South African movie dives into the complexity of poaching
WHAT does salvation look like? When a person lacks options, this may not be a straightforward judgement to make. Is salvation an unearned windfall, or doing what’s legal?
The award-winning South African film Sons of the Sea pivots on questions like these. It explores the moral universe of forced choices through the narrative of Mikhail and Gabriel, two brothers from Kalk Bay, a fishing village near Cape Town. Mikhail is the older brother and a small-time abalone poacher. Gabriel is set up as his opposite: He completed school, plans to study further, has a good job at a local hotel and is in a relationship with a responsible young woman. Mikhail lives according to somewhat looser morals — associated with active criminality.
When a foreigner dies in the hotel where he works, Gabriel finds a stash of dried and packaged abalone, an amount that represents a fortune if it can be sold successfully. The brothers steal the valuable marine snails, setting off the wellknown crime movie spiral into uncontrolled events.
As a counterbalance to the brothers, we encounter Peterson, an official with the local government department that deals with marine resource extraction. We are given clues about Peterson to indicate a man in a desperate situation — a widower with a young son and problematic mother-inlaw, financial troubles and an inherited ethos of living off the land. Without giving away the story, suffice it to say that the lucre of the abalone lures all three to a dramatic resolution.
Abalone, or perlemoen (Haliotis midae), is a shellfish that was once abundant along South Africa’s Western Cape coast. Illegal extraction rose steeply in the 1990s, for a number of reasons. It is highly sought after as a delicacy and status symbol. This made it valuable to the established black marketeers who saw the newly democratised South Africa as an expansion opportunity.
A number of coastal communities were left disappointed by the fishing rights processes that they had been relying on to reverse a century and more of colonial and apartheid exclusion from the formal fishing sector. When it became clear to these communities that they would not gain access to fishing resources, many took to “protest fishing”. This opened the gap for more intentionally-criminal elements.
While it has its roots in the idea that the sea belongs to the people of the Cape, the reality is that poaching is devastating these communities and the ecology on which they wish to base their livelihoods.
The complex poaching world
Sons of the Sea is beautifully filmed, with close-ups and lingering shots of the Atlantic, the Great African Seaforest and the fynbos-covered hills at the southern tip of Africa. The land and sea help determine what actions the characters take. Switching between them echoes the idea of salvation as ambiguous, preventing clear distinctions between who is good and who is bad.
When I talk to people about my research into marine resource law enforcement in the Western Cape, I often encounter two perspectives: A conviction that all illegal fishers are criminal poacher-gangsters; or that poaching is a noble response to the enduring legacy of colonial and apartheid exclusions of people of colour from the ocean space and resources. The reality is usually far less clear cut.
What I argue — in line with other work on different kinds of illegal resource extraction — is that the decision to poach is not a decision, but a destination on a journey that is often fraught with loss and exclusion. Many divers have died in rough seas or when trying to evade law enforcement. Unless you are the kingpin or the merchant, poaching is a dangerous choice which could see you dead, in jail or embroiled in gangsterism.
My research has shown me that South Africa’s coastal communities are under-resourced to the point of precarity. The inter-generational cycle of poverty leaves one with few choices. The dithering by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment on implementing policy for small fisheries means that poaching is often the only option. It is not simply a choice between legality and criminality, it is often between starving or not.
To stop poaching, communities must be nurtured — in some cases regenerated — to provide young men like Mikhail with options. In the film, he is not simply criminal — he is trapped by the legacy of exclusion that reserves the sea for others. As a young man of colour, who did not finish school, he is in a bracket that currently suffers from 40,2% unemployment. He has no hope of getting a legal fishing licence, or a regular job with prospects. So why would he turn away from the one thing that provides without taking?
This article was taken from The Conversation
Marieke Nortonis a lecturer, Course Convenor and post-doctoral Rresearcher at University of Cape Town