“Criminalized and marginalized” despite a 24-year-old post-apartheid Constitution that enshrines the right of access to sufficient food and guarantees social justice and equality for all, thousands of small-scale fishers called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to secure their right to food and sustainable livelihood as South Africa celebrated Human Rights Day on March 21.
“(W)e want to bring to your attention that tens of thousands of coastal and inland fishers and their families are still denied access to marine and freshwater resources for their livelihood and struggle to realise their human right to food and related human rights,” Masifundise Development Trust Director Naseegh Jaffer told President Ramaphosa in an open letter.
The Cape Town-based Masifundise, founded in 1980, facilitates the mobilization and organization of fishing communities at the grassroots level. It is a member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, which is part of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition.
The organization wrote to Mr. Ramaphosa on behalf of Coastal Links South Africa, a community-based organisation representing over 5,000 members of small-scale coastal and inland fishing communities in the regions of Vanderkloof Dam, Gariep Dam, and Jozini Dam.
Implementation of fisheries policy ‘deeply flawed’
Masifundise’s Jaffer told the chief executive that despite a pro-people Charter and fishing policies that cater to the interests and welfare of small-scale fishers, hurdles in their implementation have prevented fishers from exercising their right to resources that will ensure their food and livelihood needs.
Jaffer cited the problematic enforcement of the Small-Scale Fisheries Policy (SSFP), which was adopted in 2012 to ensure that small fishers — whose rights were not acknowledged under the Marine Living Resources Act, 18 of 1998 and apartheid era fisheries policies — will be recognized and have equal access to marine resources.
He said the SSFP’s implementation “is deeply flawed” because “the verification process put in place failed to include many bona fide small-scale fishers,” thereby prompting South Africa Fisheries Minister Barbara Creecy to approach the high court to have the process reviewed and re-done in Western Cape.
Fishers are ‘marginalized, criminalized’
Masifundise also told President Ramaphosa that “inland fishing communities continue to be marginalized and criminalized.”
This is because the National Freshwater (Inland) Wild Capture Fisheries Policy Framework for South Africa that acknowledges and promotes the activities of inland small-scale fishers has not yet been finalized and thus makes fishing for food and livelihoods in lakes, rivers and dams “unrecognized.”
Another problem, according to Masifundise, is the expansion of marine protected areas in South Africa that did not only limit the access of small-scale fishers to their traditional fishing grounds but also made them “face violence and brutality at the hands of conservation authorities and other law enforcements.”
Masifundise cited the killing of Celimpilo Mdluli inside a vast protected area in KwaZulu-Natal Province as among the consequences of the state’s failure to acknowledge the rights of small fishers.
The 30-year-old Mdluli, who was from a small fishing community cooperative in Nibela, was fishing at the St. Lucia Lake in iSimangaliso Wetland Park when rangers gunned him down on September 16, 2020.
Blue economy also threatens small fishers
South Africa’s blue growth development plan called Operation Phakisa, which focuses on large investments such as in energy, ports, tourism, and aquaculture, was likewise criticized by Masifundise. It said the economic strategy “poses a threat to small-scale fishing communities, the fisheries resources, and coastal and inland water bodies.”
“While framed as sustainable development to boost the economy and combat poverty, unemployment, and inequality, in reality, extractive activities across the country’s coastline…hinder fishing practices as transnational mining companies destroy the coastline and marine ecosystems,” Masifundise’s Jaffer told President Ramaphosa in the letter.
A crisis compounded by Covid-19, climate woes
What makes the situation of fishers more difficult are the “converging food, economic, and health crisis caused by Covid-19, which is having a major impact on South Africa’s rural communities, and the climate crisis that continues to worsen the working conditions in which fishing communities operate,” according to Masifundise.
The group told President Ramaphosa that all the hardships being endured by small-scale fishers are tantamount to “a national crisis (that) must be solved immediately” by adhering to the pertinent provisions in the 1996 Constitution and pro-small fisher laws and policies.
Masifundise also urged the government to honor the international treaties and accords that uphold the rights of small-scale fishers and were ratified by South Africa. These include the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas; and the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization.
It likewise enjoined President Ramaphosa and his administration to take the following steps to ensure the protection and promotion of the rights of inland and coastal small-scale fishers:
1) Include bona fide fishers, including women and youth, in the programs being implemented under the Small-scale Fisheries Policy
2) Include bona fide fishers in the consultation and decision-making processes at the local and national levels
3) Implement a full and meaningful cooperative training process that can support fishers in the management of their cooperatives
4) Allocate an economically viable basket of species that SSF entities can fully and directly harvest, using their traditional and customary knowledge and practices
5) Revisit the demarcation of fishing zones and areas, including access to marine protected areas, in recognition of small-scale fishers’ human and customary rights
6) Support the development of localized markets for small-scale fisheries products
7) Address the criminalization and insecure tenure of inland fishing communities while the Inland Fisheries Policy is being finalized for implementation
© 2016 Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition