CITICHAT 12/2002 - 28 March 2002
The Westcliff; JICBC SWOT
EXOTICS AND PRAGMATICS
What have Villa san Michelle, Florence; Reid’s Palace, Madeira; Liliansfels Blue Mountains, Katoomba; La Samanna, French West Indies; Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro; Keswick Hall,Charlottesville; Bora Bora Lagoon Resort, Bora Bora and Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, Machu Picchu have in common with The Westcliff, Johannesburg? They are just some of the hotels in the stable of Orient-Express together with its famous collection.of cruises and trains such as the Venice Simplon-Orient Express, the Great South Pacific Express and the Eastern and Oriental Express. I’m not name dropping, just love the sights and smells that the exotic names conjure up. But The Westcliff is hardly inner city Johannesburg, I hear you mutter. OK but it’s close enough to be kissing cousins with the CBD and is now offering us ‘city folks’ a new much needed facility.
The Westcliff is a rather special hotel as one would expect from an establishment in such an illustrious stable – which I earlier omitted to acknowledge also includes “The Nellie”, the Grand Dame of Cape Town, the Mount Nelson. It has a wonderful setting and a unique design hugging the hillside and overlooking what is claimed to be some of the most prolifically wooded suburbs in the world. If you are a local and haven't been transported up its steep winding road by golf-cart to it’s La Belle Terrasse restaurant and satiated yourself on wonderful cuisine and the exceptional views, well, you haven’t really lived, doll!.
Seriously, whilst The Westcliff is not exactly Inner City, a new state of the art conference centre that close to the CBD is good news indeed. The CBD lost its chance for a major Conference Centre/Convention Centre some years ago when the relevant authorities rejected two inner city applications for casino licences, probably one of the most short-sighted decisions in a city whose history is littered with poor decisions! The casino went to Fourways and the convention centre to Sandton, also an approach that defies all logic. With the resultant closure of the Carlton Hotel, and it did close when it’s application for a casino licence was rejected in favour of the northern suburbs, the CBD lost a popular and well used Conference facility which has not yet been replaced although the possible future refurbishment of both the City Hall and of the Carlton Hotel may resolve that lack.
The launch of the construction phase was on Monday evening. The balmy 'Joeys' March evening provided the ambience for an excellent audio-visual programme cleverly screened against the backdrop of the excavations cutting into the hillside whilst preserving trees and the natural beauty of the site. .The Westcliff Conference Centre is not particularly large but will provide a variety of venues from boardroom size through larger executive meeting rooms to a 120 seater conference room. As one would anticipate, given the area in which it is situated, it has been designed to blend with the residential surroundings. Apart from conferences, I would imagine that this will provide a popular venue for weddings and receptions as its setting is just great and the service outstanding. Completion due first quarter of next year and a meaningful addition to the city's assets.
From exotics to pragmatics – Monday also provided the Executive Committee of the Johannesburg Inner City Business Coalition (JICBC) the opportunity to look back at the past two years and forward to the next two at the JICBC biannual strategic workshop.
The following are some (I've trimmed them to just four or five in each category) of the more important aspects recorded in a scan of "Inner City Current Realities" after categorising them into a SWOT format - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats followed by Core Competencies and Key Constraints:.
Strengths
• Improved safety and cleanliness with a substantial reduction in crime in core area
• Accessibility
• Cross border shopping
• Remains a major retail node for black shoppers
Weaknesses
• Perceptions
• Obsolete buildings, particularly high rise, expensive to upgrade and offering insufficient parking - cannot accommodate 1st world tenants.
• Lack of by-law enforcement - MPD does not provide a sustainable presence
• Little previously disadvantaged property ownership
Opportunities
• Declining property values
• High speed train could positively impact on an improved local transport infrastructure
• Increasing residential development
• Emerging niche markets
Threats
• Declining property values
• Poor enforcement
• Insufficient Parking
• Inability to accommodate 1st world tenants in existing buildings
Core Competencies
• Extensive infrastructure _ although there is concern in regard to lack of maintenance
• Access - location - transport hub
• Low Rentals
• Niche retail
• A changing City - New Energy
Key Constraints
• Perceptions
• Redundant, obsolete buildings, parking
• City Bureaucracy
• Enforcement - MPD
• Insufficient residential accommodation and slum landlords
• Continuing Urban Sprawl
Arising from the scan and analysis, the following are some of the dozen Strategic Initiatives adopted for 2002/2003
BUSINESS TO COUNCIL STRUCTURES: Revisit current Council/Business inter-relationship and structures to improve communication and understanding with and quicker reaction by both Councillors and senior officials.
HOUSING: Develop an appropriate approach to housing conversion to ensure that it only occurs where it should and that it complies with all regulations as well as encouraging new mixed income housing development where appropriate
TRANSPORT: Mobilise inner city transport planning and implementation around proposed high speed train
DATABASE: develop a comprehensive database
MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS: develop a comprehensive plan with other stakeholders to change perceptions and market the positives
TECHNOLOGY: Investigate economic solutions to upgrading technology standards
SPRAWL: Prevention of continuing urban sprawl, promote adoption of smart growth principles.
In closing this week, courtesy of the Neal Peirce Column, a comment made some 30 years ago by Kenneth Patton, then economic development director of New York City - "Urban economies are the only places that do what America is supposed to care about - the resurrection of people who've been left out, and newcomers who have yet to get in, and are not admitted to other places. Cities are successful in their ability to take people from some point of entry and elevate them to some higher level in the economic order of things. Suburbs look successful, but they are not. They just promote a certain measure of achieved success. They are not creative. Cities look unsuccessful, but by definition they are not."
May you enjoy a good long-weekend break and may it be a truly blessed one, regards,
Neil
Thursday, March 28, 2002
Friday, March 22, 2002
Kampala Citichat 22 March 2002
CITICHAT 11/2002 - 22 March 2002
Kampala – “The Hill of Antelopes” – Kasozi k’mpala
Early in the twentieth century, Winston Churchill described Uganda as the “Pearl of Africa”. Declared a British Protectorate in 1894, it eventually became independent from British colonial rule in 1962. After an initial period of relative stability and economic progress, the country was plunged into political chaos. In 1971, army chief Idi Amin seized power and the country descended into an orgy of ethnic violence, wholesale disregard for the rule of law and the sanctity of life and economic chaos. Even after Amin’s subsequent fall, the country was wracked with civil war as Milton Obote returned to power for the second time followed by some other short- lived regimes. It wasn’t until the National Resistance Movement (NRM) under the current President, Yoweri Museveni, took power and formed a government of national unity in 1986 that Uganda started the long, hard road back to constitutionalism and democracy.
In 1995 a new Constitution was promulgated. Under the Constitution, Parliament is the supreme organ of Government. Whilst political parties can register, multi party activity has been suspended and political participation in government is based on individual merit. Today, Uganda continues to be run under a government of National Unity and this approach has been upheld through a national referendum held in 1999. Once the new Constitution was crafted, Museveni called for nominations for presidential candidates in 1996 and then won the resultant election with 75% of the votes against two other candidates. At the end of his five-year term there were many more presidential hopefuls but he was again returned for a final five years this time garnering 69% of the vote. The elections were largely considered by both foreign and local observers to be free and fair.
The country has prospered under Museveni and the Government of National Unity. The economic growth rate over the past decade has averaged 6% per annum, inflation has been maintained below 10% for the past four years. There are no restrictions to foreign ownership of investments and no barriers to remittance of dividends. The country offers a highly competitive incentive regime for private investors. The government has made it clear that its recovery is based on a strong private sector and has seriously gone about creating an environment in which business can flourish. A recent United Nations publication records that the Government has pursued a steady policy of improving the investment climate by reducing bureaucracy, streamlining the legal framework, fighting corruption and stabilising the economy. Although the current government started from a low base following the years of anarchy, they have set about the recovery process in a progressive, deliberate and measurable way providing goals for each and every segment of their economy. Every indicator has shown positive growth over the past ten years, whether it be in education, water provision, telecommunications, agriculture, manufacture, privatisation, housing or health. Although the country must still be acknowledged as ‘poor’, its specific focus on poverty alleviation has resulted in a drop in poverty incidence of twelve percent between ’92 and ’98 – representing two million people. The Government Poverty Eradication Programme is based on:
• Creating a framework for economic growth and transfotrmation
• Promoting good governance and security
• Actions which directly increase the ability of the poor to raise their incomes and
• Actions which directly improve the quality of life of the poor.
Museveni is also credited with the country’s dramatic improvement in AIDS, from a prevalence of 30% ten years ago to 6% today, a period when most African countries have experienced growth in incidence. During that time the cost of AIDS drugs has dropped from $1000 a month to $40. The prevalence rate now is the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. Museveni has just received an international award as the most successful leader of any country in the fight against AIDS. (Telling is the fact that the Uganda AIDS campaign is based on a massive sensitisation campaign about safe sex, abstinence and faithfulness. Our own country bases its campaign by targeting teenagers with the message that sex is acceptable provided it is protected. The result is that our latest figures are that one fourteen year old in eight; two fifteen year olds in four and one sixteen year old in two are sexually active. The number of teenage boys using condoms is 15%, the same level as five years ago. All the tens of millions of rand spent have done has been to make us a nation of promiscuity with no dent in AIDS incidence.)
Last Saturday evening I sat on a terrace a couple of floors above street level in Kampala, capital city of Uganda, enjoying a meal with and chatting to Barnabas Tumwesigye, the Assistant Director of Land Development and some of his colleagues of the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA). Some time during the evening he looked down the road below us and told me about the city during the Amin era when this same street had been home to a tank regiment. He recounted how terrifying the occupying UNLA forces were – soldiers who had spent eight months in the bush advancing on Kampala, murdering everyone in their path.Eight months without a bath covered in lice and with an aura of death about them. “No one, and I mean no one, stayed in the city after six o’clock in the evening, if you did the chances of seeing the sunrise the next day were less than nil!” “We’ve seen some really bad times”, he mused, “but possibly you never appreciate the good times until you have suffered, really suffered.”
Today Kampala, (it takes its name from Kasozi k’mpala, ‘the hill of antelopes’ - its origins from 1891 when the Kabaka of Buganda had his court on Rubaga and Mego Hills) spread over some twenty-one hills, is a hive of energy and activity. The city built for 400 000 now houses well in excess of a million people, could be as many as two million says the Mayor. And you become aware of the resultant over-stretched infrastructure very quickly. The traffic is horrendous, worse than I have experienced anywhere. Streets, hopelessly underdesigned for current traffic levels are inadequate and, exacerbating the problem are an abundance of large British colonial-style traffic circles. I saw only one traffic light and it was the only intersection that coped with the traffic flow reasonably well. Add to the design difficulties, the streets are crowded with thousands of mini-bus taxis, “mutatus” as they are known locally and masses of scooter motorbikes. Driving techniques are more relevant to Hochenheim or Silverstone and traffic is forced to constantly weave around and from side to side to avoid destroying springs and tyres on the liberally potholed road surfaces. Punctuated with the hooting and shouting of taxi fare ‘soliciters’ and pedestrians who dodge the traffic anywhere and everywhere, the result is chaos. An American friend of mine once remarked that all cities are characterised by chaos, the better ones have learnt how to manage it! Kampala is not currently numbered amongst those!
On the other hand the city exudes an energy that is quite amazing. The hilly roads leading to and from the city are lined with buildings, mostly illegal, the city’s Chief Planner confessed, which sell anything you can think of and then some. In some instances, above ground floor retail space, which spills onto pavements where there are any, is some residential accommodation. Instead of the umbrellas, garden furniture, mirrors and curios alongside some of our local roads such as William Nichol, here steel doors, windows, shutters fences, burglar bars, wooden furniture including ornately upholstered chairs and double beds, coffins, bricks, plastic and cement pipes, blocks and everything else that one can think of as a saleable item (I saw a huge pile of plastic ducks!) line the streets. As opposed to our ‘passive’ roadside sales here, there it is very much ‘active’ for the goods for sale provide a backdrop to their open-air manufacture. Everywhere people are making, creating, selling. Amazing energy. Railway containers double up as informal shops stacked with pockets of cement standing cheek by jowl with one another, the owners of each vying with their neighbours to clinch a sale. A whole street just informally selling motor spares.
In the city, retail appears to be generally of poor quality but restaurants are great. Street crime is low and one sees a great many private security guards on the pavements outside the many financial institutions. They are all armed, mostly with what looked like ancient Lee Enfields - I did see one quite vicious looking home made rifle. I encountered little begging, informal pavement traders are not particularly prolific, I understand they have to be licensed , but the city has a number of informal trading markets. I visited two. The first focused on foodstuff, meat. fish, fruit and vegetables, was hugely busy and bustling and enveloped in the sounds and smells unique to the African market. The second was huge and, like the strip markets lining the streets into and out of the city, sells every conceivable goods and service. Combi taxis are serviced next to stacks of pots and pans and colourful plastic goods. The mayor says that this market houses 30 000 informal businesses and, on Sunday when I was driven through its centre, it was certainly jumping, a hive of activity.
I asked a local architect to show me typical Ugandan architecture. He smiled wryly and confessed that there wasn’t a local style – the buildings generally are pastiches of almost everything worst in international design. There are some examples of colonial architecture but nothing over-exciting. The City Council building was evidently funded by the Italian Government and succeeds in hiding the more interesting Governor General offices of a previous era. Now it is the office of the Mayor, Ssebaana Kizito, with whom we met for an interesting discussion regarding the problems being experienced by his local government.
There is very little open public or ‘green’ space in the city. To some extent this is softened by the fact that this is an intensely green and lush area, the equatorial climate ameliorated by altitude. Good quality clay is obviously in abundance and nearly all middle to upper income housing is roofed in locally produced red clay tiles. Such housing appropriates the many hilltops that comprise the suburbs so one does have a pleasing visual effect of bright red roofs dotting the green promontories of the city. The poor, as with so many developing countries, are generally in the valleys in the corrugated iron shacks that characterise the no or very low income.
South African firms are quite in evidence. Amongst Stannic, Steers, Nando’s, Shoprite and others, the most prominent is MTN whose bright yellow kiosks are on every street corner and who are responsible for adding to the chaos by digging up half the city streets to lay their cables.
Tourism appears to be fairly underdeveloped but with huge potential. Little seems to be in progress in physically recording the country’s turbulent and, at times, quite terrifying past. Outside of Kampala itself however, the country offers 10 National Parks with many tropical forests with an abundance of birds, primates and other mammals and reptiles. I believe the bird-watching is amongst the best in the world and there are great hikes and safaris. The Nile River, the source of which is in Uganda, is by all accounts spectacular offering wonderful scenery, white river rafting and the largest fresh water fish in the world, the Nile Perch.
One of these days I hope to get the time to explore areas outside of cities and not have to rely on hearsay, in the meantime I did find Kampala a fascinating African city and its people extremely friendly and pleasant at all levels.
Regards, neil
Kampala – “The Hill of Antelopes” – Kasozi k’mpala
Early in the twentieth century, Winston Churchill described Uganda as the “Pearl of Africa”. Declared a British Protectorate in 1894, it eventually became independent from British colonial rule in 1962. After an initial period of relative stability and economic progress, the country was plunged into political chaos. In 1971, army chief Idi Amin seized power and the country descended into an orgy of ethnic violence, wholesale disregard for the rule of law and the sanctity of life and economic chaos. Even after Amin’s subsequent fall, the country was wracked with civil war as Milton Obote returned to power for the second time followed by some other short- lived regimes. It wasn’t until the National Resistance Movement (NRM) under the current President, Yoweri Museveni, took power and formed a government of national unity in 1986 that Uganda started the long, hard road back to constitutionalism and democracy.
In 1995 a new Constitution was promulgated. Under the Constitution, Parliament is the supreme organ of Government. Whilst political parties can register, multi party activity has been suspended and political participation in government is based on individual merit. Today, Uganda continues to be run under a government of National Unity and this approach has been upheld through a national referendum held in 1999. Once the new Constitution was crafted, Museveni called for nominations for presidential candidates in 1996 and then won the resultant election with 75% of the votes against two other candidates. At the end of his five-year term there were many more presidential hopefuls but he was again returned for a final five years this time garnering 69% of the vote. The elections were largely considered by both foreign and local observers to be free and fair.
The country has prospered under Museveni and the Government of National Unity. The economic growth rate over the past decade has averaged 6% per annum, inflation has been maintained below 10% for the past four years. There are no restrictions to foreign ownership of investments and no barriers to remittance of dividends. The country offers a highly competitive incentive regime for private investors. The government has made it clear that its recovery is based on a strong private sector and has seriously gone about creating an environment in which business can flourish. A recent United Nations publication records that the Government has pursued a steady policy of improving the investment climate by reducing bureaucracy, streamlining the legal framework, fighting corruption and stabilising the economy. Although the current government started from a low base following the years of anarchy, they have set about the recovery process in a progressive, deliberate and measurable way providing goals for each and every segment of their economy. Every indicator has shown positive growth over the past ten years, whether it be in education, water provision, telecommunications, agriculture, manufacture, privatisation, housing or health. Although the country must still be acknowledged as ‘poor’, its specific focus on poverty alleviation has resulted in a drop in poverty incidence of twelve percent between ’92 and ’98 – representing two million people. The Government Poverty Eradication Programme is based on:
• Creating a framework for economic growth and transfotrmation
• Promoting good governance and security
• Actions which directly increase the ability of the poor to raise their incomes and
• Actions which directly improve the quality of life of the poor.
Museveni is also credited with the country’s dramatic improvement in AIDS, from a prevalence of 30% ten years ago to 6% today, a period when most African countries have experienced growth in incidence. During that time the cost of AIDS drugs has dropped from $1000 a month to $40. The prevalence rate now is the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. Museveni has just received an international award as the most successful leader of any country in the fight against AIDS. (Telling is the fact that the Uganda AIDS campaign is based on a massive sensitisation campaign about safe sex, abstinence and faithfulness. Our own country bases its campaign by targeting teenagers with the message that sex is acceptable provided it is protected. The result is that our latest figures are that one fourteen year old in eight; two fifteen year olds in four and one sixteen year old in two are sexually active. The number of teenage boys using condoms is 15%, the same level as five years ago. All the tens of millions of rand spent have done has been to make us a nation of promiscuity with no dent in AIDS incidence.)
Last Saturday evening I sat on a terrace a couple of floors above street level in Kampala, capital city of Uganda, enjoying a meal with and chatting to Barnabas Tumwesigye, the Assistant Director of Land Development and some of his colleagues of the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA). Some time during the evening he looked down the road below us and told me about the city during the Amin era when this same street had been home to a tank regiment. He recounted how terrifying the occupying UNLA forces were – soldiers who had spent eight months in the bush advancing on Kampala, murdering everyone in their path.Eight months without a bath covered in lice and with an aura of death about them. “No one, and I mean no one, stayed in the city after six o’clock in the evening, if you did the chances of seeing the sunrise the next day were less than nil!” “We’ve seen some really bad times”, he mused, “but possibly you never appreciate the good times until you have suffered, really suffered.”
Today Kampala, (it takes its name from Kasozi k’mpala, ‘the hill of antelopes’ - its origins from 1891 when the Kabaka of Buganda had his court on Rubaga and Mego Hills) spread over some twenty-one hills, is a hive of energy and activity. The city built for 400 000 now houses well in excess of a million people, could be as many as two million says the Mayor. And you become aware of the resultant over-stretched infrastructure very quickly. The traffic is horrendous, worse than I have experienced anywhere. Streets, hopelessly underdesigned for current traffic levels are inadequate and, exacerbating the problem are an abundance of large British colonial-style traffic circles. I saw only one traffic light and it was the only intersection that coped with the traffic flow reasonably well. Add to the design difficulties, the streets are crowded with thousands of mini-bus taxis, “mutatus” as they are known locally and masses of scooter motorbikes. Driving techniques are more relevant to Hochenheim or Silverstone and traffic is forced to constantly weave around and from side to side to avoid destroying springs and tyres on the liberally potholed road surfaces. Punctuated with the hooting and shouting of taxi fare ‘soliciters’ and pedestrians who dodge the traffic anywhere and everywhere, the result is chaos. An American friend of mine once remarked that all cities are characterised by chaos, the better ones have learnt how to manage it! Kampala is not currently numbered amongst those!
On the other hand the city exudes an energy that is quite amazing. The hilly roads leading to and from the city are lined with buildings, mostly illegal, the city’s Chief Planner confessed, which sell anything you can think of and then some. In some instances, above ground floor retail space, which spills onto pavements where there are any, is some residential accommodation. Instead of the umbrellas, garden furniture, mirrors and curios alongside some of our local roads such as William Nichol, here steel doors, windows, shutters fences, burglar bars, wooden furniture including ornately upholstered chairs and double beds, coffins, bricks, plastic and cement pipes, blocks and everything else that one can think of as a saleable item (I saw a huge pile of plastic ducks!) line the streets. As opposed to our ‘passive’ roadside sales here, there it is very much ‘active’ for the goods for sale provide a backdrop to their open-air manufacture. Everywhere people are making, creating, selling. Amazing energy. Railway containers double up as informal shops stacked with pockets of cement standing cheek by jowl with one another, the owners of each vying with their neighbours to clinch a sale. A whole street just informally selling motor spares.
In the city, retail appears to be generally of poor quality but restaurants are great. Street crime is low and one sees a great many private security guards on the pavements outside the many financial institutions. They are all armed, mostly with what looked like ancient Lee Enfields - I did see one quite vicious looking home made rifle. I encountered little begging, informal pavement traders are not particularly prolific, I understand they have to be licensed , but the city has a number of informal trading markets. I visited two. The first focused on foodstuff, meat. fish, fruit and vegetables, was hugely busy and bustling and enveloped in the sounds and smells unique to the African market. The second was huge and, like the strip markets lining the streets into and out of the city, sells every conceivable goods and service. Combi taxis are serviced next to stacks of pots and pans and colourful plastic goods. The mayor says that this market houses 30 000 informal businesses and, on Sunday when I was driven through its centre, it was certainly jumping, a hive of activity.
I asked a local architect to show me typical Ugandan architecture. He smiled wryly and confessed that there wasn’t a local style – the buildings generally are pastiches of almost everything worst in international design. There are some examples of colonial architecture but nothing over-exciting. The City Council building was evidently funded by the Italian Government and succeeds in hiding the more interesting Governor General offices of a previous era. Now it is the office of the Mayor, Ssebaana Kizito, with whom we met for an interesting discussion regarding the problems being experienced by his local government.
There is very little open public or ‘green’ space in the city. To some extent this is softened by the fact that this is an intensely green and lush area, the equatorial climate ameliorated by altitude. Good quality clay is obviously in abundance and nearly all middle to upper income housing is roofed in locally produced red clay tiles. Such housing appropriates the many hilltops that comprise the suburbs so one does have a pleasing visual effect of bright red roofs dotting the green promontories of the city. The poor, as with so many developing countries, are generally in the valleys in the corrugated iron shacks that characterise the no or very low income.
South African firms are quite in evidence. Amongst Stannic, Steers, Nando’s, Shoprite and others, the most prominent is MTN whose bright yellow kiosks are on every street corner and who are responsible for adding to the chaos by digging up half the city streets to lay their cables.
Tourism appears to be fairly underdeveloped but with huge potential. Little seems to be in progress in physically recording the country’s turbulent and, at times, quite terrifying past. Outside of Kampala itself however, the country offers 10 National Parks with many tropical forests with an abundance of birds, primates and other mammals and reptiles. I believe the bird-watching is amongst the best in the world and there are great hikes and safaris. The Nile River, the source of which is in Uganda, is by all accounts spectacular offering wonderful scenery, white river rafting and the largest fresh water fish in the world, the Nile Perch.
One of these days I hope to get the time to explore areas outside of cities and not have to rely on hearsay, in the meantime I did find Kampala a fascinating African city and its people extremely friendly and pleasant at all levels.
Regards, neil
Friday, March 15, 2002
Liliesleaf Citichat 15 March 2002
CITICHAT 10/2002 15 March 2002
Liliesleaf
"The white state has thrown overboard every pretence of rule by democratic process. Armed to the teeth it has presented the people with only one choice and that is to overthrow by force and violence. It can now be said that very little, if any, scope exists for the smashing of white supremacy other than by means of mass revolutionary action, the main content of which is armed resistance leading to victory……"
The opening passage of a court submission entitled 'Operation Mayibuye' submitted as an exhibit in the case of "the State against Nelson Mandela and others." The original document was lying on a table in a small thatched cottage in Rivonia, about 20 kms north of the city of Johannesburg, on the 11th July 1963 when police burst in to arrest the group of men gathered around the table. A black and white aerial photograph of the area of that time shows the cottage with a cluster of outhouses close to a farmhouse set in large fields. This was the 20 acre Liliesleaf Farm, in '63 very much part of rural Johannesburg, today an upper market residential area a stones-throw from the Rivonia business strip, the countryside swallowed in urban sprawl. This was the area known as 'mink-and manure' where the Johannesburg wealthy kept their stables and horses for country riding. Not so this particular farm. With the banning of the ANC, Harold Wolpe had bought the farm in 1961 for the undercover headquarters of the ANC and its military wing, Umkonto we Sizwe. The place was ideal, it was north of the city well away from the 'townships' in the south, literally in the 'country', the farmhouse almost invisible from the road with dense bushes and clumps of trees and fields to be traversed before one could get to the house itself.
The farm had a constant stream of 'visitors' who had to 'duck and dive' to get to and from the farm.Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, James Kantor, Elias Motsoaledi, Rusty Bernstein, Andrew Mlangeni. Many ANC members on the run from the police used the farm as a hideout, Nelson Mandela amongst them masquerading as a gardener. But on the 11th July 1963, Nelson Mandela was already in jail serving a five year sentence when a laundry van and a bakery van burst onto the farm and sixteen police and two police dogs swarmed around the buildings arresting 'anyone or anything that moved.' The thatched cottage contained a radio transmitter (using one of the farmhouse lightning conductors as aerial) which was of course Radio Freedom, the outhouses contained the printing presses on which ANC pamphlets and papers were printed. The papers lying on the table of the thatched cottage were eventually joined by other incriminating documents once a safe in one of the farmhouse bedrooms was opened. In their eagerness to see what the locked safe contained, the police ran out of patience with the locksmith and blasted the safe open, the door today is without its handle and is pockmarked with bullet holes. Outside the kitchen in the coal bunker the police found more incriminating documents, including Nelson Mandela's diary. Seventeen people were arrested, later many more who were implicated through the evidence collected. Arthur Goldreich??? and harold Wolpe found themselves searated from the others and locked up in what was then known a s Marshall Square police headquarters from where they made a dramatic escape and finally got to Britain. The evidence collected was used to arrainge Nelson Mandela as the primary accused and for he and the apprehended ANC leadership to be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Twenty six years later, in 1989, a Durban businessman Helmut Schneider and his wife Veda moved to Johannesburg and bought what once was the farmhouse, the farm having been sub-divided and developed into residential accommodation. A couple of weeks after they moved into the house they saw an article in a local newspaper headlined " Mystery buyer snaps up plotter's hideout" and, for the first time were confronted with the fact that this was that Rivonia farmhouse. Little by little they pieced together the background, the thatched cottage and most of the outbuildings were still there, albeit now on sub-dividec property, the safe and the coal bunker, the tree where Nelson Mandela shot a dove and learnt a lesson in life. Then in 1991, a surprise visit from Madiba himself, come back to resurrect old memories and they learnt a lot more about the farm.
On Tuesday of this week, I was fortunate to have been invited by Eric Itzkin, Deputy Director Heritage, to join a group to visit Liliesleaf Farm. Our tour guide was Veda Schneider but before the tour, we were briefed by Eric and then Nicholas Wolpe, son of Harold Wolpe who had originally bought the farm in '61 with ANC funds and had escaped the country in '63. Nicholas told us of arranging a reunion of the remaining Rivonia trialists.It was at the reunion that the idea to reinstate Liliesleaf farm to its 1963 state as a natuional heritage site was born. Lilliesleaf stood for what the struggle was all about, and whilst other sites (all with a colonial background) such as the Drill Hall, Robben Island and the Fort have all subsequently become 'struggle icons', Liliesleaf was pivotal, standing for what the struggle was all about, it was at a crucuial stage as the ANC moved from their passive resistance to armed struggle. The aim is for the Liliesleaf trust to acquire all the buildings, restore thenm to wahart they were, and develop an interactive museum they have already recovered the Freedom Radio radio transmitter from the police (complete with ExhibitA tags) are searcjhuing for the printing presses . They have 2/3 fullscap hand wriitten biographies of every treason trialist, are hoping to obtain all Percy Yutar' sdocuments of the treasonm trial (Yutar was the state prosecutior) and the notes were purchased by harry oppenheimer and are currently in the Oppenheim,er Museum)
Nicholas is concerned that our society is losing what ther struggle was all about and Liliesleaf could become that symbol.Wheras Robben Island portrays the negative connotation of incarceratuion, loiesleaf stands for freedom and democracy and where we are going. Liliesleaf is to become a symbo;l of democracy, leadership, awareness and education personifying tolerance and understanding.
Liliesleaf
"The white state has thrown overboard every pretence of rule by democratic process. Armed to the teeth it has presented the people with only one choice and that is to overthrow by force and violence. It can now be said that very little, if any, scope exists for the smashing of white supremacy other than by means of mass revolutionary action, the main content of which is armed resistance leading to victory……"
The opening passage of a court submission entitled 'Operation Mayibuye' submitted as an exhibit in the case of "the State against Nelson Mandela and others." The original document was lying on a table in a small thatched cottage in Rivonia, about 20 kms north of the city of Johannesburg, on the 11th July 1963 when police burst in to arrest the group of men gathered around the table. A black and white aerial photograph of the area of that time shows the cottage with a cluster of outhouses close to a farmhouse set in large fields. This was the 20 acre Liliesleaf Farm, in '63 very much part of rural Johannesburg, today an upper market residential area a stones-throw from the Rivonia business strip, the countryside swallowed in urban sprawl. This was the area known as 'mink-and manure' where the Johannesburg wealthy kept their stables and horses for country riding. Not so this particular farm. With the banning of the ANC, Harold Wolpe had bought the farm in 1961 for the undercover headquarters of the ANC and its military wing, Umkonto we Sizwe. The place was ideal, it was north of the city well away from the 'townships' in the south, literally in the 'country', the farmhouse almost invisible from the road with dense bushes and clumps of trees and fields to be traversed before one could get to the house itself.
The farm had a constant stream of 'visitors' who had to 'duck and dive' to get to and from the farm.Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, James Kantor, Elias Motsoaledi, Rusty Bernstein, Andrew Mlangeni. Many ANC members on the run from the police used the farm as a hideout, Nelson Mandela amongst them masquerading as a gardener. But on the 11th July 1963, Nelson Mandela was already in jail serving a five year sentence when a laundry van and a bakery van burst onto the farm and sixteen police and two police dogs swarmed around the buildings arresting 'anyone or anything that moved.' The thatched cottage contained a radio transmitter (using one of the farmhouse lightning conductors as aerial) which was of course Radio Freedom, the outhouses contained the printing presses on which ANC pamphlets and papers were printed. The papers lying on the table of the thatched cottage were eventually joined by other incriminating documents once a safe in one of the farmhouse bedrooms was opened. In their eagerness to see what the locked safe contained, the police ran out of patience with the locksmith and blasted the safe open, the door today is without its handle and is pockmarked with bullet holes. Outside the kitchen in the coal bunker the police found more incriminating documents, including Nelson Mandela's diary. Seventeen people were arrested, later many more who were implicated through the evidence collected. Arthur Goldreich??? and harold Wolpe found themselves searated from the others and locked up in what was then known a s Marshall Square police headquarters from where they made a dramatic escape and finally got to Britain. The evidence collected was used to arrainge Nelson Mandela as the primary accused and for he and the apprehended ANC leadership to be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Twenty six years later, in 1989, a Durban businessman Helmut Schneider and his wife Veda moved to Johannesburg and bought what once was the farmhouse, the farm having been sub-divided and developed into residential accommodation. A couple of weeks after they moved into the house they saw an article in a local newspaper headlined " Mystery buyer snaps up plotter's hideout" and, for the first time were confronted with the fact that this was that Rivonia farmhouse. Little by little they pieced together the background, the thatched cottage and most of the outbuildings were still there, albeit now on sub-dividec property, the safe and the coal bunker, the tree where Nelson Mandela shot a dove and learnt a lesson in life. Then in 1991, a surprise visit from Madiba himself, come back to resurrect old memories and they learnt a lot more about the farm.
On Tuesday of this week, I was fortunate to have been invited by Eric Itzkin, Deputy Director Heritage, to join a group to visit Liliesleaf Farm. Our tour guide was Veda Schneider but before the tour, we were briefed by Eric and then Nicholas Wolpe, son of Harold Wolpe who had originally bought the farm in '61 with ANC funds and had escaped the country in '63. Nicholas told us of arranging a reunion of the remaining Rivonia trialists.It was at the reunion that the idea to reinstate Liliesleaf farm to its 1963 state as a natuional heritage site was born. Lilliesleaf stood for what the struggle was all about, and whilst other sites (all with a colonial background) such as the Drill Hall, Robben Island and the Fort have all subsequently become 'struggle icons', Liliesleaf was pivotal, standing for what the struggle was all about, it was at a crucuial stage as the ANC moved from their passive resistance to armed struggle. The aim is for the Liliesleaf trust to acquire all the buildings, restore thenm to wahart they were, and develop an interactive museum they have already recovered the Freedom Radio radio transmitter from the police (complete with ExhibitA tags) are searcjhuing for the printing presses . They have 2/3 fullscap hand wriitten biographies of every treason trialist, are hoping to obtain all Percy Yutar' sdocuments of the treasonm trial (Yutar was the state prosecutior) and the notes were purchased by harry oppenheimer and are currently in the Oppenheim,er Museum)
Nicholas is concerned that our society is losing what ther struggle was all about and Liliesleaf could become that symbol.Wheras Robben Island portrays the negative connotation of incarceratuion, loiesleaf stands for freedom and democracy and where we are going. Liliesleaf is to become a symbo;l of democracy, leadership, awareness and education personifying tolerance and understanding.
Friday, March 8, 2002
Faraday Citichat 8 March 2002
CITICHAT 9/2002 - 8 March 2002
Faraday
Gave an Australian visitor a whistle-stop tour of the city this week. Something that intrigued him particularly as a first time visitor to Africa was the muti (traditional medicines) shop in Diagonal Street with its degutted monkeys and baboons, snake and bird skins hanging from the ceilings and its brightly coloured glass jars of ground herbs. We didn’t have time to take in the muti market on the southern boundary of the city but I had occasion to visit it a few days later. There are probably as many as a hundred specialist informal traders who have made the area under the M2 elevated highway their trading home. The informal market that they have created stretches down Faraday Street and is truly a reflection of the city’s African character.
Here there are the dispensers of traditional medicines, the traditional healers, the inyangas and sangomas. The dispensers, or informal pharmacists, either travel extensively in order to maintain a stock of relevant traditional medicines or have contacts spread throughout the country and neighbouring countries. What constitutes traditional medicines? Animal products such as skins, heads and bones which are used mainly for warding off evil spirits after being ground and burnt and then herbs which are generally ingested to combat impurities in the body. But there is also counselling and herbs for those who need help to improve their financial situation, for their confidence when being interviewed for a new job and for their sexual ability. There is a large market for natural remedies and I understand that most of the traders in the area make a pretty reasonable living.
The Faraday Station Special Facility Project is being planned to recognise (I think that better encapsulates the objective than ‘formalise’!) the activities of the area by providing good facilities such as waiting and consulting rooms for the traditional healers and dispensers and also for the display and selling of their products. But it will also acknowledge and provide facilities for and consolidate the other formal and informal activities in the area related to taxis, buses and rail. The ‘Special Facilities’ therefore include:
1.Facilities for commuters, taxi operators and drivers
2. The market for traditional medicines and consulting and treatment rooms for traditional healers.
3. A general informal trading market.
4. A precinct or neighbourhood centre including offices for precinct management, meeting and training rooms for health workers and for environment and conservation, a visitor’s and security centre.
5. Public open space with a small retail component
6. Environmental upgrade of existing pavements and provision of new pedestrian spaces, safety measures and amenities.
7. A taxi industry service and retail centre with formal retail space for spares and parts, services and food.
8 Residential accommodation.
There have been extensive consultations with all concerned and this promises to be an exciting recognition of one of the city’s unique attributes.
Referring back to the ‘whistle stop’ tour, what really invigorated me again was the sheer energy that has started to pulsate through the city with numerous projects underway. Newtown, in particular, is quite a beehive of activity. With ever more projects being planned, more inquiries being received, the city is becoming an area of real economic opportunity and growth
Regards, neil.
Faraday
Gave an Australian visitor a whistle-stop tour of the city this week. Something that intrigued him particularly as a first time visitor to Africa was the muti (traditional medicines) shop in Diagonal Street with its degutted monkeys and baboons, snake and bird skins hanging from the ceilings and its brightly coloured glass jars of ground herbs. We didn’t have time to take in the muti market on the southern boundary of the city but I had occasion to visit it a few days later. There are probably as many as a hundred specialist informal traders who have made the area under the M2 elevated highway their trading home. The informal market that they have created stretches down Faraday Street and is truly a reflection of the city’s African character.
Here there are the dispensers of traditional medicines, the traditional healers, the inyangas and sangomas. The dispensers, or informal pharmacists, either travel extensively in order to maintain a stock of relevant traditional medicines or have contacts spread throughout the country and neighbouring countries. What constitutes traditional medicines? Animal products such as skins, heads and bones which are used mainly for warding off evil spirits after being ground and burnt and then herbs which are generally ingested to combat impurities in the body. But there is also counselling and herbs for those who need help to improve their financial situation, for their confidence when being interviewed for a new job and for their sexual ability. There is a large market for natural remedies and I understand that most of the traders in the area make a pretty reasonable living.
The Faraday Station Special Facility Project is being planned to recognise (I think that better encapsulates the objective than ‘formalise’!) the activities of the area by providing good facilities such as waiting and consulting rooms for the traditional healers and dispensers and also for the display and selling of their products. But it will also acknowledge and provide facilities for and consolidate the other formal and informal activities in the area related to taxis, buses and rail. The ‘Special Facilities’ therefore include:
1.Facilities for commuters, taxi operators and drivers
2. The market for traditional medicines and consulting and treatment rooms for traditional healers.
3. A general informal trading market.
4. A precinct or neighbourhood centre including offices for precinct management, meeting and training rooms for health workers and for environment and conservation, a visitor’s and security centre.
5. Public open space with a small retail component
6. Environmental upgrade of existing pavements and provision of new pedestrian spaces, safety measures and amenities.
7. A taxi industry service and retail centre with formal retail space for spares and parts, services and food.
8 Residential accommodation.
There have been extensive consultations with all concerned and this promises to be an exciting recognition of one of the city’s unique attributes.
Referring back to the ‘whistle stop’ tour, what really invigorated me again was the sheer energy that has started to pulsate through the city with numerous projects underway. Newtown, in particular, is quite a beehive of activity. With ever more projects being planned, more inquiries being received, the city is becoming an area of real economic opportunity and growth
Regards, neil.
Friday, March 1, 2002
Informal Trading Citichat 1 March 2002
CITICHAT 8/2002 - 1 March 2002
Informal Trading
There has been a lot of publicity lately regarding the clamp-down by the city's Metro Police Department on informal trading/street vending/hawking. Headlines in the press have ranged from "Cops, hawkers clash in Joburg" and "Irate hawkers to take Joburg Council to court" to "Hawkers put urban prosperity plans to the test." The latter article uses language such as "the battle between hawkers and officials for Johannesburg's streets intensified this week" A Hawker Association representative is quoted as saying "We want to bring to an end this control over the informal sector" - hawkers are quoted as saying that the city is targeting the poorest section of its constituency whilst the City Manager is quoted as saying that the Metro is having “to deal with anarchy.” Hawker associations claim that the City's informal trading markets are disasters whilst the City's Markets Company head claims that the markets are full and being supported by the public! It is virtually impossible to get any sense out of the rhetoric and emotions that are running riot but let's have a look at some background to the current approach to informal street trading in the city.
Informal street trading has been a part of Johannesburg literally since the city's founding in 1886. And so, it would appear, have been the attempts to control it. Apart from local bylaws, national legislation going back to the 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act and subsequent apartheid legislation such as the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act No. 15 of 1945 all sought to strictly control and restrict not just hawking but even formal businesses in ‘townships.’ Professor Keith Beavon in the 1989 publication ‘Informal Ways’, recorded what the approach was up to just a decade ago - “action can legally be taken against the hawkers if they do not move a certain distance in a certain amount of time, or action can be taken if they are trading without a license or without having the license with them. Action can also be taken if the hawkers are seen to be blocking either the road or pavement on, or alongside which, they operate. It is also possible for action to be instituted on the basis of a complaint received from an unidentified member of the public or from a shopkeeper who believes hawkers are competing unfairly with his shop. Actions can vary from spot fines to arrest and confiscation, as well as the destruction of the hawker’s commodities.” All of this applied right up to the beginning of the ‘90s. The pendulum was heavily weighted against informal trading!
You may wonder, as I did when we were researching hawker bylaws some years ago, about the reference to “moving a certain distance in a certain amount of time.” In fact what was called for was that the hawker was not allowed to trade for longer than 20 minutes in one place and then was required to move at least 25 metres from the spot that they had been trading from. Although this was still operative up to the beginning of the ‘90s, its origin was actually from the early ‘30s! A group of pavement sellers known as the ‘Cheap Jacks’ operated in Johannesburg in the early ‘30s. They weren’t traders but actually were confidence tricksters who sold cheap goods to a gullible public with the assistance of a number of accomplices. A Cheap Jack would stand on a box or stool on the pavement attracting a crowd of potential buyers with typical cockney patter and wild exaggeration about the cheap goods that he was offering, whilst his mates would pick the pockets of the crowds who had gathered around. As this caused an obstruction to pedestrians and an irritant to formal retailers, legislation known as the ‘move-on’ regulation was introduced and was kept conveniently in place and misapplied for nearly sixty years after the reason for the bylaw had been eradicated!
In the early ‘90s, with pending democratic changes clearly in the offing, all the country’s offensive legislation came under scrutiny. In May 1991 all restrictions which had denied disadvantaged communities opportunities to start businesses were removed but, rather like ‘throwing the baby out with the bath-water’, so were all protective measures. The City Council of the time, the last ‘illegitimate’ council, decided that it would not repeal its regulations but would not enforce them. Unfortunately it also chose not to manage the resultant situation. Informal trading mushroomed in the city, I seem to remember figures of 250 licensed traders in the early ‘80s ‘which in the early ‘90s now rose to a reported 12 000, although this was probably closer to 5 000. The pendulum had swung back in the favour of the hawkers with a vengeance!
In 1993 the Central Johannesburg Partnership (CJP) established an Informal Trading Forum bringing around the table representatives of Hawker Associations – of which there were many at that time - with formal retailers and businesses operating in the city as well as city council officials The idea was to develop a new policy - instead of YOU MAY NOT TRADE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES the policy was rather YOU MAY TRADE PROVIDED THAT…. The new bylaws we crafted provided a code of conduct for traders and practical bylaws which allowed trading only on pavements that were wide enough to permit both trading and reasonable pedestrian access; restricted trading against retailers’ windows, restricted selling of goods that were in direct competition with the formal shops the traders were in front of; provided the the council the authority to restrict trading in certain areas, or to restrict times of trading or goods to be traded. There was a lot of give and take in the negotiations, but we felt that we had moved forward positively with the objective of bringing the pendulum into a far more neutral position. In the meantime, the deterioration in the urban environment had become pronounced and a large number of formal retailers had left the city.
At this stage bureaucracy and inter-governmental ‘turf wars’ appeared to take over. The bylaws were finally only put in place in mid 1998, some three years after agreement had been reached in the Forum. A Council enforcement team was established and an education and bylaw awareness programme was launched but the promised enforcement never materialised on a sustained basis. The streets became more and more unmanaged and a great many formal retailers lost faith in the Council perceiving there to be a lack of political will to enforce the bylaws and left the city. The quality of formal retail went into a sharp decline. But the Council was starting to count the cost of the laissez-faire management approach of the past few years. The cleaning of the city as a result of waste generated from hawking had become much more difficult requiring substantial increases in staffing and therefore cost. Stormwater drains were continually blocked by litter and refuse emanating from hawkers. The deterioration in the public environment became pronounced. It was clear that action had to be taken. A fresh study was undertaken which involved large scale interaction between the consultants and all the role players. As opposed to most previous studies, it focused heavily on developmental issues. The resultant recommendations were work-shopped and accepted – certain areas of the city where informal trading was considered to be inappropriate would be declared restricted trading areas and the quid pro quo was that informal trading markets would be established. Apart from some linear markets, the pavements of the CBD would be trading-free. The hawker associations were unhappy, one suspects that their unhappiness was more to do with losing a degree of control than with promoting the best interests of the hawkers themselves. Some associations appeared to go out of their way to undermine the projects and processes that were being put in place, and the rhetoric level increased dramatically. On the other hand, the initial resultant projects and processes appeared to generate a number of major operational problems that disadvantaged some of the traders. Corruption seems to have also been part and parcel of enforcement which appeared to be selectively targeting traders who were trading illegally. Confiscated goods disappeared between the place of confiscation and the storage facility. The pendulum was now yo-yoing!
Where does this tale of oppression, freedom, over-compensation, attempts to provide a rational framework, lack of enforcement and the new resolve to address the issue lead? Apart from the current war of words and legal action that is! Firstly, whatever is done, on both sides, must be done within the boundaries set by legislation, if we cannot agree to that then we are no better than a banana republic. Secondly, there needs to be a recognition of the economic difficulties of a large number of people who are desperate to earn a living. But, this latter point needs to be balance by the need for the hawking community to accept that it does create practical problems for the city and its other stakeholders. (In reviewing some of our documentation on the subject I came across a 1991 report on street vending in the city of Philadelphia, Penn. It clearly states that the unmanaged hawking at that time had “negative effects on the image of the business district and pedestrian movement, unfair competition with stores and restaurants; generation of litter and liability exposure among property owners.” We are not unique, many cities struggle with these issues.) Thirdly, whatever we do must now fall within the reality of the long-term over-riding vision for the city as enunciated in Joburg 2030. Essentially this is that a ‘better city’ and a ‘better quality of life for its citizens’ is fundamentally based on growing the city’s economy.
For the past few decades the economy of the city has been shrinking and therefore it has not been a ‘better city’ nor provided ‘a better quality of life’ for its citizens. Can this all be blamed on informal trading? Absolutely not, but it is very much part of the problem, part of the decline. There have been many factors that have led to the city’s deterioration, poor planning decisions, lack of urban management, lack of enforcement, crime and a host of other issues. How does one quantify the earnings capacity of informal trading on the one hand with the cost to the city on the other.? I’m no economist but I did attempt to at least get a feel for the answer to that question. Although there are a number of blanks which require one to make judgement calls I came to a conclusion that
1. The nett income – profit – derived by hawkers in the CBD could be between R50 and R100 million per annum. (which is untaxed in terms of both city rates and taxes and personal tax.)
2. The nett loss to the city in terms of excessive office vacancies and depressed rentals
- both office and retail space – is R1.2 billion per annum.
3 This figure excludes (a) the reduced economy in the city through both lack of ‘feet’ and through (b) lack of ‘quality of feet’, (c) additional costs of cleaning, repairs and maintenance of the city’s infrastructure and, (d) the 50% reduction in rates income through the new valuations. I don’t know how these would all be quantified but the R1.2 billion could well be R2 billion per annum.
The judgement call is how much of the ‘cost to the city’ is purely brought about by informal trading? If only 10%, then the negative impact of informal trading could be R200 million per annum; if 25%, then the negative impact could be R500 million per annum. Based on my calculations, it would appear as if the annual income of R50 to R100 million in the pockets of informal traders in the CBD has been ‘bought’ at a price of anything from R200 to R500 million per annum.
Government that allows unmanaged informal trading is doing neither the towns/cities nor the informal traders a favour. The economic results of unbridled informal trade can be seen from my admittedly rather crude workings. Informal traders deserve better than they are getting - they must be given every opportunity to develop and grow their skills and their income – they have little chance of doing this on the streets. Why should thousands of people be condemned to operating on pavements with no proper shelter, no storage or toilet facilities, exposed to the high degree of pollution that our cities generate? Why should hundreds of thousands of city users have to endure pavements that are difficult to navigate and filthy and that impact negatively on the city’s ambience? But then how do we also retain and celebrate our Africanness? Are markets the answer? We will do far better for the city and all its stakeholders, which clearly includes informal traders, if we adopt a pragmatic rather than an emotional approach to solving the problem. I believe that the current ‘market plan’ is just such a pragmatic approach. If corruption can be eliminated – and I don’t believe that corruption is limited to just one party – and if implementation can take place in the best interests of the city and of informal traders, we can get that pendulum to finally come to rest plumb in the centre. And everyone wins!
Regards, neil
Informal Trading
There has been a lot of publicity lately regarding the clamp-down by the city's Metro Police Department on informal trading/street vending/hawking. Headlines in the press have ranged from "Cops, hawkers clash in Joburg" and "Irate hawkers to take Joburg Council to court" to "Hawkers put urban prosperity plans to the test." The latter article uses language such as "the battle between hawkers and officials for Johannesburg's streets intensified this week" A Hawker Association representative is quoted as saying "We want to bring to an end this control over the informal sector" - hawkers are quoted as saying that the city is targeting the poorest section of its constituency whilst the City Manager is quoted as saying that the Metro is having “to deal with anarchy.” Hawker associations claim that the City's informal trading markets are disasters whilst the City's Markets Company head claims that the markets are full and being supported by the public! It is virtually impossible to get any sense out of the rhetoric and emotions that are running riot but let's have a look at some background to the current approach to informal street trading in the city.
Informal street trading has been a part of Johannesburg literally since the city's founding in 1886. And so, it would appear, have been the attempts to control it. Apart from local bylaws, national legislation going back to the 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act and subsequent apartheid legislation such as the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act No. 15 of 1945 all sought to strictly control and restrict not just hawking but even formal businesses in ‘townships.’ Professor Keith Beavon in the 1989 publication ‘Informal Ways’, recorded what the approach was up to just a decade ago - “action can legally be taken against the hawkers if they do not move a certain distance in a certain amount of time, or action can be taken if they are trading without a license or without having the license with them. Action can also be taken if the hawkers are seen to be blocking either the road or pavement on, or alongside which, they operate. It is also possible for action to be instituted on the basis of a complaint received from an unidentified member of the public or from a shopkeeper who believes hawkers are competing unfairly with his shop. Actions can vary from spot fines to arrest and confiscation, as well as the destruction of the hawker’s commodities.” All of this applied right up to the beginning of the ‘90s. The pendulum was heavily weighted against informal trading!
You may wonder, as I did when we were researching hawker bylaws some years ago, about the reference to “moving a certain distance in a certain amount of time.” In fact what was called for was that the hawker was not allowed to trade for longer than 20 minutes in one place and then was required to move at least 25 metres from the spot that they had been trading from. Although this was still operative up to the beginning of the ‘90s, its origin was actually from the early ‘30s! A group of pavement sellers known as the ‘Cheap Jacks’ operated in Johannesburg in the early ‘30s. They weren’t traders but actually were confidence tricksters who sold cheap goods to a gullible public with the assistance of a number of accomplices. A Cheap Jack would stand on a box or stool on the pavement attracting a crowd of potential buyers with typical cockney patter and wild exaggeration about the cheap goods that he was offering, whilst his mates would pick the pockets of the crowds who had gathered around. As this caused an obstruction to pedestrians and an irritant to formal retailers, legislation known as the ‘move-on’ regulation was introduced and was kept conveniently in place and misapplied for nearly sixty years after the reason for the bylaw had been eradicated!
In the early ‘90s, with pending democratic changes clearly in the offing, all the country’s offensive legislation came under scrutiny. In May 1991 all restrictions which had denied disadvantaged communities opportunities to start businesses were removed but, rather like ‘throwing the baby out with the bath-water’, so were all protective measures. The City Council of the time, the last ‘illegitimate’ council, decided that it would not repeal its regulations but would not enforce them. Unfortunately it also chose not to manage the resultant situation. Informal trading mushroomed in the city, I seem to remember figures of 250 licensed traders in the early ‘80s ‘which in the early ‘90s now rose to a reported 12 000, although this was probably closer to 5 000. The pendulum had swung back in the favour of the hawkers with a vengeance!
In 1993 the Central Johannesburg Partnership (CJP) established an Informal Trading Forum bringing around the table representatives of Hawker Associations – of which there were many at that time - with formal retailers and businesses operating in the city as well as city council officials The idea was to develop a new policy - instead of YOU MAY NOT TRADE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES the policy was rather YOU MAY TRADE PROVIDED THAT…. The new bylaws we crafted provided a code of conduct for traders and practical bylaws which allowed trading only on pavements that were wide enough to permit both trading and reasonable pedestrian access; restricted trading against retailers’ windows, restricted selling of goods that were in direct competition with the formal shops the traders were in front of; provided the the council the authority to restrict trading in certain areas, or to restrict times of trading or goods to be traded. There was a lot of give and take in the negotiations, but we felt that we had moved forward positively with the objective of bringing the pendulum into a far more neutral position. In the meantime, the deterioration in the urban environment had become pronounced and a large number of formal retailers had left the city.
At this stage bureaucracy and inter-governmental ‘turf wars’ appeared to take over. The bylaws were finally only put in place in mid 1998, some three years after agreement had been reached in the Forum. A Council enforcement team was established and an education and bylaw awareness programme was launched but the promised enforcement never materialised on a sustained basis. The streets became more and more unmanaged and a great many formal retailers lost faith in the Council perceiving there to be a lack of political will to enforce the bylaws and left the city. The quality of formal retail went into a sharp decline. But the Council was starting to count the cost of the laissez-faire management approach of the past few years. The cleaning of the city as a result of waste generated from hawking had become much more difficult requiring substantial increases in staffing and therefore cost. Stormwater drains were continually blocked by litter and refuse emanating from hawkers. The deterioration in the public environment became pronounced. It was clear that action had to be taken. A fresh study was undertaken which involved large scale interaction between the consultants and all the role players. As opposed to most previous studies, it focused heavily on developmental issues. The resultant recommendations were work-shopped and accepted – certain areas of the city where informal trading was considered to be inappropriate would be declared restricted trading areas and the quid pro quo was that informal trading markets would be established. Apart from some linear markets, the pavements of the CBD would be trading-free. The hawker associations were unhappy, one suspects that their unhappiness was more to do with losing a degree of control than with promoting the best interests of the hawkers themselves. Some associations appeared to go out of their way to undermine the projects and processes that were being put in place, and the rhetoric level increased dramatically. On the other hand, the initial resultant projects and processes appeared to generate a number of major operational problems that disadvantaged some of the traders. Corruption seems to have also been part and parcel of enforcement which appeared to be selectively targeting traders who were trading illegally. Confiscated goods disappeared between the place of confiscation and the storage facility. The pendulum was now yo-yoing!
Where does this tale of oppression, freedom, over-compensation, attempts to provide a rational framework, lack of enforcement and the new resolve to address the issue lead? Apart from the current war of words and legal action that is! Firstly, whatever is done, on both sides, must be done within the boundaries set by legislation, if we cannot agree to that then we are no better than a banana republic. Secondly, there needs to be a recognition of the economic difficulties of a large number of people who are desperate to earn a living. But, this latter point needs to be balance by the need for the hawking community to accept that it does create practical problems for the city and its other stakeholders. (In reviewing some of our documentation on the subject I came across a 1991 report on street vending in the city of Philadelphia, Penn. It clearly states that the unmanaged hawking at that time had “negative effects on the image of the business district and pedestrian movement, unfair competition with stores and restaurants; generation of litter and liability exposure among property owners.” We are not unique, many cities struggle with these issues.) Thirdly, whatever we do must now fall within the reality of the long-term over-riding vision for the city as enunciated in Joburg 2030. Essentially this is that a ‘better city’ and a ‘better quality of life for its citizens’ is fundamentally based on growing the city’s economy.
For the past few decades the economy of the city has been shrinking and therefore it has not been a ‘better city’ nor provided ‘a better quality of life’ for its citizens. Can this all be blamed on informal trading? Absolutely not, but it is very much part of the problem, part of the decline. There have been many factors that have led to the city’s deterioration, poor planning decisions, lack of urban management, lack of enforcement, crime and a host of other issues. How does one quantify the earnings capacity of informal trading on the one hand with the cost to the city on the other.? I’m no economist but I did attempt to at least get a feel for the answer to that question. Although there are a number of blanks which require one to make judgement calls I came to a conclusion that
1. The nett income – profit – derived by hawkers in the CBD could be between R50 and R100 million per annum. (which is untaxed in terms of both city rates and taxes and personal tax.)
2. The nett loss to the city in terms of excessive office vacancies and depressed rentals
- both office and retail space – is R1.2 billion per annum.
3 This figure excludes (a) the reduced economy in the city through both lack of ‘feet’ and through (b) lack of ‘quality of feet’, (c) additional costs of cleaning, repairs and maintenance of the city’s infrastructure and, (d) the 50% reduction in rates income through the new valuations. I don’t know how these would all be quantified but the R1.2 billion could well be R2 billion per annum.
The judgement call is how much of the ‘cost to the city’ is purely brought about by informal trading? If only 10%, then the negative impact of informal trading could be R200 million per annum; if 25%, then the negative impact could be R500 million per annum. Based on my calculations, it would appear as if the annual income of R50 to R100 million in the pockets of informal traders in the CBD has been ‘bought’ at a price of anything from R200 to R500 million per annum.
Government that allows unmanaged informal trading is doing neither the towns/cities nor the informal traders a favour. The economic results of unbridled informal trade can be seen from my admittedly rather crude workings. Informal traders deserve better than they are getting - they must be given every opportunity to develop and grow their skills and their income – they have little chance of doing this on the streets. Why should thousands of people be condemned to operating on pavements with no proper shelter, no storage or toilet facilities, exposed to the high degree of pollution that our cities generate? Why should hundreds of thousands of city users have to endure pavements that are difficult to navigate and filthy and that impact negatively on the city’s ambience? But then how do we also retain and celebrate our Africanness? Are markets the answer? We will do far better for the city and all its stakeholders, which clearly includes informal traders, if we adopt a pragmatic rather than an emotional approach to solving the problem. I believe that the current ‘market plan’ is just such a pragmatic approach. If corruption can be eliminated – and I don’t believe that corruption is limited to just one party – and if implementation can take place in the best interests of the city and of informal traders, we can get that pendulum to finally come to rest plumb in the centre. And everyone wins!
Regards, neil
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