Ras Gareth Prince Returns to Court: The Unfinished Fight for Equitable Cannabis Rights in South Africa

In 2018 the Constitutional Court handed down a unanimous judgment that changed the legal status of cannabis in South Africa. Adults could cultivate and use the plant in private without fear of criminal sanction. The name attached to that victory was Gareth Prince — the Rastafari lawyer and activist who had spent decades challenging the prohibition that had blocked his own admission as an attorney and criminalised a central sacrament of his faith.

Eight years later Prince is back in the Western Cape High Court. This time the target is the legislation Parliament eventually produced to give effect to the 2018 judgment: the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act 7 of 2024 and the accompanying hemp regulations. The new application, brought with the RasTafari Nation Council and a group of small-scale farmers, seeks both urgent interim relief against ongoing arrests and plant destruction, and a broader declaration that the Act itself is constitutionally invalid.

The case is more than a technical dispute about legislative tagging or public participation. It is a test of whether South Africa’s post-2018 cannabis framework will deliver rights that ordinary people — traditional growers, rural communities, Rastafari practitioners and small operators — can actually exercise, or whether it will leave them formally free yet practically constrained.

From the 2002 Defeat to the 2018 Victory

Prince’s litigation history is long. In the late 1990s and early 2000s he challenged the Law Society’s refusal to register his articles because of prior dagga convictions and his stated intention to continue using the plant as a Rastafari. The Constitutional Court in 2002 rejected a religious-exemption argument by a narrow margin. He continued the work. By 2018 the privacy-based challenge succeeded comprehensively. Every justice concurred that the criminalisation of private adult use and cultivation was unconstitutional.

Parliament was given time to legislate. The result, signed into law in 2024, was the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act. On paper it removed cannabis from the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act for private purposes. In practice, critics including Prince argue, it created a right without a workable pathway. There is still no clear, accessible legal source of supply for most people. Commercial and industrial routes remain complex and costly. Traditional and small-scale growers report continued vulnerability to arrest and crop destruction. Enforcement patterns documented throughout 2025 and 2026 — laboratory busts, border seizures, school searches — have kept the tension visible.

The 2026 Challenge: Two Parts, One Argument

The current application has two main limbs.

Part A seeks urgent interim relief: a halt to cannabis-related arrests for private conduct, a stop to the destruction of plants in circumstances that infringe protected rights, and measures to prevent the continued exclusion of traditional growers from any emerging formal economy.

Part B attacks the constitutional validity of the Act and related regulations on several grounds. Prince and the co-applicants argue that the Bill was incorrectly tagged as a section 75 matter (ordinary national competence) when its provincial reach required a section 76 process, meaning the National Council of Provinces never properly deliberated. They contend that public participation was constitutionally defective because the communities most affected — including Rastafari and rural small-scale farmers — were not genuinely engaged and their submissions were largely ignored. Finally, they argue that the Act creates a right to private use while making the exercise of that right impossible for anyone without access to a legal supply, rendering the right illusory for the majority.

In April 2026 the matter came before Acting Judge Mnengwana. State respondents, including the ministries responsible for policing, trade and industry, and agriculture, arrived without answering affidavits and asked that the case be removed from the urgent roll. The judge refused. A timetable was set: respondents were given days to file, and the matter was enrolled for 8 June 2026.

By early June, Prince had publicly rejected suggestions from a senior Department of Trade, Industry and Competition adviser that the challenge risked setting the entire reform process back. He described the Act as a “slap in the face for the dagga community” and called for community turnout at court. Subsequent reporting indicated the June hearing was postponed, the matter reassigned to a new judge, and a July 2026 date indicated. As of the latest available public information, the substantive hearing of the constitutional challenge remains pending.

What Is at Stake Going Forward

The outcome will shape the next phase of South African cannabis policy in several concrete ways.

First, the enforcement climate. An interim order restraining arrests for private conduct would immediately alter the risk environment for thousands of people. Even without a final declaration of invalidity, it would force a sharper distinction between protected private activity and commercial dealing — a distinction that community organisations have long argued is applied inconsistently.

Second, the legislative architecture. If the court finds the Act constitutionally defective on tagging or participation grounds, Parliament would be required to start again, this time with proper provincial involvement and genuine engagement with affected communities. That process would open space for the inclusion of traditional growers, clearer supply pathways, and possibly more realistic compliance thresholds for small operators.

Third, the relationship between rights and markets. The current framework has been criticised for creating a formal sector that is accessible mainly to well-resourced entrants while leaving the historical cultivation base informal and exposed. A successful challenge would not automatically create an inclusive industry, but it would remove the claim that the existing Act already solved the constitutional problem.

Fourth, the regional and international signal. South Africa’s 2018 judgment was watched across the continent and beyond. How the country resolves the gap between that judgment and lived reality will influence neighbouring jurisdictions that are designing their own medical and industrial regimes.

The Broader Landscape

Prince’s litigation does not exist in isolation. Fields of Green for ALL and other organisations continue parallel work on police reform, record clearance, cultural-heritage recognition and practical support for people facing arrest. Industrial pioneers such as the Green Route team are generating local data on seed, fibre and processing. National dialogues list commercialisation, red tape and SAPS practice as agenda items. Cross-border seizures in both South Africa and Zimbabwe underline that significant volumes continue to move outside formal channels.

All of these strands converge on the same unresolved question: can the constitutional right recognised in 2018 be turned into a system that ordinary South Africans can use without fear or impossible compliance costs? Prince’s current case forces that question back into the courtroom with the same insistence that characterised the original privacy challenge.

Looking Ahead

As of early September 2026 the matter remains before the Western Cape High Court, having been postponed and reassigned after the June enrolment. Further directions, interim relief or a substantive hearing will determine the immediate next steps. Whatever the procedural timetable, the underlying issues — arrest practices, supply pathways, public participation, and the inclusion of traditional and small-scale growers — will not disappear.

Prince has signalled that he is prepared to wait for a result that delivers meaningful relief rather than accept a framework he regards as inadequate. Community organisations have indicated continued support. Government respondents will be required to defend both the legislative process and the practical workability of the rights the Act claims to confer.

The 2018 judgment established that private adult use and cultivation are protected. The 2026 litigation asks whether Parliament has given those rights a form in which they can actually be lived. That is the question now before the court. Its answer will shape the next chapter of South Africa’s cannabis story — for Rastafari communities, for rural growers, for small operators, and for anyone who believed the Constitutional Court’s unanimous voice in 2018 was meant to change more than the letter of the law.

The man who waited decades for the first victory is still waiting for the second. The court, once again, holds the next decision.

Key sources

•  Mail & Guardian, 8 July 2026: “South Africa started global cannabis prohibition. It can end it”

•  IOL / Weekend Argus and related reporting, April 2026

•  Cannabiz Africa coverage of June 2026 developments

•  Fields of Green for ALL public statements