MSP Research Network

Faculty of Law, Ocean Sciences Campus

Nelson Mandela University, South Africa

Hennie is a Professor of Public Law and Director of the Centre for Law in Action at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He is an admitted advocate and completed a Diploma in Police Science, the degrees B.Iuris, Bachelor of Laws and Doctor of Laws. He completed post-doctoral studies at the La Salle University in Mexico. He is also responsible for the Refugee Rights Centre and the FishFORCE Academy. He teaches the Enforcement of Marine and Coastal Legislation. Furthermore, he focuses on the drafting, implementation, enforcement and administration of legislation.

Prior to joining the university, he was employed as a detective in the Drug Squad and as the Head of Housing and Infrastructure Development for Local Government,

 Within local government, he concentrates on municipal health law, municipal law enforcement, improvement of local governance and council oversight. He has written municipal codes for more than 60 municipalities in South Africa. He is the drafter of the Nelson Mandela Metro’s Spatial Planning and Land Use By-law and collaborates within a community of projects (CoP) aimed at establish the first MSP for Algoa Bay, South Africa. He also served as an expert member for the World Bank, for the development of local government legislation in East Timor.

 With the financial assistance of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he established a Fisheries Crime Law Enforcement Academy (FishFORCE) at the university. FishFORCE’s main purpose is to combat sea fisheries crime and related criminal activities, including drug smuggling, human trafficking, and other clandestine activities. It has started training fisheries control officers, national parks officials, police officers, tax officials and prosecutors in South Africa and Kenya and it will be doing the same in other countries along the South and East African coastline and along the Indian Ocean Rim. A FishFORCE Academy has also been established in Kenya and in 2019 academies will be established in Tanzania, Mozambique, Namibia and possibly, Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles and Mauritius. The training on offer takes the form of short learning programmes linked to formal qualifications. To this end a Higher Certificate: Criminal Justice and a Diploma in Law Enforcement have been registered. Both qualifications focus on fisheries crime.