The uproar of dismay when 33 Jeep-driving SA tourists tore up Glen Eden beach on September 26 has raised the issue of failure to prosecute the law.
The gazetted ban of vehicles in 2002 by then environmental minister Valli Moosa was not welcomed by many rock and surf anglers.
Yet, bakkies and buggies were churning up beaches right to the high water mark, crushing nests, and generally damaging or destroying the ecosystem.
But conservation-minded South Africa was delighted. Today a stroll on the beach is a joyous wildlife experience.
Into this 24-year period of natural grow-back came the Jeeps, beats pumping, with well-dressed partners and drinks, and they sailed past a large sign prohibiting vehicles on the beach.
Videos showed Jeeps racing through the shallows and chunky off-road tyres churning up the beach.
Many residents moaned that nothing would happen — they were wrong, and right.
The state did react. After a few hours, a Gonubie colonel led a squad of public order police, environment enforcement officers from the department of economic development, environmental affairs and tourism, SAPS patrol officers, Eco Scorpions and an honorary nature conservation officer to the lodge where the Jeep owners were staying.
The convoy had no idea if the drivers were drunk or armed, but the engagement was sober and orderly.
A charge was read out. The claim that a permit had been obtained was refuted by the official who handles such requests.
And then the issue disappeared from the public eye.
Questions on the progress on the charge sheet and docket have been met with silence.
Jeep owners, who belong to a large national network of clubs calling themselves “Cartels”, have been posting about their amazing visit to the Eastern Cape with its “stunning beaches”.
There seems to be the view from some in the public that breaking the National Environmental Management: Integrated Coastal Management Act, is OK, and worse, that the ban is somehow racial — a hangover of white privilege.
It is now up to the state to prove that it does not protect environmental law breakers
More concerning, the cartels are proud that they are a network of educated professionals — clearly wealthy enough to gleefully ruin a vehicle by careening through the salty shallows, but not aware of nor apparently bothered about conservation legislation.
Ironically, the 2002 legal ban was greeted with rank hostility.
Former Scorpions boss Div de Villiers recalls having to stare down an explanatory meeting of angry white anglers who were heckling a much younger Kevin Cole, our natural scientist at the East London Museum.
De Villiers, a giant of man, took the mic, saying the next heckler could come outside and have a face-to-face “explanation” — hardly a moment of exercising white privilege.
It is now up to the state to prove that it does not protect environmental law breakers through active concealment.
Daily Dispatch
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