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Feike has been informed that two of DAFF's leading lights in the fisheries management chief directorate are presently strongly punting a "non-competitive" rights allocation process in a bid to engineer a solution to its present rights allocation time and skill woes!  What on earth is a "non-competitive" rights allocation process I hear you plead with tears streaming down your cheeks? While we dont know for certain, one can only surmise that if the previous successful and constitutional court approved processes were described as being "competitive processes" where applicants in each sector were grouped as either right holders or new entrants and then were competitively scored against each other (right holders v right holders only and new entrants v entrants only) based on a published set of criteria and scoring system, then a "non-competitive" process can only be the opposite which equates to a free-for-all - aka a judicially reviewable p...

The DA has issued this statement today. Reports today have revealed that the tender for the maintenance of patrol vessels in the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has been awarded to Nautic Africa. The decision is significant because Nautic Africa was formerly known as KND – which formed part of the R800 million Sekunjalo tender bid.  The responsibility to maintain the vessels was awarded to the SA Navy after the contract with Sekunjalo was cancelled.  The latest report however means the contract has been rewarded to a company with links to the Iqbal Surve owned Sekunjalo. The decision comes after the fisheries Deputy Director-General Greta Apelgren-Narkedien reassured members of the media at a press conference that Smit Amandla, Sekunjalo and companies associated to it would not be allowed to bid for the contract. The Minister has once again misled the public and acted unethically in the reissuing of this tender to the same group, while using ...

Feike can confirm that DAFF's latest and most controversial DDG, the grating Greta Apelgren-Narkedien, has been removed from her post as DDG and "re-deployed" in the parlance of the ANC cadre to the KZN Housing Ministry! Not bad. From heading up fisheries to housing. Who needs to know anything about the subject matter of the job they occupy under this government. Expertise? What is that for?  BUT, now that DAFF is without a DDG again, will the Minister or the Acting DG or other Acting senior official in the acting department of fisheries, please let us know how it intends allocating fishing rights in time this year considering that Narkedien often boasted that she would use her vast governance and managerial experience to ensure a proper and timeous rights allocation process? 

On 25 April 2013, the Minister of Fisheries gazetted a rather detailed (if not overly verbose) set of proposed amendments to the Marine Living Resources Act, 18 of 1998. Amendments to the MLRA (and the 1998 Fisheries Regulations - although amendments to the Regulations are conspicuously absent) are certainly needed in order to bring the only piece of legislation regulating marine fisheries and fishing farming management into the second decade of the 21st Century.   An amendment bill has therefore been well overdue now and we welcome the gazetting of an amendment bill.  However, as is the case across government, there seems to be a negligent and rather careless attitude toward such important issues. On a rather superficial take of the draft Bill, it is poorly drafted with too many bad cut-and-pastes (again!) from other texts. For example, a definition clause in the draft Bill refers to "this policy" indicating a pasting of a definition from a policy text. Then there a...

Yesterday, the ANC-led government passed the Protection of State Information Bill - or the Secrecy Bill - despite widespread condemnation that this Bill will only serve to shield government from the current glare of daily corruption and scandal exposure. There is no other possible reason for such apartheid-era-type legislation. Together with the apartheid era laws such as the National Key Points Act, the Secrecy Bill will provide this government with the cover and threat of imprisonment against journalists, bloggers and whistleblowers to ensure it can continue mismanaging and thieving all it wants under the cover of secrecy (or national security and other vague language).  Within the domain of fisheries management, the Secrecy Bill will provide officials with the precise tools they presently wish they had. Recently, the DDG of Fisheries, Greta Apelgren-Narkedien complained bitterly about the "hostile" media and Feike (although she was too scared to even mention our name)...

Mozambique’s pristine Primeiras and Segundas coastal belt has been declared a marine protected area and is now Africa's largest MPA. Known as the Primeiras and Segundas archipelagos, the MPA covers almost 10 500 square kilometres – about one and a half million hectares. It’s the second major conservation area in the country to be declared within the last two years, after the creation of the Lake Niassa reserve in mid-2011. Read more about this important step in support of sustainable and responsible fisheries management by the Government of Mozambique.

We have been quite scathing of the Department of Fisheries' so-called consultation process in preparation for the allocation of long term fishing rights in 8 commercial and small-scale fishing sectors this year. Our analyses have been reported in various media and on this BLOG. And then we attended the Cape Town consultation meeting this morning at Cape Town's Good Hope Centre. Unfortunately, the consultation process only confirmed that DAFF is actually at least 12 months away from being able to properly and lawfully allocate fishing rights in these 8 fishing sectors.  There are no sector policies for any of the 8 fisheries. We are told that during May, draft sector policies will be presented to the respective fishery management working groups for informal comment before a formal notice and comment procedure (such as the present one underway) will commence.  DAFF has no idea with respect to the application and grant of right fees that will be levied. The process o...

The South African hake trawl industry has maintained MSC certification of the hake trawl fisheries despite efforts by the SA government and the Department of Fisheries, in particular, to derail certification.  Over the past 12 months, DAFF failed to successfully deploy the research vessel, Africana, on a single demersal (or pelagic) research cruise, there have been absolutely no fisheries patrols as the patrol vessels have been allowed to rot in Simonstown harbour (where they continue to remain) and despite promises to the MSC last year that the observer programme would be functional after it was abruptly terminated in 2011, DAFF has failed to appoint a service provider to manage and run the programme.   Instead, the trawl industry had to step into the breach and provide private industry vessels and crew to complete the research cruises and had to even provide and pay for observers to observe a number of fishing trips in order to ensure compliance with the criteria se...

Reports from people who attended the Hermanus consultation meeting confirm that once again the meeting was a pointless event with no substantive answers being provided to the many questions raised.  For example, when questions pertaining to the status of section 21 fishing right transfer applications and section 28 notices were put to Ms Middleton (who gave the presentation on behalf of DAFF), she advised the meeting that the department was awaiting advice from Parliament on how these applications ought to be dealt with! Parliament? What has Parliament got to do with section 21 rights transfer applications and section 28 notices?  Ms Sue Middleton could not provide answers on when the sector specific policies would be published or what the application fees would be for each fishery as the fees had to still be decided! Do they realise that the application fees must be approved by the Minister of Finance but prior to that the fees (application and grant of right fees) t...

As DAFF steamrolls along the coast and heads to the Western Cape for its long term fishing rights allocation "consultation process", we reckon that these questions need urgent answering: 1. How are interested and affected parties supposed to comment on and consider the draft general policy with no sector specific policies? The draft general policy repeatedly states that the reader must read the general policy together with the applicable sector specific policy but these are non-existent.  2. When will the sector specific policies be gazetted for comment? When will all the policies be available in languages other than just English, especially given the overwhelming use of Afrikaans in the Western Cape?  3. Why did DAFF start the "consultation process" without first gazetting each of the 8 sector policies first? If these sector policies are gazetted for comment, will DAFF commence a second consultation process? 4. Where are the draft application...

Feike has been informed by a number of sources that the "newly" appointed DDG of Fisheries, Greta Apelgren-Nakardien, will leave her controversially allocated post of DDG of Fisheries at the end of this month. We have been informed that she will be "re-deployed" (as per the parlance of the "cadre") to a senior government post in KwaZulu-Natal. Let the countdown to month-end begin.

The Port Elizabeth consultation meeting held this morning has been described as a waste of time by those who attended. This was the same response of those who attended the Richards Bay and Durban meetings.  The reasons for these meetings being described as a waste of time are essentially that the draft General Policy is too "general", that those presenting the policies simply cant answer basic questions on process and substance (such as what constitutes an SMME in the fishing industry) and most pertinently, the meeting did not provide copies of the sector specific policies. The meeting in PE was told that the department will be holding a second round of consultation meetings on the sector policies once these are ready! So how are they going to do conduct the second round of consultations and invite applications during May 2013 as they have stated?  It is noted that the Gazetted draft General Policy and the posters advertising each consultative meeting are now availab...

The 2013 draft General Fisheries Policy was gazetted on 17 April 2013. The gazette notice confirms a public consultation process that ends on 10 May 2013 and that calls for applications will be made in May 2013.  We reiterate that this consultation process is problematic and unlawful for a number of reasons: 1. The public consultation process component has not included members of the public as no one other right holders have been invited to attend these meetings. Adverts have not been placed notifying members of the public of the impending public consultation process and what is the purpose of the consultation process. In addition large swathes of coastal communities are being ignored by this public consultation process, including huge chunks of the Eastern Cape and Western Cape coasts. 2. The public consultation process commenced BEFORE the actual draft policy was gazetted and this draft policy has been gazetted in only one language - English. It is therefore not acce...

DAFF's strategic plan has been completely rubbished by Parliament's fisheries portfolio committee research unit.  The research unit has this to say about the "strategic plan". "The Strategic Plan of the MLRF is marred by numerous spelling mistakes, typographical errors, incorrect acronyms, inconsistent font type and colour, frequent word-spacing errors, incomplete sentences and factually incorrect information. These mistakes can be found from the Foreword (Page 1) to the last page. This Strategic Plan is expected to be guiding the management of the approximately R5 billion industry, however, the lack of seriousness among the officials who compiled it leaves much to be desired. This is a clear indication that this fisheries management responsibility is in the wrong hands." It is the most damning analysis of the plethora of failures by the fisheries department ever by Parliament. The Cape Times and Business Day have run articles on the report prod...

On 12 April 2013, the department of fisheries unofficially published its Draft Revised General Policy on the Allocation and Management of Fishing Rights: 2013. The document was handed out to representatives of the registered fishing industry bodies that were invited to a meeting in Cape Town.  The draft General Policy has not been gazetted and as we have pointed out in our previous BLOG on the adopted "roll-out plan" , the process insisted upon by DAFF cannot be considered proper or lawful.  On the morning of 15 February 2013, DAFF held a "consultation meeting" in Richards Bay at The Richards, Protea Hotel. Again, only specific people were invited to attend. The local and regional newspaper and journalists of the Zululand Observer were completely unaware of the meeting. So were representatives of the Richards Bay Ski-Boat Club and Coast Watch. There was no public advertisement of the meeting which was supposed to be a consultation meeting on the draft General...

On Friday 12 April, the Department of Fisheries issued a draft General Fisheries Policy to invited representatives of fishing industry associations in Cape Town. The draft General Fisheries Policy is intended to be the overarching policy document for commercial fisheries management and the allocation of long term fishing rights during 2013. It appears that this draft General Fisheries Policy will replace the 2005 General Fisheries Policy but this is not apparent from the current draft. But we will be analysing the content of the draft General Fisheries Policy in the next 24 hours.  At this initial stage it is important to immediately highlight some serious and fatal flaws in the Department's intended consultation process which is set to commence in Richards Bay on 15 April 2013 at 9am at the Richards Bay Protea Hotel. As we have repeatedly pointed out before, the Department cannot lawfully conclude a rights allocation process by September/October 2013 given its appallingly unp...

I cannot believe that I just wasted 4 good pages printing the Notice that proclaims the creation of the Prince Edward Islands Marine Protected Area. Yep, on 5 April 2013, the Minister of Environmental Affairs gazetted the Notice that proclaimed the establishment of South Africa's first offshore marine protected area (GN 36307 of 5 April 2013).  You must be wondering why I cant bring myself to congratulate the Minister of Environmental Affairs on what appears on paper to be a commendable and much anticipated Notice. Afterall, the establishment of the Prince Edward Islands MPA was mooted some time back - in fact a draft set of MPA regulations for the Islands were prepared in 2004 by yours truly. Feike has been on record calling for the establishment of the MPA after it was repeatedly shelved between 2006 and 2008.  The lack of our congratulatory ululations and abundance of frustrations stems from the fact that this important MPA is promulgated at a time when South Afric...

Feike's Shaheen Moolla has been invited by Noseweek to talk about the mess that has come to define fisheries governance in South Africa at the Franschoek Literary Festival on 18 May 2013. The talk and discussion will take place at the Protea Hotel and start at 10am. It is certainly hoped that senior officials from DAFF will attend and debate Shaheen's views and opinions.  Shaheen will address a broad range of crises afflicting the fisheries department, including the catastrophic impact of ANC policy to deploy its unskilled and unqualified cadres to the two most senior positions in the fisheries department, the nonchalant admission that departmental and ministerial incompetence and bungling has resulted in South African waters being un-patrolled and unmonitored for more than 12 months; the failure to successfully undertake a single fisheries research trip in 12 months; the destruction of R500 million in assets without the slightest of consequences; the ongoing failure t...

Writing on 2 April 2013, Christopher Pala for Nature  reports that Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia has led a study which uncovers massive unreported catches by China in waters off of West Africa in particular. The study was published in March 2013. Chinese vessels are renowned for illegal fishing with multiple exposes of huge illegal shark finning having been reported off Mozambique and multiple reports of IUU vessels in South African waters.  But this study by Pauly et al  indicates a level of colonialism and resource stripping not seen since ... well the days of European colonialism! This report must be taken extremely seriously by South Africa especially since our government is desperately cozying up to the Chinese within the BRICS grouping.  What is particularly concerning is that although the European Union has been criticised for its fisheries agreements (now referred to as partnerships) with African states, its agreements are pu...

The Department of Fisheries announced this morning that it had appointed Damen Shipyards on a six month "emergency" basis to effect unspecified repairs to and undertake maintenance on the fisheries research and patrol vessels.  The Department confirmed that it appointed Damen Shipyards on 3 April 2013 in terms of the Public Finance Management Act's (PFMA) provision for the appointment of service providers on an "urgent or emergency case" basis without having to follow the normal public tender procedures.  It is our view that this is simply nonsense and an abuse of the applicable PFMA provisions. The Department knew by November 2012 that the Navy had completely failed in its mandate. By 19 February 2013, the department confirmed to Parliament that the Navy had failed to put the vessels to sea and that the vessels required substantial repair. Why did the department not commence with a public tender procedure at that stage so that come 1 April 2013 (or eve...

The 12 months since South Africa's fisheries department embarrassingly handed over its entire fleet of research and patrol vessels to the Navy have come to an end ... and its been a messy and accusatorial divorce as the fisheries department has accused the Navy of essentially failing South Africa.  The fisheries research and patrol vessels have for all intents and purposes never sailed. The vessels have been significantly damaged and now require massively costly and unnecessary repairs. The joint Naval and Fisheries blunder has left our oceans completely un-patrolled for more than 12 months now. The only fisheries research that has occurred has been undertaken by industry vessels.  The flagship research vessel, the Africana , has almost been completely destroyed with much of its cutlery and crockery having been stolen; the ship was overrun with rats and generally uninhabitable.  The magnificent patrol vessels which are only between 8 and 6 years of age appare...

On 27 March, the South African Minister of Fisheries confirmed that she had a signed a "statement of intent" with the Russian Government during the 5th BRICS Summit held in South Africa. According to the Ministry, the statement of intent was "signed for the conclusion of a future agreement on cooperation in the field of fisheries based on conservation and rational use of living marine resources, prevention, deterrence and elimination of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, exchange of information and data on the fisheries-related issues, which are of interest to both parties, cooperation in matters concerning the activities of the international fisheries organisations, fisheries research and development of scientific programs, aquaculture development, education and training of specialists to meet the needs of the fishing industry, development of joint projects in fisheries, processing and marketing of fish products." ( sic ) This is indeed quite a lau...

According to the Department's own timetable for the allocation of fishing rights later this year, the two sets of service providers to review the present fishing policies and provide administrative support ought have been appointed by March 2013. This has not happened. And as we reported in a previous BLOG,  the tender inviting potential service providers has not yet even been published! And during March and April, the department ought to have commenced public consultation on the draft  fishing policies and processes that are intended to guide the next rights allocation process. Needless to say, this has not happened either. Next deadline: The Call for Applications is scheduled for May 2013.