Unreported World, Channel 4, 19th May 2023, Unreported-world-on-demand, Kenya’s Christian Death Cult.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/on-demand/75517-001

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65588273

Symeon Brown investigates how Pastor Paul Mackenzie, a former taxi driver and preacher of the coming apocalypse (who is in police custody) led to the mass murder or suicide of over 600 men, women and children and babies as young as two-months old.

Pathologist Dr Goya reports that many of the victims of the exhumed bodies in Shakahola farm, near the coastal town of Malindi, showed forensic signs of strangulation and of having been beaten. Malnourishment was a constant.

Betty Katana, who escaped, reported how adults were instructed to starve themselves to death while awaiting Jesus. Children shut inside huts without food or water. Sometimes taken out into the sun to help them die quicker and escape to heaven.

Pastor Mackenzie’s sermons of the Good News International Church are still available online. His son refuses to speak to the media. Pastor Mackenzie preaches his innocence.  

 The self-appointed messiah has many of the same traits as David Koresh and Jim Jones’ death cults. His followers find it is already too late to leave. A praetorian guard around the false prophet enforces discipline and ensures an untimely death. No apostasy. No one left alive as witnesses against the good pastor.

With over eighty percent of Kenya Christian, fellow pastors find it difficult on camera to criticise Pastor Mackenzie. His teachings on the uselessness of education, especially of women; his claims to strike down and cure AIDs and Covid with inspired prayer were standard fare; seeking medical help, even for children, showed a lack of faith in Jesus that would be punished in this life or the next. These are the fundamentals of their Christian-soundbite pathology. Listen to the teachings of Christian fundamentalist ideology in America about satanic forces—war in Zion, for example, is a good thing because it brings the end of days closer. A patriarchal worldview entwined with the hornet nests’ of traditional nationalist sentiments and religious purity. This is not a foreign dis-ease. Nor is it unique to Kenya. God needs no help. Scratch the surface of a death cult and you’ll find a narcissistic psychopath as a leader with the promise of a bright new future. Sound familiar?