Beyond the glamourous government events and business dinners hosted in the name of women’s empowerment in August, we’ve got to also closely examine the livelihoods of those who labour at the bottom of racial capitalism.
The latest 2022/23 socioeconomic data published by Stats SA shows that black women who originate from rural provinces are the poorest group in the country. In other words, the racial, gendered, and geographic legacy of apartheid still remains in place and all existing mechanisms that have been tried since white minority rule formally ended are not changing this reality.
As a result, poor black women from the country’s rural margins have migrated to the cities to look for a better life – and the structured exclusions of the formal economy have pushed them out to the street trading space to survive. In every city and town in SA, the streets are occupied by black women who sell fruits, vegetables, cooked food, and clothing. The taxi ranks and CBDs in particular, where the black working-class mostly congregates, are full of these women street traders including a few men and immigrants.
In a recent research study I conducted with my honours student, Ms Thembi Mba, we show that black women as street vendors are able to survive out of this kind of work; they raise families, and they also open stokvels where they converge their earnings and profits to generate significant wealth. This revelation was different from the usual defeatist presentation of black women street vendors as a people who are victims of poverty, single motherhood, abuse, and divorce.
Although the observation we made in this study was commendable, we were not oblivious to the fact that being a street vendor in SA is also precarious and dangerous. When the Covid-19 lockdown regulations were implemented, street vendors were the first victims of state violence where their possessions were dispossessed, and they were forcefully removed from their popular selling spots. This brought so much devastation to their families and children, and many of them are yet to recover from these traumatic losses.
In addition, all municipalities are developing anti-poor by-laws that seek to exclude street vendors from taking part in the local economy. Three years ago, the City of Cape Town initiated by-laws that targeted homeless people and informal traders from freely moving, selling, and occupying public spaces in the city. The latest move by this municipality against informal traders was the impounding of taxi vehicles, and this led to a two-weeks long protest against these forms of anti-poor state violence.
Similar incidents in the past two years have also been witnessed in municipalities of Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Ekurhuleni among others. These practices are shocking, given the fact that as far back as June 2018, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA (Seri) and the SA Local Government Association (Salga) issued a detailed report titled: "Informal Trade in SA: Legislation, Case Law and Recommendations for Local Government" – which was intended to advise, caution, and condemn all municipalities from initiating unjust laws against street vendors. This report underscored the street vendors’ constitutional right to private property and their freedom of movement, trade, settlement, and dignity.
For municipalities to continue with their discriminatory laws and practices demonstrates the culture of violence, racism, sexism, and complete hate against poor people that is embedded in the state. Nobody can deny that we are witnessing an era of increasing violence against poor black people and black women in the main.
As we commemorate Women’s Month we must comprehend that the women’s march on August 9 1956 against the racist pass laws implemented by the apartheid regime is still an ongoing struggle today. Black women as street vendors, as workers in corporate and government, and as mothers, are still trapped at the bottom of this vicious system of racial capitalism. The post-1994 government has maintained the racist capitalist structure it inherited from the apartheid regime, and it continues to implement its determined logic in violating women’s human rights with impunity.
Between the racist by-laws that displace struggling black women street vendors from urban life today, and the racist pass laws of 1956 that pushed black women into structured black poverty – there is absolutely no difference. We must therefore continue this fight for liberation.
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