“If the government were not here we would kill him” – continuity and change in response to the Witchcraft Ordinances in Nyanza, Kenya, c1910–1960

The Kenyan Witchcraft Ordinances, passed by the British administration in 1909 then revised in 1918 and 1925 represented an attempt by the colonial government to control the punishment of a variety of magical practitioners. This article examines how successfully they were applied in Nyanza. Administrators and judges were forced to recognise their own ignorance of what constituted an offence and leave definitional control of witchcraft in the hands of local people, especially after 1933 when Native Tribunals were authorised and actively encouraged to hear most of the cases. There remained a fundamental incompatibility between the “cognitive map” that underpinned beliefs in the power of magic and a colonial rational–legal judicial system that relied on empirical evidence. Despite indications to the contrary, British officials persisted in their claim that such “superstitions” would naturally decline with the advance of education. In this context the colonial mindset had a lesser claim to reality than belief in the power of magic.