The mass eviction was carried out by the City without taking any measures to distinguish between the traders who have always been doing business legally, and other informal traders who have not. Faced with indiscriminate evictions, the informal traders negotiated with the City to allow them to return to their lawful trading activities. Despite the informal traders complying with the verification process suggested by the City, they were not permitted to return to their stalls and to trade. Those who did so were forcibly evicted by the metro police, who also dismantled the stalls previously used by the traders. They say it became increasingly clear to them that OCS was not an attempt to verify and reregister the lawful informal traders in the inner city. Instead, it was a project to remove informal traders permanently from their trading booths and relocate some or all of them to unknown ‘alternative designated areas’, and prohibit them from trading in the interim. The informal traders approached the High Court, and they could to secure the relief sought. They approached the Constitutional Court which found that in terms of section 6A(3) of the Businesses Act certain steps must be taken by the city in order to designate a trading area for informal trading. The City failed to comply with these requirements.

The Constitutional Court found that the City has not identified any lawful ground that permits it to disturb the informal traders’ right to enjoy the use of trading stalls in the inner-city. The city does not dispute the unlawfulness of its officials’ conduct. It was found that the informal traders’ families’ livelihood depended on their trading in the inner city. The City conduct denying them to trade in the inner-city left them destitute and unable to provide for their families. It must be added that the eviction of the traders involved constitutional issues of considerable significance. The capability of people to earn money and support themselves and their families is an important component of the right to human dignity. Without it they faced ‘humiliation and degradation’. Most traders have dependants majority of these dependants are children, who also have suffered hardship as the City denied their breadwinners’ lawful right to conduct their businesses. The city has not disputed this. The City’s conduct has a direct and ongoing bearing on the rights of children, including their direct rights to basic nutrition, shelter and basic health- care services. The harm the traders were facing was immediate and irreversible.