Fish stock plunder costing SA billions

Africa loses more than R288bn a year to fisheries crime, according to Nelson Mandela University law professor Hennie van As.

Van As, who is head of the university-based FishFORCE, Africa’s first fisheries law enforcement academy, said the global scourge was having catastrophic effects.

“Countries are being deprived of taxes, citizens of jobs, food and income and fisheries and environments are being destroyed.

“Many developing countries are unable to effectively enforce fisheries laws and are therefore unable to manage their coastal zones,” he said.

“The result is fish stocks [are] in sharp decline, instability, food insecurity and the loss of livelihoods and state revenue. Africa is particularly vulnerable.

“This is a battle we have to win.”

Van As was introducing the second FishFORCE Dialogue, a two-day conference at NMU’s north campus, which began on Monday.

Funded by the Norwegian government with buy-in from Interpol, the SA Development Community and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, FishFORCE was launched in 2016 with the aim of improving the investigation and prosecution of fisheries crime globally and  particularly in Africa.

The academy has also appealed to the SA government to deal with the poaching and smuggling of the country’s valuable marine living resources as organised crime, Van As said.

“We are losing vital natural, economic and food resources through rampant fisheries crimes and yet insufficient attention is given to law enforcement in this environment.

“Why are our marine resources not being protected in the same way that we protect our gold or in the way we work to protect our rhinos?

“While marine living resources are strictly regulated by law, the implementation, administration and enforcement falls woefully short.”

Fisheries crime was not viewed as a priority crime by the police, he said.

“By and large, the penalties for fisheries crimes are not having a deterrent effect.

“South African fisheries are a target for organised crime and the country is losing a lot of revenue.

“Treasury and the SA Revenue Service must become more involved. Billions of rand and national marine resources are being lost.”

Much of the illegal global multi-crime activity linked with fishing was happening off the coast of SA, Namibia and the east coast of Africa, he said.

“The fishing vessels don’t need to go into our harbours, they make their trans-shipments offshore.

“It’s all happening in front of us. We can actually see these vessels poaching in our Exclusive Economic Zone but we don’t have the capacity to deal with it.”

FishFORCE had been advocating that fisheries crimes be addressed as a priority transnational crime and prosecuted as organised crime and racketeering under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, with severe penalties of 25 years to life, he said.

Interpol was advocating the same, given that large-scale fisheries crimes had a well-established connection to a gamut of other illegal activities in drugs, arms, rhino horn, counterfeit goods, smuggling, human trafficking and forced labour, fraud, forgery, corruption, money laundering, and tax and customs evasion.