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This statement was issued by the Democratic Alliance's, Pieter van Dalen, DA Deputy Spokesperson on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (see www.da.org.za) Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Tina Joemat-Pettersson, in her infinite wisdom, has decided that the best way to turn around the performance of the Marine and Coastal Management Unit is to relocate it to Pretoria from Cape Town where it is currently based. Exactly how taking a coastal management unit away from the coast will help is difficult to fathom. Talk about a fish out of water. Do we need to remind Minister Joemat-Pettersson that 80% of commercial fishing activity takes place in the coastal region of the Western Cape? Does she expect fishermen to travel to Pretoria each time they have to apply for a permit? And what will happen to the 7 00 Marine and Coastal Management staff members who currently reside in Cape Town? This has clearly not been thought through properly. The evidence is mounting that Minister...

The Minister of Fisheries proposed yesterday in Parliament that the Fisheries Branch which has always been located in Cape Town be moved to Pretoria! Apparently she thinks that fisheries considers itself a provincial function of sorts and not a national function! Had the minister of fisheries remotely understood fisheries, she would know that more than 80% of all commercial fishing activity happens in the Western Cape! Or did I miss something and do we land fish in Gauteng these days? More than 90% of all recreational fishing takes place in the Western Cape. Minister, please explain to us how on earth will fishery managers regulate and manage fisheries from Pretoria? How will liaison and co-ordination with the fishing industry (which is based in the Western Cape, by the way, minister) take place? How will the scientific and management working group meetings take place with the fishing industry? How will compliance be regulated on the slipways and landings sites? How will administration...

So what does the Minister and her department do now (besides wipe more egg from their collective faces) that the Sekunjalo tender has been withdrawn/cancelled/trashed? One option of course is that the tender invitation gets a make-over and potential service providers submit fresh tenders. Another option would be to actually make use our Navy! Since the procurement of the infamous Corvettes, the Navy has been extremely interested in assisting with combatting IUU fishing on behalf of the Fisheries Branch. The Navy surely has the skills and resources to manage, maintain and deploy our fisheries patrol and research vessels? In addition to providing the professional skills to man our vessels, their management of our vessels could also serve a broader coast-guard function, combatting piracy and the growing drug-trade by sea. Not to mention that the Fisheries Department could immediately save a ton of money (or a billion to be more precise)!

On 27 November 2011, Feike published an article on this BLOG questioning how, just two days previously, the Minister of Fisheries could have conceivably allocated an R800 million vessel management and maintenance tender to Sekunjalo Investments, which owns Premier Fishing. Premier Fishing holds a range of extremely substantial fishing quotas in a number of South Africa's largest and most lucrative fishing sectors. Premier Fishing, for example, is the single largest holder of South Coast rock lobster fishing quotas. We questioned how it was possible that a fishing company could be granted a tender to oversee fisheries compliance patrols and fisheries research. The shocking conflict of interest was plain for all to see except Sekunjalo and the Minister. On 26 November 2011, the Mail & Guardian published a separate and unrelated story about Premier Fishing's decision to pay for the personal security costs of another Cabinet Minister. Soon thereafter, the Democratic Alliance, t...

This story is taken from www.stopillegalfishing.com On the 23rd of February 2012, almost three years since its arrest, the High Court of the Republic of Tanzania delivered its verdict in the case of the fishing vessel Tawariq 1; guilty. The Court ordered the vessel to be forfeited to the Government. The Captain of the fishing vessel, Mr. Hsu Chin Tai and the ship's agent Mr. Zhao Hanquing were found guilty of fishing without a licence in the Tanzanian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). They have been sentenced to pay 1 billion Tanzanian shillings each (USD 625,975) or go to jail for twenty years. The Captain was also fined a further of 20 billion Tanzanian shillings (USD 12,519,500) for the offence of pollution. On the 8th of March 2009, the Tawariq 1, supposedly registered to Oman, was intercepted 180 nautical miles off the Tanzanian coast, and subsequently arrested by a South African Environmental Protection vessel EPV Sarah Baartman. The vessel had no flag visible or hoisted, the r...

The statement below was issued to day by the Democratic Alliance. The DA welcomes the withdrawal of the tainted R800 million tender allocated to Sekunjalo Marine Services Consortium. The tender was for policing South Africa's marine resources. The DA has been fighting for justice on this matter for the last four months. The Department's decision to withdraw the tender was based on a legal opinion and forensics report that I exposed in a letter to the media published on Friday morning. The tender was revoked that afternoon. It is important now that the withdrawal of the tender must not divert from the serious questions that now have to be asked about the bid adjudication process in the department. The DA calls on Minister Tina Joemat-Petterssen to ensure that public finance law is followed in all respects. Those responsible for causing this conflict of interest by awarding the tender must be held responsible. Should the Minister fail to do so, the DA will take steps to involve t...

Feike understands that the tainted R800 million fisheries tender bonanza allocated to Sekunjalo has now been withdrawn and will be re-advertised.

Section 27(1) of the Marine Living Resources Act of 1998 ("the MLRA") provides for the Minister of Fisheries to proclaim a harbour a "fishing harbour". Since promulgation of the MLRA in 1998, the Fisheries Minister has not proclaimed any harbour to be a fishing harbour. All 12 of the current fishing harbours were proclaimed prior to the promulgation of the MLRA. Section 26(1) of the Sea Fisheries Act, 12 of 1988, made identical provision for the declaration of fishing harbours. Although the two sections of the two Acts are identical, the MLRA was promulgated subsequent to the adoption of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa in 1996. The Sea Fisheries Act was promulgated in an era of Parliamentary sovereignty and not Constitutional supremacy. Schedule 4 (Part B) of the Constitution lists the regulation of, inter alia , pontoons, ferries, jetties, piers and harbours, excluding the regulation of international and national shipping and matters related theret...

The fisheries department's 3rd quarter report bizarrely states that it intends to increase the number of proclaimed fishing harbours from 12 to 19. The names of the possible additional 7 harbours are not mentioned. Why they would want to increase the number of proclaimed fishing harbours is not explained. The only logical reason is that they could at least be seen to be doing something. But other than that there is no logic to this. Our fishing harbours are in a disastrous state. DAFF continues to fail to invoice users of the harbours; security is non-existent and harbours like Hout Bay pose a serious threat to safety and security. Hout Bay is now a very convenient thoroughfare for abalone and lobster poaching with rubber ducks landing their illegal catches in broad daylight near the repair jetty. They then leisurely load their illegal take onto vans which are parked not more than a 150 metres from the fishery control offices and off they drive right past a completely inebriated DA...

The Fisheries Minister and the Director-General of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) failed to turn up this morning to brief the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Fisheries. They apparently failed to even submit formal apologies or explanations for their tardiness. Members of the Portfolio Committee were extremely agitated. Mr Abram, MP (ANC), led the charge describing the DAFF as being a "dysfunctional" department full of "Hollywood actors" referring to the vast numbers of officials who simply "act" in posts and that its Minister and DG are disrespectful of the Committee. He charged further that the documents prepared by the DAFF officials are woeful; that they actually belong in the rubbish bin; and that they contain a lot of information that simply does not exist in reality. The meeting was postponed to Thursday afternoon. As a taxpayer, I must say thank-you to our so-called fisheries minister and her over-paid DG for wasti...

The Minister of Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, should be renamed the Minister of "It Wasnt Me"! The Sunday Times today reports (as this Blog has been reporting for some time now) that not only has her department allocated the R800 million Sekunjalo tender in an unlawful and questionable manner, but her department has failed to spend some R800 million intended for poverty relief and flood relief aid. But as it has become her trademark, Joemat-Pettersson steps firmly to plate and blames her officials for the bungling. This is the umpteenth time that she has blamed her officials for another bungle. However, we have never seen an official fired or demoted for these bungles. There is no doubt that Joemat-Pettersson is an extremely ineffectual and weak minister who repeatedly refuses to take responsibility for her department's near weekly bungling. There can be nothing worse than a Minister too weak (and possibly conflicted) to be accountable for her own department's d...

Two months have passed since the Department issued individual letters to right holders telling them that no decision was taken with respect to the performance-related data submitted in 2010. In addition to the "no decision" refrain, the Department produced a series of, frankly, useless data drawing even more useless conclusions such as "It was found that in the Hake Deep Sea Trawl sector, 44% of Right Holders own more than 50% of shares in a vessel; 26% of Right Holders own less than 50% of shares in a vessel; and 30% of Right Holders own no share in a vessel or provided no information in response to the question in their RFI." Huhh! What is the point of this? How does any of the data "analysis" provided relate to the meeting of sector policy objectives? For example, have by-catch levels been reduced and what are the average ratios of hake to bycatch takes? What is the average age of trawl vessels (noting that the Policy referred to the need to recapitalis...

South Africa's official opposition political party, the Democratic Alliance, has appointed Pieter van Dalen (pictured, right) as its Deputy Shadow Minister for Fisheries. Pieter will also act as the party's spokesperson on fisheries. Barely two weeks after his official appointment, Pieter van Dalen met with Feike's Shaheen Moolla to discuss the various opportunities, challenges and crises facing fisheries management in South Africa. Pieter is an avid fisherman himself and by the time he sat down with Feike, he had already identified the principal areas he would like to focus on. As we have already seen, the bizarre and highly questionable R800 million tender bonanza allocated to Sekunjalo is a priority. In addition, Pieter wants to focus on the ongoing mismanagement of our fishing harbours, the potential crisis facing the next round of quota allocations set for 2013 and looking at ways of growing our commercial and artisinal fisheries as opposed to unsustainably divvying up...

What is the rampant overfishing of South Africa's inshore lobster, abalone and linefish stocks costing us in terms of taxes, jobs and social cohesion? Six years into the interim relief lobster fishing quotas, DAFF has still failed to produce any analytical study into whether these interim relief quotas has benefitted the quota holders or has a few "connected individuals" been able to exploit the 1500 interim relief fishers for their own financial gain? To who does the money from interim relief quotas flow? How much do interim relief quota holders get paid for every kilogram of lobster landed? The following article appeared on www.bbc.co.uk on 10 February 2012. The research, by the UK-based New Economics Foundation, said a third of Britain's fish consumption could be met if stocks were allowed to recover. Separate research suggests that half of fishermen would not be willing to give up their livelihoods. Last week, a report said there were reasons to be optimistic that...

This statement has been issued by the Democratic Alliance's Pieter van Dalen. The DA has gained access to a forensic audit into the infamous Sekunjalo tender, announced by Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson last year. The report exposes significant irregularities in the awarding of a contract to Sekunjalo Holdings to combat illegal fishing on South African coastlines. The contract was awarded even though a Sekunjalo subsidiary, Premier Fishing, has fishing rights for South African waters – a clear conflict of interest. Sekunjalo has effectively entered into an R800 million contract with the state to be both the player and referee in South African waters. I will today be writing to the Minister to urge her to release the report and declare the tender process invalid. Steps must be taken to review the contract awarded to Sekunjalo Holdings. The key findings of the forensic report in the DA’s possession are: There was no evidence that the bid adjudication committee even considered the m...