Every morning, Christopher Motani walks to Lilongwe City Centre knowing his livelihood could vanish in a wink.
Like hundreds of informal traders across the capital city, the Area 36 resident sells handy goods along the streets—a daily gamble between hand-to-mouth survival and losing everything to Lilongwe City Council law en-forcers out to keep the city clean, orderly and secure.
“I take the risk because I have mouths to feed,” he says.
City authorities say confiscating goods from street vendors is necessary to make laws work and streets safe.
Street vendors, however, describe the sudden swoops as punitive and economically devastating.
“When the enforcement teams grab your items, you can lose the entire capital in a second. This sinks vulnerable households into debt,” Motani states.
> He sells fritters sourced from bakeries on credit. The business earns him just enough to cover transport, food and basic needs for his family. Without a shop, the unlicensed vendor plies near traffic lights, cashing in on pedestrians and motorists caught in the slowdown. The fragile balancing act crushed last month when city patrolpersons and police confiscated his stock and detained him. “They only left me with a debt I’m struggling to rebuild,” Motani says. The patrol team bundled the seized foodstuffs into sacks without any records or disclosures to sign. Just like that, they wiped out his capital. The business collapsed as follow-ups to recover his goods only yielded detention without trial and a K20 000 fine for illegal street vending. “I didn’t have the money. So, I borrowed from friends and relatives to buy my freedom, but it wasn’t enough to save my business. The debt kept growing,” he says.
