Namibia's High Court declines to rule on the cannabis ban

On 11 July 2026 the High Court in Windhoek ended, for now, the only serious legal challenge to Namibia’s cannabis ban. It did not say the ban was lawful. It said the question was not yet the court’s to answer.

Five years in court

The case was filed on 19 August 2021 by Brian Jaftha, president of Ganja Users of Namibia and of the Rastafari United Front, and Borro Ndungula, the users’ group’s secretary general. They asked for a declaration that the prohibition on adult possession and use of cannabis is unconstitutional.

Their argument was that the ban rests on outdated and unfounded views, that it was partly motivated by a racist political agenda against the Rastafari religion, and that it cannot be justified scientifically, morally or rationally. Cannabis, they said, does not compare with nicotine or alcohol in its risk of dependence.

The defendants were the government, the prosecutor general, the ministers of justice and health and the head of the police.

The claimant goes to prison

While the constitutional case waited, the criminal law took its course against the man who had brought it. In October 2023 Jaftha was sentenced to two years in prison for possession, about five years after his arrest.

He said the plant material found on him had never been tested, and that the investigating officer had died and could not be cross-examined. His parting words to the court were “see you in two years.” The lawyer acting for him without charge in the constitutional case said the sentence did not end it.

“Not ripe”

The state’s answer to the challenge was procedural. The justice minister, it said, had approved a review of the cannabis laws by the Law Reform and Development Commission, so the claim was premature and not ripe for a court.

Judge Claudia Claasen agreed. Cannabis policy, she held, is primarily a matter for the executive and the legislature. She called the dispute polycentric: it involves public health, the enforcement of criminal law and social policy at once, and requires weighing the risk of harm, religious and social values, the potential for addiction, social and economic costs and policing.

Courts, she said, should generally not interfere with a legislative process that is under way, except in the clearest cases of constitutional obligation. To step in now would disrupt it. She upheld the state’s special plea.

What the ruling leaves

The judgment decides nothing about the rights the claimants invoked. It rests entirely on the government’s statement that the law is under review. No date for the end of that review appears in the report of the case.

Why the index did not move

The ruling left every rule where it was. Possession and use of cannabis remain offences in Namibia under an Act of 1971, and a court challenge that fails on procedure changes neither the law nor how it is applied. The score would move if the law commission’s review produced a new statute, or if a later court reached the constitutional question and answered it.^[1][2]