Why Dion George's Removal as Fisheries Minister is a GOOD DECISION: Some Facts Not Considered by the Daily Maverick

The Daily Maverick has over the past few days since it emerged that Dion George would be removed as the SA Minister of Forestry, Fisheries & Environment published two substantial pieces preferring view points opposing and objecting to his removal. The premise of the objections is that his replacement - Willie Aucamp - is an avid hunter and close to the hunting lobby, drumming up fears that South Africa will somehow adopt a pro-canned hunting policy despite this being contrary to Aucamp's own party's publicly stated policies. 

If canned hunting is against DA policy and is certainly contrary to SA national ecological policy, then the fears being raised by the Daily Maverick pieces are misplaced in my view. 

There are some other facts as to why he was fired as the Minister responsible for forestry, FISHERIES & the environment. 

Dion George was most likely removed as fisheries minister because of his record of ridiculously bad decisions that ARE IN FACT CONTRARY TO DA POLICY.

He just took a series of awful decisions that are not only fatally bad in law (which is usual) but significantly harmful to entire Overberg and Cape Town communities reliant on abalone fishing. See here

Then, he simply continued to put his name to the same legally bad fishing quota allocation decisions taken by his predecessor, Barbara Creecy, resulting in a multiplicity of adverse court orders. On 4 November 2025, due to embarrassing bungling by his "legal advisors", George had to concede 3 small pelagic review cases in a single day with costs awarded against state. Some articles explaining how bad George was for commercial fishery sectors: here and here and here for a summary!

George's incompetence and insistence on relying on the same incompetent legal and fisheries management staff who advised Creecy, not only resulted in him taking indefensible decisions, he is now possibly facing a multiplicity of contempt of court applications for failing to take decisions by 31 October 2025 in numerous small pelagic matters. See here for that short piece.   

George was effectively being used as an unthinking tool to continue to implement the same bad ANC policies and decisions that have destroyed SA commercial fisheries. (Under 2 decades of SA fisheries mismanagement, our commercial fisheries have been decimated from once having 22 relatively healthy and thriving commercial fisheries to having 13 barely functional fisheries). 

In a 14 May 2025 article, I wrote the following about just how bad Dion George's grasp of fisheries management is; how his decisions are contrary to DA policy and historic positions and how he is simply putting his signature to bad ANC 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!"

On 18 March 2025, I wrote about the "Foolishness of Dion George", where I stated the following: 

"Being the first DA appointed Fisheries Minister, we held out much hope that Dion George would significantly move away from the catastrophic policies and incompetent 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. "

To conclude, George's performance as fisheries minister has been dismal and as if he was just another cadre deployee by the ANC. But it was not just at fisheries that he simply took awful decisions. He, for example, continued to issue shark net and drumlin permits to the KZN Sharks Board contrary to DA policy. 

Dion George Destroys What is left of SA's "Legal" Abalone Fishery

Last week, Dion George decided the "appeals" that were filed by some 170 abalone divers against a 28 January 2025 decision to refuse them exemptions because of the finding of a 2023/2024 investigation into false reporting of landings. 

The 2023/2024 investigation produced a set of findings against 179 divers without ever first affording any of them a right to first answer any allegations put to them. These divers then proceeded to court in April to declare the 28 January 2025 decisions unlawful because this fundamental failure to afford them due process. Sadly - perhaps also an indication of the state of our courts - the Western Cape High Court is yet to issue a decision on this matter despite it having been argued in August as a "semi-urgent" matter. Judgement ought to have been given with 30 days given that the "extended" abalone season closed at the end of September 2025. 

The investigation found that divers were reporting landings from one zone when in fact they harvested the abalone at Robben Island (Zone F). The reasons for the apparent false reporting were that zonal allocations in other zones (such as Cape Town (Zone E) or Zone G - West Coast) have very low quantities of abalone due to massive levels of organised poaching by syndicates and the costs of fuel and labour to travel to these zones forced certain divers to instead choose to fish at Robben Island. The divers did not take more than what they were allocated - they only took abalone from the incorrect harvesting zone.

Subsequent to the 28 January 2025 decision, the DDG (who took the 28 January 2025 decision), sought to mitigate the unlawfulness of that decision by thereafter issuing notices to affected divers asking them to respond to her "decision" to deny them an exemption - hence the appeals to the Minister in terms of section 80 of the Marine Living Resources Act. These decisions of the DDG were thus considered by the Minister. 

We have considered more than 40 appeal decisions taken so far and our view is that almost every single decision by George is unlawful and thus reviewable. For one, the decisions are nearly identical and demonstrate an unthinking decision to deny the appeals regardless of merit. There are some patently obvious and incorrect readings of data and vessel positioning reports but the Minister simply put his signature of decisions denying these divers their abalone fishing permits. 

And then there are appeal decisions where the Minister explicitly states that he upholds the decision of the DDG to deny exemption permits despite the fact those decisions were taken after 1 April 2025. On 1 April 2025, the DDG lost her legal authority to take these decisions because Minister George himself revoked those delegations of power! 

If ever there was evidence of a Minister simply putting his signature to decisions he could not have conceivably considered and decided for himself these are those decisions.  

Our advice to the abalone industry is to challenge these unlawful decisions. Only a court of law can over turn George's egregiously unlawful decisions that pander to organised crime and poaching syndicates. 

Which leads to the WHY? Why would George and his department embark own this desperately unlawful path to deny 179 divers their permits. That is more than 50% of the entire sector. 

The Department - we know - has a history of corruption and being complicit in the poaching and laundering of abalone through the "confiscated abalone" trade using its "storage" facilities at Paarden Eiland as a conduit to trade 1000s of tons of illegal abalone to benefit local gang leaders. Dion George has been useful idiot of the Department's corrupt senior staff. The illegal abalone trade removes 4000 tons of abalone annually. The legal fishery was allocated 40 tons of abalone in 2025. For 2026, George collapsed the TAC to 12 tons! 

Coupled to the the cover afforded to the illegal fishery, the Department remains committed to allocating abalone rights to the "small-scale cooperatives" and by removing 179 legitimate divers, the Department now has the legal space to allocate rights to these co-operatives. These co-operatives have been a proven failure but also a critical conduit to launder illegal lobster. The co-operatives have been responsible for the collapse of the West Coast rock lobster over the past decade as they have regularly been implicated in massive over-harvesting and illegal reporting without any consequences. 

George's dual decision to collapse the abalone TAC to 12 tons and to exclude more than 170 divers from the fishery is surely the death knell to South Africa's legal abalone fishery. 

Dion George's Failure to Decide Small Pelagic Appeals Could Result in Contempt of Court Applications

On 3 February 2025, Judge Mantame issued some 20 orders reviewing and setting aside some 2 dozen appeal decisions in the small pelagic (anchovy and pilchard) sector. Those orders were each taken by agreement and included an order that the Minister must finalise the reconsidered appeals by 29 August 2025. 

The Minister failed to comply with those court ordered deadlines and instead negotiated an extension with the attorneys representing those applicants to 31 October 2025 to finalise these decisions. But the Minister remained under judicial order to finalize each appeal in terms of those orders. 

Instead of complying with the court orders, on Friday 31 October 2025, the Minister issued a statement confirming that he will not issue final appeal decisions but that he intends to institute a “self-review” application as some unspecified future date to correct certain undefined errors in the decisions of the delegated authority and Minister Creecy. 

1. The Minister’s statement that he will not finalise the appeal decisions constitutes a contempt of each every court order issued by Judge Mantame. The Minister does not have the authority to simply elect to ignore a court order and choose to do as he pleases, especially one issued by agreement. The Minister ought to have applied for a variation order first before making his improper decision on 31 October 2025. 

2. Given that Judge Mantame had already reviewed and set aside some 20 unlawful decisions, the Minister cannot seek a further order reviewing what has already been reviewed and set aside. 

The Minister has to finalize the appeals according to Judge Mantame's orders AND he cannot review decisions already reviewed and set aside.

Small Pelagic Fishery Headed for Turmoil As George Continues to Fail as Minister

SA's fisheries minister, Dr Dion George, admitted on 31 October 2025 that he's predecessor and her staff advising her took such bad decisions in the small pelagic (anchovy & pilchard) sector in 2022 and 2023, that he has to now approach the WC High court to review and set aside ALL decisions taken since March 2022. 

While he's press statement billed this step as some sort "unprecedented" solution, it sadly is not. It is a repeat of the catastrophic decision-making processes that plagued the 2016 fishing rights allocations in the hake inshore trawl and horse mackerel fisheries. In both fisheries, the Minister sought to self-review her own incredulously bad and unlawful decisions. So unprecedented, this is not. 

George's failure to finalise the appeal decisions despite some 20 court orders that he do so is also a failure in his leadership given that he conceded these reviews (except for 3) on 3 February 2025 before Judge Mantame. And before that, he insisted on opposing the relief that the applicants sought for months. 

George - like Creecy - has demonstrated a startling failure of leadership and ability to understand fisheries management. More pertinently, he and his senior staff remain unwilling to engage right holders who are now exposed to a fresh allocation of fishing rights, which will undoubtedly cause chaos and panic in a sector already under strain because of collapsing anchovy stocks. 

So George's "solution" is to start again as if this is January 2022. It, OF COURSE, is not. But crucially, George wants to start afresh with the small pelagic fishing allocations using the same incompetent staff who advised Creecy and him to make all these unlawful decisions! The definition of insanity. 

George may want to read some fishing history and get to understand that the last time a successful fishing rights allocation process was undertaken (back in 2004/2005, sadly), the Minister responsible first completed a wholesale clean-out of the rot and incompetence that he inherited as Minister from a former ANC minister and colleague. Minister Moosa removed the incompetent and corrupt staff between June 1999 and January 2000 and started his first successful medium term rights allocation process in mid 2001. 

So George's "solution"? - to start again afresh. George must realize that he cant simply go back to those 2022 applications because .... well ... it's not 2022 and you cant pretend it is. 

Not only is the data in each and every one of those applications outdated and irrelevant, we have had 4 years of fishing since then and a number of "new entrants" in 2022 are no longer new to the fishery. They have invested; employed; taken out substantial loans to finance vessels and operations. They cant simply be discarded or risk being discarded. They were allocated 15 year rights and based an entire generation of decisions on that. 

So what George needs to urgently communicate as a PROPER SOLUTION to the idiocy of this problem is perhaps the following: 

1. Remove the staff responsible for FRAP 2016 & 2022. Considering the financial harm alone they have caused; they should be binned and never allowed to set foot in a salaried position ever. 

2. Urgently institute the self-review application. He has not committed to a timetable for this and he must do so immediately. That self-review application needs to be filed by mid-November at the latest - he has had months to prepare it. 

3. Immediately start planning a fresh re-allocation process and system so that once the self-review is ordered, the re-allocation process can start. This must include a new custom designed application form for pilchards, anchovy. That form needs to cater for 3 different categories of applicant now in 2025. First, historic right holders that held rights since 2005; second, those that held rights since March 2022 and, thirdly, new entrants who never held a pilchard/anchovy right before.