Ten days ago, Barbara Creecy's delegated authority in the hake long line fishery suddenly and quietly decided to add 3 more Category A applicants to the rights register. To this day, she has failed to announce this decision publicly to any of the hake long line right applicants or the hake long line fishing industry.
Burt why this obviously unlawful and unaccountable conduct? Well, firstly because the hake long line fishing industry, like many other industry bodies, are just too weak to demand accountability for their members. Secondly, these industry bodies are more concerned about placating an increasingly incompetent and unaccountable minister as opposed to protecting member interests.
As a consequence, historic members who were unlawfully denied their rights will be left to urgently protect their own interests.
To date, Feike, has been demanding ministerial and departmental accountability through the courts. And the consequence is that our clients have been able to secure their fishing rights. The only way to protect right holder interests is through the courts. We see this in every other sector from education, security, energy, environment to mining. Industry bodies and interest groups that seek to placate the body of corrupt, incompetent, arrogant and unaccountable ANC ministers only help to ruin their sectors and economic clusters.
The question under consideration. How on earth can a Minister permit a delegated authority to secretly issue an addendum decision in the hake long line fishery AND NOT publicise this decision. Its been 10 days and not a media statement; not a word to any of the applicants and appellants who have a direct interest in this addendum decision and the fact that it introduced 3 additional Category A right holders and consumed more than 1,4% of the 2.11% TAC set aside for appeals?
The consequence of course is that THERE CAN BE NO APPEALS PROCESS. There is room for perhaps 1 successful appellant on appeal ... at most! Nevermind that no one has sight to the competitor applications or that the hake long line GPR is at best complete gibberish written in ANC cadre code.
And make no mistake, within the next 15 days even that 0,6% of the TAC will no longer be available to the Minister on appeal as a review application is being prepared that will see the balance of the "appeals TAC" being allocated.
This is #frapfailure and #frapnever.
Barbara Creecy can start taking her bow as being the Minister responsible for the most disastrous, nonsensical, illogical and financially catastrophic fishing rights allocation process in history. And, given that she beat the corrupt and incompetent Tina Joemat-Pettersson and her disastrous FRAP 2013 by being even worse, well ... that says a lot.
