South Africa occupies a unique position in the rapidly developing legal cannabis market. With a government that seeks to legalize and develop the cannabis and hemp sectors as a sunshine industry and a private and community sector desperately willing to engage, this should be a match made in heaven. Yet the country finds itself in a regulatory quagmire with market forces, both legal and illegal, now in control. Cannabiz Africa is your front row on the torturous journey towards a regulated adult-use commercial market.
The DTIC’s Cannabis and Hemp Steering Committee has met to try and get the Master Plan back on track. The DTIC has to date missed all its deadlines to draft a new cannabis commercialization policy and hopes to reignite the process.
SAHPRA’s unilateral decision to halt approval of any further Section 21 medical cannabis applications has spiralled into a crisis. Patients are being denied access to medication and service providers face uncertainty while the regulator remains silent.
KZN’s hemp planting season has officially started with the launch in KwaMaveshe of the hemp seed multipliction programme
The NDPP has been chastised for trying to mislead the court in a cannabis-related asset forfeiture case. The judge dismissed its application to seize a Ford Ranger on procedural issues.
A distinctive feature of African sativas is the presence of THCV, and KwaZulu Natal is a strong candidate for THCV-forward expressions. That’s according to a deep dive by the Landrace Sativa team, who report that apart from THC, minor cannabinoids CBG and CBC also feature in what’s commonly known as ‘Durban Poison’.
Research confirms that SA’s licensed medical cannabis cultivators appear to be putting more flower into the illegal local market than they are exporting. Despite the fact that this is largely illegal, many growers are finding it easier, and more profitable, to supply the ‘Grey Zone’ than it is to crack the difficult EU market.
Government’s first ‘back to the drawing board’ steps do not augur well for the industry. In advertising for a new project manager for the beleaguered National Cannabis Master Plan, the DTIC says knowledge of the cannabis and hemp industry would only be an ‘added advantage’ rather than an absolute prerequisite
In the face of growing threats to South Africa’s landrace varieties, the African Cultural Heritage Trust has initiated a bold programme to reintroduce indigenous cannabis genetics back into the communities they came from. Working with Druids Garden, the Trust has original genetic material dating back to the late 1940’s.
Professor David Katerere’s team at the Cannabis Hub has launched a landrace research project that seeks to document and commercialize local seed heritage. Among the Hub’s aims is to upskill indigenous farmers in agro-processing so they can add value to landrace biomass.
South Africa’s cannabis landraces hold significant medicinal properties that are only just being discovered. In fact, researchers are still determining how many indigenous landraces there are, with the African Cultural Heritage Trust having identified up to 40 different strains across all nine provinces.
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