Gabriel Tati, « Resisting to spatial exclusion and fighting for economic inclusion: African immigrant traders in the public commercial spaces of the City of Cape Town, South Africa »Espace populations sociétés [En ligne], 2021/2-3 | 2021, mis en ligne le 19 octobre 2021, consulté le 11 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/eps/12019 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/eps.12019

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Gabriel Tati

Professor
Department of Statistics and Population Studies
University of the Western Cape
gtati@uwc.ac.za

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