SA's marine protection vessels
Nombini Matomela
23 November 2004
The first of South Africa's four new environmental protection vessels was christened at the Cape Town harbour last week.
The 47-metre patrol ship was named the Lilian Ngoyi, after one of SA's heroines of the struggle against apartheid.
The largest vessel to be built in Cape Town in the last 25 years, the Lilian Ngoyi was built in Table Bay by South African ship builders Farocean Marine. Three other vessels, the Ruth First, Victoria Mxenge, and Sarah Baartman, will be unveiled by the same company in 2005.
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, which is
described as twice the speed necessary to catch poachers.
The Lilian Ngoyi 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 South Africa's 200 nautical mile economic exclusion zone, with a crew of 12 plus three fisheries inspectors.
The vessel's unique features include a camera with night vision that works on thermal imaging. It also carries a rigid inflatable boat, which can be launched quickly if needed and is capable of speeds of almost 40 knots.
Speaking at the naming ceremony aboard the Lilian Ngoyi, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said that n addition to their fishery and environmental protection functions, the vessels would be used for search and rescue missions, and to provide first aid in fire-fighting and towing operations around the country's coast.
Van Schalkwyk said the introduction of the new vessels would create job
opportunities for 40 marine officers.
Van Schalkwyk added that South Africa had not forgotten the contribution that Lilian Ngoyi made in the struggle to bring freedom to the country.
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.
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.
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.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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