Filthy Harare's vendor dilemma

Every morning, Charlene Hukutwa, not her real name, stacks tomatoes into small pyramids along George Silundika Avenue, where five or six usually sell for US$1.

By 7am, the pavement is already crowded with commuters heading to work. For Hukutwa, that steady stream of pedestrians is more valuable than any formal market stall elsewhere in the city.

She knows she is not supposed to be there.

The Harare City Council (HCC) has spent months clearing pavements and urging vendors to move into designated markets where trading is legal, regulated and more orderly.

But for Hukutwa, moving away from the CBD could mean losing the customers who sustain her livelihood.

"Personally, I do not like coming here," she said.

"But if the council can fully pay my child's school fees, I will completely stop vending, stay at home and never bother anyone. As long as they fail to do that, this will remain my home until my child finishes school."

Her story captures the dilemma at the heart of Harare's long-running battle with informal trading: how to enforce the law without destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people who depend on high-traffic areas to survive.

Under the council's definition, a legal vendor must operate from a designated vending zone or market, possess a valid municipal trading permit, pay prescribed charges and comply with public health and environmental requirements.

Food vendors must additionally register with the City Health Department and meet food safety standards.

HCC acting town clerk Advocate Warren Chiwawa said the council was not seeking to prevent people from earning a living, but wanted to create an orderly, safe and sustainable trading environment for vendors, consumers, residents and businesses.

Yet the scale of informal trading highlights the difficulty of achieving that objective.

Council records show that only 947 licensed traders operate in the central business district, while the authority estimates that between 20 000 and 30 000 vendors operate illegally on pavements, at intersections and along major streets.

At the same time, the city says it has capacity for 17 660 vending stalls, of which only 8 545 are occupied.

This leaves more than 9 000 stalls vacant, unusable, undeveloped or abandoned.

The situation is particularly striking in the CBD, where the council has identified eight primary market sites with a combined capacity of 933 stalls.

Only 207 are occupied, leaving 726 vacant.

Of those, 720 are at the Seke Road/Dieppe Road intersection.

The figures appear to present a simple solution — move illegal vendors into the empty spaces.

But the economics of vending make the problem far more complicated.

A stall can be legal, affordable and properly serviced, but still fail if there are not enough customers passing through the area.

A vendor operating from a CBD pavement has immediate access to thousands of potential customers. Moving that vendor several kilometres away can effectively destroy the customer base around which the business was built.

For Hukutwa, therefore, the issue is not simply whether the city has a legal stall available.

It is whether that stall can generate enough income to keep her child in school.

The National Vendors Union of Zimbabwe (NAVUZ) says this economic reality has been ignored for too long.

NAVUZ chairperson Sten Zvorwadza said the organisation recognised the city's authority to regulate public health, safety, traffic and urban planning, but argued that repeated enforcement operations had failed to address the economic forces driving people back onto the streets.

"This is not a defence of disorder," he said.

"Decades of enforcement operations followed by the return of vendors demonstrate that the underlying economics of the crisis have never been addressed."

Zvorwadza pointed to vending sites such as the Coventry Road bay and a location in Warren Park, which he said struggled because they did not attract sufficient customer traffic.

"A trading bay without customers is not economic infrastructure," he said.

"A site may be legally designated but economically useless. A pavement may be legally prohibited but economically attractive precisely because of the customer traffic passing through that space."

The vendors' representative body argues that Harare's planning has failed to keep pace with the rapid informalisation of Zimbabwe's economy.

Zvorwadza cited the 2023 Economic Census, which found that 76,1 percent of operational establishments in Zimbabwe were informal, while 87,9 percent were micro-enterprises.

"Zimbabwe's economy informalised faster than Harare's spatial planning adapted," he said.

NAVUZ, however, said informal trading should not be allowed to compromise public safety.

Vendors should not block roads, obstruct emergency access, mishandle food or trade over sewer infrastructure, Zvorwadza said.

Instead, the union is calling for a comprehensive vendor workspace and economic infrastructure audit involving the city, central Government, vendors, urban planners and public health authorities.

The proposed audit would establish where vendors are currently operating, where commuters actually travel and where new markets could realistically succeed.

NAVUZ also wants a negotiated social compact under which vendors commit to registration, licensing and sanitation requirements while the Government and council provide safe and commercially viable workspaces, fair stall allocation and protection against arbitrary seizures.

The union further wants greater transparency to tackle so-called "space barons" who profit from informal control of trading spaces.

Council says it has already reduced some vending charges in the 2026 budget, but whether the changes are enough to make formal trading economically attractive remains uncertain.

"Formalisation without infrastructure is merely registration," Zvorwadza said.

"Relocation without commercial viability is displacement."

He said the objective should not be to force every vendor into the CBD, but to establish a network of viable markets closer to residential areas and major commuter routes.

"The future choice is not vendors versus a clean city — it is between unplanned informality and planned informality," he said.

"A well-governed Harare can protect pedestrian movement, sanitation, traffic, businesses and public infrastructure while simultaneously protecting livelihoods."

For now, however, the debate remains largely theoretical for vendors such as Hukutwa.

Tomorrow morning, she will once again arrive on George Silundika Avenue before 7am, put down her crate, smooth out the plastic sheet and build her familiar pyramids of tomatoes.

The council has its regulations. NAVUZ has its proposals.

Hukutwa has school fees to pay.