Although there are intense disagreements about associating informal street traders with poverty, the urban poor are profoundly impacted by pervasive poverty. In response to their inability to obtain decent employment opportunities, a considerable number of them resort to informal street trading in order to pursue a livelihood. Importantly, the National Development Plan estimates that the informal sector has the potential to create 1.2-2 million jobs by 2030. Section 22 of South Africa’s Constitution guarantees everyone the right to freely choose his or her trade, occupation and industry; the Constitution also provides for local government envisioned as democratic, participatory, inclusive, responsive and accountable to people’s needs and aspirations. The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality has a high number of people who participate in the informal sector. Because of its restrictive and prohibitive by-laws and policies, the City is one of the many cities and towns in South Africa that encounter multiple challenges in dealing with the implementation of the urban poor’s pursuit of informal street trading. From a human rights perspective, the purpose of this article is to explore the primary legal, institutional and structural challenges faced by the City in the implementation of informal street trading by its urban poor. The article identifies possible solutions to these predicaments from the starting-point of systematic commitment to integrally linking informal street trading with the urban poor’s rights to dignity, equality, choice of trade, occupation or profession, access to just administrative action, and freedom from arbitrary deprivation of their property.
Paul Mudau (Thu,) studied this question.