Johannesburg, South Africa — People make an incredible amount of money in Jeppe. The wholesalers, the shopkeepers, the shoppers, the landlords. But also, the police and City officials.
Close to $600 million each year is spent by cross-border shoppers in Jeppe Street, a bustling corner of Johannesburg's inner city. That's twice the turnover of upmarket Sandton - the richest mall in Africa - yet Jeppe faces ongoing surveillance and frequent crackdowns by the authorities.
This unique entrepreneurial explosion operates in city blocks abutting the central Park Station transport hub. Some call it the Ethiopian Quarter, Little Ethiopia, and Little Addis. Municipal officials have dubbed the area the Chaos Precinct.
Traders in the area still know it by the hallmark road - Jeppe - even though it was renamed Rahima Moosa Street more than a decade ago. For them, it is a place of opportunity and frenetic trade: a dynamic, exuberant nerve centre that fosters entrepreneurship. It has emerged without any formal planning, intention, or support.
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
Defunct medical towers and office blocks have been converted - primarily by Ethiopian migrants - into shopping centres hosting over 3,000 cupboard-sized shops. Local and cross-border shoppers arrive on buses and taxis to buy shoes, t-shirts, dresses, underwear, jeans, suits, wallets, belts, nail clippers, and cosmetics.
The micro traders of Jeppe and cross-border shoppers move massive amounts of goods from Johannesburg to all corners of southern Africa. Physically, they pick up where the formalised distribution networks from China to South Africa stop.
They rely on informal networks, on the city infrastructure, and on bodies and phones to operate the services that smooth supply chains across the region.
This economic hub is an entrepôt that bears a close resemblance to major port cities.
"We thought this was our El Dorado"
But Johannesburg has not embraced the economic opportunity Jeppe offers. The focus of the authorities is on an old-style law and order that equates informality with criminality.
Despite research that spotlights the heft of this economy - its logistics and its services - it is not recognised as the backbone of a regional retail port. This new reality finds no place in City Council plans.
Instead, Jeppe is regularly raided by the police. Law enforcement in South Africa is notoriously ineffectual - but not in Jeppe. Here, uniformed and plain-clothed law enforcers are continually and feverishly exercising their power.
There is a wide array of contraventions to monitor - counterfeit goods; unregulated street trading; undocumented migrants; and overcrowded, decaying buildings in which by-laws are not enforced.
Often, the raids are brutal. A stun grenade may sound or sirens blare, and within minutes the streets are blocked by vans and cruisers of the national police, revenue services, and Metro police.
Uniformed men and women move in and out of buildings and street-facing shops. They are armed with sidearms, automatic rifles, or batons. Groups of officers break open locks of roller-shuttered doors and remove goods from shops.
Others keep guard or chase shopkeepers away from their shops and traders from their stalls. Some crack whips - known as sjamboks - on the road surface or across the backs of traders who are not moving away quickly enough.
Sultan Tiklu, an Ethiopian trader who sold both branded and unbranded T-shirts, told me a policeman once said to him, "Jeppe is our Canaan. We never come here without getting something." Tiku believes the policing of counterfeit goods was the perfect excuse for massive graft.
He knew no one who had been invited to witness the mandatory destruction of seized counterfeit goods - even though regulations require that the accused party, while under investigation, should be permitted to observe.
"We do sell counterfeit. I would say 10% of the goods here could be fake," said Tiklu. "But I know many shopkeepers who do not stock a single copy item. Yet their goods are removed into police vehicles and not returned."
Read more:
How growing hostility in South Africa impacts South-South migration
None of the traders I interviewed ever knew of anyone who had been successfully charged with the sale of counterfeit goods in the area.
The policing of migrant status is no more procedural. Even lowly law enforcement officers apprehend migrant shoppers or traders to demand proof of their legal status. Many migrant entrepreneurs here talk of being held in police vans where bribes are extracted.
"We thought this was our El Dorado," said Tiklu. "Ethiopians, who had no idea about business or about property markets - and no idea they could make money in Johannesburg - came. And by the grace of God, the Chinese came. And the shoppers came from all the surrounding countries."
People make an incredible amount of money in Jeppe. "The wholesalers, the shopkeepers, the shoppers, the landlords. But also, the police and City officials," Tuku said. "But it is at risk of being trashed. The landlords were short-sighted. They care nothing for the buildings. The police have taken [bribes] for themselves. And the City doesn't support this business."
There is another way
The vitality of Jeppe is not an exotic implant in the city. Far from being a "chaos precinct" that is ungovernable, this is a potential lodestar for navigating the future of the city. This is Johannesburg finding its place among African cities, on a continent bound together by movement, trade, and diversity.
It is time that Johannesburg reckoned with itself as an African city, a metropolis connected to other metropoles, towns, and small settlements on the continent. Indeed, the apparent chaos of this migrant entrepreneurial precinct conceals the logic of its economic potential.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Johannesburg could put this cross-border shopping hub on the African map as an exemplar of an inclusive global distribution centre. Rather than decimating it through petty control by the police, the state could allow it to flourish while tackling the infrastructural risks.
For as long as the authorities do not actively embrace it and support it to become more fully the transnational trading post it has organically become, there can be no order. And without order, criminals wearing the badge of authority can continue their militarised activities of rent-seeking under the guise of creating order.
But the order called for is not of the jackboot variety regularly dished out on Johannesburg's streets. It is a higher order that entails responding to what is; of legitimising the often-incomprehensible kaleidoscope that Jeppe has become and finding the levers that can make it more of the best it offers.
Tiku's formula for Jeppe is a shift in attitude by landlords, the police, and the City.
"Landlords need to protect the buildings that [gave the hawkers] the opportunity to start as hawkers and become so wealthy," he said. "And the police system needs to tackle the lawless policing that makes us more afraid of police than of any other criminals. And the City needs to believe in this economy."
We could do worse.
