educates … is illegal
Focus on drugs: Be it dagga or cocaine, from KwaZulu-Natal to Colombia the only way poor rural communities survive is by growing illegal crops
Eddie Koch and Enoch Mthembu
THE lives of three people who live in different places along the banks of the Tugela, a majestic river that dissects some of the most rugged and the poorest parts of KwaZulu-Natal, epitomise the many paradoxes that surround one of the few cash crops that are booming in South Africa’s agriculture sector: dagga.
Let’s call them Mfana, Mama Xhulu and Zacharia.
Mfana is an exquisite example of the contradictions that characterise government policy on the dagga industry. He works for the Department of Justice as an interpreter at a small magistrate’s court in the Tugela district, one of the places where thousands of people are charged and convicted for growing the weed that abounds in the valleys and kloofs of the river.
Yet back at his little home near the courtroom, bushes of mthunziwenkhukhu (an isiZulu word for cannabis that means “shade of the fowls” because of the chickens’ habit of lying in the shadow cast by dagga plants in these arid places) wave in the wind outside his bedroom window.
“Yes, I smoke it,” says Mfana. And, in anticipation of a question about how he reconciles this with the role he plays in the criminal justice system, adds: “Let’s say the stuff just grows here by the will of God and I was unlucky enough to be put in this job in a place that is surrounded by it.”
It is a refrain repeated by Mama Xhulu, a matriarch whose general dealer’s store lies tucked into one of the steep banks of the river not far from where it runs into the Indian Ocean. “I don’t know about other places, but here we believe this is a natural herb,” she says.
“We know of many people whose lives were destroyed by alcohol. But we do not know of anyone who has suffered in the same way from insangu (dagga). All we know is that almost every single child in this area has been educated, clothed and fed from this crop.
“We use it to make a tea that heals serious ailments like blood pressure and chest diseases. Can you explain why the farmers are persecuted while the bottle stores are not?”
Zacharia is a member of the ZCC church and, when we met him, was working for a small education project in the dry and arid upper reaches of the river not far from Tugela Ferry in the Msinga district.
He describes how police regularly raid the plantations in the hills around his home. They either spray the illegal crop with herbicides or uproot tons of cannabis and burn it, usually in a spectacular display at the rugby fields in nearby Weenen.
“We just go out and start it again,” says Zacharia. “They cannot stop it.”
He explains how, in his area, the entire population of villages go into the kloofs and valleys at night to cultivate huge fields hidden from the police even though some of them are as big as the Weenen rugby ground. There, especially when the moon is full, the workforce from the valley hoes, weeds and trims the crop that sustains their livelihood.
To Zacharia the contradiction is not between his religious belief and an industry that involves drugs. It is in the fact that the state spends so much on trying to stop a commercial activity that provides employment and keeps the kids from joining criminal gangs – and then fails anyway.
“Dagga must have been God’s creation,” he says. “I think it is because it does these good things for the community that the police cannot destroy it.”
A recent tour by the Mail & Guardian through the dagga-producing regions of the Tugela Valley and the markets of Durban where the produce from around the province is distributed revealed how widespread and important this illegal but extraordinarily tenacious industry is for the poorest of the province’s residents.
Because of the illegal nature of the industry, little research has been done to corroborate the anecdotal impression that the entire province is immersed in a massive but underground form of cash-cropping.
However, a pioneering study, published by Indicator SA in the early 1990s, gives some idea of the sheer scale of the industry.
The study, based on research conducted by farmer Neil Alcock before he was killed in one of the faction fights that characterise the Msinga district, estimated the annual turnover in agriculture’s informal dagga sector to be twice that generated by the legal liquor trade.
“If Alcock’s estimation that police seize only 10% of the total crop is accurate, the statistics are staggering. Based on the street value of dagga confiscated, the annual dagga crop would have been worth over R4,5-billion ten years ago. This guesstimate would have risen dramatically by now,” the study noted.
“For many of these farmers, cultivating small plots in inhospitable terrain, dagga is the only viable cash crop that they can grow. It flourishes almost anywhere and it grows in the poorest soil. Police reported in March 1989 that in 150km2 on the Tugela River a yield of 14 000kg per square kilometre was being obtained.
“Sugarcane, the other important Natal crop, cannot compete as a cash crop for small- scale farmers. In 1983, Alcock reported that sugar farmers in the Ndwedwe district earned R5,25 per ton, the amount earned by dagga farmers from a single plant. A ton of dagga would earn the farmer between R8 000 and R10 000, depending on the quality.”
The figures help explain the ingenuity and resilience that the people of the Tugela Ferry use to sustain their commerce. In the lower reaches of the valley, according to Mama Xhulu, the homesteads each cultivate up to six small fields of dagga. These are hidden in the dense thickets that surround the river or in the steep cliffs that surround it.
Higher up in the valley, the industry appears to be based on a more collective form of cultivation described by Zacharia. Police have reported fields near Tugela Ferry that are 1km long and 500m wide with plants so large that they each required two officers to uproot them.
Sowing is said to be a special skill and requires certain rituals to ensure success. A woman who farms next to the gravel road that winds down from the town of Stanger to the Tugela Valley explains that “you must look over your right shoulder as you scatter the seed so that you do not see where it lands in the soil”.
“It grows so easily and it doesn’t need any irrigation, which makes it more easy,” says Mama Xhulu. “But like any other crop it does need work. The families have to keep the fields clean, take away the weeds and trim the plants because if they grow too long they lose their power. Sometimes when the police come and burn the crop even we are surprised and say `Aish! I didn’t know we could grow so much’.”
Unlike other crops which are usually harvested only once a year, cannabis provides an almost continuous supply all year round. Once a family has planted the first seeds, the plants shed new ones that propagate rapidly as the older ones are cut for the market.
Much of this work is done by women while the men tend to spend time doing the retailing at Inanda and KwaMashu – the huge townships on the outskirts of Durban – where most of the crop first lands before being distributed in the city.
“Here we do not like to send children into the fields because they must go to school and, if they are caught, it is easy for them to give away secrets to the police about who owns the field.”
Once the crop has avoided police scrutiny, the next task is to get it to the market. The growers pack the dagga into bags or plastic containers filled up with madumbis (sweet potatoes) which are heavy and discourage police at roadblocks en route from opening and searching them. Private vans and taxis ferry the contraband to Durban’s markets located in all the shantytowns around the city.
According to “Welcome”, a dealer based in Durban who travels regularly to the valley and the Midlands to buy stock from producers, a 25-litre container of dagga fetches R300. “This is for grade number one. We also classify the stuff as grade number two and grade number three.”
All the dealers count themselves as quality- control experts, relying on the feel of the product, and the occasional smoke, to test it.
“By the time this tin of Poison Number One gets to Inanda it has been marked up to R700 and this is because of the danger involved. Then I can split the container up into small pencils. I sell these to taxi drivers and also sailors from overseas. If the quality is really good, I can get up to R6 000 from that one container.”
This huge mark-up is confirmed by the Indicator study which quoted police as saying they had smashed a smuggling ring exporting dagga to the Netherlands in the early 1990s. At that stage it was estimated that dagga bought for R1 000 at a market like those in Inanda would fetch R20 000 on delivery in Amsterdam or London.
There have been recent media reports that faction fighting in the valley has been fuelled by competition over the trade routes down to Durban. This was denied by the residents and growers interviewed by the Mail & Guardian: they insisted that the industry regulates itself and – except for growing conflict with the police – did so in a peaceful way (see story below).
Every grower and dealer interviewed noted that the enormous scale of this hidden but vast industry was driven by the role it plays in keeping rural families above the poverty line, paying for clothing, food and education.
A recent poverty profile of northern KwaZulu-Natal prepared by the Development Bank of Southern Africa found that the vast majority of primary and secondary schools were built and run on funds collected by the community. The M&G was told of at least one community school on the Transkei coast that was built with revenue from the village’s cannabis harvest.
For Welcome this was the ultimate paradox: “We are subsidising the education system with dagga and yet the government insists on sending police to destroy that which is helping them. There are MPs in Cape Town who were educated with dagga. They know it but have turned their backs on the mothers and fathers who must grow it.”