Graft, politics breed cult culture

We should be mourning the victims of the Shakahola massacre. I refuse to call the main suspect 'Pastor'. He does not deserve that title, which he stole from Christian leaders who have stood for good values.

We are a country that does not respect human life but at least we could start by trying. The place to start is to remember the Kenyans caught up in this bizarre death trap set by the two rogue pastors suspected of killing their faithful.

If one politician of prominence dies, the flags will be flown at half-mast. Why not lower them for the many victims of Shakahola? They are worth our respect in death at least.

Like many other Kenyans, we need to ask how the authorities let this high number of people die right under their nose. The Shakahola massacre may have lifted a lid off a problem that may have gone unchecked for a very long time.

It took brave citizens bringing the concerns of people being starved in order to "see Jesus" to the attention of human rights organisations at the Coast. They did not go to the police or the local chief; which indicates that Kenyans have no confidence in the government security teams as to trust them to deal with criminal matters.

Police and the Judiciary had a great opportunity--way back in 2017--to stop the Shakahola massacre had they followed up on charging one of the pastors with the death of two children due to the activities of the cult he ran. As the government focuses on cleaning up the mess left by rogue pastors and churches, it should also hold to account any government official who slept on the job and let the cult deaths go unchecked. Heads should be rolling. Without holding officials to account, nothing will change.

As usual, the government has been making a splash as it reacts to a problem that could have been avoided by proactive measures when the first cult-related incident reared its head. The authorities have had more than 20 years to work on the initial intelligence that came as a result of the trafficking charges another fake pastor faced in the UK. He and his wife were implicated in child trafficking, where mules (including his wife) were used to steal newborns from their mothers at Pumwani Maternity Hospital in Nairobi and traffic them to the UK.

The pastor was finally extradited to Kenya in 2017 to face justice but the case is still crawling in the court corridors. But that case set the template for intelligence officials to work on. Had a spotlight been shone on independent churches since, we would, perhaps, never have heard of the cults today and the Kenyans wrongfully starved by fasting could have been alive.

The slow pace of the case involving the suspected child-trafficker pastor and the failure to charge his colleague in 2017 show the hallmark of a process influenced by corruption. There is no evidence to suggest money may have exchanged hands but, going with the past and even current behaviour of some actors within the criminal justice system, it won’t be too far-fetched to blame the problem on corruption, a vice that has had a chokehold on the criminal justice system.

Corruption has been the bane of the lives of many Kenyans, who fail to get justice due to a bribery culture. I am not holding my breath that the ongoing cult cases will see the light of day. In a country where leaders are allowed to get away with serious crimes, it will be naïve to think other Kenyans with financial influence would lay themselves bare at the court when they can buy their freedom.

The suspected cult leaders have been called all manner of names--from terrorists to extremists. However, I think this is a cop-out and an easy way to package a problem that might be much deeper than that. The Christian community has, in the recent past, become a magnet for fraudsters and now, perhaps, people with serious altered mental health. We could be looking at the emergence of psychopaths using religion to expound on their twisted desires, such as starving people and watching them die. There are narcissistic traits being exhibited. Nobody in their right mind would lure hundreds of people to death.

But the suffering has been enabled by our politicians, who turned church pulpits to campaign platforms. Over the years, Christians have become a powerful majority because of their large voting numbers that no politician would dare raise concerns about as regards criminal, psychopathic and fraudulent activities going on in some churches.

Many other churches have done a great amount of good in the country. For their sake, and for the sake of vulnerable Kenyans, there is a need to move with speed and cleanse Christianity of rogue elements who're using the religion to cause mayhem and deaths and fleece people of their money. Any wealth obtained by every fake pastor through a 'prosperity' church must be declared illegal. Reforms in anti-corruption policies and the criminal justice system could not come any sooner.

Ms Guyo is a legal researcher. [email protected]. @kdiguyo