Cash crops poisoned in Pondoland
Police helicopters spray marijuana plantations every year
Ground Up (South Africa)
April 7, 2016
April 7, 2016
The villagers keep watch from January, waiting for police helicopters to thud over the hills. Every year, for nearly three decades, their plantations have been poisoned towards the end of summer, right before harvest, leaving behind fields of withered stalks. Marijuana farming sustains entire communities in the rural Eastern Cape, an important cash crop in a deeply impoverished subsistence economy. It has also been illegal under South African law since 1929. For more than 60 years the state has conducted regular eradication programmes but failed to halt the practice. (See also: Battle to stop dagga spraying | Dagga spraying: police ‘expert’ accused of bad science)
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