The Act that has not started yet

Ask what the law on cannabis in South Africa is and you will be told, confidently and often, that "the Cannabis Act legalised it in 2024". Inside that sentence there is a real thing and a misunderstanding, and they are worth separating — because the misunderstanding is the sort that gets somebody arrested.

What actually happened

The Cannabis for Private Purposes Act 7 of 2024 was signed by the President on 28 May 2024. It is a real Act, on the statute book, and it does the job the Prince judgment left to Parliament: writing private, personal, adult use into legislation instead of leaving it to a court order and six years of guesswork.

What it does not do yet

An Act that has been signed is not an Act that is in force. This one comes into operation on a date fixed by the President by proclamation in the Government Gazette, and the pieces that must be in place first are not all there. The Act does not itself name the quantities. It leaves the maximum amounts an adult may possess, cultivate or transport to be prescribed by the Minister — and those amounts have to be approved by Parliament before they are published.

So the order of events is: Act signed, quantities prescribed and approved, commencement proclaimed, Act in force. Only the first of those has happened.

What governs you in the meantime

The law you are actually living under is the one the Constitutional Court left standing in 2018: an adult may use, possess and cultivate cannabis in private, for their own personal use. The edges of that are drawn by the judgment and by the courts applying it — not by a schedule of grams, because the schedule does not exist yet.

That is less precise than a number, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. "The Act says I may have X grams" is not a defence when the Act has not commenced and X has not been prescribed.

Check the current position rather than trusting this page, or any page, to still be right. That is not a disclaimer written for the sake of having one: an Act waiting on a proclamation can begin on any ordinary Tuesday, and this one has been waiting a while.

What the Act does when it starts

Worth knowing, because it is coming.

• Quantities. Maximum amounts for possession, cultivation and transport, prescribed by the Minister with Parliament's approval. Holding more than the prescribed amount for private purposes is an offence, carrying a fine, imprisonment of up to five years, or both.
• Expungement. People carrying a criminal record for personal-use possession may apply to have it cleared — and so may people convicted of dealing on the strength of the old presumptions, where a quantity found on somebody was simply taken to mean trade. This is the most consequential thing in the Act and the least talked about. A record for something that is no longer an offence follows a person into every job application they will ever make.
• Children. An adult may not give cannabis to a child except where a medical practitioner has prescribed it and a parent or guardian administers it; an adult must keep cannabis where a child cannot get to it; and no child may be used to deal in it. Where a child is found using or holding cannabis, the Act leans toward assessment and diversion rather than a criminal record.
• Privacy, still. The Act rests on the same foundation as the judgment. It protects a private, personal freedom. It is not a trading licence and it does not create a legal retail market.

Why this club reads it closely

A members' club lives inside the private-use frame, so where the edges of that frame end up drawn touches everything here — monthly allowances, what the register records, how much anybody may hold at once. When the quantities are proclaimed they become figures a club can actually hold itself to, which is a better place to stand than the one everybody occupies now.

Until then the posture is the one it has been since 2018: modest, personal, private, adult. No proclamation is going to make that the wrong answer.