South Africa is surrounded by 2,798km of coastline. Yet, oddly, the country doesn’t have a coherent maritime strategy underpinned by a related national strategy to safeguard its maritime interests.
This omission was underscored again recently by an evolving master plan for South Africa’s oceans. The document is significant as it puts the importance of South Africa’s oceans into sharper focus. But this shouldn’t obscure the fact that government’s commitment to comprehensively harness the ocean to help arrest economic decline has been disappointing.
