12 Months of a DA Fisheries Minister: What's Different?

12 months ago, South Africa saw the appointment of its first fisheries minister from the opposition Democratic Alliance party as a consequence of the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU). 

Admittedly, there was a substantial amount of hope that the decades of mismanagement, bad policy, destructive fisheries management and corruption at the Fisheries Management Branch located at Foretrust Building, Foreshore, Cape Town would come to an end. 

That hope was not blind hope. It was based on the fact that while in opposition, the DA had espoused the type of policies and action needed that would certainly see the rapid righting of the rotten fisheries ship that is the Fisheries Management Branch. 

12 months later and that hope has been dashed as the DAs Dion George has actually just continued with the same bad policies and incompetent / corrupt staff that he inherited from his ANC predecessors. In fact, George has been doubling down and issuing even worse decisions and proposing appalling policies (draft transfer and FPE policies). 

In January 2025, his DDG summarily decided to terminate 178 abalone exemptions and deny these divers the right to export the previous season's quota because of apparent findings of criminality by these abalone divers. The decisions were taken without first consulting with any diver or even attempting to understand how the sector operated. Moreover, his department simply refused to explain the grounds for the apparent criminal findings, which later morphed into allegations and then later allegations subject to "verification". 

Only in late April and May after some 113 divers filed an application for relief against these unlawful decisions did George's department start issuing "notices" alleging the apparent criminal violations. And almost all of these are just nonsense and an indication that his staff decided to starve 178 exemption holders on absolutely spurious grounds. 

The same corrupt and incompetent staff that happily ran riot during Creecy and Joemat-Pettersson's terms remain employed. 

The same weak, unnecessary and costly administrative systems remain in place. (Cf for example what George's colleague at Home Affairs has achieved with respect to corruption, inept staff and systems).

What we have seen George do plenty of, is travel to international conferences and cut ribbons. 

Other than signing the High Seas Treaty (which is of significant importance), George has not done anything substantively important to fix fisheries. When he has addressed fisheries management, he has simply read from the ANC's playbook about "fishing rights for all" and more fishing rights to small-scale fishing co-ops which are proven failures from Port Nolloth to KZN. 

He has not done anything to expose the corrupt processes for the sale of confiscated fish (read lobsters and abalone) to daylight and scrutiny (which is what every DA shadow minister since Pieter van Dalen demanded happen).

He has not overhauled the corrupt and incredibly disastrous fisheries control and compliance units. He's staff continue to harass commercial fishing skipper's and hinder their operations with "bribe-seeking" fines. 

Critically, he has not led from the front and 12 months after his appointment, he has not addressed the South African fishing industry and set out his vision, goals and targets. 

SA commercial fisheries is in a state of collapse due to a decade-plus of mismanagement and institutional corruption. Back in 2004, there were 22 functional and well-managed fisheries with some 3000 commercial (800) and small-scale commercial fishing right holders (2200). Today, there is no more than 13 functional fisheries and who knows how many "right holders" - we dont know because the department refuses to publish rights registers especially in the small-scale co-op sector. 

George had the perfect opportunity to up-end this mismanagement and regression and focus on growing fisheries and collaboration of the SA fishing industry. 

George appears happy to be led by the nose by the same staff who advised Creecy and have overseen the current state of fisheries management. 

What is Going on with Fisheries Control? Do Not Pay Those Fines!

 What is going on with fisheries control, Minister George? Your FCO's are randomly issuing fines to skippers of fishing vessels demanding they pay "admission of guilt fines" for the most mundane non-existent issues. 

FCO's are supposed to foster a relationship of co-operation with the fishing industry as opposed to creating a hostile environment where it appears that FCO's are out looking for bribes. What else could explain why FCO's are issuing fines in cases where a tuna pole vessel's newly painted lettering mistakenly reads "TB" as opposed to "TP"? 

Or issuing a fine to a tuna long line vessel because it has wooden bamboo poles on board because the FCO does not know that bamboo poles are also used to gaff tuna caught by long line to be brought safely on board the vessel? (Not to mention that the tuna long line conditions do not contain a definition of what is "tuna long line gear" and there is no criminal prohibition for having fishing gear from another fishery on board a long line vessel).

There are dozens and dozens of cases where skippers are issued these J534 notices and told that they must "sign" the fines and pay the admission of guilt fines. 

Our advice is: You dont have to sign any fine and any threat by an FCO should you not sign is unlawful. And do not consent to the payment of admission of guilt fines as these admissions admit to criminal guilt and can affect future fishing right and permit applications.

Once the fine is issued, consult with a lawyer and have the lawyer prepare representations to the senior prosecutor of the court concerned for cancellation of the fine. 

There has not been a single fine issued to date that we have seen or assisted with that has not been quashed by a senior prosecutor. And this includes dozens of fines issued to abalone divers listed as "category 2" offenders. It is noteworthy that after various prosecutors and magistrates threw these matters out, the Minister actually had the fines issued in the jurisdiction of other courts in a desperate attempt at "forum shopping". 

Just yesterday, the Cape Town Magistrates Court cancelled a fine issued to a boat owner because "its VMS was not functioning" despite the fact that the VMS was in fact reporting. The Department's VMS receivers are either so outdated or simply dysfunctional that the department is in fact at fault and not vessel owners who are now being issued fines. 

Do not pay these fines and do not admit guilt.  

Minister George's Squid Appeal Decisions: Another Set of Bad Decisions!

On 6 May 2025 (almost week after Minister George was required by the Western Cape High Court to publish his appeal decisions), Dion George issued his revised squid appeal decisions. The original appeal decisions taken by Barbara Creecy were reviewed and set aside by the Courts last year (as were dozens of hake long line and small pelagic decisions, but we digress). 

The squid appeal decisions are problematic for at least 2 reasons and once again demonstrate a Minister who lacks access to proper advisors and importantly demonstrates that the DA (As a political party) simply have no clue about fishing, policy and growth in this sector. And this is incredibly tragic given that, as an opposition party, the DA did actually have substantive policy and ideas to fix and grow fisheries!

Reason 1:

Firstly, the Minister has allocated a total of 6 rights to new entrants but allocated them each a crew allocation limited to 4 men - also called the TAE or total applied effort limit. 

What this means is that each new entrant right holder cannot deploy more than 4 men on their squid vessels to fish for squid. The irrationality of this decision is obvious. 

Firstly, there is no squid vessel that can carry 4 crew. Squid vessels are typically 15-20m freezer vessels that have minimum crew allocations that far exceed 4 crew! A 4-man crew could be found on very small traditional line fish boats that catch snoek and yellowtail; not on a multi-million rand squid freezer vessel.

Secondly, allocating 4 crew rights means that the Minister is simply unserious. He is unserious about growing the fishery. He is unserious about empowering new entrant right holders because they can only ever be paper quota holders who sell their permits to vessel owners who are THEMSELVES short of rights on their own vessels and cant put vessels to sea because they have too few crew! And he is unserious about his own fishing policies which prohibit paper quota holders. 

A few days ago, Sea Harvest launched review proceedings against the George because his decisions in November 2024 in the horse mackerel fishery did exactly that - allocate meaningless rights which can only be paper quota holders.  

Reasons 2:

The second reason that Dion George's decisions are problematic (and reviewable) is because the decision irrationally allocates crew rights to vessels despite the fact that allocations exceed the legal carrying capacity of a number of vessels. 

Historically, the allocation of effort (or crew rights) on vessels was methodically undertaken to ensure a right holder's nominated vessel had the capacity to carry the number of crew allocated to that vessel. So for example, VESSEL ABC owned by right holder XYZ is authorized by SAMSA to carry no more than 20 crew. However, VESSEL ABC is not only nominated by owner XYZ who is granted a right but rights are also allocated to 2 other right holders who concluded access agreements with right holder XYZ. The process of allocating crew rights on that vessel (and thus the effort allocations to each right holder) means that the SUM OF THE TOTAL NUMBER OF CREW allocated to each of the 3 right holders using VESSEL ABC cannot exceed 20 crew - OBVIOUSLY. The Minister must then consult each right holder and determine how they wish for that 20 crew to be split amongst the three right holders and that decision is then given effect to in the Minister's Appeal GPR. 

That was the process followed back in 2015 when I led the appeals process as advisor to the Minister at the time and avoided any litigation as a result because the decision involved the direct consultation with and input from right holders. 

Dion George's decisions are thus irrational as crew allocations per vessel now exceed what vessels can lawfully carry. If not reviewed and set aside, the practical consequence is that the "excess" crew rights will also just be sold to other vessel owners who are short of crew rights (Again, because George's decisions failed to consider the intricacies of the effort allocation methodology). 

A perpetual cycle of paper quota crew rights will then be established and by the time rights are re-allocated in 12 years' time, we will effectively have institutionalized and legalized the unlawful system of paper quota holders in this fishery. 

... And lets not even talk about that catastrophically disastrous decision to award squid rights to those parasitic co-operatives who do nothing; invest nothing; fish for nothing; but simply demand payments from rights holders to buy the latest Mercedes and more Louis Vuitton!   

113 Abalone Divers Take Fisheries Minister to Court

 On 28 January 2025, Dion George's fisheries department decided to terminate the annual fishing authorizations for 178 abalone divers based on some mysterious "investigation" his department undertook in 2024 and concluded in December 2024. 

Not only did the department terminate the right of these divers to earn an income in 2025, they did so without ever first affording the divers any due process - not once did the department first consult any of these divers and ask them to explain the allegations of wrongdoing they were purportedly found guilty of in January 2025. 

And then the department failed to even tell these divers what the charges are that they faced. Only now in April has the department begun informing individual divers what the allegations of wrongdoing are and every single one I have seen is bogus and they are all very similar. 

Almost all divers are accused of misrepresenting the diving zone from where they recorded a particular catch in 2024. But when one examines the landing slips used to record individual abalone landings for each dive day, together with the vessel monitoring reports, the department's allegations fall completely flat. It appears that the department does not understand its own landing slips and cannot interpret vessel monitoring system reports. 

But the department could so easily have avoided ruining the lives of abalone divers by simply first consulting with each of these 178 divers BEFORE terminating their income source. Why were individual divers not consulted in 2024?  

This type of hamfisted, unlawful conduct is fully expected from an ANC government but Dion George is increasingly demonstrating that he is simply a continuation of the destructive and poor executive leadership that has defined the maladministration and destructive governance of our fisheries sector since Tina Joemat Pettersson's corrupt and ruinous "reign" over fisheries. 

At the beginning of April 2025, 110 divers and 3 abalone marketing companies elected to take Dion George to court to ensure that their right to an income is restored and that they are afforded due process and the right to be heard before government officials simply decide on some whim to terminate sources of income, especially important for small-scale fishers. 

*Postscript: It has to be said that over the years, I advised previous shadow DA fisheries ministers and even drafted fisheries policy for the DA when Pieter Van Dalen was their shadow minister. Dion George's governance to date contradicts everything that the DA supposedly stood for when it comes to SA fisheries management. It does appear that unlike his colleagues in Public Works and Home Affairs - for example - he has chosen to travel to international conferences and cut ribbons. 

The Foolishness of Dion George.

Being the first DA appointed Fisheries Minister, we held out much hope that Dion George would significantly move away from the catestrophic policies and incomptent management that has defined fisheries management in this country for some 15 years now. 

ANC fisheries policy since Joemat-Petterssen has been defined by corruption, incompetence, typical redistribution of a contracting quota pie to more and more "fishers" with the consequnce that nearshore fisheries have essentially all collapsed and of the 22 healthy and functioning commercial fisheries we had back in 2005, we are down to 13 at best today. And yet we have 1000's more quota holders! 

The DA of course supposedly prides itself on its strategies of "growth", competence and collaboration with industry / fishers to grow the SA economy. Minister's George's leadeership since 3 July 2024 has been a copy-and-paste of the incompetence and dithering that has defined ANC mismanagement of our fisheries since Marthinus Van Schalkwyk. 

What makes George's leadership at fisheries so much more stark in his failure, is the plain-sight comparison to the radical changes his colleagues are making at Home Affairs and Public Works, for example. 

George could have - 

• fixed the corruption and incompetence endemic in fisheries compliance and administration. He was given the names and evidence. 
• refused to continue to implement ANC fisheries policies that simply allocate unviable and unsustainable quotas to "co-operative" communities led by sheisters and corrupt ANC-appointed chiefs.
• undertaken a comprehensive review of current fisheries policies and instructed the urgent commencement of new fisheries development and thus fisheries sector growth. Again, he was given the information to do this. 

In June 2024, we actually provided some crib notes for quick wins he could have achieved - See here.

South Africa has never had an "expert" appointed as Minister responsible for fisheries. Hardly unexpected.  My old friend, Svein Munkejord, was appointed as fisheries minister for Norway many decades ago having been a professional fisheries man before that and subsequently continued to advise South Africa and the United Nations on fisheries until the mid-2000's. And Iceland is reknowned for regularly appointing industry leaders to serve as fisheries minister. 

When Valli Moosa was appointed fisheries and environment minister back in June 1999, he inherited a department fraught with corruption and incompetent leadership - as did almost all subsequent ANC Ministers such as Joemat-Petterssen, Zokwana and then Creecy and now George! [The inheritance of corruption and incompetence is of course a hallmark of ANC ministerial leadership].

The key difference was that Moosa immediately appointed a group of experts to advise him independently of the inherited bureacracy despite the fact that Moosa's predecessor was an ANC colleague. Similarly, Zokwana was able to fix the failed FRAP 2013 he inherited from Joemat-Petterssen only because he appointed a group of independent experts. 

Sadly for George, he has elected to be led by the nose down the garden path of ongoing fisheries failure and mismanagement by the same people that ran fisheries into the ground under Creecy. The DA is doing itself significant harm in Western Cape fishing communities by perpetuating ANC policy, corruption and mismanagement as it directly hurts local fishers. 

What is Dion George Doing with Abalone? Deliberately Destroying any DA GOODWILL Through Gross Incompetence?

On 28 January 2025, Dion George's fisheries department issued a decision to refuse to grant abalone fishing exemptions to 179 historic divers because they had apparently committed multiple serious violations of the MLRA. 

Additionally, 83 exemption holders were found to have committed "minor" violations of the MLRA and were instructed to pay "admission of guilt fines" or not have their fishing permits issued. And they were told (dishinonestly) by fisheries staff that the payment of admission of guilt fines would not reflect on their criminal records and these fines "have nothing to do with prosecutors and magistrates"! These are obvious lies that unlawfully coerced many exemption holders to admit to crimes they never committed in order to desperately secure access to their fishing permits so as to earn a living. 

The decision of 28 January 2025 was apparently the consequence of a 6-month long investigation into compliance conduct by abalone exemption holders. The investigations - we are told - were completed in December 2024 where these hundreds of violations were "found" to have been committed by these 262 exemption holders. [It is worth noting that there are no more than 290 exemption holders in the entire fishery, which means that according to the department, 90% of divers committed violations of the MLRA].

This in itself ought to have caused any Minister and his senior fisheries staff to pause and double-check the "findings" of their supposed investigations! A 90% violation rate for any fishery is simply not even comprehensible! But not for the geniuses running the fisheries department. They proceeded to refuse to issue fishing permits to 179 exemption holders and then sought to blackmail the additional 83 exemption holders into paying fines. 

Problem 1: A significant number of those accused of "minor" violations - the 83 - refused to pay admission of guilt fines and instead challenged the fines which have since been withdrawn because the department made repeated and basic errors in their "investigations". For example, exemption holders were accused of landing fish against permits that dont even exist and because their vessels failed to report their positions despite the fact that it is widely known that the Department's Vessel Monitoring System is outdated and barely functional and the reporting problem lies with the department. 

Problem 2: Lying to exemption holders about the consequences of paying an admission of guilt fine in order to coerce them into paying fines is egregious and shameful. Paying an admission of guilt fine means that the contravention is recorded as a criminal offence and can affect ones ability to apply for VISA's, jobs, future fishing permits etc. 

Problem 3: The department has failed to inform any one of the 179 exemption holders accused of the supposed multiple and serious violations of the MLRA and what these charges are but has already found them each guilty by refusing them their fishing permits. It's been 4 months since the department says their obviously flawed investigations were completed and yet they have failed to even notifty a single exemption holder of these "serious" charges. The violations of due process, the provisions of the MLRA and the exemption holders' Constitutional rights to fair, just and lawful adminsitrative action is of great concern. 

The conduct to which these exemption holders have been subjected to by the Fisheries Department is entirely expected from a corrupt and inept ANC administration. Such conduct was the hallmark of the FRAP 2022 for example, which resulted in more than 120 successful review applications against the Fisheries Minister. 

But what on earth is Dion Geroge and the DA doing by simply repeating the failures of the ANC administration? The DA is effectively causing signifcant harm to fishing communities in the Western Cape with this type of heavy-handed, unlawful ANC-style mafia conduct.