Former Uruguay President José Mujica was laid to rest last week amid glowing tributes for a progressive politics that resulted in Uruguay becoming the first country in the world to legalise the recreational use of cannabis.

The 89-year-old Mujica succumbed to cancer, leaving a rich reformist legacy that increased freedoms for the Latin American country, including his government’s decision to decriminalise abortion and to legalise same-sex marriage and the consumption of cannabis.

His record holds lessons for African governments that find themselves at a crossroads and with a chance to make history if they do not squander it; Parliamentarians in the African countries that have decided to legalise cannabis have been seen to be squabbling over  legislation to legalise cannabis with the result that draft legislation has been gathering dust with no follow-up action taken as other countries profit handsomely from the trade in the green gold.

For “Pepe” as Mujica was fondly known when not being called the “world’s poorest president” for his austere personal lifestyle, decriminalisation was the way forward. This not only achieved positive results in terms of minimising harm and reducing crime for Uruguay but enabled the government to track cannabis users and reduce dependency with suitably-tailored programmes.

Pepe ruled on a socialist platform and showed that socialism does not necessarily have to be a byword for repression or the withdrawal of personal freedoms as seen in the Eastern bloc during the hey days of the Cold War.

The late leader’s ethos could therefore teach once socialist-inspired countries a thing or two about how society can negotiate its way out of a cannabis conundrum. For one, Kenya and Zambia once practised what was known as African Socialism while the revolutionary and founding leaders of Namibia and Tanzania were avowedly socialist.

This is more so as in most African countries, societal conservatism has percolated through to Parliament where some lawmakers have been seen to frustrate steps to legislative reform with disinformation campaigns that have sometimes labelled cannabis as dangerous and psychosis-inducing.

While Tanzania prepares to hold general elections later this year in Zambia politicians are already campaigning for the 2026 local government elections. But there’s a discernible common thread in both scenarios: instead of enlightening their constituencies on how cannabis can potentially transform the national economy and reduce poverty, politicians are being seen willingly bending to voters’ sensibilities. Many of Africa’s citizens are ignorant of the difference between high THC medicinal cannabis and hemp which is non-psychotropic and mainly used for industrial applications.

As the world mourns Pepe, many of his initiatives are written all over many countries’ cannabis regulations, including South Africa’s. These include the number of plants an individual can grow, cannabis social clubs and legalising sales in order to weaken the drug trafficking trade and related crimes.

Given that Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia all face massive cannabis trafficking problems, Pepe’s blueprint could serve as the template to ensure that revenue otherwise lost to the black market is formally channeled to the state coffers through taxation. 

 #