Fisheries leaves seaweed harvesters destitute
NATURAL RESOURCE: A community-owned seaweed harvesting company at Buffeljags near Gansbaai has lost its licence to gather seaweed on local beaches A REMOTE fishing village that survives largely by harvesting seaweed from its rocky shore has been left destitute due to yet another fishing rights dispute.
Buffeljags, on the Western Cape’s Overberg coast, is a windswept clump of about 40 seaside houses at the end of a gravel road.
Its residents relied largely on poaching to make ends meet until a flagship seaweed business created more than 30 jobs.
But this week, just days after paying off their twin-engine harvesting boat, the community lost their harvesting rights.
The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has not renewed their 10-year rights allocation, stating that it will be transferred into a yet-to-be established small-scale community fishing sector.
The small-scale policy makes provision for some fishing resources — in this case seaweed — to be reserved for still-to-beestablished community co-operatives that will take joint ownership of the resource.
But in the case of Buffeljags, the result is that as from this month seaweed workers will no longer be paid, business has come to a standstill, and the settlement’s only school — a crèche funded by seaweed income — faces closure.
“There is no other income for us here,” said Johnny van der Bergh, director of Buffeljags Marine. “It’s not like around here one can go and look for a job in construction.”
Van der Bergh and his codirectors are appealing the department’s decision, which has left them puzzling over government policy: a grassroots business owned by a community trust with a monthly income of around R200 000 from seaweed is now high and dry.
Their R110 000 tractor, bought in November, gathers dust in a warehouse, and a halfbuilt R30 000 seaweed drying facility has been abandoned.
The standstill also threatens the only other major business in town — one of the country’s largest abalone farms that buys much of the kelp harvest.
The seaweed workers are sceptical about the government’s new small-scale fishing rights policy, which aims to set up around 300 community cooperatives along the coast. The department has identified coastal zones where community rights will be prioritised. According to the new system, a fisherman can qualify for either a community right or a commercial right, but not both.
The Buffeljags seaweed harvesters said they had already applied for their new commercial seaweed rights when the department announced that the area had been incorporated into the small-scale system.
They also pointed out that, while they are already up and running, the small-scale system is still years away — meaning the community, with huge monthly expenses to handle, is effectively stranded.
In addition, not all residents have been included as beneficiaries SHELL GAME: Abalone farming is one of the few sources of jobs in Buffeljags near Gansbaai of new small-scale rights, amid widespread allegations of political interference in the rights process.
The permit bungle has had knock-on effects along the coast, notably for Buffeljags Marine sub-contractor Ferdi Kritzinger, who this week retrenched 10 people he employed to collect seaweed around Pearly Beach. “I had to let them go — there were tears in their eyes,” Kritzinger said.
Disputes over new long-term fishing rights have also put the spotlight on “radical economic transformation” within the fishing industry, with the department coming under fire from both established industry — for moving too fast — and from marginalised communities — for not moving fast enough.
Andy Johnston, one of the architects of the small-scale policy, said the Buffeljags stand-off underlined the poor implementation of the plan.
“It is a shame what is happening to the people there. [ The department] can’t seem to cross the finishing line. There are nice policies and nice talking, but nobody is delivering.”
Craig Smith, the department’s director of small-scale fishing, confirmed that Buffeljags Marine had applied for an exemption, which was “currently under consideration”.
He said the final list of smallscale beneficiaries still needed to be finalised, and only then “will we start with the work of mobilising fishers into co-operatives and then start the rights-application process”.