Meet and greet traders at Warwick Street market
WARWICK Street Market in Durban has five newly trained tour guides, but the tales they can tell are not the narratives taught in tourism textbooks.
Phiwokuhle Mhlongo can offer foreigners advice about how traditional herbs can help a wide variety of common ailments. But she can also tell wide-eyed foreigners how a healthy mix of herbs from her home in Hlabisa, north of Mtubatuba, can bring back a lost lover.
Mhlongo is also one of the pioneering medicinal herb sellers in the muti section of the massive market and her life story is a fascinating one of overcoming hardship.
“I came to Durban to sell herbs on Russell Street with my mother in the 1980s. We slept on the street.
“The police would come with their dogs and take away our herbs and the plastic we used for shelter.It sometimes happened three times a week. It was hard, but my father was away and it was the only money we had.”
Later, Mhlongo’s mother and her friends came together to ask the city for help and were allocated the piece of incomplete freeway construction that protruded from ground level in the market area. They slept there, too, to begin with, but were able to sell their wares without the danger of them being confiscated. They later earned enough to rent in Clermont township.
Stories Mhlongo will be able to offer tourists will be about both the rural and urban side of the muti trade.
“When I go home, I know the bush,” she said. “I know the plants that can bring you love.”
Nokunga Ntshangase, who received her tour guide qualification at a Markets of Warwick tour project ceremony on Wednesday, also followed her mother to a life of selling in the market.
“She was selling on the steps,” said the chicly dressed Ntshangase, whose speciality is clothes and sun hats, being a popular choice of tourists.
“I took it over when my mother passed away in 2012.”
Velaphi Ndlovu, another of the five informal traders who received their qualifications, has also attended workshops to learn about how criminals’ minds work in his capacity as a member of the Traders Against Crime (TAC) group.
“I now know their games. I would see them in the shop where there is an ATM. It was easy to know what they were planning,” he said.
He added that they liked to “jam” the machines. “I would catch them or call the police to come and arrest them.”
Ndlovu said crime had been rife in the market before the TAC was formed.
“Women, especially, were being robbed. It hurt me.”
Today, all his fellow TAC members are women. Ndlovu sells music CDs. “Anything you want, from maskandi to gospel to international stars, you will find at my table.”
He said he frequently explained to tourists the relevance of cow-hide clothing that many traditional Zulu people wore. “And tourists just love Zulu dancing.”
The tour project has attracted about 9 000 tourists since its inception in 2010. Visitors included school groups, such as matric pupils who needed to know about the informal sector, said Richard Dobson of Asiye eTafuleni.
The NGO developed the Markets of Warwick tour product with informal hawkers after receiving an influx of visitors after the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
“We also have strong programmes with the universities and with many businesss,” said Dobson.
While all this is in progress, aspects of formality relating to workplace safety have crept into life at the market.
“We have had 60 informal workers trained in first aid and 60 as fire marshalls.”
The NGO has also taught informal traders technical language and to make a presentation to the city about their own needs.
“Usually this technical kind of work is relegated to the professionals.”
Russell Street in the 1980s seems a long way and a long time ago. In fact, it’s no longer even called that. It’s Joseph Ndluli Street.
For more information, visit www.marketsofwarwick.co.za