Delirious from starvation, a believer who had introduced his household to stay with a Christian doomsday cult in a distant wilderness in southeastern Kenya despatched a distraught textual content to his youthful sister final week. While he begged her assist to flee, he was nonetheless within the grip of the preacher who had lured him there, promising salvation by way of demise by hunger.
“Answer me quickly, because I don’t have much time. Sister, End Times is here and people are being crucified,” Solomon Muendo, a former road hawker, instructed his sister. “Repent so that you’re not left behind, Amen.”
Mr. Muendo, 35, has been residing within the Shakahola Forest since 2021, when, like tons of of different believers, he deserted his house and moved there together with his spouse and two younger kids.
They have been following the decision of Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a former taxi driver turned televangelist who, declaring that the world was about to finish, marketed Shakahola to his followers as an evangelical Christian sanctuary from the fast-approaching apocalypse.
Instead of a haven, nevertheless, the 800-acre property, a sun-scorched wasteland of scrub and spindly bushes, is now a ugly crime scene, scattered with the shallow graves of believers who starved themselves to demise — or, as Mr. Mackenzie would have it, crucified themselves in order that they may meet Jesus.
As of this previous week, 179 our bodies have been exhumed and moved to a hospital mortuary within the coastal city of Malindi, round 100 miles east of Shakahola, for identification and post-mortem. The authorities’s chief pathologists reported final week that whereas hunger prompted many deaths, a number of the our bodies confirmed indicators of demise by asphyxiation, strangulation or bludgeoning. Some had had organs eliminated, a police affidavit mentioned.
Hundreds extra persons are nonetheless lacking, maybe buried in undiscovered graves. Others are wandering the property with out meals like Mr. Muendo — whose spouse and youngsters are lacking, his sister mentioned.
The horrific scale of what the Kenyan news media known as the “Shakahola Massacre” has left the federal government struggling to clarify how, in a rustic that counts itself amongst Africa’s most fashionable and secure nations, legislation enforcement had for therefore lengthy missed the macabre goings-on in an expanse of land situated between two fashionable vacationer locations, Tsavo National Park and the Indian Ocean coast.
That so many individuals disregarded probably the most primary human intuition to outlive and selected as an alternative to die by way of fasting has raised delicate questions concerning the limits of spiritual freedom, a proper that’s enshrined within the Kenyan Constitution.
Evangelical Christianity — and freelance preachers — have surged in reputation throughout Africa, a part of a non secular increase on the continent that stands in stark distinction to the speedy secularization of former colonial powers like Britain, which ruled Kenya till 1963. About half of Kenyans are evangelicals, a far greater proportion than within the United States.
Unlike Roman Catholic or Anglican church buildings, that are ruled by hierarchies and guidelines, many evangelical church buildings are run by impartial preachers who don’t have any oversight.
Kenya’s president, William Ruto — a fervent believer whose spouse is an evangelical preacher — has been cautious of imposing restrictions on spiritual actions, although final week he requested a bunch of church leaders and authorized specialists to suggest methods to control Kenya’s chaotic religion sector.
For Victor Kaudo, a rights activist in Malindi who visited Shakahola in March, the liberty granted preachers like Mr. Mackenzie has gone too far. Tipped off by defectors from the cult, Mr. Kaudo discovered emaciated believers who, although within the throes of demise, cursed him as “an enemy of Jesus” when he tried to assist.
A ravenous girl, her head shaved on orders from the cult management, flailed angrily on the bottom as Mr. Kaudo approached providing sustenance, a video he recorded confirmed.
“I wanted these starving people to survive, but they wanted to die and meet Jesus,” Mr. Kaudo recalled. “What do we do? Does freedom of worship supersede the right to life?”
Mr. Mackenzie has instructed investigators that he by no means ordered his followers to not eat and merely preached concerning the End Times agonies prophesied within the Book of Revelation, the ultimate chapter of the New Testament. He was arrested in April, let loose after which shortly rearrested. He is beneath investigation over accusations of homicide, terrorism and different crimes. His lawyer declined to remark.
Appearing briefly earlier than a courtroom in Mombasa this month, Mr. Mackenzie, 50, sporting a pink jacket, reduce a jaunty determine as he waved imperiously from inside a steel cage to get the Justice of the Peace’s consideration. The Justice of the Peace ignored him and prolonged his detention.
‘It Was a Normal Church at the Beginning’
Mr. Mackenzie’s journey from destitute taxi driver to cult chief together with his personal tv channel started in 2002 in a stone courtyard reverse a Catholic major college in Malindi. The property belonged to Ruth Kahindi, who had met Mr. Mackenzie at a close-by Baptist church and invited him to evangelise at her house.
Together they fashioned their very own church, Good News International, utilizing Ms. Kahindi’s house as its base.
“It was a normal church at the beginning,” recalled Ms. Kahindi’s daughter Naomi, who remembers Mr. Mackenzie as a robust speaker who initially caught to the usual evangelical message of salvation by way of religion in Christ alone and the Bible as the last word non secular authority.
After years of shut partnership, Ms. Kahindi cut up with Mr. Mackenzie round 2008, the daughter mentioned, after he turned more and more apocalyptic in his preaching.
There have been additionally quarrels over money, Ms. Kahindi’s daughter mentioned, including that Mr. Mackenzie was suspected of pocketing tithes.
In response, the daughter mentioned, “he started accusing my mother of witchcraft.”
Barred from utilizing Ms Kahindi’s house for preaching, Mr. Mackenzie, not a pauper, constructed himself a giant concrete prayer corridor on a plot of land he had bought in Furunzi on the outskirts of Malindi and declared this the brand new house of Good News International Church. Word unfold of his warnings of the approaching Battle of Armageddon.
Though bitterly estranged from Ms. Kahindi, he took with him certainly one of her daughters, Mary, who had married certainly one of Mr. Mackenzie’s most fervent followers, Smart Mwakalama, a former lodge cleaner.
Mr. Mwakalama is now additionally beneath arrest. His spouse, Mary, and their six kids have all vanished and are feared to be among the many useless buried in Shakahola.
Mr. Mackenzie, mentioned Mary’s sister Naomi, “is a demon” who has “ruined too many lives.”
Among these caught within the ruins is Priscilla Riziki, an impoverished villager who launched her oldest daughter, Lorine, to Mr. Mackenzie’s preaching a decade in the past. Wracked by guilt and grief, she visits the Malindi morgue every day to seek for her daughter and three grandchildren, all of whom moved to Mr. Mackenzie’s retreat in 2021.
“My only hope now is to just see my daughter — either dead or alive,” Ms. Riziki mentioned.
A mob of indignant residents, a few of them disconsolate family of lacking cult members, ransacked Mr. Mackenzie’s former church, final week, tearing down its pink entrance gate and smashing the encompassing wall.
“People are very angry and blame Mackenzie, but I blame the government,” Damaris Muteti, a member of a rival evangelical church and itinerant preacher, mentioned, surveying the wreckage.
“Mackenzie is a good man, but the Devil used him,” she mentioned. “Something went wrong.”
Selling Land He Didn’t Own
A peanut vendor named Titus Katana, who joined the Good News church in 2015 and rose to grow to be deputy pastor, mentioned he initially had nice admiration for Mr. Mackenzie and his preaching. “He changed because of his false prophecies” concerning the finish of the world, Mr. Katana mentioned. “His main interest became making money, not preaching to the world.”
By 2017, he recalled, Mr. Mackenzie had began telling worshipers to not see medical doctors or ship their kids to high school. He arrange his personal unregistered, fee-paying college at his church. He additionally claimed divine therapeutic powers, for which he additionally charged.
“He told me he had received a revelation from God” about training and medication being sinful, Mr. Katana recalled. “Everything bad started with this.”
Mr. Mackenzie had by this time expanded his attain far past the Kenyan coast because of his institution of Times TV, a gospel channel that beamed his more and more fiery sermons over the web and throughout Africa. Among these lacking in Shakahola are a Nigerian citizen and a Kenyan flight attendant.
Elizabeth Syombua, the sister of the person now ravenous within the wilderness, mentioned she and her brother had been entranced by Mr. Mackenzie’s tv broadcasts. “You get addicted to what he says,” she mentioned, recalling how she used to hurry house from work at a Mombasa stitching manufacturing facility in order that she might be part of her brother to observe.
“He is like an evil spirt with this strange power to lure people into his trap,” she mentioned.
Mr. Mackenzie’s rising reputation, nevertheless, additionally attracted the eye of the authorities.
He was arrested in October 2017 on 4 expenses, together with radicalization and selling extremist beliefs, crimes that had beforehand been leveled largely at Muslims answerable for numerous terrorist assaults in Kenya. Mr. Mackenzie pleaded not responsible and was acquitted.
He was detained once more in 2019, and launched on bail. He escalated his confrontation with the federal government, denouncing its introduction of nationwide identification numbers for residents as “the mark of the beast” — and one more signal of approaching apocalypse.
Threatened with additional prosecution, Mr. Mackenzie surprised his followers in 2019 by asserting that he was closing down the church, promoting off its property and retreating to Shakahola Forest. He invited followers to affix him and buy small plots on what he mentioned can be a brand new Holy Land.
Children Would Be the First to Perish
Mr. Katana, his former deputy preacher, mentioned he had purchased an acre for 3,000 Kenyan shillings, then price round $30 — a low worth however nonetheless a boon for Mr. Mackenzie, who didn’t legally personal the land he was promoting.
The arrival of the Covid pandemic in Kenya in 2020 elevated the enchantment of Mr. Mackenzie’s land provide and, for a lot of, vindicated his longstanding message that the world was coming to an finish.
Increasingly obsessive about the approaching apocalypse, Mr. Mackenzie, in response to Mr. Katana, issued “new instructions” in January to the tons of of people that had moved to Shakahola, which the televangelist divided into districts with biblical names like Jericho and Jerusalem.
Mr. Mackenzie, casting himself as a Christ-like determine, lived in a bit he known as Galilee — after the world of Palestine the place Jesus lived most of his life.
The directions, Mr. Katana mentioned, featured a methodical plan for mass suicide by way of hunger. The first to perish have been to be kids, who have been “to fast in the sun so they would die faster,” Mr. Katana mentioned, recalling the pastor’s phrases. In March and April, it will be the flip of girls, adopted by males.
Mr. Mackenzie, in response to Mr. Katana, mentioned that he would keep alive to assist lead his followers to “meet Jesus” by way of hunger however that after this work was carried out, he, too, would starve himself to demise forward of what he mentioned was the approaching finish of the world.
In a video submit on-line in March, Mr. Mackenzie mentioned that he had “heard the voice of Christ telling me that ‘the work I gave you to preach End Time messages for nine years has come to an end.’”
Mr. Katana mentioned he had by this time damaged with Mr. Mackenzie and wasn’t in Shakahola when the suicide program began, however heard about it from believers who have been. He went to the police to report that “kids are dying” within the forest.
“They never took any action until it was too late,” he mentioned.
In April, Mr. Muendo, the previous hawker who moved to Shakahola in 2021 together with his household, telephoned his sister in Mombasa and instructed her that “we are starting a fast so that we can go to see Christ in Golgotha,” a reference to the positioning of Jesus’s crucifixion within the Bible.
“I told him: ‘I’m praying for you but we need you, so don’t crucify yourself,’” the sister, Ms. Syombua, mentioned.
Mr. Muendo, in response to his sister, requested her to grasp that he had no selection however “to go through to the end.”
The sister mentioned, “He was happy, because he thought he would be dying soon for Jesus.”
As for Mr. Mackenzie, she added, “he is a murderer.”
Simon Marks contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
Source: www.nytimes.com