Farming a la Port St Johns

Farming a la Port St Johns

Dagga, weed, ganja, dope – Cannabis Sativa and Cannabis Indica are known by many names. It’s a robust annual, can grow up to 4m in height. It doesn’t need much water, and it does like hot weather.  It is a plant of many uses, it was grown in China as far back as 1500 BCE and  was supposedly regularly eaten by the founder of the Persian Sufi sect. The early jeans were made from hemp, and it was grown in America since 1606 and was an important crop throughout the 1800’s. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson farmed the crop. Today it is extremely fashionable (and green) to wear clothes made from organically grown hemp.

Medicinally the plant is used as an analgesic and anesthetic. It is used for asthma, arthritis and epilepsy. It cures cancer. It is often used to ease the discomfort of terminally ill cancer patients. As was recorded by one cancer patient, not using cannabis was dying of cancer, using cannabis changed his life to living with cancer.

Baked in cookies or such like, the effect of dope is supposedly much stronger than when smoked. Cannabis is used by either harvesting the resin and making hash, or by using the dried flowers and leaves. A method that is becoming quite common place, is cannabis oil. Cannabis oil is extremely potent and even in the Netherlands when hash and dagga were already legalized, it was classed as a dangerous drug and is illegal.

Port St Johns and its environs is well known for producing very good quality dope, sometimes referred to as Transkei Gold. It is offered in some of the better coffee shops in Amsterdam, right there on the menu next to the White Widow and Silver Haze.

Much of Port St Johns' and Lusikisiki’s economy is dependent on ganja growing. One may argue that the farmers are too lazy and only want to make a quick buck, and therefore grow dope instead of regular crops, but that doesn’t alter the fact that many a child has been educated and well fed on cannabis earnings.

The guide to Port St Johns has a section on dagga smoking etiquette in PSJ, under the section dealing with ‘Things to do’. Entitled ‘Other Trips’; following a brief history and botany lesson, one reads: ‘ Although the smoking of dagga is generally socially accepted in Port St Johns, (‘Do you mind if I roll a joint?’, is asked more often than the more common ‘do you mind if I smoke?), followed by the caveat that it is illegal, etc,etc.

The crop is grown in remote areas and inaccessible valleys, necessitating that SAPS sent in helicopters twice a year to spray and kill the product before it reached maturity, was harvested, and was trucked or taxied to the open market. The SAPS helicopter crews had been coming for years, and were regarded by most residents as nice guys who were here to do a job, even if the job in question was to remove the food from the mouths of babes. And, of course, interfere with the annual buying of luxury cars. Activists fought this illegal spraying for years, and eventually won in about 2015, so the dope in Pondoland is no longer sprayed with glyphosates.

The pilots tell of heart wrenching stories of entire villages on their knees, beseeching them not to spray, and of one old lady hobbling into the fields waving a white flag. Yes, it was a war against drugs, but should the pilot have heeded the peace flag? How could he? He had a job to do, and until such time that South Africa is no longer a signee to various International anti drug agreements, and marijuana is legalized, SAPS will continue to arrest smokers and growers.

But the SAPS helicopters had also caused paranoia among some residents. Growing your own dope is quite common. And more common is the planting of dope in non smokers’ organic vegetable gardens as companion ‘anti bug’ plants.

Raine’s plants were nearing maturity, the crop was going to be magnificent, and harvest day was looked forward to. Then a helicopter was heard. The helicopter flew overhead, and then horror of horrors, it started circling. It circled many times, flying ever closer to the tree tops. Raine panicked. It was obviously the cops. They had spotted the plants. They would be on the property in no time, oh what to do? The sensible thing was to dig them out, and get rid of the evidence. So staff were dispatched (a slightly different take on Colonial Africa this is], with orders to dig up and destroy. First the plants were flung into the bush. But as that was so thick, that the dope plants only decorated the top of the indigenous bush, the evidence far from gone. The next solution was to fling it in the river, a good idea, had the tide been coming or going. It was turning, so there the magnificent bushes just floated on the water, going nowhere. The plants got hauled back in, were chopped up into little pieces, and were once again distributed in the bush.

 Raine sat down, rolled a calming joint and lit it; when the cops came, she would brazen it out.

A few minutes later, in waltzed a very happy neighbor, complete with a huge fruit bowl filled with hard-to-get fruits and a bottle of champagne. ‘Guess where I’ve been?’ says the neighbour, ‘I’ve had the most magnificent day! William spoilt me; he gave me the most wonderful birthday present, a helicopter ride all the way up the coast, with a champagne breakfast on a deserted beach! Here - I’ve had so much champers today, you have this bottle and left over fruit. Did you see me waving to you as we flew over just now? I was trying to photograph our properties.’      

Deadly silence followed as Raine realized what had happened. A year’s crop gone, for nothing. How daft not to have realized that SAPS helicopters are blue and white, and that this morning’s one had been black. Neighborly relations were strained to breaking point. And then of course the ridiculous side was seen, and the left over champagne was uncorked, and the neighbor’s birthday celebrations were resumed.