Niki Moore
The women of the Sokhulu community on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast would harvest mussels by sneaking into the intertidal zone and indiscriminately scraping the rocks with a panga.
Large mussels, small mussels, other rock-bound marine life all would be swept off and bagged in haste. All the time someone would keep an eye on the shoreline, waiting for the dreaded conservation police.
What these women were doing was illegal they were not allowed to harvest mussels for subsistence. In an effort to prevent the indiscriminate stripping of rocks on the north KwaZulu-Natal coastline, people were required to buy a permit to gather mussels and they were restricted to a bag limit.
There was no differentiation between people gathering mussels for fun and those gathering them for food. Anyone who tried to do differently was breaking the law.
That is until Jean Harris came along. Harris is the regional marine ecologist with KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, where she promotes and conducts research supporting intertidal resource management and biodiversity. Her work focuses on the resources of the shoreline, including the effects of harvesting on ecosystem structure and functioning.
Harris realised that the stand-off between the authorities and the women of Sokhulu was a no-win situation. Why not allow the women to remove mussels for food under controlled conditions and do an experiment on sustainable harvesting, she reasoned.
Harris approached the Green Trust for funding and approached KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife for its cooperation. The method of operation was quite simple: the food-gatherers of Sokhulu would be educated to realise that the uncontrolled gathering of the mussels from the rocks between Mapelane and Richard’s Bay was unsustainable. KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife would be persuaded to let the women harvest mussels for food in strictly controlled areas.
A strip of the rocky coast was set aside for harvesting. It was zoned into different areas. The Sokhulu food-gatherers were allowed to harvest certain amounts a day from each zone and were only allowed to take mussels above a certain size. A monitor was on hand to oversee the gathering.
“It sounds a great deal easier than it turned out,” says Harris. “Firstly, there had been decades of confrontation between the mussel-gatherers and officials. It was difficult to overcome years of mistrust.
“Secondly, it was hard to teach the women they were part of a decision-making process. They were so used to acceding to authority that it took a long time for them to assert themselves.
“There were actually many problems. The women who agreed to participate got bitter when they discovered that there were still illegal gatherers who were not cooperating. So there was still a need for law enforcement. With a growing population, the number of mussels they were allowed to take was still not enough to feed people adequately. The place where they were allowed to harvest is a two-hour walk from their village and they were unhappy they had to walk so far for such a small daily haul.
“Meetings between the Sokhulu women and KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife were also problematic: there was a language barrier; we found that we could not really keep to a formal meeting structure; the women were often too shy to stand up for themselves; officials were sometimes not very cooperative; the organisation was also going through budget cuts and restructuring that made the creation of relationships difficult.”
But Harris persisted and began to see her project gather momentum. From the start there had to be debate the first was about which tool to use to harvest the mussels. Through trial and error it was found that a screwdriver was most suitable tool for prising the mussels off the rocks.
The next debate was about how many mussels could be harvested. “There was no point in just telling the women about sustainability,” says Harris, “they had to see it for themselves.
“We started by finding out how much they knew. Clear traditional knowledge did, however, emerge. For example, harvesters knew at what time of year mussels are in best condition, that sand decimates mussel beds and that new small mussels grew from the rocks. The indigenous knowledge was characterised by being about pattern [what you see] with little understanding of the cause.
“For example, harvesters were initially adamant that we need not worry about over-harvesting since the seawater would come over the rocks and cause new ones to grow. The need for large mussels to provide the seed was rejected initially.”
Through a series of experiments conducted by the harvesters and intensive training courses in intertidal foodwebs and basic fishery management, the current system of harvesting is a blend of traditional and scientific knowledge. Now it is no longer the scientists who have to prove the case for conservation to the harvesters it is the other way round.
The Green Trust, with some assistance from the Mazda Wildlife Fund, the Pew Fellowship Foundation, the Poverty Relief Fund and Marine Coastal Management, has managed to create an ongoing project that is ensuring a food supply for the Sokhulu community and is exploring other forms of income through craft.
The Sokhulu mussel project is particularly relevant now because it is testing new legislation. The recently promulgated Living Marine Resources Act (18/1998) recognises subsistence fishers as a new sector of marine resource use and encourages community participation in the management of resources. The Act makes provision for managing and utilising subsistence fishing, and the mussel project has cleared the way for other types of subsistence fishing on other parts of the coastline.
For Harris this has been a pilot project that bears the torch for sustainable use of marine resources by impoverished communities. She is already working on plans to expand the concept to other regions and other types of marine food sources.