Kenyan Officials Ignored the Warnings While 446 Died in Shakahola

Four hundred and forty-six bodies came out of a forest in Kenya. Many were children. Their parents had been told that starving themselves was the road to Jesus, and the people who were supposed to stop it watched and did nothing.

This week a court in Mombasa is expected to deliver its verdict in the Shakahola trial. Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, the self-proclaimed pastor who led the Good News International church, faces 191 counts of murder, manslaughter and terrorism. He denies them. Thirty co-accused stand beside him. Some families want a conviction. Others have not even been able to bury their dead. Look at what they are living with: Alice Mwajuma Deche, 66, lost two children and ten grandchildren in the massacre, and she is still searching for eleven relatives. Francis Wanje, a teacher, pulled his eight-year-old grandson out of the forest alive. The boy's two younger siblings had starved to death there. Wanje's family lost eight people in all and has been able to bury four.

Think about what that means. A grandmother who buries one grandchild and still does not know where the rest are. A man who found one child alive and two dead.

Let us be precise about how this happened. In March 2023, a man reported to police that relatives who had joined a new church had not come home. Investigators searched the area around the Shakahola forest near Malindi on the Kenyan coast and found hundreds of shallow graves. A Kenyan Senate inquiry had recorded 428 exhumed bodies by October 2023, plus one suspect who died in custody. Later exhumations brought the total to 446. Of the 443 bodies and body parts held at the Malindi mortuary, only 34 have been positively identified through DNA matching. Four hundred and nine people who were someone's mother, son, or neighbour still have no name on their file.

The most damning finding did not come from the accused. It came from Kenya's own ombudsman. The Commission on Administrative Justice described "a gross dereliction of duty" by officials of the National Government Administration and the National Police Service, who ignored warnings about Mackenzie's activities between 2021 and 2023. It called the deaths preventable and recommended disciplinary action against six officials. Elema Halake, head of the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, called it a multi-agency failure. Read that again. The state had the warnings. The state had the institutions. The state had the time. And the state looked away while people starved.

So ask the question nobody in Nairobi wants to answer. How many warnings does a government need before it acts? Two years of warnings is not an oversight. It is a choice, or at least a failure so consistent that it amounts to one.

This is not an isolated Kenyan embarrassment. Across the continent, the pattern repeats: the danger is visible, the alarm is raised, and the institutions meant to protect citizens shrug. Whether it is a predatory preacher, a militia that terrorises villages, or a corrupt police commander who takes bribes to wave through trafficking, the common thread is a state that treats its own people as someone else's problem. We have seen this before in Kenya, and we will see it again unless we change the incentives.

The ongoing debate over church regulation shows just how far the rot runs. A presidential task force set up in May 2023 handed its report to President William Ruto in July 2024. It recommended a separate statute for religious organisations and the re-registration of every religious institution in the country. The resulting Religious Organisations Bill would penalise leaders who extort money through false miracles. Cabinet approved a draft in July 2025. Then the clergy appealed for the bill to be withdrawn, and it stalled. Bishop Francis Omondi of the Anglican Church says the laws already exist and simply are not followed. He is partly right. But the task force chairman, Reverend Mutava, put the danger plainly: "Our greatest fear is that if this is not implemented, we are likely to see another Shakahola."

He is right to be afraid. A country that cannot tell the difference between faith and fraud, and cannot enforce its own rules, is an open door for the next cult leader with a Bible and a bank account.

Kenya is not a failed state, and we must not pretend otherwise. Its courts are functioning. Its ombudsman has spoken without fear. Its families are demanding answers. These are the building blocks of a democracy that works. But democracy is more than having the right institutions on paper. It is about whether those institutions are used when it counts. Botswana has built a reputation across decades for disciplined governance and an independent judiciary that holds officials to account. Mauritius has shown that a diverse, multi-faith society can thrive under clear rules that apply equally to all. Neither is perfect. Both prove that accountability is a choice a government can make.

So here is what Kenya must do, and what the rest of us should demand from our own leaders. First, the officials who ignored the 2021 to 2023 warnings must face disciplinary action now, not after another decade of paperwork. If the Commission on Administrative Justice recommended action against six officers, name them publicly and see the process through. Second, pass a Religious Organisations Bill that is written to protect genuine faith while stripping away the cover for predators: mandatory registration, transparent finances, and real penalties for those who sell false miracles and starve their followers. Third, fund the DNA identification effort properly and stop treating the dead as a bureaucratic inconvenience. Murkomen says the problem is not money but people coming forward to give samples. Then make it easy and make it urgent. Set up mobile collection points in every county the victims came from. Publish the list of unidentified bodies so that a mother in Kisumu who has been searching for three years can finally check it. Fourth, give the police and the administration a clear, independent mechanism for escalating warnings so that no single district commissioner can bury a report in a drawer.

The families have already waited too long. Alice Deche is still searching for eleven people. Francis Wanje still has four graves he cannot fill with the names he knows.

We are the ones who must refuse to let this become normal. Every Kenyan who reads this should write to their Member of Parliament and demand a date for the Religious Organisations Bill. Every journalist should keep asking which officials were warned and what happened next. Every church leader who truly serves God should be the first to call for registration and transparency, because real faith has nothing to hide. And every African government watching from the sidelines should understand that the Shakahola graves are a warning to them too.

Four hundred and forty-six people went into that forest believing someone was looking after them. Their government had been told. Their government did nothing. The least we can do, and the most we owe them, is to make sure that when the next warning comes, someone in power finally picks up the phone.

Based on reporting by RFI