Concessions fail to end riots over ban on Dakar's street hawkers

A boy wearing a balaclava takes parts in riots in Dakar sparked by a push to clear hawkers and beggars from the centre of the Senegalese capital
A boy wearing a balaclava takes parts in riots in Dakar sparked by a push to clear hawkers and beggars from the centre of the Senegalese capital. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP
Senegal's worst riots for almost two decades persisted into a second day yesterday, despite government efforts to defuse a crisis triggered by a decision to ban hawkers from the streets of the capital, Dakar.

Market stalls remained shuttered while police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters, witnesses said. The unrest was nonetheless less destructive than the violence which convulsed the city the previous day after President Abdoulaye Wade's government ordered police to evict thousands of street vendors whose stalls line the city centre's pot-holed streets.

"Enough's enough," said the red-banner headline of Le Populaire newspaper. "Dakar joins the evicted street vendors to show their discontent with the government."

The disenchantment began to spread last week when the security forces began clearing the capital's intersections of beggars and hawkers under a presidential decree aimed at bringing some order to the city's clogged streets.

On Wednesday groups of men protesting at the ban faced off against riot police, throwing stones at the officers. The police replied with tear gas and arrested dozens. Police were also seen beating some men with batons as they quelled the protest and shut down a union march that the government had prohibited because of the unrest. Two buildings burned, along with cars caught in the melee.

The unrest was extremely rare for a west African city often held up as an example of peace and stability in the region. It was aggravated by wider discontent over unemployment, rising prices of rice and bread, and a perception that the government is building luxury hotels and roads while ignoring the poor.

The government has indicated that it will soften the presidential decree. The prime minister, Hadjibou Soumare, who met representatives of the traders late on Wednesday, agreed to keep certain central streets open to vendors at the weekend, and to set aside a special area for them during the rest of the week, said Maimouna Sourang Ndir, the minister of life quality and leisure.

Local aid groups estimate that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 unlicensed vendors and beggars in the capital. Young men sell everything from ironing boards to electronics in the streets.

Dakar's legions of jobless young are also losing patience. "Wade pledged to help the youth if he got a second mandate," one of them, Ibrahim Mbemgue, 28, told Reuters. "He betrayed the people."

Today's best video

  • Tony Benn

    Tony Benn: 'It's questionable whether we have a democracy'

  • Scarlett Johansson Under the Skin

    Film Show

  • Cheltenham Festival

    Cheltenham Festival


    Kelis swaps her milkshake for a food van


Today in pictures