The name is absent

transformed a human being into a new frame of mind which has rarely, if ever,
been witnessed before.”³⁸ Based on this report, Corfield points out the
importance of understanding the oath as a relationship between spiritual beliefs
as an essential factor successfully used in the Mau Mau movement.³⁹ He points
out that oathing activities and principles were embedded in the African ability to
quickly mobilize, unite, and channel power.⁴⁰ Although his accounts specific to
the Mau Mau oath were written for the colonial government, his report
nevertheless provides important details, some of which have been taken out of
context.

Shortly after the release of the Corfield report on June 13, 1960, Time
magazine published the article, “Kenya: The Oath Takers”, which provided a
ghastly spin on the oathing process based on its interpretation of the Corfield
report. It stated:

“Corpses & Orgies....Mau Mau leaders deliberately reduced their victims to a
state where a man who took the Mau Mau oath was cut off ‘from all hope,
outside Mau Mau, in this world or the next.’ To achieve this, the Mau Mau
leadership forced its recruits, voluntary or involuntary, to seal their oaths by
digging up corpses and eating their putrefied flesh, copulating with sheep,
dogs, or adolescent girls, and by drinking the famed 'Kaberichia cocktail’- a
mixture of semen and menstrual blood. And when he was assigned to kill an
enemy of the movement, a sworn Mau Mau pledged himself to remove the
eyeballs of his victims and drink the liquid from them. Once the blood lust had
been aroused to this pitch, the oath taker was easily led to kill his own father
or mother, wife, child or master at Mau Mau command. And any local Mau
Mau leader devising a fouler ritual was under obligation to pass along his
recipe immediately to his less inventive colleagues. Since there were seven
basic oaths which could be taken over and over again, Mau Mau ceremonies
thus became perpetual orgies.”⁴¹

³⁸ Corfield, Historical Survey, 163.

³⁹ Corfield, Historical Survey, 163.

⁴⁰ Corfield, Historical Survey, 163-170.

⁴¹ “Kenya: The Oath Takers,” Time, June 13, 1960,

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,940578,00.html.

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