Four months after Johannesburg's court-ordered verification of informal traders, some officially verified traders have been sidelined. Desperate for feedback, the fallout is affecting their schoolgoing families, with children in matric going hungry or without electricity.

A number of verified informal traders' lives in Johannesburg are falling apart as they claim that, despite being verified to trade, they have not been allowed back on the streets. Four months after Johannesburg's informal trader verification process began, their efforts are being stonewalled.

The process sought to regulate the informal economy, enforce by-laws, and finally settle the City's long-running disputes with informal traders after they went to court when the City removed many of them from the streets in October 2025 as part of a clean-up operation.

"My policies and insurances have lapsed. School fees for my children remain unpaid and so is their scholar transport," said Ayanda Kela, an informal trader and one of the leaders of the South African Informal Traders Forum (SAITF).

"We are not getting any sound explanation for preventing us from working when we are already verified," Kela said. "We wake up every day, come to the street with the hope we would be allowed to trade, but no luck."

In November 2025, the Gauteng High Court ordered the City to verify, register and allocate spaces to qualifying informal traders, but while some traders are back on the streets, others say...