ABSTRACT
This chapter explains some thirty years of trading activities in the townships on the southwestern side of Johannesburg. It relates to the framework of broad restrictions imposed by acts of parliament. The dawning realization that some concessions must be made to the demands of those who are trading in a technically 'illegal' way. The designs of grand apartheid introduced by the Nationalist government after their electoral victory in 1948 begin to impact more forcibly both on the conduct of 'formal' trading and the sphere of 'informal' trading. The consequences of the Council's inability to provide trading facilities in the new townships and to augment existing facilities in the older locations has had an immediate and unfortunate result, namely, the emergence, on a very large scale, of illegal trading. The council was opposed to the hawking of soft goods in general, largely on the grounds that it was opposed to 'illegal' street trading.
