Ziyambi Blames Opposition Councils for Garwe Informal Traders Crackdown
Following a probe in Parliament by Mkoba South MP, Honourable John Kuka, on protection of young informal traders, Justice Minister and Leader of Government Business, Honourable Ziyambi Ziyambi told Parliament that opposition local authorities are responsible for the ongoing informal traders crackdown in CBDs, distancing central government from initiating Local Government Minister Garwe’s nationwide clean-up order.
Delicious Mathuthu 
Harare — Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Honourable Ziyambi Ziyambi has blamed the ongoing crackdown on informal traders in cities and towns accross the country on opposition councils, adding that it is the sole responsibility of local authorities to create legal trading spaces for vendors.
This comes despite a continuing directive by his fellow Cabinet Minister, Local Government and Public Works Minister, Daniel Garwe, to enforce a nationwide campaign to clear informal traders from central business districts.
Mkoba South Member of Parliament, Honourable, John Kuka, raising the issue in Parliament, asked what central government was doing to protect young entrepreneurs whose livelihoods depend on vending.
Mkoba South Member of Parliament, Honourable John Kuka.
“What is the Government doing, in collaboration with local authorities… to ensure that these young entrepreneurs are protected? Because they are all Zimbabweans, and since they are all Zimbabweans, vending is what is giving them a livelihood,” Honourable Kuka said.
In response, Honourable Ziyambi, who is also the Leader of Government Business in Parliament, rejected the premise, placing full responsibility on councils.
“Those asking a lot of questions are the ones who are in charge of the councils.
"They are the ones who, in their caucus meetings, are supposed to make decisions on how they should run the councils that they won,” he told the House.
He said the clean-up programme began in opposition-run Harare City Council and was later adopted by government because sanitary lanes had been turned into toilets and the risk of cholera was real.
“Honourabme chair, we had reached a situation where, if we had a cholera outbreak, a lot of people would die. So what the City of Harare started, we accepted as Government,” Ziyambi said.
Yet Local Government Minister Daniel Garwe launched "Operation Chenesa Harare" in early September, giving vendors then until 9 September to vacate undesignated sites in the capital before a zero-tolerance clean-up that was explicitly planned to spread to all cities and towns.
Local Government Permanent Secretary, Tafadzwa Muguti, later imposed countrywide trading hours limiting CBD vending between 6am–6pm across all 92 local authorities.
Minister Ziyambi maintained that councils must identify land, prepare layout plans for markets and approach the Minister of Local Government, who can then engage the Ministry of Lands.
