World South Africa Goes Halfway On Pot

JOHANNESBURG’S WORST-KEPT SECRET looks like any other suburban bar, with a bartender who has nothing unusual to offer.

- Jillian Keenan

Then someone emerges from the back to present the “other menu.” There, marijuana—or “dagga,” in Afrikaans slang—is listed alongside beer and cider. Customers in business suits hand over a few hundred rand, choose from the selection of strains and edibles, and relax. Shortly thereafter, a “special” rainbow rice crispy treat shows up unceremoniously, wrapped in colorful plastic like a convenience store snack. Clouds of smoke drift over the pool tables. Bob Marley plays from the jukebox. Everything appears safe, casual, and aboveboard.

But the Amsterdam vibes are deceiving. Johannesburg’s funky new drug scene actually exists in a precarious legal gray zone.

Despite reports last year that South Africa’s Constitutional Court had decriminalized marijuana, that ruling only protects adults who “use or cultivate or possess cannabis in private for [their] personal consumption.” Selling weed or consuming it in public remains illegal. And just as in the U.S. and elsewhere, partial decriminalization tends to benefit some groups of people more than others.