End of the line for anglers

‘This is my life,” says John Deweer, nodding at the fishing rod in his hands. ‘This is my food, my clothes, it gives me everything. We got no time for stealing; we just try and fish to live.”

Sitting on North Beach, surrounded by the conspicuous consumption of the Durban Beach Festival, it is apparent that the ‘everything” Deweer’s rod gives him is not very much.

He lives, most nights, on a pier on Durban’s Golden Mile; his possessions are in a rucksack at his feet.

Deweer will spend the night fishing intermittently; when and where he hears the shad are biting. ‘Hopefully I’ll make some extra money and go into the [homeless] shelter, but the problem there is that you pay R25 a night. If you don’t have the money to book again they charge you for your bags if you leave them there,” says the 34 year old, who sells his daily catch for between R10 and R30.

Deweer is one of Durban’s subsistence fishermen who feel their livelihood and historical claim to the Indian Ocean are threatened by the development plans of the municipality and the National Port Authority (NPA).

Durban’s fishermen voiced their anger after the invoking of the apartheid-era National Key Points Act to keep them out of the harbour — fishing off a boat is still allowed — and believe that the city’s plan to build a small-craft harbour on Vetch’s Pier will rob them of yet another fishing spot.

As the NPA continues its R2-billion plan to widen and deepen the harbour mouth, the North Pier has been closed to fishermen. The South Pier’s proposed closure is on hold — for now.

‘We were told the NPA planned to close South Pier from June 1, so we organised a protest march and have occupied the pier ever since,” said Des D’sa of the KwaZulu-Natal Subsistence Fishermens’ Forum, which represents 5 000 Durban fishermen. There are about 15 000 subsistence fishermen in the eThekwini region, while the 1999 State of the Environment report put the national figure at 3,6-million, with the industry worth R1,1-billion. Commercial fishing, it said, employed 27 000 people.

D’sa said the fishermen had not been consulted on the ‘unilateral notice” on the South Pier’s closure. They have called on the NPA to reverse ‘all decisions that have been finalised regarding the closure of, and access to, South and North Pier, Durban Harbour and beaches without involving us”. Their memorandum also called for an urgent meeting of interested parties.

The NPA has handed the matter over to its attorneys. Jyothi Naidoo, its acting corporate affairs manager, said ‘we do not want to get into a debate through the media with them. They have their story and we have ours.”

Naidoo said South Pier had not been closed because there was ‘a bit of a delay in the fencing, which is likely to start in mid-July”. He said the deepening and widening of the port was important for ‘safety of navigation and to cater for future needs. The project is scheduled for completion in 2010.”

He added: ‘The reopening of the South Pier for public access will be determined by security and other considerations closer to the time.”

D’sa doubts the area will ever open to the public, especially the poor: ‘With the recent tendency to use the National Key Points Act, it will be closed forever. We looked at the proposals and 98% of the work will happen off North Pier. Why are they closing South Pier down? ‘Is the council looking to privatise that side of the harbour for luxury apartments and hotels, like they did on the Point?”

He rejects Deputy Mayor Logie Naidoo’s contention that fishermen can use other sites, saying the South Pier is unique in Durban, and possibly in South Africa, because of the deep-sea fishing available. ‘Poor fisherman need only take a train to catch barracuda, Natal snoek, geelbek and salmon, otherwise they need a boat.”

With sea-borne trade accounting for 95% of South Africa’s international commerce and Durban harbour accounting for 33% of that trade by mass and 65% of all containers, the harbour expansion, which also includes a quadrupling of its container capacity, seems inevitable.

But for pensioner Essop Ahmed (69), the closure of South Pier is a deeply personal issue: ‘I’ve been fishing there since 1953, and before that my father fished there. My sons fish there and I want my grandchildren to fish there.

‘It’s over a hundred years old, a national heritage site with so much history, so many stories of dead fishermen, and they want to shut us out!

‘We’re fighting to keep it open for the poor guys from Chatsworth, Merebank and all around who live off the fish they catch. Where are they going to find jobs and feed their families?”

While the line fishermen have claimed the South Pier as their historical right, it, along with the harbour, is an area which has also been harvested by seine-netters: ‘It is a tradition which goes back to the late 1800s when Indian fishermen, post-indenture set up their homes in Fynnlands on the Bluff, from which they would go out in their boats. With the Group Areas Act, they were moved out to Chatsworth, and as industrial development increased in the harbour and stock diminished, they slowly dissapeared,” said Dianne Scott, Associate Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Environmental Sciences. Scott co-produced a film, Hanging Up the Nets: The History of the Durban Bay Fishing Community, which tracks the history of these fishermen and their descendants.