Urban 'Reform' in South Africa: Policy and Practice towards Hawkers

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Periodical article

Title:	Urban 'Reform' in South Africa: Policy and Practice towards Hawkers
Author:	Rogerson, Christian M.
Year:	1989
Periodical:	African Urban Quarterly (ISSN 0747-6108)
Volume:	4
Issue:	3-4
Period:	August-November
Pages:	293-302
Language:	English
Notes:	biblio. refs., maps
Geographic terms:	South Africa Southern Africa
Subjects:	informal sector economic law market vendors Urbanization and Migration Politics and Government urbanization Peddlers and peddling urban areas government policy
Abstract:	This paper investigates one aspect of South Africa's new urban reform initiatives. Specifically, it examines new initiatives for programmes of economic deregulation of informal trading or hawking activities. Widespread calls have been sounded for the legalization, promotion, and deregulation of the informal sector, including street hawking, as a vehicle for catalyzing urban income opportunities. The study discloses geographical variations in hawker policy regimes throughout urban South Africa, particularly between the country's largest urban municipalities, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Moreover, it reveals a gulf between the rhetoric of reform at the level of the central State and the limited extent of concrete reform programmes at the level of the local State. Ref., sum.