SIX Kalk Bay fishing boats spent the first three months of the year tied to a concrete jetty. In January the boats were seized under a preservation order while the Scorpions investigated nearly 700 tons of illegal crayfish. Last month the high court let the boats out of the harbour on condition that they are monitored by observers contracted to Marine and Coastal Management (MCM – previously the department of sea fisheries). In the meantime, the criminal investigation against the boat owners continues.
The Kalk Bay community is tight lipped, refusing to talk about the poaching scandal. Instead, they doggedly celebrate the awarding of new quotas to local fishermen, who for decades have lived off the sea.
Kenneth Edwards who, after 46 years of fishing for a pittance, heard late last year that he is entitled to 800kg of lobster every year for four years. West Coast rock lobster presently sells at around R150 a kilogram and Edwards is one of 10 men who, in the midst of the whisperings, are celebrating a turnaround in their lives. Horst Kleinschmidt, MCM programme manager, created a new quota category that turned subsistence quotas into “limited commercial quotas”. Applications cost only R500 as opposed to the R6 000 required for full commercial quotas.
The fact that the men do not have boats is irrelevant. The new application guidelines do not insist on a boat. The 10 seasoned men make the guidelines of “history in the industry”, “knowledge in the sector” and the “ability to catch, process and market the fishing right” seem understated. They share lifetimes of fishing experience and have elected to hire the Karimer D to fish their quota.
Fifty-two Kalk Bay widows, housewives and pensioners have also received a quota of two tons of lobster a year for four years, starting now. The women are ecstatic. Having lived in fear of the south-easter and the fickleness of snoek they finally have a chance to make ends meet. The group’s pensioners look forward to being rewarded after a gruelling life on the sea, rather than “rotting on the harbour side”, as harbour master Pat Stacey says he has seen some do. Up until now pensioners have had to rely on a pay-out of R3 500 from the Kalk Bay West Coast Rock Lobster Association, a company that comprises most of Kalk Bay’s fishermen, after which they were disqualified from receiving dividends.
The January bust and the new limited commercial quotas augur a shift in ballast. For now, though, Kalk Bay’s power structures remain shaky but stable. The fishing boats that were seized then released have, for the past six years, fished Kalk Bay’s communal 17,5-ton quota of West Coast rock lobster. The boat owners kept 26% of the payment for the catch and the rest was divided among more than 200 members of the rock lobster association. Annual dividends ranged between R1 000 and R3 500.
A third-generation villager says that these boat owners, furtively referred to as “the cabal”, have been the target of mistrust for many years. The man, who asked not to be named, voices the suspicion of some that their quota earns more money than the boat owners claim. For now tradition still overrides suspicion, for once the seized boats were freed the cabal allegedly resumed the task of fishing out Kalk Bay’s long-standing lobster quota.
The MCM’s clampdown on poaching is one of many signs of real transformation within a previously chaotic industry. The MCM’s first attempt to implement the Marine Living Resources Act of 1998 was less than impressive. The Act was designed to gradually transfer fishing rights from rich white hands to fisher-people who have so far been deprived of a stake in the sea. The department of sea fisheries, however, was afflicted by corruption and mismanagement. It was accused of R24-million worth of unauthorised spending, while dubious quota allocations were made.
Political connections became a gateway to fish, while paper quotas were a quick way for “historically disadvantaged persons” to make easy cash. A hefty Kalk Bay fisherman with burnt blue eyes laughs: “In that queue for quota applications I saw hawkers, teachers and Afrikaans priests.” Quotas intended to allow disadvantaged people to begin new businesses and to create employment in impoverished communities were bought back by big companies. The wealth of the sea remained securely in the grip of the big five: Oceana, Lusitania, Sea Harvest, Premier and Irvin and Johnson (I&J).
Although large companies still dominate the industry, Kleinschmidt (also a deputy director at the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism) has introduced clever measures over the past two years. He has instituted tighter administrative measures to counteract charges of partiality and bribes. Claire Attwood, a fisheries reporter who works closely with Kleinschmidt, says that a body of independent lawyers virtually “quarantined” themselves in a room for three months to apply a newly designed points system to thousands of quota applications. The system awards the highest number of points to transformation measures, that is, measures that ensure equity and/or employment for the previously disadvantaged.
A rights-verification unit was formed this year to filter out misrepresentations. Kleinschmidt employed a private company, DeLoitte and Touche, to oversee quota awards and operate a help-line for queries and complaints. A member of the rock lobster association says that the “0800” number has been “burning up” since a boy fresh out of college received an 800kg lobster quota, plus one for perlemoen. The man expresses the angry suspicion of many local fishermen when he says: “These people were weekend fishermen, him and his dad. His father works for Premier and I’m sure he is friendly with someone high up in the African National Congress.”
The new quota selection system is obviously not without controversy. Eddie Rosslind, the chairperson of the Kalk Bay West Coast Rock Lobster Association says that most of the new right-holders are going to “smoke and drink out the extra money. Few of them have gone into this from a business point of view.” Kleinschmidt acknowledges that some of this pessimism will be well founded. He has, however, received some hopeful feedback, mostly from the West Coast, where quota holders have banded together and employed local people. The building of support structures for fishing communities is a priority, says Kleinschmidt. He mentions discussions between the MCM and the British government’s development agency to start training programmes for previously poor fisher-people. “A Japanese NGO is also interested in assisting in training. This hasn’t happened yet, but we are talking about it right now.” The MCM estimates that its new quota allocations are worth R39-million to poor coastal communities.
Jean Gomez, the treasurer of the Kalk Bay Pioneers, the pensioners’ organisation, and one of its directors, Helena Clarence shrug off any negativity. This is their chance, they say, to start a business that their grandchildren can benefit from one day. “Only with a quota,” says Clarence, can fishing ever be part of her family’s future. She says: “In the past I had one son and one dream: that he should never become a fisherman.”
In a contradictory twist typical of this interdependent community, the Pioneers paid for the use of the Marion Dawn, one of the freed boats, to fish this year’s quota.
Deliberately ignoring political tensions in the town, the women are determined to prove to the “quota people” that “women can do what men can do”. They say that the Pioneers are determined to invest in the business and the community, and strengthen their position when application time comes around again. They agreed to pay themselves only R1 000 dividends so they can save enough to buy their own boat. They have plans to donate money to the local school and buy a Kombi to transport their pensioners to and from hospital. This quota, they say, ends a lifetime of risk and the grim reality of “no fish, no pay, no food”.