Enduring intersectional precarity: A history of resistance by women informal traders in Harare (Zimbabwe), c. 1965 to 2022

The thesis examines livelihoods through an intersectional and gendered framework, emphasizing survival amid complex and intersecting forces, including structural racial and gendered marginalisation; socio-economic crises; systemic absence of State support; punitive regulation of the informal sector and a pandemic. While informality is not a new phenomenon in Zimbabwe, its expansion post-economic liberalisation has significantly involved an enduring presence of women. This study focuses on the resilience of women in the informal sector from 1965 to 2022 in Harare (Salisbury), exploring the multifarious ways in which they navigated shifting socio-economic and politico-legal contexts. Utilising archival sources, oral interviews, newspapers and government documents, the study examines the colonial system’s influence on African women’s participation in the urban informal economy and subsequent efforts by the post-independence government to incorporate, finance and support women informal entrepreneurs within the black empowerment rhetoric. Additionally, it investigates women’s evolving livelihood strategies amidst multiple crises and their interactions with law enforcement. This historical understanding of women, who have a long history of systemic economic marginalisation and prejudice, in a growing industry of informal trade, expands critical knowledge on gender, crises, informality and survival in Africa. The thesis argues that women informal entrepreneurs were not waiting to be rescued; they were astute economic actors who built alternative resilient economies, adapting livelihood strategies, outmanoeuvring restrictive policies and resisting systemic marginalisation, saving themselves daily. It deconstructs the saviour narrative in gender and informal economy discourses and challenges the notion of informality as marginality.

Grantor dc:publisher

Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Chitaukire, Rumbidzai Hazel

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Fransch, Chet

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/135687

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/135687