The name is absent

cleansing ritual; it hoped that this would prevent them from retaking oaths.”⁸¹
During the Mau Mau period the colonial government’s incorporation of
purification rites into the rehabilitation programs was significant on several levels.

First of all, this strategy for rehabilitation and emergency stabilization to
prevent subsequent oaths also inadvertently showed the colonial inability to
combat the notions of African power in supernatural beliefs. Thus, this
purification inclusion in many ways strengthened the perception of the power
associated with African supernatural beliefs and customs. This was a major shift
in the historiography in which the colonial government was often viewed as
denouncing many of these beliefs.⁸² Administrators like John Nottingham recalls
“public witchcraft”⁸³ artifact burning ceremonies designed to move the Africans
from the practices associated with witchcraft and the supernatural.⁸⁴ However,
the evidence of colonial officials adhering to purification ceremonies was an
example of the colonial administration in Kenya adapting to the powerful African
belief system.

And finally, the colonial government’s involvement in purification also
required working with the Christian church. Some may argue that this
collaboration already existed to a certain degree with the local court systems that
handled judicial matters and the Supreme Court that handled severe criminal
cases. Prior to the emergency period, policies associated with supernatural

⁸¹ Kershaw, Mau Mau From Below, 328.

⁸² Interview, J. Nottingham, Nairobi. February 2009. Also see KNA files of the Attorney General’s Office -
Criminal Jurisdiction: witchcraft cases, File 100, date range of files from 1925-1951.

⁸³ The label witchcraft was attached to the Mau Mau movement to offer an explanation for situation by
some Colonial officials.

⁸⁴ Interview, J. Nottingham, February 2009, Nairobi.

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