Fisheries department must take its cue from all South Africans

IT IS the late US broadcast journalist Edward R Murrow who once said: “To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful.”

I seem to have stirred the hornets’ nest when I suggested two weeks ago that the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is seriously considering moving its Fisheries branch, formerly known as Marine and Coastal Management, to Pretoria

I argued that Fisheries continues to work as an island from the main body and this has created duplications with the work done at head office.

Fisheries also paints a picture of being an independent body that is not governed by the department.

But it is clear that when I lamented that Fisheries has a bias towards the Western Cape and mainly big business in exclusion of the rest of the country and the small fisher folk, I ruffled feathers.

Since then, the DA, aided and abetted by the industry, consultants and faceless bloggers – and excellently using the media to execute their strategy – have come out, guns blazing, calling me names and even calling for my head.

The Cape Times (in its editorial of March 8) accuses me, in short, of making an uninformed call, even ridiculing me for wanting to move Fisheries to an inland office – likening me to a joke about a head of state who wanted to create a navy in a landlocked country.

It is clear that the DA – and, it would appear, some sections of the media – has been prevailed upon by lobby groups that have vested interests in keeping Fisheries a sole domain and exclusive interest of the Western Cape.

And, to be persuasive, they have been continuously untruthful. But, to their credit, because they have repeated the untruths so often, they now seem believable.

Unlike the DA, my lobby network is slightly broader. Instead of listening to one group with (financial) vested interests, as a national minister and a public representative, I take my cue from all South Africans, with or without a voice.

Fact: all government departments have their headquarters in Pretoria.

I cannot understand why Fisheries does not. Pretoria has been the administrative capital of SA since apartheid. This is not an introduction of the ANC.

The same way as we have Agriculture and Forestry offices in all provinces and regions, Fisheries will remain firmly represented in the Western Cape, and it should also have offices everywhere we have a mandate to develop and manage.

Fact: I am concerned, and so should the public be, that I could run a department that is so fragmented as to have glaring and expensive duplication of service and roles.

The Fisheries branch employs its own chief financial officer, has a full HR office, IT and many other corporate services.

‘I did not wake up from a bad dream and decided to put everyone on a plane’

This is despite the fact that head office gives these services to other branches with ease and excellence.

Fact: I stated clearly that we are going to conduct a scientific study of the feasibility of this move.

I did not wake up from a bad dream and decided to put everyone in a plane and moving them, lock, stock and barrel, to Pretoria.

Being based in the Western Cape has resulted in Fisheries, by design or default, having a bias not only towards this province, but also towards the big commercial sector.

In 2010 I had to lift a ban on abalone fishing in some parts of the Western Cape. This ban, which had been in existence for about five years, had taken away livelihoods from small black fishing communities that for generations have depended on the sea for their survival, education and prosperity.

Similarly, there are areas in the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and Kwazulu-natal that have suffered unfairly from underdevelopment because Fisheries has focused its work on the commercial Western Cape sector.

To this effect, we are dealing with many cases at Fisheries that point to maladminstration at best, and corruption at worst, which, to me, could have been managed better from headquarters.

The continued repetition that 80 percent of commercial fishing happens in the Western Cape is as much as a result of climatic realities as it is about the fact that the Western Cape has a monopoly over the industry.

I am determined to go ahead with this fact-finding study.

This study is about better co-ordination of our three branches, better use of resources and, certainly, about better use of resources.

Unlike the DA, I will use the truth, that is believable, to be persuasive.

Joemat-pettersson is minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries