Hazel Crampton does well to outline the colonial mythmaking around marijuana but her book, Dagga: A Short History, still comes across as incomplete, writes Kwanele Sosibo.
DAGGA: A SHORT HISTORY by Hazel Crampton (Jacana)
In a talk at the international conference on law and religion in Africa, held at Stellenbosch University last year, emeritus justice Albie Sachs touched on a momentous 2002 Constitutional Court case involving the religious use of dagga.
Rasta lawyer Gareth Anver Prince had challenged the constitutional validity of the prohibition on using or possessing dagga for religious purposes and was now facing Constitutional Court judges, including Sachs.
“I don’t know why I felt so much for Anver Prince [and his fellow Rastafarians]; they were standing at the back of the court with their dreadlocks, kind of uncomfortable.
“And worse than that for me, they get up my nose, they say: ‘Albie, people like you. What’s the matter with you? You are so driven. Take it easy; tomorrow is another day. Relax.”
Although Sachs said he empathised with Prince – the court would eventually uphold the prohibition in a 5-4 decision – he could not help but caricature Prince and his band of Rastafarians as lackadaisical and lacking in ambition.
The irony is that it is this attitude, the demonising of the black cannabis smoker, that has resulted in a status quo that has not changed since the 1971 introduction of the Abuse of Dependence-producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act.
Although Crampton does well to outline the colonial mythmaking around dagga, her eschewing of an in-depth analysis of the current labyrinth of lobby groups means the book feels incomplete. It suggests that those who bear the brunt of the stringent laws are, with a few exceptions, something of a silent mass when, in fact, the choices to light up, grow and distribute remain collective acts of insubordination, concludes Kwanele Sosibo.
For full review by Kwanele Sosibo see Mail & Guardian
