Throughout the colonial era, the “supernatural” state of Kenya was one of conflicting codes and contested justice. The contentious nature of justice, law, and order in Kenya emerges in high relief in cases of witch-killing. In the course of investigating and adjudicating such cases, state authorities aimed simultaneously to discipline and deny local “witchcraft” practices and beliefs while African actors asserted the efficacy and legitimacy of their communities’ approaches to witchcraft.

Accordingly, this chapter analyzes the most high profile witch-killing case in colonial Kenya – that of Mwaiki, a Kamba woman killed in 1931 by a group of men from her community who believed her to have bewitched a neighbor woman. Mwaiki’s case, officially known as Rex v. Kumwaka s/o of Mulumbi and 69 Others, achieved international recognition when it was tried in the Supreme Court of Kenya and sixty of the seventy defendants were sentenced to death. These sentences were upheld by the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa and ultimately commuted by the Governor of Kenya. Rex v. Kumwaka brought to bear imperial anthro-administrative networks of knowledge about witchcraft and engendered vociferous debates in Kenya and the metropole about what made British justice in the African Empire.