A Kenyan court has convicted cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie of murdering nearly 200 children after ordering his followers to stop eating in hopes of meeting Jesus, in a case that has drawn widespread national attention. The verdict was delivered on Monday in Mombasa by Lady Justice Diana Kavezeda-Mochache, who described Mackenzie as the principal architect of a doctrine that transformed fasting from a religious practice into a path to death.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver and televangelist, operated from 2019 to 2023, leading his followers to a remote area near the Indian Ocean known as Shakahola Forest. There, he preached an impending apocalypse and urged followers to fast until death as a means of salvation. When starvation failed to end lives quickly enough, some children were killed by hand, the judge noted.
Authorities began investigating after exhuming over 400 bodies from the forest, mostly children under the age of 10, many of whom died from starvation while others showed signs of strangulation. Mackenzie was formally charged with 191 murders, nearly all involving children. In addition to Mackenzie, 28 of his aides were also convicted of murder.
The court heard testimony from former cult members who stated that Mackenzie encouraged parents to ensure their children fasted and died first so they could reach heaven before adults. One particularly disturbing case involved a follower who delivered a seventh child at the forest site; the newborn was denied breastfeeding and died within 12 days.
The judge held parents legally responsible for the deaths of their children, noting that many of the victims were offspring of accused cult members. Sentencing for Mackenzie and the aides is scheduled for November 6. While Justice Kavezeda-Mochache described the acts as crimes against humanity, no conviction was made under this classification.
Mackenzie’s arrest in 2023 followed earlier detentions, including one in 2017 on charges of promoting extremist beliefs, though he was acquitted at that time. After a subsequent arrest on similar charges in 2019, he closed his church and relocated followers to Shakahola, marketing the forest as a new “Holy Land.”
Criticism has mounted over the authorities’ failure to intervene sooner. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights called the official response “deplorable,” adding that many lives could have been saved if warnings from former cult members had been acted upon more promptly.
The Shakahola incident is one of several fatal cases worldwide involving cult leaders leveraging charismatic authority to manipulate followers into deadly acts. Notable parallels include the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana, the 1990s poisonings in Uganda, and the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians in Texas.
In Kenya, a deeply religious nation, the tragedy has sparked soul-searching and unrest, raising concerns over how such activities remained undetected for years despite prior government scrutiny of Mackenzie’s activities.