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 is looking to facilitate international funding for a hemp textile engineering company and two other major infrastructure projects in the Eastern Cape to kickstart the province’s cannabis economy. It’s seeking a total of US$55 million in foreign investment which it says will generate over a billion in value and create 12 000 jobs.
Following the success of the African cultural heritage dramas, Shaka iLembe and Modjadji, Msanzi Magic has launched a TV series, Mpondoland, a tale of identity, power, greed, self-discovery, and responsibility – with cannabis farming at the centre.
South African cannabis reform is just not kicking into gear, largely because Government has fumbled the process badly. Nowhere is this more evident than the continued shelf-life of the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act, which is still on the statute books despite repeated Government promises to amend it and a 2020 Concourt judgement that found sections of it to be unconstitutional.
The African Farmers Association of South Africa (AFASA) has joined forces with the African Heritage Cultural Trust, SACHIDA and other organizations to protect and promote local landrace genetics. This comes as new regulations define indigenous plants as agricultural crops so that small holder farmers can benefit from their economic development.
Barely a week after Labat announced that it was no longer selling its cannabis assets to Brian van Rooyen’s All Trading Propriety but to initial bidder 64P Investments,, there’s been yet another twist to the tale. A new buyer, African Ntsha Trading Solution, has stepped in and snapped up CannAfrica for R8 million replacing all other offers on the table.
How Government handles cannabis licensing is one of the single biggest factors that will make or break South African cannabis reform. Currently the only licenses available are for exporting medical cannabis, of which just over 100 have been issued. The way Government accommodates an estimated 900 000 small-scale legacy growers will either level the playing fields or create deep inequality in a future cannabis economy.
The Spanish online magazine Canamo says South Africa is defining cannabis in its own new way that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. It says what South Africa is more than just a curiosity for the Spanish-speaking world, it’s a living laboratory where new ways of exploring and interacting with the plant are unfolding.
The Police Reform Project is to take its crusade to the Constitutional Court and has called on all cannabis stakeholders in Gauteng to gather at Constitutional Hill on 27 February 2026. This emerged from the Project Indlela webinar on legacy cannabis communities where there were repeated calls for mobilization against police harassment.
From Western Mpondoland to the West Coast, from the Cape Flats to rural Limpopo, representatives of legacy cannabis communities are in strong agreement on one point: stop the police harassment immediately and allow the commercial trade in cannabis products. This came out of the Project Indlela stakeholder webinar held earlier this week on inclusivity in cannabis reform.
South Africa is second only to the DRC in the Top 10 African countries worst hit by organized crime. ENACT, which released its 2025 survey findings, says SA’s rating places it among the continent’s countries most vulnerable to ‘state capture’, reflecting deep-rooted criminal networks and systemic challenges.
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