Original source: BBC News – “Hemp fibres ‘better than graphene’” Published 13 August 2014, by James Morgan In August 2014, researchers presented work that should have shifted how the world looks at industrial hemp. Dr David Mitlin and his team showed that the waste bast fibre left over after hemp is processed for textiles or […]
Tag Archives: green economy
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 […]
(Also reported by NewZimbabwe.com, 6 September 2026) In the early hours of Friday 4 September 2026, a routine stop-and-search operation along Zimbabwe’s Harare–Masvingo highway turned into a significant drug seizure after a kombi driver attempted to evade a police checkpoint near Mvuma. According to Zimbabwe Republic Police national spokesperson Commissioner Paul Nyathi, officers were conducting […]
Last week the South African cannabis and hemp conversation moved on two tracks at once. On one track, police operations generated fresh headlines and widely shared posts — hydroponic laboratories dismantled, multi-million-rand consignments seized, foreign nationals arrested. On the other, the slower work of building something different continued: young teams developing local hemp seed and […]
A Facebook post currently circulating (https://www.facebook.com/share/1BWUntXqMG/?mibextid=wwXIfr) adds another voice to the ongoing discussion about South Africa’s emerging cannabis and hemp sector. In a landscape still shaped by constitutional rights recognised in 2018, incomplete commercial frameworks, national dialogues on SMMEs and red tape, persistent enforcement actions, and the practical work of pioneers trying to build actual […]
On a smallholding outside Walkerville, south of Johannesburg, the air is alive with birds. Thousands of them nest in a dense stand of sturdy stalks whose seven-fingered leaves form a living canopy. This is not a recreational cannabis grow. It is the working farm and processing site of Green Route Hemp Industries, a young South […]