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Paper short abstract:

Tracing the history of dagga (cannabis) smuggling across the Lesotho-South Africa border, this paper recounts a moral panic around drugs and smuggling that challenged Basotho individuals, the chieftaincy in Lesotho, and both colonial governments to rethink borders in a changing colonial world.

Paper long abstract:

The Lesotho-South Africa border has long been a site for contestation. Without access to enough arable land to make subsistence or even cash cropping of most popular commodities viable, some Basotho turned to the cultivation of dagga (marijuana/cannabis). Needing only relatively small patches of land, dagga increasingly found its way to South Africa via smuggling by the 1920s. Coming to the attention of colonial authorities in both Lesotho and South Africa, there was a moral panic starting in the 1920s around Basotho dagga smuggling. This panic upended clear distinctions between chiefs and commoner, and between colonial officials in Lesotho and in South Africa. Thus, the criminalization of dagga and attempts to crack down on smuggling across the border suggest ways that ordinary Basotho were able to use borders and transportation to survive in the enclave of Lesotho. This became a larger issue in South Africa as the white state was at the forefront of international efforts to criminalize the trade in and consumption of dagga/cannabis. Efforts to control dagga, especially from Lesotho, show how South Africa was attempting to exert control and, potentially, even annex Lesotho (along with Bechuanaland Protectorate and Swaziland). The issue of dagga cultivation and smuggling suggests the complicated calculations that individuals and governmental officials had to make in the shifting colonial world from the 1920s to the 1950s. With medical cannabis now being grown in Lesotho, examining the colonial era policies and decisions can better situate contemporary debates around cultivation of and trade in dagga.