Dear Desmond Stevens and Team, You are Enacting the Will of the Majority The lifelong struggle of small scale artisanal and subsistence fishers from more that 160 rural and urban coastal fishing communities has been ignored for decades and there are still ruthless detractors who will do anything to prevent impoverished communities from extracting a livelihood from marine resources that occur in abundance at their doorsteps. In 2009 Desmond Stevens, with a proven track record for driving developmental and transformational projects aimed at poverty relief and community empowerment was appointed Director: Stakeholder Engagement at Fisheries and ever since he has travelled the length and breadth of the country to hear and understand the plight of affected coastal communities fishers and their families. In his previous role as a founding and National Executive Implementation Manager of the internationally acclaimed Working for Water Programme 18000 livelihood opportunities for mostly rural workers were swiftly created and since working at Fisheries, under the Working for Fisheries Expanded Public Works Programme a further 1200 livelihood opportunities have been created as a consequence of his vision and dedication. Further accomplishments include his ability to encourage the President and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson to visit coastal communities and motivate Cabinet to approve reopening of the commercial abalone fishery which instantly reactivated 1000 livelihood opportunities benefitting more than 3 000 downstream dependents. Since being appointed Acting Deputy Director General of Fisheries (DDG) in just 8 months his achievements include gazetting a new General and 8 Sector-specific policies for allocation of commercial fishing rights under the Fishing right allocations process 2013, a process he is responsible for having developed in record time as consequence to procrastination by several former ‘academic’ DDG’s who failed atrociously. In addition to successfully allocating fishing rights across 8 commercial fishery sectors timeously he is also responsible for fast-tracking amendments to the Marine Living Resources Act which for the first time in the history of South Africa legislatively recognizes the ancestral right of small scale fishers to a sustainable livelihood from our nation’s natural marine resources and he is presently fast-tracking the process to implement the Small Scale Fisheries Policy which he played a significant role in developing and which was approved by Cabinet in June 2012. The DDG is a remarkable revolutionary well known and praised for his tremendous efforts in all coastal fishing communities countrywide and so it leaves little wonder to understand why DDG Desmond Stevens, about to address the needs of some 30 000 fishers with more than 200 000 dependents under the SSFP, is under such vehement attack by a minority of vested interests who find him far too successful and unstoppable, especially when it comes to measurable delivery to the poor. The MLRA amendment bill and SSFP are unanimously supported by the vast majority of coastal community fishers and representative non-governmental organizations. This was irrevocably demonstrated at Portfolio Committee hearings and in the National Assembly where all political parties save one voted in favour of the Bill. The SSFP provides for fishing right allocations to Community Based Legal Entities as opposed to Independent Transferable Quotas to individuals which the National Development Plan supports and recommends that we; ‘Develop strategies for economic cooperation or association that give poor producers greater collective market power in value chains, create synergies and access to information, allowing them to achieve the minimum supply volumes required for participation, negotiate improved levels of market access and/or better terms of participation.’ ‘Identify other potential partners in the agro-processing value chain to support smallholder development.’ ‘Encourage supermarkets to open up value chains by partnering with local producers in rural areas.’ ‘Incentivise the development of niche markets to promote smaller producers.’ ‘Allocate economically viable fishing rights.’ ‘Review fisheries policies to determine the best way to allocate rights to maximise employment.’ whilst NDP further emphasises the need; ‘to find viable ways of bringing greater benefit to our traditional artisanal fishers, whose development is clearly far from adequate or viable’ and ‘ensure that the support systems for a viable small-scale industry is in place, including appropriate gear and technology, finance, training, rights and so forth.’ The amendment bill and the SSFP also give life to the resolutions of the Freedom Charter, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the Integrated Growth and Development Plan which are supported by the National Democratic Revolution Strategy and Tactics of the Ruling Party in Government to tackle the challenges of poverty, financial inequality and unemployment countrywide. In a dynamically efficient manner the DDG is merely enacting the will of the vast majority as opposed to the prejudiced will of a tiny minority. This minority parasitically feed-off of the back of micro-quota holders under the ITQ system as so called community representatives, middle-men, consultants or pre-2014 election political opportunists. The recent debacle in the line-fish sector is aptly indicative. Here a disgruntled group of mostly boat-owners who prior to 2014 held commercial line-fish rights but who for various reasons failed to qualify in terms of Frap13 policy criteria wish to bring an urgent application to overturn line-fish allocations. This arises despite the fact that in terms of Frap13 exhaustive criteria the appeals process is yet to be completed and a further fact that the majority of un-successful applicants in an amicably negotiated interim settlement have been granted exemptions to continue fishing until the appeals process is complete. The 2005 policy and process allocated 60% of all commercial line-fish rights to previously advantaged boat-owners and it has since been established that up to 50% of these former right holder failed to record satisfactory catching performance aggregate to landings by bona fide commercial line-fish professionals whilst 22% failed to record any fish-catching performance at all. It was previously noted that poor working conditions and financial inequality that existed under apartheid amongst boat-owners and crew continues and therefore a revised General and Sector-specific line-fish allocation policy was developed under a consultative process to overcome these challenges. The scoring profile for applicants was deliberately calibrated to address this issue. The result is that many applicants, mostly boat-owners failed to provide financial statements to substantiate income generated and empowerment equity transference that could confirm their crews are being fairly treated, appropriately remunerated and that tax is being paid in accordance with the privileged tonnage of fish annually harvest. Obviously applications were unsuccessful as a consequence of this and other technical criteria and many applicants received blank scorecards for submitting defective applications which in accordance with predetermined Frap13 policy could not be considered. 50% of the scientifically approved total allowable line-fish effort (1 725 crew) under Frap13 is set aside for allocation to Community Based Legal Entities under the provisions of the SSFP whilst close to 50% of rights in the commercial line-fish sector have been allocated to new-entrants who qualified under measurable policy scoring criteria which has elevated the transformative profile sector above 70%. Whilst the media have been good at reporting the views of a disgruntled minority there is a need to report on the joy and elation amongst coastal community fishers, predominantly line-fishing crews across the country, who are enormously grateful to Government for finally acknowledging their plight and taking the long-awaited decisions to expedite their access to a livelihood from our nations natural marine resource endowments. Our advice to those unsuccessful line-fish right holders who truly believe they are bona fide commercial fishers is to work with Government and endure the appeals process which we believe will reward them as opposed to bringing a premature legal challenge which if not successful could leave then land-locked forever. With Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson and DDG Desmond Stevens at the helm of Fisheries in South Africa long forgotten coastal community fishers can now look forward to swift delivery and a bright future. Yours sincerely, Hendrick Latola The views expressed herein are the shared views of several hundred small scale coastal community fishers whom I represent in the Overberg region as well throughout the Western Cape; Secretary - Small Scale Fishers Organisation of South Africa Chairperson - Overstrand Small Scale Fishing Forum Western Cape Coordinator - National Federation of Small Scale Fishers
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 12:33:17 +0000
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