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The Kenya starvation cult reported on three weeks ago now has claimed 179 lives [1]
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Date: 2023-05-13
Nthenge Mackenzie told followers that Shakahola Forest would be “’where Jesus’ second coming would happen,’” according to Issa Ali, son of a woman who was found in a shallow grave. He spoke to the Guardian in late April.
Shakahola Forest is located in 50,000-acre Chakama Ranch in Kalifi City, according to the BBC; Mackenzie owns 800 acres there. “Shakahola is a Swahili word that loosely translates as ‘a place where worries are lifted.’”
The BBC reports that the entrance to the forest is “down a rough track off the main road.” It’s two hours’ drive from the nearest town of Malindi, described as “a town of 120,000 people about 72 miles north of Mombasa,” per the Washington Post.
The forest itself, AP relates, is “on the country’s Indian Ocean coast.” Members of the church have since isolated themselves there, in a remote area with no access to cell service or internet access, no electricity and no running water.
“The area had been partitioned into villages, each given biblical place names,” the BBC reports. “Some of Pastor Mackenzie’s followers lived a life of deprivation in Judea. Others holed themselves up in Bethlehem. There was also Nazareth,” and Jerusalem as well.
Mackenzie offered land to some of his followers as he applied his ministry. The Washington Post states that Mackenzie reportedly gave a ½-acre plot to at least one member. Titus Katana, a former member of the group who managed to escape and was interviewed by the BBC, said that Mackenzie was selling land to his followers.
Nthenge Mackenzie was arrested April 15 “on suspicion of luring his followers into the remote area and brainwashing them into fasting to the death in order to ‘meet Jesus,’” the Guardian reports.
Additionally, the BBC reports, “There is no direct evidence in the dozens [of] videos we’ve seen of Pastor Mackenzie directly ordering people to fast, but there are many references to followers sacrificing what they hold dear, including their lives.”
The BBC says that “some members may have been strangled, suffocated, or beaten to death with blunt objects,” and Reuters confirms that at least two people showed signs of asphyxiation.
Many among the dead are children, as they were to be sacrificed first. The order of death established by the leaders of the intense group had children dying first, then the unmarried, then mothers and the elderly; church leaders were to be last. More than 220 children remain missing, per the Guardian, and Reuters reports that children account for most of the bodies discovered so far.
Stephen Mwiti, who lost his wife and six children to the group, said, “I heard that when my [infant] son was killed, instead of the cult members grieving, they clapped and rejoiced that he had ascended and met Jesus.”
Katana explained to the BBC that “those who tried to leave the cult were branded as traitors and faced violent attacks.” The Manila Bulletin reports that there was an “enforcer gang” of two dozen people “tasked with ensuring that no one broke their fast or left the forest hideout alive.” One member of the group, quoted in the Guardian, claimed that he couldn’t leave the cult, that “they have taken my phone and suspect I am sharing information outside.”
Nthenge Mackenzie preached in a style that attracted people. Katana said that Mackenzie was “charismatic and preached God’s word well.” He added, “But when I saw his preaching was odd, I chose to leave."
In a separate BBC exposé, The Good News International Church is described as holding to “apocalyptic themes” in its beliefs. “One series of videos on [the] church’s YouTube channel has the caption: ‘End Time Kids’ and shows groups of young children delivering messages to the camera.”
Other videos show exorcisms “in which followers—often women—writhe around on the ground while [Mackenzie] ‘torments’ the demonic forces within them.” These YouTube channels have “thousands of subscribers.”
“Another theme of Pastor Mackenzie’s sermons has been the idea that formal education is satanic and used to extort money,” the BBC says. “[H]e claimed education was ‘not recognised in the Bible.’”
Robert Mackenzi, Nthenge Mackenzie’s brother, explained in an interview captured by Reuters:
As an individual, he said he wouldn’t take his own children to school because of various reasons. He said ‘worldly’ education does not help anyone. But when you give a child godly education, they are safe, not just on earth but in heaven as well. And he said that he will give his children ‘religious’ education.
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“Pastor Mackenzie has also condemned education for promoting homosexuality through sex education programmes,” the BBC continues. “’I told people education is evil … Children are taught gayism and lesbianism,’ he told the Nation newspaper.”
Another tenet that Nthenge Mackenzie promoted in his church was that science was not to be trusted. “He has also encouraged mothers to avoid seeking medical attention during childbirth and not to vaccinate their children… The pastor [claims] that doctors ‘serve a different God.’”
Mackenzie also prohibits women from braiding their hair, wearing wigs or adorning themselves with “ornaments.”
The BBC adds, “The church’s online content also features posts about the end of the world, impending doom and the supposed dangers of science.” Mackenzie expressed skepticism of modern technology.
“Much of Pastor Mackenzie’s preaching relates to the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies about Judgement Day… [including] frequent warnings of an omnipotent satanic force that has supposedly infiltrated the highest echelons of power around the world.” He claims the New World Order is made up of the UN, the United States, and the Catholic Church to institute authoritarian world government. (Nation [Africa] reported in 2019, “To many Kenyans, illuminati is the byword for cultism.”)
Mackenzie has characterized a plan to institute unique government-provided identification numbers for citizens, the equivalent of Social Security numbers here in the United States, as the “mark of the beast.”
Some devout members, the BBC states, “tore up their education certificates, quit their jobs and refused to vaccinate their children.” Family members described “behavioral changes” in their loved ones, according to the Guardian.
Indeed, “Walid Sketty, who works on the rapid response team of Mombasa-based NGO Haki Africa, said survivors resisted attempts to give them food and water when they were rescued. ‘They’re saying they are doing this because it’s their religion, and that they want to do this,’” reports the Washington Post. “’This is extremism of the highest order.’”
Kenyan President William Ruto likened Nthenge to terrorists who “use religion to advance weird, unacceptable ideology.”
Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki, speaking with Al Jazeera at the beginning of May, “said the autopsies will look at all possibilities, including whether some bodies had missing organs.” Manila Bulletin reported that “[c]ourt documents filed on Monday [May 8] said some of the corpses had their organs removed.” The AP reported on May 1, “Opposition leader Raila Odinga said … that the Kenyan parliament should ‘establish whether the deaths… were acts of rogue pastors, human sacrifices or body-organ trade.”
Nthenge Mackenzie and at least fourteen of his enforcers remain jailed at this time. Mackenzie was denied bail Wednesday and, for his part, has announced he is embarking on a hunger strike. He has not yet been required to enter a plea.
A neighboring church, accused of promulgating similar beliefs in conjunction with Mackenzie, saw its minister, Pastor Ezekiel, released on bond to a cheering crowd.
The crime “is being referred to as the Shakahola Forest Massacre by government officials,” Al Jazeera reports. President Ruto “announced his government would soon establish a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate the deaths,” per the AP, and it was previously reported by KTN News that the case has been referred to the International Criminal Court.
At the same time, some officials are walking a fine line. The Washington Post, explaining that Kenya is approximately 70 percent Christian, says that “Ruto’s Christian belief was at the core of his 2022 election campaign, and he has been filmed leading prayer before the start of cabinet meetings and praying and kneeling down in church on various occasions. His wife, Rachel Ruto, attends evangelical meetings held by local and international preachers in Kenya.”
Reuters adds, “Kenya’s Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua said on Friday the discovery of the starvation cult was about individuals and not the institution of the church and vowed to protect it against those who might weaponise the cult disaster. ‘They would want to use that small issue to give the Church of Christ a bad name,’ he said in a video clip posted online by Citizen TV Kenya.”
To learn more, please view this segment by TRT World, published May 2:
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