The Justice Department’s resistance to cannabis legalization is becoming all too obvious as other government departments begin aligning behind the DTIC’s leadership in the commercialization process.
The Justice official responsible for promoting and processing public input on the Private Cannabis, Makubela Mokulubete, has declared all private cannabis clubs illegal without going through the scores of submissions on the draft regulations.
Mokulubete Pronounces on Private Clubs without Going Through Public Submissions on Cannabis Act
The astounding statemenet by Mokulubete, a senior state law advisor and the ‘public face’ of the Cannabis Act, came at lunchtime on Friday, 6 March 2026, the day after the deadline for submissions had closed and before any formal review process had begun.
Earlier, during the three-hour virtual Parliamentary session on that day, the DTIC, Agriculture and Health Department all demonstrated their willingness to ‘co-create’ cannabis regulations with the private sector as envisaged by the Phakisa workshop held by the Presidency in June 2023 and incorporated into the National Cannabis Master Plan (NCMP).
It then came as somewhat as a shock that at the end of the session, the Justice Department’s point man on the Cannabis Act, Makubela Mokulubete, came up with the unexpected pronouncement that cannabis clubs would not be legalized.
Mokulubete, who had made no prior input during the session which was attended by senior ranking government officials and MP’s, wanted to clarify a comment made by SAHPRA’s Daphne Fafudi, who said the regulator had no input on the private club issue as this was beyond its medical cannabis mandate.
In a somewhat garbled explanation, the senior law advisor revealed a tenuous conceptual grasp of the issues at hand when he said the Constitutional Court had not asked Parliament to legalize private clubs and so there was no legal compulsion to do so.
“When we processed this bill in Parliament this issue came up many times for these people to use cannabis at these private clubs” he said.
“Our response was to say that even the Constitutional Court judgement did not make provision for the legislation to cover cannabis clubs…..because in our view it will not be consumption or the use of cannabis in a private place it will be in a place that would be accessible to many people in the public…….and therefore would not be a private place as envisaged in the Constitutional Court judgment and also in the Private Cannabis Act as well”.
“So clubs are not permitted in terms of the Cannabis Act so it is in contravention of the law if those private cannabis clubs continue to operate” he concluded, clearly not having digested any of the numerous private club submissions that had been sent to him as the Department’s designated recipient for the public submissions which closed on 5 March 2026.
Justice’s Resistance to Clubs Unlikely to Stand the Test of Time
The reaction to these comments from a lawyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, was:
“With respect, what the senior state law advisor is saying here is utter legal hogwash. He clearly has no grasp of basic legal principles regarding privacy or constitutional rights of association – or he is being mischievously obstructive. Either way it makes a mockery of the Justice Department’s support for the Presidency’s commitment to public participation in devising cannabis regulations”.
The Justice Department’s view that private clubs have no place in a private consumption regime is not likely to withstand the test of time. The DTIC, which has the whip hand in driving the Master Plan, has signalled its openness to the concept of private clubs.
Indeed DTIC DG Simphiwe Hamilton said as recently as February 2026, in an engagement with the Marijuana Board of South Africa, that a compliance certificate for non-commercial cannabis organizations was a possible regulatory mechanism.
Mokulubete’s legal incoherence and tone-deafness will not surprise any the cannabis stakeholders who made presentations on the Cannabis Bill in 2022 and 2023. The original drafters of the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, under the stewardship of Sarel Robbertse, opted for the narrowest possible definition of the Prince judgement – effectively acknowledging the Concourt’s ruling that an adult citizen had the right to possess and consume cannabis, but to make it as difficult as possible to access that right.
Robbertse and his state legal architects ignored every single piece of advice from over 100 non-government organizations and individuals who presented to the now defunct Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services responsible for the Cannabis Bill that was put to Parliament. The resulting Cannabis Act has been described by legal activist Gareth Prince (he of the Prince judgement) as one of the worst pieces of legislation ever to come out of democratic South Africa. Prince is currently preparing to challenge the constitutionality of the Act instead of responding to the draft regulations.
Supreme Irony: Government’s Cannabis Act is Biggest Obstacle to Government’s Cannabis Master Plan
The irony in the whole situation is that the Cannabis Act is now the biggest obstacle in the development of the National Cannabis Master Plan – the core of which is to open up access to the plant for the maximum benefit instead of restricting access.
The Act, which expressly forbids commercial cannabis transactions and penalizes dealing under the Medicines Act instead of the Drugs Act, is likely to be short-lived.
DTIC cannabis policy chief John Jeffery told the meeting that a draft commercialization policy, which effectively sets out the terms for what the Cannabis Act outlaws as ‘dealing’, will be out for public comment during the course of April.
Public input would be incorporated into an ‘omnibus cannabis act’ to be put to Parliament in mid-2027, which will allow full adult use and regulations governing THC.
Once that happens, the Cannabis Act will pretty much be consigned to the dustbin of history and the Justice Department will be removed from cannabis policy control.
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