Les agriculteurs d’Afrique du Sud perdants dans la lutte contre la marijuana

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Les agriculteurs d’Afrique du Sud perdants dans la lutte contre la marijuana

15 avril 2016

Dans les collines ondoyantes du Pondoland en Afrique du Sud, le cannabis est cultivé depuis la nuit des temps, en partie à cause du manqué d’alternatives. Pour en savoir plus, en anglais, veuillez lire les informations ci-dessous.

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By Scott Bernstein

In the rolling hills of South Africa’s Pondoland, Cannabis sativa – marijuana, known locally as “dagga” – has been grown for as long as people can remember, in part because they have few other options to earn an income.

Consider the arid village of Mkumbi, where about 100 families live in grass-thatched huts with neither electricity nor access to clean water. With little to live on, villagers here grow marijuana, one of few crops that somehow manages to flourish in this dry environment. They are subsistence farmers trying to feed their families. The crop, which is collected by middlemen, is destined for South Africa’s urban markets.

As in most of the world, marijuana is illegal in South Africa. For years, police have taken aggressive measures in communities across Pondoland to dissuade them from cultivating the crop. Mkumbi residents describe how police break down the doors of their homes, make arrests, and beat them. In the last decade, the South Africa Police Service has taken to indiscriminate spraying of the cannabis fields from helicopters using glyphosate – the same substance that Colombia recently banned after a World Health Organization (WHO) report linked it to cancer in humans.

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Thumbnail: Flickr Dan

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