MarijuanaNews.com : UN Agency Tries to Get Swazis To Switch From Insangu To Hemp Cultivation. Weird, And Sad, But Interesting.

Posted April 9, 2003
(MarijuanaNews note:
Mbabane is the capital city of the Kingdom of
Swaziland in southern Africa. Swaziland has a population of almost one million.

This article conveniently
combines two of my pet peeves, the UN narks and the threat that cannabis
prohibition poses to the poorest people in Africa.
See

UN Nark’s Speech To Swedish Prohibitionists May Cause Permanent Brain Damage.
Illogic, Ignorance and Lying, Especially About the Dutch, Of Course.

and

Is The UN An Instrument of Peace and Freedom Or Of War and Tyranny? UN Narks
Make Answer Clear. Lies and Hatred In Service To International Police State.
(International Narcotics Control Board Report)
and

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs Resolution on the Control of Cannabis in
Africa. UN Narks Urge War on Poorest of the Poor. Cannabis Prohibition Does Most
Damage In Poor Countries.
and links

Besides I really learned
something, besides the Swazi word for weed!

In all fairness to the people
involved in this article, it seems that they are trying to help the people cope
with a policy imposed from outside.

It is also interesting that
they use the North American word “marijuana” rather than the universal
“cannabis.”)

New Initiative to End Marijuana Cultivation
From The UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
NEWS
April 4, 2003
Mbabane, Swaziland

Swaziland’s mountainous
northern Hhohho Region, one of Southern Africa’s prime marijuana growing areas,
is being targeted in a new strategy to convince farmers that now is the time to
switch crops.

“We want the small-landholder
farmers up here to switch from insangu (the Swazi word for marijuana), but not
exactly. They are experts at cultivating cannabis, so
why throw away that talent? We just want them to grow another species of
cannabis - hemp,” said agriculture consultant, John Weatherson.

“We are looking to
set up a large-scale hemp growing agribusiness… All the small farmers would be
able to piggyback on the plant by selling their hemp crops there, where it would
be processed into value-added products for export,” Weatherson added.

Such products would
be included in goods shipped to the United States under the African Growth and
Opportunities Act, a trade
scheme intended to boost Swaziland’s economy by allowing locally produced goods
into the world’s largest market, duty-free.

Marijuana has been a real
money-earner for Swazi farmers, and much more than just a subsistence crop.

“We’re trying to convince the
Hhohho farmers to grow vegetables for the export market. This can be lucrative.
But a transport and marketing infrastructure is not yet in place, and we’ve not
been successful,” said former head of the National Agriculture and Marketing
Board, Magalela Ngwenya.

Weatherson doubts farmers
currently growing marijuana can easily be persuaded to try other crops. “They
have no interest in growing tomatoes. They are experts in cannabis,” he said.

The Swaziland
Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse estimates that 75 percent of small-landholder
farmers in Hhohho’s isolated mountain valleys grow marijuana.

“The buyers are South African
drug dealers from Johannesburg and Durban. Some of the drug is consumed in South
Africa, but most of it is shipped up to Europe. In the Netherlands there is a
big demand for ‘Swazi gold’, as the local marijuana is called,” said David
Pritchard, recent president of the organisation.
(MarijuanaNews note: Never heard of it, but most of
the cannabis sold in Holland is Dutch.)

“From what we understand,
Swazi marijuana is highly prized for its potency and
purity. The Swazi soil is fertile - this is an agricultural country - and
apparently it is good for marijuana, too,” he said.
(MarijuanaNews note: Sounds like BC Bud. What is the
Swazi word for “hype”?)

Marijuana has
always been a part of Swazi culture.
One privilege of the headman of a traditional homestead is to retire to his
private kraal with male companions and pass around a pipe filled with the
intoxicating weed. At Swaziland Cultural Village in Mantenga, a faithful
re-creation of a 19th century Swazi homestead, a man in traditionally-braided
hair playing the role of the family elder demonstrates smoking with a classic
bone pipe, using actual marijuana.

But changes in the drug trade
have thrown the Swazi marijuana cultivation business into confusion this year.
For decades, Swazi farmers bundled up their drug harvests in bales, which were
compressed locally into brick-sized blocks for transport out of the country, en
route to Europe.

“Now European buyers want
‘chocolate’, which is a viscous brown resin distilled from the plant,” said
Weatherson.

All over Swaziland, unsold
blocks of marijuana are stacking up. There are no extracting machines in the
country to manufacture “chocolate” resin.
(MarijuanaNews note: “Chocolate” resin? Haven’t
these people ever heard of hash? Of course, hash was made for millennia before
the development of machines.)

An agriculture ministry
developmental officer, David Masuku, who has studied alternative crops for the
marijuana-growing region, noted: “What these farmers would get from hemp is
nowhere near what they now get for marijuana. But this is the time to convince
them to change cannabis crops, because of the insecurity in the marijuana
market.”

Another inducement is the peril
marijuana farmers increasingly face from law enforcement bodies. Police are
stepping up their interdiction efforts to stamp out the drug trade at its
source. In the past, joint army and police operations
were assisted by South African police helicopters to locate and destroy
marijuana crops in remote areas.

But with the construction of
Maguga Dam on the Komati River, which spurred the development of the Hhohho
Region road system, once isolated farms are more accessible.

This week, police confiscated
marijuana worth R1 million (US $125,000). What was once an unusually large haul
is now routine. “I have lost everything. Insangu
(marijuana) is part of Swazi culture, and this is not fair,” one farmer
who lost his harvest complained to the local press.

“These farmers have tons of
experience in growing marijuana. They are so good at it, it’s logical they
should continue, but with hemp,” said Weatherson.
(Marijuananews note: It is ironic that the DEAland
narks claim that they cannot tell a bush from a stalk, so hemp cultivation has
to be banned in the most technologically advanced country in the world, but in
Swaziland hemp is a substitute crop for marijuana.)