January 24, 2003
By Sheree Russouw
NORA ARMANDU starts her day by lugging two 25-litre containers of water from a grimy bathroom at the Noord Street taxi rank to her tent across the road. She uses the water to prepare traditional Mozambiquan food, which she cooks on a rusty primus stove cramped inside a cardboard box.
For R8, customers get a plate of rice and karakal fish - its silvery head still intact - cooked in peanut and coconut sauce. On a good day, Armandu can pocket R100. Her food never goes to waste, she says, as there are three hungry mouths to feed at home.
At this informal marketplace, Armandu is one of many operating what is euphemistically called "open-air restaurants" from cramped tents or out in the open. Large pots, merciless heat and a few decrepit plastic chairs and buckets fill her small tent, while bits of stale food cover the floor.
She disposes of her waste in refuse bags she brings from home. But her customers can be messy, she says. "Sometimes when I get here in the morning there is dirt everywhere but I clean it up. I like to keep my place neat."
A report on street food by the Food and Agriculture Organisation for the United Nations released in April 2001 attributes the burgeoning of ready-to-eat food businesses like Armandu's to rapid urbanisation and population growth in Johannesburg.
This is because, it says, street eateries offer "inexpensive, convenient and often nutritious food for both urban and rural poor" and provide jobs for the poor, especially women, who are able to start their own businesses with limited capital.
But the study highlights the potential for the spread of diseases such as food poisoning and salmonella if vendors do not adhere to food hygiene practices. It stresses that educating food vendors about basic food hygiene is essential.
"No one has ever fallen ill after eating my food," says 23-year-old Mbuso Zondo. He cooks bulls' heads on two coal-burning braziers placed inside empty rubbish bins. Smoke wafts in pungent plumes but fans of his cuisine dig in with gusto, claiming that the food "makes men men". Zondo dumps his leftovers into a drain filled with rotting meat and pap crumbs - rich pickings for the ubiquitous pigeons.
To sell their cooked food on the city streets, vendors first need to be granted a certificate of acceptability by City health officials, but few traders have one. The certificate means, among other things, that they have the correct facilities to prepare and cook food; they have a potable water supply; toilet facilities; and that there are adequate rubbish and disposal sites nearby.
A inner city street restaurant
The UN study calls for local authorities to ensure that the street traders have the right infrastructure to conduct their business and inform them about dangers of contamination. While he acknowledges that education is essential, Corrie Bezuidenhout, the manager of environmental health for the inner city, says that plans to formally educate and train vendors about the basic principles of food hygiene are still at an early stage.
"We have a programme to teach street vendors about safer food preparation and the need for better facilities. Also, our officials have always gone on to the streets to teach these people about better food hygiene," he says.
But according to the Informal Business Forum, an umbrella body of hawkers' associations, it is useless to educate street food traders without supplying them with the right facilities. "Street food vendors have insufficient resources to buy the equipment that they need to cook their food. They do need training programmes," says spokesperson Edmund Elias.
Interestingly, of the food vendors studied in Gauteng, most practised some basic hygiene principles when preparing and handling food "even though they may not understand the reasons for these principles". Because their food was thoroughly cooked, it was deemed generally safe as the heat killed off bacteria.
But merely cooking the food does not necessarily make it safe. The UN study shows that the poor handling and storage of cooked food; the cross contamination of cooked food from raw food, especially of animal origin; lack of hygienic conditions; and the inadequate cleaning of cooking utensils, can cause disease. It found that some vendors used dirty dishcloths to dry their cooking utensils or used one container of water to wash their hands and dirty dishes.
The unit plans to clamp down on street vendors violating public health by-laws and the Health Act. The draft by-laws state that the City of Johannesburg must regulate all activities in a manner that "prevents unsafe food or drink from being eaten or drunk" and that "does not make it easier for human or animal diseases to spread".
"A lot of the conditions at these places are unacceptable. Food must be prepared freshly on site rather than two days before. If this hasn't happened and someone does get food poisoning, it is often impossible to trace the informal trader who cooked that food," says Bezuidenhout.
