Talk:Cannabis in South Africa

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Cannabis in South Africa covers cannabis in South Africa: the history of the plant and of its prohibition, the growing regions and landraces, trade and law, preparations and consumption, religious and cultural use, and the conservation of the landraces.

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Scientific literature on the landraces

The scientific record on the traditional landraces is thin. The article cites a 2024 morphological survey of eight landrace collections from Lusikisiki, a companion study of the agronomy of the same material, and a 2024 review that found no study of the diversity or chemistry of southern African cannabis landraces.

Ethnobotanical sources

The ethnobotanical record for the country's peoples is uneven and, for ritual use specifically, thin. No dedicated peer-reviewed study documents cannabis in Xhosa initiation or as a discrete rite in Xhosa or Sotho ceremony. The psychoactive-plant ethnobotany of the region, including cannabis in divination and healing, is itself a recognised gap in the literature (Sobiecki 2008; Nyazema, Chanyandura and Egan 2024).

The 1658 daccha and the origin of dagga

Two cited works disagree on what the daccha of van Riebeeck's 1658 journal was. Du Toit (1975, pp. 88–89) judges it "almost certain" that this and the following seventeenth-century references describe Leonotis leonurus, not cannabis; the entry describes a dry herb that was eaten. Gordon (1996, pp. 65–68) reads it as canna, a fermented Karoo root, and holds that the reading of the early Cape accounts as Leonotis cannot be substantiated. The article attributes both readings.

On the word itself, du Toit (1975, p. 89) follows Nienaber (1963) in preferring a Khoekhoe root, daXa-b, but notes that Lichtenstein (1928) and Nienaber doubted that dagga is an original Khoekhoe word, and that Meinhof derived it from Arabic duXan, "tobacco". Gordon (1996, p. 66) relates it to San and Korana forms meaning "to be drunk".

Source discrepancies: aerial spraying

• Start. The article says the police sprayed from the air "from the 1980s". Herbicide spraying in South Africa reports that the police turned to herbicides in 1980, at first from hand pumps, and that helicopters had replaced ground patrols by the end of the decade (de Greef 2016).
• 2016. The article says no aerial spraying was conducted in 2016, from an article of 7 April 2016. Herbicide spraying in South Africa reports only that no spraying had been seen in the region by April 2016, and Mpondoland cites GroundUp (2024) for the spraying stopping in 2016. Éloise 20:25, 21 October 2026 (+07)

Source discrepancies: KwaZulu-Natal and the regional complex

• Msinga. The article said cultivation was "long established in the foothills of KwaZulu-Natal, around Msinga", citing Bloomer (2009), Bloomer (2019) and Gastrow (2003). None of the three names Msinga or describes a foothills growing zone in KwaZulu-Natal; the foothills in Bloomer are the Foothills zone of Lesotho. Koch and Mthembu (Mail & Guardian, 25 July 1997) describe fields in the upper Tugela valley near Tugela Ferry, "in the Msinga district", and the article now cites them. The time depth now comes from Nkosi, Devey and Waetjen (2020): in 1929 the Weenen magistrate called his district a "chief supply centre" for the Union.
• "Single production complex". The article said the region forms "a single production complex" with Lesotho and Eswatini. The phrase is not in Kepe (2003), Gastrow (2003) or either Bloomer paper. Paterson (2009, p. 3) calls South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland "a kind of self-sufficient, closed cannabis market, known as the southern African cannabis complex". Laniel (2001) writes of a South African "cannabis complex" made up of parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the "Eastern and Northern Cape (the former Transkei)", with Swaziland and Lesotho. The article quotes Paterson and names Laniel's areas by his own gloss, the former Transkei, which lay in what is now the Eastern Cape, not the Northern Cape.
• Aerial spraying in KwaZulu-Natal. The article said helicopters sprayed "the KwaZulu-Natal foothills". De Greef (2016) and the International Drug Policy Consortium (2016) describe the spraying in Pondoland and do not place it in KwaZulu-Natal. Eliseev (IOL, 18 September 2006) reports police helicopters spraying more than 260 hectares in the hills of the Tugela River basin near Winterton, and the article now cites him.
• The same wordings stood on South Africa and were corrected there in the same way. Éloise 22:24, 21 October 2026 (+07)