MALINDI, Kenya (AP) — Shukran Karisa Mangi used to show up to work drunk, where he would find the bodies of members of the doomsday cult buried in shallow graves. But alcohol could not dull his shock the morning he found the body of a close friend, whose neck was so badly twisted that his head and torso were pointing in opposite directions.
This violent death angered Mangi, who had already dug up bodies of children. the body count continued to rise in this community on the coast of Kenya, where an extremist evangelical leader Paul Mackenzie is accused to order his followers to die of hunger in order to meet Jesus.
Mangi recently said that when he tries to sleep, he sometimes sees the remains of others. But when he is awake, he is haunted by the image of his friend’s mutilated body.
“He died in a very brutal way,” said Mangi, one of several gravediggers whose work was suspended earlier this year as bodies piled up at the morgue. “Most of the time, I still think about how he died.”
In one of the deadliest cult-related massacres ever, at least 436 bodies have been recovered since police raided the Good News International Church in a forest some 70 kilometers (40 miles) inland from the coastal town of Malindi. Seventeen months later, many in the area are still shocked by what happened, despite repeated warnings about the church’s leader.
Mackenzie pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering 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 during his captivity shows how much power some evangelists project, even as their teachings undermine government authority, break the law or harm followers desperate for healing and other miracles.
It’s not just about Mackenzie, says Thomas Kakala, who calls himself a bishop at Jesus Cares Ministry International in Malindi, referring to the questionable pastors he knew in the capital Nairobi.
“You look at them. If you’re sober and you want to hear the word of God, you don’t go to their church,” he said. “But the church is full.”
A man like Mackenzie, who refused to join the community of preachers in Malindi and rarely quoted Scripture, could thrive in a country like KenyaKakala said. Six detectives have been suspended for ignoring multiple warnings about Mackenzie’s illegal activities.
Kakala said he felt discouraged in his attempts to discredit Mackenzie years ago. The evangelist had played a tape of Kakala on his TV station and declared him an enemy. Kakala felt threatened.
“Those were some of his powers, and he used them,” Kakala said.
Kenya, like much of East Africa, dominated by Christians. Although many are Anglican or Catholic, evangelical Christianity has spread widely since the 1980s. Many pastors model their ministries after the successful American televangelists, investing in broadcasting and advertising.
Many evangelical churches in Africa are run as sole proprietorships, without the guidance of trustee boards or lay people. Pastors are often unaccountable and derive their authority from their perceived ability to perform miracles or make prophecies. Some, like Mackenzie, can appear all-powerful.
Mackenzie, a former street vendor and taxi driver with a high school education, apprenticed with a Malindi pastor in the late 1990s. There, in the laid-back tourist town, he opened his own church in 2003.
A charismatic preacher, said to perform miracles and exorcisms, he could be generous with his money. His followers included teachers and police officers. They came to Malindi from all over Kenya, giving Mackenzie national fame and spreading the pain of the dead throughout the country.
“As a religious leader, I see Mackenzie as a very mysterious man because I can’t understand how he could kill all these people in one place,” said Famau Mohamed, a sheikh in Malindi. “But one thing that is still puzzling, even at this moment, is that he still speaks with so much courage. … He feels like he has done nothing wrong.”
The first charges against Mackenzie concerned his opposition to formal education and vaccination. He was briefly detained in 2019 for opposing government efforts to issue national identification numbers to Kenyans, saying the numbers were satanic.
Later that year, he closed his church in Malindi and urged his congregation to follow him to Shakahola, where he leased 800 hectares of forest home to elephants and big cats.
According to survivors, church members paid small sums to own plots of land in Shakahola and were required to build homes and live in villages with biblical names such as Nazareth. Mackenzie became more demanding, with people from different villages not allowed to communicate or meet together, said former church member Salama Masha.
“What made me realize that Mackenzie was not a good person was when he said the children had to fast to die,” said Masha, who escaped after witnessing two children starving to death. “That’s when I knew I couldn’t do that.”
The grass-covered house with a solar panel where Mackenzie lived was known as “ikulu,” or state house. Police found milk and bread in Mackenzie’s refrigerator while his followers starved nearby. He had bodyguards. He had informants. And, crucially, he had his aura as the self-proclaimed prophetic “paapa” to thousands of obedient followers.
“(He is) like a chief, because they had a small village and my brother is the elder of that particular village,” said Robert Mbatha Mackenzie, speaking of his elder brother’s authority in Shakahola. “He went there and in just two years he had made a big village. And many people followed him there.”
Mbatha Mackenzie, a mason who lives in a tin hut in Malindi with his family and goats, said that while Mackenzie was generous to his followers, he never treated his extended family with the same kindness.
“My brother — he was like a politician,” he said. “They have a sweet tongue, and when he says something to the people, the people believe him.”
A former church member who fled Shakahola said she lost faith in Mackenzie when she saw how his men handled people who were on the verge of starvation. She said Mackenzie’s bodyguards would take the starving person away, never to be seen again.
The woman said it was “routine” for the bodyguards to rape women in the villages. She said she, too, was sexually abused by four men while pregnant with her fourth child. The Associated Press does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault unless they choose to identify themselves publicly.
According to former church members, those who tried to leave the forest without Mackenzie’s permission were beaten, as were those caught breaking their fast.
Autopsies on more than 100 bodies showed deaths from starvation, strangulation, suffocation and blunt force trauma. Mangi, the gravedigger, said he believed more mass graves were yet to be discovered in Shakahola. According to the Kenyan Red Cross, at least 600 people are missing.
Priscillar Riziki, who left Mackenzie’s church in 2017 but lost her daughter and three grandchildren at Shakahola, broke down as she remembered Mackenzie as “initially good” but increasingly rude to his followers. Her daughter Lorine was not allowed to take her children on family visits without Mackenzie’s permission, Riziki said.
One of Riziki’s grandchildren was identified by DNA analysis and given a proper burial. Lorine and two of her children are presumed dead.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, which witnesses said reinforced Mackenzie’s end-of-days vision, the leader ordered stricter fasting measures that became even stricter in late 2022. Parents were no longer allowed to feed their children, witnesses said.
According to village elder Changawa Mangi Yaah, some church members who escaped from Shakahola spread stories about the suffering there. On one occasion, a fight broke out in the forest when outsiders on motorbikes attempted a rescue mission.
Two of the rescue team’s motorcycles were burned in Shakahola, but police did nothing beyond making brief arrests, Yaah said, adding that he realized “Mackenzie was more powerful than I thought.”
___
Associated Press’s religion coverage is supported by the AP Newsletter cooperation with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.