City Council aware of standoff between hawkers and GH
City Mayor’s attitude may help the hawkers’ cause
The atmosphere at the Gaborone bus rank is visibly tense and charged with suspicions that it could descend into a bloodbath between street vendors and the Gaborone Hotel management if authorities do not intervene. Even the Mayor of Gaborone Thata Father Maphongo is aware of the standoff between hawkers and hotel owners over the location of the hotel. Members of the public are complaining and demanding to know why a hotel was allowed to operate at the bus rank. Being a busy public spot, the bus rank has attracted vendors, hawkers, and bus and taxi operators, who all ply their trade here. But this has come at a heavy price for the hotel management. The hotel says it
is losing business and clients due to stubborn and unruly bus and kombi drivers who continuously park, load, and offload at GH entrance gates. They are even contemplating evicting them from the space because they argue, it belongs to them (GH). But the vendors will have none of that. They may also be bolstered by the Mayor’s attitude to the GH’s complaint. Maphongo told this publication that GH management should have anticipated the implications of operating a hotel near the Bus Rank when they applied for the plot in the first place. “They were given land and they accepted, they should have thought of the possibilities. We cannot be blamed for why they are there as if the rank came as a surprise to them. Land allocation is done by the Ministry of Lands, not us,” Maphongo said. But for the hotel management, it has been a frustrating four-year battle that involved dealing with unbending hawkers who have even gone to the extent of occupying a portion of the hotel’s parking lot. So resigned to their fate is the hotel management that they are ready to surrender everything to the government if only to operate in a peaceful environment.
They have even sent letters to the city council, pleading for a way out of the chaos that they find themselves in at the bus terminus. “We are still dealing with the issue unfortunately I cannot go into deeper details without getting full facts of the issue,” Maphongo told The Midweek Sun when asked about the portion of the land that GH says it has leased from the Council. “All I know is that we cannot lease land that does not belong to us, you talk of us owning the parking space and renting it to the hotel. I will have to find out more about the matter so that we know exactly what we are talking about,” Maphongo said this week.”