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The Department of Fisheries has issued two tender requests in the latest tender bulletin (24 August 2012). One is for the appointment of a service provider to review fisheries policies and oversee the allocation of long term fishing rights in 9 fishery sectors in 2012/2013. The second tender seeks to appoint a service provider to provide a marine anti-poaching service in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces.  Although these tenders are to be welcomed, they are extremely long overdue. The fishery policy and allocation tender closes on 21 September 2012. Assuming the Department does not repeat its recent   record when it comes to tender (mis) management, this tender could be allocated by late November 2012, which will leave the prospective tenderer less than 12 months to achieve the near impossible.  The allocation of fishing rights involves a series of complex and integrated management, decision-making and regulatory functions, which are presently lacking at DAF...

This is a press statement issued by the DA's Deputy Shadow Minister for Fisheries, Pieter van Dalen, on 27 August 2012. The DA has received confirmation from the Public Protector, Advocate Thuli Madonsela, that she is investigating our complaint that  Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson violated the Executive Ethics Code. This will be the third concurrent investigation into Minister Joemat-Pettersson's conduct. The other issues being scrutinised by the Public Protector are the Minister's expenditure on flights and hotels and tender procedures in her department as a result of the irregular R800 million Sekunjalo tender. The DA requested the latest investigation on the advice of Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. Section 2.1 of the Executive Ethics Code stipulates that members of the Executive must "perform their duties and exercise their powers diligently and honestly", must "act in good faith and in the best interest of good governance", and "...

Feike has been informed that the Fisheries Portfolio Committee meeting scheduled for 28 August 2012 @2pm which was supposed to have been addressed by the Minister of Fisheries has been postponed indefinitely.

Please take note that the Fisheries Minister's meeting with the Portfolio Committee will start at 14:00 in Committee Room V227, Parliament.

The Minister of Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, is scheduled to address the Portfolio Committee on Fisheries on 28 August 2012 at 9:30am   on her department's plans concerning the allocation of long term fishing rights in 2013 and 2015.  South Africa is set to re-allocate commercial fishing rights in the majority of its 22 commercial fishery sectors in 2013 and again in 2015. Feike has repeatedly warned that the department has not explained what plans and systems are in place to ensure a seamless allocation process which is critical to ensuring stability in the supply of fish products to existing markets, job security and continued investment by right holders.  There is little point in waiting until the very last minute to inform right holders who have now held fishing rights for periods of 8 and 10 years what will be required of them come the next round of quota allocations. This is not supposed to be some lottery. There are huge numbers of jobs and investmen...

There have been a number of press statements issued over the past few days by the Minister of Fisheries, on the one hand, and the DA's Shadow Deputy Minister for Fisheries, Pieter van Dalen, on the other. It is patently clear that South Africa faces a growing number of serious fisheries management and governance crises. This BLOG has recorded example after example of crisis and mismanagement afflicting fisheries. Most recently we have had the spectre of the Minister dueling her very own senior staff in public. It is all quite farcical. Maritime Re view Africa, Southern Africa's leading fisheries and shipping magazine, has now invited both van Dalen and Joemat-Pettersson to a panel debate where the various governance issues that have dominated the media recently and which are clearly in the fisheries public interest can be ventilated. Importantly, it will provide the Minister with a platform to clearly address the fisheries public on her most recent anti-corruption initiativ...

It is truly becoming bizarrer and bizarrer down at the Fisheries Branch on the Foreshore. The Fisheries Minister has now confirmed that she is investigating apparent fraud and corruption at the branch amounting to R1billion and going back to 1999! Talk about Tantrum Tina truly taking us back to the previous century! This is just utter lunacy. And to add to the lunacy are the slanderous and defamatory rants of some Western Cape-based organisation called the Black Business Chamber. It has been stated that this Black Business Council (in the Apartheid days we had the Boerebond; so now I guess in this colour-mad South Africa, the BBC(!!) is the equivalent?). Well, the BBC issued a shocker of a press statement alleging massive corruption by Smit Amandla and of course the Fisheries Branch and its predecessor, Marine and Coastal Management, when previous vessel management tenders were allocated to Smit.  It has been reported by Business Report that the BBC stood to benefit finan...

A tip-off sent to, amongst others, Mr Pieter van Dalen (DA), the Shadow Deputy Minister of Fisheries, has confirmed the desperate and chaotic state that the fisheries ministry finds itself in as a result of a minister  that sees ghosts at every turn and who must certainly be staring into a number of reports by the Public Protectors that prove what we have been saying for months - Tina Joemat-Petterssen (TJP) is completely unfit to hold public office, let alone sit in Cabinet.  The tip-off is titled "Tina Joemat-Pettersson's office in disarray" and states the following: (unedited) • In May she (TJP) suspended her DDG for Fisheries, Sue Middleton. Middleton is now back in office due to bungling of the department. Investigation was supposed to have concluded in 2 months and that didn't happen • In June she (TJP) suspended her DG Langa Zita. Sources say that Zita is willing to leave but wants to be paid for the remainder of his 5-year contract. • She (...

SAPA reports that fronting and fraud have been highlighted as the major factors that will render transformation in the fishing industry impossible, Parliament's fisheries committee chairman, Lulu Johnson, said on Friday. Johnson addressed the media on the plight of nine black women who are part of a corporation called Meermin Visserye CC. The women claim their quotas and names were fraudulently being used by a fishing company and an individual, who are making money while they don't see a penny. The women own a 15-year small pelagic fishing permit, which comes to an end in December 2020. "Regrettably, the owners of Meermin have been denied the financial benefits of their high-value pelagic quota over the past two years. They have been defrauded and unlawfully denied access to the fishing quota and the income generated from the quota," Johnson said. Initially, the women used Compass Fishing Enterprises to catch pilchards and anchovies, but terminat...

Feike understands that the Minister of Fisheries is set to remove one of her two so-called "special" advisors, Mr Rams Mabote. The reasons for his dismissal are unknown. The Minister has this year alone suspended her head of fisheries, Sue Middleton, and her DG, Langa Zita.  Although Zita remains on suspension, Middleton is back in her office but apparently still subject to some form of investigation regarding her decision to actually do something to try and get the critically important demersal research cruise to sea. Ultimately, this cruise did not take place and the Marine Stewardship Council which certifies SA hake trawl has noted this as a "red flag". The consequence of Middleton's unwarranted suspension is that senior managers and decision-makers in the fisheries branch have by and large stopped taking any decisions of a controversial nature, lest they too get suspended! It must certainly be a horrible working environment especially when the Minister ...

Our BLOG, Is Tina Smoking Another Red Herring , has elicited substantial comment and questions as to what would motivate the Minister of DAFF to suddenly proclaim that her department is rat-infested for the second time since March.  Only in South Africa can an ANC Minister consider it almost cathartic to admit that her / his department is riddled with corruption, mismanagement and dysfunction. This is increasingly the favoured  defence, having been deployed by, inter alia, the Minister of Education Without Textbooks and the Minister of Public Dont Works. Nevermind that they are supposed to be responsible for these dysfunctional, corrupt and incompetent departments. So the question is why has the Minister of Fisheries issued another press statement about her corrupt department but this time also talking about "internal and external" threats to destabalise her department. We contented that her screams about her corrupt department and all the brouhaha she mouthed out y...

The news was abuzz today with Minister of Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, issuing yet another statement accusing staff at the Fisheries Branch of corruption but this time she said her department had being infiltrated by abalone "poaching syndicates". Holy cow! The Minister is on record as stating, inter alia , that -  "The investigation was "sensitive and at an advanced stage", and had initially focused on perlemoen poaching."  "There's an attempt at destabilising the department, and this... will not be tolerated. There's also been all sorts of information surfacing about me as a person... but I will not be intimidated or harassed. This investigation will continue." "The efforts to destabilise her department were both "internal and external", she said." "Several witnesses had been placed in the Witness Protection Programme. "There is a threat to some people's lives." She then ...