Dear Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
A year ago, the City of Johannesburg’s (“the City”) politicians and officials intimidated informal traders around Johannesburg Park Station and eventually removed them, claiming they were trading unlawfully. SERI has been representing them since 2013, and evictions happen every few years. This is partially because the City’s politicians do not fully accept or understand the role played by informal trading in our metro and individual households.
I remember that we dispatched a letter to the City inviting them to stop interfering with informal trading without following due process. We attempted to negotiate with them for a few weeks and eventually launched a case to interdict their unlawful actions in the matter of Ayanda Kela v City of Johannesburg on behalf of the informal traders. The matter was moved out of court into mediation because the City insisted that the informal traders had been removed for trading unlawfully, so that their lawfulness could be verified in a process which officials initiated on 4 November 2025. The media articles vacillated between how this issue was about undocumented migrants on one hand and the suffering of the informal traders who had food taken from their homes, on the other. Little was said about how those informal traders enable households to purchase vegetables at affordable prices or clothe their families during the winter months with second-hand clothes sold at the De Villiers Linear Market, which is at the centre of the removals.
While the verification mandated by the court order was happening, the City continued removing informal traders across the Central Business District, and we launched another case. That case was heard by the urgent court on23 December 2025; the court ordered those informal traders to join the mediation in the first case. At the time, being sent to mediation was one of the things we feared as the City had failed to arrange and pay for the mediation in the first case. They had also shown no appetite to move that process forward. So being sent to mediation felt like being dismissed without the option of appealing. Luckily, the judge ordered the City to pay for and arrange it. We were fortunate that the matter was allocated to an experienced and skilled mediator.
By March 2026, the informal traders were frustrated as they had undergone the verification process, received their smart cards, but were unable to return to their trading spots. Ayanda Kela, the first applicant in the first urgent application, walked into the mediation with his smart card in his pocket, but no trading occurred in the De Villiers Linear Market, even as over a hundred traders from that site were also sitting at home with their smart cards. As I write to you now, there is still no trading at De Villiers and many other trading sites, and the mediation has stalled.
And then at the end of May, Braamfontein had its streets closed for two days in a row. One of my colleagues investigated because even though we knew that Mayor Dada Morero was delivering his State of the City Address, the event had never necessitated such road closures in the past. Then we learnt that the SOCA was being delivered from St Mary’s Cathedral to announce a precinct to honour your legacy. An article published by the City situates the precinct with Sophie De Bruyn Street in the north, Claim and Mooi streets to the east, Harrison Street to the west, and Commissioner Street to the south, covering Wards 59, 60, 123, and 124. An article announced the public consultation process for renaming the streets around the precinct from Plein Street to Desmond Tutu Street, Wanderers Street to Simeon Nkoane Street, De Villiers Street to Trevor Huddlestone Street and Hoek Street to Cathedral Street. Here you lead an illustrious contingent of clergy from the Anglican Church who have stood with our people regardless of the times or cost.
When we read a publicly available presentation on the precinct, we realised that the removal of traders was part of the City’s execution of the Desmond Tutu precinct. One of my most respectful colleagues remarked that the presentation was tone deaf. There were many times when I wondered how you would have responded to someone who would say or write these things, let alone include them in an official document. The words below, taken from slide 9, stand out:
Yet at times, we can understand that people can struggle to articulate things in a manner that recognises the dignity of others but have an honourable intention. As an optimist, you could read the presentation to accommodate informal traders and the people who already live in the precinct. Even if you ignore the pictures of tourists who look nothing like you or me sitting in the precinct. Slides 44-45 make it clear that the vision of the precinct is one that attracts wealthier residents and more established businesses.
Honestly, a person who does not know our past can read it and conclude that this is a beautiful plan to honour one of South Africa’s leading sons, a Nobel Laureate and an uncompromising man of God. But knowing our heritage as a country of dual or even multiple frameworks, one for the Whites and another for the Blacks or, more recently, one for the poor and another for the rich, you would fear what this precinct means for your legacy.
Can your legacy be enforced by the location of a nyala on De Villiers? Can you rest in peace as poor people are denied a livelihood in a country of limited opportunities in your name? Should our heads not hang in shame that our vision of better is still white faces lounging at midday instead of cooking mamas who seek to feed their children?
The SOCA was many months ago, so why write to you now? Why raise these matters with you now? Because the truth is never late. Just this Saturday, I realised that a century can pass and a giant of faith can be forgotten, but the truth always comes out. I remembered this as I joined thousands in honouring the legacy of Reverend Tiyo Soga at Rhema Bible Church, under the leadership of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation and Classics on Turf.
Reverend Tiyo Soga represented so much for Christianity and South Africa. Many took the podium, speaking to who he was as an intellectual, a man of faith and a proud African. I was moved to write to you because of the intergenerational connections made visible on Saturday, 19 September, from Thandi Ntuli playing in honour of the late Abdullah Ibrahim to the execution of the project commemorating the great 19th century musician Reverend Soga, through a delivery by Mandisi Dyantyi who has earned his stripes in the 21stcentury. I marveled to myself that Reverend Soga lived the ideal of one humanity even as he treasured being African.
Our heritage of one humanity gives me hope even today. I am carried by it even as the informal traders' case delays, and it looks possible that the race of yesterday has simply morphed into the class/ gender and ethnicity of today.
I write to honour you and the many Christian leaders who have shown that Christianity is radical - from the South African Council of Churches and others denouncing apartheid as incompatible with Christianity to the SACC today standing with migrants in our country in a moment where our government and our people could not fully protect them.
Lala Ngoxolo Arch, phumla, ugqatso lwakho ulufezile.
[ENDS]
>> Download the open letter here.