Cape small-scale fishers demand recovery targets be upheld
Suspend the allocation of all WCRL fishing rights to those responsible for benefiting from fronting, racketeering
IN CONTEXT of the crisis in the West Coast Rock Lobster (WCRL) fishery, which arises directly in consequence to decades of ignorance, maladministration and grossly incompetent official management, “The Collective” represent the majority interest of small-scale fishers (SSFs) in the Northern, Western and Southern Cape.
It incorporates all members of Coastal Links SA, the SA United Fishing Front and 15 independent community-based structures (plus numerous SSFs in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, but excluding Masifundise Development Trust).
“The Collective” is a unified apolitical movement of coastal community artisanal fishers dedicated to promoting, protecting and securing sustainable use of the WCRL resource for the direct benefit of SSFs as provided for in the SmallScale Fisheries Policy. It's where our vast membership's constitutional human rights to access a sustainable livelihood from our nation's natural marine resource endowments was only recognised for the first time in history by amendments to the Marine Living Resources Act, 1998, in 2014. This despite our ancestral heritage of being the first fishers and gatherers of Nearshore marine resources in Southern Africa. As SSFs we know who we are, where we originate and what is rightfully ours, but which unscrupulous capitalists, politicians and rotten officials would have all believe, is not.
The suffering we have unmercifully been forced to bear through decades of deprivation under discriminatory laws, which have criminalised our way of life to benefit an unscrupulous elite, is no longer tenable in fishing communities, where our members' patience has worn thin and where peaceful protest action is now concomitantly being met by rubber bullets
The first and foremost concern of “The Collective” is the present sustainable status of the WCRL biomass, which according the WCRL Scientific Working Group of the department and related academics, presently stands at a mere 2% of its pre-exploitation level.
Unlike unscrupulous others, our members present and future livelihoods as household breadwinners for the young, ageing and old in ravaged coastal communities are entirely dependent on sustainable use of the WCRL biomass, and we therefore demand that the recovery targets introduced by the WCRL SWG in 2010 to rebuild the sustainable status of the WCRL biomass B75mm by 7% by 2021 not only be upheld, but immediately improved
In this regard, and specifically in respect of the WCRL fishery, “The Collective” calls for:
The immediate suspension of the mechanised WCRL trap method of capture, which measurably since its introduction in 1965 is indisputably the major factor materially responsible for the present severely depleted sustainable status of the WCRL biomass.
The Small Scale Fisheries sector presently operational on an Interim Relief basis and WCRL Commercial Nearshore right holders are to be directly apportioned a minimum of 70% of the access to the global WCRL Total Allowable Catch to be caught exclusively by SSFs and WCRL Nearshore right holders within the Nearshore, deploying the WCRL hand-hauled ring-net method of capture at a demarcated depth contour of less than 100m.
The fishing operations of all WCRL Commercial Offshore right holders to immediately be restricted to operating at a demarcated depth contour of no less than 100m.
The patently flawed process used by the department for verifica- tion and identification of the bona fides of all SSFs, rejected by our members as being undemocratic and corrupt, to immediately be revisited with the support and identification facilities of the South Africa Social Security Agency, and the capacity and expertise of the Independent Electoral Commission.
The Consultative Advisory Forum and the Fisheries Transformation Council provided for under sections 5, 6, 7 and 29 to 36 of the MLRA respectively, to guide the minister in decision-making, to immediately be established equitably accommodating and representing the interests of the Small Scale Fisheries sector in South Africa.
Our members demands for 'Shared Information Exchange Symmetry' in respect of the marketing of WCRL locally and internationally, as provided in the Competition Commissions Conditional approval of an Exemption to South Africa's five largest WCRL exporters, to immediately be suspended pending our members' equitable accommodation in transparent alignment of the Competition Commission's envisaged objectives for ‘Shared Information Exchange Symmetry' to equitably benefit all WCRL participants, downstream and upstream.
The custodians of the MLRA to cease paying lip-service to addressing long-standing widespread allegations of corruption and to immediately move to suspend the allocation of all WCRL fishing rights to those responsible for benefiting from fronting, racketeering and fleecing SSFs in equitable revenue accrual in the completed downstream and upstream value chain for WCRL, locally and internationally.
The Delegated Authority to be instructed to immediately announce a sustainable global WCRL TAC for the 2017/18 WCRL fishing season and its equitable apportionment among all WCRL sub-sectors in a manner that is fully committed to rebuilding the sustainable status of the WCRL biomass for the benefit of present and future WCRL fishing generations.
Garcia is the Liaison Officer of “The Collective”