Kenya’s first President Jomo Kenyatta, grandson of and apprentice to a witch doctor, was a great believer in witchcraft, black and white.
He would have found it natural for politicians to seek out witch doctors, seers and medicine men to strengthen themselves, bewitch voters and vanquish their rivals.
But writing in 1938, long before elections, he describes a witch doctor helping a trader with a failing business to win customers and defeat rivals.
Today, Mzee would be writing about politicians using the dark arts.
In his famous study of the Kikuyu, Facing Mt Kenya, Kenyatta devotes 27 pages to magic.
He calls himself "the grandson of a seer and a medicine man ...In travelling with him and carrying his bag, I served a kind of apprenticeship in principles of the art."
He believed magical vibrations of the magician, or possessor of love/attraction magic, could penetrate and influence the minds of others.
Kenyatta, who studied at the LSE, lists 11 types of magic: charms or protective magic; hate or despising magic; love magic; defensive magic; destructive magic-witchcraft (poison); healing magic; enticing and attracting magic; silencing and, surprising magic; fertilising magic; wealth, agricultural magic, and purifying magic.
Several relate to politics, such as hate or despising magic, enticing and attracting magic, defensive and hypnotising magic.
Kenyatta cites the example of "a businessman faced with competition hampering his popularity".
He attributes a rival’s success to superior magic.
The future President says the suffering businessman “at once consults his magician, demands the matter be looked into and he be supplied a powerful magical substance to counteract magic against him.”
If his client is a victim, he is given a magical substance “to entice customers and to turn them away from his competitor”.
Hate or despising magic is also used to destroy friendships between individuals or groups.
If someone hampers a man in gaining affection — not only love — but also wider good will, he turns to magic.
"He at once seeks the power of monuunga to assist him in gaining desired affection ... he first smashes the existing friendship. After he succeeds in [removing] his rival, he cultivates the desired friendship."
Hypnotising magic, too, can help a man win friends and defeat enemies. Useful in politics today.
Facing Mt Kenya
By Jomo Kenyatta
First published 1938, Vintage Books, paperback, 1965, 327 pages
This book will rank as a pioneering achievement of outstanding merit – anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski