Question for people in South Africa

[yardgrazer]

Hello,


I'm trying to write something that involves a reference to the Constitutional Court ruling on marijuana, and I was curious as to what South Africans typically call marijuana - is it Dagga? Wikipedia implied Dagga was what it's called in Afrikaans, and listed Mutokuane as generically South African, but when I searched for the latter all the references I came up with were from Germanic language websites, so I wondered if Wikipedia had it wrong, or?


TL;DR: Is Dagga a generally accepted term for marijuana in South Africa? Anything I should be aware of in terms of cultural baggage?

 

[MJPassion]

I believe DAGGA is a reference to the mint family plant called Lions Tail.

Lions tail is mildly euphoric and is used as a replacement when cannabis cannot be found.

I've grown and smoked Lions Tail and the above works, even for a seasoned smoker.

They are pretty plants too.

 

[yardgrazer]

It looks to me like that's Wild Dagga? Which is a different thing as you said, but separate from Dagga i.e. Cannabis.

 

[Green guy]

Yes they call it that, but us smokers use other terms also like zol, weed, grass, pot, as you can see we use most of them when talking about it!

 

[Water-]

https://daggacouple.co.za/the-word-dagga/

The word ‘Dagga’ originates from an old Khoi word ‘dacha’ which was originally their name for leonotis leonurus, so called Rooi dagga, Wilde dagga or Klipdagga which was smoked by the Khoikhoi in the same way as tobacco.

There appears to be confusion in the early literature between cannabis and Leonotis leonurus. It appears that ‘daccha’ was the generally adopted term of all narcotics- both smoked and chewed.

The word has been recorded from the 17th century with at least 10 different spellings:

Daggha, dacha, dacka, dagha, tagga, dachka, daga being some of them.

All of them trying hard to spell a Khoi word.

In modern times this word was ‘modified’ in the 1940’s by the ruling party in such a way that the phonetic “Ga!”, an expression of disgust in Afrikaans, was incorporated into the word for its emotional effect.

Since then this word has been used by the South African Police Service and the media to stigmatize the plant and the people who use it.

 

[lowridersa]

Wikipedia implied Dagga was what it's called in Afrikaans, and listed Mutokuane as generically South African, but when I searched for the latter all the references I came up with were from Germanic language websites, so I wondered if Wikipedia had it wrong, or?

Its very well known as dagga here in South Africa. The confusion comes in with the fact that we have 11 national languages, and propaganda also had a part in the naming. For instance in Swazi its known as "insangu", in "xhosa" its known as umya, and sotho its known as matukwane ( Mutokuane ) . Dagga is generally the accepted term for cannabis and I think its also referenced in our laws as dagga.

We also have a couple plants other than cannabis named dagga, like above Klip dagga, wild dagga, lions tail, and lions ear. Its an indigenous plant, that the bushmen used for a little buzz during their long treks.