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The Department of Fisheries recently unlawfully elected to amend the deadline by which applications for the transfer of fishing rights had to be submitted. That date was brought forward from 31 December 2020 to 11 December 2020.  The decision unsurprisingly has not elicited a legal challenge from the fishing industry given the industry's ongoing reluctance to challenge an increasingly unlawful and failing Fisheries Department.  However, bureaucratic failure and incompetence does not end commercial and trade realities.  So, what happens if a shareholder or member of a fishing corporation wishes to sell their shares/member's interest? The short answer is that from 1 January 2021 the department and its minister will have absolutely no jurisdiction over regulating the sale of these shares or interest because section 21 of the Marine Living Resources Act and the 2009 Transfer of Commercial Fishing Rights Policy only applies to the sale of shares/interest involving corpora...

 On 30 October 2020, the Minister of Environment, Forestry (and Fisheries) signed a "performance agreement" with the President some 20 months after being appointed to this position. The performance agreements for all cabinet minister appear to have been published on either the 7th or 8th of December. Minister Creecy's agreement is accessible here . The agreement is completely silent on anything related to fisheries management, ocean governance, marine protected areas, aquaculture .... and critically a fishing rights allocation process worth an estimated R140 billion rand affecting 12 fishery sectors and thousands of fishers, fishing companies and jobs! Silent.  The agreement perhaps gives away the lie that the minister and her department is even seriously planning to allocate fishing rights before 2024 (the end date of the performance agreement)!  It is quite something to digest that the Minister of Environment, Forestry (and Fisheries) is prepared to publicly state she h...

South Africa's Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Commission confirmed on 25 November 2020 that it had found African Tuna Traders CC, owned and operated by Chris Hamel and Jonathan van Breda, to have used Umbhalo Trading (Pty) Ltd and Homotsego Trading (Pty) Ltd as black-operated fronts in contravention of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act ("B-BBEE Act").   The Commission's investigations revealed that black employees were presented as black shareholders for the purposes of obtaining the fishing rights that African Tuna Traders CC currently trades with in the fishing industry, with no participation or economic interest for these black employees.  The consequences could be severe for African Tuna Traders CC, Umbhalo Trading (Pty) Ltd and Homotsego Trading (Pty) as their fishing rights could now be cancelled in terms of section 13A of the B-BBEE Act, read with section 28 of the Marine Living Resources Act.  According to the investigation, African Tuna T...