South Africa’s Century of Cannabis Politics, 1922–2022

Abstract

A century ago, the Smuts government legally restricted cannabis as a ‘dangerous drug’ in a 1922 Customs and Excise Act. This year in February, President Ramaphosa declared the African National Congress (ANC) government’s intention to promote a domestic hemp and cannabis ‘sector’, to aid the country’s Coviddepressed economy. How can we make sense of dagga’s official legislative history between these two moments? The question is linked to the peculiarities of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid pasts. Yet, to account for continuities of policy into the democratic period – as well as of persistent realities of economic injustice related to domestic relations of ‘everyday narco-capitalism’ –we should also consider global, comparative frames of historical reference. In South Africa, dagga has a long history of indigenous uses and meanings, which began to change more dramatically with its simultaneous commodification and legal restriction during processes of industrial development, migrant wage labour and racial segregation. The 1922 cannabis prohibition was largely the triumph of imperial and medical progressives, who had sought earlier