The government will finally present the national cannabis master plan to the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) on Wednesday, almost three years after the Constitutional Court decriminalised the use of the plant.
The minister of agriculture, Thoko Didiza, said in May that the framework would be formalised by the end of that month.
Department spokesperson Reggie Ngcobo confirmed the Nedlac date to the Sunday Times this week.
Matthew Parks, a Cosatu representative at Nedlac, said this week's meeting was a step forward, but it had been "a long waiting game".
He said of the 50 master plans in play, the cannabis industry's road trip had been one of the tardiest out of the starting blocks.
"We've been advocating for greater progress on the matter for the last six months," he said. "We don't have the luxury of waiting."
With the medicines portion of the road map already laid out, Parks said the recreational and related value chains could be unlocked quickly.
"We are looking forward to participating in the process and bringing clarity to the strategy," he said.
The Constitutional Court ruled in September 2018 that the use, possession and cultivation of cannabis in private should be allowed. It gave parliament 24 months to bring legislation in line with the ruling. The Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill was developed to address the court's directive.
Ricky Stone, an attorney at Cullinan & Associates in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), who represents some of the estimated 900,000 small-scale farmers in the Eastern Cape and parts of KwaZulu-Natal, told the Sunday Times that if the National Assembly passed the bill, it would mean that SA could declare hemp an agricultural crop, and would develop new policies and legislation to commercialise cannabis.
The plan was released for public comment in March after months of deliberation and increased pressure from community organisations and the private sector.
Only 16 cannabis cultivation licences have been issued by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority
Stone said rural growers had complained that the government's announcement on the master plan was in a form and language inaccessible to the predominantly Xhosa-speaking communities, which made the overly tight timeframe of one week allowed for public comments impossible to meet.
"All we ask is to be kept updated on the formal public participation process," Stone said.
To date, only 16 cannabis cultivation licences have been issued by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority.
The president of the Black Farmers Association of SA, Lennox Mtshagi, said the system had provoked an angry backlash from traditional growers and aspirant black farmers who felt they were being deliberately excluded by the high-cost barriers to entry.
Local medicinal-cannabis growers are not permitted to sell their product to local medicinal-cannabis processors. Local hemp product manufacturers have to import hemp and are not allowed to source it locally.
Mtshagi said the main beneficiaries of cannabis deregulation and allocation of the licences thus far seemed to be the big pharmaceutical players and big agricultural companies that could afford to set up export operations.
The Rupert family and Distell are buying into local cannabis company Releaf Pharmaceuticals.
Two JSE-listed companies, Labat and Nutrihold, have made cannabis a part of their core strategies.
The Goodleaf Company recently announced its intention to merge with Highlands Investments in a deal valued at almost R650m.
The Rupert family and Distell are buying into local cannabis company Releaf Pharmaceuticals
The transaction will reportedly result in the largest vertically integrated cannabis operation in Africa.
Warren Schewitz, CEO of Goodleaf, told the Sunday Times that Africa had a unique relationship and history with cannabis, and that the potential was enormous.
Ngcobo said the talks with Nedlac would be the entry point to wider public consultation, which would include the rural farming communities.
He said the department was in the process of translating the plan into various languages and had already begun printing and distributing some of these.
According to the most recent draft of the master plan, apart from amending existing legislation by removing restrictions to commercialisation, the government is planning to develop new domestic and export markets for the local industry. It will mobilise and support farmers to participate in cannabis value chains and include indigenous cannabis growers in the value chain.
But Stone said that as it stood, not much detail had been provided on how this would happen.
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