Colonial Law and the Criminalisation of Rainmaking: How European Administrators Suppressed and Reshaped Rain Authority

Evidence State: Documented, Oral, and Contested Reconstruction

The history of colonial law and the criminalisation of rainmaking rests on a contested evidentiary base. Colonial archives—court records, district commissioners’ reports, and missionary correspondence—provide extensive documentation of prosecutions under witchcraft ordinances, but these sources are deeply compromised by the racial and religious biases of their authors. Rainmaking was routinely described as ‘superstition’, ‘heathenism’, or ‘fraud’, and indigenous practitioners were cast as charlatans or sorcerers. Oral traditions, by contrast, preserve the dignity and cosmological depth of rain authority, recounting the genealogies of rain queens, the sacred objects used in ritual, and the political negotiations that accompanied colonial encroachment. African scholars such as David Beach, Elizabeth Schmidt, and Sekibakiba Lekgoathi have worked to reconcile these divergent archives, reading colonial documents against the grain while centring oral testimony. Archaeological evidence—such as rainmaking shrines, pottery associated with ritual feasting, and settlement patterns near sacred pools—further corroborates the antiquity and centrality of rainmaking institutions. The reconstruction of this history is therefore necessarily interdisciplinary, and any account must acknowledge the power asymmetries embedded in the written record.

Colonial Source Caveat: Reading Missionary and Administrative Ethnography Critically

Any reliance on missionary or colonial ethnography demands a standing caveat. European observers—whether Anglican missionaries in Mashonaland, Catholic fathers in the Congo, or British district officers in Natal—approached rainmaking through a lens of Christian triumphalism and evolutionary anthropology. They frequently conflated rainmaking with witchcraft, failing to distinguish between legitimate public ritual for communal welfare and malevolent private sorcery. For example, the Reverend John Mackenzie of the London Missionary Society described the rainmakers of the BaNgwato as ‘priests of a false god’ whose influence had to be broken for Christianity to take root. Such accounts must be read as instruments of colonial knowledge production, not neutral descriptions. They often exaggerated the power of rainmakers to justify intervention, or minimised it to dismiss indigenous political structures. When using these sources, historians must triangulate with oral histories, linguistic evidence, and the records of African Christian converts who sometimes offered more nuanced perspectives. The criminalisation of rainmaking was not simply a legal process; it was an epistemological assault that reshaped how rain authority was understood, recorded, and remembered.

Rainmaking, Spiritual Authority, and Ritual Power in Precolonial Africa

In numerous African societies, rainmaking was not a marginal magical practice but a core dimension of sovereignty. The Lovedu (Balobedu) of present-day South Africa institutionalised this in the figure of the Rain Queen, Modjadji, whose body was believed to mediate the fertility of the land and the well-being of the people. Her authority rested on a combination of hereditary succession, ritual seclusion, and the possession of sacred rain medicines (ditaola) and drums. Among the Shona of Zimbabwe, rainmaking was associated with the Mwari cult, whose priests and spirit mediums at shrines like Matonjeni controlled the timing of planting and harvest. The Venda, Lozi, and Tswana similarly vested rainmaking power in royal lineages, often with women as key ritual specialists. Rainmakers were not merely technicians of weather; they were lawgivers, arbiters of disputes, and guarantors of social order. Their ability to bring or withhold rain was understood as a sign of ancestral favour and moral legitimacy. This fusion of ecological, spiritual, and political power made rainmaking institutions prime targets for colonial administrators seeking to establish their own authority over land, labour, and governance.

Legal Authority, Adjudication, and Law-Making: The Colonial Criminalisation of Rainmaking

Colonial legal systems systematically criminalised rainmaking through a series of ordinances and proclamations. In the Cape Colony, the Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1895 made it an offence to ‘impute the use of supernatural means’ or to ‘pretend to exercise any supernatural power’, effectively outlawing rainmaking rituals. Natal’s Code of Zulu Law (1891) and subsequent amendments prohibited ‘rain doctors’ from practising, punishing them with fines or imprisonment. In Southern Rhodesia, the Witchcraft Suppression Ordinance of 1899 and the Native Affairs Act of 1927 gave Native Commissioners sweeping powers to arrest and exile rainmakers. German East Africa’s colonial administration similarly banned rainmaking as part of its anti-witchcraft campaigns, while French and Portuguese authorities in West and Central Africa enacted comparable legislation. These laws were not neutral; they redefined rainmaking as a crime against the colonial state, stripping it of its public, communal character. Colonial courts became arenas where indigenous spiritual authority was delegitimised, and rainmakers were often tried alongside ‘witch doctors’ and ‘sorcerers’. The legal onslaught was accompanied by missionary campaigns that urged converts to abandon rainmaking as demonic, further eroding the social base of these institutions.

Encounters with Colonial Powers and Resistance

Rainmakers did not passively accept colonial suppression. In many regions, they became focal points of anti-colonial resistance. The Maji Maji rebellion (1905–1907) in German East Africa was galvanised by the prophet Kinjikitile Ngwale, who distributed ‘maji’ (water) believed to protect fighters from bullets—a direct appropriation of rainmaking symbolism for political mobilisation. In Southern Rhodesia, the Mwari cult’s spirit mediums played a central role in the First Chimurenga (1896–1897), coordinating resistance among the Shona and Ndebele. The Lovedu Rain Queen, Modjadji II, skilfully navigated colonial encroachment by maintaining diplomatic relations with the Boer and British authorities while quietly preserving her ritual autonomy. In some cases, rainmakers used their reputed power to intimidate colonial officials or to negotiate better terms for their communities. Colonial administrators, for their part, often sought to co-opt rainmakers—offering them stipends or recognising them as ‘chiefs’ in the indirect rule system—in order to neutralise their spiritual authority. This dialectic of suppression and co-optation reshaped rainmaking institutions, forcing them underground or transforming them into symbols of cultural resistance.

Decline, Transformation, or Abolition of the Institution

The cumulative effect of colonial law, missionary pressure, and socio-economic change was the decline or transformation of rainmaking institutions across much of Africa. In some areas, such as among the Lovedu, the Rain Queen’s political authority was reduced to a ceremonial role, though her ritual significance persisted. In others, like the Shona, the Mwari cult was driven underground, its shrines desecrated or abandoned, only to re-emerge during the liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Colonial legal codes often remained in force after independence, and postcolonial states sometimes continued to view rainmaking as backward or subversive. However, the institutions did not disappear; they adapted. Rainmakers became cultural custodians, advisors to chiefs, or symbols of ethnic identity. The abolition of rainmaking as a public political office did not erase the memory of its former power, and many communities continued to consult rainmakers privately, especially during droughts. The transformation was thus not a simple linear decline but a complex reconfiguration of authority, in which rainmaking moved from the centre of political life to the margins of cultural practice, while retaining a potent symbolic charge.

Legacy and Modern Political Influence

In postcolonial Africa, rainmaking institutions have experienced a partial revival and revaluation. The Balobedu Rain Queen, Modjadji, is officially recognised by the South African government, and her status as a cultural and spiritual leader is protected under the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act. Rainmaking rituals have been incorporated into national heritage celebrations, and the Rain Queen’s image appears on stamps, currency, and in popular culture. Among the Shona, the Mwari cult has regained public visibility, with spirit mediums playing advisory roles in land reform and environmental conservation debates. In Zambia and Malawi, rainmaking ceremonies have been revived as tourist attractions and as expressions of cultural pride. Yet this revival is contested: some see it as a commodification of sacred practice, while others view it as a necessary adaptation to modernity. The legacy of colonial criminalisation persists in the legal frameworks of many African states, where witchcraft suppression acts remain on the books, and in the lingering stigma attached to rainmaking as ‘superstition’. Nevertheless, the resilience of these institutions testifies to the enduring power of rain as a symbol of life, sovereignty, and resistance.

Comparative Analysis with Other African Sovereignty Systems

The criminalisation of rainmaking was a pan-African phenomenon, but its manifestations varied according to colonial legal traditions and local political structures. British colonies, with their system of indirect rule, often sought to co-opt rainmakers as ‘native authorities’ while simultaneously outlawing their ritual practices—a contradiction that created lasting tensions. French and Portuguese colonies, with their assimilationist policies, tended to suppress rainmaking more directly, viewing it as an obstacle to ‘civilisation’. In German East Africa, the brutal suppression of the Maji Maji rebellion led to the near-total destruction of rainmaking networks, while in Belgian Congo, rainmakers were often absorbed into the colonial administration as low-level functionaries. Comparative analysis also reveals common patterns: the targeting of female rainmakers as threats to patriarchal colonial order, the use of witchcraft laws to criminalise political dissent, and the transformation of rainmaking from a public office to a private practice. These comparisons underscore the need to understand colonial law not as a uniform imposition but as a flexible tool of domination, adapted to local conditions and resistance.

Sources & Further Reading

• Beach, David. The Shona and Zimbabwe, 900–1850. Gweru: Mambo Press, 1980.
• Krige, Eileen Jensen, and J. D. Krige. The Realm of a Rain-Queen: A Study of the Pattern of Lovedu Society. London: Oxford University Press, 1943.
• Schmidt, Elizabeth. Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1992.
• Lekgoathi, Sekibakiba Peter. ‘The Making of a Rain Queen: Gender, Power and the Politics of Rainmaking among the Balobedu of South Africa’. Journal of Southern African Studies 39, no. 3 (2013): 567–584.
• Iliffe, John. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.