April 29, 2004
By Thomas Thale
THE Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market is a lively site of economic activity; a site where entrepreneurs of various hues, from farmers to small-scale informal traders, converge to conduct business.
From 5am in the morning, the massive complex turns into a beehive of activity, with traders taking to the floor to get the best deals.
Informal traders use bakkies to transport their goods
The JFPM has three main trading halls occupying an area of 65 000m2:
- Vegetable Hall
- Fruit Hall
- Potatoes and Onions Hall
It is in the trading halls that much of the goods and money exchange hands between agents and buyers.
Vegetable Hall
The massive vegetable hall boasts an array of fresh vegetables which are only sold in large quantities to mostly traders. Vegetables on sale include cocktail tomatoes, tomatoes, Hubbard squash, white pumpkin, baby butternut, sweet potatoes, chillies, beetroot, and herbs like coriander. One corner of the hall is reserved for the sale of pre-packed vegetables, including baby cabbages, red cabbages and coleslaw.
Fruit Hall
An assortment of fruits, some packaged in large boxes, others inside large plastic packets, are on permanent display. Grapes, guavas, bananas, spanspek, apples and pears adorn stalls throughout the hall.
Potatoes and Onions Hall
These two products are kept separate from other vegetables because potatoes are dusty and onions are smelly, and both require lower lighting to prevent them getting spoilt. The Potato and Onion hall is thus much darker than other halls. Inside the hall, huge bags of potatoes and onions are stacked separately on the floor. Some 14 agents have been allocated floor space inside the hall to sell from. Any goods that get spoilt are first checked by market inspectors to verify that they are rotten, before they are either destroyed or returned to the farmer.
Apart from formal trading in the three halls at the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market (JFPM), there is plenty of economic activity on the fringes.
Entrepreneurs with an eye for opportunities have seized on openings offered by the JFPM to create their own niche markets in the complex.
Mama's Kitchen
One of these ambitious people is Johanna Mthembu (64), widely acknowledged as the first woman to identify the niche market of selling food to market regulars for profit.
"It was some time in the 1980s when I started selling food here, my son. I can't remember the exact date. But things were bad then. We would often be raided by the police. Sometimes they would assault and arrest us. Other times they would just impound our goods for selling food in the complex," she recalls.
Where the food vendors were randomly scattered around the premises in the past, she and over 25 other women are now grouped together in the main trading area between the Vegetable and Fruit Sales Halls. A few operate next to the Mandela Market, while others sell from the taxi rank
From 6am, these women swing into action to serve breakfast to their clients. Some bring their food already prepared from home, while others cook their food at the market on primus stoves. Favourite regulars are pap and meat, skop (sheep head), dumpling, fish, sandwiches, cakes and tea.
Since 2002, the JFPM has provided them with kiosks with fold-out tables and seating arrangements and washing facilities with running water.
"Now I can make a living. It is not much, but at least I can survive!" exclaims Mthembu. While their income is not a fortune, many of the vendors make enough to hire assistants.
Mthembu hires a van every day to transport her stock from her house in Protea North, Soweto, to the market and back, empowering the transporter, a popular entrepeneurial job choice, in the process.
Commuter Transport
After being retrenched from his job as a driver at the BP head office in 1990, Zweledinga Dlomo used his retrenchment package to buy a van, as he had noticed that informal traders who bought fresh produce from the JPFM were unable to transport their goods to destinations across the city.
Dlomo and other van operators have a regular clientele at the market,
but competition has become fierce as more and more bakkie owners join the fray.
"A lot of people who were retrenched in the 1990s bought bakkies and flooded the market. Now we have to share the cake," he complains.
According to Dlomo, the number of bakkie operators has increased from about 100 in the early 1990s to some 500 at present. Dlomo starts transporting vendors in the wee hours of the morning and takes home an average of R200 per day.
Another threat to van drivers are taxi operators, who also ferry commuters to the market. To help protect their turf fairly, the van owners set up a Bakkie Association, by which bakkie owners have agreed not to encroach on taxi turf by transporting more than four passengers at any given time.
"We used to have a tough time with the taxis. We even had sporadic incidents of violence because they didn't want us to transport passengers," he says.
However, the Bakkie Association has now cultivated healthy relations with the Faraday Taxi Association, and after mediation from the office, Dlomo says hostility is rare.
Mandela People's Market
A satellite market of JFPM, the Mandela People's Market is a vibrant trading area which rents out some 71 stalls to informal traders to sell produce bought from the main market directly to the public in much smaller quantities.
Unlike the main halls, which close at 11am during the week and on public holidays, trading hours in the Mandela Market are more flexible. Indeed, it is only when the formal market closes, that informal traders get really busy. Traders also have space to store their goods overnight.
Prices in the fresh produce market are governed by the law of supply and demand and, although there are standard prices for all products, haggling is accepted practice.
Unity Fresh Produce Market
Perhaps the earliest vendors to seize the opportunities offered by the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market were Indian wholesale traders. As early as the 1970s, they were buying fresh produce in bulk from the agents and selling it in smaller quantities on the market premises for a marginal profit.
Yusuf Patel's Unity market
For the past 30 years, Yusuf Patel has been trading in tomatoes at Unity market. Each day he drives from his Mayfair home as early as 4am to seek out the best tomatoes. Like other wholesalers operating from Unity, Patel buys tomatoes in pallet blocks from the agents at the market and sells them in boxes to clients who buy fresh produce in smaller quantities. "My busiest days are Fridays and Saturday mornings," says Patel.
Patel's niche market are customers who want to buy fresh produce in bulk and don't have the time to wait in queues to buy and fill in coupons to mark each step of the purchasing process. "Some people would rather pay an extra R1 for the convenience," says Patel.
In 2003, a special Pallet Trading Area was developed in an open area at the back of the market to accommodate traders like Patel. Eighteen stalls, each measuring 86 square metres, have been constructed on the site. This area also has an undercover loading area of some 1 000 square metres, and there are facilities to store goods overnight.
What sets the Unity market apart is that it is reserved for traders who specialise in one particular product. By selling just tomatoes, Patel generates enough money from the market to take care of his family and he employs four assistants.
Big or small the, JFPM caters for them all - whether they trade in 50 pallets a day, or five boxes.
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