The 'Queen' of Palapye's streets
Koketso Kgoboge | Friday May 29, 2020 16:45
Omphemetse ‘Queen’ Kebotswang, who has been trading as a street vendor for the past 13 years, is amongst the underprivileged members of the society here that were pushed into the corner by the mandatory lockdown.
Queen sells fruits and vegetables, airtime and sweets. Her shelter is located at the Engen Mall in front of Hungry Lion Restaurant.
The mother of two daughters, who are fully dependent on her, has been homebound for the entire lockdown period.
By the time the ink dries on this paper, Queen will be a new grandmother. Her first-born daughter was admitted at the Palapye Primary Hospital maternity wing and the family was waiting to welcome a new member.
Queen is excited at the prospect of the new addition. During our interview, she is in suspense about whether the baby will be a boy or a girl.
She clings to her phone in the hope that the good news would break at any moment. Queen is thrilled for her daughter, but having been exposed first-hand the chronicles of being a young jobless mother, she is also anxious.
The struggles of raising her two daughters forced her to eke a living in the streets of Palapye where she started off in 2007. The father to the girls passed on after the second-born girl was born and she had to fend for them alone.
For a period, Queen worked for a Chinese shop earning a paltry P100 a week. The pay was far from meeting her needs. At the time, her second-born had just joined her big sister at school doing Standard One.
After toiling unprofitably in the Chinese shop the whole year, she decided to quit in December of that year, using her last paycheck to buy the airtime that kick-started her trade.
Life instantaneously improved. Queen’s stall became a convenience to customers around Engen Shopping Centre with her Mascom Nzamela and Orange Quick airtime services. At home, the young girls looked to their mother every evening when she returned from work.
Before long she was operating from a table in front of Tla Pitseng Restaurant where the posh Hungry Lion Restaurant currently sits. Tla Pitseng was famous before the construction of the Palapye bus rank.
Queen was able to open a savings account and started a motshelo with her colleagues in the street. With profits from the motshelo and her business, she bought herself a piece of land at Lotsane ward and built a house where she resides with her daughters.
Today, she drives her third car, all bought from proceeds of her informal sector business. She parted with P450.00 every month for the whole of 2014 to get her driver’s licence.
The business has been an up and down affair, highly profitable one day and gloomy the next. The tough times have included being kicked out by council authorities and mall owners, during which her stall was damaged.
“The trick is always to have savings even though these are usually meagre. The savings have brought me to my feet when things have gone bad.”
Queen’s daughters were unlucky at school and ended their studies at junior secondary school. Her first-born followed her footprint, working briefly in Chinese shops before she was laid off due to the pregnancy late last year. At the beginning of the year, Queen used part of her savings to open a tuckshop at her home, to provide an income for her expectant daughter.
Little did she know that the coronavirus would strike.
With a heavily expectant child, Queen was forced to empty her savings to ensure that the family had sufficient supplies to survive the lockdown.
“I’m struggling to make ends meet. Even though the lockdown has ended, the stall that was usually packed has shrunk to the size of the small table I started with some 13 years ago.
“Sweets no longer make enough profit and neither does airtime. Cigarettes are banned and I can’t access the farms to buy products to sell.
“There is not much to attract customers to the stalls as before.”
Despite the tough times, she still braces the chilly mornings every day to erect her shelter as she tries to get her life in the street going again.
“In no time I will be taking care of a new baby and her mother. I need to make every little I can. I don’t have much to sell but I am compelled to come to the stall every day.
“Every thebe I make is vital at our house,” the visibly worried grandmother-to-be, says.
Queen is a member of the Rise and Shine Association, which is the voice of the street vendors in Palapye and surrounding areas. Her chairperson at the association, Pelonomi Balotlhanye, says COVID-19 had plunged their businesses to low levels.
“Government did not engage us when they released the Letlhabile Relief Fund for small businesses that is accessed at the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA).
“The requirements are disparaging and most of the traders at the lower end will probably not benefit from the relief.
“The requirements are not well thought-out. They should have engaged our associations when they came up with this.
“Ka fa go dirilweng ka teng ga go a direlwa rona,” she says with a voice of hopelessness.
Balotlhanye says the informal sector and vendors in particular need grants from government to re-ignite their businesses.
“We need as little as a non-refundable P1,500 to buy stock and start selling again.”
“These grandmothers, mothers and sisters are the sources of livelihoods for many people.
“If we don’t help them they might just resort to desperate measures to ensure their families survive. The government needs to relook at the relief for street vendors and hawkers,” Balotlhanye says.
Balotlhanye schooled her children, grandchildren and her siblings’ children through her catering business. Three out of the 10 she cared for are degree holders today.
These days, she stays home taking care of her ailing mother and can no longer get back to the streets. However, she is still trading selling fresh fish from home.