Everything we earn comes from selling cannabis For generations, people in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa have been growing cannabis...

Everything we earn comes from selling cannabis

For generations, people in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa have been growing cannabis. You might expect that when a country moves to legalize the crop, they would be the first to benefit, but that may not be the case.

The drive from Umthatha to the village of Dikidikini in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa is a pleasant journey filled with endless beautiful scenery, scattered houses and winding roads that pass through green hills that could easily be mistaken for maize fields – but it is a different plant.

"That's cannabis," my local guide and cannabis activist Greek Zueni tells me. "Everybody here grows it, that's how they make a living."

In a farm near the bank of the river, we meet a group of men, women and children tending the new harvest. Their hands are green from plucking cannabis buds all day.

The strong smell of marijuana hangs heavy in the air. They joke while they work - harvesting is a group effort. A large pile of green heads lies beside them, drying in the midday sun.

For villager Nontobeko, which is not her real name, she does not know any other type of kilomcha except cannabis: "I learned how to grow it when I was an eight-year-old girl," she says proudly.

"Marijuana is very important to us because it is our livelihood and source of income. Everything we earn comes from the sale of marijuana. There are no jobs, our children are just sitting here with us."

Although marijuana may be a means of livelihood for this community, growing it to this extent is illegal.

There are more than 900,000 smallholder farmers in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces who have been growing cannabis for years. These farmers have found themselves on the wrong side of the law many times, but the government's tough stance on cannabis seems to be changing.

It started with a landmark court decision in 2018 that outlawed the personal use, possession and cultivation of marijuana.

Earlier this year during his State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa said South Africa should enter the multi-billion dollar medical cannabis industry, which he said has the potential to create 130,000 much-needed jobs.

While this may be good news for commercial companies, traditional farmers in the Eastern Cape region feel left behind. The cost of obtaining a license to grow cannabis is prohibitive for many people.

"The government should change its attitude and create laws that are friendly to farmers and that benefit its citizens. Right now, people who have licenses [to grow cannabis] are rich," Mr Zueni says.

"The government should help the communities to grow so that they can compete with the world market, here there is a product that grows easily and organically, we are not jealous, the rich should also enter, but I ask that we accommodate the poor of high quality." ," Mr Zueni added to say.

'The opportunities for European distribution are huge'

One company that plans to finance medicinal cannabis is the Labat Africa Group. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company recently bought Eastern Cape cannabis grower Sweetwater Aquaponics.

The director of Labat, Herschel Maasdorp, says the company is witnessing significant growth in Europe and Africa.

It is also listed in Frankfurt, because "Germany is one of the largest markets in Europe for the distribution of medicinal cannabis", he says.

"The distribution opportunities in Europe are very big. With that, crossing borders, only in Africa, there is a proposal that we have integrated in various countries from Kenya, Zambia to Uganda, Rwanda," he said. Tanzania, and Zimbabwe too.

"The legal cannabis trade on the continent is expected to rise to $7bn as regulation and market conditions improve, says London-based industry analyst Prohibition Partners. It says the top producers in Africa by 2023 will be Nigeria with $3.7bn, South Africa $1.7bn, Morocco $900m, Lesotho $90m and Zimbabwe $80m.K

In its Global Cannabis Report, Prohibition Partners predicts significant growth for the industry worldwide: "Global sales of CBD, medical cannabis and adult use rose to $37.4bn in 2021 and could rise to $105bn by 2026 ."

Given South Africa's booming economy and record unemployment, getting into the cannabis industry could be a big deal.

For Wayne Gallow from Sweetwater Aquaponics, incorporating traditional farmers into the industry is essential to economic development in the Eastern Cape.

"What we wanted to get through our license is not only to plant cannabis for medicine but also to use that license to benefit all the people of the Eastern Cape," he told the BBC.

He admitted that traditional cannabis growers have been left behind as plans to legalize cannabis continue.

"The Pondoland region was known for distributing marijuana throughout South Africa," he says.

However the change in the law will have a "huge impact" on Pondoland farmers, because it means anyone can now grow and use their own cannabis, so they will have no market for the once lucrative crop.

Even growing marijuana to sell abroad for medicine is not possible for small farmers, because of the high costs.

It requires a license from the South African Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) which costs approximately $1,465.

Aside from the license fee, to set up a cannabis treatment center you need about $182,000 to $304,000, which is beyond the means of most traditional growers.

However, there is good news for Eastern Cape farmers. The Pondoland or Landrace plant that thrives in abundance in the area has shown results in treating breast cancer.

Sweetwater Aquaponics and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are currently conducting research, and scientists are hopeful that the strain will yield positive results.

It is still early days, but if the Pondoland variety proves to be good, this could be the change that indigenous farmers have been looking for.