The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) has condemned a directive by the Minister of Local Government and Public Works, Hon Daniel Garwe, ordering vendors operating outside designated sites to vacate the streets by 9 September. In a statement, ZimRights quoted old community wisdom that “you cannot cure diarrhoea by stitching the anus”, saying the sickness […]
The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) has condemned a directive by the Minister of Local Government and Public Works, Hon Daniel Garwe, ordering vendors operating outside designated sites to vacate the streets by 9 September.
In a statement, ZimRights quoted old community wisdom that “you cannot cure diarrhoea by stitching the anus”, saying the sickness is not in the street.
“The sickness is not in the street. It is in an economy that has closed its doors to its own children,” the statement reads.
“Sweeping vendors off the pavement will not create a single job, will not lower the price of a single loaf of bread, and will not return a single family to dignity. It will only push the symptom out of sight while the disease deepens.”
ZimRights said it does not dispute that cities need order, and that sanitation, safe pavements and properly serviced marketplaces are themselves rights that vendors have been demanding for years.
“But order imposed by a seven-day ultimatum and municipal police, in the absence of any credible alternative, is not order. It is displacement, and it punishes the poor for the failure of the economy to accommodate them,” the association said.
The organisation said the debate should recognise the human face behind vending.
“Before they are vendors, they are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. They are graduates whose degrees are folded in drawers, retrenched workers, widows, young people who came of age in a country that had no vacancy for their ambition,” ZimRights said.
“Nobody dreams of a life spent under the sun bargaining over tomatoes and airtime. Vending is not a choice; it is the last item on a long list of things that did not work out.”
ZimRights argued that the directive falls short constitutionally and legally. It cited Section 24 of Zimbabwe’s Constitution, which binds the State to secure work and decent livelihoods, Section 51 on human dignity, and Section 68 on the duty to act lawfully, fairly and reasonably in administrative conduct.
It also cited the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the African Charter, which require that any measure affecting people’s means of subsistence be preceded by genuine consultation, adequate notice and viable alternatives.
“A deadline is not consultation. An eviction is not a livelihoods policy,” ZimRights said.
ZimRights has called on Government to suspend the 9 September deadline and open structured dialogue with vendor associations, local authorities and civil society.
The organisation said Government should sequence the policy correctly by providing serviced, accessible and affordable marketplaces before, not after, removals, and guarantee that no enforcement involves violence, arbitrary arrest or the destruction and confiscation of goods, which for many families is their entire capital.
It also called on the Government to provide safe spaces for informal traders, and to address the root causes through job creation, industrial revival and an honest reckoning with the corruption and misgovernance that hollowed out the formal economy.
The measure of a nation is not how clean its streets look on the day of an operation. It is whether its people can eat, and hope, and dream. Let us treat the sickness, not stitch the symptom,” the statement said.
