Illegal Tribunals And Secret Societies

During these years, colonial officials also became increasingly troubled by the emergence of a third type of witchcraft, which also seemed to have taken the form of a secret society. Labeled variously in official reports as "witchcraft tribunals," "illegal tribunals," "secret societies," or "witchcraft guilds," these groups were alleged to hold trials, pass judgments, and levy punishments in the form of cattle fines within remote areas of Tigania and Igembe. They were believed to enforce each decision by the threat of bewitchment through fearsome curses. District officers sent to investigate the initial rumors soon discovered that all Meru knew of them, but none was willing to divulge details. In consequence official reports over the subsequent five years suggest that the British learned little more about them than their names.

The Natives here [1923] are sunk in superstition. No headman can be relied upon to help government . . . [in] putting down abominable practices. . . . Njuricheke Kiama [sic ] is credited with supernatural power which makes . . . administration very difficult indeed.^[35]

Today [1925] the more educated [Meru] claim the Njoli [Njuri] must be abolished because it keeps the country in darkness, impeding the advancement and progress of their civilization.^[36]

District officials were also troubled by rumors of a large number of allegedly "secret" societies, each dedicated to the practice of witchcraft. Although most numerous in Tigania and Igembe, reports of similar groups emerged in every region. One, the Kiama Kia A-Athi, clearly referred to a council of forest hunters. The others, the Kiamas of the Kagita, Kaundu, Makuiko, Mwaa, and several like them, remained shrouded in mystery.

Over time, nonetheless, these scattered reports began to form identifiable patterns. Each of these societies was small. Several, however, notably those of the A-Athi and the Kagita, were alleged to have branches on almost every Meru ridgetop. Their meeting places were secret, protected in the traditional Meru fashion by lethal curses that could be placed by the elders of each society on any Meru who betrayed its trust.

The activities of these two most numerous groups seemed to take two forms. One was overtly sexual, in which members of each society were said to compel women from the surrounding communities to join them for feasts of meat and beer. The rumors also suggested that the

women were forced to participate in nude dancing, which continued the entire night. Male relatives who objected to a woman's participation in these practices found themselves either overawed by the threat of a society's curse or, worse, forced to join in themselves.

Such reports were extremely disturbing to British administrators only a few years removed from the Victorian age. The rumors paled, however, before subsequent allegations that added a political dimension to the problem. After 1924 at least two of the secret societies, once again the Kiama of the A-Athi and the Kagita, were reported to have taken on the roles of "illegal tribunals" and to have begun to dispense justice. Moving in small bands among villages in the more remote areas, both groups were described as having begun to resolve conflicts among local inhabitants in virtually the same manner as the other four "illegal" tribunals of the Njuri. As a result, it was said, large portions of the livestock in those areas had been transferred into the hands of these wandering judges.

Worse news, however, came in through reports that the "loyal" elders in these remote areas were immobilized by fear, daring neither to move against these societies in traditional fashion nor to appeal to colonial headmen and chiefs. Some colonial officers, although still groping for more accurate data, believed both secret societies had virtually absorbed the four "illegal" tribunals of the Njuri, "most of whose members belong [ed] to either Aathi or Kagita."^[37]

More serious still, these same societies were reported to have penetrated deeply into the ranks of the Meru African Colonial Service. Indeed, in several areas, chief, headmen, tribal retainers, police, and even members of the colonial Local Native Tribunals were said to have been forcibly incorporated into one or even both societies, thereby placing them in situations that might endanger the colonial structure itself.