Durban - The country’s unmanned ports were the gateways for human trafficking and drugs, a maritime conference heard on Wednesday.
And it was human trafficking and drugs - and not piracy - that posed “serious threats”, said Herman van Niekerk, the operations director of Maritime Risk Solutions, a private maritime security company involved in anti-piracy operations in high-risk areas.
“Human trafficking is the largest crime on Earth at the moment. People get stolen and vanish,” Van Niekerk said during one of several presentations he gave to the Maritime Counter-Piracy Offensive Masterclass at Durban’s Royal Hotel that was attended by naval and government representatives, piracy experts and interested delegates from several African countries, and Denmark.
Van Niekerk, who lives in Knysna, said there were eight unguarded ports in South Africa and his home town had one of them.
He said there were “so many places” for boats in Knysna and no one cared if drugs were offloaded there and transported to Port Elizabeth, Joburg, or to Cape Town.
He said the various authorities (SAN Parks in Knynsa’s case), had no budgets to fight the issues which were worse than piracy.
Van Niekerk said there had been 138 piracy incidents worldwide in the first six months this year compared with 177 in the corresponding period last year, and seven hijackings compared with 20.
The number of sailors taken hostage had decreased dramatically from 334 to 127.
He said the UK Maritime Transport Organisation, which compiled the figures, did not include incidents in which no one was hurt in a pirate attack.
He believed these should be counted as well – and if so, the totals would increase six-fold.
Van Niekerk urged delegates to use the private maritime security companies as their “eyes and ears” in the high-risk areas as they knew what was going on.
“They go to places you don’t go to, they speak to people there, they know who to trust and who they cannot trust,” he said.
He said that he had anti-piracy teams on board ships in Sri Lanka, Jizan in the Red Sea and in Suez and that’s how he would get to know the situations there.
A former SANDF officer, Van Niekerk recalled when he was based at army HQ, he had suggested that the army embrace Executive Outcomes, the private security company which was formed at the time by former military members.
“I said that they would get information that the army would never get and that they could be the eyes and ears on the ground.” But the army did not like the idea.
The masterclass, which ends today, aims to come up with “a decisive solution to the menace”.
The recommendations will be sent to the International Maritime Organisation.
Daily News