page_title: Cannabis in South Africa
section_title: National laws
hierarchical_section_title: Cannabis in South Africa / History / National laws
caption_attribution_description: English: People marching in the streets of Cape Town against the prohibition of cannabis in South Africa.
context_page_description: Cannabis in South Africa has been decriminalised by the country's Constitutional Court for personal consumption by adults in private. However, laws prohibiting use outside of one's private dwelling and buying and selling cannabis still remain. Since regulations against the purchase of products containing cannabis still remain in effect, it also remains unclear how the ruling can be enforced as well.
  Before prohibition against the plant was lifted in 2018 advocates pressured the government to modify its laws, which first restricted cannabis in 1922, to allow exemptions for medical use, religious practices, and other purposes. Dagga, is the Afrikaans term commonly referred to for cannabis; it derives from the Khoikhoi word dacha, which was used by the early European colonial settlers in the Western Cape.
  Cannabis is thought to have been introduced to Africa by early Arab or Indian traders. It was already in popular use in South Africa by the indigenous Khoisan and Bantu peoples prior to European settlement in the Cape in 1652, and was traditionally used by Basotho to ease childbirth.
context_section_description: In 1922, regulations were issued under an amended Customs and Excises Duty Act which criminalised the possession and use of "habit forming drugs", including dagga. Under regulation 14, the cultivation, possession, sale, and use of the plant were prohibited. The burden of proof for any defence against a charge lay with the accused; legal scholar Professor Chanock contrasted this with laws regulating alcohol at the time, which laws placed the burden of proof on the accuser; he reasoned that the cannabis regulations were applied differently because they were intended to target black people.
  Following the Fifth Session of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, it was at South Africa's wish, expressed by Secretary to the Prime Minister J. C. Van Tyen in 1923, that dagga was included in a list of prohibited narcotics, which list had hitherto been almost entirely concerned with opium and its derivatives. Cannabis was subsequently outlawed internationally in 1925.
  Cannabis was wholly criminalised in South Africa in 1928 under the Medical, Dental, and Pharmacy Act, for political and moral reasons. and in 1937, the government of South Africa introduced the Weeds Act, which made the occupant or owner of a property accountable for preventing the growth of cannabis, or any other plant classified as a "weed", on the property. Concern about the extent of dagga use in South Africa continued to grow, resulting eventually in the enactment, in 1971, of the Abuse of Dependence-producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act. Under the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act of 1992, people found in possession of more than 115 grams of dagga were presumed to be guilty of dealing. However, following the adoption of the interim constitution of South Africa, courts found that this unjustifiably infringed the constitutionally enshrined presumption of innocence,  and consequently invalidated those parts of the Act.
  On 18 September 2018 the South African Constitutional Court decriminalized the use and cultivation of cannabis in a private space. The Constitutional Court has given a 24 month period to have the cannabis laws in South Africa amended. Even though private use of cannabis has been decriminalized the buying and selling of cannabis, cannabis oil and cannabis seeds remains illegal.
caption: People marching in the streets of Cape Town against the prohibition of cannabis in South Africa, 9 May 2015
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