Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Valli Moosa seems set to challenge black empowerment fat cats as he considers ways to put an end to perlemoen poaching.
In the past year 188 tons of poached perlemoen worth about R100-million was confiscated by police, but close on 2 100 tons — five times the legal catch — reached Hong Kong from South Africa last year, Hong Kong police estimate.
Black empowerment companies have acquired big quotas as part of transformation in the fishing industry.
Moosa, whose portfolio includes Marine and Coastal Management (MCM), is apparently thinking of asking the ”so-called big players” in the industry to give up their perlemoen quotas in favour of ”small, individual divers who live along the coast”. This, he claimed, would help to stop the poaching because the local communities would have a stake in the resource.
The big companies in the hake industry have voluntarily surrendered up to 20% of their hake quotas in favour of black empowerment entrants in the past five years, and Moosa has obviously decided that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
It is not yet clear how the plan would work. MCM head Horst Kleinschmidt told the Mail & Guardian that it was based on Australian and Chilean models in which communities were given exclusive rights to fish in designated sectors on condition that they protected their own turf.
”We have now instructed our own scientists, and marine scientists at the University of Cape Town, to work at top speed on adapting the model to South Africa. This does not mean the fishers would be left on their own to fight the poachers — we shall keep all the law-enforcement agencies on board as long as it takes. We shall also bring in new regulations that will make it easier to get a conviction. By next year we shall have four new, fast fishery patrol boats.”
Perlemoen have been poached close to extinction, but Moosa has apparently decided against his other option — stopping all harvesting.
His chosen option, if acted on, would reverse an earlier policy decision that took the right to harvest perlemoen away from subsistence fishers — the ”small, individual divers”.
Two years ago MCM adopted a policy of encouraging the formation of small, limited companies to harvest perlemoen because, in the view of a special task team, ”the high value of abalone was not compatible with a subsistence fishery”.
This has proved to be a mistake. There were 458 applications for these limited rights — and only 232 were successful. Of 83 applications for full commercial rights, 39 were successful.
So hundreds of disgruntled would-be perlemoen fishers — many more than bothered to apply for quotas — have decided to throw in their lot with the poachers. Moenieba Isaacs of the University of the Western Cape is one of several academics who have reported community perceptions that quota allocations are illegitimate and unfair.
MCM had 413 tons of perlemoen to dispose of in the current allocation, valid until the end of this year. This is the total allowable catch, set on the advice of MCM’s marine scientists. Since 1995 it has been reduced by a third. In the latest round 74 tons were allocated for limited rights holders in units of 430kg each, and 313 tons for full commercial rights.
But there was a very uneven distribution of the full commercial amounts allocated to full commercial rights holders. Four of them received 145 tons between them, and these are the ”big players” targeted by Moosa.
They are Foodcorp, a subsidiary (via Marine Products) of Gauteng entrepreneur Ndaba Ntsele’s Pamodzi; Tuna Marine, a subsidiary of Oceana (jointly owned by Real Africa and Tiger Brands); Walker Bay Canners, owned by Irvin & Johnson, which claims substantial black shareholding; and Blue Star Holdings, with its associated Abalone Processors.
But the targeted companies are apparently not prepared to cooperate. They have already met, protesting vociferously, with Kleinschmidt, and have asked for a meeting with Moosa.
Blue Star protested in a press statement that established companies were being penalised in favour of poachers. ”Introducing a new regime into the current state of chaos will not end the poaching,” it said.
Oceana warned of unemployment when factories closed down because of quota loss. A Foodcorp spokesperson said Moosa’s statement was ”obviously a matter of concern to us”.
All the companies insisted that MCM should re-establish the rule of law before making any changes in quota allocations.
Andy Johnston, chairperson of the Artisinal Fishers’ Association, said restoring rights to subsistence fishers was a step in the right direction. But informal Third World fishers should not be subjected to individual transferable quotas.
His association and its international affiliates in India and Malaysia were in favour of the quota-free system known as Cread (controlled, regulated, equitable access distribution) in which fishing communities were entirely responsible for their own areas.
The so-called perlemoen poaching war has been given front-page treatment in Cape Town newspapers for months. Briefly, it involves drug-related syndicates in the Far East and their local connections. The perlemoen goes out, mainly to Hong Kong, where it fetches up to R1 000 a kilogram, and drugs come in.
The Wo Shing Wo group, the Sun Yee On, the 14K Hau group and the 14K Ngai group, all based in Hong Kong, have been identified as having a significant presence in South Africa, says Peter Gastrow of the Institute for Security Studies.
The syndicates have paid divers up to R370 a kilogram, as against R20 a kilogram for ”legal” perlemoen. So entire communities between Cape Point and Cape Agulhas have become involved in breaking the law: gangs of up to 100 have threatened conservation officers, on one occasion ramming a police boat with their powerful rubber duck.
Poachers operated openly during daylight hours in a marine reserve at Betty’s Bay, east of Cape Town, and contemptuously threatened locals who tried to intervene.
Clearly, the perlemoen war was getting out of hand. The Scorpions — an elite investigative unit — as well as the police, the army and the National Intelligence Agency have been drafted to help the under-resourced conservation officers. This concerted effort is only now making inroads on the syndicates’ activities.
There have been some dramatic, well-publicised arrests, while boats, vehicles and a Gansbaai house have been seized.
It has been suggested that the MCM has been warned that the state will not throw away much more money on protecting a resource that contributes far less than, say, tourism to the economy.
And Moosa’s suggestion smacks of a last-ditch effort to get the situation under control.