Small-scale fishing communities in South Africa have to cope with unequal power relations as they seek effective means for the implementation of the SSF Guidelines

Sunde, Jackie

Aquatic Commons

28
SAMUDRA REPORT NO. 74
SSF GUIDELINES
South Africa
This article is by Jackie Sunde 
(jsunde@telkomsa.net), Member, ICSF
In July 2014 the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) hosted 
an international workshop on 
implementation of the Voluntary 
Guidelines for Sustainable Small-
scale Fisheries (VG SSF), entitled 
“Towards Socially Just and Sustainable 
Fisheries: ICSF Workshop on 
Implementing the FAO Voluntary 
Guidelines for Securing Sustainable 
Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of 
Food Security and Poverty Eradication 
(SSF Guidelines)”. 
Participants at the workshop 
recognized that power relations 
within which SSF communities 
are located are invariably skewed 
against these communities and, in 
particular, against women and other 
vulnerable and marginalized groups. 
Integral to the SSF Guidelines’ goal 
of targeting the most vulnerable and 
marginalized persons and eliminating 
discrimination will be the need to 
have adequate understanding of 
these power relations and 
intersectionalities that shape access 
to, and control over, marine and other 
resources. These intersectionalities 
include issues such as gender, race, 
ethnicity, age, labour and migratory 
status, disability and geographic 
location, amongst other historical and 
specific power relations relevant in 
each national context. 
In order to contribute towards 
the development of a sound body 
of information upon which the 
foundation of the SSF Guidelines 
implementation action plan can 
be built, ICSF has embarked on a 
number of national studies in order to 
promote deeper understanding of the 
social relations shaping small-scale 
fisheries (SSF) in different contexts. 
In 2015 a study of the dynamics 
and social relations impacting SSF 
in South Africa was undertaken. 
This was complemented with an 
analysis of the existing legislative 
and policy environment in South 
Africa within which the SSF 
Guidelines will gain traction.  
Since its first democratic 
elections in 1994, South Africa has 
developed an extensive legislative 
and policy framework that gives the 
SSF Guidelines traction within the 
constitutional framework within 
which fisheries governance and 
marine resource conservation is 
located in this country.  An analysis 
of the key principles and provisions 
in the SSF Guidelines provides 
clear evidence that implementation 
of the SSF Guidelines in South Africa 
is not an optional, voluntary gesture 
of goodwill on the part of either the 
South African government or of 
any other actor in the fisheries 
sector. Rather, the SSF Guidelines 
conveniently bring together a range 
of pre-existing human-rights 
obligations and policy guidelines that 
have relevance for the SSF subsector. 
Ecosystem approach
From provisions to secure gender 
equity for women in fisheries and 
eliminate all forms of discrimination 
to secure decent and fair labour 
standards to the need to adopt an 
ecosystem approach to fisheries, 
the SSF Guidelines are mirrored 
Caught in a Net
Small-scale fi shing communities in South Africa have to cope with unequal power 
relations as they seek effective means for the implementation of the SSF Guidelines
...the SSF Guidelines conveniently bring together a range 
of pre-existing human-rights obligations and policy 
guidelines that have relevance for the SSF subsector.
AUGUST 2016
29
in national legislation and policy 
even though this framework was 
developed prior to the SSF Guidelines. 
The only significant gap in this 
national framework relates to specific 
provisions to protect the rights of 
indigenous peoples and migrant 
fishers. These groups may be 
vulnerable. Although the Equality 
Clause of the Constitution outlaws 
discrimination, and most indigenous 
peoples would be protected by 
various clauses in the Constitution, 
the specific rights and needs of 
indigenous peoples have not been 
highlighted and South Africa has 
failed to implement the 2007 
UN Declaration on the Rights of 
Indigenous Peoples. 
However, the South African 
Constitution obliges the State to take 
cognisance of international law and 
as the rights of indigenous peoples 
are now international customary 
law, this would apply. In addition, 
although the Constitution recognizes 
the rights and freedoms of all people 
in the country, even if they are 
foreign nationals, there are no specific 
mechanisms to ensure the protection 
of migrant fishers. Migrant fishers, 
particularly if they are found to be 
in South African waters illegally, 
might be very vulnerable as the 
Constitutional provision protecting 
all people in the country is dependent 
on being legally resident in the 
country. Over and above the two 
gaps mentioned, the spirit of the SSF 
Guidelines is clearly evidenced in 
South Africa’s national legislation and 
policy developed on the foundation 
of the human rights enshrined in the 
country’s Constitution. 
Notwithstanding this very 
enabling legislative and policy 
framework in South Africa, interviews 
with key respondents drawn from SSF 
fishing communities, fisher leaders, 
government, NGOs and research 
institutions, together with a review of 
current literature, provide evidence 
that there are huge challenges facing 
the SSF subsector in South Africa. 
In particular, a range of unequal 
power dynamics and social relations 
shapes the location of small-scale 
fishers within the political economy 
of fisheries and impacts the way in 
which both the international 
SSF Guidelines and the recently 
promulgated South African Policy on 
Small-scale Fisheries (SSF Policy) are 
being interpreted and implemented.  
Racial, class and gender-based 
relations, coupled with historical 
rural-urban divides, continue to 
shape the experiences of different 
groups of small-scale fishers and their 
communities.  Many fishers up and 
down the coast express a sense of 
despair in the face of what appears 
to be deepening levels of inequity 
and marginalization within the 
fisheries sector, with the associated 
social vulnerabilities that accompany 
this: high levels of poverty, debt, 
corruption, food insecurity, sexual 
violence, drug and alcohol addiction, 
crime, conflict and depression. 
Environmental changes in the marine 
and coastal environment exacerbate 
their vulnerability 
to these political 
and social challenges. 
While the problems 
that are cited by the 
fishers on the western 
seaboard differ from 
those in the two 
coastal provinces 
on the eastern 
seaboard, a common 
theme expressed by 
fishers, NGO activists 
and researchers is a 
perception of a 
growing gap between 
the visionary 
and aspirational 
human-rights-based 
content of the South 
African Constitution 
and the reality that 
they face on the ground 
every day. 
The industrial 
fisheries subsector 
has historically 
dominated the 
catching, processing 
and marketing of all 
high-value species in 
South Africa. Under 
the apartheid regime, 
this subsector was 
S S F  G U I D E L I N E S
JACKIE SUNDE 
A woman inter-tidal mussel harvester, Dwesa Cwebe, 
in Eastern Cape, South Africa
30
SAMUDRA REPORT NO. 74
S O U T H  A F R I C A
controlled by white capital. Artisanal 
and subsistence fishers, predominantly 
from black communities, were 
systemically marginalized and 
dispossessed of their tenure rights to 
marine resources. SSF communities 
question the lack of real redress for 
the racially-based dispossession 
that many of them experienced 
during apartheid. Notwithstanding 
some policy attempts to transform 
the unequal racial structure of the 
industry in the past two decades, 
the continued close relationship 
between the ruling party, the fisheries 
administration and the captains of 
industry creates the co-management 
conditions required by the industrial 
subsector to ensure that they benefit 
from any policy that is introduced to 
address the needs of the SSF. Their 
continued control over the means of 
production, made possible through 
the failure of the Department of 
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 
(DAFF) to apportion adequate 
resource access to the SSF and to 
introduce mechanisms to enable SSF 
communities to control a segment of 
the value chain, leaves the SSF very 
vulnerable.  It would appear that 
notwithstanding State commitments 
to the SSF Guidelines and the SSF 
Policy, and hopes for a paradigm 
shift in favour of a different model 
of fisheries exploitation that would 
enable redistribution of marine 
resources to poor SSF communities, 
the policy trajectory for the future is 
‘business as usual’ in South Africa.
In addition to key class and 
racial fissures, the SSF subsector is 
structured by patriarchal gender 
relations which continue to shape the 
underlying dynamics in communities. 
Whilst superficially an impression 
of shift is created by the visibility of 
a few prominent women leaders, 
deep-seated patriarchal relations 
continue to influence how men in 
fisher organizations and communities 
perceive women’s rights to resources 
and to controlling these resources. 
This impacts women most heavily 
along the western seaboard where 
the high-value industrial fisheries 
have been dominated by men. 
Women were largely restricted 
to employment in the processing 
subsector.  In the current processes 
aimed at implementing the SSF Policy, 
women are required to demonstrate 
ten years of active involvement in 
the industry in order to be eligible 
for membership of an SSF entity with 
a fishing right. However, their years 
of employment in the processing 
establishments are not considered 
relevant. This is an issue that women 
fishers are determined to challenge in 
the coming months, drawing on the 
Constitution and the SSF Guidelines. 
The historical marginalization 
of black fishing communities, 
particularly in two of the coastal 
provinces of the country, namely the 
Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal 
provinces, where the apartheid 
regime established designated areas 
where African persons could reside, 
continues to shape the current context. 
SSF fishing communities in these 
provinces remain ultra-vulnerable 
due to their lack of voice and the 
unequal provision of services in these 
regions.
Dispossession
During the height of apartheid, 
the State embarked on racially-
based spatial planning which 
dovetailed with the expansion of the 
conservation estate. More than half 
of the existing 22 coastal Marine 
Protected Areas (MPAs) were 
established adjacent to terrestrial 
reserves that involved racially-based 
forced removals of local coastal 
communities. Despite most of these 
communities submitting land claims 
in terms of the Land Restitution Act 
post-apartheid, there has been no 
recognition of their dispossession 
from their traditional fishing grounds 
and marine resources. Land claim 
settlements have failed to lead to 
restitution of  their pre-existing 
...the SSF subsector is structured by patriarchal gender 
relations which continue to shape the underlying 
dynamics in communities.
AUGUST 2016
31
S S F  G U I D E L I N E S
tenure and access rights. The heavy-
handed attitude of the conservation 
authorities in these provinces 
towards the small-scale fishers 
who they do not accept as having 
legitimate tenure rights now 
exacerbates their socioeconomic 
marginalization.  
Communities living in, or adjacent 
to, MPAs and the iSimangaliso World 
Heritage Site are most vulnerable in 
this regard. Lack of high-level 
inter-sectoral policy cohesion and 
a total absence of policy guiding 
the management approach to SSF 
fisheries in these areas is resulting in 
extensive conflict between the fishing 
communities and the authorities. 
Several local fishing communities 
living adjacent to MPAs have legal 
action against the State pending in 
order to secure their customary tenure 
rights. The fishers have drawn on 
the SSF Guidelines and the Voluntary 
Guidelines on the Responsible 
Governance of Tenure of Land, 
Fisheries and Forests in the Context 
of National Food Security (VGGT) in 
their court papers.
In the light of the fact that South 
Africa already has a legislative and 
policy framework that prescribes 
the implementation of the principles 
inherent in the SSF Guidelines, the 
question as to why there is such a 
gap between the provisions in the 
SSF Guidelines (and the Constitution 
and the SSF Policy), and the actual de 
facto rights enjoyed by SSF fishers on 
the ground arises. It is apparent that 
whilst there are de jure provisions to 
protect and promote the SSF subsector, 
the interpretation of these legal and 
policy provisions into practice results 
in de facto discrimination against 
poor SSF fishing communities. Several 
characteristics of the current situation 
enable this failure to implement the 
SSF Guidelines. 
A powerful neoliberal economic 
agenda influences the location of 
the SSF subsector in the political 
economy of the country and shapes 
the perceived value and role of the SSF 
subsector. The industrial subsector 
commands considerable control over 
fisheries policy and influences the 
States’ approach to tenure rights, 
resource management, marketing 
and trade, and research support 
to the sector. The lack of data and 
information about the SSF subsector 
is an outcome of this marginalization 
and further deepens the 
marginalization of SSF communities.
As one of the consequences of 
this agenda, organization of fishing 
communities and fishworkers is 
fragmented and there is a lack of 
solidarity amongst actors in the SSF 
subsector. Small-scale fishers have 
historically lacked political awareness 
and voice. They have also been slow 
to build community support for their 
struggles and so fisher organization 
in many coastal communities is 
limited, resting largely on a thin 
layer of fisher leaders with few cross-
sectoral alliances and little solidarity 
from other small-scale producers or 
political groupings. Although one of 
the key SSF groupings has been very 
involved in the international advocacy 
activities leading to the negotiation 
of the SSF Guidelines, the majority 
of the SSF subsector lacks awareness 
of the SSF Guidelines and the 
protective provisions within both the 
Constitution and the Guidelines that 
they could use to defend their rights. 
Democratic practice
A major contributing factor has been 
the government’s failure to put 
mechanisms in place to ensure 
transparency and accountability 
within the fisheries administration. 
This has created a culture in which 
corruption, cronyism and political 
influence has thrived. This lack of 
ethical governance is mirrored in 
some of the fisher organizations, 
where a lack of democratic practice 
and sound checks and balances have 
enabled several individual leaders 
to become involved in deals with 
marketers and the industrial subsector 
A powerful neoliberal economic agenda infl uences the 
location of the SSF subsector in the political economy of 
the country...
32
SAMUDRA REPORT NO. 74
S O U T H  A F R I C A
that compromise their legitimacy. 
In this environment, the lack of 
legitimacy of both government and 
community-level institutions has 
enabled a pervasive perception of 
lawlessness and inequity. 
The analysis conducted by ICSF 
on the SSF subsector in South Africa 
provides useful insights into the 
key obstacles that prevent full and 
effective implementation of the 
SSF Guidelines. It suggests that an 
enabling legislative and policy 
framework is a necessary precondition 
for implementation of the SSF 
Guidelines but in and of itself is not 
sufficient to secure their realization. 
Rather, a multi-pronged approach 
that builds local-level organization 
and democracy, advocacy capacity 
and political power is key to 
ensuring that the SSF Guidelines are 
implemented. The SSF Guidelines 
will be achieved through the bottom-
up advocacy struggles and strategies 
of small-scale fishers and their 
supporters and through them leading 
by example. 
Whilst there are no government 
or civil-society initiatives to track 
implementation of the SSF Guidelines 
in South Africa underway as yet, 
this research has highlighted the 
importance of contextual analysis 
icsf.net/en/monographs/article/EN/150-
social-relation.html?limitstart=0
Social Relations and Dynamics 
Shaping the Implementation 
of the Voluntary Guidelines 
on Small-scale Fisheries 
(SSF Guidelines) in South Africa
For more
JACKIE SUNDE
Local fi shers at Dwesa Cwebe MPA. Artisanal and subsistence fi shers, predominantly from black communities, 
were systemically marginalized and dispossessed of their tenure rights to marine resources
prior to the implementation of the SSF 
Guidelines. If goals such as promoting 
poverty eradication and food 
security, eliminating discrimination 
and ensuring inclusivity and equity 
are to be achieved, then it becomes 
necessary to ensure that a baseline 
understanding of the social relations 
and dynamics in the fisheries sector is 
available and that strategic priorities 
are identified accordingly across all 
actors, both state and civil society. 
This study underscores the need to 
ensure that unequal power relations 
are placed centre stage in any plan 
of action in order to ensure that 
the human rights and freedoms of 
small-scale fishing communities are 
realized.                                                       


South Africa: SSF guidelines, caught in a net

http://aquaticcommons.org/21192/1/08%20caught%20in%20a%20net.pdf

South Africa: SSF guidelines, caught in a net

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Aquatic Commons