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Namibia

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Namibia
Namibia
The Waterberg Plateau
The Waterberg Plateau
Capital Windhoek
Continent Africa
Subregion Southern Africa
Cannabis Status
Legal Status Illegal
Status Since 1971
Enforcement Seizures and arrests by the Namibian Police under the Act of 1971
Documentation
Growing Regions 0
Growing Areas 0
Accessions 2
Conservation
Populations none documented yet


Namibia, called South West Africa before independence in 1990, is a country in Southern Africa where cannabis is prohibited by the Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act of 1971, a South African statute that applied to the territory under South African rule and remains in force.[1][2] The Act names the plant "Cannabis (Dagga)"; dagga is the word in common use.[1][3]

The Swedish traveller Charles John Andersson found people he called Hill-Damaras, the Damara, at Onanis in the 1850s cultivating "dacka", or hemp, for its young leaves and seeds, which they smoked in place of tobacco.[4]: 89 In December 1889 the Finnish missionary Martti Rautanen gathered a cannabis plant in Ondonga, in the north, whose label gives the local name Epangua and says that it was grown and did not grow wild.[5]

The Ministry of Health and Social Services ruled out the commercial cultivation of cannabis for medical use in 2024.[6] In July 2026 the High Court in Windhoek held that a constitutional challenge to the prohibition, brought in 2021 by members of Ganja Users of Namibia and the Rastafari United Front, was premature while the government reviewed the law.[2]

Geography

Herta Kolberg's checklist of 2026 lists Cannabis sativa, with a native range in South-East Asia, among the naturalised alien plants of Namibia, those "confirmed by a specimen or other record".[7] A plant gathered in Windhoek in February 1968 grew as a weed on a property in the town.[8]

The police have reported household plantings at Oshakati in the north-central Oshana Region (2010), a plot beside the B1 road on the edge of Windhoek (2017) and an irrigated plantation of about 1.55 hectares on a farm near Hochfeld, in Otjozondjupa Region (2025).[9][10][11] The Act of 1971 was made to apply to the whole territory, "including the Eastern Caprivi Zipfel".[1] That strip, the far north-east of the country, is now the Zambezi Region, where the border post at Ngoma faces Botswana.[12]

Demographics

Communities with cannabis relationships

Brian du Toit concluded from Andersson's account that the Damara "were the main dagga cultivators" of the region. Citing Stow (1905), he described small Damara gardens of melons, pumpkins and dagga, beside which they also grew tobacco.[13]: 93–94 He quoted the missionary Heinrich Vedder (1938), who wrote that the Bergdama (Damara) traded dagga to the Ovambo for cattle, goats, iron and copper.[13]: 94

The botanist Hans Schinz, who travelled in the territory from 1884 to 1887, wrote that the "Hottentotten" of Great Namaland, the Nama, had taken up the "harmful" smoking of hemp since they came into contact with whites. They used its seeds and leaves and called the plant Daχa, a name that Schinz thought had belonged to another local narcotic before the hemp of Asia arrived.[14]: 93–94 In the north, the Ondonga sheet of 1889 gives the name Epangua.[5]

Du Toit derived the word dagga from the Khoekhoe daXab, a word that also meant tobacco, and reported Nienaber's view that the cannabis name meant "green tobacco".[13]: 86, 89 The linguist Wilfrid Haacke, writing on Khoekhoegowab, the language of the Nama and Damara in Namibia, derives it from the Cape Khoe dāxa.b.[15]: 59, 72

Agriculture

The Damara at Onanis grew the plant for its young leaves and seeds.[4]: 89 The Ondonga label of 1889 reads Wird gezogen, wächst nicht wild ("is grown, does not grow wild").[5]

Lawrence Kazembe and Isak Neema called Namibia "not a significant producer of cannabis" in 2016.[16] In July 2022 the Minister of Agriculture, Calle Schlettwein, said that his ministry was awaiting the findings of an investigation by the Ministry of Health and had issued no licence to grow cannabis.[17] In 2015 an Australian company, Erin Resources, announced that MGC Pharmaceuticals had secured an option over a licence to grow hemp in Namibia; Chris S. Duvall noted that no other source confirmed it.[18][19]

Cannabis in Namibia

History

Du Toit estimated that cannabis had been growing in southern Africa for four or five centuries, carried in most likely by early migrants and since naturalised.[13]: 88 Andersson's two expeditions into the region ran from 1850 to 1854.[4]

The territory was German South West Africa from 1884 until 1915. Schinz's account of the Nama dates from those years, as does the sheet Rautanen gathered in December 1889 at Ondonga, in Ovamboland; the University of Zurich entered it in its herbarium in 1907.[14]: 93–94[5] Rautanen, born in 1845 in Ingria near St Petersburg, ran the Finnish mission station at Olukonda and stayed in Owambo until his death in 1926; he was a self-taught linguist, ethnographer and natural scientist.[20]

Under South African administration the Union's Medical, Dental and Pharmacy Act of 1928 was extended to the territory by a proclamation of 1929.[1] Regulations made under it in 1930 on opium and other habit-forming drugs, reprinted in the Official Gazette of South West Africa in 1936, required seized drugs to be destroyed, but allowed any saleable habit-forming drug "other than dagga" to be disposed of by tender to chemists, doctors, dentists and veterinarians.[21] The Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act of 1971 applied to South West Africa by its own terms and came into force there and in South Africa on 6 December 1971. Its administration was partly transferred to South West Africa in 1977. None of the amendments later made in South Africa applied there. The penalties now in force were set by an amending Act of 1987.[1]

At independence on 21 March 1990 the Constitution kept every law then in force until it was repealed, amended or declared unconstitutional.[22] Namibia acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, as amended by its 1972 Protocol, and to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances on 31 March 1998 and to the 1988 Convention on 6 March 2009.[23][24][25] In November 2006 the Deputy Minister of Safety and Security, Gabes Shihepo, said that the 1988 Convention had not been ratified for lack of national legislation.[26]

Cultivation

In 2010 the police commander of Oshana Region, Ndahangwapo Kashihakumwa, said that residents, young people above all, planted dagga at their houses, flats and cuca shops and at their parents' houses.[9] In 2017 police in Windhoek arrested a man who grew cannabis beside the B1 road near the Cimbebasia neighbourhood.[10] At a trial in Swakopmund in 2022 a woman charged with cultivation and possession told the court that she had bought hemp seed at a pharmacy in the town and planted it at home.[27]

On a farm between Hochfeld and the Osire refugee settlement, police found in May 2025 a plantation of about 1.55 hectares under irrigation, dried and fresh cannabis and a small factory for harvesting, weighing and packing it.[11][28][29] A worker said that one of the accused had farmed cattle before he started the plantation in December 2024.[30] The regional police commander, Philip Hidengwa, said that the police were deciding whether to destroy the crop with chemicals or with a grader.[29] The farm was sold at auction in May 2026 for N$44.5 million.[31]

Preparations and consumption

The Damara at Onanis smoked through a horn holding a little water, usually that of a kudu and three or four feet (about a metre) long; a short clay pipe filled with tobacco or "dacka" was fixed upright into its side near the narrow end.[4]: 89–90 The defendant at Swakopmund in 2022 said that she had made cannabis oil from her garden plants and coconut oil.[27]

In 2021 the Minister of Health and Social Services, Kalumbi Shangula, told the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs that cannabis was the illicit drug most commonly used in Namibia.[32]: 3

Religious and cultural use

Followers of Rastafari lobbied for the decriminalisation of dagga at the National Council's public hearings on a new drugs bill in February 2007.[33][34] The plaintiffs in the constitutional case filed in 2021 claimed that the prohibition violated, among other rights, their rights to culture and religion.[35]

Trade and commerce

In Vedder's account, quoted by du Toit, dagga "was at that time the Bergdamas' money with which they could buy anything".[13]: 94 Du Toit, citing Vedder, also described a trade into the Kalahari from the peoples of South West Africa.[13]: 85

Maretha Maree wrote in 1998, citing a master plan of 1995, that dagga was regularly smuggled into Namibia from Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland.[3] In 2019 the police in the Zambezi Region said that some of the 371.35 kilograms they burned at Katima Mulilo had come from Zambia and from South Africa through Botswana and that it was exchanged locally for devil's claw and for fish.[36] Participants in a study of the Ngoma border post, published in 2024, said that cannabis was the good most commonly smuggled there.[12] In February 2026 police in Kavango West Region stopped two Angolan nationals at Nankudu with 11.94 kilograms.[37]

The police said that the two men accused in the Hochfeld case were allegedly the main suppliers of dagga in Windhoek and Okahandja.[28] Workers said that the cannabis went by cattle truck to Okahandja, Gobabis, Otjiwarongo and Rundu.[30] In 2021 the Minister of Health told the Commission on Narcotic Drugs that Namibia was turning into a transit and consumer country for drugs.[32]: 3

The Act of 1971 lists "Cannabis (Dagga) and the whole plant or any portion or product thereof" in Part I of its Schedule, the prohibited dependence-producing drugs. Dealing, which the Act defines to include cultivation, carries on a first conviction a fine of up to R30,000 or up to 15 years' imprisonment or both; possession or use carries up to R20,000 or ten years. Anyone found with more than 115 grams of dagga is presumed to have dealt in it unless the contrary is proved.[1] The Medicines and Related Substances Control Act of 2003 lets the Namibia Medicines Regulatory Council permit the cultivation of a plant from which a specified Schedule 4 substance can be extracted.[38] Government Notice 278 of 2018 lists dronabinol in Schedule 4, if intended for therapeutic purposes.[39]

Two challenges reached the High Court. Juvani Swartbooi, found with 241 grams at Lüderitz in February 2020, asked it to strike down the presumption of dealing. The Deputy Judge President, Hannelie Prinsloo, dismissed the application on 30 January 2026.[40] In 2021 Brian Jaftha and Borro Ndungula of Ganja Users of Namibia sued to have every mention of cannabis removed from the Act, claiming that the prohibition violated their rights to dignity, equality, privacy, administrative justice, culture and religion.[35] The government answered that the Minister of Justice had approved a review by the Law Reform and Development Commission of the laws on the possession and use of cannabis.[41] On 11 July 2026 Judge Claudia Claasen upheld that plea and held the case premature: "The government is currently reviewing and reforming the impugned legislation."[2] Ndungula said that the court had not ruled against the plaintiffs' rights.[42]

The Combating of the Abuse of Drugs Bill, introduced in 2006 to replace the Act of 1971, was adopted by the National Assembly without amendment on 21 November 2006.[26][43]: 113 A committee of the National Council endorsed its minimum sentences of 20 years for a first offence of dealing in, possessing or consuming a banned substance and 30 years for later offences. It did not recommend legalising cannabis.[44] The bill had not become law by 2017.[43]: 113

In July 2019 the Minister of Justice, Sacky Shanghala, told the National Assembly that Namibia was not ready to legalise cannabis.[45] A task force of the Office of the Prime Minister, the ministries of Justice, Home Affairs and Safety and Security and the Attorney-General had been considering decriminalisation. A public consultation by the Ministry of Health that closed on 22 November 2020 drew 56 submissions.[46] In June 2024 the Minister of Health, Kalumbi Shangula, said that the Cabinet had resolved in 2021 not to decriminalise cannabis on medical grounds and that its cultivation and commercialisation were outside his ministry's mandate.[6]

Enforcement

In 2020 the Khomas regional commander, Joseph Shikongo, answered complaints from Ganja Users of Namibia, who claimed that the police inflated the value of seized dagga to secure heavier sentences, by saying that the drug was illegal "whether it is measured in small or big quantities".[47] At the Swakopmund trial in 2022 a senior forensic analyst said that tests looked only for the presence of THC and that any trace of it was illegal.[27]

The police put the value of cannabis seized from October 2018 to April 2019 at over N$27 million.[46] At Katima Mulilo in July 2019 they burned 371.35 kilograms seized from 2017 to 2019.[36] Two men were arrested at the Hochfeld farm in 2025 and charged with possession or dealing, organised crime and racketeering.[11] In February 2026 police at Nkurenkuru, in Kavango West, arrested a man found with cannabis plants.[37] Brian Jaftha, one of the plaintiffs in the constitutional case, was sentenced in October 2023 to two years' imprisonment for possession, five years after his arrest.[48]

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

Map

List

Accession IDNameCollectedArea
Meyer 1094 (1968)Meyer 1094 herbarium specimen, Windhoek (1968)
Rautanen s.n., Ondonga (1889)Rautanen herbarium specimen, Ondonga, Ovamboland (1889)

Conservation status

Rautanen's sheet from Ondonga, of December 1889, is held by the Herbarium of the University of Zurich as Z-000164599. It carries one tall stem with long, narrow leaflets. A stamp shows that it was treated with sublimate as a preservative.[5][49] P. G. Meyer's sheet no. 1094, gathered as a weed in Windhoek on 19 February 1968, came to Meise Botanic Garden from the Botanische Staatssammlung in Munich and is held there as BR0000014662614.[8][50]

Recent news

No recent news items.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act 41 of 1971" (PDF). Republic of Namibia Annotated Statutes. Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Menges, Werner (12 July 2026). "Attempt to legalise cannabis fails in High Court". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Maree, Maretha (4 September 1998). Substance use: youth and culture in Namibia (PDF). International Council on Alcohol and Addiction. hdl:11070/656 – via University of Namibia Scholarly Repository.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Andersson, Charles John (1856). Lake Ngami; or, Explorations and Discoveries during Four Years' Wanderings in the Wilds of Southwestern Africa. New York: Harper & Brothers – via Project Gutenberg.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 "Digitised sheet Z-000164599: Cannabis sativa L." Digitalis. United Herbaria of the University and ETH Zurich. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Hiveluah, Feni (11 June 2024). "No to growing dagga – for now". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  7. ↑ Kolberg, Herta (February 2026). "Checklist of naturalised alien plants in Namibia" (PDF). Environmental Information Service Namibia. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662614: Cannabis sativa L." Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Shivute, Oswald (6 October 2010). "Police concerned about dagga in Oshana Region". The Namibian. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Smith, Yanna (27 February 2017). "Dagga is from God". Namibian Sun. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Namibia Press Agency (29 May 2025). "N$52m cannabis plantation discovered at Hochfeld". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Simataa, Charlene; Shaamhula, Loide; Johannes, Geldenhuys (2024). "Illicit Activities and Border Control in Ngoma, Namibia". Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies. 52 (3). doi:10.5787/52-3-1484.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 du Toit, Brian M. (1975). "Dagga: The History and Ethnographic Setting of Cannabis sativa in Southern Africa". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 81–116. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.81.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Schinz, Hans (1891). Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika: Forschungsreisen durch die deutschen Schutzgebiete Gross-Nama- und Hereroland, nach dem Kunene, dem Ngami-See und der Kalaxari, 1884–1887 (PDF) (in Deutsch). Oldenburg and Leipzig: Schulzesche Hof-Buchhandlung und Hof-Buchdruckerei (A. Schwartz) – via Wikimedia Commons.
  15. ↑ Haacke, Wilfrid (2015). "Lexical borrowing by Khoekhoegowab from Cape Dutch and Afrikaans". Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus. 47: 59–74. doi:10.5842/47-0-653.
  16. ↑ Kazembe, Lawrence; Neema, Isak (2016). "Drugs and Drug Control in Namibia". In Kalunta-Crumpton, Anita (ed.). Pan-African Issues in Drugs and Drug Control. Routledge. pp. 87–112. doi:10.4324/9781315599335-5.
  17. ↑ "Namibia investigates commercial cannabis cultivation". The Brief. 1 July 2022. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  18. ↑ "MGC Secures Option for Cannabis Growing License in Namibia" (PDF) (Press release). Erin Resources Ltd. 22 July 2015 – via Australian Securities Exchange.
  19. ↑ Duvall, Chris S. (2019). "A brief agricultural history of cannabis in Africa, from prehistory to canna-colony". EchoGéo (48). doi:10.4000/echogeo.17599.
  20. ↑ Heininen, Simo (19 November 2019). "The Letters of Martti Rautanen to Carl Hugo Hahn, 1888–1895". Intertwined Histories: 150 Years of Finnish-Namibian Relations. University of Turku. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  21. ↑ "Regulations regarding the importation, sale and use of opium and other habit-forming drugs (Union Government Notice No. 2137 of 1930)" (PDF). Official Gazette of South West Africa. Windhoek. 2 June 1936. No. 675. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  22. ↑ "Namibian Constitution" (PDF). Republic of Namibia Annotated Statutes. Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  23. ↑ "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961: status". United Nations Treaty Collection. United Nations. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  24. ↑ "Convention on Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 16. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  25. ↑ "United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances". United Nations Treaty Collection. Chapter VI, 19. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Weidlich, Brigitte (23 November 2006). "Parliament adopts drug bill". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 "All cannabis is illegal in Namibia". Namibian Sun. 1 February 2022. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Tafirenyika, Tracy (2 June 2025). "Massive dagga bust dries up supply in Windhoek, Okahandja". The Namibian. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 "Farm owner arrested after police uncover illegal dagga plantation and factory near Osire". NBC News. Namibian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Tjehiua, Chollastic (3 August 2025). "Inside Namibia's N$52-million dagga farm scandal: Workers unpaid, families torn, futures uncertain". The Namibian. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  31. ↑ Felton, Nishi (6 May 2026). "Dagga farm auctioned for N$44.5m". The Namibian. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Shangula, Kalumbi (April 2021). "Statement by Honourable Kalumbi Shangula, Minister of Health and Social Services, at the 64th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 12–16 April 2021, Vienna, Austria" (PDF). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Republic of Namibia. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  33. ↑ Isaacs, Denver (7 February 2007). "Churches chip in on dagga". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  34. ↑ Isaacs, Denver (8 February 2007). "Drug bill hearing just a puff of smoke?". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 "Lawsuit filed to legalise dagga". The Namibian. 6 September 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 "Katima cops burn cannabis worth N$3.7 million". New Era. 4 July 2019. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Muyamba, John (16 February 2026). "Police seize nearly 12 kg of cannabis at Nankudu". New Era. Retrieved 17 October 2026.
  38. ↑ "Medicines and Related Substances Control Act 13 of 2003" (PDF). Republic of Namibia Annotated Statutes. Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  39. ↑ "Government Notice No. 278: Classification of medicines and other substances as scheduled substances: Medicines and Related Substances Control Act, 2003" (PDF). Government Gazette of the Republic of Namibia. Windhoek. 31 October 2018. No. 6749. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  40. ↑ Menges, Werner (2 February 2026). "High Court rejects bid to declare cannabis possession law unconstitutional". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  41. ↑ Menges, Werner (20 February 2025). "High Court to hear case on whether cannabis ban in Namibia is unconstitutional". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  42. ↑ Nakashole, Puyeipawa (19 July 2026). "Dagga group's high hopes not up in smoke yet". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Unengu, Ingrid Lerato (April 2017). A Critical Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Legal Framework on Drug Offences in Namibia (LLM thesis). University of Namibia.
  44. ↑ Isaacs, Denver (16 February 2007). "No shift on harsh drug penalties". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  45. ↑ "Namibia not ready to legalise cannabis – Shanghala". The Namibian. 15 July 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 Kathindi, Andrew. "Only 56 submissions from cannabis consultations". Windhoek Observer. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  47. ↑ Nambadja, Charlotte (1 October 2020). "Ganja users bemoan 'unfair' police treatment". The Namibian. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  48. ↑ Graig, Augetto (18 October 2023). "Cannabis activist jailed". Namibian Sun. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  49. ↑ "Occurrence 2575424233: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
  50. ↑ "Occurrence 1839971721: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 16 October 2026.
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