South African court frees cannabis from the shackles of its colonial past

Cannabis has a deep precolonial past in southeastern Africa. It didn't, however, feature in the intoxicant repertoires of Anglophone settlers

A ruling by the South African Constitutional Court opens the way for decriminalising private use of cannabis, locally known as “dagga”. It marks a definitive shift in a century of notoriously punitive drug policy, recognised in the recent judgement to be “replete with racism”.

In 1922, cannabis was officially classified and designated for control as a “habit-forming drug” through a national Customs and Excise Act. Consequences of this legal development were not only local: they were global.

A year after the national law was passed, the government under Prime Minister Jan Smuts, approached