Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi (pictured here) has been in the job for less than six months after swopping places with her predecessor, Thembi Simelane, who was moved to Human Settlements in December 2024. Simelane herself had only held her position for six months before being shifted sideways under a cloud of controversy relating to her role in the VBS scandal.

Neither of these ministers have managed to fulfil any of their department’s constitutional or political orders relating to their cannabis obligations, appearing to be distracted by other issues.

In Simelane’s case, it was defending her dubious ‘coffee shop loan’ that linked her to the VBS scandal, while Kubayi has been on the warpath against those within the ANC who are accusing her of plotting the downfall of Deputy President Paul Matshatile.

All the while the Justice Department has been missing in action on the cannabis front and stuck and is not only holding back cannabis reform but encouraging criminality.  

Its main priorities for the past 12 months have been to get the Cannabis Act passed into law and issue new guidelines relating to cannabis offences. To date it has achieved neither nor offered any explanation of the reasons for the delay.  

Political accountability sits with acting Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, who to date has not yet made any comment on the Cannabis Master Plan or addressed the crisis of illegality that has come to characterize cannabis reform.

Now she’s being nudged by her Cabinet colleague, DTIC Minister Parks Tau, to urgently come to the cannabis regulation party as he is under pressure to get cannabis reform back on track.

As numerous stakeholders have pointed out, the lack of regulations has led to a free for all in the illegal cannabis market which has turned into a billion rand sector that is a law unto itself.

At best, the Justice Department is bereft of answers to dealing a situation that is spiralling out of control, at worst there are elements within the security cluster who are profiting from the lack of regulation and perpetuating the crisis of illegality for their own profit.

The crisis of illegality has spread across all parts of the value chain, most noticeably, the:

• Explosion of unregulated cannabis retail outlets, almost all of which are illegal;

• Resulting non-compliance of many cannabis outlets with basic municipal guidelines;

• Exploitation and enforced criminalization of many cannabis retail employees;

• Lack of reach of SARS into the new sector which may be worth R35 billion and growing fast;

• Absence of safety guidelines governing the proliferation of high THC products that appear beyond the regulator’s reach and yet accessible to the public;

• Misuse of the Section 21 provision of the medicines Act by numerous operators supplying the market with ‘recreational’ cannabis;

• Increasing supply of cannabis from licensed exporters to the local non-medical cannabis market which is against the law;

• Widespread use of fake documentation in the Grey Zone;

• More visible involvement of corrupt police officers working with the cannabis underworld;

• Rising levels of substance abuse amongst teenagers;

• Victimization of Rastafarians across the country which the SAHRC says amounts to human rights abuse;

Kubayi a long-standing ANC MP and NEC member, confidante to the President and also co-chair of the Cabinet’s Justice, Crime Prevention, Security Cluster (JCPS), so she does not lack political clout.  Why then has she not addressed any of the issues above?

One answer may lie in the distraction of ANC politics.  Kubayi has been caught up in the proverbial ‘smoke-filled’ backrooms of the presidential succession debate and is in the thick of the faction fighting.

Gauteng police confirmed in April 2025 that Kubayi opened a case of “perjury, wrongful impersonation and identity fraud” against unknown people who had been allegedly running a smear campaign against her.

This is after she was implicated in what she called a “fake” Whatsapp conversation in a bid to ‘wrongfully prosecute’ Mashatile, as alleged in a Sunday World report, which said that she, along with the Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, and President Cyril Ramaphosa himself, had a secret agenda to neutralize the DP’s presidential ambitions.  She has strongly denied the allegations and the matter is unfolding through the courts.

Kubayi has also been busy justifying her travel expenses from her previous portfolio at Human Settlements, where she was alleged to have run up a R16 million travel tab in six months. She issued a statement claiming these expenses were exaggerated, but that hasn’t stopped her fondness for travel.

Last month she attended a “high level” retreat in Ghana to digest the Kampala Amendments submitted to the International Court of Justice.

Back home, Trade Minister Tau says the Justice Minister’s priority should be to get the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act into law as its regulations still have not been gazetted.

As President Ramaphosa has said, stakeholders will be consulted before the regulations are finalized, so even if the Justice Minister applies her mind to the matter, nothing is going to happen any time soon. Given that the average window for public consultation is three weeks and that this input will still have to be processed, it’s likely that the draft regulations for the Cannabis Bill are at least three months away.

This could well delay Tau’s timeframe to get a new cannabis law on the table by the end of February 2026.

#