Witnesses testify on land used to bury Shakahola cult victims

Witnesses appeared before a Mombasa court on Wednesday to provide information on the land where victims of the Shakahola cult were buried. 

In a case involving suspected cult leader Paul Mackenzie and his other followers, Andrew Charo Baya, the 40th prosecution witness who is a farmer born, raised and currently residing in Shakahola for the last 54 years gave a witness testimony of the events that happened in the forest two years ago.

Baya stated that on July 9, 2020, he encountered Mackenzie and his followers as they were there clearing the bush and cleaning the land which didn’t belong to them, planning to undertake farming activities. 

Two years later on January 2023, Baya recounted meeting a young boy estimated to be 12 or 13 years old who recounted events transpiring in the land where Mackenzie was settling.

“I went and found a child when I was coming from a neighbor’s farm. The child had his clothes on him, and we exchanged greetings. He proceeded to tell me where they were, they were fasting, fasting until they died. They called the place Jangwani (wilderness),” testified Baya.

Baya further recounted that three months later on March 17, he was called by the area chief and instructed to go to a residence in Shamba la Msimba where there was a body of a man that had been found by pastoralists and had already decomposed.

In the days that followed, he helped with rescuing survivors who were exhausted and unable to move. He also helped to exhume some bodies.

Michael Mwaria, a land surveyor stationed in the Ministry of Lands in Nairobi told the court of a request by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to submit GPS coordinates of structures in Shakahola.

Aside from submitting the coordinates of the structures, Mwaria told the court that he was in a team of surveyors that went to the site of the incident to implement the request by mapping out houses, water pans, holding bays, and graves (exhumed and non-exhumed).

The case hearing comes at a time where there are new reports that Mackenzie continues to run a new cult in Kilifi behind bars. A claim he has denied. 

Six children are reported to have died in Shakahola just two years after surviving the initial incident.

The six children—Flora (15), Mary (14), Christine (10), Shadrach (6), Esther (4), and Tonny (1)—were reportedly buried in a settlement within Kwa Binzaro village, deep inside Chakama Ranch. 

The children were part of a family of eight rescued during the 2023 Shakahola operation and later relocated to Nyadorera in Siaya County.

Their father, Jairus lied to the extended family that he had been offered a job in Bondo and was to move with the entire nuclear family. But he boarded a bus to Kilifi with his wife Lilian Atieno and their six kids, with the intention to rejoin the starvation cult. Jairus and Lilian were rescued two weeks ago and later arrested from the forest.

A close relative to the arrested couple recounted to Citizen TV, of receiving first-hand confessions from the two.

Human rights activists have warned of a rise in deaths and called for the government to control phone use for suspects imprisoned following the first incident in 2023.

“The government must find a way to control phone use, especially for those charged in Shakahola One,” said Mathias Shipeta, Rapid Response Officer at Haki Africa.

“We have received information that Mackenzie and his accomplices are still preaching the gospel of fasting unto death via mobile phones, which, according to the prison service, they are entitled to use for communicating with family. But deeper investigations show they are not speaking to family.”

“I ask the government to put an end to this Shakahola issue completely… It should not continue. It seems people are regrouping in the forest.”