Empowering the fishing communities
|
Empowering the fishing communities in the coastal areas through knowledge interchange
Masifundise Development Trust is an independent, non-governmental organisation working with small scale and traditional fishing and coastal communities mainly in the Western Cape. The organisation has also recently started working with representatives from fishing communities in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Masifundise is the only non-governmental organisation in South Africa working with fisher and coastal organisations and has been engaged in advocacy and policy development for the past eight years.
South Africa is a country with kilometres of beautiful coastline and abundant marine resources, but commercial fishing industry and poaching are taking their toll on the natural marine resources. Traditional fishing communities who rely on the sea are increasingly under threat as their livelihoods are eroded.
After 1994, attempts were made to redress apartheid imbalances and fishing permits were granted to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) candidates to try to diversify the racial and economic profile of the people benefiting from the country's resources. Unfortunately, many traditional small-scale fishermen lost out on the permit allocation process and for the first time many families who had relied on the sea for generations were unable to fish legally.
The new policy and subsequent allocation of permits has contributed to massive unemployment and boredom particularly, among young men. As a result, the levels of poverty amongst these communities had risen drastically as their source of livelihood has been taken away from them. With lack of any other skills, but fishing, and the need to provide daily sustenance, the non-permit holders have resorted to illegal fishing activities. Consequently, the policy has been counterproductive as the dwindling marine resources that it is meant to protect are now being depleted at a faster pace.
Masifundise Development Trust is working with the communities in order to redress the situation. “We have used CIDA funding to build capacity within traditional fishing communities,” explains Jackie Sunde from Masifundise. “People feel very emotional about being stripped of their fishing rights, but we are enabling them to think critically about their situation and empower them to assert their human rights and to seek solutions in conjunction with government departments. So far we have held two workshops with leaders from the different fishing communities. The first meeting was held in June 2009 and the second in October.”
The workshops provided a platform for the fishing communities to raise many of the issues they are facing. For Jackie what stood out was the way community leaders were able to engage with each other and look beyond their personal experiences to those of the broader fishing constituency. And, for many, the workshop provided them with insight into another world as fishing communities in the Western Cape are very different from those in KwaZulu-Natal.
As part of the knowledge interchange, CIDA has funded an exchange programme which enabled two First Nation community members from Canada to visit traditional fishing villages and attend one of the capacity building workshops. Leaders from South African fishing villages were able to share lessons and to learn from the Canadians experience of organising and advocating for their rights to natural resources. Central to this networking were the lessons that were shared on how to promote food sovereignty amongst traditional harvesting communities.
In addition, CIDA's support for the project has also helped produce, A handbook towards sustainable small-scale fisheries in South Africa: Promoting poverty alleviation, food security and gender equity in small-scale fisheries. The draft handbook was distributed to the workshop participants who then provided valuable feedback on the content and approach to policy making.
Several of these leaders are represented on the national small-scale fisheries policy task team and the handbook will be used to empower leaders and community members to participate fully and effectively in this policy development process.
One of these leaders, Ebrahim Yusuf, is accustomed to rising at 3am - well before sunrise - and making his way down to the sandy beaches of KwaZulu-Natal. Ebrahim explains, “in the Durban area, a once vibrant and economically sustainable fishing community was destroyed and stripped of their fishing rights in the 1950s. Sadly, these rights have not been restored to us."
Currently, Ebrahim and other fishermen are using recreational permits to avoid being prosecuted, but there are lots of restrictions. “We fish to put food on the table,” he says, “but if you can only catch four fish a day, there is no way that you can pay for transport and bait so you end up poaching to make ends meet.
“The workshops run by Masifundise were very helpful. They afforded me the opportunity to meet and share with other fisher communities. I'm lucky because I'm relatively empowered, but policy-making is not my job. Now we know we can contribute to policies that affect us. We need to stand together to get policy makers to listen to what we have to say. You always think people are like you, but the coastal communities in South Africa are very diverse. What unites us is that we just want to support our families and continue to fish as we always have.”
Unfortunately the Department of Marine and Coastal Management, South Africa (the government department responsible for managing marine resources and interfacing with the communities) did not support this initiative. Sadly, they would not allow their field workers to attend the workshops. “This was a huge disappointment,” Jackie explains, “because it would have been the perfect opportunity to learn from each other and grapple with the issues together. We could also have focused on building a civil society and government partnership, which would have been groundbreaking.”
|
