Eswatini

Eswatini
Eswatini
Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary
Capital	Mbabane
Continent	Africa
Subregion	Southern Africa
Cannabis Status
Legal Status	Illegal
Status Since	1922
Enforcement	Fields destroyed by police; possession charged under the Pharmacy Act
Documentation
Growing Regions	0
Growing Areas	0
Accessions	4

Eswatini, called Swaziland until 2018, is a country in Southern Africa where cannabis is grown illegally, most of it in the steep, hilly north.^: 99 The plant is called insangu in siSwati and dagga in the English of the region.^: 73 In 2006 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime wrote that Swaziland was "known for producing high-quality cannabis" in the north of the country and that its seed stock, including strains called rooibaard and Swazi gold, had been marketed internationally, largely by nationals of the Netherlands.^: 73

Ethnographies of the Swazi describe cannabis smoked through a horn water pipe and through a hole in the ground, by diviners, by young warriors and by the praise singer of the king.^{: 97, 103} In the late 20th century Swazi growers supplied South Africa; compressed blocks of Swazi cannabis reached the coffee shops of the Netherlands.^{: 72, 76–77}

Cannabis remains illegal. Its possession is charged under the Pharmacy Act of 1929, which classifies dagga as a poison. A bill tabled in 2020 to amend a statute of 1922 and allow medical cannabis was still awaiting approval in March 2024.

Geography

Swaziland's climate and soil suit the crop. Most of it is grown in the north, on steep and hilly ground that is hard to reach by road.^: 99 In 2002 the farmers who lived by it were confined to the narrow mountain valleys of the northern Hhohho Region; cannabis was also grown in the fertile hills of central Swaziland and in the south. A United States report of 2007 placed the highest-quality cannabis around Piggs Peak, in the north. It called the crop of the south-west lower in quality.

The historian Craig Paterson counts Hhohho, centred on Piggs Peak, among the three districts on which the southern African cannabis trade is focused; the others are the Mokhotlong District of Lesotho and Mpondoland, in the former Transkei of South Africa. In his account South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland form a self-sufficient, closed cannabis market, the "southern African cannabis complex".^: 3

Demographics

Communities with cannabis relationships

Brian du Toit grouped the Swazi with the Zulu as the northern Nguni peoples and placed their name for the plant, ntsangu, in a "Swazi-Zulu complex". He derived the regional word dagga from the Khoekhoe daXab, a word that also meant tobacco.^{: 86, 91} Paterson, citing du Toit's later work, writes that around the time of Shaka's reign Zulu groups were sent on trading expeditions to what is now Swaziland to acquire high-quality cannabis.^: 32

A news report of 2002 called insangu "the customary relaxant of the headman of a Swazi homestead". A medical thesis written at Edinburgh in 1913, which framed cannabis smoking among "the native races of South Africa" as an evil, ranked "the Swazi tribe" first and claimed that "practically every Swazi is a devotee"; its author, Charles Bourhill, conceded that no statistics on the habit had been compiled.

Agriculture

Simon Pillinger, writing for the Institute for Security Studies in 2003, called dagga a widely grown cash crop and counted Swaziland among the largest dagga-growing areas of southern Africa.^: 99 In 2005 Swaziland's Council Against Drug and Alcohol Abuse was reported to estimate that about 70 per cent of small farmers in Hhohho, where the mountainous terrain makes maize hard to grow, turned to cannabis. Farmers in the northern valleys told reporters in 2002 that nothing but cannabis flourished there and that it was their only cash crop. A young man of Hhohho said in 2006 that a grower could raise thirty 10-kilogram bags a year in the hills and use the money to buy cattle and furniture and to send children to school.

The same report of 2006 announced that the government was to allow small-scale production of hemp to test whether it could become an economically viable crop.

Cannabis in Eswatini

History

Du Toit estimated that cannabis had been growing in southern Africa for four or five centuries, brought in most likely by early migrants and since naturalised.^: 88 Swaziland was under British rule from 1903 to 1968. In 2024 the government was working to amend provisions of a statute of 1922 enacted by the British administration. On 26 January 1965 the United Kingdom extended the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to Swaziland among its territories. Pillinger writes that, although cultivation was illegal, some people appear in the past to have obtained approval from King Sobhuza II to grow it for medicinal purposes.^: 99

From the 1970s white South African buyers travelled from the cities to the producing regions, above all the Transkei and Swaziland. By the early 1990s Swazi cannabis, pressed into blocks of one or two kilograms for transport, was on sale in the coffee shops of the Netherlands. Around 1990 a cross between Dutch Skunk and Swazi cannabis, known as "Swazi Skunk", reached the southern African market.^{: 72, 77, 106} Nigerian groups took a larger share of control over the Swazi trade around the turn of the century.^: 93

Swaziland acceded to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Convention on 3 October 1995 and to the Single Convention as amended by its 1972 Protocol on 18 October 1995. On 19 April 2018, at celebrations of his birthday and of 50 years of independence, King Mswati III announced that the country would be known as the Kingdom of Eswatini.

Cultivation

A United States report of 2007 said that Swaziland, unlike most growing areas, has no specific harvest season. Paterson, who visited in 2009, found the winter harvest the only one of the year for most growers, though a few planted twice.^: 90 A report of 2013 wrote that the climate and soil allow several harvests a year.

Paterson, drawing on interviews with traders, writes that Swazi growers remove the male (staminate) plants on a larger scale than growers in the Transkei and that since Swazi Skunk entered the market the plants are "apparently no longer as homogenous as they used to be".^: 106–107 The UNODC wrote in 2006 that after years of eradication the quality of Swazi cannabis "seems to have declined".^: 73 A seed seller's description of 2009 called its Swazi Red line "Swazi roolbaard from the top swazi breeder in nkomati region of swaziland".

Preparations and consumption

The Swazi smoked cannabis through a water pipe made of horn. Unlike the Zulu, who set the reed into the side of the horn, the Swazi, the Thonga and the Venda used a longer reed placed down into the horn through its large open end.^: 103: 28 They also dug a hole in the ground, filled it with the herb, lit it and drew the smoke through a mouthpiece.^: 97 The travel writer Owen Rowe O'Neil described this method among "common Swazis" who were not allowed the "great pipe" of the diviners; in his account the hole was filled with dagga and lit with a hot cinder from the fire.

Compression was more common in Swaziland than in the Transkei or Lesotho, since most compressed cannabis went for export.^: 76 Inside the country it was sold by the matchbox, which in 2009 cost 5 rand in the harvest season and up to 15 or 20 rand in the dry summer.^: 91

Religious and cultural use

Du Toit wrote that among the Swazi the herb was associated chiefly with diviners, who used a pipe and filled their mouths with water after each puff to cool the smoke. It was also taken as a stimulant by young warriors and by the praise singer who intoned the praises of the king or another prominent person.^: 97 He quoted the anthropologist Brian Marwick's The Swazi (1940): "If a man is faced with an extraordinary knotty problem he will smoke his shawulo [pipe] and concentrate on the problem and the solution will present itself to him without trouble."^: 97 O'Neil wrote of watching "witch-doctors" smoke from a great pipe into which a coal was dropped over a calabash of water.

Trade and commerce

Gastrow wrote in 2003 that Swazi-grown cannabis was known internationally for its high quality and sought after in South Africa, Europe and the United Kingdom. In May 2000 growers received between 1,800 and 2,500 South African rand per bag of good-quality dagga from South African or Nigerian middlemen. In 2000 three tonnes of compressed dagga shipped in a container from Swaziland were seized in the United Kingdom.^: 100–101 Large sales were negotiated through a kind of growers' union, in existence since 2003. Much of the best cannabis was sold for Europe.^: 91 In 2023 many farmers of north-western Hhohho sold their crop locally and in South Africa.

The International Narcotics Control Board named Swaziland in 2009 among the countries of southern Africa where cannabis was cultivated on a significant scale.^: 56 In the reports of member states from 2014 to 2018 Eswatini was among the countries of southern Africa most often named as a country of origin, departure or transit of cannabis, with Mozambique and Malawi.

Legal status

Cannabis is prohibited. A court report of December 2025 calls dagga a substance "classified as a poison under the Pharmacy Act of 1929", the law under which possession is charged. In the same month the National Commissioner of Police, Vusi Masango, said that "as long as cannabis farming remains illegal in this country", police officers had a statutory obligation to enter the fields and destroy the crops.

In October 2018 Profile Solutions, a company based in Florida, announced preliminary approval from the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development for an exclusive farm and processing plant for medical cannabis and hemp; the proposed agreement included 1,000 hectares of land in the Simunye area. Voice of America called it in 2024 "the only authorized cannabis grower" in the country.

A bill first tabled by the health ministry in 2020 proposed to amend sections of the law of 1922. In 2020 a member of parliament, Bacede Mabuza, moved that it be withdrawn for further consultation. When it was revived in 2023 Saladin Magagula, chair of the Eswatini Cannabis Association, said that its focus was solely the creation of a new regulator, the Medicines Regulatory Authority. Many cannabis farmers in Hhohho opposed it. The bill needed the approval of three-quarters of the House of Assembly and the Senate; the government spokesperson, Alpheous Nxumalo, said in 2024 that legalisation would limit the black market, raise tax revenue and empower farmers. In July 2025 the member for Mtfongwaneni, Nathi Hlophe, renewed the call for legalisation.

Enforcement

Police efforts against drug trafficking concentrated on the cultivation of and trade in dagga. The Royal Swaziland Police and the South African Police Service made frequent attempts to curb cultivation by aerial spraying from South African helicopters. In March 2000 the Commissioner of Police acknowledged that the repeated destruction of large fields had not produced concrete results. In 2001 the police seized 3.9 tonnes of compressed dagga in a single raid.^{: 99–100, 102}

Raids early in 2002 destroyed 2,500 hectares of fields identified from South African police helicopters. The authorities eradicated between 400 and 500 hectares a year from 2001 to 2003.^: 160 By June 2005 the police had seized 285 kilograms that year and destroyed about 197 hectares. From January to September 2006 police drug units destroyed 437.5 hectares with a manually sprayed chemical, almost all of it around Piggs Peak and Nhlangano. The government estimated the area under cultivation in 2010 at 633 hectares.^: 43–44 Swaziland reported the eradication of 1,069 hectares in 2014 and 1,515 hectares in the first eight months of 2015.^: 3

In September 2025 the Anti-Narcotics Unit of the Royal Eswatini Police Service found 2,169 kilograms of dagga at a homestead at Nyonyane, in northern Hhohho, in raids across all four regions of the country. In December 2025 a man appeared before the magistrates' court at Nhlangano charged over 1,055 kilograms, after the National Commissioner had ordered police across the country to step up the destruction of illegal fields.

Growing Regions

Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki: No growing regions documented yet.

Growing Areas

Landrace cannabis growing areas currently documented on the wiki: No growing areas documented yet.

Accessions

List

Accession ID	Name	Priority	Collected	Area
AFP-SWZ-UNK-0120090001	Swazi Red 2009
ATA-SWZ-UNK-0120090001	2009 ATA Swazi Red IBL
CBG-SWZ-UNK-0120160001	Sudáfrica 2016
VIB-SWZ-UNK-0100000001	Swazi General Population

Conservation status

Karl W. Hillig's chemotaxonomic study of terpenoids in cannabis, published in 2004, analysed one accession from Swaziland among 82.^: 879–880 Indiana University's herbarium holds a voucher of a plant Hillig grew in the university's greenhouses in 1996 from seed of Swaziland origin supplied by HortaPharm of Amsterdam. Seed of lines named for Swaziland is kept by seed sellers and collectors.

Recent news

Article	Date	Category
News:2026-09-05/Trafficking/royal-eswatini-police-recover-89-82-kg-of-cannabis-in-three-operations	5 September 2026	Trafficking

See also

• Cannabis and Culture (1975)
• Cannabis in South Africa
• Landrace Cannabis
• South Africa
• The African Roots of Marijuana (2019)