Devastation and defiance
IVendors who lost everything in the fire that gutted part of Yeoville Market this week have taken to the streets, setting up stalls on pavements in the hope customers return, writes Shaun Smillie
n the direct morning sun over Raleigh Street, Mike Otchia’s tomatoes don’t last as long as they used to. The sun spoils her day-old bought tomatoes and wilts the spinach she has laid out on the table perched on the edge of the busy road that cuts through Yeoville, a suburb of Johannesburg.
The mother from Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose name is pronounced Mickey, has other worries. Soon the highveld rains will come and drench her street stall. Then there are the thugs that work Raleigh Street, on the prowl for an unattended cellphone or cash to snatch off a table.
But her biggest worry is the customers that no longer come. “We have lost our customers; they don’t know that we are here,” she says.
Otchia is one of 21 shopkeepers who lost their stalls when a fire swept through part of the market in the early morning of September 20. Since then, they have set up their stands along Raleigh Street, a hard place to make a living.
Otchia says she makes a third of what she did when she was in the market where her vegetables lasted longer and her customers knew where to find her.
Other vendors on the street are also suffering. On the day the Sunday Times visited, one told how her daughter was not in school because she was unable to afford the transport.
In the hours after the fire, rumours spread through the community that the cause was arson. There had been threats that the market would be burnt down unless the foreigners gave up their stalls to locals. Witnesses said they saw a group of men walking down Rocky Street moments before the fire, carrying petrol bombs.
However, an investigation by Johannesburg Emergency Management Services was unable to determine its cause. A separate police investigation, according to spokesperson Col Mavela Masondo, was also unable to link anyone to the fire.
“The case will be closed as undetected,” he said. While the exact origin of the fire is unknown, the threat of xenophobia has hung like a sooty cloud over the market since its earliest days. It was built in 1999 as part of a city plan to remove hawkers from the streets.
It was thought by some that if you have a market, you won’t have street trading.
“That never happened,” says Maurice Smithers, who wrote the book Re-Imagining Post-Apartheid Yeoville Bellevue.
“In the first month it was built, metro police patrolled the area to make sure people didn’t trade on the streets. But as soon as they left at four o’clock in the afternoon, people would go back onto the streets, including from the markets, and set up their stalls.”
The market arrived after Yeoville had undergone rapid transformation at the end of apartheid. The 1991 census showed that 85% of Yeoville’s population was white; by the end of the decade it was 90% black.
A new wave of urban migration brought foreigners to the middle-class suburb. Some set up stalls on the street and eventually moved into the market.
“And this was where the tensions began, with the South Africans saying this is their market,” says Smithers.
In 2008, when xenophobic riots flared in Alexandra, the fear was that they would spill into Yeoville and the market. The rioters never came, but tensions continued to simmer.
And while this was happening the market was evolving into something unique. It became the place to source wild Congolese honey, cassava, smoked catfish from Zambia and spices that can’t be found in any Joburg supermarket.
Mercy Mokgehle said she had customers, white and black, who would travel in weekly from Sandton and Randburg.
Once Smithers watched a group from the Prue Leith Culinary Institute, dressed in their chef whites, on the hunt for exotic ingredients.
The market even became a stop on the city tourist map. Groups on a day trip sampling the different culinary offerings at foreign restaurants along Rocky Street would end their visit with a wander through the market.
But fear meant that many South Africans would only come when accompanied by a tour guide.
“People fear xenophobic attacks and it is the South Africans who are scared,” says tour guide Nontuthuzelo Ntikinca, owner of Uzuko Tours and Transfers. The street crime in Yeoville even has ehailing taxi operators reluctant to pick up clients at night.
Mokgehle is different from the others who lost their shops in the fire. She is South African. She took over her mother’s stall in 2003 and is part of the market committee set up to deal with the aftermath.
“My customers haven’t come back because they thought the whole market was burnt down,” she says.
Progress is slowly being made. The burnt section was recently cleared and a group of engineers were on-site when the Sunday Times visited.
The Johanneburg MMC for economic development, Nkululeko Mbundu, said the city has begun refurbishing and restoring the fire-damaged stalls.
“The rubble has been cleared, allowing neighbouring traders to continue their operations without the health and safety risks posed by the damaged site.”
In time, Smithers says the revamped market could become a model for other parts of Joburg. “A market is where you are supposed to feel the vibrancy of a city.”
But to make it viable, there are problems that need to be dealt with. Street crime is rampant and fear is palpable.
The suburb that has seen much recent change needs to metamorphose, says Smithers. The pockets of different nationalities need to merge into a singular suburban identity. United they would be stronger.
Meanwhile, for those stall keepers on Raleigh Street, their wait to move back into the market is one they say they can’t afford.
Amiee Mansumbu has been in SA since 2000. Now she is thinking about returning to the Congo. Like others, she is battling to make ends meet.
Some have borrowed money and dread the day they have to pay it back. But what they do have is each other.
There is a bond on Raleigh Street that circumvents national identities, where a trader can ask another for some cassavas or “spot” them a couple of rand. “What I can say is we are family; we do things together,” says Mokgehle.