HARARE – The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) has urged the government to suspend its September 9 deadline for street vendors to vacate undesignated trading sites in Harare, warning that a crackdown without alternative livelihoods will deepen poverty.
Local government minister Daniel Garwe last week gave vendors operating outside designated sites until September 9 to leave ahead of a nationwide clean-up operation. The government says the exercise is aimed at restoring order, sanitation, and access to public spaces.
But ZimRights, in a statement, said removing vendors from the streets without addressing the economic conditions that drive informal trading would amount to dealing with the symptoms rather than the underlying problem.
“Vending is not a choice; it is the last item on a long list of things that did not work out,” the advocacy group said.
“Strip away the label ‘illegal vendor’ and what remains is a citizen chasing a livelihood in a country with too little to offer and inequalities too flagrant to ignore.”
ZimRights said it supported clean and orderly cities, including safe pavements and properly serviced marketplaces, but argued that enforcement backed by a seven-day ultimatum and municipal police was not a solution without credible alternatives.
“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,” it said.
The organisation said vendors included graduates, retrenched workers, widows, and young people who had been unable to find formal employment.
It said the government was constitutionally obliged to promote decent livelihoods, protect human dignity, and ensure that administrative action was lawful, fair, and reasonable.
ZimRights also invoked Zimbabwe’s obligations under international human rights instruments, arguing that measures affecting people’s means of subsistence should be preceded by consultation, adequate notice, and viable alternatives
It called on the government to suspend the September 9 deadline and open dialogue with vendor associations, local authorities, and civil society.
The organisation also wants authorities to provide accessible and affordable marketplaces before removing vendors, guarantee that enforcement will not involve violence, arbitrary arrests or destruction and confiscation of goods, and address the root causes of informal trading through job creation and industrial revival.
Garwe has warned that authorities will dismantle illegal vending structures and deploy municipal police to prevent traders from returning to cleared areas once the deadline expires. The operation is expected to begin in Harare before being extended to other cities and towns.
ZimRights said the government should instead honor commitments made in its People’s Human Rights Manifesto, particularly a call for safe spaces for informal traders and removal of barriers to lawful economic activity.
“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,” the organisation said.
“Let us treat the sickness, not stitch the symptom.”
