Potsane: the ‘dagga president’

MASERU – KOTSOANA Potsane, the man who fought valiantly to legalise the growing and sale of dagga in Lesotho, died a disappointed man. Potsane, who called himself Mopresidente oa Matekoane (President of ), died two weeks ago after a long illness. He was buried in his village of Masaleng in Berea last Saturday.

Potsane came into the national spotlight after he openly told a government minister that he was growing dagga and wanted a license to trade legally. It is illegal to grow in Lesotho without a licence.

When he died two weeks ago, Potsane had still not received his license to allow him to trade dagga legally.  His relative Kamohelo Potsane told mourners at the funeral that the late Potsane had been reluctant to visit doctors before he died.

Potsane left behind two adult daughters. His wife died a long time ago. Potsane used to publicly announce on a local radio stations almost every day that he eked out a living by illegally growing and selling dagga.

Prior to the re-ushering of democracy in Lesotho in 1993, Potsane was among thousands of Basotho who heard the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP), leader Ntsu Mokhehle promise that his government would legalise the growing of dagga.

The BCP won all constituencies and ruled without opposition from 1993 to 1997 but did not legalise the growing of dagga. Its ea khutla naha le matekoane a eona (our land will return to us together with its dagga) proved to be a mere slogan meant to hoodwink voters.

Its splinter party and successor in government, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) led by Pakalitha Mosisili skirted the dagga issue for years. In the meantime, Potsane continued growing dagga in his fields and smuggling it to South Africa, hoping that one day the government would fulfil its promise to legalise the drug.

When Thomas Thabane broke away from the LCD in 2006 to found the All Basotho Convention (ABC), Potsane became one of the party’s staunchest supporters. His hope that one day would be legalised did not diminish.

His life of smuggling and bribing the police at the border to smoothen entry into South Africa continued throughout the ABC’s status as the opposition. Finally, when the ABC became government in 2012 his hope was that his dream of farming and selling it without fear of being arrested would become a reality.

Still, the was not legalised and Potsane’s smuggling continued. It was not until 2017 when the Thabane-led government legalised the growing of , becoming the first country in Africa to do so.

But for Potsane and his fellow poor Basotho, that did not bring any relief. Instead, Potsane saw a lot of rich companies owned by whites from the west establishing farms in different parts of the country.

The Ministry of Health licensed a South African firm to grow cannabis in Lesotho for medical and scientific purposes, the first such authorised establishment in Africa. By 2018 the government had licensed five companies to produce medical .

Some of these companies have been partially or entirely acquired by established licensed Canadian producers. The first is Verve Dynamics in which a Canadian company, Aphria, owns about 30 percent shareholding.

Another one is MediGrow Lesotho, partly owned by Supreme Cannabis of Canada. There is also Daddy-Cann which is 100 percent owned by Canopy Growth of Canada. Another company is Medi-Kingdom, wholly owned by Medi-Kingdom of the United Kingdom.

Also there is the Pharmaceuticals Development Corp (PDC), which is wholly owned by Corix of the United States of America. Another company is Bophelo Bioscience and Wellness (Pty) and 20 percent of its shares are held by Halo Labs Inc of Canada.

At the time, Health Minister Nkaku Kabi had issued a directive that in order to obtain a trading licence for cannabis, one had to pay M500 000 and have not less than M40 million in the bank.
Kabi later told thepost that Basotho’s outcry is that the conditions and funds required to start the medicinal cannabis business shut out poor locals.

He however said it is with good intentions that the conditions are stringent – to save the industry from collapsing even before it starts. Kabi said the other reason for most Basotho not being able to trade in is that the seed that is used is from outside the country. He said Lesotho does not have such suitable cannabis seeds.

The one Lesotho has, which Potsane and many other smugglers plant, has not been found suitable as yet and Kabi said it was not known if the seeds would qualify in the long run.

Potsane, who already at the time had started a massive media campaign for licensing the indigenous , said he would not dance to the music of the government if the tune did not suit him.

“If the government says we have to have this lot of money to trade that means they do not care about Basotho because we will not be able to raise that kind of money,” Kotsoana told thepost then.

“Only the ministers and MPs will be able to trade. This means the government is not considering us because as poor as we are we will not afford it,” he said. “We do not want the foreign companies to come here and plant , we will plant it and they will have to buy it from us.”

Potsane argued that although Lesotho was making strides in the business, there were still huge impediments for locals who wanted to join the industry. It was during this time that the disappointed and dismayed Potsane took a 100-kilometre trip from his Masaleng village in Berea district to Kabi’s office in Maseru.

Kabi told mourners at the funeral that Potsane confessed to him that he was illegally trading in and he was asking the minister to issue him a licence. Kabi said he tried telling Potsane about the licence conditions and hefty prices but he would not listen – all he wanted was a licence so that he could trade legally.

Kabi said Potsane told him that although his cannabis was reaching the targeted market in South Africa, the problem was that he had to grease too many hands to cross the border. Kabi said Potsane told him that at each road block he would leave no less than M3 000 as a bribe to pass and, depending on the number of road blocks he would come across, he ended up taking home very little money. Potsane, he said, would make around M30 000 after harvest.

Wanting to help Potsane to trade legally, Kabi said he quickly told Prime Minister Thabane about Potsane’s request and they decided to assist him find an investor in the United States.

He said they found one in Texas but because of Covid-19 that struck the world in 2020 that saw all flights being grounded while cross-border travel stopped, the investor never came to Lesotho.

Potsane had, at the invitation of Kabi, been part of the government delegation that went to the US on a fact finding mission about the potential opportunities of Lesotho’s cannabis. The Pelgrave Handbook of International Development says cannabis is widely produced in the country, being the nation’s most significant cash-crop.

Other researchers have found that in the 2000s it was estimated that 70 percent of the cannabis in South Africa came from Lesotho. In the Journal of Political Ecology, Julian Bloomer of Trinity College of Dublin, Ireland, found that the illegal cultivation of cannabis in Lesotho has emerged as a key livelihood strategy that enables smallholder farmers to generate an income from their limited agricultural resources.

Bloomer found that cannabis was estimated in the late 1990s to be one of the three principal sources of foreign revenue for the country, the others being international aid and remittances from South Africa.

Bloomer said faced with declining employment opportunities, “cannabis has provided a means to achieve diversification and provide a subsistence living”. She found that “cannabis cultivation in rural Lesotho should be viewed as a coping strategy, as opposed to it being seen as criminal opportunism”.

Cannabis producing households were generally only meeting their subsistence needs, if even that, with the income they received from cannabis, she said.

“Any policies that attempt to reduce cannabis production in Lesotho will have a large and serious impact on a crucial coping strategy for marginalised rural households.”

As for Potsane who died without seeing the licence he so seriously pushed for, he was given dagga that was still fresh and in its stalks as a farewell gift as his coffin was lowered in the grave.

Zealots among the mourners took the coffin and ran in zigzags on the way to the graveyard, holding stalks and putting them on the coffin in the midst of a loud song. What a send-off to a man who fought so hard for the legalisation of dagga!

Caswell Tlali