Image via: Adobe Stock
Image via: Adobe Stock
This takeaway from the Gauteng State of the Province (SOPA) address on Tuesday 23 February may ‘spliff’ opinion – Premier David Makhura has once again indicated that he wants to see the province become the country’s leading processor of cannabis in order to stimulate economic growth and development.
He said that the Eastern Cape is in pole position to become the country’s largest producer of the plant, but that Gauteng is well-positioned to lead the industrialisation of the agricultural sector and blaze a trail towards recovery in the province by putting it on the market.
Makhura remains enthusiastic about cannabis industry
Makhura said that he remains highly enthusiastic about the economic potential offered by a well-structured, productive dagga industry in South Africa. He insisted though that the industry will focus on producing cannabis products that are useful for their health and pharmaceutical benefits, as well as their use in the textile industry.
“The new sector of the economy is the cannabis industry, we want to be the industrial hub, we already have the industrial infrastructure for industrial processing of cannabis, not to smoke,” Makhura said.
“The processing of cannabis, particularly cannabis for health purposes and for other parts of improving the quality of human life has got many properties that help when it is processed.”
He said that his vision is for the plant to act as the catalyst for Gauteng’s goal of being “the engine of Africa’s industrialisation”.
Infrastructure projects to benefit
Makhura said that such investment into the cannabis market is aligned with the province’s ongoing infrastructural projects.
“We focusing on our high-growth priority sectors and infrastructure investment projects that will unlock the transformation, modernisation, and re-industrialisation of the different corridors and districts of our city region,” he said.
This is by no means the first time that Makhura has outlined his vision to build a green economy in South Africa, with the Premier having proposed almost exactly the same mandate in last year’s SOPA when he promised to “focus on the industrialisation and processing of cannabis industry…especially for use and medicinal purpose”.
Legal experts sceptical of Cannabis draft regulation
The draft Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill submitted to parliament by Justice Minister Ronald Lamola in August 2020 proposes the following:
An adult person may for personal use;
- Possess the prescribed quantity of cannabis plant cultivation material;
- Cultivate the prescribed quantity of cannabis plants in a private place;
- Possess in private, the prescribed quantity of cannabis in a public place;
- Possess the prescribed quantity of cannabis in a private place; and
- Possess in private, the prescribed quantity of cannabis plants in a public place.
This draft legislation was lambasted by law experts, such as Andrew MacPherson, Senior Associate in the Dispute Resolution practice at Commercial law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, who said last year that the bill is too narrow in terms of its allowance for economic growth potential.
“This is disappointing as the deferment to the Legislature of the relevant legislation for re-drafting presented the best opportunity yet for those responsible for drafting the laws of South Africa to rethink and reimagine the laws surrounding cannabis,” he said.
“The potential to generate tax revenue, create jobs, and produce environmentally-friendly, sustainable and cost-effective building and manufacturing products and textiles, which the wholesale legalisation of commercial cannabis would present, now appears to have been discarded by the relevant parliamentarians.”
