A Vaal Triangle medicinal cannabis researcher and healer has turned to the Public Protector to try and recover R34 million in cannabis research assets he claims were unlawfully seized by the State. He further alleges that the police action was designed to protect criminal syndicates in Pretoria.
Anthony Karoly Smida, chairperson of the Heritage Collective (THC) NPC, says he has been unduly hounded by law enforcement over a nine year period despite his attempts to work with police in developing medical cannabis solutions.
He says illegal actions by the police have cost him years of medical cannabis research as his Smida machine prototypes and cultivar specimens have been destroyed.
Smida tells Cannabiz Africa that the Heritage Collective holds an active R34 million asset recovery claim against SAPS following two raids on his properties by the Hawks in 2017 and 2022.
He says he registered a complaint with the Public Protector on 2 March 2026 and is seeking assistance from the Independent Police Directorate after what he calls ‘malicious harassment designed to protect criminal syndicates in Pretoria’
Smida said the healing properties of the plant saved his life after he was diagnosed with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterium that causes infections in different parts of the body.
He said doctors told him in 2011 that the disease was incurable and that he had six months left to live. However, cannabis appeared to him in a dream, and he began exploring its medicinal qualities.
Although the disease led to one leg being amputated in 2014, he defied the medical experts by self-treating with cannabis, and he slowly developed his own cannabis research hub.
In 2014 Smida informed his local police station about his rare condition and his use of cannabis.
“I wrote a declaration of admission of guilt that I would be growing, producing and using cannabis as medication,” Smida told The Citizen at the time. “The station commander told me she could not give me permission to do so and would be forced to arrest me if I was caught.”
Since then he says he’s been arrested over 10 times, including once in 2021 when he was arrested in front of his daughter during her birthday party for no apparent reason and no charge was laid.
Smida says that despite his efforts to be compliant, he has faced ongoing harassment. He suspects police in Pretoria are working with criminal syndicates who are threatened by his work.
He says he formed the Heritage Trust as a ‘ vertically integrated traditional plant medicine research and cultivation enterprise and is in the process of applying for a Section 22 C(1) (b) license from SAHPRA to be able to research cannabis for the preparation and supply of medicinal plant products.
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“We do not view compliance as a bureaucratic hurdle. We view it as the scaffolding that protects traditional knowledge from further interference, and as the standard by which our ethical research earns its rightful place in the modern regulatory landscape” says Smida.
“Our research spans eleven years of systematic documentation, encompassing 666 medicinal plant species across 23 global healing traditions. Our botanical IP assets include, among others:
• Muti Gold — a chemotype-stabilised cultivar developed from Durban Poison and Malawi Gold landrace genetics;
• The Nontsika Strain Suite — a formally documented heritage cultivar collection;
• The Smida Machine — a proprietary processing innovation subject to active IP protection proceedings;
• PlatinumRoot — a hemp-based phytomining concept under development.”
Smida says these assets were illegally destroyed by police who have not been forthcoming in rectifying the situation. It’s for this reason, he says, that he has gone to the Public Protector.
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