Leif Petersen

Development of a compendium of local, wild-harvested species used in the informal economy trade, Cape Town, South Africa

Wild harvesting has taken place over millennia in Africa. However urbanization and cash economies have effectively altered harvesting from being cultural, traditional, and subsistence activities that are part of a rural norm, to being a subculture of commonly illicit activities located primarily within the urban, cash-based, informal economy. This paper focuses on Cape Town, South Africa where high levels of poverty and extensive population growth have led to a rapidly growing informal industry based on the cultural, subsistence, and entrepreneurial harvesting and consumption of products obtained from the local natural environment. Through a process of literature reviews, database analysis, and key informant interviews, a compendium of harvested species was developed, illustrating the breadth of illicit harvesting of products from nature reserves, public open space, and other commonage within the City. The compendium records 448 locally occurring species (198 animals and 250 plants) that are extracted for medicinal, energy, ornamental, sustenance, nursery, and other uses. The sustainability of harvesting is questionable; nearly 70% of all harvested flora and 100% of all collected fauna are either killed or reproductively harmed through the harvesting processes. Furthermore, for the 183 indigenous flora species currently recorded on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, 28% (51) hold assessments ranging from Declining through to Critically Endangered. With respect to the more poorly assessed fauna (46 spp.), approximately 24% (11) have Declining or Threatened status.

Small Area Census Approach to Measure the Township Informal Economy in South Africa

In this article, we describe a research approach to undertaking a small area census to identify informal economy activity, using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative tools. The method focuses on enterprise activity. The approach enables the researcher to record a broader spectrum of informal micro-enterprises through identifying businesses in situ within an area of sufficient scale to broadly reflect area-level market conditions and business dynamics. The approach comprises an enterprise census, a survey of all identified micro-enterprises in key sectors, in-depth interviews, and participatory research techniques. The article reports on the application of this method in eight case sites, located in township settlements within five major cities in South Africa. The research identified 9,400 individual enterprises, entailing 10,220 primary and secondary activities, distributed within a population of 325,000 and comprising 97,000 households. The approach permits significant advances to our understanding of the spatial dynamics of the informal sector. The research data has enabled the researcher to make original contributions to understanding informal enterprise activities in grocery retailing, liquor trade, and traditional medicine sectors.

Enforced informalisation: The case of liquor retailers in South Africa

After a decade of unsuccessful efforts to migrate informal businesses to South Africas formal economy there remains little understanding of the dynamics in this sector, especially as regards micro-enterprises. International literature discusses ‘exit’ and ‘exclusion’, holding that poor law enforcement is the reason for the persistence and growth of the informal economy. Through examining the informal liquor retail (shebeen) sector, we demonstrate that enforcement actually produces informality in this sector. Illustrated with examples from one of our sites in Delft South, Cape Town, the article describes key aspects of shebeen business practice, including the responses to greater law enforcement. Notably, instead of closing shop or facing the hurdles of compliance, the great majority of shebeens continue to evade the law by downscaling their activities. This finding has implications not just for liquor policy in South Africa, but for understanding both theories of formalisation and theories of the informal economy.

“Bush Doctors and Wild Medicine”: The Scale of Trade in Cape Town's Informal Economy of Wild-Harvested Medicine and Traditional Healing

South Africas organically emerged cultural business of traditional healing is almost exclusively reliant on wild-harvested resources extracted from wilderness areas or open-access commons. The wild medicine business has been described for much of South Africa, although is little understood in Cape Town, the urban centerpiece of the Cape Floristic Region (CFR). A census of different traditional healer typologies in five typical working-class residential areas (representing ∼71,500 residents) was conducted to assess the nature and extent of traditional medicine harvesting and trade. Extrapolating these findings for the city reveals a local industry of more than 15,000 practitioners collectively conducting trade worth US

Implementing value chain analysis to investigate drivers and sustainability of Cape Town's informal economy of wild-harvested traditional medicine

15.6 million per year. More than 40% of the volume of traditional medicines traded in the city is harvested from the CFR. Future conservation approaches must consider that the business of traditional healing and dispensing wild-harvested medicines is both economically important and culturally entrenched.

Shebeens as spaces and places of informality, enterprise, drinking and sociability

Despite a highly visible presence, policy-maker knowledge of the drivers and participants in the informal economy of wild-harvested medicinal plants in Cape Town remains limited. To illuminate the workings of this local cultural business activity, the researchers adopted value chain analysis (VCA) for dissecting harvesting, trading and consumer demand in the trade. The study included qualitative, open-ended interviews with 58 traditional healers and a quantitative consumer study of 235 township households. Cape Towns traditional healers are numerous and potentially more uniquely culturally diverse than elsewhere, serving various community health needs. Healer groups enhance their healing reputation by utilising wild-sourced medicines – much of which is harvested locally. Their services remain culturally important and utilised by at least 50% of all consumer respondents. The VCA revealed a universal healer and consumer requirement for wild medicine stocks which has considerable implications for policy-making, protected area management and traditional medicine-oriented conservation projects.

From local survivalism to foreign entrepreneurship: the transformation of the spaza sector in Delft, Cape Town

The paper explores the complex role of drinking in Sweet Home Farm (an informal settlement) through an examination of its contextual setting and its spatial characteristics. It examines, through a social-spatial ethnographic method and focus on a series of case studies, how shebeens are positioned in terms of their relationship to urban settlement, their role in providing publicly accessible venues within an over-crowed slum and influence on drinking outcomes. Our analysis of space focuses on the context of the informal settlement as an (un)regulated space which permits emergent spatial expressions and arrangements. Through a detail examination of four case studies, we consider the intimate configuration and organisation (place) of specific venues. From the perspective of place, the analysis examines the use (and non-use) of equipment/objects and internal architecture to define the character of particular typologies of establishments and their positioning vis-a-vis market niches. We reflect on the role and impact of shebeens on life within Sweet Home Farm, both in terms of providing space for socialisation and in supporting diverse cultures of drinking and business forms.