Maputo City Council demolishes informal stalls in Catembe – AIM report

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Maputo City Council demolishes informal stalls in Catembe – AIM report

8:49 CAT | 29 Jan 2018

O País

Maputo Municipal Council on Friday began to demolish informal stalls in the urban district of Catembe, located near the jetty used by the Maputo-Catembe ferry service.

The stallowners reacted with outrage, although they had been warned three times to move, because they were occupying space on which the Council intends to build a road.

The first warning came in May 2017, when the Council told the stallholders they would have to move. The Council offered them land elsewhere, but they refused to move, saying the new site is “too far away”.

The stallholders demanded compensation, but the Council said they had no right to any compensation.

Two further warnings came, the latest on 5 January, and still the stallholders refused to go. Now the Council has shown that its threat to remove the stalls by force was serious. According to a report on the independent television station STV, on one plot of land the bulldozers destroyed 14 stalls.

There has been a trend for informal markets to spring up on unused land, and although they have no legal right to the land, the stallholders have often been tolerated and so become part of the urban landscape. The tolerance then backfires when the municipal authorities want to use the land for something else, and the stallholders refuse to move.

Blackmail sometimes works. The Nwankakana informal market in Maputo was blocking the planned northern access road to the suspension bridge over the Bay of Maputo. The stallholders demanded money, and held up work on the bridge for six months.

Eventually, Maputo-Sul, the public company in charge of building the bridge, caved in and paid compensation (though not as much as the stallholders wanted).

No doubt the Catembe stallholders thought that they too could follow the Nwankakana example, and force the authorities to pay up, but they have been proved wrong.

The stalls sell to people using the ferry. But in a few months time when the Maputo-Catembe bridge opens, there will be no more requirement for a ferry service and the main clientele for the stalls will disappear.

Source: AIM