The church was named “Good News.” Hundreds of members died in a cult massacre that haunts the survivors

MALINDI – Shukran Karisa Mangi always showed up drunk at work, where he dug up the bodies of members of a doomsday cult buried in shallow graves. But alcohol could not dull his shock when he found the body of a close friend in the morning, his neck twisted so badly that his head and torso were pointing in opposite directions.

The violent death shocked Mangi, who had already dug up children's bodies, and the body count continued to rise in this community off the coast of Kenya, where extremist evangelical leader Paul Mackenzie is accused of ordering his followers to starve to death so they could meet Jesus.

While he sometimes sees the remains of others while trying to sleep, Mangi said recently, the recurring image of his friend's mutilated body torments him when he is awake.

“He died in a very cruel way,” said Mangi, one of several gravediggers whose work was suspended earlier this year as bodies began piling up in the morgue. “Most of the time I still think about how he died.”

In one of the worst cult massacres in history, at least 436 bodies have been recovered since police raided the Good News International Church in a forest about 70 kilometers inland from the coastal town of Malindi. Seventeen months later, many people in the area are still shaken by what happened, despite repeated warnings about the church leader.

Mackenzie pleaded not guilty to the murders of 191 children, multiple manslaughter charges and other crimes. If convicted, he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

In Malindi, Associated Press officials said Mackenzie's confidence while in custody shows the power some evangelists wield, even as their teachings undermine government authority, break laws or harm their followers who are desperate for healing and other miracles.

It's not just Mackenzie, said Thomas Kakala, a self-proclaimed bishop of the Malindi-based organization Jesus Cares Ministry International, pointing to questionable pastors he knew in the capital Nairobi.

“Look at them. If you are sober and want to hear the Word of God, you wouldn't go to their church,” he said. “But the place is packed.”

A man like Mackenzie, who refused to join the community of pastors in Malindi and rarely quoted from the Bible, could succeed in a country like Kenya, Kakala said. Six police officers were suspended for ignoring repeated 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 television station and declared him an enemy. Kakala felt threatened.

“Those were some of his powers, and he used them,” Kakala said.

Like much of East Africa, Kenya is predominantly Christian. Many are Anglicans or Catholics, but since the 1980s evangelical Christianity has become widespread. Many pastors model their sermons on successful American television preachers and invest in radio and advertising.

Many of Africa's evangelical churches are run as sole proprietorships, without the leadership of a board of trustees or lay people. Pastors are often unaccountable and derive their authority from a supposed ability to perform miracles or make prophecies. Some, like Mackenzie, can seem all-powerful.

Mackenzie, a former street vendor and taxi driver with a high school diploma, apprenticed to a preacher in Malindi in the late 1990s. He opened his own church in the laid-back tourist town in 2003.

A charismatic preacher, he was said to perform miracles and exorcisms and to be generous with his money. His followers included teachers and police officers. They came to Malindi from all over Kenya and made Mackenzie known nationwide, spreading the pain of the deaths throughout the country.

“As a religious leader, I find Mackenzie a very mysterious man because I cannot understand how he could kill all those people in one place,” said Famau Mohamed, a sheikh in Malindi. “But what puzzles me even now is that he still speaks with such courage. … He feels he has done nothing wrong.”

The first complaints against Mackenzie were about his opposition to schooling and vaccinations. In 2019, he was briefly arrested for opposing government efforts to assign national identification numbers to Kenyans, claiming the numbers were satanic.

That same year, he closed his church premises in Malindi and asked his congregation to follow him to Shakahola, where he leased 800 acres of forest home to elephants and big cats.

Church members paid small sums to own land in Shakahola and were forced to build houses and live in villages with biblical names like Nazareth, survivors say. Mackenzie became increasingly demanding, and people from different villages were forbidden to communicate with each other or gather together, says former church member Salama Masha.

“When he said the children should fast to die, I realized Mackenzie was not a good person,” said Masha, who fled after witnessing two children starve to death. “That's when I knew I couldn't do that.”

The grass-thatched, solar-panelled house where Mackenzie lived was known as the “ikulu” or “state house”. Police found milk and bread in Mackenzie's fridge while his followers starved nearby. He had bodyguards. He had informants. And, crucially, he had his aura as a 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 village,” Robert Mbatha Mackenzie said of his older brother's authority in Shakahola. “He went there and built a big village in just two years. And many people followed him there.”

Mbatha Mackenzie, a bricklayer who lives with his family and goats in a tin shack in Malindi, said that while Mackenzie was generous to his followers, he never treated his extended family with similar kindness.

“My brother – he seemed like a politician,” he said. “He has a sweet tongue and when he says something to people, people believe him.”

A former church member who escaped Shakahola said she lost faith in Mackenzie when she saw how his men treated people who were close to starvation. She said Mackenzie's bodyguards took the starving people away and they were never seen again.

The woman said it was “like routine” for the bodyguards to rape women in the villages. She says she too was sexually assaulted by four men when she was pregnant with her fourth child. The Associated Press does not release the names of victims of alleged sexual assault unless they publicly identify themselves.

Those who tried to leave the forest without Mackenzie's permission were beaten, as were those caught breaking their fast, according to former church members.

Autopsies of more than 100 bodies revealed deaths from starvation, strangulation, suffocation and injuries from blunt objects. Mangi, the gravedigger, said he believed more mass graves had been discovered in Shakahola. The Kenya Red Cross says 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 recalled Mackenzie's “initially good” and then increasingly rude treatment of his followers. Her daughter Lorine was not allowed to take her children on family visits without Mackenzie's consent, Riziki said.

One of Riziki's grandchildren was identified through DNA analysis and properly buried. Lorine and two of her children are presumed dead.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, which witnesses said reinforced Mackenzie's end-time vision, the leader ordered a stricter fast that became even stricter until the end of 2022. Parents were forbidden to feed their children, witnesses said.

Some church members who fled Shakahola described the suffering there and once started a fight in the forest when strangers on motorcycles attempted a rescue operation, said village elder Changawa Mangi Yaah.

Two rescue team motorcycles were burned in Shakahola, but police did nothing except make brief arrests, Yaah said, adding that he realized: “Mackenzie was more powerful than I thought.”

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