Conflicting codes and contested justice: Witchcraft and the state in Kenya

Analyzing various "critical moments" at which "witchcraft"-related violence has challenged state authority, this dissertation argues that crimes driven by "witchcraft" have consistently presented practical and epistemological impediments to the state's efforts to construct order and administer justice in Kenya from the colonial-era to the present day. Incorporating archival, oral, and published sources, this project demonstrates the historical ineffectiveness of law and policy in dealing with "witchcraft"-related violence. It also highlights Kamba people's historical and contemporary perspectives on "witchcraft" and on state interventions into "witchcraft." Rather than searching for the "modernity" of "witchcraft," this dissertation reveals how popular discourse has consistently employed "witchcraft" as a metaphor for and explanation of misfortune and how state discourse has continuously constructed "witchcraft" as a convenient category of-the-state, mobilized to explain away persistent disorder. Departing from Mahmood Mamdani's assertion that "custom" constituted one half of a "bipolar" colonial legal system in which "customary" law and "native" courts governed African affairs while civil law and "metropolitan-style" courts regulated non-natives, this thesis examines "witchcraft"-related offences in order to show how criminal law also constituted a central space for governing African affairs. Throughout the colonial period, British authorities produced vast quantities of "anthro-administrative" knowledge about "witchcraft." Tracing the imperial networks through which this knowledge circulated, this dissertation demonstrates how "witchcraft" was an empire-wide, rather than highly localized, concern. During the opening decades of colonial rule, British authorities developed and refined anti-"witchcraft" law and anthro-administrative practice concerning "witchcraft." During the 1930s, the Wakamba Witch Trials stimulated heated debates in Kenya and the metropole over what made British justice in colonial contexts. In the 1940s, sentencing protocols and case law produced a corpus of legal precedent for dealing with "witch"-killing cases. During the Mau Mau rebellion of the mid-1950s, colonial authorities in Kambaland organized a series of "cleansings" of Kamba "witches" who were alleged Mau Mau supporters, thus breaking with the long-standing policy of not officially engaging "witchcraft"-related methods and actors to combat "witchcraft"-driven challenges to state authority. Despite colonial anthro-administrative and legal interventions, "witchcraft"-related violence remains a consistent challenge to state authority to the present day.