A second Transvaal survey again finds no dagga crisis

A second Transvaal inquiry in 1911 found that most responding officers opposed a total dagga prohibition, even as a newspaper campaign portrayed cannabis smokers as a danger to white households.^[1] The inquiry included town magistrates as well as the mines studied three years earlier.^[1]

A newspaper warned of violence and sexual danger

The Sunday Times published an alarmist account linking cannabis with insanity, criminality and threats to white women.^[1] It described African servants and white people adopting African smoking practices through the racist fears of the period.^[1]

The article called for prohibition, but an official in Johannesburg’s Native Affairs administration reported that he could not find miners incapacitated in the way the newspaper described.^[1]

Historian Thembisa Waetjen uses the contrast to show how claims circulating in public could differ from observations reported by officials working around cannabis users.^[1]

The earlier survey had already challenged a ban

The 1908 inquiry had found managers describing moderate use and worrying that restrictions would deter workers from coming to the mines.^[1] In 1911, some respondents again defended workers’ customs and reported little evidence of the newspaper’s alleged effects.^[1]

One official described miners’ belief that coughing after smoking helped relieve the dust they inhaled underground.^[1] These were reports of workers’ practices and officials’ beliefs within an unhealthy labour system.^[1]

There were disagreements about youth and local rules

The replies did not present a single view of cannabis.^[1] Some officials thought use was increasing; others reported very little smoking in their districts.^[1]

Suggestions included age restrictions and controls over sales or growing in civilian areas.^[1] A similar dispute in Zululand in 1909 had connected smoking with arguments over children, women and chiefly authority.^[1]

Other officials feared another restriction would add to African people’s grievances after war, taxation and growing colonial interference.^[1] Most responding officers still did not support a blanket ban.^[1]

National policy eventually took another course

An unpresented national draft in 1916 proposed banning use, possession, trafficking and unlicensed cultivation.^[1] A national cannabis prohibition followed in 1922.^[1]

The inquiries remain part of South Africa’s history because they record opposition from within the administration itself, alongside workers’ customs and the racial anxieties used to argue for suppression.^[1]