Good News International Ministries, later known internationally as the Shakahola cult, was founded in Kenya in 2003 by Paul Nthenge Mackenzie and his first wife. Mackenzie was born in 1973 in Kwale County to an evangelical family. He grew up singing in church choirs and began preaching young.
He also showed a volatile temper as a child, including once severely beating another boy. Before starting his ministry, he worked as a street hawker in Mombasa and later as a taxi driver in Malindi in the late 1990s. His preaching repeatedly drew police attention during this time, though early cases ended in acquittal for lack of evidence.
As his ministry grew, Mackenzie became known as a charismatic preacher who claimed direct communication with God. He built his first congregation in an early follower’s home before expanding it in Malindi.
His sermons were emotionally intense and centered on claims of miraculous healing and exorcism, with followers sometimes seen writhing on the ground during these rituals. He also posted recorded sermons online, warning of an approaching apocalypse and urging followers to stay devoted.
Mackenzie’s theology grew increasingly hostile to modern society. He denounced formal education, health care, television, sports, and other secular institutions as tools used by corrupt systems to exploit the faithful. He claimed doctors served a different god and discouraged women from seeking maternity care, while also opposing vaccination. He taught that schooling indoctrinated children with sin, noting that biblical figures had never attended school.
He extended this rejection to modern conveniences like mobile banking, calling it evil, and embraced conspiracy theories claiming the Catholic Church, the United States, and the United Nations were secretly orchestrating a satanic “New World Order.”
In 2017, after several children in the church died, Mackenzie and his second wife were charged with promoting radicalization and denying children medical care and education. Authorities rescued 93 children from the ministry that year and shut down his unlicensed broadcasting and school operations.
His personal life shifted alongside these events. His first wife died of asthma-related complications in 2009, and his second wife, Joyce Mwikamba, died of pneumonia in 2017. He then married a third wife, Rhoda Mumbua Maweu.
Despite political criticism and repeated legal action, most charges against Mackenzie were eventually dropped or resulted in acquittal, allowing him to keep operating. He later expanded through broadcasting, launching a company and acquiring a television channel to distribute his sermons, drawing further legal scrutiny.
In 2019, he was arrested for opposing Kenya’s Huduma Namba digital ID system, which he likened to the biblical “mark of the beast,” and separately for possessing unlicensed film content. After these arrests, he publicly announced he was closing his Malindi church and ending his ministry, though investigations found his sermons kept circulating online.
Looking for a more isolated base, Mackenzie’s deputy, Smart Mwakalama, identified an 800-acre forested property in Shakahola, Kilifi County. Mackenzie organized his followers to relocate there, framing the forest as a promised land free from outside influence.
Parliamentary inquiries later suggested Mackenzie’s theology drew on the apocalyptic teachings of American preacher William Branham, whose booklets were found at the site. Branham’s doctrine promoted extreme fasting as a path to spiritual power, a practice historically linked to Jonestown leader Jim Jones. Researchers also noted structural similarities between Mackenzie’s movement and fringe groups like Australia’s “A Voice in the Desert,” though that group denied any direct connection.
The Shakahola settlement was organized into small villages with biblical names such as Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jericho, where residents lived in mud huts on shared plots. Daily life revolved around lengthy prayer sessions led by Mackenzie. New members were often recruited with promises of divine healing, some joining after believing they had witnessed cures for physical or mental illness, offering what felt like refuge from poverty, illness, or personal hardship.
Once inside, members were required to liquidate their assets and hand the proceeds to Mackenzie, stripping them of financial independence. He taught that marriage, formal jobs, secular education, and ties to nonbelieving family should all be abandoned. State institutions were painted as evil, and members were told to lie to authorities and avoid government contact.
Around 2020, Mackenzie introduced mandatory fasting as a requirement for spiritual purification and salvation. What began as reduced rations escalated into total starvation.
Survivors said followers were taught that starving to death was the only guaranteed path to heaven ahead of an apocalypse Mackenzie predicted would arrive on April 15, 2023. According to testimony, the fasting schedule was designed so children starved first, followed by young women, then adult men.
An armed internal security force under Mwakalama’s command enforced the fasting rules, patrolling with machetes and crude weapons to stop members from leaving and to punish resistance. Survivors said those who tried to escape or eat again were beaten, tied to trees, or killed, with enforcers reportedly calling these deaths “wedding days.”
Killings involved strangulation and blunt-force trauma, sometimes carried out by family members acting under duress. Sexual violence by security personnel was also widely reported, with the group’s teachings reportedly reshaped to justify such abuse against fasting members.
The crisis became public in April 2023 after a family member reported relatives missing in the forest. Police who entered the area found 15 severely emaciated survivors, four of whom died shortly after, along with several shallow graves.
A broader search of the 800-acre property uncovered hundreds of individual and mass graves, some holding entire families. Autopsies showed many victims died of extreme starvation, though a substantial number died from strangulation, suffocation, or other trauma.
Reports that some bodies were missing internal organs sparked public debate over possible organ harvesting, with officials offering differing accounts of how widespread this was.
By late 2023, the confirmed death toll had passed 400, with hundreds more reported missing. Mackenzie was arrested in mid-April 2023 along with several co-defendants, including his deputy and his third wife, Rhoda Maweu, who was later released on bail.
In January 2024, he was formally charged with murder, manslaughter, terrorism, and child cruelty. After court-ordered psychiatric evaluation found him fit for trial, he pleaded not guilty. In a separate controversy, authorities drew criticism from human rights groups for initially charging 65 emaciated survivors with attempted suicide under Kenyan law.
In response to the discoveries, Kenya’s government deregistered Good News International Ministries and classified it as an organized criminal group. President William Ruto condemned the movement, comparing its methods to terrorism.
The government launched a judicial commission of inquiry along with a task force to review oversight of religious organizations nationwide. Analysts and psychologists have since examined the Shakahola deaths as part of a broader pattern among charismatic religious movements in the region, pointing to isolation, financial exploitation, and concentrated authority as key factors that can turn fringe spiritual groups into settings of extreme control.
Legal proceedings continue in Kenya’s High Court, and investigations into the full scope of deaths and other events at Shakahola remain ongoing.
Key Sources:
Carelse, V. (2025, October 2). Doomsday cult leader talked followers into deadly ritual while still in jail police say. Sky News.
Hussein, F. (2026, February 25). Witness in Shakahola case details cult control, destruction of Bibles, and suicide pacts. Eastleigh Voice.
Jimenez, A. T. (2024, October 18). ‘Let the children die first’: African cult leader convinced over 400 people to starve themselves to death for end of the world. International Business Times.
Okeowo, A. (2024, August 19). The cult in the forest. The New Yorker.
Reuters. (2023, April 23). Number of bodies exhumed from suspected Kenyan cult graves jumps to 47.