The heavy-handedness of the police in dealing with defenseless and vulnerable vendors raises eyebrows for all the wrong reasons.
While it is within the mandate of the City Police to maintain law and order and enforce compliance with municipal by-laws – it is disheartening to see the amount of brute force used against these defenseless women, who are only trying to fend for themselves and their families.
A video that was recently circulated on social media shows the police enforcing an arrest with heavy force – with even one officer even pulling out a gun on a vendor. The vendor’s crime? She was trading without a permit.
Well, she probably resisted arrest too, but does that warrant such brute force? The whole story is yet to be told on both sides as to what exactly transpired. As such, we will not apportion blame.
What is worth condemning however remains the modus operandi of the police in carrying out their mandate. What could trigger a police officer to draw a weapon on an unarmed, defenseless woman? What are the rules of engagement in such cases?
Such scenes bring bad flashbacks of harsh treatment the same vendors went through during pre-independence Namibia. Surely no one wants a return to such times at any cost.
A disclaimer: At no point are we advocating lawlessness, neither are we implying that the police are trigger-happy. But events like the one depicted in the video have been recurring. And it appears there is no stopping either.
These are mothers, most of whom who would be enjoying their pension age in peace on a farm or cozy retirement home – if they could afford it. But they are forced by circumstances to keep toiling and putting bread on the table for themselves and even sometimes for their children and grandchildren. Paying their efforts with brute force is most definitely not the way to reward their noble objectives. A show of hands of how many of us reading this were raised and schooled by mothers deriving paltry income from hawking or vending? We thought as much…
The middle-class, most of whom have migrated to lofty apartments in leafy suburbs to escape the ‘noise and hindrances’ of the areas they grew up in, are failing our mothers dismally. To allow these pensioners – our mothers and grandmothers – to toil daily under semi-shaded areas in this scorching heat and falling rain, manning a fruit and veggies stand or a kapana stall cannot be the norm. It should be a rare and extreme exception.
The police on the other hand do not have it easy too, admittingly so. At times, they are confronted with difficult decisions to make on how to proceed in such cases.
They have the law on their side, and they could easily be following such to the letter. But the crowds often gathered during such arrests do not make matters easy. Simply put, how does one deal with an unarmed, defenceless woman resisting arrest? Therein lies the problem.
The foundation of the matter could lie in the drafting of by-laws. The fracas shown on the video – and several others shared before – playing itself out in full view of the public, often draws questions as to what is really considered when coming up with by-laws? How much public input goes into the enactment of municipal by-laws? As much as the municipality has open markets designated for such vendors, most of these markets are literally off grid and not easily accessible to customers. As a result, the vendors and hawkers are left with no choice but to return to places they have been told to vacate.
But be that as it may, it might be a good idea to empower the vendors to go through the channels and acquire trading permits for their location, as that is what is prescribed by the by-laws. The city, however, is still expected to use maximum force in extreme and isolated cases. This is the harmonious relationship that we all want to trade and live under.