Resetting the Master Plan
Where South Africa's hemp and cannabis Master Plan stands, and what it needs.
South Africa's hemp and cannabis Master Plan was first tabled in draft in 2021. It is now led by the dtic and under review.
The stated direction is right: processing, manufacturing, markets and traditional growers. The instruments to deliver it are not yet in place. This page sets out where the plan stands, measured against government's own guidance, and what we think needs doing.
Where it stands
- The dtic leads the plan and chairs the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Hemp and Cannabis (dtic, September 2025).
- The dtic said the Commercialisation Policy would be ready for Cabinet and public comment by April 2026. That date has passed, and we have found no public release.
- A single Cannabis Bill is promised for mid-2027 (Parliament, March 2026).
- The Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, signed in May 2024, has not commenced. Draft regulations were published on 2 February 2026, with comment closing on 5 March (our objection). Parliament must still approve the quantity limits, and there has been no public feedback since.
- Cannabis remains listed in the Drugs Act. We know of no regulatory sandbox with traditional growing communities, as agreed at the 2023 Phakisa, that has been activated.
- Estimates presented to Parliament in March 2026 put the illicit market at about R36bn, which dominates the sector.
- Since 1 December 2025 the hemp definition under the Plant Improvement Act has allowed up to 2% THC in leaves and flowering heads, up from 0.2%. The dtic reported 1,408 cultivation permits in September 2025. Mpondoland landrace tests at 5 to 10% THC (Grooten, 2023), so it remains outside the hemp definition.
- The Localisation Support Fund's hemp industrialisation study maps the opportunity across the five Fs, fibres, fractions, food, feed and fuel, and names the binding constraints: no industrial-scale decortication or retting infrastructure anywhere in the country, no hemp-specific standards, a centralised permit system misaligned with zoning, and capital requirements that point offshore for equipment.
- The Industrial Development Corporation, as we understand its position, holds that primary hemp production remains illicit under drug-trafficking legislation, and will not fund it on that basis. A development finance institution is therefore declining to fund the crop another arm of the state is promoting.
Phakisa means "hurry up"
Operation Phakisa is government's own delivery method, adopted in 2014 and named for the Sesotho word for "hurry up". It exists to turn policy into delivery quickly, by holding stakeholders together until they produce costed, time-bound commitments.
The Cannabis and Hemp Phakisa Action Lab reported in June 2023. It committed to 19 foundational principles, among them inclusivity for indigenous and legacy farmers, rural livelihoods, migrating the market from illicit to licit, and "whole plant, all purposes" regulation. It committed to a comprehensive commercialisation bill by June 2026, and to a regulatory sandbox with traditional growing communities.
June 2026 passed with no bill. A single Cannabis Bill is now promised for mid-2027. We know of no sandbox that has been activated. The Commercialisation Policy missed its own April 2026 deadline.
The Phakisa Report is not a wish list. It is a government-convened, multi-stakeholder, cabinet-level commitment. Three years on, the instrument built to hurry things up has delivered a possession limit and an expungement form.
Measured against government's own guide
The dtic's 2021 Masterplan Guide sets out how a sector masterplan should be built: an independent service provider appointed under jointly developed terms of reference, a situational analysis resting on an evidence base all parties accept, a steering committee and task teams drawn from the social partners, priorities signed off by an Executive Oversight Committee, and indicators carried into departmental performance agreements. The architecture exists so that the plan binds the partners to each other, rather than sitting as a departmental document.
Measured against that guide, the current draft falls short in five specific ways.
- No co-created steering committee or task teams. It was written internally rather than built with the social partners.
- No evidence base underneath it. The draft predates the research the sector now has, including the dtic's own Country Competitive Analysis and the Localisation Support Fund study.
- Consulted after endorsement. It went to the Inter-Ministerial Committee first, instead of being signed off by an Executive Oversight Committee and adopted as a social compact.
- No programme management office. Nothing was established to hold delivery to time and budget.
- No accountability mechanism. No indicators went into departmental performance agreements, and the action table expired in 2023.
There is a further problem the guide itself cannot solve. It is built for established sectors, where government, business and labour are already organised and can commit to each other. Cannabis is not that. Most of the production, and most of the people, sit in the illicit economy, outside any structure the three-partner model can reach. That is why community participation has to be a social partner in its own right, properly constituted and mandated, rather than a consultation step.
What needs doing
Our 2023 civil society position for the Cannabis Phakisa set out this direction.
- Start with what exists: landrace genetics and the tens of thousands of households already growing in Mpondoland.
- Regulate at the processor's gate, not in the field.
- Build the missing middle: processing capacity, with finance attached.
- Pass one whole-plant law, with one lead that has the authority to act.
- Activate a sandbox with traditional growing communities, and a seed amnesty to register landrace genetics.
- Build delivery that survives changes of leadership: a PMO, documented handover and accountability in performance agreements. Seat communities alongside business, labour and government.
- Consolidate what exists before restarting.
Sources: SAnews, dtic statement, 9 Sep 2025 · Parliament, 6 Mar 2026 · SAnews, Plant Improvement Act, 3 Dec 2025 · Grooten, 2023 · Localisation Support Fund, Commercialisation Pathways for the Industrial Hemp Sector
Checked October 2026.
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