Horst Kleinschmidt
THE GOVERNMENT should audit the transformation in the fishing industry. But given who derives benefit, the chances of changing the policy must be rated as slim.
For the record: I support the constitutional imperative for transformation. I allocated fishing quotas in 2001 and 2005/6, and after the second allocation the “statistics” showed a credible 60 percent of quotas to be in BEE hands. But two examples show how perverse the BEE outcomes are when applied without recognition of the specific situation. The examples speak to continued injustice and to a new bigotry.
The first tale: If you saw him you would know he’s a fisherman. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes are the only place where his face is not sunburnt. His arms are strong and his humour infectious. His parents also made a living from fishing.
His forefathers got dumped in False Bay when an American whaling ship ran aground at Smitswinkelbaai around 1861. The American skipper went home, but the Indonesian crew were abandoned. They form the heart of the old community in Simon’s Town and Kalk Bay, before apartheid uprooted them – forced them to Ocean View and other places.
He does not want me to use his name, lest his chances at the Fisheries Department get even worse, if that is possible. His last application for a linefish quota was again turned down.
Did you have to find another job? I ask. He says no, “I regularly go fishing in my small vessel. It’s dangerous because we have to go further into the ocean to get a good catch.” Is he poaching, is he illegal? I ask. “No!” He says with indignation.
He explains how he has a catch agreement with three men from Nyanga. They have a handsome quota. They have never been to sea, but they get him to catch their quota. The three men even have a big vessel, but it has never been to sea.
Why? They got the white buyer of their catch to sponsor the boat so they would be assured of a quota. Where is the boat?
“It’s here under the tarpaulin, but it’s got no licences to go to sea. So I just use my small old boat.” They pay him R2.50 per kilogram for the crayfish he catches for them. He says it’s the only way he can eke out a living.
The Nyanga guys get around R40 a kg and the white buyer, who sponsored the boat, makes around R100 a kg. By the time someone orders their lobster in a restaurant the price has gone up to R300 a plate or even more. The Nyanga guys sit pretty, he says. “When they come and pay me they drive fancy cars – all for doing nothing.”
The second tale: Every white-owned fishing company knew after 1994, to stay in business, they had to transform. Since fish stocks periodically revert to the state to then be reallocated, the government has a direct means to reward or penalise transformation, pending the extent to which applicants conform to the BEE policy.
What to do to meet the BEE objectives? Nothing simpler than having lunch with ministers, MECs and MPs and besides paying for the meal, offering them shares in your company.
Most of the new politicians did not know it was so easy to make money. “You don’t have to pay for them, you know, your dividend each year will be debited until your shares are paid up. It’s shares for jam.”
At annual general meetings the “political” shareholders mostly don’t even turn up. The only thing the ministers and MPs know is when it’s dividend time. Then they come for an annual visit and (generally) argue that they’d rather defer paying for the shares (with their dividend) and take the money instead.
The white owners don’t care because these “ghost” shareholders don’t interfere in the running of the company, not even when the fishermen are exploited. This way companies have given up to 51 percent shareholding away without feeling threatened, yet are able to say: We are majority black-owned.
And that’s the trick to get your next quota. In this way a politician (or his wife) gets a benefit without the remotest involvement in the fishing industry.
In Parliament they nod wisely and tell each other that transformation and BEE are working.
This is perverse. The present policy and points system is at fault. The reward of a quota is based on the highest number of points an applicant can attain. The higher the score the bigger the quota. As the examples demonstrate, however, this has meant attracting dead wood and/or political connections that add no iota to this industry. The effect down the value chain is that the consumer pays more, all because the political elite and in the latter example, top business, connive for it to be this way.
The two examples have produced hundreds of cases like these. More than anything this speaks to the injustice felt by genuine fishermen who are sidelined by a policy that is blind to real fishers and has given rise to a new bigotry.
The policy of sustainable fish stocks is imperative. This limits the number of quotas the state can allocate. The proper goal should be to allocate to people who either “get their hands wet” or who have paid for their shares and who are not politically connected.
Whether the outcome was intended or unintended, the policy should be rewritten to favour the real fishermen and women coming from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Given the pressure fish stocks are under, “new entrants” (people who have never fished before) should be excluded from applying for quotas. And: many fishers don’t need a quota either; they need to be properly paid by their boat and company owners.
This terrain remains contested. If the policy favoured real fishers, it would favour people previously designated “coloured” and it would favour male over female.
This debate is far from settled.
What the fishing industry needs most of all is an audit that analyses the who’s who among the current quota holders. Then it should be back to the drawing board for a new policy that favours those who go out to sea in real life or those who attend board meetings.
l Kleinschmidt is a former deputy director-general of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism’s marine and coastal management branch and head of the fisheries branch. On returning from exile, he served as director of the development organisations Kagiso Trust and then Mvula Trust. In exile, he was a director of the London International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (Idaf).