Fisheries Department to get a New Minister

That is correct! South Africa's department for forestry, fisheries and the environment (www.environment.gov.za) will get its third new fisheries minister since South Africa's leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, joined the national government after the May 2024 General Elections. 

The DA National Leader, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has requested that the SA President move the current fisheries minister to the Agriculture Department and appoint the current Western Cape Provincial Minister responsible for Education, David Maynier, to the position of Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. 

Having previously served as Minister of Finance in the Western Cape Province, Maynier will understand the importance of the South African fishing industry and its socio-economic contributions to the Western Cape's urban and rural economies and why fixing fisheries and growing it is not only crucial to the Western Cape but South Africa's broader economy, which continues to shed jobs at a remarkable level. 

Maynier takes over a fisheries department that is fraught with incompetence, mismanagement and a department stuck technologically in the early 2000's with thousands of fishing companies having to make 1000's of permit applications annually ... manually! 

So what can Maynier do immediately to start the process of fixing a broken fisheries department and stagnant fisheries economy? 

1. Open 3 new experimental fisheries for commercial fishing. In the early 2000's we had 22 commercial fisheries sectors. In 2004, a detailed plan was presented to parliament by the then leadership of the fisheries department to open 12 new fisheries over a period of 4 years. None of that happened. Instead, today we have no more than 13 functional fisheries (of varying degrees). The collapse of the SA fishing industry is visible if one merely visits Hout Bay fishing harbour, Hondeklipbaai, Port Nolloth, Doringbaai, Lamberts Bay etc. What we urgently require is growth; new fisheries. We don't need more division and sharing of an increasingly contracting fisheries pie. 

2. Urgently review redundant and irrelevant permit and fishing conditions. Almost every sector remains governed by the exact same fishing conditions that existed 15 years ago. Why do we need "transport permits" that cost the industry hundreds of thousands of rands to apply for every time they need to transport fish from a vessel to a processing factory or to the airport!? WHY? 

3.  Urgently review the 1998 fishing regulations (GN R1111 of 2 Sept 1998). These regulations were last comprehensively reviewed and rewritten in 2003 by yours truly. They are so out of date and today pose serious regulatory obstacles to efficient and responsible fishing. 

4.    Urgently review the current transfer for fishing rights policy. Currently, the sale and purchase or transfer of fishing rights requires ministerial permission under the Marine Living Resources Act. However, in terms of the Policy governing these transfers, the Minister essentially decides these applications solely on whether the transferee is as black and women owned as the transferor! To put it mildly, that is stupidly insane. Transfers of rights should be governed by economic, compliance and social factors exclusively. Period. 

5.   Settle all current FRAP-related litigation. Why is the Minister still pursuing litigation regarding the 2022 fishing rights allocation process (FRAP)? There is still pending litigation from the 2016 fishing rights allocation process! AGAIN, WHY? This ongoing litigation is unnecessary and hinders the core objectives of fishing and fisheries management. In 2015, the Minister at the time wisely chose to halt all litigation against his department (which he inherited from the most corrupt fisheries minister to ever grace a South African shore, Tina Joemat-Petterson). Round-table discussions were held with every litigating sector at the time and all litigation either settled or pre-empted. 

6.    Get out of the 20th Century! To apply for a fishing permit every year, the same company has to manually make application and submit the same information year in and year out! Company resolutions, tax certificates, company registration documents, certifications from the department itself that the company's fishing levies are paid up (!!). Applying for a fishing permit is more archaic than applying for your drivers' license renewal. 

ONCE AGAIN, WHY? Maynier could immediately commence a process of establishing a fishing permit e-platform which will allow each and every fishing company and individual fishing right holder to instead apply for and have every type of regulatory permit immediately issued. It is not hard! It would save right holders thousands of rands in administrative costs and lost fishing time waiting for permits. 

Minister Maynier has the opportunity to revolutionize fisheries management and grow South Africa's fisheries economy for the first time since the early 2000s. We need to reverse the stagnation and collapse of fisheries urgently.