Apartheid planning in the Durban Metropolitan Area (DMA) did not provide for African businesses in the central business district (CBD). In addition, for many years city by-laws prohibited trading in a street or public place within a 'Prohibited Area' which included the core and peripheral CBD areas. Until recently, the only way that Africans could access the lucrative CBD consumer market was by illegally occupying public spaces to trade. As controls on street trading have gradually been relaxed, and as unemployment in the DMA has increased, there has been a dramatic growth in the number of street traders in the CBD.

The Council has been actively supporting the activities of traders through the provision of covered trading sites, secure storage for goods, ablution blocks and waste removal services.

Positive effects associated with street trading in the DMA

• Providing cheap consumer goods
• Providing marginalised people with access to an income
• Improving income distribution
• Stimulating small and micro production
• Fighting crime through organised street trader organisations
• Encouraging the development of entrepreneurs
• Attracting consumers from other parts of the province and other parts of the country
• Providing small formal manufacturing firms with a marketing channel
• Boosting formal wholesalers' sales
• Facilitating communication and democratic organisation through street trader organisations and unions
• Attracting tourists
• Providing local revenue indirectly through the sale of fresh produce on the streets (ie. through municipal market revenue).

Negative effects associated with street trading in the DMA

• Closure of retail business as a result of street trading and the resultant loss of rates and employment
• Little or no direct contribution to the rate base
• Significant leakage of state support and indirect subsidies to higher income people (absent owners)
• Low wages and poor working conditions for street workers
• Protest action by street traders is seen to have a negative impact on the perceptions of investors and tourists visiting the city
• Vulnerability of street traders to social dislocation, sexual violence and crime
• Saturated markets with low returns for participants
• Unhygenic goods and related health risks
• Vulnerability of street traders to extortion and corruption
• Tourists and investors are seen to be discouraged by the status of street trading in the DMA
• Increased littering and waste
• Low quality and/or illegal goods
• Inconvenience to pedestrians
• Increases in traffic congestion