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Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition:

The Case of Kenyan Horticulture

Catherine S. Dolan

ABSTRACT

This article examines the social effects of contract farming of export horti-

culture among smallholders in Meru District, Kenya. During the 1980s and

1990s, contracting was popularized by donors and governments alike as a way

to reduce poverty and increase opportunities for self-employment in ruralareas. Considerable research has documented the tensions in social relations

that emerge in such cases, giving rise to gendered struggles over land, labour,

and income in the face of new commodity systems. This article highlights

similar tendencies. It suggests that mens failure to compensate their wives

for horticulture production has given rise to a string of witchcraft allegations

and acts, as the wealth engendered by horticultural commodities comes

up against cultural norms of marital obligation. While witchcraft accusations

can expose women to risks of social alienation and financial deprivation,

witchcraft nevertheless remains a powerful weapon through which women can

level intra-household disparities and, more broadly, challenge the legitimacy

of social practice. In Meru, witchcraft discourses are a vehicle through which

gendered struggles over contract income are articulated and contested, and

through which the social costs of agrarian transition become apparent.

INTRODUCTION

On a breezy February day, throngs of women descended the fertile slopes

of Mt. Kenya to convene at the Chief s camp. The meeting had been

summoned by local politicians in the wake of the poisoning of a village man,whose wife claimed that he refused to share French bean income with her.

As women sat in the shade of the trees, nursing their babies and grading

French beans for export to Europe, the speaker asked the women if it was

right to put poison in their husbands food? The women quietly responded

no. The speaker continued, Why are you killing your husbands? . . .Your

husband protects and guards you so dont try to kill him.

I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Fulbright, the Joint Committee on AfricanStudies of the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation (grant

#240-2873A), which made this research possible. I also thank Cecile Jackson of the School of

Development Studies, University of East Anglia, and three anonymous reviewers for their

constructive comments.

Development and Change 33(4): 659681 (2002). # Institute of Social Studies 2002. Publishedby Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden,MA 02148. USA


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Indeed, why are women allegedly poisoning their husbands? How are

such accusations connected to the infusion of external capital for French

bean production? And what can this case tell us about the way that social

relations are expressed and/or destabilized in situations of agrarian change?This article explores these questions, focusing on how the contract farming

of export horticulture in Meru District, Kenya has been mediated by local

conceptions of gender and culture. Prior to the introduction of French beans

in Meru, womens usufruct property was allocated to local vegetables grown

for household consumption and sale at local markets. When export horti-

cultural crops were introduced, they engendered new property and labour

arrangements, with the horticultural success story founded to a large extent

on womens labour. Moreover, as French beans became increasingly lucrative,

horticulture the historical domain of women became appropriated by

men, who laid claim to the land allocated for, or the income derived from

French bean production. With men hedging into conventionally female

spheres, womens1 control has eroded, and conflict has ensued over male

and female property, and womens rights to a rewarding income stream.

Most women have responded to the intensification of the labour process

with apparent compliance, although the form of that compliance differs.

Some have remained silent in the face of mounting work burdens; others

have diverted their labour to church groups and become saved into a lifeof Christ (Dolan, 2001).2 However, several women have employed more

aggressive strategies when their remuneration is at stake. Income is one

terrain on which familial politics are played out, as the wealth engendered

by horticultural commodities comes up against cultural norms of communal

obligation. In particular, women have directly challenged mens refusal to

compensate them for their land and labour, threatening and/or deploying

witchcraft to reclaim their economic autonomy and purchase freedom from

male constraint. In Meru, witchcraft discourses are a vehicle through which

gendered struggles over contract income are articulated and contested, andthrough which the social costs of agrarian transition become apparent.

HORTICULTURAL CONTRACTING IN MERU DISTRICT, KENYA

This article is based on fieldwork conducted in Meru District from 1994 to

19963 and three supplementary visits from 1998 to 2000. The research took

1. While there are important intra-gender differences and social divisions that condition

womens access to resources, this article focuses exclusively on married women and

resource constraints between husband and wife.

2. Joining church groups and becoming saved into a life of Christ have become ways that

women confront the confines of their marriage.

3. Fieldwork consisted of quantitative and qualitative interviews conducted with 113 male

contract farmers and 94 spouses cultivating French beans.

660 Catherine S. Dolan


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place in Abothuguchi West, Central Imenti Division, one of the most

densely populated and agriculturally productive areas in Kenya.4 While

Meru boasts a long history of smallholder involvement in coffee and tea, it

was not until the late 1980s that several Nairobi-based companies, respond-ing to the growing demand for exotic vegetables in Europe, introduced

export horticulture to the area.5 By the mid-1990s there were more than

twenty-five horticultural export firms operating in Meru, providing seeds,

inputs and a guaranteed market outlet to smallholder farmers under contract.

In Central Imenti specifically more than 600 farmers were integrated into

contractual arrangements to grow French beans and mangetout on plots of

less than half an acre.

Horticultural crops are particularly well suited to contract farming due to

stringent quality and cosmetic imperatives that necessitate close scrutiny of

cultivation and post-harvest activities. Such imperatives engender particu-

larly high labour intensity at certain points in the production process such as

planting, weeding and harvesting. For example, Kenyas most widely grown

horticultural export crops snow peas and French beans require 600

and 500 labour days per hectare respectively (Little, 1994). By outsourcing

production, export firms ensure that this intensification of the labour

process is internalized within the farm household.

While there is a now a sizeable literature6

documenting the economicbenefits as well as social costs of contract farming, there are two features of

the institution that are relevant to this article. Firstly, one of the main

advantages of contracting for export firms is that it allows them to exercise

control over the production process without the liability of owning or oper-

ating farms (Key and Rungsten, 1999). However, companies will generally

only issue contracts (and payment) to landowners. This effectively excludes

women from receiving a contract in their name since in Meru, as in most parts

of Kenya, the vast majority of landowners are men. Secondly, companies

remunerate growers on the basis of the unit of produce harvested regardlessof labour input, thereby banking on the process of family self-exploitation

to meet production objectives. Export firms thus harness an entire family

to global agricultural production, trusting that the labour process will be

managed through cultural norms of rights and responsibilities (Collins, 1991).

However, it is not only family labour but specifically female labour that is

essential for effective horticultural production. As the chairman of Kenya

4. In 1995 there were an average of 420 people per km2, with approximately 95 per cent of the

labour force engaged in smallholder agriculture (Rural Planning Department, 1996).

5. While Kenya has a long history of participation in export horticulture (vegetables, fruits

and cut flowers), it became widely promoted during the 1980s as part of the agricultural

diversification initiatives of international lending agencies.

6. See Ayako et al. (1989), Glover and Kusterer (1990), Kennedy (1989), and Williams and

Karen (1985) for a discussion on the benefits of contract farming. See Little and Watts

(1994) and Mbilinyi (1988) for a critique of its social consequences.

Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition 661


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Horticultural Exporters claimed, Women are better bean pickers. Their

hands are smaller and they have more patience for the work than the men

(pers. comm.). These gendered associations are not simply derived from

capitalist ideologies that consider women better suited for horticulturalwork but are also embedded in local cultural norms that differentiate labour

allocation and crop cultivation by gender.

Gender and Contract Farming

Studies of how gender identities, roles and responsibilities inform and are

informed by changing commodity relations are, by now, familiar ones.

Nearly three decades ago, for example, Chambers and Moris (1973) charted

the unintended consequences of development that arose when gendered

property rights were overlooked in a Kenyan rice scheme. More recently,

scholars have documented the tensions in social relations to emerge in cases

of agricultural commercialization, tracing the link between the penetration

of transnational capital and the transformation of womens private lives in

the household (see von Bu low and Srensen, 1988; Carney, 1992; Dey, 1981;

Heald, 1991; Mackintosh, 1989; Mbilinyi, 1988).

Several of these studies have focused specifically on the institution ofcontract farming, documenting how agrarian potential is circumscribed by

the nature and form of domestic organization, including conjugal, kin and

filial responsibilities. For example, Healds research (1991) among contract

tobacco growers in Western Kenya clearly illustrated how social structure

mediated the effects of contract farming, leading to markedly different

outcomes for the Teso and Kuria. In contrast to the Kuria, the small

household size and rigid division of labour among the Teso impeded the

moblization of labour, generating tensions among husbands and wives over

labour allocation, subsistence, and control over tobacco income. This theme the incapacity of households to accommodate increased labour burdens

and the social strain that ensues features in several studies of contract

farming. Both von Bu low and Srensen (1988), and Mbilinyi (1988), for

example, depicted how pressures on womens labour time following the

introduction of tea contracting destabilized conjugal relations and under-

mined the broader potential for capital accumulation. Similarly, research by

Carney and Watts (1990) on irrigated rice contracting captured with great

clarity the significance that social norms play in defining property rights and

labour responsibilities, and more importantly how those definitions conferopportunities for income and well-being in contract farming. What all these

studies share is a conjugal contract rife with struggles over land, labour, and

income in the face of changing material relations. More specifically, they all

point to the importance of understanding how gender and cultural norms

figure in the constitution and transformation of agrarian processes. This

article follows these lines of inquiry, exploring how the process of French



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bean contracting is shaped by, as well as embedded in, the practices and

discourses of witchcraft in Meru.

WITCHCRAFT AND MODERNITY

Within the last two decades, one of the most striking aspects of postcolonial

Africa has been the re-emergence of witchcraft in public discourse. While

witchcraft has long been at the heart of African anthropological study, it has

recently resurfaced as central to critiques of culture and modernity. Part

of the reason for this renewed interest has been the shift away from view-

ing African witchcraft as a phenomenon restricted to bounded traditional

societies to the identification of witchcraft with wider processes of global

change.7 In fact, the majority of recent work views witchcraft as distinctly

modern, as a signifier for the contradictions and tensions emanating from

contemporary processes of missionization, urbanization, state domination

and globalization.8 These studies show that far from disappearing in the face

of modernization, witchcraft is ubiquitous in Africa, implicated in conflicts

between rural and urban, state and community, and men and women.

While anthropological interpretations of witchcraft may have changed,

the idea that witchcraft reflects the friction between communal values (moraleconomy) and individual accumulation (capitalism) persists. Expressions of

the occult are well documented in situations of economic change, where the

introduction of new resources exacerbates social differentiation and accentu-

ates struggles for power and control. For example, Seur (1992: 206) shows

how farmers in a climate of rapid economic differentiation in Zimbabwe

used sorcery accusations as a check on communal imbalance, effectively

ensuring conformity to an ideology of equality. Similarly, Kohnert (1996)

discusses the spate of witchcraft accusations against the nouveaux riches

who flout customary rules of redistribution and kinship norms of solidarity.In the same vein, Niehaus (1993) traces the historical shift from witches

attacking communities to witches targeting individuals and households,

reflecting the deterioration of communal ties and heightened friction within

and between households.

7. Anthropologists have interpreted African witchcraft variously. Arguably the most

significant work has been Evans-Pritchards (1937) interpretation of Azande witchcraft

as an explanatory framework for seemingly inexplicable phenomena (such as misfortuneand illness). Functionalist approaches such as Goody (1970), Douglas (1963), Marwick

(1965), Middleton (1964) and Middleton and Winter (1963) viewed witchcraft and witch-

craft accusations as mechanisms of social control, ensuring long-term equilibrium through

the release of structural tension among kin and community. For a review of literature on

African witchcraft see the essays in African Studies Review 41:3 (1998).

8. See Auslander (1993), Austen (1993), Bastian (1993), Comaroff and Comaroff (1993),

Englund (1996), Geschiere (1997), Kohnert (1996), Masquelier (1993), Niehaus (1993,

2001), Parish (1999, 2000), Rutherford (1999) and Shaw (1997).



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What all these studies demonstrate is how clearly witchcraft and kinship

are connected to social norms and expectations of reciprocity and exchange,

and how both are inculcated in putative notions of intimacy and trust. As

Geschiere and Fisiy (1994: 325) contend: witchcraft is indeed the dark sideof kinship: it reflects the frightening notion that there is hidden aggression

and violence where there should be only trust and solidarity.

In no area is this dark side more evident than in the use (or purported

use) of witchcraft between men and women. Several feminist scholars

(Ciekawy, 1999; Drucker-Brown, 1993; Karlsen, 1987; Larner, 1981) have

shown how witchcraft practice and accusations are grounded in gendered

power struggles, where culturally constructed notions of male and female

and the boundaries of material prosperity are played out.9 For example,

Nadel (1952) interpreted witchcraft among the Nupe of Nigeria as a mani-

festation of malefemale competition. He argued that the prevalence of

female witches attacking, dominating and threatening male authority was

linked to womens economic power in the marketplace. In this situation the

success of female traders precipitated accusations by their husbands (who

were frequently indebted to them) that women were organized in clandestine

witchs covens. Similarly, Goodys study of male and female witchcraft

among the Gonja of Ghana showed how idealized constructions of gender

roles denied women a sanctioned vehicle for the expression of aggressiveemotion. As Goody noted, womens perceived use of witchcraft not only

threatened the viability of male control but cast into doubt the benevolence

of the affective relationships on which the domestic group centres (1970:

242). This theme was echoed by Drucker-Brown (1993), who argued that

witchcraft among the Mamprusi of Ghana not only reflected the emergent

autonomy of women in the sexual division of labour but also diminishing

male control in the economic sphere. What all these cases have in common is

that witchcraft is associated with women transcending the boundaries of

appropriate social behaviour and hence, challenging their ascribed positionwithin the social hierarchy.

WITCHCRAFT IN MERU

Despite the widespread adoption of Christianity in Kenya, anxiety about

witchcraft and fear of its repercussions remain a salient feature of daily life.

Witchcraft is blamed for missing persons, deviant social behaviour, illness,

death and natural catastrophe, and people are lynched, mobbed and

9. Several theories suggest that women are predominantly associated with the occult due to

their social marginalization, which is expressed in symbolic forms such as spirit possession,

sorcery and witchcraft (Ardener, 1970; Giles, 1987; Lewis, 1989; Ong, 1987). However,

others (Drucker-Brown, 1993; Nadel, 1952) attribute the phenomenon to the increasing

power of women in economic spheres.



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slaughtered because of their alleged predilection for the occult.10 It is an

integral and dynamic aspect of social order, an ever-present threat that is

deeply inscribed in public culture and private life (Comaroff and Comaroff,

1993: xviii). As one interviewee noted, Most of us fear it so much. We are soafraid of losing our lives, property or children. You see if one is bewitched

its not easy to reverse its effects. Its traumatizing.

Yet witchcraft is not a new phenomenon in Meru.11 As early as the 1900s

colonial officials in Meru District perceived local institutions such as kiamas12

and the njuri ncheke13 as bulwarks of witchcraft and paganism. Local Native

Council minutes are permeated with claims that the progress of the District

had been impeded by the persistence of superstition, and warnings to

Christians against joining secret societies or adopting lurid oathing prac-

tices.14 By the 1920s colonial officials were intent on banishing witchcraft,

contending that the inability of the backward Meru people to attain the

economic advancement of the neighbouring Kikuyu was rooted in witch-

craft practices, which had penetrated the Meru African Colonial Service and

endangered the colonial structure itself. District Commissioner Lamb (who

instituted the anti-witchdoctor campaign), claimed that no tribe in Kenya

was more deeply steeped in witchcraft than the Meru, and that witchcraft was

robbing the chiefs, and through them the entire machinery of the British

administration of all governing initiative (cited by Fadiman, 1993: 305).Close to a century later, vilifying witchcraft as an obstacle to development

is central to the vision of the post-colonial state. From national politicians

to village leaders, witchcraft is demonized in public discourse as a relic of a

backward past that threatens to undermine national objectives of progress

and accumulation. In fact, in 1994 President Moi was forced to appoint a

Presidential Commission to investigate the perceived resurgence of witch-

craft, ritual murders, and other ostensibly occult practices brewing through-

out Kenya. The outcome of this investigation the widely publicized Report

on Devil Worship included numerous reports of magic, ritual murder, andcannibalism, which threatened to derail the countrys national objectives

(Njau, 1999). The government frequently calls baraza (public assemblies)15

to preach against the apparent rise of occult practices such as witchcraft

10. There were sixteen deaths caused by mob violence against persons suspected of practising

witchcraft in 1998 (US State Department, 1998).

11. In contrast to Evans-Pritchards (1937) seminal distinction between witchcraft (ascribed)

and sorcery (achieved), the Meru use the terms interchangeably in conversation. While the

practices described in this paper (i.e. poisoning) fall within the Evans-Pritchards definitionof sorcery, I use the term witchcraft to denote both types of action.

12. Kiamas (councils) formed part of the governing body of the Meru (Fadiman, 1993).

13. The njuri ncheke, or Council of Elders, is a disciplinary body that was responsible for

executing laws and arbitrating disputes.

14. Minutes of the Meru Local Native Council County Court, LNC/15/15/6, 1952, and May

12, 1955 (no file number).

15. Baraza are outdoor assemblies licensed by the state, typically called by national and/or

local politicians (Haugerud, 1995).



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and to promote ideologies of Christianity and national unity to subvert its

appeal.

However, despite the rhetoric deployed by government and clergy, it is

specifically within the context of the modern post-colonial state thatwitchcraft is flourishing (Parish, 1999). So who are these witches that are the

terror of development (Apter, 1993: 125)? Can witchcraft discourses tell us

anything about the way gendered conflicts over resources are registered and

contested in a context of agrarian transition?

As in many African societies, witchcraft in Meru (urogi) is seen as a way

to diagnose and understand misfortune and adversity.16 It is not uncommon

to hear witchcraft invoked as an explanation for crop failure, livestock loss,

and other natural catastrophes. As one interviewee said, A phenomenon

that cannot be explained like drought, floods, these things that destroy our

property and not the neighbours, this is truly witchcraft. Yet witchcraft

is more frequently viewed as a means to redress interpersonal hostilities

and jealousies stemming from economic differentiation. In an area of high

population growth riven by competition for resources, witchcraft acts as a

powerful weapon to settle the score against potential rivals for economic

gain. As one interviewee expressed it, it is this gap between the haves and

the have nots that causes all this bewitching issue. This echoes Greens

(1994: 24) study of the Pogoro of Tanzania, which showed that witches,motivated by jealousy and greed, attacked people whose main mistake

was in surpassing their fellow villagers on the path to accumulation. This

explanation was supported by a well-to-do Meru man who said, When I go

into Meru town . . . you hear many educated people and those who are very

rich confessing they dont want to go to the villages because they will be

bewitched. I understand that. You even fear the people around you. When you

have something they dont have, its not easy to live with it. When you know

that the people you eat and drink with want your things, what can you do?

For the Meru witchcraft is a premeditated act, based on the manipulationof spiritual entities and/or substances by malicious individuals with the

intent to cause harm. It generally assumes the form of either bewitching or

poisoning.17 The former involves casting a spell on a piece of the victims

property or planting a substance in a strategic point where the victim is

likely to pass. The latter involves creating a medicinal concoction from

plants, to inflict illness, death, or more widely, to render the victim lazy,

unreliable, and mentally incapacitated. The Meru also believe that a witch-

doctor or herbalist can counter the effects of bewitching, but only if the

victim possesses sufficient resources to offer proper compensation.

16. Prior to the advent of Christianity, the notion of a centralized evil force personified as

Satan or the devil was non-existent in Meru. Instead, misfortune was attributed to

displeased ancestral spirits or to various forms of witchcraft.

17. Historical acounts record three main types of witchcraft in Meru: curses and incantations;

rituals; and potions/medicines (Fadiman, 1993; MImanyara, 1992).



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In contrast to the colonial and pre-colonial period, however, where

individuals associated with witchcraft were widely considered to be male,

today the sex of the witch is contingent upon the type of offence for which

retribution is sought. In general, men are associated with witchcraft that isemployed to mitigate inter-household conflicts, primarily land disputes with

neighbours. Women, on the other hand, are most commonly regarded as

perpetrators of intra-household witchcraft, seeking to revenge husbands, co-

wives, and children for their greater share of resources. The latter association

is borne out in divorce records, where husbands frequently accuse wives of

threatening to poison or bewitch them to gain access to household land.18

However, while women are the targets of most allegations, many women

also consider witchcraft to be a legitimate way to assert claims for equity

and power within their households. Rumours of women giving their husbands

kagweria19 a substance that induces psychosis and transforms men into

dolts, thus leaving control of the household to the wife or poisoning their

husbands to death, have been recorded in Meru since the 1930s. Womens

use of the practice is said to have heightened during the 1970s when men

started abusing coffee and tea income, which while under male control, was

also intended to sustain the economic well-being of the household. Cur-

rently the practice is claimed to include conflicts over French bean income,

which women consider their crop. Other rationales for demasculinizingmen through kagweria include adultery, one co-wife becoming jealous of

another if the husband is favouring the latters children in land allocation, and

womens subordination in the household (Dolan, 1999). In these cases, the use

of kagweria is fuelled by a womans sense of injustice, primarily their

exclusion from the protections afforded by land and independent income

streams, such as French beans.

In reality, whether or not women use kagweria against their husbands is

unclear. While there are indications of a well-established local market for

the herbs, it is also the case that witchcraft is generally manifest in rumours,allusions and insinuations, which may or may not be grounded in actual

practice. However, the essential question is not whether women are

poisoning their husbands per se, but rather under what circumstances such

threats and allegations arise. And it appears that one such circumstance is

the contract farming of French beans.

French Bean Production

How womens work is defined, commodified, and negotiated within the

household directly mediates the production process of horticulture

18. Meru County Court Records, Land Register, Central Imenti Civil Cases #63/88, #69/91,

#20/91, #5/92, #733/64.

19. Kagweria, a liquid acquired from certain trees, is mixed with sedative drugs. It can be

purchased from knowledgeable women in the Chuka and Embu areas.



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contracting. In Meru over 90 per cent of contracts are issued to male

household members who control labour allocation and secure payment.23

However, the fulfilment of those contracts rests primarily on womens

unpaid labour; women are nearly wholly responsible for planting, weedingand picking French beans. While over 27 per cent of men do participate

in French bean labour, for the most part their activities (ploughing and

fertilizer application) require less overall labour and have less significance

for product quality. Nevertheless, despite the labour requirements of French

beans, there has been no adjustment of labour obligations between husband

and wife. In fact, men have contributed less labour to their wives plots and

women have been compelled to hire labour to perform tasks that were

formerly performed by their husbands. Some 52 per cent of men in contrast

to 39 per cent of women hired people to work on horticultural crops. In

both cases the hired labour was highly feminized with women constituting

over 75 per cent of workers contracted to plant, weed, pick and grade

French beans (primarily female-defined tasks).20

However, it is French bean income, and in some cases land appropriation,

rather than labour, which has become the terrain of overt conflict between

husband and wife. In general, women have not openly challenged the intensi-

fication of the labour process. While some women have diverted their labour

to church groups, seeking both fellowship and their own choice of work, thispractice falls within the parameters of prevailing norms of the good wife.

In Meru maintaining the reputation of a good wife engenders considerable

protections. It is intimately linked to the benefits that women derive from a

household system where loss of social standing has dramatic material conse-

quences. However, there are several women who are rumoured to have

discarded the protections afforded by compliance with Christian norms of

conjugal responsibility. These women have exerted a forceful claim against

mens refusal to compensate them for the labour used in French bean culti-

vation, and in some cases the appropriation of their usufruct land. The nextsection of the paper examines why this is, and more specifically why witch-

craft discourses have become the loci of tensions between husband and wife.

STRUGGLES OVER LAND

In Meru land fragmentation has become increasingly prevalent, fuelled by

high population growth and patrilineal inheritance practices that compel

each man to divide his property among his sons. Deteriorating land qualityand availability means that land has become a vitally contested resource,

and a key field on which intra-familial contestations are expressed. Between

1983 and 1994 the number of land disputes in Meru District doubled from

20. See Dolan (2001) for an analysis of the impact of French bean production on household

labour allocation.



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460 to 946 cases. Further, close to 10 per cent of all murders committed in

the district between 1979 and 1989 were due to land disputes.21 Over 69 per

cent of people in this study felt that land disputes are more severe today than

ten years ago and 48 per cent of people have experienced land or boundarydisputes themselves. As one interviewee noted, we have so many of these

land disputes between families or neighbours. Everybody is fighting for a

portion of land which everyone claims is theirs.

Land scarcity is particularly inimical for women, especially for those who

are unmarried, fail to give birth to sons, and/or those who have lost their

usufruct rights due to their husbands or male kins appropriation. Despite

statutory laws that permit women to own land regardless of marital status,

over 95 per cent of land is registered to men. In Meru, as in other parts of

Kenya, womens rights to land remain predominantly embodied in custom-

ary law (founded on patrilineal inheritance practices), and are contingent on

their status as wives, mothers and daughters. In fact for many women access

to land has remained virtually the same since the pre-colonial period, with

use rights to garden plots derived from their husbands upon marriage

(Laughton, 1938). Prior to the introduction of French beans, these gardens

were earmarked for local vegetables grown for household consumption and

sale at local markets. Most importantly, women had the right to dispose of

income from crops grown on these fields, providing them with somemeasure of autonomy. It is these fields that have become a vitally contested

resource since the inception of export horticultural production.

Studies (Aspaas, 1998; Bryceson, 1995) have shown how agricultural

commoditization can lead to male encroachment on female property, either

undermining womens ability to fulfil subsistence needs or to produce cash

crops over which they might have control. This is particularly true in regions

that have developed specialized market niches such as export horticulture.

In Meru, the gendered nature of property rights circumscribes the benefits

that women derive from French bean production. Due to the grave landscarcity in the area, women are not in a position to expand their horti-

cultural production without repercussions for local vegetable production.

There is an inverse relationship between the land allocated to export

horticulture and local crops: as fields devoted to the former expand, those

apportioned to the latter contract. Because tea remains highly profitable and

coffee cannot be legally uprooted, the only reserve of land to appropriate is

that which supports local crop cultivation (including maize, vegetables and

fruits). Because women retain control over the income from the sale of local

vegetables, it is in their interest to allocate more land to them than to Frenchbeans. However, over 33 per cent of the women interviewed claimed that

their husbands had either compelled them to grow French beans on their

21. Meru District Country Court Records, Civil Cases, Land Register, 19831994 and Meru

District Annual Reports, 19831994.



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usufruct plots or retracted their rights to those plots altogether. This is a key

breach of cultural norms as womens rights to usufruct property, and to the

income derived from that property, are encased in customary arrangements.

Women claim that conflicts over their usufruct property have becomeparticularly marked since the introduction of export horticulture. Many

women who contest the appropriation of their usufruct property and in-

equitable inheritance practices do so via the courts. They bypass the clan,22

feeling that their interests are better served through statutory law, exploiting

the Christian precepts of male obligation, on which statutory law is erected

to press their claims in court.23 However, this is not the whole story.

Witchcraft is allegedly employed to ward against the potential of future land

appropriation. As one interviewee noted, This is very common in Meru and

around Tharaka and Tigania area. The person who wants to keep her land

can also bewitch him [her husband] so that he dies or goes mad. When she

threatens and carries out the threat, the husbands fear and give in to her

demands. Another interviewee claimed that In the case where a woman is

not satisfied with what is happening she can decide to grab her husbands

land anyway. So she uses witchcraft so that she can influence the judgement

when they go to court and hence obtain her husbands land. Geschiere

(1997) labels such action as the levelling side of witchcraft, whereby

jealousy incites aggrieved individuals to employ occult forms of aggressionto force those in power to share their wealth. In Meru, this has its ante-

cedents in the pre-colonial and colonial period, when the threat of witchcraft

was intended to mitigate inter-personal hostilities before they became overly

inflamed (Fadiman, 1993). For example, the curses issued by womens

kiamas were not so much to kill their husbands as to force them to seek

alternatives, preferably by providing . . . gifts sufficient to induce removal of

the curse (ibid.: 160). In the same vein, womens threats of witchcraft today

act as a mechanism to effect equity in land allocation.

CONTROL OVER INCOME

While both labour and land allocation are grounded in cultural construc-

tions of rights and responsibilities, income distribution is governed by

patriarchal ideologies that privilege male prerogatives. The households in

this study are not joint, pooling enterprises, but rather a constellation of

individual undertakings in which the household head manages the production

processes and controls its subsequent output. In contrast to parts of WestAfrica (Guyer, 1988; Hill, 1975) where distinct male/female axes of domestic

22. Dispute resolution is processual, undergoing four stages: family/household, clan, sub-

Chief/Chief, and ultimately statutory courts.

23. See Dolan (2001) for an elaboration of this process.



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budgets exist (separate purses), income in Meru is intended to collectively

insure the well-being of the household. However, while women ostensibly

comply with cultural prescriptions regarding income control, their actual

behaviour diverges considerably from those norms. Most women are careful

to shield their earnings from their spouse lest they be compelled to pay for

school fees, medical expenses or for household items that are normatively

their husbands responsibility.

Part of this strategizing results from the significant disparities in womens

access to, and control over income. Womens income averages one-third of

mens due to few opportunities for female wage employment and off-farmincome generating activities. Over 85 per cent of women, in comparison to

32 per cent of men, garnered no income outside the sale of agricultural crops.

Moreover, the primary sources of remuneration for men coffee, tea, French

beans and the sale of livestock are generally more profitable than the sale

of food crops (womens primary income source).26 However, even within

agricultural production, men control the vast majority of income (see Table 1)

despite the fact that women perform a disproportionate share of labour.

Table 1. Average Annual Income and Control

Crop Income Control

Female (%) Male (%)

Bananas 10.0 90.0Beans 72.7 27.3Cabbage 50.0 50.0Carrots 53.6 46.4Coffee 14.0 86.0French beans 38.0 62.0Maize 53.3 46.7Mangetout24 52.0 48.0Onions 61.1 39.9

Potato 49.2 50.8Passion fruits 90.0 10.0Pyrethrum 0.0 100.0Tea 6.7 93.3Tomato 75.3 24.7Wheat 0.0 100.0

Source: Bi-weekly Agricultural Production Survey, 19949525

24. Women are generally able to retain a higher percentage of mangetout income due to the

lower quantity produced, and hence lower income generated. However, further research is

needed to determine whether this situation has changed since the recent growth in the

mangetout market.

25. This survey collected data on labour allocation and income generation for 113 men and

94 women cultivating French beans.

26. Women only sell between 8 and 14 per cent of food crops as the majority of food crops are

consumed.



14/23

As Table 2 indicates, there is an inverse relationship between the level of

womens labour participation and their control over agricultural earnings.

Struggles over Export Horticulture Income

While French bean production can potentially increase overall household

incomes, there is a wide disparity in the distribution of income between men

and women. Women perform 72 per cent of the labour for French beans,

and obtain 38 per cent of the income. In many cases the profitability of

French beans has piqued mens interest, prompting them to assume control

of the income, despite the fact that women perform the majority of the

labour and customarily control all horticultural crops. For most women,

control over French bean income is contingent upon the leverage that they

can exert within their households or more commonly, upon the goodwill of

their husbands. As one interviewee claimed, I am not financially inde-

pendent from my husband. I plant and grow and sell the French beans.

When I give the money to my husband sometimes he refuses and gives it

back to me for my own needs. Other times not.

While it might be argued that women maintain a higher percentage of

French bean income relative to other African export crops such as coffee,

tea or cocoa, two points need to be considered. The first is that Frenchbeans (and other horticultural export crops) are grown on womens usufruct

property, and rights to income from this property have conventionally been

enshrined in cultural norms. While cultural meanings are, of course, subject

to (re)negotiation and overlapping claims, it is nevertheless interesting to

understand the conditions under which cultural entitlements are subject to

revocation. In the Meru case, we can clearly see how rapidly cultural purity

dissolves in the face of economic imperatives and patriarchal prerogatives.

The second point is that even where women receive money, they are often

compelled to contribute this cash to household expenditures that wouldhave typically been their husbands responsibility. Women often accuse their

husbands and brothers of squandering French bean profits on alcohol and

miraa 27 and abandoning their family to the desires of their body. One

woman cursed men on market day, proclaiming You speak this afternoon

Table 2. Control of Income Over all Crops versus Labour Performed

Labour Performed (%) Control over Income (%)

Men 18 66Women 82 34

Source: Bi-weekly Agricultural Production Survey, 199495

27. Miraa is a stimulant grown in the area.



15/23

but tonight when you sleep the devil will come. Another woman passing

the market proclaimed, Money of the people taken in the wrong way will

always be misused but the one who is using his own sweat will eventually

reap the fruits. Conflicts between husbands and wives over the allocationof income from French beans are commonplace and often escalate into

household violence. As one female interviewee claimed: The crops that

result in wife-beating today are coffee and tea, because they are termed as a

mans crop. Many husbands misuse money from these crops and when

asked they beat their wives. Michiri [French beans] are also cause for

beating. When we try to keep our money, our husband asks where it is. If we

dont give it to him we are beaten. These crops cause us many problems.

This was supported by a village man who said, If the wife misuses money

from milk or crops she is beaten. Many women misuse money from these

crops and when they are asked [for the money], they dont have it. They are

beaten for this.

Most men interviewed agreed that wife-beating was necessary to sustain

the moral order of the home. Wife-beating brings respect to the household

women become more disciplined due to beating. Christian norms of wife

obedience have legitimated the escalation in domestic violence against women

by providing aggrieved husbands with a justifiable means of retribution. For

example, the following words were spoken at a baraza summoned by the Chiefand village politicians of Githongo Location to lecture women on norms of

female obedience. This was in the wake of the poisoning of a village man,

whose wife claimed that he refused to allocate any French bean income to her.

You must accept your husband whether he is good or bad to you . . . You must always

appreciate your husband. If he comes in late or has been with other women you must not

quarrel but accept and appreciate him. Never chase him away just pray to God that he

becomes better. You must never move about with other men; if you do you deserve the abuse

that your husband serves you.

As a result of such violence, myriad women are either leaving or divorcing

their husbands. Divorce cases increased by 400 per cent between 1982 and

1992,28 with womens motivation for divorce strongly linked to both physical

abuse and mens default on marital responsibilities. This is a striking rise not

only because divorce is censured by the Church, but also because marriage

and fertility are a key aspect of womens identity and status. While divorce

may be seen as empowering for women, it nevertheless involves considerable

patriarchal risk (Cain et al., 1979). This risk the loss of economic

security and social position can engender social exclusion, landlessness,and deprivation in a rigidly patrilineal society such as Meru.29 Nevertheless,

despite the vulnerability that divorce can entail, it is one way that women

28. Meru County Court, African and Christian Marriage and Divorce Records, 19821992.

29. In the case of divorce a woman is required to return to her natal family, and the

bridewealth paid for her must be returned.



16/23

assert a claim against male authority in both the appropriation of household

income (such as French beans) and against physical abuse in their marriage.

WITCHCRAFT AND WOMEN

This notion of patriarchal risk extends equally to those women who

challenge their ascribed position within the social system by threatening

to bewitch or poison their husbands. By invoking the potential of witch-

craft (whether or not it is actualized) women are defying the patriarchal

bargain,30 breaking with the normative rules regulating gender relations and

the explicit code of behaviour expected of a good wife (Dolan, 2001). It is

important to acknowledge what this risk entails; as a woman bereft of a

husband, the witch potentially inhabits a position of complete vulnerability,

stigmatized socially and marginalized economically. Yet despite the very

real sanctions that exposure to witchcraft accusations entails, some women

are willing to take this unthinkable risk. It is particularly in contestations

over household income rather than over inequitable labour allocation that

women transcend the parameters of patriarchal constraint through the

threat and/or exercise of witchcraft. One woman explained the reason this

way, Many women end up being frustrated because after days go by, themen find it not useful to bring home the money, but instead spend it in

towns with young beautiful ladies. The women feel bad, frustrated, and start

looking for alternatives. The best advice they lay their minds on is if

I bewitch my husband, I will control all the income. It really works and the

man at the end of the month brings home all the money . . . If my husband

was like this, I would do the same.

Rumours of kagweria use in income conflicts have become increasingly

common in Abothuguchi West. In 1993 a thirty-five-year-old woman in

Githongo Location was accused of administering the potion to her husband,who suffered from dementia and later, psychosis. When the Chief interro-

gated her, she disclosed that there was a group of four women in the

Location who had supposedly perfected the recipe and were distributing

it to other women. One interviewee described womens involvement with

kagweria in the following way.

Women buy [kagweria] from Tharaka, Tigania, Chuka and Embu from other women who

are old. Kagweria is a charm given secretly by women to their men that changes mens mental

ability to a worse state. Once a man is fed with kagweria, he stops giving orders to his woman

and therefore the woman becomes the head of the family. This [use] has increased because we

are dealing away with our traditional customs. Before, the clan would intervene in husband

and wife cases. Now the clan doesnt do much for us, so we get a solution for ourselves. Men

dont respect their wives or they are not all that faithful like before. They still love with other

30. The patriarchal bargain conveys the protections that women are afforded in marriage in

exchange for acquiescing to inequalities, thus maximizing their interests (Kandiyoti, 1988).



17/23

women and this annoys the wives. Most women do not want to accept that a woman should

always be under a man, like they tell us. We are envious of the progressing way of other

women who have freedom. A way to have freedom is to give kagweria. . . [and obtain] power

over the wealth, especially from the good crops.

Women claim that bewitching is on the rise due to mens adultery and

appropriation of household income. One particular interviewee knew of

seven cases of bewitching over a two-year period, all provoked due to intra-

familial struggles over French bean income. One particular case concerned

the poisoning of a village man, whose wife claimed that he had hoarded

French bean income. A village woman described the incident in the follow-

ing way:

In Katheri, a wife worked with her daughters to bewitch her husband and take all the wealth.The man was forced to stay in the house for three weeks with vomiting and diarrhoea. The

church is taking the duty to preach against bewitching now. In June the Four Square

preachers held a crusade and prayed and pointed out one of the women from Kiithe village

who has been supplying kagweria. They chastised her. But usually these women arent found

because witchcraft can only be carried out at night. It is very secretive . . . Only talked about

. . . Never seen with the eyes.

Churches, in partnership with local politicians, regularly organize womens

seminars to preach against witchcraft and to teach women how to ameliorate

household struggles through Christian service. For example, during the barazadiscussed above one of the speakers read part of Proverb 31, emphasizing

the merits of an industrious and virtuous wife, and then said:

You must be a good manager of your home, wake up early and prepare the fire for tea before

your husband awakes. It is very important that you manage your household well. . . In some

homes women have more power than men and that is very bad and a sign of terrible

management . . . If a woman is a poor household manager, she tries to kill her husband or

make him crazy by feeding him medicines or poisons.

As this excerpt illustrates, the baraza is a powerful instrument of social

control, inculcating and enforcing normative gender roles and responsi-bilities through discourses on morality and proper female behaviour. As

such, it captures the tensions in social relations, exposing the cracks in

conjugal relations to the arsenal of Church and State (Haugerud and Njogu,

1991).

Witchcraft and Agency

In Meru, the gender implications of export horticultural production have

created fertile ground for the expression and elaboration of witchcraft and

religious revivalism. While these particular discourses certainly reflect much

broader configurations of social and economic change than those

engendered by horticultural contracting alone, it is interesting to explore

why women choose to deploy one set of discourses rather than another in

the face of agrarian transition. How do we understand some women opting



18/23

for Christian conversion while others seek to redress inequities through

threats of witchcraft? And how do we understand the same woman assuming

the identity of the witch and the good wife?

Firstly, the prevalence of ostensibly contradictory forms of spiritualexpression is certainly not unique, as the widespread interpenetration of

African traditions and Christian cosmologies testifies. Myriad recent studies

(such as Ashforth, 2001; Gifford, 1998), for example, have shown how the

boundaries between Christianity and the occult are often slippery, with

individuals invoking idioms of both situationally. Secondly, the enactment

of a certain subject position (the good wife, the witch, the Christian, the

mother, the Ameru, the Kenyan, etc.) is contingent, as women are embodied

in, and constitutive of, multiple, overlapping, and often competing dis-

courses (Pratt, 1999). In Meru, both Christian conversion and witchcraft

may be seen as ways that women express agency in a context of patriarchal

constraint, whether through apparent compliance or overt conflict. As

Kabeer (2000) notes, agency the capacity to define ones goals and act

upon them can adopt many forms, including but not limited to

bargaining and negotiation, deception and manipulation, and subversion

and resistance. Yet it is misguided to interpret agency as simply a matter

of choice as some subject positions encompass considerable reward while

others can result in sanctions and even ostracism from the community(Kabeer, 1999; Moore, 1994). For example, Rohatynskyj (1988) has docu-

mented how wives who do not obey the wishes of their husbands risk being

labelled as witches, and Schroeder (1996: 72) has shown how women who

continue to work in their own market gardens are demonized . . . as bad

wives. To speak of meaningful choice, however, implies the ability to have

chosen otherwise, to have alternatives that are materially and ideologically

feasible (Kabeer, 2000). Whether women are willing to risk material un-

certainty and/or social exclusion largely rests on their social, economic and

political circumstances and their capacity to forfeit the rewards of thepatriarchal bargain (Agarwal, 1994). As I have argued elsewhere (Dolan,

2001), in Meru participation in Christian groups is most prevalent among

women who have a high stake in the stability of the household system, and

few prospects for material autonomy. In this context, womens power to

choose otherwise is limited, as most are bounded by the cultural construc-

tions of gender that shape their economic options (Kabeer, 1999).

However, within the boundaries of patriarchy and cultural constraint,

there is clearly some space for manoeuvre and varying options for women to

exert active and passive resistance in the face of oppression (Kandiyoti,1988: 274). Not all women experience power and subordination in the same

way and each encounters horticultural production with different histories,

subjectivities, material positions, and social circumstances that inform their

capacity to act. Those women who are willing to overtly challenge the

conjugal contract tend to be those with less investment in the preservation

of the household system, largely due to their access to sons and/or to the



19/23

presence of alternative income generating possibilities. For these women,

who are willing to risk the loss of social security in the expectation of

economic gain, witchcraft (whether it is simply a threat or it is carried out)

can have a strong appeal. It not only enables them to challenge the powerand authority of the conjugal contract in a way that Christianity proscribes

but it also provides a clear vehicle through which to exercise agency in

an area where women are customarily denied direct expression of their will

(Drucker-Brown, 1993). By engaging in witchcraft, these women have

contested the realm of doxa (Bourdieu, 1977), the tacit, unquestioned,

naturalized aspects of gender relations that define men and womens

position in the social hierarchy. Normative gendered rights and responsi-

bilities the doxa of social relations are now the fodder of discourse, a

discourse that is publicly defended and reinforced by Church and State

(Kabeer, 2000). Hence witchcraft discourses are not simply about confront-

ing the appropriation of French bean land and income, but more broadly,

subjecting the inequity of gender norms to public scrutiny.

CONCLUSION

This article has described the social repercussions of contract farmingamong smallholders in Meru District, Kenya. In Meru, horticulture the

traditional domain of women has been rapidly intensified and

commoditized in response to a growing world market. This would appear

to offer women an opportunity to capitalize on cultural conventions that

define horticultural land and income as female. However, this assumption

overlooks the salience of intra-household power relations that place male

interests at the heart of the household system. With the introduction of the

export horticulture, it is these power relations that have deepened gendered

conflicts over labour, land and income.The contracting of French beans is dependent on the exploitation of

household labour to be profitable, and more particularly the intensification

of female labour. Yet it is not simply womens labour, but also womens

land that has become key to the viability of contracting. Because horti-

cultural production occurs predominantly on womens usufruct property,

many women have either lost their usufruct rights due to their husbands

appropriation, or claim that their husbands have required them to grow

French beans on these plots.

While most women have responded to the intensification of the labourprocess with apparent compliance, it is mens failure to compensate women

for their labour and land that has provided the fodder for heightened

marital discord. For some women male appropriation of French bean

income has not only breached cultural expectations of male responsibility,

but also undermined their material security. As mens individual ambition

has overridden their household responsibilities, several women have forsaken



20/23

the patriarchal bargain, articulating their grievances through threats and

acts of witchcraft. These women have made clear the limits of conjugal

contract, invoking witchcraft to redress their husbands evasion of marital

responsibilities and the asymmetry of household power relations. Whilewitchcraft accusations can expose women to risks of social alienation and

financial deprivation, it nevertheless remains a powerful weapon through

which women can level intra-household disparities and more broadly,

challenge the legitimacy of social practice. In Meru witchcraft discourses

reveal how the fault lines of social change are constituted locally, and are a

key arena through which the gender implications of agrarian change are

registered.

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Witchfinding in North-west Zimbabwe, Critique of Anthropology 19(1): 89109.

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Relations and Religion in Serenje District, Zambia. PhD Thesis, University of Wageningen,

The Netherlands.

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Catherine Dolan is an anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at the

School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4

7TJ, UK. Her research is focused on the social impacts of globalization and

agrarian change on rural livelihoods, particularly in Eastern and Southern

Africa. She is currently engaged in research on ethical trade, gender and

rights in African agriculture.


Documents

Dolan-gender in Ag Transition-02