South Africa faces a crisis of unemployment exacerbated by a stagnating economy that in turn is lowering the tax base and harming the country’s ability to meet its expenses – and pay social grants.
This issue of funding a safety net for the unemployed has become an issue of national security, says Andries van Wyk, but the sea and the Great Lakes of Africa together offer an incredible opportunity to dramatically revitalise the economy, create jobs and increase taxes for the treasury – if South Africa can protect them.
Van Wyk, who is Armscor’s Chief Defence Analyst in the Defence Decision Support Institute, said at the recent Africa Aerospace and Defence Conference that the inland waterways of Africa’s Great Rift Valley are akin to China’s famed Silk Road. The catalyst to it for South Africa is Lake Tanganyika.
The Great Lakes hold the key to the safe extraction of the mineral wealth from Central Africa, that is 30 times the size of the Witwatersrand gold fields, because the road networks that exist are prey to rent seekers.
“It is safer to transport the mineral wealth through the Great Lakes than the roads, which can be choked, but there is still a great risk from piracy. Lake Tanganyika is the last piece in the north south corridor.”
The potential to create jobs is immense, he said, given that in 2012 it was estimated that Beit Bridge to Durban route had created 160 000 jobs.
“The question though is whose job would it be?”, which was something that Armscor was asking, he said. Protecting South Africa’s extensive maritime economic exclusion zone was even more important.
“If we invest in our navy and our fishing stock grows 10-fold, we will still not meet the global demand.”
It is the ocean economy where the greatest potential lies to revitalise South Africa’s economic health, but also the greatest risk. As the global demand for fish grows inexorably from 117.3 million tons in 2007 to a projected 154 million tons in 2030, South Africa sits with incredible resources.
“There is a growing demand but the supply is fixed,” said Van Wyk, “which means that cheap fish will be commercially farmed, but the expensive fish will be free range for want of a better word.”
In 2019, sales of caught fish in South Africa yielded R6.6-billion, of which hake amounted for 21% and squid 22%.
South Africa’s stocks of both are stable and exceptional, but are vulnerable to illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing because of “insufficient maritime control and coercible policing”.
Protecting these fishing grounds renders the actual EEZ manageable since the hake are found on the West Coast, up from Cape Town, while the squid congregate off the Eastern Cape.
“The moment you see the EEZ like this it becomes much smaller,” said Van Wyk.
The correct use of technology can complement Project Biro – which has delivered three Multi-Mission Inshore Patrol Vessels to the SA Navy – and act as a force multiplier, with passive sensors on the various oil and gas rigs or placed on the sea beds. A constellation of micro satellites using Synthetic Aperture Radar can provide live footage of the hake grounds; a UAV like the new Milkor 380 can over fly the entire hake fishing ground in one mission. Alternatively, said Van Wyk, the department of defence could purchase 200 sea drones for the price of one Milkor UAV.
“The perpetrators’ weak points can be exposed by our strong points, they have to stop and refuel, South Africa must disrupt them as late in their value chain as possible, once they have committed 70% of their resources to their operation.”
This, he said, means using technology to apprehend the pirate fleets once they are already en route to the factory boats to offload.
