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What state’s real beef with trout is
by Neels Blom, 11 August 2014, 05:49
TROUT and jacarandas have won a reprieve, according to flyfishers’ federation Fosaf and the Department of Environmental Affairs. They say that, for the moment, brownies and rainbows have not been listed as alien and invasive. That means, for the moment, that no one in the government will start tipping piscicides into streams anywhere in the country or chopping down jacarandas in urban areas.
To paraphrase Fosaf on the reprieve for trout, it is because the approach to regulation is still being discussed by the department and affected parties. Fosaf and Trout SA have welcomed the postponement and applauded the government for its efforts. The member (of the Upper Jukskei Flyfishing Collective) is pleased too, though with some reservation. That is because the department’s views on trout are largely unchanged; in the eyes of the government, trout are unloved, if tolerated.
The department’s deputy director-general of environmental programmes, Dr Guy Preston, says the listing of 559 invasive species and 560 prohibited species, plus the provisions to try to prevent the unauthorised or accidental introduction of other potentially invasive species, could not be held back while the inclusion of trout remains unresolved.
On the table is the proposal that, as unloved if tolerated species, much like the mostly middle-aged mostly white men who fish for them, trout will be prevented from spreading beyond the areas in which they already occur and, where they do occur, they will be regulated.
Perhaps that is the collective’s best hope. Perhaps the insipidness of compromise is better than eradication or the dubious solace of reactionary politics. If compromise means Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa will indeed “prioritise” the department’s efforts to control those alien invasive species that pose a serious threat to the country as she has promised, trout will be safe in their zones for a long time.
None of this is certain, of course. The member suspects that the threat suspended over South Africa’s trout is a tactically useful way to control those who fish for it — and the member is certain that the operative word here is control. Trout and jacarandas, beloved as they are, are incidental in this government’s obsession to control the minutiae of every aspect of South African life. For instance, the onslaught against trout has so focused the member’s attention that he nearly missed the clause which best illustrates how inebriating control becomes to those who seek to assume it.
Article 29 (3) of the Alien and Invasive Species Regulations reads: “The seller of any immovable property must, prior to the conclusion of the relevant sale agreement, notify the purchaser of that property in writing of the presence of listed invasive species on that property.” If you don’t, you are committing an offence that could get you a R5m fine — and as much as R10m for a repeat offence — and/or 10 years in jail if you omitted the privet sucker coming up in your yard from next door’s.
Considering that there are 559 listed species, that might be doable if you tried to sell one of Johannesburg’s charming little postage-stamp properties, or hoped to include in the sale a pot plant, say of the family Cannabacea, but it would be no good if you were trying to sell your farm in anticipation of a land-reform expropriation order. It is just mad.
That is what makes the trout row important to the wider collective and that is what makes nonsense of the idea that autochthony could determine the right of any resident species to claim South African citizenship and an African heritage. For that there is no compromise.