The Rasta community in Cape Town has marched to Parliament demanding the rapid industrialisation of cannabis production.
The marchers say while they acknowledge it being decriminalised for private use about five years ago, no market space has been created leaving members of the Rasta community vulnerable to arrest by the police.
The march forms part of the global march which takes place every year on the first Saturday in May to lobby for cannabis production to be commercialised.
One of the lobbyists, Hein Scheepers says, “Here in South Africa, besides you can revolutionize social housing we can use hemp to create the price of building material will go down once you start industrialising with hemp. You can start using biofuels so many critical components people with cancer, our people that have these chronic diseases, there are so many components from hemp and cannabis.”
