The split

6 576 169 people arrived in South Africa between January and the end of July. Up 12,4%.

Split it.

African markets grew 14,3%. Overseas markets grew 5,7%.

More than twice the rate.

The Minister called it growth becoming geographically diversified and said it had been one of the department’s strategic priorities. That is how you say a thing in a press release.

Plainer: the people coming here are increasingly from here.

Who we write for

Go back through this site and count.

A man gets off a long haul flight. He has 2 weeks and he has been saving. He wants the Garden Route, a wine farm, a game reserve, something to tell people about at home. He books months out, he books online, he pays in euros, and he wants to know before he lands whether the place he is sleeping is going to be funny about a joint on the stoep.

We have written for him since day 1. Catching the Boom. Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride. The 420-Friendly Traveller’s Code.

Good pieces. He is not where the growth is.

The other one

He drives.

He comes over a border post with a car full of people, most of them related to him. He has done the trip before and he will do it again in 4 months. He is not on holiday the way the first man is on holiday. He is here for a funeral, a wedding, a hospital appointment, a shopping run, a football match, a school term, a stock order for his shop.

He books at 20h30 from a garage forecourt, because the place he was going to stay fell through or the road took longer than he thought.

He wants 1 night. Sometimes 2. Then he is gone.

He does not pay in pounds.

Everything he owns for the week is in the car, so he wants to park where he can see it from the window.

Nobody in this trade writes a word for him.

What we do not know

We went looking this morning for which African countries are actually sending the most people. Obvious next question. The piece is worse without it.

Statistics South Africa publishes it. Release P0350. We did not pull it this morning.

4 aggregator sites will hand you a country list. We are not using those. We have no idea where they got the numbers and neither do you. Some serious titles name countries too, and they are reading P0350, which means the answer is to go and read P0350 rather than copy a man who did.

So: African arrivals are growing at more than twice the rate of overseas arrivals, because the department published that and 2 separate titles carried it. The league table is a different piece. We will pull the release and write it.

That is the whole difference between this page and the sites that will tell you anything.

If you have a bed

4 things. None of them costs money.

1 night is a real product. Most hosts price as if a stay is 3 nights minimum, because the fortnight tourist trained them. A man 11 hours into a drive with 3 children in the back does not want your 3 night rate. He wants a clean room, a gate that shuts, and to be gone by 07h00. That fills the Tuesday you were never filling.

Parking is the booking. For a man with a loaded car, secure parking he can see is often the whole decision between you and the place down the road. If you have it, say it first. Not 14th.

He arrives late. That is normal, not an exception. If your listing says check in closes at 18h00 you have removed yourself from this market. The road decides when he gets there.

He comes back. The fortnight tourist comes once in his life. A man driving the same road 4 times a year for family reasons is a standing arrangement. Be decent to him at 23h00 in October and he is yours in February.

Now the part that matters more than any of it

Do not carry cannabis across a border. Not in. Not out. No amount. Not in the boot, not in a bag, not for yourself, not because it is legal where you are going or legal where you came from.

Private adult use here is a domestic position from our own Constitutional Court. It says nothing about what you may carry through a port of entry. Moving cannabis across an international border is a serious crime on both sides of every border this country has. It gets charged as trafficking. People sit in prison in this region for exactly that, and the fact that they were not selling anything did not help them.

We wrote about what a neighbouring state’s paperwork does to ordinary people at Fear and Loathing in the Mountain Kingdom. Nobody on either side of a border cares what you thought the law was.

Drive here with nothing.

The law, flat

Adult. In private. For himself. Use, possession, growing. Lawful since the Constitutional Court handed down Prince 8 years ago today, on 18 September 2018.

The Court gave Parliament 24 months to fix the statute. They ran out on 18 September 2020.

The Cannabis for Private Purposes Act was signed on 28 May 2024 and has never started. That needs a proclamation from the President in the Gazette. There has not been one.

The draft regulations were gazetted on 2 February 2026. Comment closed on 5 March 2026. 197 days ago.

They are still on the Justice department’s own invitations page, released 3 February 2026, no closing date beside them. 227 days. Nothing published since.

Dealing is a crime. Crossing a border with it is a crime. Nothing here says otherwise and nothing here tells you where to get any.

What we want. Line here.

Treat it like a crop. Maize, figs, honey, olives, pumpkins, konfyt. Nobody registers the fig tree at the farm stall. Nobody counts the hives on the bakkie.

Let him grow it. Let him sell it. Tax what he earns. Stop there.

We are not asking for a kinder Act or a fairer gram limit or a licence we might qualify for. We want it forgotten. Long version at Legal Weed Still Has a Ceiling.

And while we are here. If this region ever stops treating a plant as contraband at every gate between here and the equator, the man in the car stops being a man with a risk in his boot. He becomes a man on holiday. That is worth more to every host on this continent than any marketing campaign ever written.

The practical part

6,5 million people in 7 months. The fastest growing part of it is arriving on 4 wheels from somewhere on this continent, with a boot full of family and a phone in his hand at 20h30.

He is not looking for a resort. He is not looking for a fortnight. He wants 1 clean room in a town he is passing through and somewhere to put the car.

CannaStaySA is an information and advertising directory. Over 18 only. We do not sell cannabis, supply it, broker it, or help anyone else do any of that. Nothing on this page tells you where to get any. We tell a traveller who has a bed, in which town, on which night, and what the house rules are. The rest is between the 2 of you.

He came by road. Nobody wrote him a word.

Write him one.

Make it before they take it, Selah.