Reckless ruling on dagga

The reckless Constitutional Court judgment on private use of dagga accepted without question the claim of judge Dennis Davis in his judgment that the history of cannabis use is “replete with racism”, citing another judgment that “some sections of the population have been accustomed for hundreds of years to the use of dagga”.

Dagga was introduced to sub-Saharan Africa in the 1300s via Arab traders. It was not indigenous to the area. The Khoi had it for a window period of about 150 to 250 years before the Dutch arrived.

The practice of smoking dagga rather than chewing it came from the Dutch. This hardly gives smoking dagga the precedent of a historic cultural practice. Cannabis is an ancient Greek word. This implies it reached Europe before Africa. One cannot therefore claim dagga has more historic legitimacy with one ethnic group than another.

The psychoactive component of cultivated dagga has been steadily increasing, making modern dagga more intoxicating than older varieties. Evidence suggests that the Khoi word for dagga was used for more than one psychoactive plant. One cannot therefore conclude that the banning of dagga was for racist reasons. This is an opportunistic attempt to exploit racial sensitivities for political purposes. The learned judges have copied and pasted from the Davis judgment and his sources, without checking the facts or considering argument.

Philip Rosenthal Via e-mail