Heritage Day asks South Africans to consider what we inherited, what we share and what we intend to leave behind, and for the cannabis sector that question reaches much further than regulation.
The official 2026 Heritage Month theme, “Celebrating Our Living Heritage: Strengthening the Ties That Bind Us,” speaks directly to indigenous knowledge, customary practice, memory and the traditions carried through communities from one generation to the next. Cannabis deserves a place in that conversation.
Long before licences, compliance frameworks, investment funds and retail models, cannabis formed part of the lives and knowledge of South African communities. President Cyril Ramaphosa described it in 2022 as an “age-old commodity”, particularly associated with communities in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere. Today that history exists alongside a very different cannabis economy made up of traditional growers and indigenous knowledge holders, Rastafari communities, medical cultivators, hemp farmers, scientists, investors, retailers, clubs, product developers, activists and entrepreneurs.
We don’t have to succeed at the expense of others
That diversity should be one of South Africa’s advantages, yet too often we behave as though one part of the cannabis community can succeed only at the expense of another. Anyone who works in the sector knows the arguments: medical versus adult use, formal versus informal, large operators versus small growers, clubs versus retailers, activists suspicious of capital and businesses suspicious of activists. Too much energy goes into deciding who speaks for cannabis, who arrived first, who has government’s ear and whose model deserves to survive.
Some of those disagreements are unavoidable because a future regulated market will affect existing interests differently, and not every model operating today will necessarily fit comfortably within whatever framework eventually emerges. There is, however, also territorialism, commercial self-interest and a reluctance to accept a basic truth that should by now be obvious: nobody owns South Africa’s cannabis future.
Government still carries the greater responsibility for the regulatory position in which the sector finds itself. Cabinet committed to developing the cannabis sector in 2019; Ramaphosa said in 2022 that hemp and cannabis could create more than 130,000 jobs; and in 2023 he spoke specifically about enabling traditional farmers to participate and unlocking economic activity in rural areas.
The Cannabis and Hemp Phakisa later that year brought together more than 100 participants from government, business, labour, communities, traditional leadership, Rastafari, science and the legal sector. The Presidency said the process agreed a programme of well-defined, assigned and time-bound actions intended to accelerate implementation of the Cannabis Master Plan.
Yet in March 2026 Parliament was still being told that an overarching Cannabis Bill is planned for mid-2027, while the Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition noted that commercial cannabis trade remains largely prohibited and that the illicit market continues to dominate the sector. Those delays carry consequences for investment, employment and the people government repeatedly says it wants to bring into the formal economy.
Fractured sector makes engagement with govt harder
The industry should nevertheless be willing to examine its own conduct. A fractured sector does not cause government to miss its obligations, but it does make coherent engagement harder. When every constituency arrives with a different demand, when organisations devote their energy to excluding competitors, and when personal or commercial rivalries overwhelm common interests, government receives plenty of consultation but far less clarity about what the sector collectively regards as essential.
That uncertainty is visible to investors as well. South Africa is competing for domestic and international capital against jurisdictions where licensing, permitted revenue streams and routes to market may be easier to understand. Failed investments and stranded projects leave a memory behind, and the next legitimate business seeking finance must explain not only its own prospects but the history of the sector around it. Unity therefore has economic value; it affects credibility, confidence and ultimately the willingness of capital to take another chance on South African cannabis.
The position of traditional and indigenous growers makes the Heritage Day connection especially difficult to ignore. On 21 September, only days before Heritage Day, the Department of Small Business Development advertised for legal expertise to develop a framework for the recognition, protection and regulated participation of indigenous cannabis growers in South Africa’s formal cannabis and hemp value chain.
We cannot celebrate cannabis as part of South Africa’s living heritage while constructing an economy in which the communities that preserved much of its knowledge remain spectators. At the same time, meaningful inclusion cannot mean replacing one form of exclusion with another. A viable South African industry will need traditional growers and modern agriculture, indigenous knowledge and science, social justice and investment, small enterprises and businesses capable of operating at scale.
Nobody needs to surrender legitimate interests or agree on every policy detail. There is enough common ground for the sector to establish a short national position around which very different constituencies ought to be able to stand: meaningful participation for traditional and indigenous growers; protection of indigenous knowledge and genetic heritage; lawful commercial routes; product safety and traceability; clearer enforcement boundaries; investment certainty; and measurable dates for government delivery.
Cannabis belongs to everybody
The 2023 Phakisa demonstrated that the different parts of this industry can occupy the same room. What has not yet emerged strongly enough is a durable common position that survives after everyone leaves it, which is precisely where Heritage Day should challenge us.
Government still needs to account for the commitments it made and the framework it has not completed, but the sector will be much harder to ignore when traditional growers, Rastafari, investors, medical operators, retailers, activists, researchers and entrepreneurs can acknowledge one another’s legitimate place in the economy and agree on what government now has to deliver.
The plant is older than our organisations, our business models and our disputes. The communities that preserved its knowledge deserve genuine economic participation, investors who commit capital deserve rules they can understand, and entrepreneurs deserve a market in which lawful businesses can compete. Government must deliver its side of the bargain, while the industry should stop handing it division as an excuse to wait.
If cannabis forms part of South Africa’s living heritage, its future cannot belong to one faction. It must be built broadly enough for all of us to have something worth protecting.
This Heritage Day, perhaps that is where the sector should start: recognise what binds us, settle on what we need government to deliver, and ask for it together.
Charl Botha (B.Proc) is a South African legal strategist and cannabis policy specialist, and co-founder of H3 Legal Solutions (Pty) Ltd. He has participated in parliamentary processes concerning cannabis policy and industrialisation.
