Bonno
South Africa
18-02-23
Five years after decriminalization historical cannabis records still block thousands of South Africans from immigration and employment.
Here are a few of their stories.
Arnold Malan* has lived with a heavy chip on his shoulder since 1994. A former officer in the South Africa colonial police, he, like thousands more, can’t easily emigrate because of a historical conviction for smoking cannabis blocks them from accessing visas to US, China, Australia and elsewhere.
Cannabis Albatross
“It feels like a crime of a lifetime when it’s no really a crime,” Malan, 53, tells Cannabis Culture from his home in Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial capital. To avoid further jeopardizing his future immigration chances to China, better-paying domestic job opportunities in South Africa or avoid reprisals, Malan chose to change his name out of the sensitivity of the discussion.
“It was in 1994 when colonialism ended and all officers serving with me in the army’s unit, Black, Colored, White were used to roll up smoke of cannabis to ease off the pressures of a volatile job. I got arrested one weekend and have carried a ‘criminal’record in the police database since then,” he says.
Malan, like many other South African who spoke to Bonno say a so-called criminal record for cannabis possession has stood between them and a good life for years.
“I got a job offer as a heating technician in Australia in 2018. It was the chance of a lifetime. I was on the door of emigrating until police clearance letters showed my arrest for cannabis smoking at a Valentine Day outdoor barbecue party in 2015. The Australian visa officer crossed off my visa approval,” Bhekumuzi Nyambose*, 39 tells Cannabis Culture.
Like Malan, Nyambose is highly skilled, and yet is now dependent on a ZAR 2000 ($180) monthly South Africa welfare grant thanks to a trivial cannabis possession ‘crime’ record.
Ugly history
In the case of Malan, the ex-South African soldier who is now idle because of a decades old cannabis so-called offence, history has been unkind to him in as much as the law has been a blight. Euro-Christian male fanaticism which underpinned South Africa’s past colonial apartheid regime for 100 years until 1994punished cannabis use aggressively. In 1971, the colonial apartheid regime in South Africa passed a very strict law criminalized the cannabis plant and its associated products.However, underneath the sheet of white-led colonial police and armies’ officers of all ethnicities freely used cannabis says, says South African historian Gladman Sithole.
“It was an open secret; despite the hypocrisy, some police commanders during colonial times and even now smoked a joint of cannabis in their private moments. The job was and is stillhectic, requires steaming off,” says Sithole,
However, police records for cannabis possession, which are yetto be automatically expunged in South Africa have today condemned countless white and Black South Africans (ex-soldiers, students, youths, civil workers, pastors) from decent work, foreign visas, emigration because the in a ‘free’ new South Africa, the police refuses to expunge historical cannabis individual ‘criminal’ records even though the country’s supreme court, in a landmark ruling in 2018, decriminalized cannabis use.
“It’s a Kafkaesque frustration that has ruined people’s families and careers over minor incidences like being found with a gram of cannabis in the past,” Brian Daliqebo, a criminal defense lawyer in the capital Pretoria tells Cannabis Culture.
“On my books I have dentists, sailors, English teachers who got lucrative job offers out of South Africa in the US or Singapore but can’t move an inch because police won’t expunge their cannabis criminal records.”
The US where there is not yet a federal-wide cannabis legalization take a dim view of cannabis possession on visa applicants files, says Daliqebo. Singapore, a city-state in Asia, strictly punishes cannabis possession with fines that reach up to $S20,000 ($15,000us) and its embassy in South Africa don’t tolerate cannabis details on a visa applicant’s file, added Daliqebo the attorney.
A slow bill
Yet, for cannabis users like Malan and others, South Africa’s economy is in the throes of debilitating electricity blackouts and mass unemployment that has made it the world’s top country for youth joblessness. Thousands of skilled workers have emigrated and are actively looking to take up viable jobs abroad and some complain that past and personal interaction with cannabis for leisurely use is throttling their professional careers.
A bill has been introduced in South Africa’s parliament to force police to automatically expunge cannabis so-called criminal possession records for ordinary South Africans and align the situation with the supreme court’s 2018 legalization ruling. It is being called the Cannabis for Private Usage Bill. However,lawyers representing South Africa’s skilled workers whose lives and careers are frozen by residual cannabis charges doubt that there will be will and capacity by police to automatically expunge criminal records.
“It’s a mystery. The police don’t consider this priority. Even if the bills pass, we doubt police will act quickly or set up the technology to automatically delete cannabis ‘crime’ records,” says Daliqebo the advocate.
The spokesperson for South Africa Police Service, Manfred Xulu says police’s hands are tied until the bill is passed. “We can’t promise automatic deleting of records until the law is passed to authorize that. We wait for relevant laws first.”
It’s improper what police are doing – maintaining past cannabis convictions as a ransom on people lives yet the South Africa supreme court long legalized all uses of cannabis in 2018.
“Very soon we are likely to see a big lawsuit against the South Africa police by private citizens whose lives have been held up by irrelevant cannabis use charges contained in their databases,” says Shimmer Pasi, treasurer of the Sandton Cannabis Boutiques Forum, a grouping of small startup businesses seeking licenses to openly sell cannabis on main street retail spaces in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“As participants in the local cannabis scene, we suspect police don’t want automatic expunging of cannabis records because the ability to affect cannabis arrests arbitrarily gives police so muchbragging power over ordinary South African citizens.”
A stubborn past
Gladman Sithole is perplexed that the Christian puritanism fervor of colonial South Africa which frowned up cannabis use has continued in a supposedly ‘new’ South Africa. “On cannabis criminalization of ordinary citizens, the ugly old has blended in well with the humiliating present,” he says explaining that, on cannabis criminalization, the goal was to block IndeginousSouth Africans from commercially exploiting a crop that they had cultivated for centuries.
“Cannabis record is now an albatross around my neck, a barrier to block me from getting a good state job or a better one abroad,” says Kimberly Ramogkopa*, 27, a newly qualified nurse in Johannesburg who says a cannabis possession arrest on her graduation party in 2020 has stalled civil service recruiters from hiring her for hospital jobs.
“I’m stuck sitting at home while hospitals battle shortages of midwives thanks to my cannabis police record. My lawyer says realistically my record could only be expunged when the bill passes around 2025. It’s so grossly unfair.”
*Asterik means people mentioned chose to change their names out of extreme fear of being targeted in South Africa.
