Presentations dealt with the following questions:

• How has the ITQ system impacted on the social and economic conditions in fishing communities?

• To what extent have governance reforms through the reallocation of fishing rights improved access to sources of livelihood for different groups of fishers and small-scale enterprises in South Africa?

• Has the new fisheries policy alleviated poverty and reduced vulnerability among marginalised groups, and what are the alternatives?

Post-’94 governance reforms of South Africa’s fisheries sector have aimed to broaden access to marine resources, and to alleviate poverty among previously disadvantaged fishing communities through the Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) system. But the new opportunities, or ‘action space’ (Barberton and Kotze: 1998) that increased under democracy did not benefit South Africa’s small-scale fishers. While new entrants and established companies were mainly active in the formal space, marginalised poor fishers were pushed into the informal action space. These bonafide, but marginalized fishing communities used this space to organise and agitate against the formal rights system, voicing their discontent with the allocation process and the way the benefits of the new policy were being captured by elites.

In 2003 the Artisanal Fishers Association and Masifundise with support from the Legal Resources Centre and Moenieba Isaacs (PLAAS) lodged a class action court case against the state to challenge the allocation of fishing rights. The court case has been a mechanism for the marginalized small scale fishers to engage with the policy on the public arena which provided leverage for a settlement agreement with the state that opened the door for the rewriting of small-scale fisheries policy through a representative task team of community representatives of all coastal provinces. The state’s commitment in this agreement extends to restoring the principles and practices of community management and to formalise the position of fishers who were left outside the formal rights system between 1994 and 2008. The court case was placed on hold until the end of 2008 when, if not reopened, it expires.