Kenya: Police move to halt merchant-hawker street brawl

By Magdalene Mukami

NAIROBI, Kenya (AA) – Police fired live bullets and teargas in Kenya’s “Little Mogadishu” area Wednesday to break up street violence between street hawkers and mall merchants.

The fighting came after a local merchants’ group, the Eastleigh Business Community, vowed to close all shops indefinitely starting Thursday following a court ruled last week that hawkers could return to the streets and stopping the Nairobi county government from ejecting them.

Eastleigh Estate -- which gets its nickname from its large Somali immigrant population and is considered the center of Kenyan capital commercial life -- was a battleground Wednesday with hawkers and traders mounting burning tire and cardboard blockades while hurling stones at each other.

One shop was reportedly set ablaze by the angry protestors.

The feud started last year when the Eastleigh Business District Association, which has members who own over 60 large malls, accused more than 20,000 hawkers of flooding the streets outside their business premises and selling similar merchandise at extremely cheap prices.

The mall traders have previously said that they collectively pay more than 1 billion Kenya shillings ($9.9 million) in taxes to the Nairobi county government every month with their investment of more than 100 billion Kenya shillings ($989 million).

Law enforcement officers were forced to intervene to stop the clashes, which had already left dozens wounded and untold property damage.