The Illegal Abalone Trade: A tangled web of Corruption, "Criminal Philanpthropy" and Governance Failure

During August 2014, the Institute for Security Studies published two reports on organised crime - both integrally related to the trade in illegal abalone in the Western Cape (and specifically Hout Bay). And last week Kimon de Greef published his research paper on the illicit abalone trade focussing again on Hout Bay in Cape Town.

The ISS papers can be accessed here (under "publications"). Kimon de Greef's paper can accessed here. All three papers are a must read.

The ISS paper by Khalil Goga perhaps best summarises the state of abalone poaching as follows:

"Criminal governance in the abalone trade thus takes various intersecting forms. These include the marginalised turning to the informal economy in the wake of lack of opportunity; both abalone wholesalers and gangsters developing a level of power over a region that renders them parallel sources of authority; the corruption and co-opting of state officials; and, arguably, the state’s reliance on the seizure of poached abalone."