'Dying of hunger': Zimbabwe street vendors hit by coronavirus clampdown

Martha Kahari was already struggling to make ends meet after Zimbabwe’s coronavirus lockdown forced her to stop selling second-hand clothes and tomatoes at the side of the road in the capital Harare. Then the council came to tear down her stall. Since April, local authorities in Zimbabwe’s major cities have demolished thousands of illegally built structures that vendors like Kahari use to sell their wares, in what authorities have said is an effort to legitimise informal trade in the city. With her stall destroyed, the 40-year-old disabled mother of two has given up hope of being able to afford rent or pay back the money she borrowed to buy the stock she planned to sell once the lockdown was lifted.