High Times reporter John Veit traces South Africa’s turbulent cannabis landscape with activists Myrtle Clarke and Trenton Birch, highlighting the human cost of contradictory laws, police chaos, and an export-first legalization model that sidelines legacy growers. Blending personal tragedy with policy analysis, it shows how private clubs, medicalization, and ingenuity persist in a legal gray zone as the country struggles to reconcile human rights, economic opportunity, and effective reform.
From the Jazz Farm in Johannesburg and Cheeba Africa Cannabis and Hemp Academy in Cape Town, South African cannabis activists Myrtle Clarke and Trenton Birch express tragic optimism about the future of cannabis in South Africa.
I first met Myrtle Clarke, one-half of South Africa’s infamous Dagga Couple, in 2018 at a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs. She and her husband, Julian Stobbs, were a welcome break from the generally stodgy, bureaucratic vibe. Their sharp, often hilarious, perspective emphasized cannabis policy designed to benefit society’s most vulnerable members—children, women, the elderly, and indigenous legacy farmers.
Later that year, I spoke about gray-market medical marijuana in New York City and Los Angeles at Cannatech, a global gathering of cannabis industry leaders held in Cape Town, and again at Cannabis Expo in Johannesburg. At both events, the Dagga Couple stole the show with polished, insightful presentations to hundreds of cannabis insiders from around the globe.
After the conferences, I visited the Dagga Couple at the Jazz Farm on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Their garden is a living library of the globe’s best cannabis strains and entheogenic cacti. For a few days, I observed how their non-profit, Fields of Green for All (FGA), navigates the chaotic thrall of cannabis politics in the world’s most complicated country.
Amid a stream of phone calls and emails from people seeking advice on dagga-related matters—arrestees, politicians, media, and conference organizers—FGA’s brilliant team of productive stoners was enmeshed in policy papers, legal hassles, and scheduling snafus. One minute, they were hammering out language for Cannabis in South Africa: The People’s Plant. A Full Spectrum Manifesto for Policy Reform, the next, they were coordinating a cannabis oil extraction workshop with legacy farmers in a far-flung village. Free time was spent lobbying the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs with FAAAT (For Alternative Approaches to Addiction Think and Do Tank), a Vienna-based cannabis education and lobbying group.
Clarke and Stobbs didn’t want to be cannabis activists. Prior to their life as the Dagga Couple, they were successful TV producers when a gang of cops stormed their home in 2010 and arrested them on cannabis possession and dealing charges. Instead of paying the routine bribe, they sued the government, maintaining that their privacy was unjustly invaded. Criminal charges against the Dagga Couple were granted a stay of prosecution while the Trial of the Plant lurched through eight years of setbacks, delays, and strategy shifts.
On September 18, 2018, South Africa’s Constitutional Court relented and decriminalized “private cultivation and possession of cannabis by adults for personal purposes.” That victory catalyzed contradictory cannabis regulations that spawned a growing medical export industry and a booming private cannabis club scene.
In Spring 2020, shortly before Spannabis, a massive cannabis trade show in Barcelona, I interviewed the Dagga Couple for Revista Cáñamo. Their global profile rising, the Dagga Couple were slated to address the crowd, attend events, and network with international botanical bureaucracy experts. Days before Spannabis was set to begin, the COVID-19 wave hit Europe, and Spannabis was cancelled.
Undeterred by the new-fangled fear of indoor public gatherings, the Dagga Couple spent the off days at various cannabis clubs imbibing Barcelona’s best strains and extracts. At Dab-A Doo, along with at least 1,000 other connoisseurs, they sampled cannabis wax, jelly, shatter, and rosin for at least a dozen hours over two days. Unlike many politicized cannabis activists who avoid talking about getting high, the Dagga Couple were unashamed about how much they love to. Jules preferred dabbing, while Myrtle usually smoked joints and spliffs. A barrage of vitamins and entheogens kept them in remarkably good health and spirits.
Two months later, on July 2, 2020, Stobbs live-streamed Episode 139 of The Hot Box Show, FGA’s weekly web show at the Jazz Farm’s cottage studio. Wearing a t-shirt from Zelena Alternativa, a Macedonian cannabis educator, reading, “Good People Disobey Bad Laws,” Stobbs and co-hosts Joanne Parry, Danny Purkiss, and Buzz discussed the week’s news while hot-nailing what Stobbs called, “the most beautiful dry-sift [hash] I’ve ever smelled.” Additionally, two small buds were shared in a pipe throughout the hour.
Buoyed by Hotbox’s interview with Steve D’Angelo, a renowned cannabis activist from Oakland, CA, Stobbs went to bed. A few hours later, thieves broke into the Jazz Farm’s living room and office area. Stobbs chased them off and went back to sleep. Hours later, the intruders returned and shot Stobbs to death as Clarke lay next to him.
Other homes in the area were robbed that night, but it is unclear why the home invaders returned to the Jazz Farm a second time.
Police Capture = No Investigation
Now protected by electric fences, concrete walls, state-of-the-art security, dogs, and increased neighborhood patrols, Clarke reports that police “never investigated Jules’ murder. Never. When I checked about 18 months ago, there were still only two pieces of paper in his file—and that was my statement. There’s never been forensics done. There’s never been ballistics where they could maybe connect the casings found to a particular firearm on the ballistics register; it just doesn’t happen. There’s just not been any of that because of the absolute turmoil in the police.”
Since September 2025, South Africans have been riveted by live public hearings into systemic, entrenched police corruption and incompetence across the country. Streamed live for hours most weekdays, members of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System grill dirty cops and absorb whistleblower testimony exposing what is broadly called “police capture,” when criminal groups use bribery, murder, drug dealing, robbery, fraud, embezzlement, and protection schemes to co opt the South African Police Service.
Clarke explains, “Ex-police ministers, top generals, police commissioners everywhere, they’re all being implicated in the most phenomenal amount of corruption. So, my chance of actually getting Jules’ murder investigated is absolutely nothing. It’s very frustrating. I’ve tried everything to move things forward with Jules’ murder. But the fact is that there are tens of thousands of people just like me who’ve never, ever, had any resolution for their loved ones’ murders. So, all I can do is stop the cops when it comes to it. Then it will be some form of
justice. And that’s what we’re busy doing. That’s our big project now. If I can give the middle finger to these fucking pigs in terms of weed, then yeah, it’s something.”
“It’s so difficult trying to explain it to Jules’ family. They live in West London in the UK. They’re retired, and they’ve got a nice little nest egg and everything. And they just don’t understand. They’re like, ‘Why haven’t they investigated?’ I’m like, ‘Where do I start to even explain it to you?’ I think even they have realized now that it’s not going to happen.”
“I’ve spoken to my legal team about actually suing for not investigating because that’s been done before. There’s no statute of limitations on that. But I have so much on my plate, trying to keep the Jazz Farm going, trying to keep the little team going, and Fields of Green for All. If I can stop the cops in the next year, maybe I’ll do that. I’ll just go back and sue the fuck out of them. Even if it’s only for publicity. Maybe they’ll do something. Who knows?”
Fields of Green for All is currently assisting Lucia Louw of Upington, whose house was seized after South Africa’s National Prosecuting Attorney convicted her of selling an undercover police detective “30 ‘Ziplock’ bags of cannabis” in exchange for R300 (US$17). The 1998 Prevention of Organised Crime Act mandates the “civil forfeiture of criminal assets that have been used to commit an offence.” Louw’s lawyer, Charl Pretorius, released a letter to DTIC Minister Parks Tau, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, and the Constitutional Court, deeming the seizure a “signal of deep institutional failure.”
In a case similar to the much-hyped 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in the United States, Isakwisa Atupele Mwamasage, a 39-year-old Tanzanian cobbler known by many as Ras Isa, died in police custody on August 28, 2025. A brutal video shows two SAPS officers pinning Mwamasage to the floor of his shoe shop in Cape Town with their knees and arms, straddling his chest and stomach while he struggles to breathe. Police claimed that Mwamasage swallowed “drugs” when confronted by the officers and died in a hospital, but the video clearly shows his legs convulsing, his pants becoming wet with urine, and he suddenly stops moving.
The video stops there, but witnesses report that police carried Mwamasage’s lifeless body into a police van and drove away. Mwamasage was the third Tanzanian to die in police custody over two weeks in the Western Cape. Their deaths added to the reported 670 police killings of civilians in 2024, which are currently under investigation by the Madlanga Commission.
“So, we just rack up these travesties almost every single day,” Clarke observed. “We’re not where we were before, when we were on a thousand arrests a day in 2015, 2016, the arrests have certainly tailed off, but it’s really mostly the poorest of the poor, the marginalized, the Rastafari, the indigenous Khoisan people, because they look the part. So, they are the ones who are now getting the tail end of all the police nonsense.”
South Africa’s Cannabis Master Plan
President Cyril Ramaphosa made a step towards legalization by signing the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act (CPPA) in May 2024, but the resulting legal and bureaucratic quagmire will take years to untangle. The CCPA vaguely promises to “respect the right to privacy of an adult person to use or possess cannabis,” while explicitly prohibiting “the dealing of cannabis.” As the hemp, private club, and medical segments of the cannabis industry grow, rural farmers are marginalized and subject to criminal prosecution.
From Cape Town, Trenton Birch, founder of Cheeba Africa Cannabis and Hemp Academy, the continent’s only nationally accredited cannabis educational institution, told High Times, “Without a recreational market, we have no opportunity for rural legacy farmers to participate. There’s just no opportunity because they’re never going to be able to grow medical. They don’t want to grow hemp. So, if they can’t grow into the clubs, and they can’t be given a license to do that, then the people that we talk about on a regular basis are just being completely neglected. And that is a travesty.”
“In Pondoland, those people have been cultivating for hundreds of years in order to send their kids to school. Those people are still criminals. They’re still not able to make a living. And those are the people who put cannabis on the map in this country. If you don’t sort that out, in my opinion, it will leave a massive scar on the industry. Even the Rastafari communities and the traditional healers, the Sangomas and Inyangas, those people are not allowed to distribute cannabis. It’s never going to happen in the medical space. In my opinion, this whole medical recreational thing is a fuck up, it’s a joke. That’s not how it should be categorized.”
Clarke concurred, noting that current cannabis regulations only cover medical marijuana and hemp. “We’re not sick, and we don’t want to make socks.”
In a 2019 High Times interview with the Dagga Couple, Julian Stobbs was adamant that cannabis segregation is a waste of time. “I stay focused on the fact that it’s a human rights issue, not a medical issue.”
A cacophony of regulators oversee some aspect of South African dagga, including the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, the Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, the South African Police Service, the National Prosecuting Authority, the South African Revenue Service Customs Division, a Parliamentary Monitoring Group, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Constitutional Court, and, most recently, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC).
DTIC’s primary job is to create and implement Master Plans that regulate everyday things like poultry, forestry, cultural and creative industries, sugar, steel, furniture, and the automotive industry.
In President Ramaphosa’s 2025 State of the Nation Address, he stated, “We want South Africa to lead in the commercial production of hemp and cannabis.” Facing rapidly eroding public support and the constraints of a newly elected National Unity government, he tasked DTIC to create a Cannabis Master Plan.
According to Birch, DTIC are “the perfect people to be leading this.” Tired of “trying to lobby morons,” Birch has been impressed by recent developments. “There’s been a very open dialogue around accountability and identifying where the blocks are, who the blocks are from, and why we’re there.”
The Cannabis Master Plan will be focused on increasing exports, but elements of it will be used to draft an Overarching Cannabis Bill that DTIC promises will “unify existing regulations, including the 2024 Cannabis for Private Purposes Act. This Bill, which will cover private use, commercial cultivation, manufacturing, and research, is set to be presented to Parliament by mid-2027.”
In a November post on the South African Cannabis Clubs Alliance (SACCA) website, administrators stated: “We thought decriminalization would bring relief, but the ‘legal vacuum’ has only emboldened abuses, perpetuating apartheid-era oppression on our rural farmers and township families..From the tragic death of Ras Isa to the outrageous seizure of Lucia Louw’s home in Upington over a R300 deal, the stories are endless and enraging.”
Under the Radar—South African Private Clubs
Meanwhile, South Africa’s private cannabis club community rivals those in Barcelona and Amsterdam. South African private cannabis clubs technically don’t sell cannabis; members reimburse the club for expenses like rent, pre-rolled joints, wax, shatter, electricity, toilet paper, bandwidth, food, and salaries.
Clarke says that Fields of Green for All has over “100 clubs signed up with us now so that we can give them advice on how to keep private, how to look after the members, and how to do harm reduction.”
Birch is awestruck by the breadth of the private club scene. “The culture of cannabis clubs in South Africa is fascinating. The number of different kinds of clubs in Cape Town will blow you away. You’ve got these corporate kind of clubs, which are dry, and you’ve got these hippie clubs, and you’ve got these hipster clubs, and it’s amazing, completely amazing. You can go there, smoke weed, drink coffee, it’s unbelievable. It really is everywhere, high streets, no holds barred. It looks to the average consumer to be perfectly legal. You walk into clubs, give your credit card. Some have members, people trying to run a model that is defensible in court. But there are more people who just don’t give a shit. I used to fault them, and I used to criticize them, but now I’m just like, ‘You know what? Good for you, get on with it.’ Just make sure the product is clean. As an industry, we’re not holding ourselves accountable and each other accountable to make sure there’s quality labeling. That’s an issue on the industry side.”
Birch notes that many of the thousands of people who have taken courses at Cheeba now work in the unregulated cannabis club scene. “The reality is that the gray market here is massive, absolutely massive. Depending on who you speak to, I reckon there are about 2000-3000 clubs. Some people say 5000. I think that is an exaggeration. But there are at least 2000 dispensaries, clubs, whatever you want to call them. Most of them are completely illegal. Most of them aren’t running the membership model. Most of them are for-profit, so they don’t really tick those boxes of the precedent set by the Germans and the Spanish, so it’s just a free-for-all. And that’s the government’s fault. I 100% blame the government. We’re in a country of innovators, of survivalists.”
Clarke frequently reminds private cannabis club operators that they operate in a “gray area inside another gray area inside another gray area.” Fields of Green for All continues to field calls from private clubs cleaning up after SAPS raids.
“If you got cash, the cops will steal it, and they’ll steal your weed, because they have their market, you know, out the back door of the police station. Once you’ve allowed them in, absolutely anything could happen. Particularly if they ask for a bribe, because then if you say ‘yes,’ then they’ll have you up for soliciting bribery. And if you say ‘no,’ they’ll just steal all your stuff. They’re just absolute law unto themselves.”
Bamboozle or Bribe
Apart from the handful of South Africans able to afford a $400 Section 21 medical exception, there is no domestic market for medical marijuana in South Africa. Clarke explains. “On the other end of the scale, there’s this little loophole called a Section 21, which is a special permit that you get through your doctor to be able to access unregistered medicine. So now all the rich fuckers have gone off and created franchises under the guise of this Section 21. It’s quite a rigorous process. Each patient has to apply to their general practitioner for a specific prescription that lasts for six months.”
“What they’re [private clubs] doing is they’re just giving everybody Section 21; just to sign, ‘Yeah, just sign here, whatever.’ And when the cops come in, they show them that. But it’s never been registered as a Section 21 permit. There’s no doctor involved. It’s just meaningless paperwork that the cops can probably not even read.”
“So those guys can afford it and have the education and the resources to put up a front, whereby they can bamboozle the police and get away with it. Or they downright pay bribes. One of our clubs in Cape Town pays 10,000 rand ($US600). The cops come in every Friday and collect their brown envelope. So, you’ve either got the resources to bribe, or you’ve got the resources to bamboozle. Or you just fly under the radar. Or you are the black market, still thriving, and you just hope you don’t get caught.”
Exports First
Under the supervision of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAPHRA), South Africa is the world’s third-largest exporter of medical-grade, legal cannabis. The Australian Office of Drug Control reported on November 20, 2025, that South African imports increased from 60 kilos of THC and/or CBD flower in 2021 to 4,992 kilos in 2024, representing 6.45% of total cannabis imports. Canada, which dominates the international medical cannabis market, exported 62,111 kilos to Australia that year. The United States does not export medical-grade cannabis.
Through Cheeba Academy, Birch consults commercial cannabis cultivators in Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a Canadian company looking to expand European Union Good Manufacturing Practices (EU-GMP) in African medical cannabis exporters eager to increase exports to Australia and Europe.
At a week-long commercial cultivation course held at the Jazz Farm in November 2025, Cheeba students represented South Africa, Malawi, Uganda, and Kenya, where EU-GMP medical cannabis export licensing is gaining steam. Other courses have attracted students from Germany and Turkey.
The European Medicines Agency in Amsterdam oversees the EU-GMP inspection system, imposing pharmaceutical-grade standards on medicine, including cannabis flowers, destined for European pharmacies. Tobacco, basil, alcohol, and batteries are all easier to get through European customs than EU-GMP products.
Adhering to strict EU-GMP standards protects Canadian, European, and Australian cannabis exporters against African competition. As legalization lurches along, Birch predicts that more African cannabis exporters will soon be EU-GMP compliant.
“This is a trade war to some degree. The Canadians know they can’t compete with us [Africans] in terms of price. And the Europeans also know they can’t compete on price. So, they’re making it impossible for developing economies to export into those territories by setting
the benchmark so high. You don’t need EU-GMP for a plant. I’m sorry, it’s utter bullshit. But we have to deal with what we have. So, yeah, they say it’s bullshit, but that’s the way it is. We obviously want to lobby and try to push against that, though we also want to be smart. And if we want to play the game, we’ve got to play the game. So, we’re teaching the parameters we work in. And we have to be smart about it.”
The medical market represents a sliver of how South Africa can profit from centuries of legacy cannabis production in Bantu-Sotho, Khoisan, Griqua, Zulu, Xhosa, and other indigenous communities. Many legacy growers are well versed in large-scale cannabis cultivation, harvesting, and storage techniques that can be easily adapted for export, but investors largely ignore their expertise.
Several Cheeba graduates are involved with companies that hold medical cultivation licenses in South Africa. Birch reckons that of the country’s 120 licensees, “about 50%, 60% of those are operationalized. And maybe out of that, I would say 10% to 20% are exporting, and the rest are just pushing out on the black market.”
“The biggest challenge in Africa is that countries are regulating medical cannabis for export only, but not for their own people, which is just bullshit. It’s like, we’ll allow this medicine to be exported, but we won’t allow it for our own people. And that’s conservatives, prohibitionists, just people who have no clue. So that is a challenge across the continent.”
Clarke agrees, “As far as medicine is concerned, I don’t know why we’re growing it for sick white people in Europe. It can only be about making money. It’s certainly not about a sustainable agricultural practice for our people.”
The Johannesburg-based Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ), a “progressive economic policy think tank,” acknowledges a lack of reliable data but estimates that 90,000 South Africans work in the country’s regulated cannabis industry while 1,000,000 earn money in the illegal market.
Safricanna, a medical marijuana exporter north of Johannesburg, exports strains like Dank Wafers, an indica boasting 23-27% THC, 2.5-3.5% terpenes, and Chem de la Chem, a hybrid sativa with a whopping 26-30% THC, 3-4% terpenes. Classic strains like Sour Diesel, Jack Herer, and Gorilla Glue 4 are eloquently described on the ‘coming soon’ section of their website. In slow motion to a stirring synthesizer track, a Safricanna promotional video follows a masked white man in lab gear inspecting clones and overseeing dozens of similarly clad black people as they harvest, haul, and trim loads of cannabis flowers. Without narration or the use of acronyms, EU-GMP is implied.
High Times reached out to Safricanna for more information about their decision to develop classic strains and to confirm prices, but did not receive a response.
The Global Cannabis Exchange’s Spring 2025 Report notes that, “Emerging producers in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are undercutting Canadian wholesale bulk dried flower prices by as much as 50%.” EU-GMP medical cannabis flowers sell wholesale to Europe for €1.50–€3.25/gram.
Getting on With It
In March 2024, Birch and activists affiliated with Fields of Green for All and Cheeba Academy were annoyed after Health Minister Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi banned cannabis, including hemp, from all food products—derailing a slowly growing sector of the nation’s cannabis economy. Birch was simultaneously deflated and enraged. “We went to war with him, and we won. He retracted the ban, [one month later]. But that’s just completely farcical. It’s an obvious example of the government’s complete, utter uselessness in moving this country forward. It’s a frickin superfood. That was just a disgrace, to be honest.”
“I sound a bit jaded, but I’m actually at a point in my life where I’m just like, fuck it, I’m just done trying to lobby morons. There’s just no defensible arguments against cannabis anymore, there just isn’t, you know, it’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit. You know, alcohol is allowed, pharmaceuticals are allowed. You’ve got something that’s completely non-toxic, has never killed
anybody, is still fucking banned, it’s just bullshit. I don’t even have arguments with people anymore. I just tell them to fuck off. I’m at that point in my life where I’m just like, ‘You’re a fucking ignorant idiot, so fuck off.’ I don’t even have the energy to pontificate or to argue with anybody anymore.”
Despite the logjams, Birch acknowledged recent progress. “There is some energy building in the industry. Things are getting better. There are a lot of good people in this industry who try to make an honest living. I believe in cannabis, despite all the challenges. I do believe that the plant will thrive and survive, and we will become a global power with cannabis. But the amount of pain and suffering that we have to go through as a nation to get this over the line is a disgrace. It’s a disgusting reflection of the politics in this country, to be blunt. The only people who will make cannabis happen is us as people. This is an obvious opportunity to drive revenue for our country. I take my hat off to all the people who are just getting on with it.”
Fields of Green for All is expanding its scope to psilocybin mushrooms. Clarke reports, “Our lawyer, Paul-Michael [Keichel], has a High Court case that’s progressing very slowly. But as soon as we can get these regulations and get cannabis out of the Drugs Act, then they will really push to move forward with that court case. So, it’s almost as if the mushrooms are hovering in the wings, waiting for the weed to do all the hard work, and then they’ll pounce in and say, ‘Oh, what about our constitutional right to use psilocybin?’ Most of the private clubs are selling mushrooms anyway. But it’s just a case of formalizing it, so that’ll happen, probably in the next five years.”
Clarke is currently concentrating her skills at the Cannabis Embassy’s Permanent Mission in Vienna, where she is an interim governor. “It’s very academic and sort of all about the UN and everything, but quite interesting. We’re not going great guns, but at least it is constituted. And we do have quite a lot of members from all over the world of grassroots cannabis organizations.”
Constituted as a state without territory, “like the Order of Malta,” the Cannabis Embassy educates UN member states to use the plant to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) covering poverty, health, education, gender equality, climate, and 11 other factors affecting the global gemeinschaft. Clarke explains, “As far as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are concerned, if you just legalize weed, it will at least help in a little way because it can help with 16 of the 17 goals. African countries are big on these goals because, if they can be seen to be working towards them, they get big political kudos over the UN, at the G20, and the African Union (AU). They love flah-flahing about that.”
“We are meant to have achieved the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 [the deadline for the UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development]. They’re not going to achieve them. But if we can have a chance at the AU at least, or maybe at a future G20 to show how cannabis can actually help, not achieve the goals, but actually make a small contribution to helping, then maybe they’ll listen. But I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m going again in March, my ninth trip to the UN in Vienna, and I’ll keep bleating along. So that’s what I’d like to do during my retirement. Fuck talking to the South African government. I want to just run the Cannabis Embassy with all these lovely people from around the world.”
Trenton Birch and Cheeba are exploring expansion to Europe and the Americas, but the majority of their students and consulting clients are African.
“There is such legacy here, such history. You will never get this anywhere. Like I say to people when I do talks, when I go to Europe, the States, wherever I go, I can confidently stand up as a South African and go, ‘We are a weed country.’ We didn’t start growing weed yesterday. We started growing weed hundreds and hundreds of years ago. It’s been used in traditional medicine by traditional healers and in traditional ceremonies for hundreds of years. We have a legacy, and then we have all our dynamic culture. It’s fascinating. You’re never going to get that anywhere else in the world.
