Forest Products, Livelihoods and Conservation

192 Trading forest products in South-Eastern Zimbabwe

a tourist or a local. The buyer’s willingness to bargain indicated by exiting the

car and moving around the market gives the trader extra time to bargain. The

situation is different when the buyer remains in the car, asking prices through

the window. Traders will then have to give buyers favourable bargains as they

are likely to leave at any time. Through participatory activities with traders

and buyers it was observed that buyers travel into Zimbabwe by road acquiring

some information on product diversity and prices. By the time they travel

back to South Africa, they will be more aware of the products they want to

buy and the place to acquire them. Each trader bargains individually with the

buyer until a price is established. Such ‘private treaty’ negotiations are very

common in woodcarving marketing. As such the resulting fairness of prices

depends upon the information, trading skills and relative bargaining power of

buyers and sellers. Prices discovered in this way tend to vary with every

transaction. Although individual traders transact with buyers, the information

from the transaction is never private, but being shared amongst traders. This

gives the woodcarving markets one characteristic of organised central markets.

This information sharing is essential because traders are able to sell products

controlled by other traders when those other traders are absent from the

market. It is often the case that only a proportion of the market sellers are at

the market at any one point in time (approximately 20%, depending on the

time of the year).

THE POLICY ENVIRONMENT

Rules regulating markets

Only five of the markets in Chivi District on the Masvingo–Beitbridge road

operate with the full approval of the Chivi RDC. The rest either operate illegally

or their registration with the council has not been ratified. In 1992 the RDC,

seeing the potential of the woodcraft sector to raise revenues for itself, levied

a tax on all participants involved at the retail level. Because of labor shortages

in collecting fees, the expected revenues were never realised. In the Masvingo

Urban Council the market rules are more stringent (Table 3). For someone to

be given a stall at the Masvingo urban market, the person has to be a ‘resident

of the town’. Defaulters on market rentals risk the disconnection of their

residential water supply. Formerly, Mwenezi RDC, also along the Masvingo–

Beitbridge road, charged a monthly rental of Z$150 for marketing space and

an extra monthly charge of Z$30 for defaulters. By 1999 these fees had dropped,

perhaps indicating a slackening of the system of rules. The fees reduced the

development of the sector in that district as many people from Mwenezi cross

the Runde River to market their products in Chivi District, where rules were

less stringently adhered to. In Chivi, the level of control of markets by the

district office is greater when the market has more participants.

Most markets on the Masvingo–Beitbridge road have a committee that runs

the affairs of the market. Some barriers to entry in the craft sector exist as

most markets have joining fees that range from Z$10 to Z$75 depending on

the infrastructure of the particular market. These fees are paid to the

committee that runs the affairs of the market. A common feature at most

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