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.
Parliament’s first formal engagement with private stakeholders on cannabis commercialization takes place on Friday, 6 March 2026 when H3 Legal Solutions makes a presentation the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition.
On 7 March 2025 the Minister of Health gazetted the disastrous ban on cannabis and hemp foodstuffs. The hastily-rescinded ban created havoc, confusion and financial losses. A year later, SACHIDA chairman Katlego Kgopotse (pictured here) refects that ‘The Ban’ should be remembered not so much as a setback but to provide a litmus test of how far we’ve come.
FGFA is in the process of collating community input on post prohibition policing laws and the next step is the big one: selling the Police Reform Project (PRP) to SAPS itself. This is likely to happen mid-year and in the meantime the organization is calling for further community input on how cannabis policing can be improved.
The Department of Health has conceded that cigarette smoking and vaping need to be treated differently in the proposed Tobacco Bill. Although the Bill still needs to be debated in Parliament, the concession means that packaging restrictions applied to combustible products will not be as harsh on non-combustibles.
FGFA is hosting a community workshop on police reform on Friday, 27 February 2028, aimed at shaping the way law enforcement works now that cannabis possession and private use is legal. Twenty five organizations are participating in the workshop which will be live-streamed on FGFA’s You Tube Channel.
SACCA has launched a pilot project for private cannabis clubs to move from ‘grey zone to governance’. It has signed an MoU with several cannabis service providers to put in place a self-compliant model using the Afrimeter software platform and will hold a stakeholder webinar on 12 March 2026.
Gareth Prince, the activist whose name is reflected in the Prince judgement legalising cannabis in 2018, is planning to challenge the Cannabis Act in court. Prince tells Cannabiz Africa that he is not going to make any input on the draft regulations on the Act, saying he does not intend ‘legitimising an unlawful process”.
Is a national catalogue of acceptable cannabis strains on the cards? That’s the question raised by legal firm Adams and Adams, which points out that this assumption is embedded in the draft regulations of the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act which are currently out for public comment.
A Cape metro cop trainee who was dismissed for testing positive for cannabis at work, is to be reinstated in his position following a Labour Court ruling which found his dismissal substantively unfair. The Court said a positive test result did not mean that the officer in question, Keegan Mantis, was impaired in his duties.
South Africa’s first major medical cannabis conference and expo will take place in Sandton in March 2026 as part of the Africa’s largest healthcare and pharmaceutical event, SAPHEX. Themed ‘From Compliance to Care’, the event aims to chart a way forward how the business of medical cannabis can be developed.
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