By Kashiwa Lameck

StreetNet co-ordinator, Pat Horn and Assistant-coordinator, Kashiwa Lameck, made a 5-day field trip to Malawi at the beginning May. The primary reason for the journey was to attend a two-day seminar in Malawi on 3rd and 4th of May in Lilongwe, organised by IFWEA (International Federations of Workers Education Associations) with the objective of producing a manual for organising workers in the informal economy in South East Africa.

The seminar was attended by partner organisations in the project in the south east Africa region including the following informal structures, StreetNet affiliates AZIEA (Zambia), MUFIS (Malawi), ASSOTSI (Mozambique) and two new organisations NUIEWO (Uganda) and KENASVIT (Kenya). Trade union centres from several countries in the region, global union federations and the ILO Harare office also sent representatives.

Street vendors evicted

A strong motivation for the field visit to Malawi was to meet with Malawi Union for the Informal Sector (MUFIS) and street and market vendors who were evicted by armed police during a so-called 'clean-up' operation starting from 18th April that affected an estimated 30 000 street and market vendors in the country.

The objective of the visit to the MUFIS office in Blantyre on 11th May was to learn about the organ-isation of street vendors in Malawi at a time when the government had relocated them and dumped them in isolated areas without any facilities, and to look for possible ways to strengthen organisation at market and street level as well as informal economy organisation nationally.

Press conference

MUFIS took advantage of our visit to call a press conf-er ence on 11th May to publicly encourage the Malawi government to engage in dialogue with MUFIS in finding a lasting solution to the problems of street vendors.

At the press conference, we denounced the unilateral decision by government and its use of force against street vendors.

We also called on government to respect the economic rights of its people and to use practices that are accep-table, siting the example of Zambia where dialogue with government has been productive, rather than the example of Zimbabwe whose 'clean-up' operation has left many thousands of people homeless and without means to earn an income.

We urged government to put in place facilities in all places where the street vendors have been forced to trade.

The press conference was attended by 10 media organisations. As a result, we had good coverage of MUFIS and StreetNet's opposition to the Malawi government's approach to the informal economy.

Market visits

We visited the Limbe market on 9th of May and saw vendors at the new 'flea market' site which had been allocated to street vendors who had been evicted from their sites in Blantyre.

Contrary to the promises of the Minister of Local Government, the site was not ready for the large number of vendors who had been evicted and it had no facilities at all.

MUFIS members were trying to work together with other traders on the allocation of sites in the limited space available.

At Manase, on the same day, we met an all-women branch of MUFIS which was very well organised.

The Manase village market seemed to lack a structure where all traders and organisations can come together and share decisions. On May 10th we went to visit the Thyolo Market in the southern part of Malawi near the tea estates of Mount Mulanje. The vendors here had not been relocated.

On the same day, we met with MUFIS members at Bvumbwe where a new market has been built with some facilities.

Vendors negotiate over removal

Vendors who had trading sites on the main road had been given notice to move. The committee was still negotiating with the authorities to delay the move as there was not enough space in the new market. We encouraged them to enlist with MUFIS and to approach the authorities for a meeting and to avoid unilateral action by government.

The next day we went to Lunzu where we met traders who had been relocated from sites on the main road to a newly built market set back from the road with much less traffic.

Following the crisis of removals, the lack of capacity to engage local authorities on the issues affecting the sector is problematic. We encouraged MUFIS to build the capacity of market leaders to engage local authorities in negotiations and to take advantage of the IFWEA informal economy training programme.

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