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The deadline for illegal vendors to move off the streets expired last week and it was business as usual for the vendors in the CBD throughout the weekend.

The vendors are vowing to stay put in the streets amid encouragement from desperate opposition political quarters that dream of a Tunisia moment from irate vendors.

We urge the authorities to move with speed and get the vendors off the streets. They are a menace to shop owners who are parting with hard-earned cash to rent shops only to have vendors block the windows and entrances to their shops. No investor can be encouraged at the sight of the disorder in the capital. The vendors should go back where they came from, period!

Their removal will come as a relief to many people from shop owners to pedestrians who can no longer freely move on the pavements.

So bad is the situation that pedestrians now jaywalk on the streets where they have in turn become an inconvenience for motorists.

No one expects genuine vendors to resist relocation. Let those who are using the cover of vendors for political expediency experience the wrath of the law. By threatening to take the law into their own hands, the vendors are tempting fate and the law must descend on them without fear or favour. While the vendors might have genuine complaints that some industries have closed in the last few years. Everyone knows the reasons for the closure of such industries.

The illegal economic sanctions imposed by Western countries at the behest of the same opposition angling to use vendors for political capital are behind the economic problems.

The Government is quite aware of the debilitating effects of the sanctions and has taken several steps to mitigate their effects.

Most of these measures are contained in the Zim-Asset economic blueprint and some of them have already been implemented.

President Mugabe last year embarked on a State visit to China where he signed several mega deals that are set to transform the country for good. The deals are in all the key economic enablers in infrastructure, energy, telecommunications, agriculture and tourism.

Some of the mega deals are already being implemented and there has been constant interaction between Zimbabwean and Chinese authorities since the signing of the agreements.

More European countries are also warming up to Zimbabwe by sending investment delegations and we have no doubt that the sanctions will be a thing of the past very soon.

What is needed now is for Zimbabweans to have a little bit of patience and work with the Government to ensure things move in the right direction. Surely, the problems that the country is going through because of the illegal sanctions cannot be a justification for lawlessness.

Illegal vendors know this fact fully well that their actions are just that – illegal.

But Government and the Harare City Council have gone beyond the illegal vendors’ expectations by providing vending sites throughout the city. Otherwise the authorities could simply have told the illegal vendors to move out of the streets without any alternative because their actions are illegal. We do not expect the illegal vendors to hold the Government at ransom by using other factors to try and justify their actions.

In their case, Government has already treated them with kid gloves by providing alternative vending sites. What many rational people had expected was that the Government would simply ask the vendors to leave and use all means possible to stop their illegal acts.

Street vendors are found everywhere in the world, including in developed countries, but the vending is well structured and orderly.

No one can tolerate the situation in Harare where every street space has been taken up by illegal vendors and all pavements are being blocked by people and goods. The people we sympathise with most are the shop owners.

Here are people who toil day and night to fend for their families in a legal way and also help the economy through paying taxes and rates.

It is the duty of Government to maintain law and order.