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Tanzanians leading `Machingas` in South Africa Cities
2007-08-26 11:28:32
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
Tanzania`s marching guys commonly known as Machingas have discovered a niche in South Africas big cities.
This reporter bumped into them in the central business district or what you may call the heart of Cape Town, Africa\'s southernmost city and South Africa`s second largest urban settlement.
And it is apparent that members of this growing army of marchers in Africa is not only confined to this city placed at the meeting point of both Atlantic and Indian oceans, but are to be found in a couple of other cities.
Saidi Athuman who hails from Kijitonyama in Dar es Salaam told The Guardian On Sunday that he has been living in the city for four years after travelling all the way to that country through various hurdles.
UPROOTED FROM DAR
``Me, together with four other guys used to have our operations near the NIC building in Dar es Salaam where we were selling shoes for a number of years.
But when the government became tough against hawker operation in the city`s Central Business District, we decided to find ways of earning a living,`` said Athuman, after giving this reporter a soda to drink.
``We decided therefore to stow away via the road route to Malawi, Mozambique, and Swaziland to South Africa. While in South Africa we did all sort of odd jobs, including working as Shamba boys in the white farms in Bloemfontein and eventually we landed in Cape Town-the city of mixed races and people,`` he said.
HAWKING NEAR THE MAYOR`S PARLOUR
They carry on their operations in the city`s main railways station and the main meeting point of city buses, hardly a stone throw from the City Mayor`s Parlour and yet surrounded by many decorated high rise marble-buildings like ABSA Bank, Sanlam, Santan and Nedbank.
Athuman said their operations are done in a very disciplined manner in that there are neither cheats nor violation of city rules. ``You go beyond the city demarcated lines and you find the police becoming your first customer of the day,`` said Athuman.
When asked how they would know that any of the hawkers trespassed the demarcated lines, he said: ``You cannot see any policeman on the streets at the moment, but if you go beyond the red lights, you will see them.``
They are monitoring our movements by means of street installed cameras, he says, adding that only a few minutes ago they arrested a group of youth from Langa and hauled them to the police station.
All sorts of petty merchandise, are exchanged, take place in this area. They range from Chinese porcelain, American jeans, Indian Saris, Brazilian Silicon Valley shoes, Swiss watches to sex workers, which given the geographical position of the city, all are easily available.
Athuman is not the only hawker from Tanzania with his operation in the city overlooking the Table Mountain\'s Central Business District.
MACHINGAS FROM TANZANIA SAY THEY ARE RESPECTED Ayub Mapande, who runs a small kiosk inside the main railway station, is another, and he says this is his tenth year in this multi racial republic. Mapande says he is one of the pioneers who came to South Africa, immediately after he heard that apartheid was to be put in the dustbin of history.
He says, though in South Africa there are many marching guys from different parts of the world, those from Tanzania are considered to be the most shrewd and well versed in the trade than the rest.
\"They consider Machinga from Tanzania as the most prowess and ones who can do things because they know how to deal with the police without embarking on rows and they do not engage in violence that is likely to cost someone\'s life,\" says Mapande. \"We assist the police to quell down some of the conflicts amongst us, that is why the authorities here like us.
They find no violence in us or in our operations,\" add Mapande Ayub. \"One might say that the multiracial nation of South Africa, and the city of Cape Town in particular, is the leading home of Machingas from various parts of the world.
You look for Indian, Malay, Japanese, Chinese, Latin American, Australian, Huguenot, European, Khoi khoi, San and black African and Arab hawkers, you will find all of them here selling goods or services.
Many of them, however reach South Africa in different ways and they give different reasons to the authorities why they left their countries.
POLITICAL OR ECONOMIC REFUGEES?
Nicholas Ogunda is from Southern Sudan where a peace deal was signed with the Khartoum government a couple of years ago. When he spoke to this paper he said the authorities know that he ran away from his country because of the ongoing civil strife in the northwestern region of Darfur.
Another hawker, Emeka Nwanko who found his way to Cape Town through Cameroon Congo, Angola and Namibia, is from Western Nigeria.
He says the authorities know that he is in South Africa as a refugee because of the ongoing conflict in the oil-rich eastern state of Niger Delta.
As for Mapnde and Athuman, they say the authorities in South Africa know that they ran away from their country, Tanzania, because of the political crisis in Zanzibar.
But the concept of marching guys cannot only be confined to the hawkers. South Africans claim that their President, Thabo Mbeki is one of the few African head of state who have built a habit of continental trotting as he shuttles from one state to another while addressing to African needs.
He is ever a marching guy. The republic`s first black President, Nelson Mandela, though old and somewhat frail, has all along been in record as a global trotter in the course of dealing with the problems of the human race.
So in South Africa, it is not only the Machingas drawn from various parts of the world who are on the march, but it is almost everybody.
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