Walk down First Street at 7am and it looks like Operation Chenesa is working. Walk down it again after dark and the picture changes. More than three weeks into the government's latest clean-up of Harare, the official numbers are big, the political language is confident, and the vendors are, quietly and in many places, still there.
For a site that tracks how Zimbabwe deals with its waste, Chenesa matters for more than the trading question. Government has explicitly tied the operation to litter, blocked drains, uncollected refuse and public health. So it is worth separating what officials say the operation is for, what it has actually done so far, and what people who have watched this cycle before are worried about.
What officials are saying
The Ministry of Local Government and Public Works describes Chenesa as a programme to restore public safety, environmental integrity, order and sustainable urban development, according to its latest situation report as carried by the Herald. The same report says joint task force teams are deploying daily across targeted parts of the city, with recent sweeps covering Borrowdale Road, First and Fourth Streets, Kirkman, Sherwood, Helensvale, Mabelreign shops and others.
Cabinet has given the operation formal backing. Information Minister Zhemu Soda said the plan rests on four pillars, Legislate, Provide, Formalise and Enforce, and the government has announced a 60-day programme meant to bring informal traders into the regulated economy and upgrade vending infrastructure.
Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume began by describing the first phase as largely persuasive and peaceful, with vendors encouraged to move to approved sites, and said the 300 municipal police officers on the streets could be increased if needed. He has since hardened his tone. On local radio he said the capital "is not a refugee camp, it is a place of business", and suggested people who find Harare too expensive could move to growth points, smaller towns or farms, New Zimbabwe reports.
Local Government Minister Daniel Garwe, addressing stakeholders in Bulawayo on 10 September, said littering was the enemy and that vendors should be able to trade safely and with dignity, with basic services such as water, sanitation, lighting and waste management, according to CITE.
Where the waste link comes in
Chenesa is often reported purely as a vendor story, but the city's own rules show why waste sits at its centre. Harare's anti-litter by-laws prohibit dumping or abandoning litter in a public place, and reporting on the launch noted that authorities have linked illegal vending with blocked walkways, accumulated rubbish, unregulated structures and health risks. When an earlier round of Chenesa Harare ran in 2024, ZBC described it as starting with clearing garbage and debris from the streets before the council turned to vendors.
That framing is not unreasonable. Anyone who has walked past a collapsed market stall after rain knows where the packaging, food waste and plastic end up. The harder question is whether removing the trader removes the waste, or simply moves it to the next pavement.
What the numbers show
The ministry's figures are large. It says 2,475 illegal businesses have been affected and 1,137 structures removed since 9 September. On 21 September alone, CITE reports, 255 businesses were affected, most of them vending operations, alongside clothes sellers, snooker tables, furniture and tyre businesses and a car wash.
The retreat is less loudly announced. On 17 September, barely a week in, newly appointed Permanent Secretary Tafadzwa Muguti announced that vending in all CBDs would be limited to 6am to 6pm across all 92 local authorities, and to 8pm in residential areas, a clear step back from the original order to clear the CBD, according to New Zimbabwe.
Writing for Nehanda Radio, PLAAS researcher Dr Phillan Zamchiya points out that even the state-owned Herald has reported vendors back on First Street Mall, Robert Mugabe Road and parts of Fourth Street, that Garwe has acknowledged people are returning to cleared areas at night, and that Mafume has conceded the city cannot clear vendors "in one day". Zamchiya describes whistle codes, WhatsApp groups tracking officials and stalls that pack away in seconds, and argues that photographs of empty pavements taken when officials arrive are being presented as proof of success.
The quiet has not held everywhere. On Saturday 26 September stones were thrown between municipal officers and traders at the corner of First Street and Speke Avenue, 263Chat reports, and nine vendors have since appeared in court over the incident, according to the Southerton Business Times.
What critics are worried about
The loudest concern is history. CITE reports that commentators see real, not rhetorical, parallels with Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, which a UN investigation led by Anna Tibaijuka found left about 700,000 people without homes, livelihoods or both. Tibaijuka's report concluded that evictions happened before alternatives were provided, and recommended designated markets, proper licensing and involving affected communities in the plans.
Lawyer and activist Chiedza Mlingwa told a SAPES policy dialogue that removing a trader from an unauthorised spot does not remove the poverty that put them there, it just shifts it. Political analyst Mxolisi Ncube put the test simply: if vendors get affordable, viable trading spaces and real support to formalise, Chenesa could be different from 2005. If they are just moved around, the problem stays.
There is also a practical question about scale. In 2024 the council said more than 500,000 vendors were registered with it. The Djeuce, in its own analysis of the operation, noted that the CBD's official vending sites hold only a small fraction of that number, while Minister Garwe has pointed to vending bays in Mbare, Mabvuku and Borrowdale that sit underused.
What other cities have done
The most useful reading on solutions so far is The Djeuce's piece, Operation Chenesa: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Harare's Vendor Crackdown. It looks at two African cities that took different routes.
Kigali built modern markets first, with sanitation and solar lighting, then moved more than a thousand traders into them, in some cases covering their first year of rent and linking them to microloans. Durban's Warwick Junction went the other way, redesigning a congested transport hub around its traders with their own organisations at the table, and it now handles close to half a million people a day. The article also traces the same argument in New York, where a decades-old cap on vendor permits created a black market, and in Barcelona, where some street sellers organised into a registered cooperative.
The common thread, for waste as much as for trade, is sequencing. Kigali's markets came with sanitation before the traders arrived. Durban's design gave waste somewhere to go. Harare, so far, has led with enforcement.
What happens next
The 60-day formalisation window is the thing to watch. If it produces serviced trading sites with refuse collection, water and toilets, Chenesa could leave Harare cleaner in a way that lasts. If it produces another round of cleared pavements and empty vending bays, the rubbish will follow the vendors back, as it has after every previous operation.
For residents, the immediate effect is uneven. Some streets are visibly cleaner during the day. For the thousands of households who depend on vending income, the new 6am to 6pm rule and nightly sweeps mean a harder, less predictable living. For waste collectors and recyclers, a formalised market system with proper bins and collection points would be a real opportunity, and BinGo will be tracking whether one materialises.
Sources
- Operation Chenesa: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Harare's Vendor Crackdown, The Djeuce
- Operation Chenesa sparks Murambatsvina comparisons as critics warn history is repeating, CITE
- Whistles, WhatsApp and moving stalls: How Harare vendors are outsmarting Operation Chenesa, Nehanda Radio
- 2 475 illegal businesses hit as Chenesa crackdown intensifies, Zimbabwe Situation / The Herald
- Government launches 60-day vendor formalisation drive, Zimbabwe Situation
- Government Gives in As Vendors Resist Order to Clear Out of CBD, allAfrica / New Zimbabwe
- Harare deploys 300 municipal police for Chenesa campaign, Zimbabwe Situation
- Harare CBD vendors living on borrowed time, ZBC News
- Operation Chenesa Harare: 300 police officers deployed, My Zimbabwe News
- Garwe orders vendors to stop paying space barons, bars police from seizing wares, CITE
- Harare Vendors Caught Between By-Laws and the Fight to Survive, allAfrica / 263Chat
- Nine Vendors Remanded Over Alleged Stone-Throwing, Southerton Business Times
Written by Rufaro
Plain-language guides to getting rid of anything in Zimbabwe, properly.
