Grinding away at the official apathy towards their fresh markets, the Institute for Market Agents of South Africa (IMASA)’s legal battle with the Tshwane municipality now resulted in a jail sentence (suspended for a year) pronounced over the heads of the uncompliant municipal manager and the mayor.
In October 2022, the Pretoria High Court gave the municipality six months to come up with a plan to repair and adhere to standards for fire and smoke detection, electrification, infrastructure maintenance, security, lifts and hoists, sanitation, and refuse removal.
The municipality takes a 5% commission on all transactions effected at the fresh produce market. An ordered affidavit outlining how the city’s R18 million capital and operational budget for the market had been spent during the 2022 financial year was similarly never forthcoming.
IMASA then initiated a contempt of court application due to its dissatisfaction with the municipality’s uncooperative stance.
During the previous judgment, IMASA’s legal costs were awarded to the municipality and defrayed by the attachment of municipal vehicles. The organisation’s legal costs have again been awarded to the city, which is already in financial straits.
“This is a warning”
He calls this a warning to all municipalities that are neglecting the fresh markets entrusted to them, and where IMASA might follow the same route. Hooghiemstra says that there are sixteen fresh produce markets in South Africa, of which all, except for Cape Town’s, which is also the only privately-run metropolitan market, experience operational difficulties.
“IMASA is a small organisation, but we’ve grown a set of sharp teeth. All we want is for municipalities to look after their own assets, the fresh markets – Tshwane in this case, but all of them – as the constitution instructs them to do,” he urges. “There has to be capital investment in the markets. They are the bedrock of food security in our country.”
Their voluntary members, drawn from the nine largest market agencies, and the many allied workers at the markets, get up long before sunrise every morning to receive and sell farmers’ crops and, he remarks, they are the ones keeping the municipal markets running.
Many market agencies have, at their own expense, taken over the municipal functions of cleaning and maintenance.
The next step now, he says, is awaiting the municipality’s response to yesterday’s firm judgment, the first ruling in such strong defence of South Africa’s fresh produce markets.
This article first appeared in FreshPlaza newsletter on 14 August 2025. Read the original here.
Photo: Pixabay on Pexels
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Relevant Agribook pages include “Fresh Produce Markets“.
