SA's marine protection vessels
20 May 2005
South Africa has tightened security around its marine resources with the launch of a third environmental protection vessel - with one more still to come this year.
The locally built state-of-the-art patrol vessel, Ruth First, is the third of four fisheries and environmental protection vessels purchased by the government to protect the country's marine resources.
All four vessels have been named after heroines of South Africa's struggle against apartheid.
Other vessels already patrolling the country's waters are the Lilian Ngoyi and the the Sarah Baartman. The Victoria Mxenge will be launched later this year.
The largest vessels to be built in Cape Town in 25 years, the patrol vessels were built in Table Bay by South African ship builders Farocean Marine.
The vessels will patrol the country's coastline to prevent environmental degradation and protect marine resources against poaching, over-fishing and the illegal discharge of fuel
oil.
The vessels, designed in Holland, are specifically built for local and international conditions. They are 47 metres long and eight metres wide, and can reach a top speed of almost 40km per hour and a cruising speed of 30km per hour - twice the speed needed to haul in poachers.
The Ruth First is powered by two 2 720kw diesel engines and has a range of about 3 500 nautical miles. The vessel, once fully operational, will patrol the 200 nautical mile economic exclusion zone extending outwards from SA's coastline.
The vessels' unique features include a camera with night vision that works on thermal imaging. Each also carries a rigid inflatable boat, which can be launched quickly if needed and is capable of speeds of almost 40 knots.
Ruth First, journalist, author and freedom fighter, was married to SA Communist Party leader - and the country's first democratic housing minister - Joe Slovo. She was killed in Maputo in Mozambique in the early 1980s by a
parcel bomb sent by the apartheid government.
Lilian Ngoyi rose to prominence during the defiance campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s. She was one of the leaders of the 20 000-women march to the Union Buildings in 1956 in protest against the pass laws.
Victoria Mxenge and her husband Griffiths, both lawyers aligned to the ANC, were killed in Umlazi township in Durban, also by the apartheid government, in the 1980s.
Sarah Baartman, a Khoi woman born around 1789, was taken by colonialists to Europe, where she was exhibited as the "Hottentot Venus". She died in France, and her remains were only returned to South Africa in 2003.
Source: BuaNews
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