More than a hundred people, including children, have been confirmed dead in Kenya’s worst cult mass suicide

More than a hundred people – among them children – have been confirmed dead in Kenya’s worst cult mass suicide, at a small village in the south-east of the country. These numbers are likely to increase following the discovery of 15 more gravesites on an 800-acre forest.

Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen, who has studied the drivers of religious extremism particularly among violent extremist groups in the east African region, examines the challenges Kenya faces from cults and religious extremism in a country where freedom of religion or belief is protected by the constitution.

What do we know so far about the cult deaths in Kenya?

No fewer than 109 men, women and children are known to have died after a Kenyan charismatic church pastor encouraged his followers to fast to death to “meet Jesus” in the afterlife. Bodies of the dead were recovered from numerous mass graves on a farm at Shakahola, a village on Kenya’s south-east coast, where Pastor Paul Mackenzie had his Good News International Church. Autopsies revealed that most had starved to death. But a small number, some children, had been strangled or suffocated to death.

Mackenzie now faces charges over the deaths. The victims came from all corners of the country, drawn to a man whose controversial teachings had come under government scrutiny as far back as 2017. Mackenzie’s apocalyptic narratives focused on the end of times, and were against the modern or western ways of life such as seeking medical services, education or music. His conspiracy theories emphasised the Catholic Church, the US and the United Nations as “agents of Satan”.

His other brush with the law came in 2019, when he faced counts of incitement to disobedience of the law and distributing unauthorised films to the public.

That same year, he closed the church, sold his TV station and moved to a ranch in a forested area of Kilifi county, where hundreds of families-built houses. The church and TV station were sold to Ezekiel Odero, another televangelist. Odero is well known for his so-called miracle healing crusades, which draw tens of thousands. He is under investigation for offences associated with the Shakahola mass suicide.

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