The City's sensible policy to regulate traders is stymied by pilfering police, but there is also no incentive for businesses to register with the government, creating an unresolvable situation that peters out, only to be revived again and again.

In one of those battles that is almost as regular as complaints that there was no spring this year, the City of Joburg is again at war with informal traders. It is trying to "regularise" people who sell things on the side of the road.

And in the process, as has happened so often in the past, they've been taken to court by people who represent the traders.

This time around, it is that familiar protagonist for the City, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (Seri).

If, like me, you have seen less and less of the Joburg CBD over the past few years, you might be surprised at just how big its markets are.

Back in 2017, that's more than eight years ago, an important study by Tanya Zack found that the amount of trade in Jeppe alone was about $600-million a year. As Zack and others noted, that was twice the turnover at Sandton City at the time (this presumably...