China Fisheries: www.cappma.com

Plans by a shadowy South African firm to take over the fisheries management on Kenya's Lake Victoria may have been nipped in the bud, but there is little celebration on the beaches.

Even as the East African Community chief executive Amanya Musenga sought to assure Kenyans that the plan to "sell" the lake was illegal and unworkable, the fishing community say they wouldn't trust anybody with their Sh6 billion-a-year natural resource.

Mr Mariko Owuor, a fisherman at Kaloka beach, says it would be premature to celebrate.

Long before the South African investor came calling, wealthy businessmen, some from as far as North Eastern, had secretly privatised fish landing beaches.

A survey confirmed that middlemen had taken over beaches from the fisheries cooperative societies, whose officials have been employed to work on boats. The worst affected area is Suba, where private fish "bandas" dot beaches in Sindo, Mbita, Remba and several other islands.

Mr Owuor says the takeover of the beaches by outsiders was a plan by the rich to take over the lake.

"They may have been stopped in their tracks, but I know they will stop at nothing to take over the lake. They may return through the back door," says 50-year-old Owuor, who has been fishing for the past 30 years. Gazing into the lake with his battered boat in the background, Mr Owuor adds: "Our Government's silence over this matter and the alleged involvement by some of our MPs indicates the issue may not be over yet."

To him, news that Redicon International had applied for exclusive rights to manage Lake Victoria fisheries did not come as a surprise. "There have been many attempts to push us out of the lake. Many rich people have slowly been privatising fish landing beaches and many cooperative societies have collapsed because of this," says Mr Owuor.

There are 37,348 fishermen who depend on the lake for a living, operating 12,248 boats on 304 beaches, according to the 2004 Lake Victoria Frame survey. Last year they harvested 105,886 metric tonnes of fish worth Sh6.2 billion, a huge percentage of which went to private fish processors, exporters and middlemen.

It is estimated that the lake supports some 24.1 million people in the three East African countries, a quarter of whom live on the Kenyan side. Most Kenyan fishermen interviewed said they were perturbed by the Government's silence on the matter and accused it of indifference to their plight. "One wonders why it took the Government too long to speak on the issue even after the media broke the news," says Stephen Omolo, a middleman for a fish processing firm.

He adds: "Nobody knew what was happening until the chief executive of the East African Community spoke out against the sale plans. The only statement from our Government came when fisheries minister Joseph Munyao denied having seen an application by the South Africans."

Mr Munyao had denied claims that the Government had received an application from the South Africans to manage and market the lake's resources. But documents obtained show that Redicon wrote to Mr Munyao on October 22, 2004 seeking the project's approval. The letter, signed by a director of the firm, Mr Wathe Walsh and a Kenyan colleague David Macharia of Ansellia Holdings, was copied to Finance, Roads, Environment, Planning and and Trade ministries.

The investor first met with MPs from Western and Nyanza Provinces at a Nairobi hotel to thrash out the deal, but things started going wrong after some of the MPs rejected his plans and sounded the alarm. Some of the MPs are said to have supported the project and were silently lobbying to have it approved by the Government.

Documents show that the South African company intended to spend Sh8 billion in the management of the lake for 10 years. It wanted to build a multi-million fish auction centre in Kisumu to stop wastage and exploitation of fishermen by middlemen and had proposed to introduce stringent policing of the lake to ensure only licensed fishermen operated on it.

What raised eyebrows, however, was its plan to reduce the fish landing beaches from the current 304 to only 26 and to restrict fishing. The firm said it intended to improve the infrastructure around the lake to instal a more effective, refrigerated fish storage equipment and profitable fisheries management systems to enable the fishermen earn more from their catches. It planned to raise Sh3.2 billion in capital expenditure and Sh700 million for initial operations.

Some of the MPs last week rushed to the media to defend themselves against accusations that they were conspiring with the South African to lease out the lake. Roads and Public Works minister Raila Odinga, defended his colleagues saying: "Nobody including the MPs have a title deed to the lake and cannot even dream of selling or leasing it out. Only the Government has a right to do so."

His elder brother, Bondo MP Oburu Oginga had called a Press conference a week earlier to distance himself from the issue. "I, like other MPs were invited to the meeting at the Pan Afric hotel to meet the South Africans, but we did not support the idea. It is therefore wrong to claim that we MPs are supporting him," Dr Oburu said.

It was Mr Musenga who said what the fishermen had been waiting for. The bid to lease out the lake was dead and buried. He said the lake was a shared resource among the three countries and that no single country could broker a deal on it without involving others.

But some stakeholders say there could be more than meets the eye. Mr Okoth Mireri, a senior researcher with Oseianala (Friends of Lake Victoria), said the attempt by the South African to take control of the lake smacked of a wider conspiracy against the fishermen. "We cannot trust our MPs. Whenever we call them for meetings to discuss the problems facing the lake, they never attend. When a foreigner summons them over the same, they all attend," he said, and described the bid as bizarre. "It is strange that our MPs have taken a back seat when fishermen are harassed and jailed by security men in Tanzania and Uganda. They have never raised a finger at the wanton destruction of the environment around the lake," he added.

Many Kenyan fishermen have been arrested and their fishing gears confiscated in the last three years on accusations of crossing borders.

The worst hit have been those living on the Islands of Wayasi, Hema, Sumba, Sigulu, Sakiti and Siro where Ugandan authorities arrest them frequently over alleged trespass.

Kenya is disadvantaged because it has only six per cent of the lake while Tanzania and Uganda control 49 and 45 per cent. Because of her smaller fishing portion, many Kenyan fishermen have been accused of crossing the boundaries in search of fish, although they say they have never been shown the borders.

Mr Mireri urges the Government to protect the fishermen by keeping away dubious investors out to make millions instead of investing in the environmental conservation of the lake.

A recent report by World Conservation Union (IUCN) says the mushrooming of many fish processing factories and lack of a joint lake patrol security team was responsible for the conflicts. "There has been a big increase in fishing. Many observers agree that there is over-capacity in the fishing leading to long range movements of fisher folks and traders across international borders on the lake," says the report. It's a case of too many fishermen chasing limited fish stocks.

Tanzania has 56,000 fishermen, 15,000 boats, 1,500 outboard engines and 600 landing sites, while Uganda has 35,000 fishermen and the same number of boats and landing beaches. Tanzania and Uganda have a larger fish processing capacity - 49 and 35 per cent - while Kenya has only 16.

With more and more people going into the lake to make a living, wealthy individuals are investing heavily in the industry, using expensive boats.