Rising tensions between groups of South African street vendors and two Zimbabwean hawkers operating in Port Elizabeth’s Govan Mbeki Avenue escalated this week, with the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality’s metro police stepping in to issue fines and confiscate goods.

While the two foreigners say they have been trading at the tunnel below Govan Mbeki and Russell Road for up to nine years, on Tuesday their fruit and vegetables were confiscated by the metro police and they were fined R1,000 for “trading in a manner which causes discomfort or annoyance to others”...