Resistance and Resilience by Informal Traders in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe: Beyond Weapons of the Weak

Abstract

Based on Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe, this paper shows that the growth of urban informality can be explained by shifts in the Zimbabwean economy. These shifts include the corporatist socialist ideology phase (1980–1989), the era of neoliberal economic policies (1990–1997) and the return to restrictionism and reign of predatory politics (1998–present). Instead of triggering economic growth, these changes led to falling industrial production and declining levels of growth, leading to unemployment. This provided a fertile ground for the growth of the informal sector, such as informal street traders (informal traders). Utilising a qualitative study of 200 informal street traders in Bulawayo, who were purposively sampled between June and December 2013, the paper argues that the presence of such traders in Bulawayo is a form of both covert and overt resistance to the local and central government. Such a response by the informal traders highlights resistance and resilience, first to the economic crisis and secondly to the local and central government, which failed to meet their employment needs. This resistance has taken surreptitious forms, such as dodging municipality police patrols or staying hidden from the regulatory regimes (weapons of the weak), but has also graduated beyond this, taking the form of open defiance of and resorting to legal means to fight the regulatory regimes (beyond weapons of the weak). In this way, the paper offers a nuanced analysis of the enduring presence of street traders in a setting where there is a vibrant and repressive regulatory regime. Further, because urban informality is an integral part of urbanisation in the Global South, there is need for strategies that progressively integrate these economic actors.