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The extent of the unlawful decision-making that has come to define the 2022 fishing rights allocation process is truly a spectacle of repeated failure and a refusal to even comprehend the most basic of legal principles.  For the second time in as many years, a review application brought by Category C new entrant, Business Compliance Advisors (Pty) Ltd (BCA), together with Izembe Trading CC (also a new entrant), was successful against the fisheries minister.  BCA had initially successfully reviewed Minister Creecy's unlawful decision to refuse it a right. It took almost a year for Creecy to eventually concede that application with costs, resulting in BCA being granted a 15-year duration hake fishing right.  After Dion George's farcical decisions last year July to award hake quota based on some mythical "quantum score", which never existed since 2022, BCA (this time with Izembe Trading) brought a further review application which resulted in Judge Saldanha granting an or...

On 19 August 2026, the Western Cape High Court reviewed and set aside the quantum allocation methodology that had been adopted to apportion quota to the holders of fishing rights in the South Coast rock lobster (SCRL) fishery. The matter was brought against the Minister at the time (Barbara Creecy) by Risar Fishing CC.  I had acted as counsel for Risar Fishing in that matter.  The Minister's legal team was immediately notified of what we considered to be the urgent next steps given that the SCRL fishing season commences each and every year on 1 October.  What has become apparent based on communications with representatives of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment is that the Minister and his department literally did nothing for the last 40 days and fully expected that they would instead attempt to unlawfully allocate a portion of the 2026/2027 SCRL total allowable catch to buy themselves more time to be incompetent. What has transpired over the past 48 hou...

The South African Deep Sea Trawl Industry Association ("SADSTIA") has published an incredibly important report that should certainly guide the significant revision of the MLRA, which is now at least a decade over due.  The SADSTIA report correctly hones on the issue of the duration of fishing rights. Fishing right duration and the increasing collapse in the confidence of any fishing allocation process will increasingly deter any meaningful stabilization of the moribund SA fishing industry - let alone spur any growth or significant investment.  What we have seen since the 2016 rights allocation process is a significant erosion in the confidence of these processes & the allocation of rights especially since we have repeatedly seen -  (a) consistent findings of unlawfulness by the high court setting aside hundreds of fishing rights; & (b) the minister repeatedly self-reviewing decisions setting aside wholesale allocations 5/6 years into a rights allocation period....

 The Western Cape High Court on 19 August 2026 set aside Minister Creecy's South Coast rock lobster (SCRL) quantum allocation methodology (QAM), declaring the QAM to be an arbitrary and irrational decision.  The order affects all current right holders in the fishery as their individual allocations have been declared to have been the product of an unlawful process.  The 2026/2027 SCRL season commences on 1 October 2026 and Minister Maynier has to of course decide the season's total allowable catch before that.  The Minister cannot decide next season's TAC allocations to right holders based on the current QAM because to do so would be unlawful. Accordingly, Minister Maynier will have to do the following without delay:  1.     Develop a draft revised QAM based on the judgement; 2.     Issue the proposed draft QAM to all current right holders for comment. An expedited comment period would be justifiable given the fact that the season starts in ju...

 On 19 August 2026, the Western Cape High Court finally ruled in Risar Fishing CC v The Minister of Forestry, Fisheries & Agriculture & Others  that the quantum allocation methodology adopted by Creecy was irrational and arbitrary and thus set it aside.  This effectively meant that nearly every single decision taken by Creecy during the FRAP 2021/2022 has been reviewed and set aside. The financial costs to the department must be staggering as every decision has been aside with costs awarded against the Minister. We would estimate no less than 40 individual reviews have been successfully brought by various fishing companies resulting in the setting aside of hundreds of decisions in the squid, small pelagics, hake, South Coast rock lobster and tuna pole sectors.   And despite repeatedly telling numerous courts how Creecy (and then subsequently Dion George) relied exclusively on the advice of the same core team of departmental legal advisors, none of these advis...

That is correct! South Africa's department for forestry, fisheries and the environment (www.environment.gov.za) will get its third new fisheries minister since South Africa's leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, joined the national government after the May 2024 General Elections.  The DA National Leader, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has requested that the SA President move the current fisheries minister to the Agriculture Department and appoint the current Western Cape Provincial Minister responsible for Education, David Maynier , to the position of Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.  Having previously served as Minister of Finance in the Western Cape Province, Maynier will understand the importance of the South African fishing industry and its socio-economic contributions to the Western Cape's urban and rural economies and why fixing fisheries and growing it is not only crucial to the Western Cape but South Africa's broader economy, which contin...

Following steadfastly in the shoes of the ruinous ANC Minister of Fisheries, the DA's latest fisheries Minister, Willie Aucamp, has filed a self-review application in the small pelagic fishery 5 months after Dion George first said he would do so.  The self-review application seeks to farcically turn the fishing rights allocation clock in this fishery all the way back to January 2022. It effectively seeks to pretend that -  1.     fishing rights were never allocated to some 160 companies that target pilchards and anchovies; 2.     dozens of rights were allocated to new entrant applicants who today are no longer "new entrants" and these businesses have over the past 4 years invested; employed; have incurred long term loans and debt BASED ON THE FACT THAT RIGHTS were allocated to them for 15 years in 2022. It is truly incomprehensible how self-defeating this DA-led fisheries ministry is.  We will be advising our clients on how best to approach this self-r...

On 31 October 2025, Dion George issued a set of decisions in the sardine and anchovy fishing sectors that recorded his intention to institute, what he referred to as, a self-review application in the small pelagic fisheries (sardine and anchovy sectors).  George announced that the decisions taken by both the delegated authority (March 2022) and Minister Creecy (2024) were so unlawful that he could not take decisions on some 30 other applications already reviewed and set aside by the Western Cape High Court in 2025. [The self-review did not apply to the decisions taken by Creecy with respect to Category A sardine right holders].  George decided that at the end of October 2025. That was 4 months ago and his successor, Minister Aucamp - although noting in December 2025 that a self-review would be instituted -  has failed to institute such a review. On 4 November 2025 my clients, Atlantic Choice and Imperial Trading, were preparing to have their pilchard and anchovy review ap...

In July 2024, the DA was gifted executive control over the Fisheries & Environment department when they joined the Government of National Unity. Unlike any other political party, the DA had an extensive and detailed policy on the management and governance of fisheries and oceans . Instead, over the past 18 months, the Democratic Alliance has squandered the opportunity so comprehensively that it boggles the mind.  Instead of even basic changes to governance that could support and promote economic growth in fisheries, the DA elected to continue implementing destructive and anti-fisher policies and litigation.  The DA keeps talking about fostering economic growth and reducing unemployment (like the ANC) but like the ANC, when loaned power by the electorate, it has chosen failure instead.  We are witnessing the catastrophic mismanagement of the Foot and Mouth Disease and the procurement of vaccines by the DA's leader himself as the Minister of Agriculture.  Is the DA...

What follows is actual DA policy on fisheries, which I wrote for the party back in 2013/2014. This remains the party's formal and actual policy position on the sector and yet despite having now overseen the SA fisheries sector since July 2024, the party has failed to even start with implementing the most basic elements of THEIR OWN POLICY.  So, why vote for a party that refuses to even implement its own published and adopted policies, which they tell voters is what they as a party believe in and will carry out.  The actual policy document is titled " DA POLICY ON NATURAL RESOURCES: ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, FISHERIES, WATER MANAGEMENT AND MINERAL RESOURCES " and accessible by clicking the link.  What the DA has done since July 2024 is implement ANC fisheries policies and ensured that bad decisions  taken by Creecy continue in force.  Bizarrely, the DA has even published a draft "transfer of fishing rights policy" which is completely fixated on race being the key cr...