Histories of state-led attempts to regulate, control, and prohibit items of trade and consumption reveal multiple processes. How certain substances come to be viewed as undesirable speaks of underlying social, cultural, and economic processes, while the ability to enforce measures of control illumines the extent and limits of state power. This article examines the case of the prohibition and control of khat, a mild stimulant consumed by chewing, in colonial Kenya. The lobbying of a small group of colonial officials led to controls being imposed over trade and consumption in the 1940s, and an outright ban in northern Kenya in the 1950s. The case holds particular interest for historians of colonial Africa, two aspects of which will be highlighted here. First, the debate over khat was about both the preservation of tradition and the promotion of modernity. Khat's potential harms were emphasized at times of social upheaval, when colonial authority was challenged by the need to control movement across boundaries, to manage wartime mobilization, or to regulate new forms of economic development;Footnote 1 but Kenya's colonial authorities sought to preserve the interests of traditional growers and consumers of khat in the Meru district of the country, who were exempted from the ban, while protecting groups in the north of the country, notably the Somali, whom they felt to be especially vulnerable to the effects of consumption. The modernizing impetus of the late colonial state in Kenya could thus not quite escape from the ideological shackling of its traditionalist past. Secondly, the imposition and ultimate failure of legislation exposes the fundamental weakness of the colonial state, and emphasizes the agency of Africans in circumventing or derailing colonial controls: to impose khat legislation, the state was easily captured by interest groups and lobbyists, yet found itself unable to effectively implement its own regulations.
The story of khat control must also be viewed within the context of broader debates about drug control, a field dominated by concerns over medical and social harms.Footnote 2 Whether a substance is to be controlled through a system of tariffs set to inhibit consumption, as in the case of tobacco or alcohol, or whether complete prohibition is to be imposed, as in the case of cocaine or heroin, usually depends upon political decisions based on an evaluation of the likely effect of those harms. The difficulty of imposing legal controls and prohibitions for trades in drugs that are transnational has long been recognized, and was first tackled in relation to opiates.Footnote 3 An international system for the identification of harmful drugs was first established during the 1920s, providing a mechanism whereby countries could act in concert to regulate drugs trades. As James Mills has illustrated for cannabis, this introduced a standardized legal framework for international prohibitions and generated a transnational vocabulary through which regulation was advocated and advanced.Footnote 4 Following the Second World War, the international system for regulating narcotics was supported by the United Nations, with the World Health Organization (WHO) playing an important role in the definition and recognition of harms.Footnote 5 This evolution of international law helped shape the debate on khat in Kenya, with discussion of health issues and terms such as ‘addict’ coming to the fore from the 1940s.
Historically, there have been several attempts to regulate khat internationally, as well as a number of local prohibitions on consumption. During the first half of the twentieth century, there were several colonial attempts made to suppress khat: the British imposed restrictions on cultivation and unlicensed sale in Somaliland in 1921,Footnote 6 and in Aden in the 1940s, while the French introduced a ban in Djibouti during the 1950s.Footnote 7 The Somaliland measures were quickly undermined by a vibrant black market that the British could not contain.Footnote 8 In Aden, an important entrepôt for the khat trade across the Gulf of Aden, the prohibition led to protests of such vigour that the policy was quickly dropped.Footnote 9 In Kenya, however, the prohibition story took a distinctive turn, being heavily influenced by the local claims of peoples from the Meru district to a monopoly of ‘traditional’ khat cultivation and consumption.
This article opens with a brief introduction to khat, before moving on to a review of the history of khat in the Meru district under early colonialism. It explains how the ‘traditional claims’ of the Meru played into the legislation devised to regulate khat, the role of key lobbyists and advocates among the colonial administration in directing this process, and the impact of that ordinance and its subsequent revisions. The failure of the ordinance to contain consumption was apparent by the mid-1950s, when the economic counter-currents that emerged against the prohibition focussed upon developing the potential of khat as an export crop. The conclusion considers the broader implications that this history holds for our understanding of debates about prohibitions and harms in the colonial context, especially with relation to the role of the state, and the role of African agency in undermining the legislation.
WHAT IS KHAT?
The khat plant (Catha edulis) grows wild in highland regions throughout much of mainland Africa, from the Cape to the mountains of north-east Africa, in Yemen, the Saudi Peninsula, and Madagascar.Footnote 10 The tree favours altitudes between 5000 and 8000 feet, and grows to heights in excess of 50 feet, although when cultivated it is kept at around 20 feet to allow for ease of harvesting. Methods of harvesting vary: in the Yemen only the succulent larger leaves are chewed, whereas in Kenya smaller leaves and the bark of stems are also harvested.Footnote 11 The leaves and stems are consumed by chewing to extract the sap. The taste is often described as bitter, although consumers assert that higher quality khat has a sweeter taste. Consumers are highly knowledgeable about varieties, their seasonal availability, and fluctuations in price relating to quality and supply. In Yemen and Somalia, the term qat is preferred, while in Kenya it is known as miraa, or mirungi. Here we will use the name khat, that being most familiar from the international market.
The stimulant effects vary depending upon the variety and quality of the leaf. Research on the chemical actions of the constituent alkaloids reveals them not to be especially strong. The principal alkaloid is cathinone, which is more powerful than the secondary alkaloid, cathine.Footnote 12 Cathinone increases dopamine, seratonin, and noradrenaline release in the brain, affecting the central nervous system in a manner similar to amphetamine – hence the common description of its effects being ‘like a mild amphetamine’.Footnote 13 But, just as chewing coca leaves is different from taking pure cocaine, so chewing khat has a more gentle effect than would taking isolated cathinone. Cathinone degrades rapidly post-harvest, so potency is radically affected by the length of time that it takes for the harvested khat leaf to reach the consumer. Trade networks delivering khat to the market therefore operate extremely efficiently: availability of speedy transportation is essential, so developing transport technologies has historically been the critical factor in market expansion.Footnote 14
As well as its stimulant and euphoric effects, khat is an appetite suppressant, and chewers easily become absorbed in even dull and arduous chores. In Ethiopia, chewing is associated with agricultural labour but is also historically associated with religious contemplation and meditation. The leisure consumption of khat has increased significantly over recent years, especially since the mid-twentieth century, and it is now associated with sociable, loquacious, and recreational settings.Footnote 15
The medical consequences and potential harms of khat consumption have been subjected to extensive research over the past fifty years. Halbach remains ‘the most noted and cited medical authority’.Footnote 16 Following his research for the WHO, he identified a number of ‘common ailments’ associated with the substance, these being principally gastric problems such as stomatitis, oesophagitis, gastritis, constipation, malnutrition, and cirrhosis of the liver. Insomnia is a frequent side effect of consumption. But, as Kennedy noted for Yemen, serious medical problems are generally connected with prolonged and extensive consumption.Footnote 17 More recent research suggests a link with cardiac problems, especially when heavy and chronic consumption is combined with other cardiovascular risk factors.Footnote 18 A link between khat and psychosis was first reported in the 1940s, as we shall discuss; but, despite a recent renewal of interest in the notion of ‘khat-psychosis’, there is no clear evidence to establish the existence of any such condition.Footnote 19 The lack of evidence of serious health harms associated with khat consumption has not, however, impeded the deployment of medical arguments in prohibition debates. Nevertheless, in recent years concern about the adverse effects of khat has centred more on social harms.Footnote 20 Modern discourse about the dangers of consumption by youth and the loss of productive labour time in the leisure consumption of khat, and anxieties about the drain on domestic finance that regular khat purchases imply, are all issues that have their historical analogues in the colonial debate in Kenya.Footnote 21
KHAT IN EARLY COLONIAL KENYA, C. 1890S–1940S
The commercial cultivation of khat has been known from Ethiopia for several centuries. Meanwhile, wild khat was dispersed throughout upland Kenya, and its harvesting and consumption was reported in European accounts from the last years of the nineteenth century. These first accounts were written during the 1890s by European explorers and hunters who visited the Nyambene Hills, in the Meru area. Arthur Neumann reported that no meeting with the elders of Meru's Igembe community was complete without the chewing of khat stems.Footnote 22 The American hunter W. H. Chanler passed through Igembe a little later, commenting on the cultural aspects of khat consumption:
The young men among the natives are not allowed to eat it, the reason assigned for this restriction being that if the young men were allowed freely to indulge in this plant, they would be apt to stay awake at night, and be tempted, under the cover of darkness, to gratify desires which the light of the day forces them to curb.Footnote 23
While Chanler may well have elaborated the point to amuse his readers, Meru oral sources do confirm that khat cultivation was once subject to restrictions, being regulated through councils of elders whose permission had to be obtained before one could plant a tree. They emphasize that khat was an essential element in the transaction of bride-price payments and was important in dispute resolution.Footnote 24 The age of many trees still standing in the Igembe and Tigania areas of Meru gives testimony to the long-standing cultivation of Catha edulis by farmers in these areas. Goldsmith states that ‘there are trees that can accurately be dated back over two hundred years in the heart of traditional cultivation’.Footnote 25
It also seems likely that khat was a trade good, with pastoralists coming from the north exchanging livestock for agricultural products at Meru marketplaces.Footnote 26 Since this is the last fertile region before the arid lands of the north, trading and hunting caravans of the nineteenth century heading further north-west replenished food supplies there, including khat. Khat was certainly traded with neighbouring Meru groups such as the Imenti, and was listed as an item of trade at the Meru town market by the first colonial District Commissioner, Edward Horne, in 1912.Footnote 27 Early colonial reports recorded the opportunistic harvesting of wild khat and some small-scale trade in khat in many parts of central Kenya;Footnote 28 in Fort Hall, limited amounts of wild khat were harvested by Kikuyu women and sold to Somali and Swahili.Footnote 29
The liveliest market for Meru khat was found in the vast swathe of arid lands to the north, in what became Kenya's Northern Frontier District (NFD). British officials posted to Meru noticed this trade at an early stage, Gerald Hopkins reporting that khat was being sent to the military and administrative posts scattered throughout the NFD by head-porters and ‘donkey-boys’ in 1917, for consumption by Africans employed as colonial soldiers and police.Footnote 30 However, in the early twentieth century the perishable nature of the crop limited the market to distances that could be covered by ‘donkey-boys’ over journeys of two to three days. The advent of roads and motorized transport brought the first expansion of the market, the 240 miles of roads built by local labour, organized by Horne and his District Officers in 1912, connecting Meru to a colony-wide road network.Footnote 31 As the transport infrastructure expanded, the introduction of the cash economy and taxation provided the incentives for Meru and others to exploit the potential demand for khat, especially in the NFD. By the mid-1920s, khat was already reaching new markets in Nairobi and Mombasa, where communities of Meru, Somali, and coastal Arab consumers were to be found, while trade to Isiolo and the NFD increased markedly.Footnote 32 The growth of Isiolo town, situated just to the north of the Nyambenes, played a huge role in encouraging further production and trade. The town grew rapidly from 1929, its population including large numbers of Isaaq Somali who settled in Kenya after serving as soldiers in the First World War. This community, known in Kenya as the ‘Alien Somali’, were avid consumers of khat.Footnote 33
As the expansion of the market in khat gained momentum during the 1930s, concerns about the effects of the substance emerged in the colonial record. The first local measure against it was taken in 1934, only a year before khat was first brought to the attention of the League of Nations.Footnote 34 In this case, the Meru Local Native Council (LNC) passed a resolution restricting khat consumption to elders.Footnote 35 This came at a time when Meru district was seen to be in disorder as ‘traditional’ authority was breaking down and young men of warrior age were considered to be out of control.Footnote 36 H. E. Lambert, the Meru District Commissioner, was keen to strengthen Meru customs to bolster the authority of the elders and had invested much power in a council of elders – the njuri ncheke – indirectly ruling through these elders. Historians and anthropologists alike have described this and similar measures that Lambert had earlier instituted in neighbouring Embu as being closer to a determination of political authority by the elders than any authentic preservation of custom.Footnote 37 Similar motivations appear to have guided Lambert's support for khat prohibitions and his assertion that Meru elders were the only legitimate – that is, ‘traditionally’ validated – khat consumers. This claim to a priori rights over khat consumption was also a claim to monopoly over khat production and marketing. Although this notion appears to have been broadly accepted, colonial officials were less convinced by Lambert's claim that khat was a narcotic drug, and that its spread from the confines of traditional and ritual consumption to the leisure market was therefore potentially dangerous. The Director of Medical Services (DMS) gave no support to this contention, and so officials declined to impose any legislation. However, it was agreed that the Meru LNC should have authority to restrict khat through local by-law.Footnote 38 Although the by-law was duly passed in 1935, there appears to have been little appetite for its enforcement. By 1939, Lambert was to lament that his intervention had been ineffective in curbing the consumption of khat by the young in Meru.Footnote 39 There were no more than a handful of prosecutions under the by-law, and in 1941 it became a dead letter when the High Court overturned a conviction on the grounds that there was no evidence that khat was a drug.Footnote 40
Ineffective though the by-law was, the measure turned out to be the first salvo in a prolonged campaign against khat. From 1938 the assault gained sharper focus, thanks largely to a colonial officer who had served in northern Kenya since 1925: Gerald Reece. Reece was to have a long and distinguished career in the colonial service, later becoming Governor of Somaliland. After initial postings in West Suk, Mandera, and Marsabit, he moved to Isiolo in 1938 to become Officer-in-Charge of the NFD.Footnote 41 His interest in khat was piqued by early encounters with consumers among the police and African soldiers at Mandera and Marsabit, but it was in Isiolo, a major centre of khat trading and consumption by 1938, that Reece developed his intense dislike for the substance. At Isiolo, he came to regard khat consumption as a vice that threatened the wellbeing of the pastoralist people of the north: khat might be relatively harmless elsewhere, Reece contended, but ‘the climate and life of the pastoral nomad leads to excess once he starts to chew miraa’.Footnote 42 In his opinion, the social harms of khat chewing made the Alien Somali indolent and lessened their value as colonial servants in the armed forces and police. The ‘Alien Somali’ of Isiolo were already ‘lost’ to khat, Reece contended, and he now sought to protect the bulk of the NFD's indigenous population from the same fate. The troublesome and political character of the Somali was also connected in Reece's mind with their fondness for khat. In later years his wife, Alys Reece, commented that there were many among the ‘Alien Somali’ of Isiolo ‘who seemed to spend their time fomenting trouble. This usually began at their khat parties, at which wild plots were hatched.’Footnote 43 Reece's personal antipathy to khat and khat consumers, and his tireless lobbying, catalysed the move to control and prohibition in Kenya.
Canvassing the views of other colonial officers, Reece found that few shared his concerns. Among those who did was Malcolm Clark of the Native Civil Hospital at Wajir. Clark's views were shaped by experience in Somaliland, as he explained to Reece in 1939:
people under the influence of khat live in a ‘dream world’ and lose all sense of reality … A khat addict gradually becomes a listless, lazy, ‘good-for-nothing’ person who lacks all energy and ambition … In Somaliland, where it was worse than here, it was usual to dismiss any domestic servant found eating khat because of its bad effects on their work.Footnote 44
He also reported that nearly every townsman in Wajir consumed khat brought up on trucks from Meru, but that consumption in Isiolo was on a far larger scale because large quantities could more easily be obtained from the nearby Nyambenes. Reece found opportunity to garner further support against khat a few months after this correspondence with Clark, amid the military necessities of the Second World War. With the Italian invasion of northern Kenya, large numbers of troops were deployed to Isiolo, where the buying and chewing of khat was quickly taken up by African soldiers.Footnote 45 By September 1940, 100 bags of khat were sold in Isiolo each day, worth an estimated £1000 per month.Footnote 46 With khat apparently spreading beyond the confines of the ‘Alien Somali’, Reece now argued that control was imperative: at this vulnerable time, the fear of key subalterns being unfit for duty through khat consumption gave extra force to the anti-khat campaign. The decision was therefore taken to impose restrictions, with the Meru LNC being persuaded to ban exports to Isiolo until the end of the war. Reece then pressed for use of the defence regulations to keep khat out of the NFD altogether, ‘in order to safeguard the efficiency of members of HM forces therein’. In arguing his case, he laid stress upon the deleterious effects of khat chewing: ‘As far as the Isiolo Alien Somalis are concerned’, he commented, ‘they are already so saturated with the drug that they have to be allowed it even in jail to preserve what remains of their sanity’.Footnote 47 Khat imports to the NFD were banned from the end of 1940 by military order, the khat market at Isiolo remaining closed until 1942.Footnote 48
A lively black market soon emerged. Khat was now sold clandestinely in coffee shops, rather than in the marketplace, with the price climbing from between 11 and 20 cents to 50 cents a bundle.Footnote 49 Smuggling boomed. The military authorities did what they could to stem the flow: by November 1941, all trucks going to the NFD were being searched, the police burning any khat they found.Footnote 50 However, it soon became apparent that numerous police and other African administrative officers were undermining the ban by assisting the smugglers and continuing their own habit of consumption.Footnote 51 Thus, while the wartime ban undoubtedly temporarily restricted consumption among the military, its only effects for other consumers was inconvenience and a dramatic increase in price. The ban came to an end in 1942 with the Allied victory in Ethiopia. In February 1941, Reece had written to medical officers in the NFD asking for their support in declaring a wider and more durable prohibition but none of them was willing to declare khat a ‘dangerous drug’, one emphatically stating that it was no more harmful than ‘tea, coffee, tobacco or gin’.Footnote 52
CONTROL AND PROHIBITION, 1940S–1950S
The lack of local evidence to support claims of khat's medical harm was rectified in Reece's favour three years later, when, in 1945, a special issue of the East African Medical Journal was devoted to khat and its effects.Footnote 53 This marked the first step toward the introduction of wider legislation against khat.
(i) The medical ‘evidence’, 1945
It is not entirely clear what role Reece played in the gestation of this publication, but the strong focus on the NFD in the various articles that appeared and the fact that many of the contributors were persons with whom Reece had corresponded in his efforts to stimulate support for prohibition are suggestive. Charles Bally, the botanist at Nairobi's Coryndon Museum and one of Reece's correspondents,Footnote 54 contributed a short article on the botany and chemistry of Catha edulis in which he argued that khat was potentially dangerous, despite admitting that he had no clear understanding of its pharmacological effects. This thinness of evidence was apparent throughout the collection of papers. The editorial introduction reproduced anecdote and social observation to declare that use of khat was on the increase, concluding that ‘nobody with any experience of its effects on its consumers seems to have a good word to say for the practice of chewing it’.Footnote 55 Chief among the ‘facts’ assembled was that consumers were ‘liable to become addicts, unable to carry on without the drug and still quite useless members of society with it’, a statement that owed more to the international discourse of ‘drugs and addiction’ that was by then ubiquitous than to actual evidence of research amongst khat consumers.Footnote 56
Two articles that followed, giving case studies of patients who had supposedly suffered as a consequence of khat consumption, were hardly more compelling. J. C. Carothers, the psychiatrist at Mathari hospital in Nairobi, a man best known for his later work on the psychology of Mau Mau,Footnote 57 recorded two cases of insanity that were, in his view, ‘clearly precipitated’ by khat consumption.Footnote 58 The next contributor was R. B. Heisch, a medical officer based in Wajir. He provided a dramatic account of the case of an Arab trader admitted to Wajir Hospital in January 1944 ‘in a highly excitable state of mind’ who had ‘lost his power of articulation’.Footnote 59 The patient told Heisch that he had consumed large quantities of khat, and a stomach tube revealed that the patient had even swallowed the hard inner stalks that are normally discarded by chewers. The patient's condition worsened, and a few days after admission he passed into a coma and subsequently died. Although conceding that ‘the evidence is not absolutely conclusive’, Heisch recorded that the patient had died of khat poisoning.
The final paper, also authored by the journal editor, was entitled ‘The need for control of khat’. Here an earnest plea was made for action to halt the increase in consumption and prevent the further spread of the habit among the ‘nomadic tribes inhabiting the Northern Frontier District’. Reece's hand was evident in both the tone of this piece and the argument that it put forward. Khat could not be taxed in the same way as ‘such good, trusty, and well-tried servants of the public as alcohol and tobacco,’ it was argued. Instead, the prohibition of new cultivation was suggested; if cultivation could not be regulated, then expensive licences should be required for trading in khat. The paper concluded: ‘Absolute prohibition of the drug would seem to be inadvisable for various reasons; but restrictive or repressive legislation of some sort does seem to be called for in the near future.’Footnote 60
Despite the weakness of the evidence, this issue of the East African Medical Journal gave the anti-khat campaign a degree of authority. V. M. McKeag, the Meru District Commissioner in 1945, now felt that the evidence was clear ‘that the use – production of Miraa should be, if not entirely suppressed, at least very strictly controlled’. But McKeag maintained the caveats that Meru elders should be allowed to continue with ceremonial use of khat, and that supplies would need to be made available to known ‘addicts’ even after a ban (a point first raised by Reece).Footnote 61 Others now agreed that action was necessary: a medical officer based in Meru reported two cases of insanity apparently related to khat, adding that he had even seen a young child of five chewing khat in Meru hospital;Footnote 62 and a memorandum by the missionary W. H. Laughton gave further testimony on the recent growth in trade and use, and described the extent of chewing among young children in Igembe, who were, he observed, ‘much duller than those in either Tigania or Imenti’ because of their consumption of khat. All of this was grist to Reece's mill. He now began an energetic campaign to have the necessary legislation prepared.Footnote 63
(ii) The first ordinance, January 1946: unintended consequences
By the end of 1945, a bill to control the ‘sale, cultivation and consumption’ of khat had been drafted. Prohibition was proposed for all parts of Kenya excepting Meru, where ceremonial use of khat would be allowed through permits in the control of local elders. News of imminent legislation was broken in the East African Standard of 11 December 1945.Footnote 64 The bill received its first reading before the Legislative Council on 9 January 1946 and a second reading two days later, when Provincial Commissioner Charles Tomkinson gave a full account of the reasoning behind it. Praising Reece – who had ‘from time to time urged that steps be taken to point out the dangers of this drug’ – Tomkinson highlighted the importance of the East African Medical Journal in providing the necessary medical evidence that a ban was merited: ‘I think we are all agreed and abide by the medical profession in their opinion’,Footnote 65 he asserted. While expressing sympathy with the Meru for the lost revenue that the ban would entail, he reassured the Legislative Council that alternative cash crops were being encouraged. The dispensation for ‘ceremonial usage’ by Meru elders was not envisaged as being permanent: in future, the drug was to be wiped out completely by not allowing younger generations to have the same privileges once they reached elderhood. After this first reading, the bill was passed to a Special Committee – consisting of Tomkinson, the Attorney General, and three members of the council, including the Member for African Interests, Eliud Mathu – for further deliberation.
It was November 1946 before the committee reported back. In the meantime, news of the planned legislation had met with severe opposition in Meru. In a series of meetings with officials, Meru elders argued for many more concessions than had previously been envisaged. They requested that all Meru elders be allowed permits to grow and consume khat, and protested vigorously at the loss of revenues from trade.Footnote 66 News of this resistance gave the Special Committee pause for thought. Their chief concern, however, was medical not economic, being primarily worried that the sudden withdrawal of so potent a drug from ‘addicts’ would have adverse consequences. After meeting with Dr Heisch, the committee felt able to assert that ‘medical evidence was to the effect that if you suddenly shut down on those people who are accustomed to using the drug and say they can no longer have it, they will go insane and become utterly demoralized’.Footnote 67 The draft bill was accordingly amended to allow permits to be issued for the sale and consumption of khat beyond Meru, so long as such permits were only issued to habitual consumers. The creation of a Meru legal monopoly on khat cultivation was noted, but accepted as necessary. When the Legislative Council member Archdeacon Beecher pointed out that khat had much the same ceremonial significance in certain parts of Embu district as it had in Meru, the committee simply agreed to extend the provisions of the bill there also.Footnote 68 In effect, the final bill forbade the cultivation of khat except under written permits given by the ‘native authorities’ of Meru and Embu. Sale and consumption of khat was forbidden to all except Meru and Embu within their home districts, and only allowed elsewhere to persons recognized as ‘addicts’ and issued with a permit from their local district office. Those convicted under the ordinance, which came into effect on 1 April 1947, were liable to fines of up to 2000 shillings and/or imprisonment for up to 12 months.Footnote 69
No one foresaw the likely consequences. Though officials had lamented the increase in khat consumption within Meru, they had grossly underestimated the extent of the export market. In the mid-1940s, new plantings of khat were evident all over Meru district as producers strove to meet the rising demand: ‘anyone and everyone is establishing big plantations’ commented one official.Footnote 70 Remittances through Meru Post Office for consignments of khat amounted to 13,000 shillings per week by February 1947.Footnote 71 Such a lucrative trade was hardly likely to be easily curbed. Supply of khat to regular consumers beyond Meru and Embu – the so-called addicts – immediately proved contentious. Agents were appointed to supply Isiolo, Nyeri, Nairobi, and Mombasa, towns where consumers were known to reside,Footnote 72 but it soon became clear that there were many more ‘addicts’ in other parts of the country. Kitui was typical. Here officials first declared that there were no khat consumers, only to be inundated with requests for permits over the next week. But how was a ‘habitual consumer’ to be defined? Two local Arab traders ‘helpfully’ drew up lists of Kitui consumers (one with 60 names, the other with 73) and asked for authority to supply them. With suspicions now raised, the District Commissioner found it necessary to appoint a group of ‘local worthies’ to investigate the veracity of Kitui's ‘genuine addicts’.Footnote 73
As the Kitui example suggests, the permit system encouraged registered agents to create monopolies over the trade. The system was flagrantly abused in this way in Nairobi, where a single Somali trader managed to secure the position of sole supplier to the city, hiking the price and lowering the quality of the bundles of khat delivered. A ferocious response from Nairobi's khat retailers saw dozens of complaints flooding the district office, among them lawyers' letters threatening legal recourse, with bewildered municipal officials having to take rapid action to end the monopoly.Footnote 74 In Nairobi and other towns, the ordinance in effect displaced indigenous Meru traders, who were legally debarred from conducting trade in khat beyond the confines of their own district. Somali, Asian, and coastal Arab traders moved in to replace them. Members of the recently formed Meru Traders & Growers Association complained,Footnote 75 amid local rumours that ‘the Government is taking steps to see that the Meru are kept poor to provide a reservoir of labour’.Footnote 76
Officials in the NFD were less concerned by these unintended consequences, noting only the ‘positive’ effect of higher prices in reducing consumption. But in Isiolo the ordinance had to be heavily enforced with prosecutions to tackle the rampant black market that immediately developed. During 1947, 150 Isaaq and Herti Somali were registered as consumers in the town, and three traders (an Ethiopian and two Somalis) were authorized as suppliers. But, with supplies limited to once each week, on Mondays, ‘a flourishing illegal market was carried on in the bush round Isiolo’. During 1947, there were 21 convictions under the ordinance in Isiolo, with fines totalling 1,672 shillings and sentences amounting to 47 months and 15 days being imposed.Footnote 77
In Meru, around thirty registered agents were helping to speed tundus – wholesale units of 100 bunches of 30 stems – on to major towns where officials handed out permits for consumption relatively freely. Nairobi and Isiolo took the largest number of legitimate tundus (200 and 105 a week respectively), while Arusha in Tanganyika was taking 26: by February 1948, it was reckoned that 549 tundus were leaving Meru each week.Footnote 78 The black market added greatly to this total, a fact acknowledged by officials who noted the large number of one-ton vans being purchased by Meru for smuggling khat to Nairobi.Footnote 79 The thriving black market and the constant troubles caused by the workings of the licensing system in Isiolo caused officials there to cancel all trading licences and instead supply Somali ‘addicts’ with their ‘fix’ direct from the district office.Footnote 80 By 1949, exasperated officials were unified in the opinion that the ordinance was a dismal failure.
(iii) The second ordinance: prohibition in the north, 1949–51
Senior colonial officials now sought to tighten the legislation, and moves ‘to stamp out a thoroughly undesirable habit’Footnote 81 with complete prohibition beyond Meru and Embu gathered pace during 1949.Footnote 82 An amended bill came before the Legislative Council in August and was the subject of vigorous debate. In contrast with discussion in 1946, the medical evidence was now questioned. Eliud Mathu, a member of the Special Committee of 1946, was now unsure of khat's harm and reckoned that there were better ways to utilize the government's resources than in policing khat. Gerald Hopkins, formerly a district officer in Meru, confessed to chewing a little of this ‘mild drug’ himself: he saw no serious harm in khat consumption. For the prohibitionists, the colonial Chief Secretary J. D. Rankine declared it a ‘moral duty’ to restrict khat, while the Director of Medical Services, N. M. MacLellan, once again emphasized the findings of the East African Medical Journal. With the Legislative Council polarized, another select committee was formed.Footnote 83
The committee's five members included MacLellan, Mathu, and Hopkins. Various memoranda were gathered, including a report on the views of some twenty Meru elders who urged government not to hamper the trade in khat.Footnote 84 Hopkins also visited the Nyambene Hills. He found no evidence that cultivation had increased markedly since he last visited in 1933, and was unable to identify any signs of medical or social harms among Meru consumers.Footnote 85 These views were broadly supported by the committee, who formed the collective view that ‘the ill effects of Miraa, at least among tribesmen other than those of the Northern Frontier districts have at times been overstressed’. Reservations about the impact within the NFD reflected no new research but only the old prejudices expressed by Reece and once again given voice in 1949 by Provincial Commissioner Richard Turnbull, who gave evidence to the select committee. They also heard from a Somali community organization known as the ‘Central East African Ishakia Association’, whose members gave an account of khat's detrimental effects that was decidedly racialized. Turnbull echoed this, telling the committee that the harm done to Somalis by khat ‘which was so different from the effect described among the Meru people, might be due to the diet, environment and in particular the very volatile temperament of the desert dweller’.Footnote 86
In their recommendations, the committee accepted this racialized account, arguing that the detrimental effects of khat were solely restricted to the ‘desert peoples’ of Kenya's north. The 1946 ordinance was therefore repealed, and replaced by legislation that totally prohibited khat in the Northern Province while removing controls elsewhere. If Meru or Embu elders wished to control youth consumption, it was recommended that this be done through local by-laws.Footnote 87 The new bill, ‘An Ordinance to Repeal the Miraa Control Ordinance and to Prohibit the Sale, Cultivation, Use and Possession of Miraa in Certain Areas of the Colony’, passed into law in September 1951. Under these provisions, anyone found cultivating, trading, consuming, or possessing miraa in proscribed areas was ‘liable to a fine not exceeding two thousand shillings or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months or to both such fine and imprisonment’.Footnote 88
The new legislation caused greatest difficulty in areas around Isiolo, where there was a large market for khat among the ‘Alien Somali’.Footnote 89 Some officials worried that ‘Alien Somali’ would relocate into Meru in order to obtain khat legallyFootnote 90 but, once again, the black market prevailed in the face of government ineffectiveness. Within a year, officials at Isiolo openly admitted that they were turning ‘a blind eye’ to infringements of the ordinance by some consumers. ‘Miraa continues to be imported from Meru District’, wrote the District Commissioner, ‘and though numerous prosecutions for trading have been successfully brought to court attempts have not been made to charge those elder Somali who are known to chew this plant in privacy.’Footnote 91 Smuggling routes were so numerous that manning permanent roadblocks was unfeasible. Although by 1953 ‘Miraa trading and beer and spirit brewing constituted the majority of crimes during the year’, prosecution was no deterrent.Footnote 92 Older Meru men still recall their adventures in these years taking khat illicitly to the main road to sell to passing lorry drivers.Footnote 93 By August 1953, one Isiolo official remarked that he knew of 12 sites where khat was illegally traded, and he could envision no solution to this.Footnote 94
Officials in northern Kenya soon devised a pragmatic approach to this situation.Footnote 95 In defiance of the law, they ‘licensed’ three Isiolo residents to bring khat bundles to Isiolo on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week, for the supply of regular, mostly elderly, consumers. This arrangement came to light when one trader was prosecuted for smuggling khat in addition to his agreed quota and appealed against his conviction on the basis that he held a ‘license’ from the district office.Footnote 96 This embarrassing episode led to pressure from the Supreme Court to apply the ordinance to the letter.Footnote 97 As the Isiolo District Commissioner recalled:
I abandoned the blind eye policy and instructed the Police to prosecute to the full. There was a lot of trouble and agitation, but by refusing to see individuals and deputations and by inflicting very heavy fines upon those caught, the situation has once again stabilised. The whole thing has now gone underground, and I am informed that at present the miraa trade is run by the Kenya Police, some Tribal Police, some of my clerks, the PWD and the Veterinary drivers.Footnote 98
In such circumstances, central government was finally persuaded during 1956 that the ordinance should be amended yet againFootnote 99 and, on 29 June 1957, ‘The Miraa Prohibition (Scheduled Areas) (Amendment) Ordinance’ came into force, introducing a new system in Northern Province whereby permits could be issued by the Provincial Commissioner to trade and consume khat legally.Footnote 100 Officials were immediately swamped with requests for permits from all over the region.
By 1957, then, khat was only legally controlled in the Northern Province of Kenya, where permits were required by both traders and consumers. Elsewhere in the country, khat was traded and chewed freely. The ambiguities that marked the evolution of this policy, based on unsubstantiated racialized notions of medical and social harms, continued to linger among officials and the general public. Confusion abounded over the status of khat, even among colonial officials. When, in 1961, Wajir's district officer described khat as ‘harmless’, proclaiming that the trade ‘should be dispersed into as many hands as possible, and be sold as freely as bananas’, he was reprimanded by his provincial commissioner, who declared that it was, in fact, a ‘dangerous narcotic’.Footnote 101 Whether officials were pro- or anti-prohibition, their collective view was summed up in another comment, from 1960: ‘This miraa trade is a perpetual headache, the legislation controlling it is anomalous, the people who trade in it are unscrupulous, and the people who eat it are decadent.’Footnote 102
ECONOMIC COUNTER-CURRENTS
A decade of legislation designed to curb khat use in Kenya only succeeded in producing unworkable ordinances of little benefit to anyone but smugglers. Yet, throughout these attempts to suppress khat, there was a counter-current in colonial discourse that emphasized its economic potential. Arguments favouring commercial marketing of khat followed two lines: the first advocated the formalization of the trade through taxation and the creation of cooperative associations, while the second stressed the value to be found in international export markets for Kenyan khat. These arguments gained strength in the 1950s, as government intensified its efforts to generate economic growth and rural development in Kenya through state-directed interventions in agriculture and marketing, eventually overwhelming and subverting the prohibitionist lobby.
Ironically, it was the focus on the control and prohibition of khat from the mid-1940s that brought to light the full commercial potential of the crop. Colonial reports for Meru are instructive on this point: after an early mention of khat in the 1912 report, it is only mentioned twice more (in 1934 and 1939) prior to the introduction of the first ordinance to control khat.Footnote 103 And yet, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, khat was already the principal cash crop in Meru, its significance steadily increasing. A 1947 report records that:
Until the selling of Miraa … was brought under control no one realised the amount of money that it was bringing into the District. The sensational figure of Sh.1,855,864/- or £92,795 has been produced for the gross value of Miraa sent out of the District under permit since April.Footnote 104
From 1947 onwards, every annual report records the value of legally sold khat. While coffee began to do well in the Imenti region of Meru in the 1950s, khat remained the mainstay of the economy for both Tigania and Igembe. In these locations, farmers paid their hut and poll tax with khat revenues, but only in the 1950s did it become apparent that the trade itself could be taxed to raise considerable revenues for local development. Rather than coffee, it was this ‘second economy’ around khat that stood as the real measure of rural prosperity for much of Meru by the 1950s. Measures to tax khat in Meru were first discussed following the amendment to the first khat ordinance in 1951, with a proposal to place a levy on all trees in the district.Footnote 105 By 1955, the local African District Council (ADC) was collecting 50 cents per tree, there being over 100,000 trees in the most intensively cultivated khat zone alone, while traders exporting from the district purchased licences at 150 shillings per annum.Footnote 106 Thus, what was a prohibited substance a short distance away in Isiolo and the Northern Province was, by the mid-1950s, a source of considerable legitimate revenues for Meru.
At the same time, officials were keen to maximize the return to Meru's farmers and restrict the profits made by non-Meru middlemen. With this in mind, in 1955 the ‘Meru District Reconstruction Committee’ began investigating cooperative marketing of khat as a means of securing a better price for farmers.Footnote 107 At first the Registrar of Co-operatives tried to thwart the idea for what he considered ‘a rather doubtful form of trading’,Footnote 108 but the ‘Meru Produce Union’ was nonetheless established in December 1955 with the aim of regularizing and controlling the khat trade.Footnote 109 First appraisals of the cooperative were positive. Prices significantly improved, revenues of £52,000 being paid to producers in the first year, with each getting 17 shillings per wholesale unit. The cooperative even stimulated a reduction in smuggling.Footnote 110 Two years later, however, the Produce Union was in trouble. While almost all producers were cooperative members and were obliged to give some of their crop to the Union, they could not be prevented from also selling to independent traders. These traders paid in cash, as opposed to the credit offered by the Union. Moreover, while cooperative transport was handled by a company known as Meru Traders Ltd., who held a monopoly on African movement in and out of Nairobi under the emergency powers regulations in force to combat the Mau Mau rebellion, independent traders – who were mostly Somali, Asian, and Arab – could operate freely and did not pay a cess to the cooperative for the privilege of transporting khat. Speed of delivery was also a factor: the cooperative could not provide the flexibility and efficiency that khat's perishability demanded. Retailers in Nairobi frequently lamented that khat sold through the Union was stale:
they attributed this to the fact that it was no doubt bulked in the Reserve, brought into Meru, held, pending sale, and then transported on to Nairobi. This did not compare favourably with Miraa purchased illegally … which was whipped smartly from the production areas straight to Nairobi.Footnote 111
Freelance traders consequently undercut the prices offered by the cooperative, whose ‘lorries frequently arrived in Nairobi to find that the “Black-Marketeers” had flooded the market with cheap [i.e. cess-free] miraa’.Footnote 112 This competition, combined with mismanagement of their financial affairs, saw the Produce Union plunge into debt by 1958: a sum of 75,000 shillings owed in cess to the ADC eventually had to be written off, despite the value of Meru's khat trade standing at around £80,000 per annum.Footnote 113
The government considered giving the Meru cooperative a monopoly but rejected this because of their poor financial performance.Footnote 114 Instead, a new system for collecting cess was introduced. This involved establishing several bulking centres, where the Produce Union had an advantage in being given a ‘cess pass’ for its khat. Others transporting khat without a cess receipt would be liable to a fine under local by-laws.Footnote 115 As a consequence the finances of the Union improved marginally, but not sufficiently to prevent the cooperatives' activities coming to ‘a grinding halt’ by 1960.Footnote 116
This failure of cooperative marketing did not blunt the enthusiasm of those who advocated an international export market for khat. The possibility was first mooted in 1946, when it was suggested that khat be sent to Aden.Footnote 117 The introduction of the first khat ordinance put a stop to these discussions, but in the mid-1950s the idea was revived. As with so much of this story, African traders were already a step ahead of the state: officials discovered that a Somali company, Abdul Wadood and Mohamed Abdulla Co., based in Nairobi, had been exporting khat to Aden over the previous four years – in defiance of government regulation.Footnote 118 While the Director of Medical Services opposed the Aden proposal,Footnote 119 the Ministry of Agriculture responded with enthusiasm at the prospect of expanding an export market for ‘production of a useful cash crop’ that is ‘no worse a narcotic than tea or coffee’.Footnote 120 The prospect of large revenues for a poor and otherwise underdeveloped district was indeed tantalizing. In 1958, after samples taken to Aden were well received by consumers, it was estimated that exports might achieve an annual value of £1·6 million.Footnote 121 As the Ministry of Agriculture pushed to get the trade underway, their estimates of the potential returns inflated: forecasts of profits grew to £2 million in 1959.Footnote 122 Even the Chief Medical Officer was moved to concede that, in the face of such compelling financial arguments, the medical case should be overturned.Footnote 123
However, old anxieties lingered. Before committing to a contract with Aden for regular shipments, the government decided to consult the United Nations on the status of khat. At this time, the WHO had embarked on a study of khat, led by Dr H. Halbach. He arrived in Kenya in December 1959,Footnote 124 and advised that cultivation should not be expanded until the United Nations had decided how to proceed.Footnote 125 The Kenyan government sat back to await Halbach's findings. The verdict of the WHO was expected in 1960 but was delayed by difficulties in obtaining authoritative analysis of khat's pharmacology.Footnote 126 In 1963, the report was postponed once more,Footnote 127 prompting a proposal that the Kenya ordinance should be repealed.Footnote 128 In a detailed response, the Director of Medical Services repeated the racialized interpretation of khat's effects and insisted that Kenya await the deliberations of the WHO.Footnote 129
Kenya had gained its independence by the time that the WHO report was finally released in 1964, but neither the report nor the new government changed khat's status. The report concluded unspectacularly that, while khat had similar effects to amphetamine, ‘toxic psychosis as a result of abuse is much less frequent with khat than with amphetamine’.Footnote 130 The verdict of the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs was cautious: any harm with khat was confined to only a limited number of countries ‘in one geographical area’, so, rather than subjecting khat to international control, it was left to the discretion of individual countries as to what action to take.Footnote 131 Despite the lack of substantive evidence of khat's harms, the Kenya government remained uneasy about encouraging the export market and so let things be.Footnote 132 While the trade in Kenyan khat continued to flourish in domestic and export markets, the crop's status remained ambiguous.Footnote 133
CONCLUSION
Khat was controlled under colonial rule, and in part of Kenya wholly prohibited, without substantive evidence of medical or social harms being demonstrated in association with its consumption. Political decisions were taken on the basis of advocacy of prohibition by energetic campaigners, who succeeded in driving through legislation in an atmosphere of general complacency and widespread ignorance, and in an international context of increasing concern for the medical and social harms of drugs. The racialization of the issue of harm evolved within this advocacy discourse, reflecting prevailing colonial notions of the vulnerability and ‘backwardness’ of pastoral peoples living in the Northern Province. Had khat been widely popular across Kenya it is unlikely that such a narrow campaign for prohibition would have proved successful, but the notion that consumption was limited to a geographically specific community, and so easily identified and contained, allowed legislation to be put in place.
The strengthening of ‘traditional authority’ among Meru was also important in justifying the need for legislation. The arguments of the inter-war years favouring the role of Meru elders in regulating khat use as a means of preserving social values and retaining cohesion and authority persisted into the 1950s, by which time they stood at odds with policies that promoted economic development and sought to take power away from ‘conservative’ elders in favour of a younger generation of progressive ‘modernizers’. The khat prohibition thus became ensnared in the contradictions of the post-war development push and ‘the second colonial occupation’ by which it was implemented. The economic arguments that ultimately trumped prohibition were the direct consequence of the state's shift to the development paradigm. In this sense, the khat prohibition might be understood as characteristic of an earlier phase in the evolution of the colonial state, even though its implementation came in the post-war years. Such contradictions were not uncommon by the 1950s.Footnote 134
Looking at the question of public awareness and the agency of Africans in this story, it is striking that rumour, anecdote, and allegation were as potent in the argument as was scientific and medical evidence. Once prejudices had been aired, and especially once government officials had expressed views against the substance, it proved impossible to remove those notions from the public or policy realm. Even as scientific knowledge of khat improved, prejudices and unsubstantiated beliefs continued to hold sway well into the post-colonial years. In all debates about prohibition, perception is as important as reality. But, throughout this story, colonial officials were astonishingly blind to African opinion, constantly being surprised by the ‘discovery’ of the extent of consumption and the value of the market in khat, and at no time seeking to properly assess the actual extent of consumption. Prejudice and bias determined much of the debate, not least in relation to the Somali. Not seen as fully Kenyan, commonly referred to as ‘Alien’, and stigmatized as itinerant traders who exploited their relations with local communities for profit on the one hand but were valued in the trusted service of the colonial police and military on the other, the Somali were given no voice in the debate over khat.
Finally, African agency did make itself felt in this story in more than advocacy for Meru ‘tradition’. By the 1940s, khat producers and traders were active in defending their own interests, sometimes petitioning the state but more often taking direct actions to obviate the effects of state interference. Through deflection, avoidance, and covert practices, including smuggling, those Africans involved in the market chain in khat – producers, traders, and consumers – colluded to undermine and ultimately destroy colonial legislation, going on in the post-colonial years to build a strong and vibrant export economy for Meru's khat crop.
