Talk:Wild Coast

Talk

Discussion for: Wild Coast • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Wild Coast is a Growing Region: the coast of the Eastern Cape between the Mtamvuna and Great Kei rivers, in the former Transkei, treated as a region where cannabis is grown. It covers what the sources say at the scale of the Wild Coast and the former Transkei. The growing area round Lusikisiki and Port St Johns has its own page, Mpondoland. South African law on cannabis is treated at Cannabis in South Africa.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the Wild Coast is a growing region

• Kepe (2003, p. 607) states that cannabis is grown in most parts of the Wild Coast stretch of the former Transkei, and that Eastern Pondoland has produced the most for many decades. Kepe also writes that the former Transkei has long been known as a major cannabis-producing area.
• Dumani and colleagues (2024, p. 261), citing Thole (2001) and Kepe, place cannabis growing in the Eastern Cape in the eastern part of the Wild Coast stretch.
• Paterson (2009) made field trips to the former Transkei and describes its harvests, trade and seed from interviews and from the author's own observation in 2005–2009.
• GroundUp (29 July 2024) quotes the Eastern Cape Rural Development Agency's stated aim of formalising "the informal cannabis market in the Wild Coast belt".
• The status is Active: Paterson's observations of 2006–2009, the vouchers collected near Lusikisiki in August 2023 and the 2024 GroundUp report all describe cultivation since 2000. Eradication does not change the status.

Extent and border

• No source read for this page draws an inland line round the growing region. The coast itself is defined by South African Tourism as running from the Mtamvuna River in the north to the Great Kei River in the south.
• The map border is approximate. It is drawn on the seven present-day local municipalities that front that coast: Mnquma, Mbhashe, King Sabata Dalindyebo, Nyandeni, Port St Johns, Ingquza Hill and Mbizana (renamed Winnie Madikizela-Mandela). Together they cover about 18,100 km²; the infobox area is rounded from the border. All seven lie in the former Transkei.
• Lusikisiki, Port St Johns, Coffee Bay, Bizana and the Mkhambathi Nature Reserve lie inside the border; East London, Kokstad and Port Edward lie outside it.
• The border does not match the sources exactly. Kepe and Paterson speak of the former Transkei, which reaches well inland of these municipalities; the inland districts are left out because the page treats the coast. Paterson's statements about the former Transkei as a whole are given on the article as statements about the former Transkei, not as statements about the coast alone.
• The growing area Mpondoland (Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns municipalities) lies inside the border.

Sources

• Kepe (2003) was read in full (pp. 605–615). Its account rests on fieldwork in one Pondoland village from 1996 to 2000; the statement about the Wild Coast as a whole cites Beinart (1982) and Ngani (1997). "The Marijuana Trail" is reported from Dickson (2000).
• Paterson (2009), an MA thesis in history at Rhodes University, was read in its sections on the former Transkei. Its statements on harvests, trade routes, seed and hashish rest on interviews with traders, named in the thesis by pseudonyms, and on the author's own observation. The article attributes them. The parliamentary speeches are quoted from Streek and Wicksteed, Render unto Kaiser: a Transkei dossier (1981), which was not read directly; the date 1979 in the thesis belongs to an earlier speaker, so no date is given for the Bizana member's words.
• The 1984 date for Skunk seed comes from one trader. The thesis notes that one other dealer gave the same date and that everyone else interviewed put the arrival about five years later; the article gives both.
• Dumani et al. (2024) was read in full from the publisher's PDF. It has six authors (Dumani, Silwana, Mpambani, Oyedeji, Egbichi and Seepe).
• South African Tourism, "The Wild Coast, Eastern Cape", was read online; it is used only for the coast's extent between the two rivers.

Sources not used

• Paterson's interview account of cannabis grown near Lusikisiki to raise funds for the African National Congress in the 1980s (pp. 84–86) rests on one pseudonymous interviewee and is not used.
• Paterson's comparison of 80,000 ha under cannabis in the Eastern Cape with 2,500 ha in Natal in 1998, taken from Oosthuysen (1998), covers the whole province, and the thesis itself says the figures may not be entirely correct. It is not used.
• Kepe's national figures (sales worth R5 billion a year by 2000, citing Gerardy) concern South Africa as a whole and are not used.