This year’s 4/20 celebrations a serious affair for SA’s ‘dagga mother’

The usual, happy-go-lucky 4/20 celebrations were a little more serious this year, as the South African cannabis industry focused on getting a manifesto together as a proposed Cannabis bill.

20 April has become an important date in the cannabis industry, celebrated worldwide as somewhat of a stoner Christmas.

According to the Urban Dictionary, this all started with five high school students from California; Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich, who called themselves the Waldos because “their chosen hang-out spot was a wall outside the school”.

The term is linked to a 1971 plan to search for an abandoned cannabis crop they had learned about based on a treasure map made by the grower. The Waldos set 4.20 pm as their meeting time at their hang-out spot.

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The term quickly spread and 50 years later, the origins have continued to be celebrated. People around the world have built a community around this and South Africans have not been left out.

Myrtle Clark, founder of the Fields of Green For All organisation, said this year’s 4/20 celebration was more serious than in the past.

Clark, who is known as one half of the “dagga couple” along with her late partner Jules Stobbs, was arrested for possession and dealing in cannabis in 2010. Stobbs was murdered during a robbery in the couple’s home in Lanseria in Johannesburg in July 2020.

“We usually celebrate it with a big party but not this year,” Clark said.

Instead, she focused on writing a manifesto to submit as comment on government’s proposed bill on cannabis, which launched online on 4/20 day.

“We have rejected every single word on the proposed bill and started again to come up with the manifesto written in benefit of each cannabis user, cultivator, trader, and law and policymakers in South Africa,” Clark said.

She added the police were still arresting cannabis users every single day in South Africa. She says the police are quick to boast about a dagga bust but have till this day not investigated her partner’s murder.

“The police are the enemy number one. I haven’t been able to get a hold of the police since October last year,” Clark said.

“Two Rasta-elders were killed in the past 18 months in jail, after being arrested for cannabis,” Clark said.

She says that instead of the convoluted bill government is currently mulling to regulate the use and trade of cannabis and related products, they should simply  open up the market.

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“None of us are interested in a pharmaceutical product anyways. We don’t want their medicine; we’ve got our medicine in our gardens. So stop arresting us,” Clark said.

Clark further said they were not going to ask for the government’s permission to grow cannabis.

“We have fought so hard against the oppression. There should be no licenses.”

She said the bill was fertile breeding ground for corruption.

“How do we know when the cannabis industry is up and running that they are not just going to capture it?” Clark asked.

marizkac@citizen.co.za