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It was announced late last week that Sue Middleton - the DDG for SA Fisheries - will retire effective 1 December 2025.  And, as is traditional in South Africa when a public official retires or dies, the person is eulogized regardless of any reality. Facts are shelved and mythology is born!  FISHSA put out a bootlicking statement listing her "achievements". The farce is that none of the members of FISHSA actually believe the nonsense because they tell me that over coffee and in the corridors!  Consider this public statement issued on behalf of Minister Dion George by his current chief of staff. This is the current Fisheries Minister's opinion of Middleton and her leadership of the fisheries department. Some paragraphs are worth quoting:  "Fishing rights allocations and fisheries management under previous ANC ministers have been a constant source of strife and suffering for coastal communities... Many of the commercial rights allocations (and non-allocations) in the p...

This is an urgent letter issued to Minister George this morning regarding his department's ongoing unlawful attack against abalone divers. A department that has been greatly implicated in abalone-related corruption and collusion with organised criminals in the abalone trading space.  Is Minister George just a confused deer staring into the headlights of ANC corruption or does he have any inclination to make any changes at DFFE?  The open letter follows:  " URGENT The Minister of Forestry, Fisheries & Environment Dr Dion George, MP Minister, Between April and late June 2025, the Deputy Director General of the Fisheries Management Branch issued a plethora of individual decisions in terms of section 81 of the MLRA recording that she refused to issue exemptions to historic abalone divers on the basis that these divers committed certain violations of the MLRA. Your department has not preferred any criminal charges against any of these divers. It is now known that the DDG l...