The Cannabis for Private Purposes Act of 2024 is likely to be promulgated into law this year final permitting South Africans the legal right to enjoy their constitutional right to consume cannabis privately. The only problem is the Act criminalizes all forms of accessing cannabis to enjoy that right, which effectively defeats the purpose of the law.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
As one private club owner who wishes to remain anonymous, told me: “Look it at this way, it’s like that the Government banned sweets for no good reason, so people resort to getting them illegally because they like them and they’re available everywhere. Then the courts tell Government that eating sweets is actually legal and forces it to unban them. So what does Government do in it wisdom, it says “OK, seeing we’ve been forced to allow everyone to enjoy their sweets, go ahead, but you got to make your own because were not going to let you buy them”. I mean is that stupid or what? Now there’s a frigging sweet shop on every corner, and they’re like, duh, how did this happen?”
To mangle the man’s metaphor, the current status is that the chocolate factory is in full-on production, the goods are moving out the ‘back door’ illegally at the rate of knots, and all the while, management pretends its exporting everything and only giving out samples locally
South Africans have been quick to catch-on that the ‘back door’ is the only place to buy chocolate, and they’re lining up.
Uncorked consumer demand is what has driven the remarkable growth of the ‘Grey Zone’, the Wild West, free-for-all, unregulated cannabis retail sector.
Cheeba Africa’s Trenton Birch told High Times magazine recently that may of the thousands of people who have taken courses with Cheeba now work in the unregulated cannabis club scene.
“The reality is that the ‘grey’ market here is massive, absolutely massive. Depending on who you speak to, I reckon there are about 2 000-3 000 clubs. Some people say 5 000. I think that is an exaggeration. But there are at least 2 000 dispensaries, clubs, whatever you want to call them.
Welcome to the Wild West
“Most of them are completely illegal. Most of them aren’t running the membership model. Most of them are for-profit, so they don’t really tick those boxes of the precedent set by the Germans and the Spanish, so it’s just a free-for-all. And that’s the government’s fault. I 100% blame the government. We’re in a country of innovators, of survivalists.”
Birch is awestruck by the breadth of the private club scene. “The culture of cannabis clubs in South Africa is fascinating. The number of different kinds of clubs in Cape Town will blow you away. You’ve got these corporate kind of clubs, which are dry, and you’ve got these hippie clubs, and you’ve got these hipster clubs, and it’s amazing, completely amazing. You can go there, smoke weed, drink coffee, it’s unbelievable.
“It really is everywhere, high streets, no holds barred. It looks to the average consumer to be perfectly legal. You walk into clubs, give your credit card. Some have members, people trying to run a model that is defensible in court. But there are more people who just don’t give a shit. I used to fault them, and I used to criticize them, but now I’m just like, ‘You know what? Good for you, get on with it.’ Just make sure the product is clean. As an industry, we’re not holding ourselves accountable and each other accountable to make sure there’s quality labelling. That’s an issue on the industry side.”
Fields of Green for All’s Myrtle Clarke told High Times that FGFA has over “100 clubs signed up with us now so that we can give them advice on how to keep private, how to look after the members, and how to do harm reduction.”
Clarke says that apart from the few South Africans who can afford the fees associated with registering as a medical cannabis patient, there is no legal domestic market .
Scamming Section 21
“On the other end of the scale, there’s this little loophole called a Section 21, which is a special permit that you get through your doctor to be able to access unregistered medicine.
“So now all the rich fuckers have gone off and created franchises under the guise of this Section 21. It’s quite a rigorous process. Each patient has to apply to their general practitioner for a specific prescription that lasts for six months.
“What they’re [private clubs] doing is they’re just giving everybody Section 21; just to sign, ‘Yeah, just sign here, whatever.’ And when the cops come in, they show them that. But it’s never been registered as a Section 21 permit. There’s no doctor involved. It’s just meaningless paperwork that the cops can probably not even read.”
“So those guys can afford it and have the education and the resources to put up a front, whereby they can bamboozle the police and get away with it. Or they downright pay bribes. One of our clubs in Cape Town pays R10,000. The cops come in every Friday and collect their brown envelope. So, you’ve either got the resources to bribe, or you’ve got the resources to bamboozle. Or you just fly under the radar. Or you are the black market, still thriving, and you just hope you don’t get caught.”
South African Cannabis Club spokesperson and Project Indlela co-ordinator Albertus van Jaarsveldt says “It is unclear how many clubs there are out there, but one thing is certain, and that is cannabis outlets are now available in almost every town and city, with it becoming visibly more saturated in our major metros”.
The Common goal – Everyone Just Wants to be Legally Recognized
He says “With a lack of a regulatory framework for cannabis distribution, private clubs operate on various degrees of models and legal applications. Differences aside, all clubs essentially share one common goal – to establish a legitimate avenue for their operations to be legally recognized “.
He says this is the core of SACCA’s mission: “After multiple attempts, we have established SACCA in 2025 with one primary objective : To ensure that private cannabis clubs are formally recognized in upcoming legislation.
“We believe that Clubs hold the solution to South Africa’s regulatory conundrum, in the compliance structures and models of operation which have already been developed by clubs – there lies the blueprint for a safe and ethical regulatory framework which can be formally adopted by government and embedded into law.
“More so Clubs serve as a vehicle for community development and inclusion. As participants in this sector, Clubs are socially obligated to consider the reality of our legacy cannabis community, and to build functional mechanisms which can incorporate them into the value chain .”
The Spanish world’s cannbis magazine, El Planto, regards South Africa as the world’s big cannbis lab experiment: What’s happening in South Africa today is more than just a distant curiosity for the Spanish-speaking world; it’s undoubtedly a laboratory where new ways of coexisting with the plant are being tested. The fact that cannabis is no longer synonymous with crime is good news, but the true measure of change will be whether regulation prevents the new industry from excluding those who sustained cannabis culture on the margins.”
Meanwhile the Tills Keep Ringing
In the meantime, the tills keep ringing in the Grey Zone. Our anonymous-seeking club owner says that to be as compliant as he can he has registered his entity as a ‘not-for-profit’ company so he’s not liable to pay VAT on what are membership withdrawals and not commercial transactions.
“The irony is that by outlawing ‘sales’, Government is missing out on VAT – nobody is paying VAT – and if the industry is turning over north of R30 billion a year, and actually who knows how much money is sloshing around this space, Government could be netting 15% if we were registered as normal businesses following the appropriate guidelines. Government could flip this whole thing around to its advantage if it just woke up on Monday mornings and got with the programme!!”
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