In a reply to a written question in Parliament, the DTIC has given the clearest indication yet that it is working in concert with unnamed parties to draft South Africa’s cannabis commercialization strategy.
There will be no further foundational input sought by the DTIC from cannabis stakeholders who will only be asked to comment once the policy has already been signed off at ministerial level.
Just in Case You Thought Government Might Be Listening
This remarkable admission by the DTIC confirms the fears of many in the industry that:
· At worst, there is a secret agenda at play in cannabis reform whereby only the politically connected are shaping future policy behind closed doors, or
· At best, the President’s March 2025 pledge that cannabis regulations would be developed transparently was yet another empty promise, or that he is being undermined by the DTIC.
Either way, the DTIC is not being transparent. What has emerged from Minister Parks Tau’s response to DA MP Toby Chance’s question on the status of the DTIC’s commercialisation policy, is that:
· The DTIC circulated a draft document on a cannabis commercialization policy to ‘select stakeholders’ and gave them a deadline of 31 July 2025 to formulate their responses;
· Thereafter the DTIC held ‘preliminary’ discussions with the ‘targeted stakeholders’;
· The consolidation of comments received from the targeted stakeholders was completed on 24 August 2025
· The DTIC’s internal cannabis task team met on 4 September 2025 to discuss the consolidated comments and/or inputs and identified areas that need to be verified with stakeholders;
· The Department is “currently revising the discussion document from Version 1 to Version 2 by incorporating comments and/or inputs received from the targeted stakeholders”;
· Version 2, once finalized, would be sent to the DTIC director General, Simphiwe Hamilton for approval;
· Once this is done the approved document will be sent for ministerial sign off;
· Any internal internal consultations will be finalised by the mid November 2025 , where- after it will be presented to the Economic Cluster;
· Publication of approval policy to solicit comments from the wider public on the policy is envisaged by the end of March 2026” said Tau.
The Select Few Have Been Consulted, the Rest Must Wait
So there you have it. Cannabis stakeholders are now defined as the ‘wider public’, a phrase that gives the DTIC’s thinking away.
There will be no broad stakeholder input at a foundational level for cannabis commercialization and the public will be presented with an already-approved Government document for limited input before it becomes a bill to be put before Parliament.
Cannabiz Africa understands that one of the stakeholders targeted by the DTIC was the Marijuana Board of South Africa (MBOSA). We are not aware of any of the other major associations or private sector stakeholders being formally consulted and given the 31 July deadline.
Concerns Have Been Mounting Over DTIC Transparency Since July
H3 Legal strategist Charl Botha wrote to the DTIC on 20 July 2025 expressing his “deep concern” over its approach to public consultation. He warned that the current process was exclusionary, lacked transparency and was “procedurally inadequate for a policy that will shape an industry with profound social, cultural, and economic implications.”
Botha suspicions that the DTIC was quietly consulting certain stakeholders on commercialization has now been borne out. He said that given the historical marginalization of communities criminalized for cannabis-related activities, the “DTIC’s limited engagement—while claiming to represent ‘industry’—risks perpetuating exclusion under the pretext of policy development”.
He said that for the National Cannabis Master Plan’s goals of inclusive economic participation, transformation, and rural development to be realized, “it must be rooted in open, representative, and participatory processes.”
He has called on the DTIC come up with a timeline of inclusive consultation, but in the meantime in the interests of transparency, he has called on the Department to :
• Disclose Consulted Stakeholders: Publish a comprehensive list of individuals, organizations, or entities consulted in the development of the cannabis commercialisation framework.
• Clarify Selection Criteria: Provide a clear explanation of the process and criteria used to select stakeholders, including how representativity across diverse constituencies has been ensured.
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