Marine and Coastal Management: Change is Needed But Not the Changes that Government Proposes
By Glenn Ashton
The Department of Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons. First came news of the breakup of the department when President Zuma announced his cabinet reshuffle. Second was the proposal to triple licence fees for recreational fishing activities without any consultation.
The proposal to hive off the fisheries aspect of MCM to the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), while MCM continues to manage and oversee environmental management of fisheries and marine resources under the auspices of the Department of the Environment has clear political overtones. Divorcing economic activities from conservation roles enables greater opportunities to exploit the already stretched resource.
This is the fate of a department that has managed to mismanage just about everything over the past decade. While the scientific and research aspects of MCM are top notch, its administration of our marine heritage has been disastrous.
On top of this, MCM has utterly failed to meaningfully transform the fishing sector. Artisinal and subsistence fishermen remain as marginalised as ever, living hand to mouth at the edges of society, perhaps even more exploited than farm workers.
Fishing communities have provided the crew for large fishing companies. Men have rowed out to sea in the mists of the west coast to disappear while fishing for crayfish for white owned export companies. They have provided society with its healthiest protein, enhancing our communal food security. Fishers are the workers in a nationally important primary industry.
Working at sea is the most dangerous work in the world and fishing is the most dangerous sector of the maritime industry, far more dangerous than mining. Fishers have traditionally worked long hours under tough, unpredictable and unregulated conditions, with poor and sporadic pay being norms of the work.
The dawn of democracy ushered in visions of an improved lot for fishing communities. However, because of abysmal management of the sector by MCM, particularly over the past 12 years, things remain as grim as ever, except perhaps for improved work conditions won through unionisation in the formal fishing industry.
While our capital-intensive commercial fishing industry was rapidly transformed through so-called empowerment deals, what really happened is that the old guard moved aside for the new elite, who aggressively gained control of significant sectors of the industry. The historically powerful fishing companies like I&J and Oceana simply restructured themselves to suit the new dispensation, in what amounted to a cosmetic change.
This part of the fishing industry continues to benefit disproportionately from the allocation of industrial fish quotas. Hake, crayfish, pelagic fish and other valuable export fish continue to be exploited mainly by those who control the industrial fishing effort.
Hiving off of fishing to the department of Agriculture will see the lucrative aquaculture industry handed over to well connected crony capitalists while fishers remain outside the fold. The formal, industrial fisheries sector is viewed as a cash cow to be shared amongst the new elite.
Meanwhile artisinal and subsistence fishers, the very fishermen who have been subjected to generations of exploitation, remain as marginalised as ever. These largely uneducated and disadvantaged communities are in as bad, if not a worse position than before. MCM has abjectly failed to properly implement the Marine Living Resources Act (MLRA), which clearly provided for improved conditions for this sector. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The MRLA, passed in 1998, resulted in workshops and talk-shops, processes and negotiations that have roundly failed to deliver meaningful change for working fishers. Despite more than a decade of patient engagement between the fishing community and MCM officials and processes, guided by champions like Andy Johnson and the Masifundise Fisherman's Association, relief was only gained by taking MCM to court. While action is now legally dictated and there are promises of action, the chaos at MCM stands to undermine even this latest victory.
Despite historical shortcomings, MCM was an adequately staffed and run organisation, which managed our fish stocks fairly well. It certainly was not perfect, being deeply corrupt in quota allocations and policing functions, with most of the inspectorate being fired for corruption soon after promulgation of the MLRA. Yet MCM remains swamped by scandal due to poor management during its supposed transformation.
The appointment of Monde Mayekiso, a credible fisheries scientist but a poor administrator, as director of MCM in 1996 was meant to herald the new era of fisheries management, through instituting the MLRA. Instead, deteriorating administration saw the plundering of finances, notably the Marine Living Resources Fund, financed by levies from the fishing industry, fines and licence fees, resulting in Mayekiso's dismissal in 1999.
After an interregnum between 2000 and 2005, where MCM was managed well under the strong leadership of struggle stalwart Horst Kleinschmidt, his management team was sidelined by political allegations that it was pursuing racially exclusionary practices – by employing 'whites and coloureds'.
More to the point was Kleinschmidt’s hard-line approach to corruption, to the extent that his life was threatened. Kleinschmidt was simply too effective. When Mayekiso was reinstated as head of MCM in 2005 he again failed to recruit a sufficiently able management team and within a year MCMs positive balance sheet was deeply in the red.
MCM's descent into the maelstrom continued. The most obvious symptoms were how the highly successful 'Marines' anti-poaching task team was abandoned, never to be reinstated, after effectively curbing rampant abalone poaching. The equally effective 'green courts' were simultaneously disbanded.
Abalone poaching exploded again, with an estimated R2 billion of stock being lost every year, decimating the abalone stock to critical levels. This plundering is equal to half the value of our entire national fishery. MCM's new patrol boats rot in port. Things could not be more dire.
Despite common knowledge of who is behind this pillaging, MCM and the justice system have done nothing as these triad linked gangs have helped themselves while simultaneously destroying our youth with drugs traded for our marine wealth. Mayekiso continues to insist that everything is fine, and has evidently been shifted to managing marine biodiversity, an irony piled upon a disgrace.
The controversial breakup of MCM, separating the research, conservation and oversight branches from the actual fishing is a tragically misinformed political attempt to transform this dysfunctional department. Instead of instituting proper oversight this sordid saga has resulted in a worse state than ever. Reporting lines in fisheries management are set to deteriorate yet further. There have been squabbles within cabinet about this 'transformation' but the prognosis is poor. What is happening to MCM is planning by blunder.
In the meantime, the fishing community remains as marginalised as ever, despite continued political sweet talk. Zuma even went to Hawston, the heart of the now destroyed abalone industry, to promise to reopen the industry. Problem is, there is nothing left to extract. This is symptomatic of the macrocosm.
The segmentation of MCM will make it impossible to manage the complex interface between monitoring fishing catches and the oversight and ecological capacity of the stocks. The internationally highly regarded research branch stands to be gutted as the fishing industry has traditionally paid levies to fund research. Things were bad when MCM was in one ministry. Now what was difficult will morph into the impossible.
This all leads us back to the astronomical price hikes that MCM seeks to impose on the softest of soft targets, so-called recreational fishers. These hikes, of between 175% and 300%, make Eskom's recent rate applications appear conservative. While these licences are used by so-called 'recreational' fishers, it is important to know that a significant number of these fishers are not so much recreational, but marginalised subsistence and artisinal fishers seeking to feed their families.
It appears that MCM is now misguidedly trying to get this sector to subsidise the looted Marine Living Resources Fund that was central to Mayekiso's first dismissal from MCM and to his subsequent redeployment. In other words, the public are now expected to pick up the slack for failed government management, an outrageous calumny.
This would be understandable if recreational fishers significantly impacted marine resources. Unfortunately this remains disputed territory. But more relevant is whether artisinal and recreational fishers actually bother to even purchase licences. The reality is the minority hold recreational licences, most choosing to remain illegal, with little chance of sanction. These proposed hikes will further diminish the numbers of legal users. Instead of increasing income, it will drop. In order to broaden the net, prices should be dropped, not raised.
The knock-on effects of the proposed hikes promise to be even more dire. Tourism will be affected as fishing charters and tours become exorbitant. Sales of fishing tackle will suffer. Illegal activity will increase, as more people become outlaws, complicating enforcement. But perhaps most importantly, the eyes and ears of a sympathetic public will be lost, as the general public become unwilling to countenance this blatant exploitation.
The mismanagement of our national fisheries is an outrageous scandal. The lack of protest is not indicative that people deem this an unimportant matter. It is more illustrative of the extent to which people are preoccupied in keeping body and soul together. Most fishers have neither time nor energy to organise or participate in opposing the continual erosion of their rights and heritage. Instead, the unjust application of laws and regulations will increasingly alienate law-abiding citizens, invalidating the rule of law and lead to a spiral of lawlessness.
The time has come to take a stand. Otherwise there will be nothing left to fight for.
By Glenn Ashton. Ashton is a writer and researcher working in civil society. Some of his work can be viewed at www.ekogaia.org.
The South African Civil Society Information Service (www.sacsis.org.za) is the source of this article.
