Mercury: Traders feel threatened by development

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4988935

Traders feel threatened by development

May 20, 2009 Edition 1

Lyse Comins

Inanda woman Ntombikayise Gagayi, 44, works diligently in her makeshift kitchen in Durban’s bustling Warwick Junction, where she cooks bovine heads for a living.

These she sells to her customers – a fraction of the estimated 460 000 commuters that travel daily through this busy intersection of traffic, train station, taxi ranks and bus terminals.

Gagayi, whose husband was killed in political violence in the early 1990s, depends on this passing trade to support her 10 children. She is one of 30 widows who sell bovine heads and other plated food at the junction’s open-air food stalls.

The women traders are among an estimated 6 000 people who depend on Warwick Junction’s brisk informal trade, which filters desperately needed income to townships and far-flung, poverty-stricken rural areas such as Umkomaas, Ndwedwe and Inanda.

In communities hard-hit by HIV/Aids, traders’ daily takings support up to 25 people. About 460 000 commuters travel daily through the area generating R1 billion in turnover for the existing mix of formal and informal traders.

But now traders fear that the eThekwini Municipality and Umhlanga-based developer, Isolenu, which forms part of the Warwick Mall consortium that is behind the proposed new R400 million shopping mall, will devastate their businesses by redirecting commuters to the mall, away from their street stalls, which will be moved to designated areas.

Bovine-head cookers like Gagayi will be moved to the nearby English Market to make way for the mall’s franchised fast-food court. And 673 traders in the early morning market building, the proposed site of the mall, have been notified to vacate by May 31.

The development includes a 30 000 square metre mall and taxi rank on the building’s top level to cater for south-bound taxis. The mall will be linked by walkways and bridges to the train station and bus rank and to redeveloped ranks for west-and north-bound taxis. The new freeway flyovers are already under construction and the new taxi rank are planned for completion in 2010.

Isolenu Group Holdings CEO Carlos Correia said he was surprised by traders’ fears and defended the development, saying it would incorporate informal traders and create 680 permanent jobs and a number of part-time jobs.

He said Spar would be the anchor tenant with a 70% national profile of tenants including FNB, Nedbank, Standard Bank, Jet, Foschini, Truworths, African Bank, the Post Office, Eskom Financial Services and several fast-food outlets.

However, the development in its present form has been widely opposed by informal traders’ associations who claim the city has sidelined them, while NGOs and the KwaZulu-Natal Institute of Architects have also opposed it.

In formal comments, the development proposal process has been labelled “flawed” and lacking due process regarding tendering and public consultation with traders and ratepayers. Richard Dobson of NGO Asiye Tafuleni said the development had been presented to traders as a fait accompli on February 18 without any real interaction.

KZN Institute of Architects’ president Miles Pennington said: “We consider the process flawed owing to the lack of any recognition of the strategic plan for the area, adherence to this plan, public consultation with current users of the site, local developers and ratepayers, due process in respect of procuring tenders for projects such as these, poor conceptualisation of the project… We believe this has been exacerbated by the need to complete the project in a timeframe that cannot be realistically met.

“We consider the ‘deal’ to be financially prejudicial to ratepayers, who are funding a significant proportion. This comment is made given the lack of sufficient evidence to the contrary. We would like to see a detailed viability study,” Pennington said.

The eThekweni Municipality Strategic Projects Unit and 2010 Programme head, Julie-May Ellingson, and city manager Michael Sutcliffe declined to comment.

“We remain involved in discussions on this matter as per council’s resolutions with directly concerned parties and I do not think it appropriate to comment on hearsay and opinions through the media,” Sutcliffe said.

However, Correira said the consortium had air rights for the space connecting the market with the train station, which was why the city had started talking to his company about developing the mall.

“We have all our EIA approvals which date back to 2007. We were going to develop the station first with retail outlets. I can only assume the city followed all its council processes. It went to the city in September last year where there was a council resolution taken and in February the process of the Municipal Financial Act was met.

“There were various objections and at the end of April we were informed that we can carry on with our development,” Correia said.

Warwick Market Traders’ Association chairman Harry Ramlall, a third-generation trader in the listed 99-year-old Early Morning Market building, said traders had reported the matter to Amafa and were seeking legal advice regarding their proposed move to a building in nearby Alice street.

“We have been here for 99 years. Some of us are fourth-generation traders. They want to relocate us to the materials management building but my concern is we don’t even know if it is a viable proposition.

“We need to go to a place where we can do business. The building has been lying vacant for a number of years and there are no people moving through there. If something goes wrong someone has to be held accountable,” Ramlall said.

Apart from loss of trade, Ramlall said he feared not all traders, who directly and indirectly employed about 3 000 people and 500 barrow pushers who take produce to street traders, would be accommodated at the new site.

However, Correia said he believed the traders had been consulted. “We are surprised to hear these kinds of comments. They (traders) seemed to take a strong view to keep the market, but the city had strong views that the market has been problematic for many years with rental issues and with conditions people are trading in,” Correira said.

Jabulani Ntsele chairman of the Eye Traders’ Association, Sisonke Alliance, said traders were concerned that traders consulting with the city had been coerced by promises of small tenders to accept the development and were not representing the community’s interests. He said traders had asked Cosatu and the South African Communist Party to assist and were planning a protest march.

“There is a big clash and the traders are going to start rising up because they are scared they are going to lose their jobs. They are destroying the livelihood of the people.

“Even to say people will get places to trade inside… we have never seen any mall where street traders are allowed to trade inside or outside, and we don’t have any agreement on paper to say that we can trade in the mall,” Ntsele said.

Correia said in terms of the council’s decision the developer had to accommodate 150 street traders in a new public square at its own cost and another 130 traders with permits would be moved at the city’s expense. He said various consultations had taken place. “We met every condition of the city. We have to provide lock-up areas and lighting for them. Regarding the bovine cookers my understanding is there is a big health issue with where they are now,” Correia said.

Ngoneni Khawula, 62, who represents vegetable sellers and food cookers like Gagayi, said the wrangle was heartbreaking.

“It’s our only source of income and the majority of traders are elderly women and widows. It’s like we are being thrown into the middle of a thick bush where there is no passing trade,” Khawula said.

UKZN School of Development Studies researcher Caroline Skinner called the wrangle between informal traders, the city and its developers as a battle for business between the formal economy, which would take profits out of the local economy, and the informal economy, which provides an income for KwaZulu-Natal’s poorest people.

Meanwhile, the Democracy Development Programme will be hosting a public discussion to debate the development and provide a platform for traders and the public to air their views. The meeting is taking place at the Durban University of Technology’s city campus at noon today.