~

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...

Feike has seen correspondence dated from December 2024 confirming that Minister Dion George had in fact revoked the authority of the DDG to decide exemption applications in terms of section 81 of the MLRA. We are trying to obtain confirmation from Minister George when in fact he had revoked this authority.  On 31 March 2025, a new set of delegations was issued by Minister George, confirming that he retains the sole power to decide any exemption application.  There are a number of significant changes to the delegations, including concerning section 28 matters.  We are also aware that despite these changes, the DDG had continued to issue decisions in terms of section 81 of the MLRA.  Members of the fishing industry are urgently advised to study any recent decisions (from approximately August 2024) taken in terms of section 28 or section 81 of the MLRA and see who took those decisions. If the decisions were taken by the DDG, it is extremely likely that these decisions h...

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 decision...

 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 ha...

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 t...

 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 o...