“Get cracking, please. We are starving.”
That is essentially the plea from desperate indigenous cannabis growers in the vast Mpondoland area of the former Transkei region to the SA government to fast-track legislation and policies to regulate the cannabis industry.
It has previously been speculated that a thriving cannabis industry in the area could create about 300,000 jobs.
In early October, hundreds of indigenous cannabis growers from the OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo districts converged in Port St Johns as part of the first-ever Mpondoland Cannabis Belt founding summit aimed at mobilising individual traditional cannabis farmers.
The initiative attracted indigenous cannabis growers from Ntabankulu, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Ingquza Hill, Port St Johns and Nyandeni local municipalities as well as from some areas in KSD and Mhlontlo.
Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, Mpondoland Cannabis Belt secretary Snoux Poswa said the event was meant to discuss issues of consolidation which would ensure that cannabis growers in the area were able to speak with a unified voice while dealing with the government or investors.
“AmaMpondo are consolidating themselves because they are not benefiting enough from their own genetic resource. Meanwhile, it [the government] has not given them legal space for them to function properly,” he said.
“We are not happy with the progress government is making with regards to the legal framework and the sense of urgency. If we were happy, we would be in the fields working instead of coming here to talk nonstop.
“We are feeding families. That is why we are cultivating cannabis. We don’t smoke and get high from it.”
Poswa appealed to the government to finalise legislation, saying the process should not go on for years while they starved as indigenous cannabis growers.
“We are appealing to the government to treat our situation with a big sense of urgency.”
He said Mpondoland already had a powerful cannabis legacy backed by a very powerful system.
To have it established on national and international markets would be miraculous, he said.
Poswa said the government should be focusing on teaching them how to diversify on their products as cannabis growers.
Port St Johns-based Abalimi Bomya Association secretary Philasande Mhlakatha, meanwhile, said the issue of acquiring licences had been a sore point for a long time despite numerous engagements with the state.
She said unlike the hemp trade industry, the cannabis industry was over-regulated.
Cannabis licences were too expensive to acquire while requirements were too stringent and unattainable for indigenous farmers.
Nokuthula Bhayitana, a small-scale cannabis farmer and mother of two from Ntabankulu, said she and her siblings had managed to go to school, thanks to cannabis.
Her father had been a thriving cannabis farmer.
However, many people had over the years acquired criminal records as they were harassed and arrested by police.
“Sometimes we had to flee our homes.
“We want those criminal records expunged and for government to open up markets so we can sell freely,” she said.
Eastern Cape Rural Development Agency cannabis specialist Dr Sunshine Blouw told the Dispatch there were 300,000 indigenous cannabis growers in the Mpondoland area and that their cannabis seed was the best as it had medicinal properties to it.
However, whoever produced it would have to have a licence first and for their product to be scrutinised by the SA Health Product Regulatory Authority.
But he said the biggest challenge thus far were policies and legislation.
“You still have the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act; hence you see in newspapers every day that there are people arrested for being in possession of cannabis.
“Until such time the Act is amended, we still have a problem.
“There are other pieces of legislation that need to be looked into by both the health and agriculture departments, because if we don’t address those legislations, it means we are not going to attract investors to come and work with our people in the cannabis space,” Blouw said.
Garth Strachan, a project management consultant in the presidency, said while there were important opportunities to be derived from a cannabis industry, there was a need to ensure there was an appropriate regulatory framework, a country-competitive strategy and a financing framework which included people from areas such as Mpondoland.
“We have to find ways of addressing the crisis of poverty in rural areas and we have to protect the indigenous knowledge of the legacy farmers in the Eastern Cape and elsewhere and use the potential of cannabis and hemp cultivation, processing and product-to-market to create sustainable rural livelihoods and employment,” he said.
“It is not easy but we have to try.”
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