Online Reporter
Moreblessing Ncube
EMAKHANDENI suburb may be laughing all the way into 2026 after a couple landed in court for tending seven healthy dagga plants like prized roses in their backyard.
Limukani Nyoni (45) and his wife Sithokuhle Sithole (33) shuffled into Bulawayo Magistrate Patience Madondo’s court looking more like embarrassed gardeners than hardened criminals. The magistrate released them until December 5 while the court tries to unravel what on earth was going on in that garden.
Nyoni boldly pleaded not guilty. Sithole on the other hand quickly raised her hand and admitted everything, almost like a pupil caught with homework copied from the clever neighbour.
Prosecutor Joseph Rugara told the court that on 1 November, police pounced after a tip-off that the Emakhandeni lovers were growing something extra leafy behind the house. Officers arrived to find seven tall dagga plants swaying in the breeze like they paid rent.
Sithole told the court that when they moved into the house they found the plants already there. Instead of removing them she decided to keep them because locals claimed boys used to smoke there. “So I just watered them,” she explained, as if reporting on tomatoes.
She added that she eats the dagga seeds to lower her blood pressure which left the courtroom in stunned silence as Rugara reminded her that self-prescribing a whole illegal plant was not exactly medical science.
He urged the court to give her a sentence that would keep her far away from her leafy medication so she does not try to fix her pressure by raising everyone else’s.
