Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Indigenous seek fishing rights
Khoisan leaders wish to trawl the oceans without quotas and permits
INDIGENOUS people say it is their historical right to fish South Africa’s oceans without being dictated to by permits or quotas.
Khoisan leaders voiced their demands in a stakeholders’ meeting with the new Minister of Environmental Affairs, Barbara Creecy, this week. Creecy and her deputy, Makhotso Sotyu, spent over two hours listening to the concerns of fishers and fishery business owners.
Khoisan community leader Tanyan Gradwell said she was disgusted that not a single member of the ministerial board is of Khoisan heritage, and said her people would not be confined by the government’s limits on fishing.
“Nobody here can tell us when to fish and what to take out, when we’ve been doing it for 600 years,” Gradwell said. “The Khoisan people are tired of asking. This is our land; these are our oceans. We are not poachers; we are indigenous fishermen.”
Gregg Fick of First Indigenous Nation SA (Finsa) echoed her statement. “We are not stakeholders. We are the owners,” he said. “Indigenous people have the right to selfdetermination.”
Creecy assured all who attended the meeting that changes would be made to improve the industry. The Department of Environmental Affairs now includes the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
“We heard how you feel separated from the natural resources that you feel you should have ownership of,” Creecy said. “This is the beginning of a partnership to repair the damage in the department, and repair the industry so that all of us can prosper.”
She committed to making the permit process more transparent, in order to weed out corruption and nepotism.
“I think the only way we are going to solve the quota and licence issues in the fishing industry is that we’re going to have to make those decisions in public, so everyone can understand who gets what and why. It’s got to be open and public.”
A representative from the Kalk Bay fishing community said that climate change was profoundly affecting fish stocks and their migratory patterns – but no funding had been made available for useful research for fishers to change their operations.
“If this is a serious problem for the entire industry, what are the people meant to do if there’s no budget for proper research?” she said.
Creecy acknowledged that recent and relevant research was missing.
Community leader and fisher Gregg Louw from Hout Bay said each fishing settlement should be part of the decisions which determine their livelihood.
“Go to each fishing community and engage with those people to find out what would be the best plan. You must give the whole ocean economy to that community.”
Louw also railed against the concept that the government can control fishers’ access to the sea and its harvest.
“We don’t need a permit if we are directly a citizen of our country,” he said.