Smelling-Out Anachronism: Embodiment and Hegemony in the Medicine Murder Cases of Basutoland

Abstract British colonial experiments within southern Africa worked to limit the influence of non-visual evidence used to prosecute witches. Relying on Western sensory legalism that focused primarily on sight, British officials distrusted Indigenous customs that indicted witches through non-visual means. Often, during medicine murder trials in Basutoland of the 1940s and 1950s, southern African legal questions of conjuring and divining therefore focused on rituals of smelling that diverged from Western sensory protocols. These debates on Indigenous legalism and remnants of colonialism remain vital in discussions of the AIDS epidemic, laws against witchcraft, and the application of specific senses and herbal curatives in modern South Africa.