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.
International cannabis thought leaders from across the world are to descend on Cape Town at the end of the month for ICS 2026. Organizer Sean Hocking tells Cannabiz Africa that the Back to Basics theme is aimed at breaking North American and European dominance in determining the world’s cannabis regulatory systems.
The Cannabis Trade Association of Africa (CTAA) has launched a compliance platform that provides a route to market for legacy cannabis growers. It’s new portal aims to link growers to retailers in a framework that ticks all government’s compliance boxes and provides a market for landraces.
South Africa did not need to reinvent cannabis commercialisation from scratch. It could have adapted proven licensing models, opened a lawful market quickly and built from there. Instead, delay, complexity and weak implementation have left the country watching a major industry slip through its fingers.
Leading South African law firm CDH has challenged the Department of Justice’s view that private cannabis clubs are illegal and contravene the Cannabis Act. Not so, says CDH. There has been no legal declaration that clubs are illegal, and actually, a careful reading of the Act shows they are within prescribed guidelines.
The key conundrum in the cannabis industry is that South Africans can legally use and possess cannabis privately but it is illegal to buy it. Until government sorts out this contradiction, there will be no meaningful cannabis reform. That was Farmers Weekly’s take-out of Gareth Prince’s keynote address at the recent Cheeba Summit.
Stellenbosch University has effectively declared itself a cannabis-free zone, specifying that residence rooms are ‘public’ places in terms of the draft Cannabis Act regulations. Any student caught dealing will be considered a threat to public order.
South Africa is sitting on a proverbial gold mine of tourism opportunities for the international cannabis community. But clearer guidelines are needed in order to make tourists feel more comfortable in order to tap this market,
Behind the scenes at the Cheeba Summit, Mpondoland cannabis stakeholders were mobilizing for market access and championing landrace as a potential medical cannabis game-changer. Overlooked by government and ignored by legislators, legacy growers are now banding together .
Gareth Prince says taking part in the National Cannabis Master Plan’s steering committee has been a ‘waste of time’ and that the Cannabis Act should be scrapped. In a letter to Cannabiz Africa, the legal activist said the Act was an absurdity and should be replaced by a new over-arching cannabis law that served the cannabis community.
Veteran activist Gareth Prince has rejected the overtures of the senior DTIC cannabis advisor John Jeffery to rethink next week’s court action that could jeopardize the Cannabis Act. Prince says he is pushing ahead with his challenge as the Act was a ‘slap in the face for the dagga community’.
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