The Consumer Protection Commission and key transport stakeholders in Zimbabwe have called for an immediate end to kombi touts, citing illegal passenger harassment, lack of training, and violations of the Consumer Protection Act.

Mai Chibaya has been queuing since 5:40am. She knows this because the man behind her checks his phone every ninety seconds and announces the time like a town crier nobody asked for. She does not need him. She has the queue in her bones.

At the corner of 1st Street and Speke Avenue, the transformation did not arrive with a Harare City Council policy directive or a public notice. It crept in. One kombi stopped where it should not have. A few passengers boarded. Another followed. Then came the vendors, the touts, the whistles, the hooting, the improvised commuter ranks. Today, what was once an intersection is, in practice, an illegal commuter omnibus rank. No one officially designated it. Yet everyone participa