Brian Jaftha is having his day in the Namibian winter sun following his release on parole earlier this month from a Windhoek prison and yet appears to wear his mantle lightly. The president of two of Namibia’s leading pro-cannabis organisations, the Ganja Users of Namibia (GUN) and the Rasta United Front (RUF) of Namibia was jailed on a charge of possessing less than 100 grams of cannabis in terms of an antiquated law that made him the default poster boy for judicial over-reach.
Now out of prison, he expresses his confidence in the independence of the country’s courts but chafes at “that law”, the piece of legislation that earned him almost two years behind bars following his conviction in October 2023: the Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act 41 of 1971 (RSA).
GUN, RUF, Medical Marijuana Association of Namibia (MMAN) and Cannabis and Hemp Association of Namibia (CHAN) recently submitted a joint application to government calling on the amendment of South African-imposed legislation, particularly the 1971 law on which Jaftha was sentenced and the Medicines and Related Substances Act 101 of 1965 (“the Medicines Act”) which also criminalises cannabis.
Surprisingly, Jaftha refuses to view his jailing as personal; he reframes it as part of the fight for justice and equality, for Rastafarians and all cannabis users in Namibia. Observers had described him as a selfless man and indeed self-effacement is the archetype the man projects in the exclusive interview with Cannabiz Africa. on 30 June 2025.
“Sometimes you’ve got to go through things, to achieve what you want,” he says, his voice sprightly on the line from his base in Windhoek. “Even in the belly of the beast we still survived,” he pronounces in the same spirit of taking his sentence as a collective punishment. Of the entire experience, he maintains:
“The good outweighed the bad”.
Prison appears for him appears to have been a golden opportunity to glimpse from the inside the privations endured by the Rasta faithful and other prisoners.
“The setup is in such a way that Rastas cannot grow. The diet is not Iri. They don’t cater for the people who do not eat meat.”
Also, his dreadlocks were forcibly cut against his will, leading him to launch a lawsuit of N$1.25-million against the state for the violation of his religious and human rights.
And despite the numerous restrictions endured in a recondite prison system not known for accommodating smokers – ditto cannabis use, a pillar of his religion – and the misfortune of losing a motor vehicle, Ras Jaftha steers the conversation on the ongoing struggle for cannabis emancipation. For one thing, activists seized on the forfeiture of his vehicle to the state as a classic case of the selective application of the law in cannabis-related offences in Namibia.
Conversely, people convicted of even violent crimes get to keep their assets while cannabis law convictions have had assets from vehicles to homes forfeited in terms of the draconian law that has earned the ire of GUN and other activists with GUN Secretary General Borro Ndungula earlier this year criticising the ongoing dispossession by the law of people charged with possession.
Jafta’s forfeited vehicle was worth $N160 000; the value of the cannabis found on him was less than N$2 000.
One surmises that even the manner of his arrest in a sting operation had the hallmarks of a setup long in the making. Authorities wanted to land a big fish and then quietly crow about it. if the intention was to silence pro-cannabis activism then Jaftha’s imprisonment only served to highlight the cause. The banner of activism has been unfurled in all its might: activists are spying triumph in the air.
“How can you call yourself a champion of democracy yet you rely on apartheid laws?” he asks of his government’s maintenance of a law enacted in the dark days of the country’s period under South African colonial rule.
“Even if they were to pass a worse law than that [at least], we know it’s theirs,” he contends, posing the reform question to a government that nonetheless has of late shown signs of a willingness to reconsider its stance.
Rastas and cannabis users can count on the government responding to their entreaties in a written response a few weeks ago as an unprecedented move in the country’s history. Earlier this month, the government also sent a high-level delegation to a cannabis regulatory meeting in Denver, Colorado, in a development many read as signifying government’s realisation that legalisation was inevitable. Even so, Jaftha counsels caution.
Although he encourages the exhausting of communication channels made available by government, he insists that the courts should remain the final arbiter. “We must put our strengths into the courts. Courts are impartial; they work with facts and evidence”.
Constitutionality taking centre stage
The government and the courts are indeed Jaftha’s priorities post-release: He is working tirelessly for an audience with President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah to plead for a moratorium on cannabis offences until the law is reformed and is also advising suspects on how to mount their defence in the best possible light by for instance encouraging them to cite personal use and not to plead to dealing.
This is a line of defence framed within the precepts of constitutionality and in this Jaftha is taking a leaf out of the handbook of one, Jeremy Acton of South Africa, whose Ganja Party, was instrumental to the legalisation of personal recreational use in South Africa in 2018, a victory later enshrined in the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, 2024.
Using the Ganja Party template of turning the cannabis matter into a personal use and medicinal use defence could help Namibia’s cause by highlighting the constitutional imperatives, he says, adding that this was never needed more than now.
Since his incarceration he has noted with deep concern that “things have changed for the worst because our people are going to jail like flies. This is the time we really should stand up and mark our presence.” At a time of litigation in the courts and when Rastas are increasingly the target of arrests by police because they are easy to identify, this was not the moment to hide, he advises.
Events in the past two or so months have revealed a pattern of increasing arrests for cannabis possession, use and cultivation, with police busting a large farm in Okahandja to the north of the country and seizing large amounts of illegal cannabis shipments.
On Wednesday 2 July 2025, the Windhoek High Court will hear a lawsuit by Jaftha and GUN Secretary General Ndungula to have the ban on cannabis declared unconstitutional. The justice minister has said the case is premature as the Law Reform and Development Commission was currently adjudicating the matter.
However, Jaftha sees in such statements an attempt to undermine the authority of the courts. “What they are saying is that the issue must go out of the hands of the courts and into the community because it’s a complex social issue.” This was nothing more than an attempt to try to save face because the facts pointed to victory for the cannabis lobby.
In attempting to do that, the government opened itself to a charge of duplicity, says Jaftha. It already had admitted that the law regulating cannabis use and possession was imposed by a foreign power and had no place in current society and that no religious considerations were made when it was decreed. It had also slated it as outdated, akin to corporal punishment and the death sentence.
Delegating the final say to the community would therefore be nothing more than a defence mechanism, with government using citizens brainwashed for decades on the supposed ill effects of cannabis to support its prohibitionist stance when in fact a survey across the country’s regions has revealed the majority of Namibians supported adult personal use, states Jaftha. However, many pro-cannabis respondents would not show their hand openly although they were in favour of reform because cannabis was taboo, he claims.
“As an egalitarian, it’s not fair,” he remarks and cites studies that show that alcohol, cigarette smoking, obesity, over-the-counter drugs and female circumcision were among the Top 5 agents of mortality as acknowledged by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
He feels the debate should now move away from therapeutics to food security for the struggle to gain momentum.
“The police are robbing us of our food,” he notes, arguing that the ban on hemp seed should be lifted as the seed lacked THC and had potential to fill a nutritional vacuum.
His call for the mainstream adoption of hemp as a food source echoes calls by many pro-cannabis voices that have charged that the ban on cannabis has perpetuated historical disparities and the marginalisation of large sectors of society by preventing mainly indigenous communities to earn a living through hemp cultivation and trade.
Conversely, corporations in Namibia were licensed to sell hemp-infused foodstuffs, shampoos and hair conditioner, the activists point out.
These glaring asymmetries have inadvertently turned cannabis into much more than a spiritual or medicinal human rights issue in the country but more broadly a human rights one. Lobbyists have also petitioned the UN Human Rights Treaty bodies and alighted on statements by UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in support of their cause following the commissioner’s arguments that continuing criminalisation and prohibition were compounding human rights violations of mainly indigenous groups and people of African descent. The commissioner has called for regulation as the best way forward.
“As a Rasta, the fight for cannabis is pivotal. It’s so intense that they [Rastas] must try to hold on to their essence. Through this we must make our presence felt,” Jaftha says of the current moment of ongoing petitioning which many see as a high watermark of cannabis activism in Namibia.
Rastas were at a disadvantage in many spheres and suffered prejudices including denial of work and they simply could not afford to sit back, he notes. For him to get out of jail on parole, the GUN president had to sit pre-release classes and prove his rehabilitation, tasks which he described as daunting and at odds with his spiritual moorings and faith.
“You come in as a smoker and the court did not punish you for smoking.” Violation after violation of one basic human right after another, he saw it all: “If you are telling me no smoking in government building you’re indirectly telling me no smoking,” he reflects. Chastised by the system he may be but definitely not broken by it.
As the battle for legalisation rolls on, one notes that there definitely is some fight left in the cannabis rights fighter of old yet. And this is the same fighting spirit Jaftha is taking into the all-important hearing at the Windhoek High Court tomorrow!
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