~

 On 17 November 2023, the Fisheries Minister launched an urgent interdict application that sought to stop ALL Category B right holders in the hake inshore trawl fishery from fishing in 2024. She wanted the courts to interdict her staff from processing and issuing hake inshore trawl permits and to stop all Category B's granted permits from fishing.  The interdict application was opposed by a number of Category B right holders for obvious reasons.  Arguments in this application were heard on Thursday 14 December 2023. The Minister conceded that her request to interdict every single Category B right holder would be over broad and the court would never permit this. Effectively, the Minister conceded that right holders LETAP CC, Mayibuye Fishing, Fisherman Fresh CC, Premier Fishing, Full Deck Investments, Dazelle Traders & Offshore Fishing would always qualify for a right despite any attempts by her to re-score their applications.  We have now been told that the Depar...

The Fisheries Minister presently has more than a dozen court cases challenging her FRAP 2016 AND FRAP 2020 appeal decisions.  Hake Inshore Trawl   Here the minister currently faces review cases by Hacky Fishing, Sevlac Investments and Letap . In the Hacky matter (which the Minister remain in contempt of a court order from September 2022), the Minister has attempted to self-review her hake inshore trawl decisions - effectively admitting that she and her advisors have repeatedly acted unlawfully when scoring Category B applicants in that fishery.  We have referred to the Minister's conduct as being an example of a "scorched hake" policy as she seeks to stop all Category B right holders from fishing so she can re-score their section 4 "suitable vessel" access data even though their rights have not been reviewed and set aside by any court of law.  So in this fishery where rights were first allocated 7 years ago, this Minister admits she still cannot score a single s...

On the evening of 22 December 2023, the Fisheries Minister issued her appeal decisions in the anchovy and pilchard fishing sectors. The decisions came almost 18 months after the appeals were filed and three months after the Minister first undertook to make these decisions public by 30 October 2023. The Minister's decisions are yet again an example of poor decision-making coupled with appalling contempt for the fishing industry. The pilchard decisions published lacked the full record with dozens of appellants' names missing from the decision table. A "corrected" decision table was later added to the Department's website but does not record an apology from the Minister or any written confirmation that this is the actual set of decisions taken by the Minister. It is effectively an anonymous set of appellant names.  Substantively, the Minister granted a total of 80 anchovy rights and 67 pilchard rights.  Pilchard rights * 60 category A * 3 category B * 4 category C An...

On 7 October 2023, Minister Creecy issued her hake long line appeal decisions. Her decisions have resulted in the allocation of a total of 106 rights in the hake long line fishery, which is a reduction from the 123 right holders that were active in the fishery before 28 January 2022.  The decisions are certainly reviewable on a number of grounds and we are in the process of preparing review applications for a number of unsuccessful appellants. We will keep you updated as these matters progress through the Western Cape High Court.  But what has become clearly apparent is that the Minster has made glaring errors in the evaluation and scoring of these appeals. For one, she has inconsistently dealt with the issue of compliance with laws such the Employment Equity Act, Skills Development Act and Skills Development Levies Act. She has unlawfully decided to deny appellants scores for these criteria despite the fact these laws do not apply to them and as such these appellants cannot b...

On Friday 20 October 2023, Barbara Creecy's appeal decisions of 12 June 2023 to introduce new entrants to the fishery and reduce the effort allocations of the historic right holders was interdicted pending a review application which has to be brought before the end of October 2023.  The court in  Visko Seeprodukte & 40 others v The Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment & 48 Others  gave a clear indication as well that the review will likely succeed which will mean that the Minister's squid appeal decisions will be reviewed and set aside and she will have to start the squid appeals process afresh. However, Friday's court decision has a significantly broader impact than just halting the unlawful allocation of rights to new entrants in the squid fishery.  Judge Salie's judgement makes it clear that the Minister cannot simply allocate additional fishing rights on appeal without first consulting with every other existing right holder in the fishery. Sect...

I have had a number of urgent enquiries from both new entrant and historic right holder appellants who had successfully appealed for hake trawl fishing rights about applying for their section 13 fishing permits.  They are being told by DFFE that they can only apply in January 2024 for their permits. Is that correct? If it is, it could be a hollow victory as many have effectively run out of cash having been surviving for the past 2 years on savings. A study of the hake trawl rights allocation letter is revealing. Paragraph 3 of the letter states clearly that the right commences on the signature date of the letter - ie 5 October 2023.   "Duration of Right 3.1 The right is allocated from date of signature hereof and terminating on 28 February 2038." The right accordingly commenced immediately on 5 October 2023. The section 13 permits must accordingly be processed and issued to give effect to that right. To refuse to do so would be unlawful. Incidentally, it is unclear what p...

What is without question, is that the last three consecutive fishing rights allocation processes in 2013, 2016 and 2022 have been increasing failures.  The most recent FRAP was not only 2 years late but the appeals process remains incomplete almost 2 years after the first rights were allocated! The catastrophic social and economic harms faced by historic right holders alone who unlawfully lost their rights back in February 2022 are simply ignored by the Minister. In fact, she is on record in her most recent press statement of 4 October saying that she is of the view that no applicant is being prejudiced by her appallingly delayed appeal decisions.  The Minister is thus of the view that being unlawfully deprived on an income for 2 years is without prejudice. (It would be useful to understand if this Minister or any of her comrades would be willing to forgo an income for two years given that these wise cadres do not consider it harmful to be without incomes?) South Africans are ...