SA's fisheries minister, Dr Dion George, admitted on 31 October 2025 that he's predecessor and her staff advising her took such bad decisions in the small pelagic (anchovy & pilchard) sector in 2022 and 2023, that he has to now approach the WC High court to review and set aside ALL decisions taken since March 2022.
While he's press statement billed this step as some sort "unprecedented" solution, it sadly is not. It is a repeat of the catastrophic decision-making processes that plagued the 2016 fishing rights allocations in the hake inshore trawl and horse mackerel fisheries. In both fisheries, the Minister sought to self-review her own incredulously bad and unlawful decisions. So unprecedented, this is not.
George's failure to finalise the appeal decisions despite some 20 court orders that he do so is also a failure in his leadership given that he conceded these reviews (except for 3) on 3 February 2025 before Judge Mantame. And before that, he insisted on opposing the relief that the applicants sought for months.
George - like Creecy - has demonstrated a startling failure of leadership and ability to understand fisheries management. More pertinently, he and his senior staff remain unwilling to engage right holders who are now exposed to a fresh allocation of fishing rights, which will undoubtedly cause chaos and panic in a sector already under strain because of collapsing anchovy stocks.
So George's "solution" is to start again as if this is January 2022. It, OF COURSE, is not. But crucially, George wants to start afresh with the small pelagic fishing allocations using the same incompetent staff who advised Creecy and him to make all these unlawful decisions! The definition of insanity.
George may want to read some fishing history and get to understand that the last time a successful fishing rights allocation process was undertaken (back in 2004/2005, sadly), the Minister responsible first completed a wholesale clean-out of the rot and incompetence that he inherited as Minister from a former ANC minister and colleague. Minister Moosa removed the incompetent and corrupt staff between June 1999 and January 2000 and started his first successful medium term rights allocation process in mid 2001.
So George's "solution"? - to start again afresh. George must realize that he cant simply go back to those 2022 applications because .... well ... it's not 2022 and you cant pretend it is.
Not only is the data in each and every one of those applications outdated and irrelevant, we have had 4 years of fishing since then and a number of "new entrants" in 2022 are no longer new to the fishery. They have invested; employed; taken out substantial loans to finance vessels and operations. They cant simply be discarded or risk being discarded. They were allocated 15 year rights and based an entire generation of decisions on that.
So what George needs to urgently communicate as a PROPER SOLUTION to the idiocy of this problem is perhaps the following:
1. Remove the staff responsible for FRAP 2016 & 2022. Considering the financial harm alone they have caused; they should be binned and never allowed to set foot in a salaried position ever.
2. Urgently institute the self-review application. He has not committed to a timetable for this and he must do so immediately. That self-review application needs to be filed by mid-November at the latest - he has had months to prepare it.
3. Immediately start planning a fresh re-allocation process and system so that once the self-review is ordered, the re-allocation process can start. This must include a new custom designed application form for pilchards, anchovy. That form needs to cater for 3 different categories of applicant now in 2025. First, historic right holders that held rights since 2005; second, those that held rights since March 2022 and, thirdly, new entrants who never held a pilchard/anchovy right before.
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