President Cyril Ramaphosa’s vision of cannabis as an economic driver went into sudden reverse on the evening of Friday, 7 March 2025, leaving the South African cannabis landscape in tatters.  

Barely a month after he told the nation that he wanted the country to be a leader in the commercialization of cannabis and hemp, the opposite has happened, as his Health Minister undermined him in a spectacular way, by gazetting a ban on cannabis in foodstuff that specifically included hemp and hemp-based products.

Hemp Foodstuffs Ban a Big Body Blow to the Cannabis Master Plan

The unexpected ban has already cost tens of millions of rand affecting almost 2 000 business entities and effectively removed a key market for the 1 500 farmers who have hemp permits. The DTIC, even though it was itself taken by surprise by the ban, has instructed affected businesses to comply or face the legal implications.

Now the President has two Cabinet members who are meant to drive the Master Plan forward, and not only are they not communicating, but are pulling in opposite directions.

And as if to rub it in, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) says it is to rebuild the Cannabis Master Plan from scratch, effectively ignoring stakeholder input from the President’s Phakisa Cannabis Action Lab initiative in June 2023 and public submissions to Parliament on the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill since 2022.

The Act, which the President signed off in May 2024, is still to be proclaimed into law as it has been held up by the Justice Department which has yet to produce a set of regulations that will empower the Act. In the meantime, the Drugs Act remains in force, despite Government's commitment to get it off the statute books three years ago, and SAPS has taken a hardline attitude to vulnerable communities such as the Rastafarians and legacy farmers, insisting on continuing with cannabis arrests.

Meanwhile, the cannabis retail 'grey zone' has exploded into a multi-billion rand business beyond the control of regulators who have no clear law enforcement guidelines - this while the DTIC is still working on a 'commerciaization' policy that will "soon" be put out to stakeholders for their input, while the NPA is working on new cannabis guidelines which it will release "soon".

Bam: Seven Years Later There is Still No Plan!

M Ayanda Bam was deputized by Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) to help revive the Cannabis Master Plan which had been presented to Nedlac in 2021, but was thrown out because of a lack of private sector consultation. That is when he began engaging with senior Government officials and put together the private sector working group in 2022 to co-create a new Master Plan. The initiative fell apart because of Government turf wars in the cannabis space and undue interference in processes, leaving him profoundly disillusioned.

Bam, who is also co-founder of Friends of Hemp SA (FOSA), said the situation remains absurd with the DTIC “always talking about the future”.

Bam is also one of only two private sector representatives on the oddly-composed Cannabis Master Plan Steering Committee (Steerco), which is yet to meet this year despite its formation nine months ago to speed up cannabis reform under the leadership of the DTIC.

In other words, his views count.

“The DTIC say they’re putting together a commercialization policy but its contents are completely opaque. There has been absolutely no engagement with anyone else as they have confirmed they’ve had internal discussions only”.

“Let me remind folks” he told the Cheeba What the Hemp 2.0 webinar . “This is the same hymn sheet that was used in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. 2023 and 2024. It’s now 18 March 2025 and were still hearing about this commercialization policy that’s somehow out there in the ether. We’ve never had a chance to engage with it”.

He then revealed the depth of his frustration at the hollowness at the centre of it all: “There is no commercialization policy, there is no economic or industrial strategy, there is no plan”.

“So this idea that we’re moving ahead and whatnot, nah, these guys are really trying us, sorry, I hate to be disrespectful here, but I think I have to express some of the anger both from industry and civil society. We have attempted for years to engage these folk” said Bam.

The ban puts paid to the President's vision of public/private sector partnerships driving the Master Plan as a myth with government relationships with the private sector trending towards litigation.

The opportunity to engage with the public through a consultation process was deliberately shunned by Dr Motsoaledi, who with a single stroke of a pen has undermined what little trust the cannabis business community may have had in Government structures.

Bam said the hemp foodstuff ban was inexplicable, unjustified and expensive, and the fact that it happened at all pointed to the dysfunction at the heart of South African cannabis reform.

He said the DoH’s explanations to date were “complete nonsense and it’s a complete obfuscation of the fact that they made a major blunder that has consequences beyond the cannabis industry”.

Meanwhile, as of going to press, there has been no official word from the Presidency or the ministers of Health and Trade although Cannabiz Africa understands there have been several intense discussions behind closed doors. 

The DTICl is understood to be working on an interim plan whereby hemp foodstuffs will be exempt from the ban which will then apply only to cannabis-infused foodstuffs.

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