Stop Governmental Corruption, Overhaul the Fishing Industry

Namibian fishing licence holders are correct in urging the government to stop being both referee and player in the industry.

However, these past masters at self-enrichment are yet again deliberately conflating the open bidding system with the corrupt ‘governmental objectives’ fish quotas programmes everybody knows was the monster that spawned the Fishrot corruption scandal.

The two issues are separate and the rent-seeking Namibian licensees should not be allowed to mix state auctioning of the fishing quotas with how the government continues to misuse the so-called ‘governmental objectives’ quotas.

The ‘governmental objectives’ fishing quotas was a scheme hatched by Fishrot accused Bernhard Esau, who was the minister in that portfolio, and co-accused Sacky Shanghala as law reform commissioner and, later, attorney general.

Anyone now knows Esau and Shanghala are standing trial, accused of using that scheme to divert fishing quotas to companies that paid them bribes and punish the firms that refused to play their dubious game.

A couple of weeks ago, the Confederation of Namibian Fishing Associations president Matti Amukwa complained: “This situation is creating a parallel quota industry, where vessel operators survive on auctioned or arbitrarily issued quotas, without working with rights holders or meeting any long-term employment obligations.”

Amukwa is right that the government has created a parallel and self-defeating system that does not seem to focus on the best returns for Namibia and Namibians.

Sadly, Amukwa and fellow Namibian licence holders are arguing for the end to auction (open bidding) and the continuation of the old, highly arbitrary, system by which the minister decides who will be given a fishing licence with the accompanying quotas every year.

That so-called Namibianisation process led to politicians allocating licences to themselves, family members, relatives, favoured institutions and other cronies.

A few thousand Namibians thus got super rich at the expense of the broader public.

The income inequality became so bad that the ‘rights holders simply became rent-seekers who privately conducted auctions by ‘selling’ their arbitrary government-issued licences to the very foreigners they now accuse of out-competing Namibians in buying ‘governmental objectives’ fishing quotas.

Through the system that resulted in the Fishrot scandal, Namibian beneficiaries of licences paid as little as N$50 million a year in levies to the tax coffers.

By contrast, a small portion of the so-called ‘governmental objectives’ fishing quotas the government has auctioned since 2020 had raised more than N$1.2 billion by last year.

Imagine how much money will flow into our national tax coffers to fund public needs if the government stops allocating itself fishing quotas which it still dishes out arbitrarily and rather designs a transparent bidding system for all quotas every year?

Such a system should still require tangible benefits for Namibians, topped by job creation, skills development for better value addition, operational and management acumen – well ahead of the shareholding gimmicks the industry has seen over more than 30 years with only a few getting filthy rich while inequality and poverty have grown.

It is understandable that Amukwa and company would want to continue lining their pockets.

That is fine as long as it does not continue to be at the expense of the majority of Namibians, as has been the case.

The government must end this Fishrot scheme and similar patronage systems based on taking the public’s resources and giving them to family, friends, supporters and political allies.

This week, president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah appointed Inge Zaamwani-Kamwi, a former presidential adviser on international relations, as the minister of agriculture, fisheries, water and land reform.

Concerns have been raised in the past that fisheries – long plagued by allegations of corruption and elite capture – may be overshadowed within this mega economic ministry.

Nonetheless, we hope Zaamwani-Kamwi prioritises long-overdue reforms in the fisheries sector for the greater good.

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