Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Tide sets against the small fishers
Pro-trawler policy make it hard to eke out a living, writes RAGHEEMAH ARENDS
IT’S 3AM in Saldanha when Joseph Williams, 50, gets up. There’s nothing more he’d like to do than go back to sleep, but he looks over at his sleeping wife and knows he has to provide for his family. With over 30 years of experience, he “feels” the weather to know if conditions are conducive to go out to sea. The ocean is in his blood and, according to the father of three, the salty water runs deep through his veins.
Williams, a line fish and rock lobster fisher, hasn’t done this for five months. He hasn’t had enough money to afford to hire a boat since June. Hiring a boat takes a large proportion of the money he makes on his daily catch.
Due to the migration of fish, there are many occasions he returns from the sea with nothing to show for his intensive labour. “I work very hard and feel sad there isn’t enough fish to catch and sell to cover the cost of hiring the boat.”
His wife Mercia Kotze, 50, sells potatoes to earn a little income. “It’s not much but at least it’s something. I believe God made the sea for everyone.”
Maxwell Moss, 57, an ANC activist in the 1980s, was an MP for 10 years from June 1999. Moss, also the son of a fisherman, remembers his father poaching to provide for the family.
“We accepted that way of living. I’m opposed to poaching now but I can understand that my father and the other fisherman would steal fish so that we could survive.”
In his retirement, Moss still plays an active role in the community, advocating for the rights of his fellow residents. “I’m not happy about what is currently happening in the fishing industry. Fishing is the most dangerous work on earth… fishermen regularly die on the job and there’s no official research because it’s accepted in our fishing communities.”
Self-employed fishers receive no benefits, like UIF, insurance or medical aid. “If the fisherman goes out to sea and catches nothing, there’s no income. If they die out at sea, their family is left with nothing. These are the issues faced by small-scale fishers.”
Widow Samira Snyders, 85, is a living example of having been left with no benefits and no means of income after her fisherman husband, the family’s sole breadwinner, passed away after a heart attack.
According to Moss, before 2001, fishers applied for a licence on an annual basis. In 2001, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries introduced the medium-term policy, under which successful applicants would get a four-year licence. But this changed in 2005 when successful applicants were granted a 15-year licence, but this meant unsuccessful fishers had to wait for 15 years before they could apply again.
In response, in 2006 the NGO, Masifundise, took the issue to Equality Court on behalf the small-scale fishers. The fishermen won, and were granted interim relief which is still in place.
Moss said: “Many fishers are unemployed because of limited rights and become poor. We need to find a way to preserve the resources but still help the people. A solution would be to have storage facilities, which would help to regulate the price of fish. There should also be a fish bank for fishers who need resources to borrow money from.
“The department needs to consult with local fishers when conducting their research, to get more accurate information for the policies and statistics,” said Moss.
The fishers highlighted the importance of the near-shore belonging to the communities and not big business. Christo Koopman, 52, said: “It isn’t blood flowing through my veins, it’s seawater.”
He said that because he caught line fish, it gave him the opportunity to assess the size of the fish and if it was undersized he put it back into the ocean.
Carmelita Mostert, 43, chairperson of Coastal Links Saldanha, said that small-scale fishers were mindful of the resources. “Commercial fishers’ income is more steady than small-scale fishers. Many fishers are forced to do illegal things like poach because they aren’t given licences. It’s a risk they take to provide for their family, even though they could be fined or go to jail. The department makes us criminals.”
West Coast fisher communities last month protested outside the offices of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries in Cape Town and presented the department with a memorandum after it proposed a 59% cut in the quota for the West Coast rock lobster.
Siphokazi Ndudane, deputy directorgeneral of the department’s fisheries management, previously said that finding the balance between allocating the fishing rights to different sectors was never easy. Fishers caught poaching are fined according to the size of their catch.
Ndudane said poaching put the most pressure on resources. “People who don’t have a licence put pressure on the resources and some individuals who do have fishing rights over catch, which also causes strain.”