Informal Economy Develpment Forum

  View From The Stalls 3 Saw a sign on the side of a refuse truck the other day. It read “illegal dumping costs the city R350m per year”, and I thought, wow! that figure could be double were it not for the waste pickers, the men and women who scrummage through your bins looking for trash they could sell for recycling. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones you regularly chase away with threats of castration if they ever came within 5m of your bin ever again! Well my friends, those “bin scratches” as they are sometimes referred to, are an integral component of the informal economy and apart from earning a living by exposing themselves to extreme health risks, they perform a vital and thankless ecological service by ridding the landfill sites of recyclables. What have we done today to save our planet? I engaged a “bin Scratcher” the other day. Must have been about 5am, I had just put out my bin when he traipsed across to me. whistling no known tune, he greeted me with a toothl...

  A post-Covid market   Traders are back…and not a moment too soon either. The markets bristle once more, but somehow things are different now. Covid is but a memory…a sad memory for colleagues who lost loved ones. For others it was a period of hardship, and of losses that they will never be able to recoup. Antie Asa, a 30-year market veteran is not back. She apparently doesn’t have money to buy stock. (thank you Covid). Likewise, pastor William’s sister Doris, the one selling kruier, well she hasn’t yet fully recovered from contracting Covid and is…let’s say, cautious. Boeta ‘Hiema, recovered remarkably well but now depends upon a walking aid, yet it’s good to have him back. Face masks is now a rarity and whilst the more cautious still religiously adorn them, most traders feel comfortable without them. Firm handshakes and hugs have replaced fist-bumps and elbow touches. Personally, I think it’s a bit too soon, but hey! That’s just me! The guy who for years sold carrier bags t...

A day in the life of a hawker Whoever said being an informal trader was easy, clearly is not one. Ask any hawker how, and under what circumstances her/his day starts, progresses, and ends, and you will be gob smacked by their responses. Formal workers on average rise at 06h30, have a full breakfast and leave home to arrive at their places of work before 08h00. Informal workers on the contrary and on average rise at around 04h00, eat on the run, and arrive at their places of trade at around 05h30.   Her taxi ride into town is never comfortable. Cramped in a mini-bus taxi with 17 others, plus 2 china bags of stock, at her feet…for which she had to pay a fee, arriving at her destination is in itself a mercy. But, Gladys’s day has hardly begun. The makeshift shelter which barely covers 2 square meters is rather tattered and offers little guarantee against the elements.   The trading area is beset with challenges. There is no lighting, or running water. Suspicious charact...