The militarisation of marine resource conservation and law enforcement in the Western Cape, South Africa

The introduction of the Marine Living Resources Act (MLRA) in South Africa in 1998 had a profound effect on the nature of marine resource use and extraction in the province known as the Western Cape. Working at the nexus of state, nature, science and publics, marine compliance inspectors and the MLRA and subsequent policies have been widely criticised as criminalising many in the small-scale fishing sectors, including those who fished on a subsistence basis. Finding that inspectors are widely seen as negative players by publics – both those who are policed, and those who think others are not policed enough – this paper suggests that the inspectors are expected to do a job that the very construction of the job in itself prevents them from doing. Focusing on the inspectors׳ attempts to establish cooperative relations with resource users, the paper shows that this difficult task is compounded by the methods of bureaucracy, surveillance and violence that current Fisheries Branch management is reliant on. The structural drivers of illegal fishing and the levels of violence associated with policing these activities have resulted in the marginalisation of both small-scale resource users and the inspectors themselves. There is a need to address the reasons for their marginality on the ground, so that the inspectorate will be more likely to achieve the goals set for it by environmental managers: a care for ecology and economy shared by both state and publics and sciences.