In the same week that Cabinet had decided to unlawfully "extend" the validity period of commercial fishing by at least 12 months, the Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, Ms Barbara Creecy, affirmed her continued support for the ongoing allocation of fishing rights to fishing co-operatives that have to date all failed.
Feike has written extensively about the extent and history of fishing co-operative failures in South Africa; how they have contributed to and fuelled community conflict, resource destruction (what more evidence than the complete collapse of lobster is required); and how they fail to contribute to any form of coastal social or economic growth. Poverty, conflict and unemployment in all coastal villages that have been historically associated with high value nearshore fisheries have increased in the last decade. Poaching has increased massively and we have seen the collapse of abalone and lobster resources over the same period.
Every fishing co-operative pilot project has failed. EVERYONE. And now the allocation of co-operative fishing rights in the Northern Cape has again confirmed why co-operatives should never be allocated fishing rights.
But we are so irrationally and ideologically tied to this system, that (like with the NHI, land reform, and every other policy adopted by this government in recent times), evidence-based decision-making is no longer an option or even a consideration. So we will forge ahead and force entire communities into sanctioned conflict, beholden to a co-operative run by hand-picked cadres who sell the "community" lobster to buyers prepared to hand out the highest back-handers to the "decision-makers". The "community" is left to suck on the idiomatic hind-tit.
Essentially, the very creation of "lists" of members to be a part of these "community co-operatives" involves a corrupt and highly contested series of processes, similar to what we see with the infamous municipal "housing lists" or land redistribution processes.
We should abandon this failed socialist policy of allocating fishing rights to "co-operatives" and undefinable "communities" as if individuals exercising their individual liberties and rights in a market economy cannot decide for themselves how best to sustainably utilise a public resource through a verifiable and accountable regulatory process. (I am sure that in another 5 years' time we will be told how due to "unforeseen circumstances" and "various challenges", every one of these co-operatives has collapsed and unable to account for the millions of rands in fish harvested and sold.)
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