The Department of Justice’s Makubela Mokulubete was one of the few government officials with any clout that attended the National Cannabis Dialogue on 27 August 2026.
He told delegates that 2 807 submissions had been received from the public during the input window that closed on 5 March 2026.
He said these had been reviewed and had been incorporated into revised regulations which would be published soon. He said that once these had been gazetted the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act of 2024 (CfPPA) would then become law.
The CfPPA effectively puts into law the 2018 Constitutional Court ruling that the adult use and possession of cannabis was legal. It has been widely criticized, however, for criminalizing access to cannabis and the exclusion of legacy growers’ interests altogether.
When I spoke to him on the sidelines of the Dialogue, Mokulubete was unfazed by all the fuss around the Act. The mild-mannered and besuited bureaucrat was clear that the CfPPA was purely a mechanism to address the Concourt ruling and expunge the criminal records of cannabis users.
When I asked him how cannabis users were meant to access cannabis flower or seeds legally, his response was that the DTIC was working on a commercialization framework and that was beyond Justice’s remit.
He was also emphatic that under law, private cannabis clubs remain illegal and that any change to the legislation to allow this would be up to the DTIC.
Mokulubete said the Prince Western Cape High Court application to halt arrests and review the Act were not of concern.
“There is nothing in his application that stops us from making the Act operational” he said.
Mokulubete said that with the Act coming into force, cannabis would be removed from the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act schedules and this would in turn allow the Plant Improvement Act of 2025 to come into force whereby non-medical cannabis would be deemed an agricultural product.
He quashed rumours that amendments to the Drugs Act would be gazetted separately from the Cannabis Act. “No, it will all be done through the Act” he said.
“We are confident that the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act will come into law this year” he said.
#
