This report from FGFA first published on 15 March 2024.

Fields of Green for All would like to inform our Cannabis Community that The Haze Club case due to be heard in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein on Tuesday 19 March has been postponed to the 4th quarter of 2024, on a date to be determined by the court.

We know that this will come as a big disappointment to many who are seeking clarity on the issues of the legality of Dagga Private Clubs in South Africa. This does not mean that we won’t get our clarity. In fact, we might even get it sooner than we thought. Even if THC had won on Tuesday, we would have had to wait months for a judgement and possibly even longer for an order of constitutional validity from our apex court.

The Cannabis for Private Purposes bill is on the President’s desk and there are whisperings that he might be close to finding his pen. This would mean that Cannabis is out of the Drug and Drugs Trafficking Act of 1992 and the prosecution may need to rethink its position, because the Act under which Neil is charged would no longer apply to Cannabis.

Here at Fields of Green for All we hope that the parties will use the intervening opportunity to constructively engage with one another, and us as Amicus, around whether or not this is a fight even worth having at all. The atmosphere of reasonable cooperation our legal team has experienced over these last minute deliberations has been very encouraging.

We believe that our Heads of Argument as Amicus Curiae is the ultimate legal argument for the constitutionality of the Dagga Private Club model. We are also proud that we have received feedback from some imminent experts confirming this. All papers concerning the case are in the public domain. This case has been very expensive for all of us in many ways but none of it is in vain, considering the bigger picture of our constitutional rights granted by the highest court in the land in 2018.

In the words of our legal team:

On 14 March 2024, the SCA agreed to postpone the matter to the 4th term.

The parties jointly approached the Supreme Court of appeal for a postponement of the matter to the 4th term of 2024. This was in joint recognition of the possibility that the intervening enactment of the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill could render THC’s constitutional challenge against the Drugs and Drugs Trafficking Act ‘moot’ (i.e, a matter that will not be entertained by the Court, because its judgment would be rendered academic and of no practical force or effect).

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