Chapter 4 The Mau Mau Oath Model: Meaning, Symbols,
Structure, and Relationships
Introduction
Despite over fifty years of interest on the topic, the Mau Mau oath remains
misunderstood and misrepresented. The vagueness and confusion around
oathing still makes it a topic of mystery and invention versus a practice full of
meaning, symbolism, and structure. Due to the political nature of the Mau Mau
war, there has been a failure to systematically treat, analyze, and communicate
the phenomenon. As shown in the last chapter, oathing remains a topic that has
been narrowly constructed and defined by scholars. What is clear is the need for
an approach to analyze and understand the complexity of oathing. Therefore,
this chapter presents a Mau Mau oath model as a solution for interpreting and
communicating the inner meaning and structure of oathing.
This chapter argues that the Mau Mau oath was an evolved, sophisticated,
elaborate, and modern system of meanings, structures, and relationships. The
practices were rooted in traditional kithitu oathing that was reconstituted to unify,
retaliate, and fight for their land and freedom. This chapter is broken into three
sections designed to describe the Mau Mau oath model. It begins with a brief
overview of the model’s methodology. A diagram of the model with the oath as
the central category for analysis is presented in the next section. Lastly, the
chapter ends with a systematic treatment of each major model component. The
objective is to show the continuous, conditional, and dynamic nature of oathing
while showing that it also contains structure, varied meaning, and regulations.
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