DA welcomes lift of abalone ban, but why the involvement of MK vets?

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the decision by government to conditionally life the ban on abalone fishing. Closing the entire fishery in the first place was never the right decision, as the DA warned in October 2007 when the previous Minister of Environmental Affairs, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, first announced his intention. On several occasions in the last year the DA has argued in the portfolio committee that the abalone fishery should at least partly be opened. Government's decision on this matter is long overdue, but it will still go a long way to helping to curb poaching and to alleviating poverty in our coastal communities.

Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tina Joemat Petersen, was correct to point out yesterday that communities have to play a role in curbing poaching. Having legal abalone divers in the water will help, as they have an interest in the sustainability of the resource, and are therefore more likely to report the illegal activities of others. It is now also time for government to revisit its decision to ban recreational diving along certain areas of the coast. This decision is unnecessarily punitive, and has only served to alienate a large group of stakeholders in the non-consumptive use sector who are ready to play their part in protecting the abalone resource.

The conditional lifting of the ban now needs to be accompanied by a massive new effort by Marine and Coastal Management and the SAPS to stop the illegal fishing. The DA notes that that 60 MK and APLA veterans are due to be trained to patrol the coast and stop poaching. However, new opportunities in the field of enforcement and compliance should not be the domain of one group of people, but should be opened up to members of coastal communities who have been worst affected by the loss of fishing quotas. The decision to employ military veterans is no doubt an initiative of Desmond Stevens, an office bearer in the MK Vets Association, who is also in the employ of Marine and Coastal Management. It smacks of cronyism and is nothing more than cadre deployment, which has a sorry record of delivering an inferior quality of services in South Africa.

Statement issued by Gareth Morgan, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of water and environmental affairs, December 7 2009

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