The name is absent

that often suppressed and/or contradicted these traditional practices.³
Colonialism reorganized and restructured Kenya economically, socially,
religiously, and politically; all of these forces crashed as Africans stood up to
contest grievances. As a result, Kenya during the 1950s was faced with an
emergency situation that forever changed history; the Mau Mau revolution was
the ultimate life crisis event in the country, and responding to the situation
required the ultimate ceremony, the Mau Mau oath. However, oathing was not a
new practice. It was a process that had been used throughout time and across
geographical locations.

In order to understand the complexity of the Mau Mau oath, this chapter
traces oathing across time and geographical boundaries to show the challenges,
limitations, wide applications, and continuities associated with the practice. This
chapter argues that although oathing is extensively practiced and known in many
societies, scholars have overlooked oath intricacies by their failure to analyze the
oath’s interior structure and meaning. This chapter is broken into two areas
designed to treat the complexity and longevity of the oathing system. It begins
with the broader historical application of oathing across time and geographical
boundaries to show that oathing was well established in various times and
places. And the chapter ends focusing on the background of oathing in pre-
colonial Kenya to show the threads of oathing continuity and disruptions.

³ Hudson-Koster, “Suppressed Rites of Power; Systems of Colonial Criminalization” (Paper presented at
the African Studies Association Conference, Chicago, IL, November 2008).

60

<<   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   >>

More intriguing information