Mau Mau oathing rituals and political ideology in Kenya: a re-analysis

Abstract

Opening ParagraphThe Mau Mau movement used a campaign of ritualised oath-taking to gain the support and co-operation of the Gikuyu masses. The oaths remain a continuing source of controversy in the literature on Mau Mau, little of which is directly anthropological. This article offers a tentative resolution to that controversy through an anthropological analysis of Mau Mau oathing rituals in the light of contemporary theories on the relation of ritual to ideology. I argue that the oathing rituals are to be understood as part of the ideological apparatus of the movement, along with rallies and songs. The effectiveness of the oathing rituals lies not solely in their symbolic reference to 'traditional practice' as Buijtenhuijs (1982: 87) has suggested, nor in some inherent mystifying property of ritual communication (Bloch, 1974: 67–76). Although a continuity between the oathing rituals and those associated with the legitimation of traditional authority is strikingly apparent, the success of the former as a medium for political recruitment is to be explained in its relation to ideology, and in the essential ambiguity of the central tenets of that ideology—‘land’ and ‘freedom’.