It’s Time to Investigate Labour and Health-Safety Abuses

South Africa’s commercial fishing industry feeds the nation, sustains coastal towns and exports high-value seafood to the world. Yet the work that makes this possible – in wheelhouses, on heaving decks, in processing plants and on cold, wet quays – too often happens out of sight and below standard. The country has launched a nationwide safety audit of fishing vessels after a devastating run of incidents and fatalities, but focusing only on hulls and hardware misses the heart of the problem: chronic labour and health-and-safety (H&S) abuses that span from recruitment to repatriation. We need a broad, joint government investigation that looks beyond vessel seaworthiness to the conditions fishers actually live and work under.