The Culture of Colonialism: The Cultural Subjection of Ukaguru

4. Court Cases: Order and Disorder

159 F O U R Court Cases: Order and Disorder A Kaguru Court A Kaguru chief’s court was ordinarily held every Saturday at the Native Authority courthouse, usually starting about nine or ten in the morning and continuing nonstop until about four or five in the afternoon. Occasionally court was held on additional days as well. Very rarely a chief might hold an open-air court in an outlying area if he thought the cases and people involved merited this.1 Applicants with cases registered their suits a few days to several weeks ahead, paying three shillings registration fee (uda) in civil cases, a fee later paid by the defendant if he was found liable. Criminal cases did not require a fee.2 The length of time taken for a case to reach a hearing and settlement after its registration depended on many factors. Weeks might be lost trying to trace an unwilling defendant or witness who had fled, or in seeking someone living in another court district. Sometimes delays were made by the court itself in order to increase chances of securing a particular judgment or to avoid hearing a case at all. Sometimes an accused, especially if he was a Baraguyu or Maasai who would be hard to recapture, was kept in the lockup for many days.3 The court clerk registered all cases and sent litigants a notice of when the case would be heard, usually through a court messenger or headman. The court decided whether a case was criminal or civil. If it was criminal , fines, flogging, or imprisonment were possible. In civil cases there were no punishments. Debts and damages were paid and social relations 160 · Colonial Life resolved. Often a court could not decide how to categorize a case until it had been heard, which was a good excuse for writing up many cases only after the trial was over.4 For that reason, most illiterate Kaguru were told to pay a court fee regardless of whether or not their case was civil or criminal. I never saw the court clerk writing up any hearing. He relied on later accounts of the court officials to learn what was said and done. Court records were divided into criminal cases (mashtaka) and civil cases (madai). Each consisted of a two-page booklet. The outside page of each booklet, whether criminal or civil, listed the name of the court, the number of the case in the yearly court file, the date the case was entered , the accuser, the accused, the offense or dispute at issue, the date the hearings began, the date they were concluded, the judgment of the court, the date any fines or compensations were paid, and whether the case was appealed. On the inside of the booklet was a list of the witnesses and digests of their testimony, along with a few sentences indicating the nature and reasons for the court’s judgment. Below this were the names of those who sat in judgment, usually the chief and two to four court elders. Below these were the names of the contending parties with their signatures, or far more often their thumbprints, and the dates of payments and acknowledgments of the judgments. Almost always only two sides of the four available page-sides were used. The most common civil cases heard by Kaguru chiefs’ courts were: disputes over payments of bridewealth, divorce and return of bridewealth , accusations of adultery, disputes over loans of wealth, disputes over inheritance of property, and disputes over boundaries between cultivated fields. The most common criminal cases were: wife-beating, assault and verbal abuse, theft of property, and destructive trespass by livestock on cultivated fields. A Kaguru court was empowered to use the following sanctions depending on the severity of the offense. It could imprison a man for up to one year at hard labor in the district jail at Kilosa. (Women could not be imprisoned by any Native Authority court, nor could women be flogged.)5 A native court could fine up to 1,000 shillings (143 dollars) or its equivalent in goods, usually livestock. In addition to fining a guilty person, a court could confiscate property in lieu of cash. Finally, a native court could administer flogging, up to eight strokes with a whip (kiboko) or stick.6 Court Cases · 161 I visited all of the upland Kaguru courts. A typical courthouse was not much different...