Sudáfrica: Los cultivadores de cannabis de Mpondolandia, abandonados a su suerte

Sin apoyo gubernamental, los cultivadores tradicionales de Mpondolandia se enfrentan a una dura competencia para participar en el incipiente mercado legal del cannabis en Sudáfrica. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Six years after the Constitutional Court judgment, small-scale dagga growers are sliding deeper into poverty while businesses profit in South Africa’s “cowboy” cannabis industry.

The police could never shut down the trade of dagga from Mpondoland. But the gradual decriminalisation of cannabis, ironically, has posed a bigger existential threat to these small farmers than law enforcement did. While anti-cannabis laws were enforced, there was a ready market for dagga grown in remote Eastern Cape villages. But with the flourishing of the often illicit, but largely unpoliced, cannabis trade in cities in recent years, it has become extremely difficult for these farmers to compete with much more sophisticated operations on quality or price.

It is a dry winter morning in Dikidikini, a remote village in the Mpondoland region of the Eastern Cape. The sun is still behind the steep rocky mountains towering over the village as 60-year-old Landiwe Msolongile gazes over her recently planted dagga field along the Mzintlava River.

“There was a time when we were making good money,” Msolongile told GroundUp as she surveyed her field full of small spindly dagga plants. “My grandfather sent us to school with money from growing dagga. Our parents even bought us cattle and clothes from growing … Everything has changed now.”

Farmers have grown cannabis in the valleys of Eastern Mpondoland in villages like Dikidikini for over 100 years. Mountains tower over the village, obscuring the cannabis fields from the prying eyes of authorities.

But this once valuable illicit cash-crop now yields barely enough for farmers to buy basic groceries to get their family through the month.

Growers in the area described to GroundUp how changes since the 2018 Constitutional Court judgment – which decriminalised growing cannabis for private use – have affected Mpondo small-scale growers.

“The prices went down rapidly,” says Lungisani Khumbafathi, who farms cannabis with his wife, Nonkanyiso Bhulabhula, in Dikidikini. “I used to make R2,000 or R1,500 for a bucket [20 litres] but now it’s only R500,” Khumbafathi told GroundUp while trimming the leaves off freshly harvested cannabis.

Initially growers like Khumbafathi tried to compensate for the drop in prices by growing larger quantities of cannabis. “Because of the low pricing, we had to clear more land and grow more dagga. I had to make sure I sell at least four buckets (20 litres) in order to buy groceries and other basic necessities like clothes for my children,” said Khumbafathi, who, like most people in the area, does not smoke the plant known locally as Ntsangu.

But this created an oversupply of cannabis from the area. With a dwindling customer base, Khumbafathi says they have had to burn part of their harvest that they could not sell.