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Despite promises that the Lilian Ngoyi and each of the research vessels would be back at sea by September 2013, these vessels are still inoperative. These photographs of the Lilian Ngoyi were taken in Simonstown Harbour on Saturday 15 March 2014 during the annual Navy Festival.

On 16 March 2014, the Minister of Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, stated that she would be taking the Public Protector's Report ("Docked Vessels") on review before the North Gauteng High Court. The Docked Vessels Report made 6 adverse findings against the Minister and her department, including  that the R800 million tender allocation to Sekunjalo Marine Services Consortium ("SMSC") was unlawful and that as a result South Africa's marine fisheries management environment was severely prejudiced and compromised on a number of fronts.  In summary, the Public Protector had found that -  1. The Minister and her department insisted on allocating an illegal tender to SMSC in November 2011 despite a legal opinion and a forensic audit report by PWC that warned against the tender allocation. This has been admitted to by the Department and its Minister.  The unlawful awarding of the tender was only reversed after Smit Amandla launched urgent High Court proc...

On 28 February 2014, the Fisheries Branch was informed that its 14th (at least by our count) acting DDG for the time being would be Mr Mortimer Mannya.  Mr Mannya's previous professional experience has been in the agricultural sector. Mr Mannya is the present Deputy Director-General: Agricultural Production, Health and Food in the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Prior to that he worked in the Limpopo department of agriculture.  According to public records, Mr Mannya holds a BSc. and Honours degrees from the University of the North. He also has an MSc from Cranfield Institute of Technology, United Kingdom, a postgraduate certificate in Project Management from the University of Bradford, United Kingdom, and completed the postgraduate Management Advance Programme at the University of Witwatersrand Mr Mannya has been described as a "Soil scientist" with vast experience in agriculture having worked as the Principal of Tompi Seleka C...

Feike has been informed that due to management delinquency and even deliberate mismanagement, more than 50 key posts at the Fisheries Branch have been abolished despite substantial amounts of money having been spent on advertising, flying interviewees to Cape Town and paying the appointed HR company its professional fees.  What is of grave concern is that many of these posts are in Compliance, Research and Management and a number of them were intended to oversee the implementation of the small-scale fisheries policy and small-scale fisheries research and management. The reality is now that even if the fish was magically found for the unimplementable small-scale fisheries policy, DAFF has abolished almost every post created to implement small-scale fisheries management!  To compound the problem of fisheries mismanagement, a number of posts in the compliance chief directorate have also been abolished now, including posts for compliance officers and two important regiona...

The removal on Friday 28 February 2014 of Desmond Stevens as the acting DDG of Fisheries could not have been more welcomed by the SA fishing industry. His reign as acting DDG of Fisheries has without doubt been one of the most controversial and catastrophic with lingering rumours of corruption having plagued a number of his decisions which are also the subject of investigations by the public protector.  His removal does perhaps confirm that the initial legal advice given to the Fisheries Minister to date is that the 2013 FRAP process is as illegal as any process could conceivably be. His removal will certainly aid the judicial review process by the commercial line fish industry currently before the Western Cape High Court. We understand that Stevens' replacement will again be another Acting DDG deployed from Pretoria. By our count, this will be the 14th acting DDG of Fisheries since January 2011. Since Tina Joemat-Pettersson's ruinous reign as minister of fisheries beg...