Residents still shaken 17 months after deadly cult massacre in Kenya

Seventeen months after one of the deadliest cult-related massacres ever, many in the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi area are still shaken despite repeated warnings about the church’s leader.

The remains of more than 430 victims have been recovered since police raided Good News International Church in a forest some 70 kilometers (43 miles) inland from Malindi.

The number of victims kept rising in this community off Kenya’s coastline where extremist evangelical leader Paul Mackenzie had instructed his followers to starve to death for the opportunity to meet Jesus.

Shukran Karisa Mangi always showed up drunk at work, where he dug up the bodies of doomsday cult members buried in shallow graves.

But the alcohol couldn’t numb his shock the morning he found the body of a close friend, whose neck had been twisted so severely that his head and torso faced opposite directions.

This violent death upset Mangi, who had already unearthed children’s bodies.

Mackenzie has pleaded not guilty to charges in the murders of 191 children, multiple counts of manslaughter and other crimes.

If convicted, he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Some in Malindi who spoke to The Associated Press said Mackenzie’s confidence while in custody showed the wide-ranging power some evangelists project even as their teachings undermine government authority, break the law, or harm followers desperate for healing and other miracles.

Kenya, like much of East Africa, is dominated by Christians.

While many are Anglican or Catholic, evangelical Christianity has been spreading widely since the 1980s.

Many pastors style their ministries in the manner of successful U.S. televangelists, investing in broadcasting and advertising.

Many of Africa’s evangelical churches are run like sole proprietorships, without the guidance of trustee boards or laity.

Pastors are often unaccountable, deriving authority from their perceived ability to perform miracles or prophecies.

Some, like Mackenzie, can seem all-powerful.

Mackenzie, a former street vendor and cab driver with a high-school education, apprenticed with a Malindi preacher in the late 1990s.

There, in the laid-back tourist town, he opened his own church in 2003.

A charismatic preacher, he was said to perform miracles and exorcisms, and could be generous with his money.

His followers included teachers and policemen.

They came to Malindi from across Kenya, giving Mackenzie national prominence that spread the pain of the deaths across the country.

The first complaints against Mackenzie concerned his opposition to formal schooling and vaccination.

He was briefly detained in 2019 for opposing the government’s efforts to assign national identification numbers to Kenyans, saying the numbers were satanic.

“One thing that’s still puzzling, even at the moment, is he still talks with so much courage. … He feels like he did nothing wrong," said Famau Mohamed, a sheikh in Malindi.

He closed his Malindi church premises later that year and urged his congregation to follow him to Shakahola, where he had leased 800 acres of forest where elephants and big cats roam.

Church members paid small sums to own plots in Shakahola, and were required to build houses and live in villages with biblical names like Nazareth, according to survivors.

Mackenzie grew more demanding, with people from different villages forbidden from communicating or gathering, said former church member Salama Masha.

“What made me (realize) Mackenzie was not a good person was when he said that the children should fast to die,” said Masha, who escaped after witnessing the starvation deaths of two children.

“That’s when I knew that it’s not something I can do.”

The grass-thatched house with a solar panel where Mackenzie lived was known as “ikulu,” or statehouse.

Police found milk and bread in his refrigerator as his followers starved nearby.

He had bodyguards.

He had informers.

And, decisively, he had his aura as the self-proclaimed prophetic “paapa” to thousands of obedient followers.

Autopsies on more than 100 bodies showed deaths from starvation, strangulation, suffocation, and injuries sustained from blunt objects.

Mangi, the gravedigger, said he believed more mass graves were yet to be discovered in Shakahola.

At least 600 people are reported missing, according to the Kenya Red Cross.

Priscillar Riziki, who left Mackenzie’s church in 2017 but lost her daughter and three grandchildren in Shakahola, broke down as she remembered Mackenzie as increasingly discourteous to his followers.

One of Riziki’s grandchildren was identified through DNA analysis and received a proper burial.

Lauren and two of her children are presumed dead.