The Daily Maverick has over the past few days since it emerged that Dion George would be removed as the SA Minister of Forestry, Fisheries & Environment published two substantial pieces preferring view points opposing and objecting to his removal. The premise of the objections is that his replacement - Willie Aucamp - is an avid hunter and close to the hunting lobby, drumming up fears that South Africa will somehow adopt a pro-canned hunting policy despite this being contrary to Aucamp's own party's publicly stated policies.
If canned hunting is against DA policy and is certainly contrary to SA national ecological policy, then the fears being raised by the Daily Maverick pieces are misplaced in my view.
There are some other facts as to why he was fired as the Minister responsible for forestry, FISHERIES & the environment.
Dion George was most likely removed as fisheries minister because of his record of ridiculously bad decisions that ARE IN FACT CONTRARY TO DA POLICY.
He just took a series of awful decisions that are not only fatally bad in law (which is usual) but significantly harmful to entire Overberg and Cape Town communities reliant on abalone fishing. See here
Then, he simply continued to put his name to the same legally bad fishing quota allocation decisions taken by his predecessor, Barbara Creecy, resulting in a multiplicity of adverse court orders. On 4 November 2025, due to embarrassing bungling by his "legal advisors", George had to concede 3 small pelagic review cases in a single day with costs awarded against state. Some articles explaining how bad George was for commercial fishery sectors: here and here and here for a summary!
George's incompetence and insistence on relying on the same incompetent legal and fisheries management staff who advised Creecy, not only resulted in him taking indefensible decisions, he is now possibly facing a multiplicity of contempt of court applications for failing to take decisions by 31 October 2025 in numerous small pelagic matters. See here for that short piece.
George was effectively being used as an unthinking tool to continue to implement the same bad ANC policies and decisions that have destroyed SA commercial fisheries. (Under 2 decades of SA fisheries mismanagement, our commercial fisheries have been decimated from once having 22 relatively healthy and thriving commercial fisheries to having 13 barely functional fisheries).
In a 14 May 2025 article, I wrote the following about just how bad Dion George's grasp of fisheries management is; how his decisions are contrary to DA policy and historic positions and how he is simply putting his signature to bad ANC decisions:
"On 6 May 2025 (almost week after Minister George was required by the Western Cape High Court to publish his appeal decisions), Dion George issued his revised squid appeal decisions. The original appeal decisions taken by Barbara Creecy were reviewed and set aside by the Courts last year (as were dozens of hake long line and small pelagic decisions, but we digress).
The squid appeal decisions are problematic for at least 2 reasons and once again demonstrate a Minister who lacks access to proper advisors and importantly demonstrates that the DA (As a political party) simply have no clue about fishing, policy and growth in this sector. And this is incredibly tragic given that, as an opposition party, the DA did actually have substantive policy and ideas to fix and grow fisheries!"
On 18 March 2025, I wrote about the "Foolishness of Dion George", where I stated the following:
"Being the first DA appointed Fisheries Minister, we held out much hope that Dion George would significantly move away from the catastrophic policies and incompetent management that has defined fisheries management in this country for some 15 years now.
ANC fisheries policy since Joemat-Petterssen has been defined by corruption, incompetence, typical redistribution of a contracting quota pie to more and more "fishers" with the consequnce that nearshore fisheries have essentially all collapsed and of the 22 healthy and functioning commercial fisheries we had back in 2005, we are down to 13 at best today. And yet we have 1000's more quota holders!
The DA of course supposedly prides itself on its strategies of "growth", competence and collaboration with industry / fishers to grow the SA economy. Minister's George's leadeership since 3 July 2024 has been a copy-and-paste of the incompetence and dithering that has defined ANC mismanagement of our fisheries since Marthinus Van Schalkwyk.
What makes George's leadership at fisheries so much more stark in his failure, is the plain-sight comparison to the radical changes his colleagues are making at Home Affairs and Public Works, for example.
George could have -
- fixed the corruption and incompetence endemic in fisheries compliance and administration. He was given the names and evidence.
- refused to continue to implement ANC fisheries policies that simply allocate unviable and unsustainable quotas to "co-operative" communities led by sheisters and corrupt ANC-appointed chiefs.
- undertaken a comprehensive review of current fisheries policies and instructed the urgent commencement of new fisheries development and thus fisheries sector growth. Again, he was given the information to do this. "
To conclude, George's performance as fisheries minister has been dismal and as if he was just another cadre deployee by the ANC. But it was not just at fisheries that he simply took awful decisions. He, for example, continued to issue shark net and drumlin permits to the KZN Sharks Board contrary to DA policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment