I was born and raised in Cape Town, also known as the Cape of Good Hope by the early European settlers and colonisers back in the 1600s or thereabouts. It’s a pleasant little tourist town that has always been the most liberal of progressive part of conservative South Africa. Recently though, our nation underwent the Mandela Effect. I mean the nation was liberated from the previous Apartheid regime and the New South Africa was born. That was 1994, and we have never looked back. In fact we are so liberated now, that cannabis has also been decriminalised. Blow me down with a feather.
Just in the last two years some activists took the issue to the highest court in the land (pun intended), the Constitutional Court, and there they debated that cannabis is legal and part of our constitutional right. And they won. Not that I’m a big smoker, but the ethical or moral standpoint is progressive and mature. Ingesting cannabis is not a crime or a sin. It is a medicine (pun intended). You certainly do not put people in jail for this supposed “victimless crime”. How can it be a crime if there is no victim? The only reason cannabis is or was illegal is because of Big Pharma. They don’t want competition. Also Big Agri back in the day banned the use of hemp because they wanted to profit from cotton in the USA. It’s all about the money, and so thousands of innocent people have been sent to jail all because of corrupt big business. Well not in my town or country.
That said, when I made a trip (pun intended) back to my old home town recently, I was amazed to find this first ever shop selling cannabis products right there in the major mall of an upmarket suburb by the sea called Sea Point. Actually I grew up in Sea Point so I know it well, but this was a new one on me. The items on sale looked good all wrapped in green and I foresee a burgeoning enterprise for some entrepreneur. Maybe next time I will do a tongue tip test and actually eat some of the munchies on offer, just as a review of course. Medically the CBDs are very healthy and can cure you of numerous ailments, and they are not psychoactive. Even the THC has medical benefits, according to experts, so cannabis is at most a medicine, not an illegal substance...at all.
Any nation that still arrests people and criminalises them for using this medicinal product is uninformed and has an illegal agenda themselves. Now the high court may in principle have repealed the illegality but the police on the ground are slow to change or implement the new standard. That’s because they also like to cream off the top of the crop, or confiscate your medicine so that they can sell it themselves. It’s just how the state mafia run the show here. The cops know when to bust anyone with plants and then they simply resell the weed to make profit for themselves. The high court has allowed anyone to legally grow and possess “for personal use”, implying that you can’t transport or sell cannabis, but you can grow up to six plants and keep the bud for your medicine.
That’s how we roll here (pun) in sunny South Africa. We have to walk a thin line of freedom between the corrupt big business and the corrupt state officials like the police. That thin line of a mature judiciary will simply throw any cannabis-related offence out of court but the police still harass you, especially as a Rastafarian or known grower of plant medicine for religious or other use. And I do like the large Rasta community we have here in Africa at the south. We are not far from Ethiopia after all. It’s just up the road to the north. I have been there – in an airport terminal in transit of course...but I touched the ground with my feet, which counts in my book.
Well the gentleman selling the cannabis products was very mature looking and learned and obviously legitimate, which added weight to his stall. So if you ever wish to procure some medicine or edibles for yourself, then just pop on down to Sea Point at the foot of Africa and you can get your flavor of the month – coconut, mint or peanut butter. The Cape is of course the place for Good Hope and nowadays finally also Good Dope. See you there.
