The role and influence of street trader leaders in urban governance: the case of Gauteng metros with reflections from Ahmedabad, India

Abstract

Street traders are often depicted as being at the mercy of punitive authorities and lacking agency. Also, in instances where their agency is acknowledged, it is from the premise that their struggle is characterised by ‘atomised forms of resistance’ and quiet encroachment as opposed to collective claim making. This narrative fails to consider the ways in which street traders organise and collectively mobilise, how they relate to local authorities and attempt to influence decision making. Analysing how street traders organise and mobilise through various structures and practices helps us understand the ways in which their organisations function, sometimes opportunistically to their own gain rather than to the advantage of the traders they say they represent. This study builds on research work that has been undertaken by the Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies (CUBES) on street trading governance in Johannesburg and subsequent work under the Practices of the State in Urban Governance Programme to investigate the role and influence of street trader leaders in the everyday management of street trade. The study uses three sites in South Africa–Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni–and one in Ahmedabad in India. These case study areas were chosen because of the extent of street trading activities especially in inner cities where management issues prevail. It is in these contexts that street trading is a contested feature of the urban landscape. The main research question that this study asked is what is the role and influence of street trader leaders in the everyday management of street trade? This broad question is broken down into the following sub-questions that guided the study: What are the prevailing street trader representative structures in the case study areas? What are the various configurations of these representative structures and their internal dynamics? How do the leaders relate to state actors and how do these relations translate to the extent of leaders’ participation in everyday management of street trade? What are the leaders’ roles in the governance of street trade? The study argues that there are various configurations of street traders’ representative structures with different organising dynamics that allow for diverse interactions with state actors. There are representative structures whose leaders operate on the margins of the state and those that act as quasi-state bureaucrats and this has an effect on the dynamics of interface with state actors and the extent of their participation in urban governance. While both antagonism and cooperation are used at varying degrees, leaders on the margins of the state tend to rely on the former while quasi-state bureaucrats rely mainly on the latter to access the state. Quasi-state bureaucrats have been formally included in the everyday management of street trade by delegating certain official duties such as allocating trading spaces and managing waiting lists. Leaders on the margins on the other hand, are excluded from official processes but find ways of inserting themselves.