L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p.

1

October 2013 -- Parliament Meets Small Scale Fishers
1


Lesley J F Green
Environmental Humanities Initiative
School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics
University of Cape Town, South Africa

Draft chapter
2
for monograph provisionally titled
The Parliament of Fish: Science, Democracy and Fisheries in South Africa

Correspondence to: lesley.green@uct.ac.za



Anger about the Marine Living Resources Act of 1998 has coursed through South African
fisheries since the day it was signed into law by then-President Nelson Mandela. The Act, also
known as the MLRA, sought:
To provide for the conservation of the marine ecosystem, the long-term sustainable utilisation of marine
living resources and the orderly access to exploitation, utilisation and protection of certain marine living
resources; and for these purposes to provide for the exercise of control over marine living resources in a fair
and equitable manner to the benefit of all the citizens of South Africa; and to provide for matters
connected therewith.
3


The law affirmed the continued scientific management of the ocean via technologies of Total
Allowable Catch and Total Allowable Effort, and it affirmed in law the methods of fortress
conservation: the definition of marine protected areas; the establishment of a network of marine
enforcement officials; a system of permits and quotas and methods of fishing; it criminalised
non-compliance, and it defined categories of fishers in a manner that excluded from its
convocation the category of small scale fishers. Neither commercial fishers involved in heavy
industry, nor recreational fishers who fished for leisure, nor subsistence fishers who fished
only for their own households, fishers who wanted to fish to make a living were not recognised
in law. Fuelling the widespread anger was that the weight of apartheids race categories was heavy
in these types of fishing, since industrial fisheries had benefited over decades from apartheids
social engineering; recreational fishers were largely drawn from the wealthier classes who were
generally white,
4
and the category subsistence fishers bound people to an ethnological analysis
that was as limited as it was limiting.
The impact of the Act has been extensively documented in regional research as having
resulted in a loss of confidence in conservation and enforcement,
5
a decrease of compliance
with legislation; increased hunger and the loss of food security; increased poverty and
dependence on the state, and diminished support for South Africas ruling party among fishers.

1
urafL chapLer for a manuscrlpL provlslonally LlLled 'arllamenL of llsh: Sclence, democracy and flsherles ln SouLh Afrlca' by
Lesley Creen. unlverslLy of Cape 1own.
2
l am graLeful Lo !ackle Sunde, Lance van SlLLerL, 8arbara aLerson and Marleke norLon for commenLs on an earller drafL.
3
Cpenlng paragraph of Lhe Marlne Llvlng 8esources AcL 18 of 1998, as amended by 1he Marlne Llvlng 8esources
AmendmenL AcL 68 of 2000. 8epubllc of SouLh Afrlca.
4
lor a summary of Lhe argumenL ln Lhe mld 2000s, see naseegh !affer and !ackle Sunde 2003, llshlng rlghLs or human
rlghLs?" ln SAMuu8A 8eporL no. 44 !uly 2006, pp. 20-24.
3
See: Marleke norLon, 'AL Lhe lnLerface: Marlne compllance lnspecLors aL work ln Lhe WesLern !"#$' (hu manuscrlpL,
unlverslLy of Cape 1own, 2014), Marleke van Zyl (2009) Ccean, Llme and value: Speaklng abouL Lhe sea ln kasslesbaal.
%&'()*#*+*,- /*0'($)& %1)23", 32 (1&2): 48-38, Cllver SchulLz (2010) 4$+*&,2&, *& '($ 5$6' !*"6'7 %& $'(&*,)"#(- *1 /'
8$+$&" 4"- 2& '($ 3*&'$9' *1 :")2&$ )$6*0)3$ 63")32'-;MA dlsserLaLlon, uepL of Soclal AnLhropology, unlverslLy of Cape
1own, and Marla Pauck, 2008. 8eLhlnklng small-scale flsherles compllance. <")2&$ =*+23- 32: 633-642.
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 2

A successful court challenge to the Act on which judgement was passed in 2007
6
forced
government to provide an interim relief measure
7
which offered an individual permit
exemption normally used by recreational fishers, to a new category of artisanal fishers, an
umbrella- category for excluded fishers.
8
Five years later, a nation-wide programme of activism
and consultation among fishers headed by the non-governmental organisation Masifundise and
the community based organisation, Coastal Links, along with several academic researchers
working on environment and justice, led to the drafting of the Policy for the Small Scale
Fisheries Sector in South Africa 2012 (DAFF 2012). The Policy established a framework that
sought to define small-scale fishers as a category in public life, and restore dignity and access
to resources to fishers. It introduced itself thus:
This policy aims to provide redress and recognition to the rights of Small Scale fisher communities in
South Africa [who were] previously marginalised and discriminated against in terms of racially
exclusionary laws and policies, individualised permit-based systems of resource allocation and insensitive
impositions of conservation-driven regulation. In line with the broader agenda of the transformation of the
fishing sector, this policy provides the framework for the promotion of the rights of these fishers in order to
fulfil the constitutional promise of substantive equality. Indeed, in terms of our Constitution, the State is
committed to respecting, protecting, promoting and fulfilling the rights of Small Scale fishers in South
Africa.

The Policy for the Small-scale Fisheries Sector was gazetted in June 2012. A little over a year
later, draft legislation in the form of the Marine Living Resources Amendment Bill of 2013 was
released, based largely on the proposals in that Policy. The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee
for the relevant government ministry, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
(DAFF), announced:
In line with Parliaments core objective of facilitating public participation and involvement in legislative
processes, the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will conduct public hearings in
Parliament on the Marine Living Resources Amendment Bill [B30-2013] on Tuesday, 15 and Wednesday,
16 October 2013. The Bill seeks to amend the Marine Living Resources Act, 1998 (Act No. 18 of
1998) Interested individuals and interested groups wishing to comment on the Amendment Bill, are kindly
requested to forward written submissions to the Portfolio Committee by no later than Friday, 11 October
2013. Stakeholders interested in making oral submissions are also requested to contact our office by no later
than Friday, 11 October 2013.

Thus it was that an assembly of humans bearing suits and t-shirts, chiffon and denim, balding
heads, braids and dreadlocks found itself pitting economy with ecology, while seated together on
the green leather benches of Committee Room V454 in the Old Assembly Building. The venue
was more familiar from television screens as the Chamber of Parliament. It was the same room
in which the laws of apartheid had been defined via an alliance of race sciences and social
sciences; it was the same room in which the architect of apartheid himself had been assassinated
by an orderly; the same room in which the release of Mandela had been argued for 27 years, and
the same room in which the last apartheid President F W de Klerk had announced that Nelson
Mandela would be released from prison unconditionally. (A curious error had concluded that
speech: he had prayed that the Almighty Lord will guide and sustain us on our course through
unchartered waters. The devil being in the detail, of course: uncharted would have meant

6
lor Lhe [udgemenL, see Lhe case known as kenneLh Ceorge & CLhers v MlnlsLer Cf LnvlronmenLal Affalrs and 1ourlsm" ,
hLLp://www.lrc.org.za/lmages/sLorles/courL_LexLs/georgeflshersorder.pdf
7
See Moenlba lsaacs, 2013. Small-scale flsherles governance and undersLandlng Lhe snoek (>(-)62'$6 "'0&), supply
chaln ln Lhe Ccean vlew flshlng communlLy, WesLern Cape, SouLh Afrlca. ?3*+*,- "&@ /*32$'- !"(4): 17.
8
!ackle Sunde noLes: 1he CourL allocaLlon of l8 was made Lo Lhe flshers lnvolved ln Lhe courL acLlon only and hence was
resLrlcLed Lo Lhe class of flshers represenLed by Maslfundlse uevelopmenL 1rusL and CoasLal Llnks ln Lhe WesLern and
norLhern Cape". ersonal communlcaLlon, March 16 2014.
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 3

unknown, but unchartered spoke of waters that had either not yet been hired from their
owners, or were not yet governed by charters of rights, license, or public privilege.
9
)
Twenty three years on, the convocation of those who had responded to the call for
comment was welcomed by Parliamentary Portfolio Committee chair Mlungisi Johnson with a
greeting that offered equal dignity to all present, surrounded by the technologies of Parliament:
push-to-talk microphones; translation headsets; video screens; piles of photocopied documents;
a projection screen for PowerPoint presentations. On the in-building side of the great security x-
ray machines at the entrances, alongside the Library of Parliament and surrounded by Members
of Parliament who are on the Committee, scientists, capitalists, representatives of trades unions
and several fishers organisations took to the floor to speak. Where consultants, unionists,
scientists and Parliamentarians had been heard here many times before, it was the fishers
impassioned submissions from all four coastal provinces that were more of a rarity inside these
walls. While several fishers groups have made representations to Parliamentarians since 1994, it
was also the case that eight years before, some of the same fishers who would speak here had
chained themselves to the gates outside Parliament in order to be heard.
10
Before the two-day
hearing was done, the audio equipment would have conveyed at least five languages in which 36
speakers had mapped the challenges of harvesting coastal resources in the Republics oceans an
area that extended 200 nautical miles out to sea over almost 4000km of coastline, and which
exceeded the terrestrial assets of the Republic.
11
On the first day of the Hearings, veteran
fisheries activist Andy Johnston summed up the fishers struggles with the words, It has taken us
the fishing communities six decades of struggle to get to this point of actually now being recognized as people who
can take their rightful place in society. In the pursuit for fishing quotas there was a general tendency to tell a lie,
live a lie and behave like a wolf in sheep's clothing, and this had and still will become the winning recipe for many
opportunists, who were extremely successful in obtaining fishing quotas in order to enrich themselves. through
this immoral individual allocation system that makes a mockery of ethics and righteous behavior.
The opening presentation on the second day was from Naseegh Jaffer from Masifundise,
an NGO that had led the successful court challenge in 2007. While Masifundise acknowledged
that others may have differing views, he said, he urged the government to look at what the
majority of fishing communities across the country were saying. Fisher folk who had been
denied rights wanted those rights returned.
12

The second speaker, the organiser of the community-based organisation Coastal Links,
began with a formal greeting in isiXhosa:
Honorable Chairperson and portfolio committee members, fishers of our beloved country, officials of
DAFF, I greet you all on this important occasion for the small scale fishers of South Africa.
I am Lulamile Ponono from the clan of Tshawe, Togu, Ngconde, Madange kaTshiwo whose
umbilical cord is buried in Cebe. My nearest town is Centane, under the Mnquma municipality in the
Eastern Cape. Here I am going to speak as a fisher, whose parents were fishers, grandparents were
fishers and great grandparents were fishers. I believe I represent the views and feelings of many fishers
from where I come from. We fish as individuals but in a group and we share common rules not individual
rules. It is always safe and less boring to fish as a group. Although I am from Cebe, I fish in the waters
between Gqungqe on the north and Nxaxo on the south. I know fishers from Gqungqe and Nxaxo and
they also know me. As fishers we have common experiences, aspirations and needs. We face the same
conditions and challenges. Most importantly we have families to feed and communities to build.

9
lW de klerk, Speech aL Lhe Cpenlng of arllamenL, 2 lebruary 1990. hLLp://www.fwdeklerk.org/lndex.php/en/hlsLorlcally-
slgnlflcanL-speeches. Accessed !anuary 3 2014.
10
SAA, 'llshers proLesL ouLslde arly', 29 May 2003. hLLp://www.fln24.com/8uslness/llshermen-proLesL-aL-parly-
20030329-3, accessed 8 !an 2014.
11
SouLh Afrlca's excluslve economlc zone (LLZ) lncludes boLh LhaL nexL Lo Lhe SouLh Afrlcan malnland and LhaL around Lhe
rlnce Ldward lslands, LoLalllng 1 333 000 km
2
. lLs land area ls approxlmaLely 1 220 000 km
2
.
12
lrom Lhe reporL of Lhe arllamenLary MonlLorlng Croup, 2013. Marlne Llvlng 8esources AmendmenL 8lll [830-2013]:
ubllc hearlngs uay 2. hLLp://www.pmg.org.za/reporL/20131016-marlne-llvlng-resources-amendmenL-blll-b30-2013-
publlc-hearlngs-day-2, accesed 8 !an 2014.
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 4


From KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Lindani Ngubane from Coastal Links thanked the Committee for
allowing him to present on behalf of the KwaZulu Natal (KZN) SSF communities, whom, he
said, were using traditional techniques of fishing such as fish traps. The summary of his
comments appears in the report of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, as follows:
Oppressive laws such as the MLRA needed to be swiftly changed, and his community was happy that
the Bill would make changes that would liberate those communities. The KZN SSF were
particularly anxious that the Bill should accommodate traditional and customary fishing techniques, and
if these were included, then they would be happy to support the Bill. Mr Ngubane said that the KZN
SSF supported the legal entity as envisaged in the amendments, and particularly supported the fact that a
specific community may choose to have co-operatives, trusts and whatever other legal entity was suitable.
Mr Ngubane said that in Kosi Bay traditional fish traps were used, which were similar to
others in the world, and which allowed small fish to grow without being harvested. Fish would enter the
traps at high tide. That showed that the traditional techniques were also committed to conserving,
managing and controlling the harvesting of the fish along that coastline. He noted that this type of fish
harvesting was not only for subsistence fishing but it also had an impact on the local tourism economy,
because tourists came from far to see those fish kraals.
Mr Ngubane said that the KZN SSF (Kwa Zulu Natal Small Scale Fishers) supported co-
management and believed that a collective structure, which would also involve Amakhosi (Traditional
Leaders) and the DAFF (Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries), would solve many
matters before they became problems. In such structures, all SSF stakeholders could share problems,
ideas, information, and promote and protect their MLR.

The submission from the Paternoster community on the West Coast by representative Neil
Joshua, noted that the Bill was supported by pre-harvest, the post-harvest, the net makers,
tackle and bait sellers, and workers and sellers of fish in Paternoster. From the PMG account:
He said that Interim Development Quotas (IDQs
13
) had divided their communities because some
benefited more than others and fishers who were not registered were branded as poachers. Doringbaai,
he said, had first-hand experience of the IDQ systems failures, where Oceana had closed down its
operation, after receiving the long term right to create employment, ensure food security and provide income
for SSFs to provide for their children. When Oceana closed, the community was left with nothing. A
broader system that allowed the community to partake equally would be preferable. Doringbaai itself was
a small fishing village with a population of about 2000 residents. Most people there were fishers, Having
started, in 2007 [when the Interim Relief Quotas had been awarded to some fishers in the wake of the
court battle], to think about the possible different structures, they decided on co-ops [co-operatives]. In
2013, the co-ops had earned, for their community, R2.4 million.

The Parliamentarians themselves listened with great interest and were invited to comment at
regular intervals. As the oversight committee for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and
Fisheries under Minister Tina Joematt-Petersen, they were drawn from six political parties
representing widely differing points of view, and their task was to compile a report, for
Parliament, on the effectiveness of the Ministry and make recommendations for changes in the
legislation. While the submissions offered for the Parliamentarians consideration unique
accounts of experiences and a wide range of concerns, the themes were familiar: multi-
generational fishers rights had been lost; they needed to be restored; individual quotas were
problematic to some. But it was Selene Smith from Langebaan in the Western Cape who took

13
!ackle Sunde, for many years a flsherles acLlvlsL employed by Maslfundlse, noLes: AlLhough Lhe communlLy refer Lo
Lhese as quoLas Lhls ls a lefL-over lnfluence from Lhe general quoLa sysLem and ln facL Lhe l8 [lnLerlm 8ellef] was noL a
quoLa sysLem, alLhough lL's very Lelllng . LhaL [lL has] come Lo reflecL a quoLa sysLem." (ersonal communlcaLlon, March 16
2014)

L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 3

the debate from a list of concerns, to an ecology of knowledge, environmentality, history, and
race. Her opening comment was addressed to fishers themselves: We must stop saying that we
fishers know nothing and understand nothing. We are never too old to learn. She speaks of having decided,
in the 1990s, to empower herself and become a fisheries activist in Langebaan, and then
encountering the fishers organisation Masifundise. Langebaan, she declared, supports this Bill
100%. It [the MLRA] must change. In that way we traditional fishers can attain that for which we fought all
those years. Those who can speak, she said, are those who know the heartbeat of a fisher, and she
thanked the newly reorganised Department for being responsive to Langebaan fishers. Our
forefathers were born there [in Langebaan]. In the old apartheid years we were taken from our own homes
[living places] where we lived. And now the sea has also been taken from us, where we fished for traditional fish
for all the years. She defended fishers capacity to self-regulate: We looked after our own fish. Our
people had their own rules on how to catch fish. They can make their own rules among themselves: After Friday
evening you dont go to sea any more, you can go to sea Sunday evening again . She challenged the law
enforcement: And I must say to you most of our people become criminals, that they are locked up even if they
get lost in the mist they get locked up. She challenged the legal framework of environmentalism: And
I must say to you, people we must have a hard look at the MPA [the Marine Protected Area] because at
the moment they are only interested in looking at conservation, thats all, but not at the livelihood and the social
responsibility concerning the fishers. She challenged science: And I am sorry to say this to the Department:
I sat at a round table and I am sorry, but I just said to one of the researchers, I dont like your attitude at
all, Mister, you must listen, you cant tell me [what the truth is]; when last was the research done ?
She challenged the idea that the tourist industry would bring benefits to local
communities: People wring the tourist industry around the fishers necks and we are told We pay, we
say. She challenged the conservationists: We, in Langebaan, to catch fish, we have to share it with
thousands, millions of seals. And we cannot make a living. But at the moment we respect the laws that are in
place. But people, I need to say to you: what is valid for one must be valid for another. We are not allowed to fish
in the MPA [Marine Protected Area]. But there are three whites who are allowed to catch fish there. And what
are we supposed to call that? We must call it apartheid I cannot give it another name. She explained the
history of that particular rights allocation via long-standing, race-based social networks in
Langebaan, linking it to an old 1991 allocation of fishing quota, and turned from that argument
to the history of struggle since then: And I must say, for too long we have fought for this law, and too long
we have fought for this policy. This policy is one we actually wrote ourselves. We went in to our communities and
asked, how do you see this policy? And that is what we did. But other people now want to come and push
themselves in. People, I have to say, referring to someone who had spoken the day before and
questioned the idea of community rights, Mister, put your foot in Langebaan and you will have me to
deal with. I want him to know he must not come to Langebaan to mislead the fishers. People were
prepared to sit around the table. Its a democratic country, its a land that we can speak more freely in, its a
country in which we all need to be able to talk even to the president. In the past we could not do that. Her story
here turns to her own life: I grew up on a farm, and I must tell you this. When I when the Girlie [ironic
referral to the farmers wife] the Girl, to whom I had to say Good evening Girl, Good evening Baas [Master],
good evening Kleinbaas [Masters Son]. And she asked me to come and sleep in her house when the Baas and
the Kleinbaas were not there, [but] I was not allowed to take my own mattress. I had to sleep on a hard mat
under the kitchen table. I know apartheid. I know what it is to be hurt. I know tears. The same for all my
community. Her submission turns here to the time when they heard that, after the Court Case,
they would be getting interim relief permits, and in an evening meeting they had come to a
decision: We said [to ourselves], what we get, we will put in a pool and we will also help those who dont have.
It is not all fishers who can make a decision like that. Because each must weigh for himself, that is why people are
still fighting. But those fishers who decided that night [to work together], gave us a mandate to act on their behalf.
We decided that the little that we had, we would share with other fishers because they have experienced what
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 6

goes on inside a house. They have experienced that what leads to hunger [ie a policy that benefits only a few], will
make them suffer hunger themselves. I thank you.
14

A submission on the complex ecology of democracy itself, her account wove together
the issues of race and self-respect and what it is to be a person; knowledge, law, policing,
tourism, old elites, new elites, histories, environmentalities, species, economies; the creation of
categories of actors in law. Her comments underscore that what is at stake is not only the
question of political ecology (how to make just decisions on who could harvest from the sea),
but the question of the ecology of politics.
Her challenge to this assembly is a challenge to the modernist framework that has driven
environmental policy in the Marine Living Resources Act, which focused on legislation to
conserve both the resource and the industry. It was a powerful presentation; although in an
economy of ideas in which power-point lists predominate the techniques of argument, it was
almost inevitable that her intensive account (in which she weaves her life experience with her
knowledge of fisheries management systems) would be translated into an extensive account of
things to do, and thus lose its power to transform the fundamental questions about knowledge
and democracy that she addresses.
15

The question related closely to Brno Latours AIME project, which hones in the points
at which dialogues break down, in democracies, over the ecology of knowledge, and it is to that
that I want to turn: first, what is it that the range of actors who drafted the MLRA could not
hear, in what she proposed, and second, what is it that the Parliamentarians themselves are not
seeing.
What the final MLRA of 1998 neglected to acknowledge, notwithstanding the input of
various environmentalists and social scientists,
16
was that the particular categories of fishers they
had proposed were not self-evident natural kinds (subsistence, recreational, industrial) but had
arisen in the course of history and were profoundly inflected by race.
17
Second, there was an
enchantment with the idea, in some sectors of fisheries conservation, that the big commercial
companies could harvest in a controlled way and supply at scale, and would be easier to police
than allowing many new entrants in without attention to the inevitable: that fishers who found
themselves defined as poachers would refuse to comply, and therefore render the careful
management of environmental resources all but impossible. Third, the dominant idea was that
the solution to the race-based ownership of capital-intensive fisheries was to require them to
transfer substantial shares of ownership to a new class of historically disadvantaged
entrepreneurs. That approach did not change the problematic structure of the industry: the
exclusion of small-scale fishers, and the framing of marine research and catch reporting in single-
species stock assessments rather than an ecosystem approach. So confident in the independence
and impartiality of science were the marine environmentalists and other political actors who
drafted the MLRA, that they paid little attention to the historical effects of race and capital on
knowledge itself. The ecology of knowledge was not in their purview; the idea seems to be that

14
Selene SmlLh spoke ln Afrlkaans. 1hls ls my LranslaLlon from Lhe audlo recordlng of Lhe proceedlngs.
13
As a represenLaLlve of Langebaan flshers, her accounL dlffers from oLhers ln Lhe reglon, slnce Lhe Langebaan ecology ls
based around a lagoon and has been relaLlvely sLable. llshers from communlLles elsewhere along Lhe coasL have
experlenced greaL hardshlp afLer specles have shlfLed souLhwards and easLwards along Lhe ALlanLlc coasL, wlLh consequenL
lmpacL on facLorles LhaL found Lhemselves havlng Lo Lruck caLches LhaL were belng made, for Lhe flrsL Llme, much furLher
afleld.
16
See 8.M. Clark, Pauck, M, Parrls, !. M., Salo, k. and 8ussel, L. 2002. ldenLlflcaLlon of subslsLence flshers, flshlng areas,
resource use and acLlvlLles along Lhe SouLh Afrlcan coasL. SouLh Afrlcan !ournal of Marlne Sclence 24: 423-437, 8arry Clark,
2000. SubslsLence llsherles 1ask Croup (Sl1C) 8eporL 1: ldenLlflcaLlon of subslsLence flsher communlLles, areas and
resources, unpubllshed reporL.
17
See L. van SlLLerL, C. 8ranch, M. Pauck, M. Sowman. 2006. 8enchmarklng Lhe flrsL decade of posL-aparLheld flsherles
reform ln SouLh Afrlca. Marlne ollcy 30 (2006) 96-110, uavld Crosoer, Lance van SlLLerL, SLefano onLe. 2006. 1he
lnLegraLlon of SouLh Afrlcan flsherles lnLo Lhe global economy: asL, presenL and fuLure. Marlne ollcy 30 (2006) 18-29,
Moenleba lsaacs, Mafanlso Paraa, !esper 8aak[r. 2007. Pas reformlng SouLh Afrlcan flsherles conLrlbuLed Lo wealLh
dlsLrlbuLlon and poverLy allevlaLlon? Ccean & CoasLal ManagemenL 30 (2007) 301-313.
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 7

justice simply had to be aded to ecology; in the parlance of marine management, the challenge
was to add the human dimension to fisheries managment. The nett effect, in the words of
South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys, was that of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
By giving insufficient recognition to the small-scale fishers and limiting their commercial
opportunities, the best conservation strategies imaginable provoked their opposite: creating a
new underclass class of environmentally disenfranchised poachers and a series of successful
court challenges, pitting fisheries managers against fishing communities; and creating a very
troubling alliance between capital, science, policing, the prosecutions system, and prisons all of
which is being questioned, here, in an historical assembly in the Old Assembly Building.
Through the promulgation of the Marine Living Resources Act in 1998, the categories of
fishers took on a social and political life (and death): they came into existence and were forced
out of existence by decree. Yet peoples experience was profoundly at odds with those
categories, in much the same way as they were with the ideology of race classification that
undergirded apartheid.
18

South African scientific community has yet to engage the implications of the reality that
the categories of race were created via an alliance of science and a particular elite, using particular
technologies available at the time, to carve out a particular object: at the time, a race category,
with which political technologies and policing and courts concurred and enforced as an objective
and a moral reality. Certainly, no-one would dream of continuing to use the particular
technologies that served to define race, which at one time included the notorious pencil test
administered by bureaucrats: did a pencil, when stuck into the hair of the person whose race was
in question, stay in or fall out? Nor would scientists continue to use the tools and techniques of
more formal race classification based on the agreed scientific criteria of the 1930s. For the most
part, that history of natural science has been brushed off as either bad science or bad apples
or both. Yet what has not been engaged in South Africa is the implication: that science and
scientific technologies emerge in society, and reflect its interests; that an expanded reality of
science in society is something to engage and work with, rather than deny. It teaches a vital
lesson: that the capacity of science, courts, Parliament and law to bring into reality a version of
the world that is at odds with the experience of many, is something to fear. Such a fear is the
beginning of wisdom. If something as close to the everyday as racial classification can be
instantiated in public life, then there is the potential for other scientific classifications to create
objects that are similarly mis-identified. The beginning of wisdom, I want to suggest, in debates
on decolonial science, is to recognise the integration of science with society, rather than
desperately cling to the argument that science is Science.
Notwithstanding the reliance of my argument here on the work of Bruno Latour, I also
want to point to a difference, in the South African context, with Latours account of Parliaments
in Europe. Unlike the Parliaments described in Politics of Nature,
19
in which the modern
constitution the division of nature from culture generates a politics that is uneasily confined
to matters socio-cultural while leaving authority on nature to scientific experts, the Parliament of
post-apartheid South Africa has explicitly sought to question the imbroglio that is capital and
science, and challenge its centrality, its authority, and its modes of verification. The South
African government has set itself the enormous challenge of questioning the relationship
between scientific accounts of nature and African knowledges, whether in the arena of medicine
(specifically HIV-Aids) or in the scientific management of natural resources. My concern here, as

18
MarLln WesL, 1989. '8ace' ln Sharp, !ohn and 8oonzaaler, Lmlle. 1989. /*0'( %1)23"& A$-B*)@6. Cape 1own: uavld hlllp.
19
8runo LaLour, 2004. ollLlcs of naLure: Pow Lo brlng Lhe sclences lnLo democracy. Cambrldge, MA: Parvard unlverslLy
ress.
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 8

in earlier work,
20
is to try to navigate a way through the pitfalls of relativism, moralism,
nationalism, or scientific rationalism. The task is to understand the ecology of knowledge within
a democracy. In regards to environmentalism, this means that the discussion shifts from creating
the knowledge of ecology, to exploring the ecology of knowledge. In the former, science is the
eye of the needle the old gate of Jerusalem -- through which all camels must kneel to pass. In
the latter, the challenge is much greater, yet much more amenable to making peace in a world in
which there are many knowledges and ways of knowing, and in which we want to find terms on
which we can work towards agreement about what is real and of concern, without requiring
knowledges to be first transformed into objects that match the scientific.
The ecology of democracy is a central concern in the work Making Things Public:
Atmospheres of Democracy in which Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel assembled an enormous
range of accounts to demonstrate the imbroglio of politics, science and nature. An exhibition
that sought to familiarise publics with the possibilities for widening the frame of reference of
political debate to include the natural, it sought to problematise the worldview in which science
and society are separate institutions. A central concern for them is the problem of reaching
agreement on ecological controversies, and the presentation of scientific evidentiaries in politics.
[T]he more we move into ecological controversies, wrote Latour and Weibel, the more important it becomes
to consider an ecosystem as a sort of assembly without walls, inside which many types of speakers are allowed to
have a voice. Not because we want to imitate the usual parliamentary settings, but, on the contrary, because its
obvious that the traditional sites of politics have to move toward the center of gravity of ecology. Ecology is not
about a naturalization of politics as if one wanted to treat humans like plants and animals; its about the
recognition of the immense complexity involved for any entity human or non-human to have a voice, to take a
stand, to be counted, to be represented, to be connected with others. From the beginning of modern science to the
contemporary engineering of rivers, landscapes and agriculture, its clear that the number of speech instruments and
apparatus as immensely increased. Without these many mediations, no representation would be possible. If we have
to live from now on in the assemblies of nature, we had better be aware of the procedures that make them either
nurturing or deadly, livable or tyrannical.
21

At issue in the traumas attached to South African fisheries, is both the nature that can
be ennumerated and tabulated in a commercial marine environment, and the nature of the
groups of fishers let us call them actors in the regions fisheries. And this is where the
imbroglio of science, race and society is central: scientific racism produced race categories
through a series of technical measures, introduced those into Parliaments like South Africa, and
enacted laws that brought these categories into life, wealth, suffering, poverty and hunger. The
same room in the South African Parliament, by the (un)virtue of its history of convening
assemblies of racial science in the service of capital, is a Parliament of nature a Parliament of
Human Nature, one might say, that instantiated in South Africa the reality of race categories that
had not existed as such before: categories that would split families; define peoples worth;
imposed limits on education, economic activity, places of residence, quality of medical care, the
colours of lovers, taking seat on a park bench or entering through a door, and whether the
stories your parents told belonged in a museum of cultural history or a museum of natural
history. In a country whose engagements with modernist thought were framed by an obsession
with legal definitions of personhood in order to define forms of presence in the polis, it was
both an accident of history and not at all an accident, that the focus of the the debate in what
one might call the Parliament of Fishers, in October 2013, attended primarily to what form of
legal personhood should be afforded to small scale fishers, and secondly to whether, in a marine

20
See Lesley ! l Creen, (under revlew). 'vlral ollLlcs, ArLhropod ollLlcs: arllamenL, uemocracy and LobsLers ln SouLh
Afrlca, 2012', Lesley ! l Creen, 2012. 8eyond SouLh Afrlca's 'lndlgenous knowledge' versus 'sclence' wars. /*0'( %1)23"&
C*0)&"+ *1 /32$&3$; 2012,108(7/8), ArL. #631
21
8runo LaLour and eLer Welbel, 2003. '1he arllamenLs of naLure' , pp.438-439 ln <"D2&, >(2&,6 =0E+237 %':*6#($)$6 *1
F$:*3)"3-. Cambrldge, MassachusseLLs: Ml1 ress.
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 9

environment in which fishing rights are managed via single-species rights, small-scale fishers be
allowed multi-species rights.
On the form of legal personhood, at issue was the establishment of a legal mechanism to
ecologically enfranchise traditional fishers without rendering them as traditional, which would
encumber them with a burden of historical and ethnological proof, and limit the range of fishing
possibilities. The concern was to align that new form of legal personhood with the terms of legal
personhood accepted by the Department of Trade and Industry, in order to be able to release
capital investments and loans to fishers to establish larger businesses. It was a very important
moment for the constitution of South Africas Polis, in which capital has had an unreasonable
level of public trust to set the terms of political life. Where Europe and North America have
battled with an unreasonable faith in the economy that could be defined by bankers, South
Africas democracy has battled with an unreasonable faith in the ability of capital to provide the
terms of political restitution. The work of fishers, then, is to offer an alternative mode of
assembly before the law, yet that mode of assembly runs the constant risk of translation (or
perhaps collapse) into a class of association that is defined by the principles of capital. It is a tiny
moment of infinite significance: what Mrs Smith describes an association of sharing is
required to conform to the principles of legal personhood in order to be verified. On the one
hand, what was achieved was a huge victory for the fishers, very much part of what the Small
Scale Fishers Policy refers to as a paradigm shift:
This policy introduces a paradigm shift and new policy approach to the Small Scale fisheries sector. The
Department recognises that the new approach must address the existing need for transformation, the
progressive realisation of human rights within affected communities, developmental objectives and current
economic realities, and the ecological sustainability of the resource; and contribute to community well-being and
development.

On the other hand, the requirement that the form of association be formalised into a corporation
required fishers to form the equivalent of a company; be trained in the techniques and strategies of
bureaucracy a process that is important but not without flaws, as Nadasdy describes in the Canadian
context with Hunters and Bureaucrats.
22
At the meeting in Parliament, Mr Dawie Phillips of the town of
Port Nolloth in the Northern Cape province, tried to mediate the contending concerns:
Mr Phillips greeted the gathering in Nama, but spoke in Afrikaans. [He] said that the amendments
proposed would help the community to gain legitimate use of the sea, as their rights would be recognised
for the first time. For the [Small Scale Fishers] of Port Nolloth, the previous arrangements had been
little better than apartheid and had disempowered them in the same way. He had now heard arguments
for and against the Bill during these two days. He could well understand that some interest groups were
against the amendments, because they were assets unto their own sector. If [Small Scale Fishers] were not
given autonomy and independence they had little choice than to become assets to the big fishing companies
who could employ and exploit them, and that had to stop. Port Nolloth [Small Scale Fishers] saw the
Bill as empowering them to own their own boats, to have their own processing plants and to trade on their
own behalf, both domestically and abroad. He said that co-ops, formal and informal, were not new to the
community, whose whole way of life was essentially a co-op of mutual assistance essentially, because when
someone had plenty they shared with those that had nothing.
Mr Phillips said that he hoped that when the amendments were passed they would give [Small
Scale Fishing] communities access to capital, which would enable them to improve their way of life
sustainably for their forthcoming generations, along with improving their business management skills
which, in turn, would lead to better communities.

The Parliament of Fishers, as assembled on October 15 and 16 2013, is reaching for a
redefinition of the ecumene and the economy of fishers: the fishers are both asking for a

22
aul nadasdy, 2003. PunLers and 8ureaucraLs. ower, knowledge, and Aborlglnal-SLaLe 8elaLlons ln Lhe SouLhwesL
?ukon. vancouver: unlverslLy of 8rlLlsh Colombla ress.
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 10

redefinition of legal personhood and a transformation of the economy of fisheries. Curiously, the
second of several insistences is the demand for multi-species rights: that one does not only get
allocated a linefish right or a shark right or a crayfish right, but that one can legally collect
multiple species. In this sense the discussion of multi-species rights in Parliament on those two
days, is very different to the use fo the term multi-species rights in decolonial debates and
contemporary philosophy. Another World Is Possible! is the collective cry of many across the
decolonial south. Yet in contrast to decolonial environmental rights activism in Ecuador, Peru,
Bolivia, and New Zealand, the cry in South Africa is to expand the rights of people over nature
within given capitalist and modernist frameworks, rather than to establish the rights of nature in
the polis itself. The reason for that, I want to suggest, is that the nature of post-apartheid
political landscape in South Africa is tightly bound up to capitalism, and that fisheries activism in
South Africa has focused on rights of access to a commodified version of nature: a marine
ecology of extractable objects; a political ecology of biomass as defined in the language and
methods of the Total Allowable Catch calculations. Where the Small Scale Fishers Policy of 2012
calls for the ecological sustainability of the resource it is not arguing for the rights of the sea,
or of Langebaan Lagoon, it is arguing for the sustainability of harvests.
Why this matters is that the fishers challenge here is not only to align the law with the
already accepted new Small Scale Fishers Policy, but it is also a challenge to the ecology of
modernist democracy in South Africa, and I want to suggest that fisheries activists here who
focus on fishers indigenous knowledge might have a very rich dialogue with environmental
activists elsewhere in the south whose critique of the global economic system generates a refusal
to go along with capitalist definitions of nature as an extractable resource. For a South African
anthropologist like myself, the question what ideas are at work here, in Parliament, is an
important one to try to think with alongside (rather than about, which replicates the practice
of colonial ethnology). My question is what efforts to unmake the legacy of modernist thought
are in evidence in the fishers presentations, and how might they offer insights into the unmaking
of the legacy of modernity and coloniality in the ecology of democracy. The question is: is there
an ecology of ideasthat we can develop that is sufficient for the struggles to be framed usefully,
in partnership with the fragile marine ecology in a time of climate change and diminished
resources, in order that the most appropriate and useful solutions can be found? Is it possible to
formulate an environmentality that does not replicate the conceptual errors of modernity and
coloniality, and the devastations of landscape, sea and personhood that have accompanied them?
Or is what is at work in Parliament, here, a combination of a skilful use of environmentality and
strategic self-representation?
The word ecology comes from the Greek oikos, which, as I have noted, is the root
term for all three of the sectors of struggle: the economy, the ecology, and the ecumene, i.e. the
relationships of collective life which, like any household that produces its own food, include
both humans and non-humans. In that oikos, the ecology, the economy and our collective
ecumene are part of our household. Whether we think of that household as four walls or a planet
of seven seas, it does not matter. The point is that it offers a unifying approach that releases us
from the problem of separating nature from human action and different way of doing
environmental politics.
The anthropocene demands nothing less than the recognition that the metaphysical
machine that is modernist thought has caused a great deal of trouble on the planet. What might
it mean to rethink the oikos as a whole, and do politics in a way that reconstitutes the oikos as a
whole? Might it be possible to reframe an environmentality on terms other than the nature
that gave us race? Bruno Latour, introducing his project titled An Inquiry into Modes of Existence,
poses the challenge to the Modernist Constitution thus:
We have to fight trouble with trouble, counter a metaphysical machine with a bigger metaphysical
machine. The hypothesis is ludicrous, as I am very well aware, but it is no more senseless than the
project of an architect who offers his clients a house with a new form, a new arrangement of rooms and
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 11

functions . And if you were to put science over there, while reolcating politics over here, at the same
time you run the law underneath and move fiction to this spot, wouldnt you be more at ease? Such
castles in the air have to be judged by the only test worth its salt: would the potential inhabitant feel more
comfortable there? At bottom, that is what it is all about: can one institute the Moderns in habitats
that are, if not stable, at least sustainable and reasonable? More simply, more radically: can one offer
them a dwelling place at long last? After all those years of wandering in the desert, do they have a hope of
reaching not the Promised Land but Earth itself, quite simply, the only on they have, at once underfoot
and all around them, the aptly named Gaia?
23


What I want to do here is go back to the remarkable submissions, on 15 and 16 October, and
focus on the debate about ecological knowledge, and the argument that fishers indigenous
knowledge needs to be added to the science in order to make environmental science equitable.
The accusations that science is misleading and that indigenous knowledge needs to be
included as a matter of justice and equity is an argument with a morality that I would want to
support, yet we know from the experience of the war over science and indigenous knowledge in
relation to HIV that the moral force of argument is insufficient grounding for the enormous
responsibility of democratic decision-making. At the same time, as I have argued here and
elsewhere, a retreat into a narrow scientific rationalism does not enable scientific argument to
find an exit from the weight of its own history. To think outside of this polemic requires work.
I want to open my contibution to this discussion with the Small Scale Fishers Policy, in
which section 6.2 speaks of the allocation of Small Scale fishing rights:
This section elaborates on the paradigm shift in the approach to the Small Scale fishing sector that is
introduced in this policy and discussed briefly in section 4. This shift introduces a new approach that
recognises and draws on age-old local traditions and practices of catching, harvesting and managing
marine living resources among Small Scale fishers. At the same time, the new approach seeks to address
the ecological sustainability of the resource, the progressive realisation of socia-economic [sic] human rights
within affected communities and current economic realities. [my emphasis]

The challenge here to traditional knowledge and practices is to be effective in terms of the
regime of markets and capital: fish become a resource to sustain; access to catch them is about
socio-economic rights and economic realities. Economics access to capital is the framing
logic. In this moment, the traditions are transformed into the service of capital; yet this is at once
a very dangerous move. Philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers speaks of the need to
disentangle science from capital as a concern, in the knowledge economy, that is as great as was
the need to disentangle knowledge from the church in the 1600s.
24
The work is echoed in MP
Meriam Phalisos concern, as explored in the previous chapter, that science is misleading because
in her terms marine science is invested in a particular form of capital. I am in agreement with her
on that point. Yet I am not in agreement with the thinking that the solution is to formalise
indigenous knowledge in relation to the interests of capital. Rather, I want to draw yet more
deeply on fishers ecologies of knowledge to rethink the relationship between knowledge and
society altogether. From the PMP report of the meeting, Ms Phaliso intervention was as follows:
Ms Phaliso urged the Small Scale Fishers to look towards their indigenous knowledge, saying that
science could be misleading. No information had been furnished on alternative marine species along the
coastal belt until the day of the hearings. She noted that environmental awareness and conservation were
nothing new to SSF communities.
25
She reiterated most of Mr Joshuas and Mr Goliaths sentiments
about the sharing of wealth from the SSF sector. She heard the support for the amendments, and the

23
8runo LaLour, 2013. %& G&H02)- 2&'* <*@$6 *1 ?926'$&3$. Cambrldge: Parvard unlverslLy ress, pp.22-23.
24
See hlllppe lgnarre and lsabelle SLengers, 2011. !"#2'"+26' /*)3$)-7 4)$"D2&, '($ 6#$++; 8aslngsLoke: algrave Macmlllan.
23
?eL, as noLed by flsherles acLlvlsL !ackle Sunde, many of Lhe flshers were from famllles who had losL flshlng rlghLs durlng
Lhe aparLheld years, and Lhelr knowledge of flsherles had been acqulred ln facLorles and on board commerclal vessels.
(Lmall, 16 March 2014).
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 12

mandate to this Committee to produce a piece of legislation that would guarantee food security to the SSF
sector.

Ms Phalisos concerns are urgent, and vitally important to hear; they ought not to be disregarded
or patronised. And they are echoed by the only white fisherman who presented, Mr Andries van
der Merwe of the Helderberg Artisanal Fisheries association:
Mr Van der Merwe said that SSFs were fisher folk, knew the sea, and knew how to sell their fish, but
the conservation scientists knowledge about when and where fish could be found was flawed. He invited
scientists to consult fishermen when they were doing their conservation work. He thought that Ms Steyns
observation about Mr Mosss assertion was skewed; all that SSFs were saying were that they should
equally be consulted. He urged DAFF [the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries] to listen
to the SSFs and investigate carefully what the scientists were saying. In 2000 the line fish committee
scientists had said that there were 93 tonnes of line fish left for breeding in the ocean. In the December
/January season of 2000/1, fishers had caught 99 and 120 tonnes of Cape salmon respectively. SSFs
should be represented on the scientific committees. They had thorough knowledge of the fish stocks.

The question underscored the relation between knowledge, compliance, management and
policing, and catch reporting, all of which are missing in the MLRA of 1998, because the
fundamental flaw of that legislation is in its own ecology: it had failed to understand that rolling
out law, penalties, the threat of criminalisation, and a new police force equipped with new
technologies of surveillance would not be sufficient to establish environmental-mindedness
among fishers. Here, the Small Scale Fishers Policy sets out an alternative ecology of democratic
practice:
The policy seeks to give guidance on how the relationship between the Small Scale fishers and the marine
living resources and ecosystems that these fishers harvest and their livelihoods depend upon, will be
managed and work in practice. In adopting an approach that is community-based and supports a
community orientation, the policy further recognizes the need to balance consideration of human rights
while ensuring the ecological sustainability of the resource. The policy proposes involving Small Scale
fishers and coastal communities in decisions about the harvesting and management of the resource, as well
as in the monitoring of the sector. Co-management will furthermore promote community participation in
natural resource management initiatives and projects. [my emphasis]

In other words, already in play is an effort to redefine an environmentality that is not bound in to
the practical outworking of racial superiority in whiteliness,
26
in which the environment
becomes the new white mans burden to save. The question of how to work with fishers
knowledge a term that itself slipped easily into the category of indigenous knowledge -- was
put back to the only scientist who presented at the hearings, Prof Doug Butterworth, who heads
the mathematical modelling group at the University of Cape Town that is tasked with calculating
the Total Allowable Catch. From the Parliamentary Monitoring Groups report, the closing
discussion was as follows:

Mr Bhanga noted that Mr Moss had alluded to the fact that the SSF felt that the conservation
scientists did not always balance their science with indigenous knowledge and the needs of the people. He
asked how a correct balance could be achieved, addressing poverty with available resources in a responsible
and controllable way and balancing this against environmental and conservation needs. He asked if Prof
Butterworth had any suggestions. He asked if implementation of the SSFP was likely to be detrimental
to the conservation of the MLR or whether it was possible to come up with an alternative environmental-
friendly policy that would also address the needs of the marginalised SSF community. He said that there

26
l refer here Lo Lhe work of femlnlsL wrlLer Marllyn lrye, afLer Mlnnle 8ruce raLL. See Marllyn lrye, 1992. WhlLe woman
femlnlsL. ln Wlllful vlrgln: essays ln femlnlsm. lreedom, CA: 1he Crosslngress. hLLp://www.femlnlsL-
reprlse.org/docs/fw2.hLm. [accessed 16.10.13].
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 13

was a need to inculcate, in citizens, the balance of indigenous knowledge with modern developments. One
of the presenters also had commented on the overregulation of the SSF sector and said that conservation
scientists over-emphasised conservation at the expense of livelihoods. There had to be a balance. The
environment should respond to the socio-economic needs of its immediate occupants. The rigidity of
conservation protection for depleted MLR were the exact reasons that led to poaching, and there were
problems in continuing this path. He asked Prof Butterworth also to speak to that point. In essence, the
scientists thought they had a monopoly over the environmental needs, and the SSFs thought that they had
a monopoly over their poverty.
Prof Butterworth clarified that the DAFF [Department of Agriculture, Forestry and
Fisheries] scientific working groups were appointed by the Chief Director of Research at the DAFF and
they consisted of scientists who were appropriately qualified people, with full rights to speak, and decisions
were taken by consensus. The National Professional Scientists Act specified who was regarded as a
scientist and who was not qualified, but there were also observers allowed in those groups. Fishery science
was not a science of isolated pockets and it was accepted that interactions were needed not only with those
who had indigenous knowledge - the fishermen but also management and compliance people, who were
represented on working groups. Industry fishermen were allowed as observers, at the discretion of the Chief
Director of Research, who had taken a liberal stance. Although there was, formally, a distinction
between members and observers, in fact contributions were welcomed, although it must be accepted that
sometimes it was only the scientists who would be able to discuss the most technical issues. Prof.
Butterworth urged Ms Phaliso and Mr Bhanga to bear in mind that there were indigenous people with
rights to be considered in the USA, and they had made inputs to their similar committees on indigenous
knowledge. Internationally, indigenous knowledge was recognised, with the qualification that [it] could
be objectively verified. That meant that pure anecdotes should be distinguished from genuine and
verifiable input. On the point that scientists were perceived as too rigid, he noted that fisheries
management was not easy. On the previous day, he had been involved in serious debate abut the penguin
situation and how that was linked to sardine availability which may lead to debates about the possible
decrease of sardine fishery operations, which might lead to disadvantage to some small scale operators in
order to benefit the recovery of the penguin colonies a matter that required a trade-off. The scientists
fundamental responsibility was to present the decision makers with the qualifications of those tradeoffs.
This example showed that there were not easy issues.
Prof Butterworth responded to Mr Bhanga that there was room, in the SSF, for an appropriate
balance for big industry and small scale operators. The word appropriate could hide so many things, but
someone had to find a sensible balance. He would, however, like to state his major concern around
compliance. The big operators landed in big harbours and it was easy to check that what they caught was
actually what they were supposed to be fishing. This was far more difficult with small scale operators and
he sympathised with DAFFs problems, because extending the range of rights holders in the fisheries
brought with it a very real need for extra resources on compliance, as there were always flaws in the
human condition when no one was looking. The Committee had to be aware of the full implications, and
provide DAFF with the appropriate resources to enable adequate compliance. It was no secret that the
country had major problems in abalone and rock lobster and unless the DAFF was given adequate
resources no one would be the winner.
Mr van der Merwe said that he did not agree with Prof. Butterworth over the scientific working
groups. He had attended the meetings, and had only seen calculations, but never real counting of the fish.
The observers could not vote. The scientists may listen to the SSF contributions, but whether they took
them into account was another matter. He hoped that the new Deputy Director General would make it
his task to put the scientists in the boats with the SSF. [my emphases]

The discussion entered the final report of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee [see Appendix]
in the following point:
! Some groups also advocated for the recognition of indigenous knowledge of traditional fishers and
its inclusion in co-management activities. It was reported that DAFF does not involve small-scale fishers
L ! l Creen, 2014. 'CcLober 2013: arllamenL MeeLs Small-Scale llshers', p. 14

in Scientific Working Groups that conduct stock assessments and determine periodic allocations of total
allowable catch and total applied effort.
Which was in turn followed with this recommendation:
! DAFF should consider including customary rights in the Amendment Bill and ensure that
indigenous knowledge of traditional fishers is considered in its Scientific Working Groups.

What the Small Scale Fishers Policy and, in my view, many of the fishers presentations are
reaching for to rethink the relationship of knowledge, law, policing, and how that is made. What
Prof Butterworth is asking for is to only have to accept objective knowledge that passes the tests
of science: an approach that means that whatever does not accord with a particular version of
science is not to be accepted. He is asking Parliament to concur with a particular felicity
condition that establishes the precedence of scientific nature. In order to equip ourselves to
begin to resolve these matters, it is important to study closely the science of the Total Allowable
Catch. This is the focus of the next chapter.