Paul Mackenzie Starved 191 Children and Kenya's State Looked Away

Children died with their mouths open to the empty air. Their parents had been told that starving was the road to heaven, and that the children would reach Jesus first.

On Monday, a court in Mombasa found Paul Mackenzie and 28 associates guilty of murder. The judge said the prosecution had proved the case against all 29 accused for the deaths of 190 children and one adult. That is the verdict. Now we must ask the harder question. How did one man run a starvation camp for years, bury hundreds of his followers in shallow pits, and still walk free between arrests?

The answer is not mysterious. It is a failure of the state, and Kenyans have every right to be furious about it.

The scale of what happened in Shakahola Forest, an 800-acre ranch inland from the coastal resort town of Malindi, should shake any decent person. Prosecutors told the court that Mackenzie "initiated and directed" extreme fasting. They described a "structured hierarchy of death" in which children would die first, then teenagers, then women, then men. Let that sink in. This was not a tragedy that happened to a community. It was a sequence, a schedule, an orchestration of death, planned by one man and carried out by parents who believed they were saving their souls.

The bodies were found after a rights group tipped off authorities in April 2023 and some followers were rescued. Police then excavated hundreds of shallow graves. The death toll climbed past 400, and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights put it at 429 in 2024. Local morgues ran out of room. Excavations had to be paused. Some victims still have no names. In January, Mackenzie was charged over a further 52 bodies discovered in a nearby village. The horror did not end when the first graves were opened. It kept coming out of the ground.

Consider what the prosecution's findings tell us about the children. Most died of starvation. Others died from asphyxia, neck compression, and traumatic head injury. These children did not die quietly in their sleep. They were starved in a forest, while adults who should have protected them obeyed a man who promised them paradise.

Now think about Francis Wanje, 62, who lost eight members of his family, including his daughter and two grandchildren. He traveled to Mombasa from the rural coast to hear the verdict. He told the press that he expected a ruling that would teach the whole public that such things must never happen again. That is not too much to ask. It is the bare minimum a state owes its people. Yet Wanje also spoke of anger at the government's initial inaction. That anger belongs to every Kenyan parent who sends a child to school trusting that the authorities are watching.

Here is the indictment the Kenyan state must answer for. Mackenzie founded the Good News International Church in 2003 and opened branches in Nairobi and along the coast, drawing thousands of followers. He was arrested in 2017 on charges of radicalisation and acquitted. In 2019 he was arrested again in connection with two child deaths at Shakahola and released on bail. He claimed to have closed his church that same year. Two arrests. Two releases. And then a forest full of bodies. Every one of those releases was a decision made by someone, and every one of those decisions has a cost measured in small coffins.

We are told that religious freedom protects these movements. It does. But freedom of worship has never meant freedom to starve children. A church that runs an 800-acre compound with no oversight, no audits, no welfare checks, and no independent monitoring is not a church. It is a private kingdom with a flock inside it. Kenya's leaders have spoken about tougher regulation of religious organisations since the scandal broke. Good. Talk must become law, and law must become enforcement.

Let us be clear about what this case is not. It is not a story about African superstition, as some lazy commentators will claim. The problem is not that Kenyans are gullible. The problem is that a man with a record of extremism could hide in plain sight because the institutions designed to stop him were weak, slow, or indifferent. Predatory leaders thrive wherever the state is absent, asleep, or bought. The same pattern appears in fraudulent investment schemes, in militia recruitment, and in the armed cults that have terrorised communities across the continent. When the police do not follow through, when prosecutors drop cases, and when courts grant bail to men accused of killing children, the message to every would-be warlord is simple. You can do this and survive.

So what must change? First, Kenya must create a binding registration and oversight regime for religious bodies. Every organisation that holds public gatherings, runs residential compounds, or handles children should be registered, have its finances audited, and be subject to unannounced welfare inspections. Second, the Children's Act and related statutes must be enforced with real penalties for any leader who restricts food, medicine, or schooling for minors in the name of faith. Third, police need an independent complaints mechanism, so that when officers ignore warnings about a cult, citizens can force an investigation and officers face consequences. Fourth, the government should publish a full, transparent account of how Mackenzie's earlier arrests were handled, so that the public knows who decided to release him and why.

Kenya is not starting from zero. Its courts have shown they can deliver verdicts that people believe in, and this trial's conviction of 29 accused proves that. Across the continent, Botswana has built its reputation on institutional discipline and a relatively clean state, showing that strong rules applied consistently produce public trust. Mauritius has used transparent governance and an independent judiciary to become a model of stability. These examples matter because they prove that African societies can build institutions that protect the weak from the powerful. The lesson is not that we need foreign experts to save us. The lesson is that we need leaders with the courage to enforce our own laws.

Citizens have their part too. Ask your MP what the government has done about church regulation since the Shakahola bodies were found. Ask your county commissioner which religious compounds operate in your area and who checks on them. Support the families who are still waiting for their dead to be identified. Report any group that isolates members, restricts food, or separates children from schools and hospitals. The Shakahola families did not choose this catastrophe. They were failed by a system that was supposed to stop it.

We owe the 190 children and the one adult more than a verdict. We owe them a country where a man who has been arrested twice does not get a third chance to preach death to people who trust him. Kenya must make certain that the next preacher with a ranch, a Bible, and a promise of heaven meets a state that acts before the graves are dug. Demand it from your leaders today, because the next forest is already being planted.

Based on reporting by RFI