South Africa’s cannabis industry is expected to deliver R1.4bn in new economic value every year, although government has never shown where that value can lawfully come from.
On 4 July 2025, trade, industry and competition minister Parks Tau addressed a National Assembly mini-plenary. During the debate, he said the National Policy on the Commercialisation of Hemp and Cannabis would target annual growth of 10% from a R14bn base.
DTIC has never disclosed what sits inside that base or how an industry without a general lawful route into domestic commercial trade is expected to produce the increase.
The official figures move in different directions across DTIC’s public reporting.
A parliamentary report published in April 2026 gave estimated annual cannabis market revenue of R5.6bn, a quarterly value of R1.4bn and export revenue of R142.3m.
DTIC has supplied no reconciliation between the R5.6bn estimate and Minister Tau’s R14bn base.
If informal or illicit activity forms part of the R14bn, government is counting trade it still prevents from entering lawful commerce. If the base excludes that activity, the department should disclose its source and composition.
For cultivators, processors, retailers and service providers, the dispute over economic terminology has immediate commercial consequences. Businesses must decide whether to invest, hire staff, secure premises, build supply chains and prepare products for a domestic market whose legal route remains unfinished. A sector cannot be treated as contraband when police confront it and counted as economic value when DTIC needs a growth headline.
Real costs are not accounted for, but they are a reality
The delay continues to consume public resources even when no department records a single cannabis cost centre. National Treasury’s 2026 Budget allocates R799.4bn to compensation of employees for 2026/27.
Divided by the seconds in a year, the public-service salary clock runs at roughly R25,000 every second and R91m every hour. Institutional expenditure does not disappear merely because it is spread across existing budgets.
H3 Legal Solutions conservatively estimates the cumulative cannabis-specific public-resource cost since 2018 at R8bn. The model does not transfer whole departmental budgets onto cannabis. It assigns only the attributable share of salary time, management, infrastructure and operating resources consumed by the cannabis process.
The calculation covers policy work, policing, investigations, seizures, forensic services, prosecutions, court processes, research, standards development and administration. Government can displace the estimate by publishing its own calculation, methodology and measurable economic return.
The arithmetic undermines DTIC’s growth claim because a conservative R8bn public cost equals almost six years of the R1.4bn annual increase promised by Minister Tau. The state may therefore have consumed years of the growth it predicts before publishing the commercialisation policy or enabling general lawful domestic trade.
DTIC inspiring little confidence, timetables all shot
Government has managed cannabis as a public problem for eight years and then presented the size of the unresolved market as a platform for industrial success.
DTIC’s policy record gives industry little confidence in the timetable. Departmental reports move the commercialisation policy from drafting to ministerial sign-off and later record an approval milestone.
The department returned in March 2026 to a Version 2 before the director-general and ahead of wider public consultation. Government had promised Cabinet consideration and public comment by April 2026, but the deadline passed without publication.
Industry is left reconstructing policy from official documents that point backwards and forwards through the same process.
The DA’s record in agriculture provides a clear counter-example to DTIC’s unresolved commercialisation process. During John Steenhuisen’s term as minister of agriculture, the Plant Improvement Act came into operation on 1 December 2025 with a 2% THC threshold for hemp and a system for national variety listing.
Steenhuisen left the agriculture portfolio on 30 June 2026 and assumed office as deputy minister of trade, industry and competition on 1 July. Direct experience of moving cannabis-related reform into operating law therefore sits inside the department whose central commercial policy remains unpublished.
Govt fragmented, unable to implement its own plans, and it just costs
The wider legal framework remains fragmented across departments, statutes and incomplete regulatory processes. Justice is pursuing draft regulations under the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, while
Parliament was told in March 2026 that a broader Cannabis Bill would reach it only by mid-2027. South Africa has an operating hemp instrument, a medicines regime, unfinished private-use rules and no published commercial route connecting cultivation to general lawful domestic trade.
Private adult use, commercial cannabis, hemp, medicinal cannabis, manufacturing and product regulation are distinct legal questions, yet DTIC continues to compress them into one industrial promise.
In Prince, the Constitutional Court supplied the constitutional boundary for private adult use. It ruled that criminalising an adult’s private use, possession and cultivation of cannabis for personal consumption in private was unconstitutional. The Cannabis for Private Purposes Act responds to that ruling, but numerical limits and enforcement powers must respect what the court decided.
SAPS officers should not be expected to resolve unfinished policy through arrests, weighing and roadside interpretation while departments debate which document has reached which desk.
Cannabis operators do not need a fresh headline promising future growth. They need the published commercialisation policy, the evidence supporting the R14bn base, a lawful route into domestic trade and a timetable that identifies who must deliver each step.
DTIC should disclose the formal businesses created, taxable turnover generated, taxes collected, investment secured, exports achieved and growers brought into lawful commerce after eight years of state intervention.
South Africa cannot build an industry from a market figure that changes according to the document being read. The public-service salary clock keeps running at roughly R25,000 every second while the commercial policy circles government desks.
The conservative R8bn estimate remains unanswered, and the sector still lacks a general lawful domestic market. Before DTIC announces a new target, deadline or Bill, it must answer the questions created by its own record: R14bn of what, R1.4bn from where, and R8bn spent for what?
Charl Botha (B.Proc) is a legal strategist, cannabis policy specialist and co-founder of H3 Legal Solutions (Pty) Ltd. He has briefed Parliament on cannabis policy and industrialisation in South Africa.
