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The Department of Fisheries has issued two tender requests in the latest tender bulletin (24 August 2012). One is for the appointment of a service provider to review fisheries policies and oversee the allocation of long term fishing rights in 9 fishery sectors in 2012/2013. The second tender seeks to appoint a service provider to provide a marine anti-poaching service in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces.  Although these tenders are to be welcomed, they are extremely long overdue. The fishery policy and allocation tender closes on 21 September 2012. Assuming the Department does not repeat its recent   record when it comes to tender (mis) management, this tender could be allocated by late November 2012, which will leave the prospective tenderer less than 12 months to achieve the near impossible.  The allocation of fishing rights involves a series of complex and integrated management, decision-making and regulatory functions, which are presently lacking at DAF...

This is a press statement issued by the DA's Deputy Shadow Minister for Fisheries, Pieter van Dalen, on 27 August 2012. The DA has received confirmation from the Public Protector, Advocate Thuli Madonsela, that she is investigating our complaint that  Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson violated the Executive Ethics Code. This will be the third concurrent investigation into Minister Joemat-Pettersson's conduct. The other issues being scrutinised by the Public Protector are the Minister's expenditure on flights and hotels and tender procedures in her department as a result of the irregular R800 million Sekunjalo tender. The DA requested the latest investigation on the advice of Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. Section 2.1 of the Executive Ethics Code stipulates that members of the Executive must "perform their duties and exercise their powers diligently and honestly", must "act in good faith and in the best interest of good governance", and "...

Feike has been informed that the Fisheries Portfolio Committee meeting scheduled for 28 August 2012 @2pm which was supposed to have been addressed by the Minister of Fisheries has been postponed indefinitely.

Please take note that the Fisheries Minister's meeting with the Portfolio Committee will start at 14:00 in Committee Room V227, Parliament.

The Minister of Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, is scheduled to address the Portfolio Committee on Fisheries on 28 August 2012 at 9:30am   on her department's plans concerning the allocation of long term fishing rights in 2013 and 2015.  South Africa is set to re-allocate commercial fishing rights in the majority of its 22 commercial fishery sectors in 2013 and again in 2015. Feike has repeatedly warned that the department has not explained what plans and systems are in place to ensure a seamless allocation process which is critical to ensuring stability in the supply of fish products to existing markets, job security and continued investment by right holders.  There is little point in waiting until the very last minute to inform right holders who have now held fishing rights for periods of 8 and 10 years what will be required of them come the next round of quota allocations. This is not supposed to be some lottery. There are huge numbers of jobs and investmen...

There have been a number of press statements issued over the past few days by the Minister of Fisheries, on the one hand, and the DA's Shadow Deputy Minister for Fisheries, Pieter van Dalen, on the other. It is patently clear that South Africa faces a growing number of serious fisheries management and governance crises. This BLOG has recorded example after example of crisis and mismanagement afflicting fisheries. Most recently we have had the spectre of the Minister dueling her very own senior staff in public. It is all quite farcical. Maritime Re view Africa, Southern Africa's leading fisheries and shipping magazine, has now invited both van Dalen and Joemat-Pettersson to a panel debate where the various governance issues that have dominated the media recently and which are clearly in the fisheries public interest can be ventilated. Importantly, it will provide the Minister with a platform to clearly address the fisheries public on her most recent anti-corruption initiativ...

It is truly becoming bizarrer and bizarrer down at the Fisheries Branch on the Foreshore. The Fisheries Minister has now confirmed that she is investigating apparent fraud and corruption at the branch amounting to R1billion and going back to 1999! Talk about Tantrum Tina truly taking us back to the previous century! This is just utter lunacy. And to add to the lunacy are the slanderous and defamatory rants of some Western Cape-based organisation called the Black Business Chamber. It has been stated that this Black Business Council (in the Apartheid days we had the Boerebond; so now I guess in this colour-mad South Africa, the BBC(!!) is the equivalent?). Well, the BBC issued a shocker of a press statement alleging massive corruption by Smit Amandla and of course the Fisheries Branch and its predecessor, Marine and Coastal Management, when previous vessel management tenders were allocated to Smit.  It has been reported by Business Report that the BBC stood to benefit finan...