Dagga the solution to SA's housing problem?

The Western Cape public protector has accepted a petition and a business plan from a member of the public who wants to build houses in rural areas using cannabis mixed with lime and sand.

The Western Cape public protector accepted a petition and a business plan on Friday from a member of the public who wants to build houses using cannabis.

Advocate Gary Pienaar, provincial public protector, is also to try to resolve an impasse between Capetonian Andre du Plessis and the national government.

“In this case we will try and facilitate discussions and follow up other elements of the complaint, particularly with the Department of Arts and Culture,” Pienaar said.

Pienaar said this department apparently did not respond adequately to Andre du Plessis’s entry into an innovative design competition, where he presented the plan to build houses using cannabis. The department apparently did not read the submission and declined the entry as having no market value.

“It seems as if there is no meeting of minds, with many aspects of the issue falling between two stools,” said Pienaar about the perceived lack of communication between Du Plessis and the various government departments petitioned, including justice, agriculture, health, correctional services and trade and industry.

Presenting his two seemingly well research documents, Du Plessis said at the handover that cannabis could form an integral part of the solution to rural poverty.

“It could be a sustainable agricultural development especially in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape, where it is already being used as a source of income,” he said. The dagga industry was worth several billion rands, he said.

Du Plessis said South Africa had created this evil—of banning dagga—when it added the plant to the Geneva Heroin Act in the 1940s, and should now undo what had been done.

“Interestingly, the world anti-doping agencies (WADA) and the International Cricket Council treat cannabis as a recreational drug… and the WADA treaty will now supercede the Geneva Act.”

Each of his proposed homes would need three tons of cannabis mixed with lime and sand, and would cost about R15 000 for an 82-square-metre dwelling, much larger than the size of the current RDP houses.

Du Plessis was also co-ordinating a march through the city centre on Saturday morning, to coincide with what he says will be worldwide calls for a more liberal approach to the plant.

The petition describes cannabis—a plant genus that includes what South Africans know as dagga—as “a sustainable agricultural option for economic empowerment” and calls for government departments to participate in a forum to develop policy “more in keeping with international trends”.

Du Plessis said that cannabis mixed with lime was currently used for home construction and insulation in France and Germany, and that it had a long history as a building material.

The 1500-year-old Hagia Sofia basilica in Turkey was “the world’s longest-standing dagga building”, he said. - Sapa