Last week, Dion George decided the "appeals" that were filed by some 170 abalone divers against a 28 January 2025 decision to refuse them exemptions because of the finding of a 2023/2024 investigation into false reporting of landings.
The 2023/2024 investigation produced a set of findings against 179 divers without ever first affording any of them a right to first answer any allegations put to them. These divers then proceeded to court in April to declare the 28 January 2025 decisions unlawful because this fundamental failure to afford them due process. Sadly - perhaps also an indication of the state of our courts - the Western Cape High Court is yet to issue a decision on this matter despite it having been argued in August as a "semi-urgent" matter. Judgement ought to have been given with 30 days given that the "extended" abalone season closed at the end of September 2025.
The investigation found that divers were reporting landings from one zone when in fact they harvested the abalone at Robben Island (Zone F). The reasons for the apparent false reporting were that zonal allocations in other zones (such as Cape Town (Zone E) or Zone G - West Coast) have very low quantities of abalone due to massive levels of organised poaching by syndicates and the costs of fuel and labour to travel to these zones forced certain divers to instead choose to fish at Robben Island. The divers did not take more than what they were allocated - they only took abalone from the incorrect harvesting zone.
Subsequent to the 28 January 2025 decision, the DDG (who took the 28 January 2025 decision), sought to mitigate the unlawfulness of that decision by thereafter issuing notices to affected divers asking them to respond to her "decision" to deny them an exemption - hence the appeals to the Minister in terms of section 80 of the Marine Living Resources Act. These decisions of the DDG were thus considered by the Minister.
We have considered more than 40 appeal decisions taken so far and our view is that almost every single decision by George is unlawful and thus reviewable. For one, the decisions are nearly identical and demonstrate an unthinking decision to deny the appeals regardless of merit. There are some patently obvious and incorrect readings of data and vessel positioning reports but the Minister simply put his signature of decisions denying these divers their abalone fishing permits.
And then there are appeal decisions where the Minister explicitly states that he upholds the decision of the DDG to deny exemption permits despite the fact those decisions were taken after 1 April 2025. On 1 April 2025, the DDG lost her legal authority to take these decisions because Minister George himself revoked those delegations of power!
If ever there was evidence of a Minister simply putting his signature to decisions he could not have conceivably considered and decided for himself these are those decisions.
Our advice to the abalone industry is to challenge these unlawful decisions. Only a court of law can over turn George's egregiously unlawful decisions that pander to organised crime and poaching syndicates.
Which leads to the WHY? Why would George and his department embark own this desperately unlawful path to deny 179 divers their permits. That is more than 50% of the entire sector.
The Department - we know - has a history of corruption and being complicit in the poaching and laundering of abalone through the "confiscated abalone" trade using its "storage" facilities at Paarden Eiland as a conduit to trade 1000s of tons of illegal abalone to benefit local gang leaders. Dion George has been useful idiot of the Department's corrupt senior staff. The illegal abalone trade removes 4000 tons of abalone annually. The legal fishery was allocated 40 tons of abalone in 2025. For 2026, George collapsed the TAC to 12 tons!
Coupled to the the cover afforded to the illegal fishery, the Department remains committed to allocating abalone rights to the "small-scale cooperatives" and by removing 179 legitimate divers, the Department now has the legal space to allocate rights to these co-operatives. These co-operatives have been a proven failure but also a critical conduit to launder illegal lobster. The co-operatives have been responsible for the collapse of the West Coast rock lobster over the past decade as they have regularly been implicated in massive over-harvesting and illegal reporting without any consequences.
George's dual decision to collapse the abalone TAC to 12 tons and to exclude more than 170 divers from the fishery is surely the death knell to South Africa's legal abalone fishery.
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