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The
Elephant's Ear Thursday 19 November, 1998 WATCHING the anti-perlemoen poaching demonstration outside police headquarters the other day, a colleague of mine was moved to note, an excitement in his voice beyond the thrall of the occasion: "IÆm so glad to see whities getting off their asses." And so it came to be that in the latter half of the 20 century, scrabbling at the coalface of a second epoch of rotten government, a small Eastern Cape community came to show us the way forward. And all of it because of a small clam-like creature greatly relished in the Orient. A grand scenario, perhaps, but extraordinary things have been accomplished here. A powerful criminal syndicate has been set back on its heels and a small community has galvanised itself into the kind of action our environment and this country desperately needs. In the end, the skirmish was short. Having cleaned out Cape Recife, the poachers had been working the Schoenmakerskop reef for six weeks. Bemused residents watching the pillaging from their clifftop were approached a number of times, sworn at and threatened. On at least two occasions people were warned that they would be killed and their houses burned down if they interfered. Daily distress calls were made to the authorities but ù hamstrung by tough possession laws, understaffed and apparently uninclined ù nothing was done. Then several things happened at once. The Herald splashed two stories across its front page on successive days; in a sensational swoop, police arrested businessman Brett Alcock, brother of Springbok Chad, and seized 400kg of perlemoen apparently sourced at Schoenmakerskop and found in his possession; residents picketed outside Louis le Grange Square police HQ and then marched through their village, calling on the poachers to depart. For the moment, they apparently have, although nobodyÆs bluffing themselves that they wonÆt try to return. In the interim, residents have briefed committees to link up with other coastal users to build on their success and form an extended network for the protection of coastal marine resources. They have alerted all authorities and are keeping a constant watch themselves. None of this has come too soon. The entire Eastern Cape coastline is monitored by just eight Sea Fisheries inspectors and ù although the new Sea Fisheries Act will garner more money for the state and place more pressure on these inspectors ù there is no indication that more staff are being delegated to their ranks. Asked about the poachersÆ contention that they should be allocated permits to legally harvest perlemoen, Rhodes University ichthyologist Dr Peter Britz says the problem is the resource is presently being mined out. The level of harvesting is too high and the number of divers is growing all the time. If permits are even considered, bag limits will have to be set substantially lower than what is presently being plundered. It is not clear how such limitations can be imposed by a scant police force on people who have already showed they have little respect for the law or the environment. If the poaching syndicates are to be eradicated, the task force must surely co-ordinate its strategy with the justice department. More and better quality prosecutors must be supplied to counter skilled defence counsel who have succeeded in delaying so many cases they have been postponed well into next year. No-one's interested in living in an over-legislated cocoon but what the law surely has to do is ensure that the fundamentals are in place. And the most basic of these is the protection of the environment. Its well-being is key to our economy and to our very existence. It is wholly fitting, therefore, that it was a lowly shellfish that got the Schoenies folk going and encouraged them to take back their humanity and their rights. A prominent Schoenies resident stood up during one of their early meetings and said the problem with the country was that nobody was DOING anything. If she had to stand by and watch the poachers plunder their reef, she felt, then she might as well join them herself. This was the simple reasoning the residents acted on, and it worked. Their triumph should encourage all South Africans that they can make a difference. For the protection of the environment, in the battle against organised crime and in the establishment of a genuine moral order. |