The use of forced labour by unregulated foreign fishing vessels, and the capture of the Cape fishing industry by BEE has resulted in a slow catastrophe for our communities
At our main fishing harbour in Cape Town, foreign fishing boats dock frequently, exploiting the notoriously corrupt national process of apportioning fishing licenses. These vessels often East Asian, have outcompeted local traditional fishing communities, whose access to fishing rights is limited by the difficulty of accessing influential members of the national department of Forestry and Fisheries.
They also benefit from a lack of labour oversight, which allows the use of forced labour to carry on without scrutiny. Crews often spend just a few days in port, their passports withheld, with minimal interaction with the local community. This lack of oversight conceals the grim nature of this enterprise – deaths at sea, suicide, harsh working conditions, unlicensed vessels flying flags of convenience, contract violations, insufficient food, and often beatings by captains.
Commercial fishing is one of the world's most perilous occupations, estimated to claim the lives of up to 100,000 annually. It also serves as a gateway for human trafficking and modern-day slavery. While the business remains lucrative, incentives to dodge oversight remain. But local authorities show little sign of interest in protecting our fishing waters from these exploitative practices.
Over the course of the 20th century, our fishing stocks have declined by over 80%. In the 1960s-70s, as today, much of the damage is due to foreign vessels. Seeing this impact, South Africa banned almost all foreign vessels from our waters from 1977 until 1998, but these stocks merely stabilised, and have not recovered to previous quantities. South coast rock lobster is particularly depleted.
The Daily Maverick reported on the state of this industry recently in along-form investigation.
They provided the example of vessel Hong Iu 313, a long-line fishing boat, crewed mainly by young Filipinos, provided a stark illustration of the conditions faced by many such vessels. Upon boarding, the boat's rusted and dilapidated state was immediately evident.
The vessel was flagged as Taiwanese, based in Kaohsiung, but in reality, it was far from seaworthy. Inspections in Durban had previously raised concerns about inadequate documentation, poor accommodation, insufficient food, subpar safety and health conditions, and no crew list. Lifebuoys were found to be rotten, the sole anchor was inoperative when there should have been two. Ultimately, the vessel was declared unseaworthy, and all crew were evacuated. It was released from detention only after undergoing stabilization, repairs, and addressing other issues. The owner paid a detention fee of R12,365.
However, when the vessel resurfaced in Cape Town, nothing had changed, including the absence of adequate food.
Many reports of poor working conditions and abuse have emerged from the docks of Cape Town, where predominantly Taiwanese, Chinese, and Japanese-flagged fishing boats are common.
As the global appetite for seafood grows and fish stocks dwindle in some regions, the problem intensifies. Overfishing is threatening the our oceans, and since the vast majority of the fishing resources are located in the Cape, a region which traditionally votes against the ruling party, there is little incentive to protect local and sustainable access.
International efforts to improve labour conditions on fishing vessels, coming from countries like Thailand and Taiwan, have made strides establishing enforceable standards. Yet, more countries need to ratify C188 to eliminate forced labour in the fishing industry.
But locally, enforcement is negligible. Recently, due to the lack of equipment (11 frigates, with only the capacity to deploy two, and two maritime aircraft) to patrol nearly 4 000 km of coastline and 1.5 million km2 of ocean, hundreds of foreign boats poach our stock with great regularity. Also, many foreign operations fish operate legally in our waters, with their licenses occupying the fish quotas that would otherwise be available to native fishermen.
From 2012 to 2017, the state has only managed to arrest 14 ships for poaching. Of these, none were imprisoned, and the fines ranged fromR75 000 to R250 000, well within the risk tolerance for the industry which, in the licit sector alone, comprised of 27 000 individuals, extracted R2.5 billion in profit in 2019, from a total income of R17.5billion.
The biggest prosecution for poaching so far this century has come not from the South African authorities, but from the United States, who ended up doing the DAFF’s job for them through the Lacey Act, when Hout Bay Fishing overfished their rock lobster quota by 30% to smuggle them into the United States.
The legal and policy framework since 1998 has been seen as criminalising subsistence fishers who, while they were excluded from commercial fishing licenses in the previous regime, were at least not persecuted for fishing without a license because of the minimal impact of their traditional fishing communities. The commercial industry was dominated by white owners, staffed predominantly by Cape Coloured fishing communities of long standing.
The industry is also heavily impacted by black economic empowerment. The hake trawling industry, which forms the largest part of the fishing economy as a whole, was 66.6% black-owned according to the latest annual review from the South African Deep Sea Trawlers Industry Association. The top three hake trawling operations have a Level 1 certification, and the fourth has a level 2 certification. This upper layer of highly “transformed” companies dominate the industry. In 2015, the top six companies held88% of the total allocated catch.
This systemic exclusion of traditional fishing communities has been well-documented, and its impact on the communities classified as Coloured has been to disrupt a way of life to which the indigenous people of the Cape have been accustomed to for hundreds of years, and which forms a continuity with ancient fishing communities stretching into time immemorial.
The Marine Living Resources Act (MLRA) affords the Minister almost plenary authority over the sector. Under no conditions can any person engage in any fishing enterprise of any scale without the granting of that right by the Minister.
Considering the insurmountable challenges facing opposition parties in seizing political power, this is a situation that will not be resolved so long as the South Africa remains under the thumb of the Union Buildings.
