Operation Murambatsvina and the Politics of Street Vendors in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Soon after the government of Zimbabwe began a wide-ranging demolition of the informal sector infrastructure on 19 May 2005, some street vendors whose market stalls had been destroyed were back at their trading sites. Four years after this clean up exercise, code-named Operation Murambatsvina, tens of thousands of informal traders could be seen on the pavements of Harare and other Zimbabwean cities. While debates about murambatsvina have focused on why this blitz occurred and how it affected livelihoods depending on the informal economy, little is known about the vendors who revived their activities in the post-murambatsvina period. This case study of Makomva Business Centre in Harare's Glen View Township attempts to understand how the ‘survivors’ of this blitz responded and explains why they responded in the manner in which they did. The study found out that rather than resorting to organised forms of resistance, the murambatsvina victims realised their limited capacity to confront the armed police and a government determined to use brute force. Instead, street vendors devised more subtle forms of resistance. Contrary to the argument that by not mobilising confrontational resistance against the destruction of their houses, businesses and jobs, Zimbabwean informal traders were apolitical, this study argues that street vendors demonstrated a high level of sophistication and political maturity by opting for adaptive resistance. Indeed, rather than viewing road-side traders as passive victims of state-sponsored violence, this article perceives them as critical political thinkers whose interactions with the state are guided by a nuanced understanding of the broader politics of the day.