A new draft fishing policy has failed to consider the plight of thousands of subsistence fishermen, a Western Cape body working with the poor said on Wednesday.
”I think it is a pie in the sky … It’s a myth that small scale fishermen will be given greater access rights,” said Naseedh Jaffer, director of the Masifundise organisation.
Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk released a new fisheries policy on Tuesday for the allocation of long-term fishing rights worth about R70-billion.
The policy spells out how quotas will be allocated in the country’s 19 fisheries, how stocks will be managed, and sets out a regulatory framework.
Masifundise has applied to the high court to declare unconstitutional the minister’s failure to provide artisanal fishermen and subsistence fishermen living between Port Nolloth and the Mossel River access to marine resources.
It also wants the court to direct the minister to give such fishermen equitable access to these resources.
Jaffer said the only opportunities the new policy allowed for small scale fishers to get quotas was when so-called paper quota holders left a gap.
”We welcome that professionals, lawyers, teachers will not be getting access, but they are a small proportion to the traditional fishers who have not got access,” he said.
Jaffer said the policy was not ”integrated”, and it carved up the fisheries into different categories. He said traditional fishers should rather be given basket rights across different species of fish, and not species-specific rights.
Such a move would protect the ecosystem and provide sustainable income.
Jaffer said the policy was a perpetuation of the past, focusing on business-creation, commerce and profit-making.
He said traditional fishermen were not business people and in order to get access, one had to be a business or commercial entity.
”They [fishermen] need access rights for livelihood needs and not business needs and the policy does not address this,” said Jaffer.
Highlighting the hardships of traditional fishermen, an affidavit from a co-applicant in the Masifundise court case showed the lack of education and business acumen prevalent among fishing communities.
Kenneth George (51) an artisanal fisherman with six dependants, has been a ”treknetter” all his life.
”I went to school until standard one. I cannot read or write … I have never applied for a permit or quota to fish, because I could not afford the application fee and because I could not fill in the application form,” reads his affidavit.
”If I could have done so, I would have.”
Treknetting, or beach seine netting, has been carried on for generations. George said apart from the nets, the only equipment used was a rowing boat.
”This is not a lucrative job — sometimes we wait three to five months for haarder [mullet] or yellowtail, but we always get something to eat.”
George said with effect from January 6, 2003, all treknetting was stopped in False Bay, without consultation by government.
In the same year, many line fishing permits were withdrawn, resulting in George being unable to fish at all.
Marius Diemont of Marine and Coastal Management’s legal department referred all comment to the deputy Director-General Horst Kleinschmidt, who said Jaffer was entitled to his viewpoint. – Sapa