Smoke in the Calabash: Africa's Deep, Complicated Relationship with Marijuana
By Tanatswa Taruvinga
Smoke comes out of the calabash as a woman on a reed mat smiles at you and offers you a puff. This isn’t the latest in dispensary culture. This is part of a culture that has spanned hundreds of years in the Binga region of Zimbabwe. A fact that is a bit surprising, considering that the conservative country has largely made the herb illegal. But Binga isn’t the only African region that has marijuana deep in its cultural roots; southern Africa, in general, has dealt with and traded marijuana for centuries.
And yet, the official national narratives across most African states paint marijuana as a foreign vice. As something imported and corruptive. There’s a deep irony in this, especially for communities like the Tonga people of Binga, whose ceremonial and medicinal uses of cannabis stretch back long before colonisation. So, how did we get here, from sacred smoke in calabashes to criminal records and whispered street trades?
To understand Africa’s paradoxical relationship with marijuana, you have to start with colonisation. For many African societies, cannabis, known by many local names: mbanje, dagga, inturuchi, and motokwane, was not just accepted; it was integrated into spiritual, medicinal, and communal life. There were customs around its growth, sharing, and use. Elders used it to commune with ancestors, herbalists included it in remedies, and young people smoked it during initiations. Then the missionaries and administrators arrived…
The colonial project wasn’t just about controlling land and labour; it was about reshaping culture. Anything associated with Indigenous spirituality was labelled backwards, even demonic. Cannabis, like many African medicines and traditions, was criminalised not just for its psychoactive effects but for what it symbolised: resistance, autonomy, and an uncolonised identity.
The laws passed in the 20th century, many still enforced today, weren’t designed to protect African communities from drug abuse. They were intended to dismantle indigenous power structures. A 1922 ordinance in South Africa, for instance, was explicit about banning cannabis “due to the increasing use by the native population,” which was considered a threat to the colonial order. Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia, followed suit shortly after. By the 1950s, most African countries under colonial rule had some form of anti-cannabis legislation, all parroting British anxieties and ignoring African realities. But culture is persistent.
Even under the weight of criminalisation, cannabis use never disappeared in many rural parts of Africa. In Binga, it remained tied to the spiritual world. In parts of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, imbongi (praise poets) and healers continued to use it quietly. In Malawi, the famed “Malawi Gold” became an underground export to European and North American black markets despite its local role in farming rituals.
In truth, Africa became one of the world’s biggest producers of illicit cannabis, not because of some moral failing, but because the plant had always been there. It grew well. It helped people. And in the face of poverty, its trade helped families survive. This is especially important to remember today as legalisation conversations emerge. Because when African governments talk about “economic opportunity” in cannabis, they rarely acknowledge that it’s rural growers and traditional communities, those historically criminalised, who’ve kept the plant alive all along.
It’s easy, especially in the era of Western dispensaries and glossy CBD brands, to forget that cannabis is not a drug. In many African cultures, it is a tool for visioning. For clarity. For connection. To improve both the physical and spiritual.
The Tonga people, for example, have long used marijuana during funerals and rain-making ceremonies. It is believed to facilitate communion with the vadzimu, ancestral spirits. The herb isn’t taken casually but with intention. You don’t smoke just to get high. You smoke to see. A similar sentiment is found among the Khoisan and Zulu traditional healers. Rastafarians across the continent also hold the herb as a sacrament. To them, cannabis (ganja) is a gift from Jah. It sharpens thought, expands consciousness, and breaks down Babylon, the metaphor for oppressive systems.
Fast forward to today, and the conversation is changing, but unevenly. South Africa decriminalised private cannabis use in 2018 after a Constitutional Court ruling. Zimbabwe legalised medicinal cannabis production in 2018 as well, but with a catch: only licensed (read: wealthy) commercial farmers could participate. Lesotho, Uganda, Rwanda, and several countries have followed suit with cannabis reforms, though mostly skewed toward export industries.
And here lies the heart of the problem: who gets to benefit from legalisation?
For many African governments, legal cannabis is about profit. It’s about foreign investment, global markets, and pharmaceutical exports. But rarely is it about restoring justice to the rural growers and spiritual communities who have carried the plant through persecution. There’s a quote that circulates among the cannabis users in Africa that goes, “So now that the white people want it, it is medicine. But when we had it, it was a crime.” That echoes a lot of people’s sentiments when it comes to the lost cultural significance of cannabis across the Sahara. It’s not just about economics or politics. Cannabis, in Africa, is also a question of identity.
To some urban Africans, raised in Christian-conservative homes or schooled under Westernised curricula, cannabis still holds the taboo. They see it as something associated with “failure,” laziness, and rebellion. But in reclaiming African identity, in decolonising the mind, we must also decolonise the stories we tell about our plants.
Cannabis is not foreign. It is not new. It is not only for getting high, and it may not seem like the most important African story to tell, but it is vital in understanding a significant part of cultural history. Because it reveals how colonialism lingers, not just in policy but in perception. Because it asks us to look again at what we’ve been taught to fear. Because it reminds us that healing, in all its forms, often starts with reclamation.
Reclaiming plants. Reclaiming memory. Reclaiming breath.
So the next time you see a cloud of smoke rising from a calabash or a rolled leaf, don’t just ask what it is. Ask who it comes from. Ask what it remembers. Ask what it restores.
Africa has never needed to copy anyone to know what wellness is. We’ve always had it. Right there, in the soil. In the stories. In the smoke.