Who is responsible for the Fishrot Scandal-YOU!
Two weeks before the election two of Namibia’s best known ministers, the Minister of Justice, Mr Sacky Shangala and Mr Bernard Esau the, Minister of Fisheries have ‘resigned’ from cabinet because of their alleged involvement in corruption in Namibia’s largest sustainable export sector – the fisheries. The people of Namibia are wringing their hands and asking how such a thing could possibly happen? What has been going on in the fisheries is well known and there has been one exposé after another of corruption and malfeasance in the sector. No-one who is an informed citizen who cares about Namibia and its future should be the slightest bit surprised about what has happened in the Fishrot scandal.
In 2016 I wrote an article in the Namibian about how people who were politically connected were getting Horse mackerel quota and selling them for $3250 per tonne to people who actually do the fishing and so anyone getting a 5000 tonne quote was instantly a multi- millionaire without having to put a line or fish net in the water. After I wrote my article some of my colleagues at UNAM laughed at me saying that this is nothing new at all and the corruption is well known. Long before I had ever written anything on the matter The Namibian newspaper was telling a seemingly disinterested public about the misconduct in the fisheries.
It was not until The Namibian exposed the role of parliamentarians in 2018 when they made their declarations of interest public, that the issue really became public. It was found that that at least 24 of the 104 members of parliament either own or are directors of fishing companies. In 2018 Mr Daniel Kali the De Beers resident director wrote an article comparing how much the diamond industry pay in taxes compared to how little the fisheries sector pays. Yet no-one really said anything as though such behavior is almost expected.
In 2017/18 the BBC ran a major high profile story from the infamous ‘Paradise Papers’, a major leak of documents about tax havens and corruption, about how Namibia was being ripped off in the fisheries sector. It was publicly aired in Namibia and the Minister of Finance was interviewed and he agreed that companies registered in Mauritius were busily ripping off Namibia and not paying their share of taxes. Certainly Mr Schelettwein knew at least a large part of what was going on in the fisheries sector.
In 2018 former Fisheries Minister Mr Esau confirmed publicly that fishing quotas were allocated to the Namibian Intelligence Service and that this had been the case since 2010. In 2019 this was estimated to be worth some N$17 million.
One scandal after another has engulfed the fisheries sector and quota allocations and those who they were allocated to were simply kept secret, despite the law. Even though Mr Esau was supposed to reveal the beneficiaries he did not do so. Finally the list of most companies benefiting from fisheries quotas was published by Robin Sherbourne who in his 4th ed (2017) ‘The Namibian economy’.
Amongst all of this corruption, malfeasance and malpractice no-one really said a word until two ministers were apparently caught on camera and lots of documents were allegedly revealed by a whistleblower. Who is the real culprit, is it the political elite who are up to their necks in the fisheries or a completely passive Namibian civil society that has said nothing until the current Fishrot scandal? If there is a problem in Namibia, it is in the mirror. If anyone wanted to know and really cared enough about their country they would have known that the fisheries sector has been rotten for years.
But we have now crossed the Rubicon - we have gone too far and the public demands that something needs to be done. What then? The Namibian newspaper has suggested that fish quotas should be auctioned and this is an excellent proposal that should be pursued by whoever is the next President. A week, as they say, is a long time in politics, and after this scandal and the anger it has generated it is by no means obvious who the next president will be.
I once served in Papua New Guinea as adviser to the Prime Minister. The situation that Namibia faces in the fisheries was exactly the same as confronted by PNG in its incredibly corrupt logging sector and PNG was much more violent. PNG had Korean, Malaysian and Japanese logging firms that had been felling prime forest of rosewood for 20 years but had never earned a profit and barely paid anything for the right to harvest. I suggested that because most government officials were so corrupt that we simply could not reform the sector and so we had to auction the logging areas to the highest bidder. I suggested that we use an independent company from Switzerland to undertake the auction. The Prime Minister and much to my surprise the forest minister, who was amongst the most corrupt and violent individuals I had ever met, thought this was a wonderful idea. I was sent off on a fool’s errand to organize the auction and then the Minister did precisely that- he auctioned the logging areas to the highest bidder pocketing what was made and distributing it to the relevant cabinet ministers. The PNG cabinet at the time was in effect ‘Ali Baba and the 40 thieves’. To this day little has changed in PNG logging sector except there is much less forest to harvest. The man sent to investigate the corruption in the logging industry, a judge and a colleague, Mr Justice Barnet was subsequently set upon by a gang of criminals and stabbed 20 times. He miraculously survived the attack.
The great risk of course in auctioning our fisheries resource is assuring that the company that organizes the auction itself remains honest and that the benefits actually accrue to the people of Namibia and not to scum bag ministers. There are of course many ways to steal. The Swiss company Societé General du Surveillance (SGS) was going to be used because its commercial advantage at the time lay in selling honesty which is something we desperately need in the fisheries sector. There are now many companies that have an excellent track record and sell such services. Namibia’s fisheries must change and it must do so immediately after the election or we will destroy this vital sector of our economy. However so long as civil society quietly accepts this sort of criminal behavior from ministers and officials then no amount of reform will matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment