Photo: (Wikus De Wet/AFP via Getty Images)
In his State of the Nation address last year, president Cyril Ramaphosa undertook to review the regulatory framework for cannabis and hemp, to open up a legal industry in South Africa.
Ramaphosa said his government would pass laws and develop policies to “realise the huge potential for investment and job creation” in the sector, which could create more than 130 000 jobs and stimulate the economies of rural areas in provinces such as the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
“We are therefore streamlining the regulatory process so that the hemp and cannabis sector can thrive like it is in other countries, such as Lesotho. Our people in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere are ready to farm with this age-old commodity and bring it to market in new and innovative forms,” Ramaphosa said.
A year later, his green revolution remains a pipe dream.
The Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill has still not been passed by parliament, two years after it was introduced and nearly five years since the constitutional court ordered the state to amend unconstitutional legislation outlawing possession, cultivation and use of the plant in 2018.
The bill has been sent back repeatedly for, among other things, continuing to criminalise possession of large amounts of cannabis, and is set to go before the National Council of Provinces when parliament resumes later this month.
On 18 September 2018, the constitutional court found that it was unconstitutional for the state to criminalise the possession, use and cultivation of cannabis by adults for personal consumption, in private.
The court gave parliament 24 months to amend the affected legislation, creating an opportunity for South Africa to legalise and regulate the existing underground industry and to introduce a framework for a medical and recreational cannabis industry, in line with international standards.
In his 2020 State of the Nation address, Ramaphosa said his government would “this year open up and regulate the commercial use of hemp products, providing opportunities for small-scale farmers; and formulate policy on the use of cannabis products for medicinal purposes, to build this industry in line with global trends”.
Ramaphosa said the regulatory steps would be announced “soon” by the relevant ministers.
Since then, progress has been made on the hemp front, and with the issuing of licences to cultivate and export medical cannabis by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, but the process towards legalising a domestic commercial cannabis industry has floundered.
The national cannabis master plan, coordinated by the department of land reform and agriculture, has still not been adopted.
In June, Ramaphosa appointed Garth Strachan, a former trade and industry deputy director general, to help the government develop an evidence-based approach to cannabis policy, but very little progress has been made.
Cannabis industry lawyer Paul-Michael Keichel said while it was not Ramaphosa’s role to personally pass laws, his government had failed badly in implementing the promises in the two addresses.
“When he stood up in parliament in the last Sona and told us that in three months we were going to see progress, some of us believed him. A year later, we are no further along in the state of our cannabis legislation than we were when Ramaphosa made those announcements,” Keichel said.
“It is an incredibly frustrating situation. We keep thinking we are on the precipice of something and then nothing seems to happen.”
Keichel said Ramaphosa appeared to “pay lip service in response to pressure points” and there was a disjointed policy response from different departments, with trade and industry and agriculture pushing for liberalisation and the justice department clinging to a prohibitive approach to the plant.
Several cannabis industry lobby groups are preparing to go back to the constitutional court to have the prohibition on dealing in cannabis declared unconstitutional and to have the police interdicted from carrying out any further arrests for cannabis until the legal situation is addressed, he said.
Keichel said the applicants in the ConCourt case believed they had no choice but to return to court because of the state’s tardiness in abiding by the original order.
“We are done talking to the government. The only way to talk to them is to get to court to tell them what to do.”
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