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On 10 March 2010 in an attempt to justify the preposterous proposed increases to commercial and recreational fish levies, the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica, stated that - " there would be no effect on the competitiveness of the commercial sector, as fees were in line with inflation and were lower than fees in neighbouring countries." Unfortunately the journalist that reported this statement did not interrogate it any further. Firstly the proposed increases are not in line with inflation unless inflation in South Africa is running between 70% and 500%. Secondly, the Minister's advisers clearly do not understand how "competitiveness" works. By increasing a regulatory fee by 70% (for hake for example) will result in right holders, processors and marketers increasing their fees to cover this massive cost input. The Minister for example clearly does not appreciate that for example, South African hake in Europe has to compete with fish that can b...

On 8 March 2010 MCM officially announced that it has suspended (on full pay) three (senior) officials apparently caught stealing Norwegian taxpayers' donor funds that were made available for fisheries management related projects in terms of the Norway-South Africa (NORSA) bilateral agreement. The brief MCM press statement does not state who the officials are or what positions they hold or whether any of the NORSA funds were recovered or are considered recoverable. The statement does confirm that the alleged civil servant thieves simply transferred the funds from the MLRF into a private account apparently in the name of one of the alleged thieves. MCM has confirmed that an internal disciplinary process is underway and the matter has been handed to the SAPS for criminal investigation. Unfortunately, MCM's recent track record of dealing with corrupt staff may mean that this matter will simply get brushed under the carpet. If we recall, about two years ago it was alleged that certa...

The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) published its 2010/2011 strategic plan which includes budgetary and delivery commitments until 2015 in the past week. "Marine Fisheries and Coastal Management" is listed as Programme 7. The strategic plan has clearly been compiled by a department and officials who until very recently were not sure as to who would be in charge of fisheries - DAFF or the department of environmental affairs. It would therefore be unfair to have expected a comprehensive and watertight plan with substantial detail about delivery of the identified objectives. However, now that we have confirmation that DAFF will take charge of fisheries from 1 April 2010 (and there is speculation that DAFF will also take charge of all marine protected areas and the Integrated Coastal Management Act on 1 April), the strategic plan would require revisiting in a number of important areas. We identify some of these areas below. The strategic plan can be acces...