While the granting of fishing rights to previous disadvantaged fishers has been lauded and is constantly referenced as a sign of progress, the plight of subsistence fishers in the coastal areas is ignored. Subsistence fishers are systematically excluded from the Department of Fisheries fishing rights regime, according to a policy research report Cast Out: The systematic exclusion of the KwaZulu Natal Subsistence Fishers from the fishing rights regime in South Africa.
This exclusion was exposed during the hard lockdown. Under the lockdown, fishers were told by the Deputy Director
General of Fisheries that subsistence fishers no longer existed as a legitimate category of fishers, hence could not be deemed as an ‘essential service’. This decision has had a huge impact on Indian subsistence fishers of South Durban and surrounding districts, together with the non-racial community of poor, subsistence line fishers subsistence fishing, who depend on subsistence fishing as a source of livelihood.
“Given their illegal status under the new regulations these fishers were unable to turn to their natural commons to feed their families, nor were they eligible for state food parcels,” laments the report, while acknowledging that situation reflects the plight of many poor South Africans under the disaster management regulations brought in to curb the pandemic.
The subsistence farmers in Kwazulu Natal, who found themselves caught in this net of regulatory distortions, have since formed an association, KwaZulu-Natal Subsistence Fisher Forum (KZNSFF), to lobby the Department of Fisheries to effect change. Their plight could be a microcosm of the conditions other subsistence fishers along the coastal areas of South Africa are stuck in.
