Tina’s scaly fish fiasco laid bare
Rights process a litany of abuse and errors
FISHERMAN Hano Blake was at a New Year’s Eve braai when he got the call: after a lifetime at the job, he was no longer permitted to catch fish at sea — his rights had just been cancelled.
“I just packed up my wife and kids and went home. All I’ve ever done is fish. What am I supposed to do now?”
Blake, from Yzerfontein in the Western Cape, relayed the bad news to his crew, including Rudi Pullen, who is blind.
Said Pullen: “My skipper called me on New Year’s Eve to tell us he didn’t get a licence, so we don’t have work. Fishing is the only thing I know. What other work must I do?”
Their story is one of hundreds of similar tales that prompted an investigation into South Africa’s biggest fishing scandal to date — the 2013 long-term rights allocation.
Although the investigation finished in May last year, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries sat on the report until Tuesday this week.
It contains shocking details of bizarre errors and political donations in the process of allocating R5-billion worth of fishing rights — which was done without even caring whether recipients had boats or lived at the coast.
The 120-page report was commissioned by the department’s former minister, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, following outrage over the “disastrous” allocation in December 2013.
Many of the allocations — some of which are being legally challenged by a fishing association — were questionable.
In the deep-sea tuna pole-line fishery, for example, the 6m Sophia S vessel was awarded a right despite the fact the South African Maritime Safety Authority insists all vessels for this fishery be at least 10m long.
In a letter sent to the department in May last year, one of the report’s authors, Peter Harris, raised a specific concern about successful bidders without the necessary boats. Exam- ples given were companies BMC Visserye CC and Unathi-Wena Fishing CC.
Another company, Letap Fishing CC, did not have a shark boat. It had a squid boat that had not been modified for shark longlining.
In the letter Harris said: “The demersal shark longline allocation was a total debacle. The scoring was extensively manipulated to arrive at a contrived, anomalous result.”
There were many surprise inclusions in the list of successful bidders, such as former gang kingpin Ernie Lastig Solomons.
“The whole thing is a fiasco,” said former department chief director Shaheen Moolla, who had helped manage the previous long-term rights allocation, in 2005. “The report is extremely definitive. The entire rights allocation process needs to be set aside.”
Other damning findings include:
A “locked” database containing the final decision on rights allocations was accessed by Joemat-Pettersson’s former deputy director-general, Desmond Stevens, the man at the centre of a “fish for pals” scandal last year;
Stevens amended a spreadsheet of rights beneficiaries, al- legedly to correct mistakes;
Joemat-Pettersson authorised changes to the rights procedure without consulting the finance minister;
Amended application forms excluded key criteria such as access to the sea or involvement in the industry; and
An audit sample of applications revealed applicants were scored for making donations, including to the ANC, but not for complying with basic safety norms such as providing safety gear for crew.
Commentators this week said the report, authored by legal firm Harris Nupen Molebatsi, raised major concerns about the credibility of Joemat-Pettersson, who presided over the rights allocation process shortly before being shifted to the energy portfolio in May last year.
“It seems a little bit unfair that the new minister should be saddled with Tina’s mess,” said Zelda Jongbloed, a DA member of parliament’s agriculture, forestry and fisheries portfolio committee.
Jongbloed said the committee had received only part of the Harris, Nupen Molebatsi report on Tuesday, and was unable to discuss its findings due to incomplete documentation.
The report is a further blow for the embattled fisheries department, which is reeling from a series of embarrassing decisions, including the awarding — and subsequent cancellation — of an R800-million contract to manage South Africa’s fisheries patrol fleet.
In a presentation to the portfolio committee, Joemat-Pettersson’s successor, Minister Senzeni Zokwana, said he had incorporated the recommendations of the report into an operational plan for the next round of fishing rights applications.
Jongbloed said it was a matter of concern that the same people who presided over the flawed 2013 process were involved in the current round of allocations. “Are they setting that up for failure as well?” she said.
Joemat-Pettersson declined to comment.
Applicants were scored for making donations to the ANC