Eviction of street vendors

“Some fathers abandoned the home leaving the wife and children without food. While you were worrying about food, a woman who had been battered because there is no money or food in the home, would come for help. I was mediating twenty such cases of violence per day. I would also get cases of marital rape. Sometimes the children would witness this violation because they were not going to school. As a leader, I would talk to the couple and we would solve the problem.”48

These cases were never reported to the police. Instead, the leaders of the women vendors’ cooperatives became arbiters between the couples.

The ban on transport and on public gatherings hindered the work of CSOs, which would have offered legal advice and assistance in accessing psychosocial, medical, and other support services to women suffering domestic and emotional violence at home. For grassroots women, land wrangles escalated because initially, legal services were not considered part of ‘essential services.’

“There is a custom here in Arua (district) they call Aruba. Aruba is a kind of belief, a mindset that a woman cannot report a case against a spouse or even against a close relative because when you report it, it’s going to backfire on the children. Now there are those women whose marriages were not stable. They had to walk out of these marriages without property.”49

The Ministry of Security and the Office of the Kampala Resident City Commissioner, issued directives on the 23rd of December 2021 and 11th January 2022, that hawkers

48 Asina Zawedde, street vendor, Wandegeya, Kampala City 49 Judith Ayikoru, Legal Office, FIDA Uganda, Arua Field Office and street vendors should not be allowed on the streets. On January 14, 2022 Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA) evicted street vendors with the aim of restoring trade order in the city. This brought untold suffering to the women street vendors in Kampala.

During the evictions, UPDF soldiers, whose methods of enforcement are brutal, were deployed. During the day the methods used for enforcement were mostly bribery and confiscation of the merchandise while in the evening UPDF soldiers chased vendors down. Many were rounded up and thrown into jail and tried without evidence or due process followed. The street vendors interviewed termed this “another pandemic” because the eviction was carried out at a time when they were just beginning to get back on their feet, economically.

“It was another battle, maybe it is another Covid (pandemic) because we had started earning something and they chased us away. I have survived like this … I gave out my mobile number to my customers. They call me, “Molly, where are you? Bring me this and this and this.”50

In this way, the street vendor incurs high transport costs and also misses out on new clients.

“We are in a situation where we are making losses. We do not know what to do. We want Kampala to be clean, we want beautiful cities but government and KCCA need to work with us so that the vulnerable people are not affected by the directives on a smart city.”51

Previously, the government had provided alternative options to help organize the street vendors through KCCA including the establishment of a Sunday market along

50 Molly Wambi, street vendor, Kamwokya, Kampala City 51 Asina Zawedde, street vendor, Wandegeya, Kampala City