Politics
The Horrors of Shakahola: Which Way Forward?
11 min read.The government is obligated to enforce the law by restraining any group, religious or otherwise, that encourages its followers to destroy life and property. But in restoring sanity in the religious sector, we must not hand the state unfettered powers that politicians could use to silence opponents.

The happenings in Shakahola, Kilifi County, involving Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, have got many talking. According to The East African, Mackenzie, leader of Good News International Church, is accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves to death as that was the only path to God. The Nation reported that by Thursday 27th April, the number of bodies exhumed from land belonging to Mackenzie had crossed the 100 mark after detectives found 11 more in mass graves. Other reports indicate that some of his victims sold their possessions and gave the proceeds to him.
Most outstanding has been the renewed pressure on the government to enact tougher laws to rein in rogue preachers; Mackenzie’s arrest was followed on Thursday 27th April by that of Ezekiel Odero of the New Life Prayer Centre, allegedly an associate and/or accomplice of his. The police arrested Odera over the alleged mass killing of his followers and closed his New Life Prayer Centre and Church. Regarding Odero, the Nation writes: “To his followers, Ezekiel Ombok Odero is a gifted spiritual leader who can cure HIV with ‘holy water.’ To his detractors, he is little more than a sophisticated conman preying on Kenya’s poor.” He is reported to have a 40,000-capacity auditorium south of the coastal town of Malindi. In December 2022, he told NTV: “People crowd my church because I am God’s chosen one.” According to the Nation, Odero claims that “holy” scraps of cloth and water sold at his mega-rallies for Sh100 can heal any disease, including HIV; but there is a rider: these remedies will only work on people “with strong faith”.
Religious leaders have been some of the loudest in condemning the happenings in Shakahola, keen to convince the public that the likes of Mackenzie and Odero are but part of a very few rotten fish among them. Nevertheless, the Shakahola outrage is just the latest in a series of exploitation scandals linked to religion going back several decades, including the “Stop Suffering” fad, the infamous “miracle babies” saga, and the “Panda Mbegu” (Kiswahili for “Sow a Seed”) teachings, among others. There have been incidents where some religious conman/woman is exposed, a public outcry ensues, the government talks tough, then things cool down and the country moves on, perhaps unconsciously awaiting the next outrage from religious quarters to be exposed.
In response to accusations from the executive that it has frustrated efforts to tame Mackenzie, the judiciary released a press statement on 27th April providing the status of all the Mackenzie-related cases that have been heard and/or those whose hearing continues. According to the press statement, Mackenzie was first charged in Malindi on 17th October 2017 “with radicalisation, for promoting extreme beliefs, offering education in unregistered institutions, failing to take his children to compulsory primary and secondary education and failing to provide the children with education”.
Psychologists, sociologists, historians, religious scholars, and journalists, among others, have offered all manner of explanations for Mackenzie’s and Odero’s nefarious doings. Yet, in the wake of the Shakahola horrors, at least three vital questions remain unanswered: How, in the first place, do rogue preachers thrive in their deception? Is there an essential difference between religious fanaticism and political fanaticism? What is the correct balance between respect for freedom of worship as enshrined in the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and the warranted limitations to that freedom through subsidiary legislation necessitated by rogue preachers?
Three catalysts of religious deception
While society usually rises in anger and distress when something as shocking as the Shakahola horror is exposed, many are really not keen to delve into how such happenings come about. Yet there are at least three causes that readily present themselves.
First, it is a well-known fact that religion flourishes most among the poor, for it often gives them hope of reprieve from their misery beyond this world, and often even in it. It is no wonder that houses of religious worship are scarce in the leafy suburbs of our cities and towns yet numerous in poor neighbourhoods. Thus Karl Marx famously described religion as the “opiate of the people”: like opium, it falsely lifts them to realms of pleasure and power unimaginable in the material want and emotional distress in which they live. What is less well known is that Marx explained that religion is part of the false consciousness that arises from situations in which the few own the means of production and shape the material realm (the “sub-structure”) and the conceptual realm (“the super-structure”) to perpetuate the exploitative state of affairs. Indeed, Marx believed that once the capitalist order is swept away by the workers’ revolution and the workers themselves become the owners of capital, religion would be a thing of the past. Thus, as long as society remains grossly unequal, with a few captains of industries and the political clique wining and dining while only talking about lowering the price of maize meal instead of working to secure decent pay for decent work, there will sadly be many other outrages following in the wake of the Shakahola horror.
It is a well-known fact that religion flourishes most among the poor, for it often gives them hope of reprieve from their misery beyond this world, and often even in it.
Second, we human beings have a hunger for the spiritual. As one thinker put it, there is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person. It is this vacuum that many preachers exploit to get a following from both the rich and the poor, much as they do not fill it. How else can one explain the willingness of so many to sell their property and give away their life savings to preachers, many of whom have accomplished almost nothing in their professions, in business or in their farms? This fact confirms that Marx’s observance, much as it offers useful insight, does not tell the whole story; for if it did, the wealthy would never be among the deceived.
Third, the Shakahola victims did not invest in studying the Holy Bible to which they claimed to pay allegiance. As I often say, partly in gest, the most popular version of the Bible is the PDV—Preachers’ Distorted Version. If only they had studied the Holy Bible, they would have seen through the fraud, because numerous passages in it warn against deception and exploitation by false prophets and false teachers. Many of those passages identify the characteristics of false prophets and false teachers—the very kinds we regularly see around us. For example, the victims of the Shakahola fraud would have read the words of Christ just before he was executed:
“… false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you in advance (Matthew 24:24-25).
They would also have read the words of Peter, again just before his demise:
“… false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” (2 Peter 2:1-3).
Besides, Paul’s words to the elders in Ephesus would have been of great use to them:
“I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts.20:29-30).
Religious fanaticism and political fanaticism: Any difference?
While both religious leaders and politicians holding public office are scrambling to display their zeal to crush religious fanaticism of the Shakahola variety, it should be noted that there is a close connection between religion and politics. The numerous prayer rallies, prayer breakfasts, and Sunday morning services attended by highly influential politicians—with the frequency of their attendance rising exponentially just before elections—is highly instructive. Such gatherings have been central to politicians’ strategies to build their following. There were thus massive prayer rallies prior to the referendum that ratified the Constitution of Kenya in 2010, prayer rallies that watered, and perhaps even fertilized the Jubilee tree in the run-up to the 2013 elections, and prayer rallies associated with both major parties before and after the 2022 elections, among others.
Besides, politicians are sure to be there when key leaders of religious movements (such as arch-bishops) are being installed in office, knowing very well that such religious leaders can sway political opinion. Yet, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch: the politicians offer political and legal protection and even financial rewards to religious leaders in return. Religious leaders also often land plum jobs through politicians, such as being appointed to key roles in the process of constituting the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, as well as in public institutions tasked with fighting corruption. Apparently, despite the string of religion-based scandals, the belief, genuine or otherwise, still holds firm that religious leaders are the bastion of integrity. All this must surely explain how religious leaders at the centre of past scandals have often enjoyed soft landings.
Furthermore, quite often when politicians attend religious gatherings, they reiterate that the “church” is in partnership with the government in the endeavour to catalyse “development”, despite the fact that both religious leaders and politicians live large on the sweat of the masses (whether in the form of taxes or “tithes and offerings”), while the masses they claim to deeply care for continue to languish in abject poverty. No wonder Karl Marx thought that politics would eventually fade away alongside religion once the exploitative structure that sustains both is swept away.
Despite the string of religion-based scandals, the belief, genuine or otherwise, still holds firm that religious leaders are the bastion of integrity.
Thus it is evident that politicians have learnt well from Niccolò Machiavelli, who, in The Prince, advises those who seek to acquire and retain power to appear to be deeply religious while at the same time being adequately able to do whatever is considered unethical (such as murder and deception) in pursuit of their goal. Indeed, the cocktail of politics and religion renders many people even more susceptible to deception, further validating the words of Machiavelli: “Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.”
Yet most sobering is the fact that both religious fanaticism and political fanaticism are grossly destructive and often deadly.
Religious fanaticism has caused many deaths in our country and beyond, the Shakahola horror being only the latest outrage. On 18th November 1978, Jim Jones, self-proclaimed messiah of the Peoples Temple, who had promised his followers a utopia in the jungles of South America, ordered his followers in the Jonestown commune in Guyana to drink a cyanide-laced fruit drink, resulting in the deaths of more than 900 people in an event that is commonly referred to as the Jonestown Massacre. On 20th March 1995, there was a coordinated multiple-point attack in Tokyo, Japan, in which the odourless, colourless, and highly toxic nerve gas sarin was released in the city’s subway system, resulting in the deaths of 13 people, with some 5,500 others injured. Members of the Japan-based Aum Shinrikyo (called Aleph since 2000), were soon identified as the perpetrators of the attack.
“Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.”
Nevertheless, both at home and abroad, much greater numbers of deaths have been caused by political fanaticism than have been caused by religious fanaticism. Approximately 1,500 Kenyans were killed, over 400,000 displaced, and an unknown number of women raped following the disputed 2007 Kenyan elections. Lives were lost and property destroyed in election-based violence in Kenya from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s as well as during the 2013, 2017 and 2022 polls. Further afield, there are the 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded during the 1914-1918 European inter-ethnic war commonly referred to as the First World War, the 35,000,000 to 60,000,000 who perished during the so-called Second World War, the more than 800,000 civilians who perished in the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, and the bloodbaths in Sudan and South Sudan. All of these are politically rather than religiously motivated. Yet quite often it is difficult to distinguish between wars instigated by religion and those instigated by politics because, as earlier pointed out, religion and politics are frequent bedfellows.
Thus, fanaticism is destructive whether it be labelled religious or political, or whatever else. Yet politicians frequently wag their fingers at religious leaders for instigating religious fanaticism, while religious leaders wag theirs at politicians for instigating political fanaticism, in both cases with noticeable vigour. Yet in either case, as the saying goes, one finger points at the other party while four point at the party wagging it.
Stopping Shakahola without causing new horrors
As we agonise about how to ensure that the horrors of Shakahola do not recur, we must be guided by the Constitution of Kenya 2010 which is categorical that “There shall be no State religion” (Article 8), thereby departing from the tradition of Kenya’s colonizer, Britain, where the Anglican Church is the state religion, with the monarch as both Head of State and Head of the Church. The purpose of this more enlightened provision in our constitution is to ensure that Article 27 (4), which proscribes discrimination on a number of grounds including religion, is respected; for a state religion would enjoy a privileged position in comparison to other religions. Besides, Article 32 of the constitution upholds “freedom of conscience, religion, belief and opinion”. This right includes the freedom to believe or not believe, which means that the constitution even contemplates the possibility of some of the citizens having no religious affiliation whatsoever.
Thus, according to our constitution, the government has no mandate to determine which religious organisations and doctrines are acceptable and which are not. If it were to do so, it would have formed some kind of state religion, however rudimentary, contrary to Article 8, and would thereby be discriminating against the other religions contrary to article 27 (4). What the government can do, and is indeed obligated to do, is to enforce the law by restraining any group, religious or otherwise, which, by word or deed, encourages its followers to destroy life and/or property.
Religious fanaticism has caused many deaths in our country and beyond, the Shakahola horror being only the latest outrage.
For most of Kenya’s history, most religious organisations have been registered under the Society’s Act, but more recently some have been registered as foundations, non-governmental organisations, or companies limited by guarantee, thereby obligating them to conduct their business in line with the legislation under which they are registered, including the requirement to hold annual general meetings and regular elections. The requirement for such registration is reminiscent of the talk in the Roman Empire during the first century about the distinction between religio lecita (“permitted religion”) and religio Illicita (“unpermitted religion”). A religion typically acquired the status of religio licita by showing its willingness to worship the emperor as one of its gods; the Christians refused to comply and so were persecuted, burned at the stake, and thrown to ravenous beasts. This was reminiscent of the record of the Chaldean King Nebuchadnezzar who required that everyone in his kingdom worship the golden image that he had made or else be cast into a furnace (Daniel 2).
Similarly, when the Chinese Communist Party came to power in the late 1940s, it sought to have all the religions in the country pay allegiance to it. For example, it worked with compliant Protestant leaders to establish the Three-Self Patriotic Movement which advocates for self-government, self-propagation and self-support. Those believers who were unwilling to join it had to operate underground at the risk of long prison sentences or even death. The movement remains China’s preferred version of Christianity.
One of the corollary discussions around tougher measures to reign in rogue preachers is the requirement that anyone setting up a religious organisation go through theological training. Such a requirement presumes that there is a universal, high-quality theological training that religious leaders who operate within acceptable parameters undergo. However, theological training is as diverse as the doctrines that the numerous religious organisations profess. Besides, the government is not suited to judge the quality of theological training because such training focuses on the spiritual realm while state power operates on the physical one. For example, how would the government determine the acceptable way of dealing with doctrines about angels, demons, curses or forgiveness of sin? Various groups teach highly divergent views about all these matters, and Article 32 of the constitution acknowledges their right to do so. Furthermore, even religious leaders with theological training have been engaged in some of the past scandals, including sexual impropriety and embezzlement of funds. Moreover, some theological trends taught in theological institutions are repugnant to some religious organisations, as is Higher Criticism which purports to analyse not only the Bible’s primal literary sources, but also the assumptions of the biblical writers themselves, and endeavours to “demythologise” the Scriptures by attempting to explain the supernatural elements in them in natural terms.
When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in the late 1940s, it sought to have all the religions in the country pay allegiance to it.
Some religious leaders have already sensed the dangers of the unfettered state control of religion, and are seeking to pre-empt it. Thus, on Saturday 29th April, the Mombasa Church Forum, while condemning the happenings in Shakahola, called for a framework within which all religious organisations would be required to join clusters in which they would engage in self-regulation.
In sum, we must walk the tight rope of restoring sanity in the religious sector without handing the state unfettered powers that politicians could use in the future to silence opponents. What is needed is for both government and religion to each stick to its own realm as much as possible without causing disruption in the realm of the other. We must stop Shakahola without causing new horrors of state high-handedness in the guise of preventing religious fanaticism. In the words of Odili’s father in Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People, “… the hawk should perch and the eagle perch, whichever says to the other don’t, may its own wing break.”
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Politics
‘Crush and Grind Them Like Lice’: Harare Old Guard Feeling Threatened
With the launch of the Citizens Coalition for Change, Zimbabwe’s political landscape has undergone a significant shift, with a younger activist generation increasingly impatient with the unfulfilled promises of liberation.

On the 26th of February 2022, Zimbabwe’s Vice President delivered a chilling threat to the opposition. In a speech the “retired” army general Constantino Chiwenga, the chief architect of the November of 2017 putsch that removed Robert Mugabe, threatened that the opposition will be “crushed and ground on a rock like lice”. The General claimed that the ruling party was a “Goliath”; the Biblical imagery of the diminutive David “slaying” the giant Goliath was entirely lost on the Vice President. Here are his words:
“Down with CCC. You see when you crush lice with a rock, you put it on a flat stone and then you grind it to the extent that even flies will not eat it… But we are as big as Goliath we will see it [the opposition] when the time comes”.
The following day violent mayhem broke out in Kwekwe, the very town where the fiery speech was made. By the time the chaos ended, the opposition reported that 16 of their supporters had been hospitalised and it was recorded that a young man was sadistically speared to death. The supporters of the ruling party had taken the threat to “crush” and “grind” the opposition seriously. Details emerged—from the police—that the suspects were from the ruling party and had tried to hide in a property owned by a former minister of intelligence.
The launch of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has galvanised the opposition. Going by the youthful excitement at the rallies, the violence flaring against its supporters, and the way the police has been clamping down on CCC rallies, the ruling elites have realised they face a serious political threat from what has been called the “yellow” movement.
Exit Mugabe and Tsvangirai: Shifts in opposition and ruling class politics
The death of opposition leader and former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai in February 2018 came in the wake of the November 2017 coup and other significant political events that followed. The death was a big blow to the opposition; there had been no succession planning, which was rendered more complex by the existence of three vice presidents deputising Tsvangirai. The MDC Alliance succession debacle set in motion a tumultuous contest that splintered the opposition. Court applications followed, and the ruling elites took an active interest. When the court battles ended, the judiciary ensured a “win” for the faction favoured by the ruling class. That faction was formally recognised in parliament, given party assets and provided with financial resources by the Treasury that were meant for the opposition.
As for the ruling party, there has been a shift in the political contests along factional lines, accentuated following the death of Robert Gabriel Mugabe in September of 2019. There is high suspicion that the 2017 coup plotters (generals and commanders) now want their proverbial “pound of flesh”—the presidency. With the presidency as the bull fighter’s prize, the factions are now lining up either behind the president or the behind generals and this is cascading through the ruling party structures. The historical faction known as G40 (Generation 40) that hovered around the then first lady has been practically shut out of political power, with its anchors remaining holed up outside the country. Remnants of the G40 faction in Zimbabwe have been side-lined, with some of them subjected to the endless grind of court processes to ensure they keep their heads down.
Yet another element has emerged, that of a president who feels besieged and is re-building the party and executive positions in the image of his regional ethnic block, bringing into the matrix a potent powder keg waiting to explode in the future.
The ruling party has gone further to entice Morgan Tsvangirai’s political orphans in order to decimate the leadership ranks of the opposition. Patronage is generously dished out: an ambassadorial appointment here, a gender commissioner position there, a seat on the board of a state parastatal…, and so on. These appointments come with extreme state largesse—cars, drivers, state security, free fuel, housing, pensions and the list goes on. The patronage also includes lucrative gold mining claims and farms running into hundreds of acres that come with free agricultural inputs. The former opposition stalwarts must be “re-habilitated” by being taught “patriotism” at a Bolshevik-like ideological school and then paraded at rallies as defectors to ZANU-PF.
Yet another element has emerged, that of a president who feels besieged and is re-building the party and executive positions in the image of his regional ethnic block.
As these political shifts take place and the opposition divorces itself from the succession mess, there are also changes in Zimbabwe’s economy and this has a direct impact on the trajectory of politics in the country.
Transformed political economy: Informality, diaspora and agrarian change
From about the end of the 1990s and stretching into the subsequent two decades up to 2022, Zimbabwe’s political economy has shifted significantly. Firstly, the fast-track land reform of the early 2000s altered land ownership from white settler “commercial” farmers to include more black people. The white-settler class power was removed as a factor in politics and in its place is a very unstable system of tenure for thousands of black farmers that have been married to the state for tenure security and stability.
Secondly, the follow-on effect of the land reform meant that Zimbabwe’s industrial base was altered, and this has resulted in a highly informalized economy or what others have called the “rubble”. An informal economy is now the new normal across the board for ordinary citizens and this has weakened organized labour as a voice in political contests. In 2020, the World Bank estimated extreme poverty at 49 per cent; this is infusing a sense of urgency for political change and is putting pressure on the political elites in Harare.
Thirdly, the exodus of Zimbabwe’s younger population into the diaspora has introduced another factor into the political matrix. According to official figures, the diaspora transferred about US$1.4 billion in 2021 alone, but this figure doesn’t capture remittances that are moved into Zimbabwe informally; the figure is much higher. The diaspora has actually used its cash to have a political voice, often via the opposition or independent “citizen initiatives”. It is proving to be a significant player in the political matrix to the extent that Nelson Chamisa has appointed a Secretary for Diaspora Affairs. For its part, the ruling party has blocked the diaspora vote.
Fourth, the national political economy has been “captured” by an unproductive crony class to the extent that researchers have estimated that as much as half of Zimbabwe’s GDP is being pilfered:
“It is estimated that Zimbabwe may lose up to half the value of its annual GDP of $21.4bn due to corrupt economic activity that, even if not directly the work of the cartels featured in the report, is the result of their suffocation of honest economic activity through collusion, price fixing and monopolies. Ironically, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has been a public critic of illicit financial transfers, is identified by the report as one of the cartel bosses whose patronage and protection keeps cartels operating.”
Fifthly, and often under-researched, is the substantial role of China across Zimbabwe’s political economy as Harare’s political elites have shifted to Beijing for a closer alliance. This has paid handsomely for China which has almost unrestrained access to Zimbabwe’s natural resources, and the political elites are “comrades in business” with—mostly—Chinese state corporations; China’s influence is pervasive and evident across the country. Put together, the factors above mean that the political economy structure has changed significantly and it is within this landscape that the Citizens Coalition for Change—dubbed the “yellow movement” — that has been launched by the opposition will have to operate and organise.
‘Yellow Movement’: Re-articulating the future beyond the ‘Harare Bubble’?
Since its launch, the opposition movement has swept into the CCC’s ranks the younger demographic of activists together with some solid veterans who survived the brutal years of Robert Mugabe’s terror. Zimbabwe’s median age is reported to be about 18 years of age; if these young people can register, turn out to vote and defend their vote, there is a whirlwind coming for the old nationalists in Harare.
Some within the ruling party have noticed this reality, with a former minister and ruling party member stating that “Nelson Chamisa is gaining popularity because the ZANU PF old guard is fighting its own young men and women”. This admission is consistent with the words of Temba Mliswa, another “independent” member of parliament and a former leading activist in the ruling party, who stated that:
“The generational approach is like you trying to stop a wave of water with your open hands. You cannot ignore it. It’s a generational issue. You cannot ignore it. You need to look at it. You need to study it… There is no young person in ZANU PF who is as vibrant as Chamisa, who is as charismatic as Nelson Chamisa. Chamisa is going to go straight for ED (President Emmerson Mnangagwa)… There is no gate preventing this.’
These admissions are an indication that the CCC movement poses a serious threat to the ruling party. But beyond the contest of politics, of ideas, of policy platforms, the “yellow movement” will have to divorce itself from the “Harare Bubble”. The ruling nationalists polished a rigid centralised political system inherited from settler-colonialism, and have used this to build a crony network of robbery based in the capital city while impoverishing other regions. But they are not alone in this; even the opposition has often overlooked the fact that “all politics is local” and it has also created a “Harare Bubble” of yesterday’s heroes and gatekeepers who, armed with undynamic analyses, continue to cast their shadows into the arena long after their expiry date.
“Nelson Chamisa is gaining popularity because the ZANU PF old guard is fighting its own young men and women”.
The yellow movement will have to go local and divorce itself from the parochial legacy of previously progressive platforms that have now been cornered by an elite who have become careerist, corrupt, inward-looking and, like civil warlords, only loyal to imported 10-year-old whisky bottles and their kitambis—their visibly ballooning stomachs.
Yet there is no ignoring it; Zimbabwe’s youth have been emboldened by political change in Zambia and Malawi, and by the rise of younger leaders in South Africa. The winds are blowing heavily against the status quo. In the 2023 general election, the ruling nationalists will face a more tactful, daring and politically solid Nelson Chamisa who has strategically pushed back against “elite pacts”. Added to his eloquence, his speeches are getting more structured, substantially more polished, and he is projecting the CCC movement as a capable alternative government. With the indelible footprints of Morgan Tsvangirai in the background, the next general election, in 2023, will be an existential contest for Harare’s old nationalists—they are facing their Waterloo.
Politics
The Dictatorship of the Church
From the enormously influential megachurches of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa to smaller ‘startups,’ the church in Zimbabwe has frightening, nearly despotic authority.

In Zimbabwe, the most powerful dictatorship is not the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. Despite the party’s 40 year history of ruthlessly cracking down on opposition parties, sowing fear into the minds of the country’s political aspirants, despite the party’s overseeing of catastrophic policies such as the failed land reform, and despite the precarious position of the social landscape of the country today, neither former president Robert Mugabe, nor the current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, nor any of their associates pose as significant an existential threat to Zimbabweans as the most influential dictatorship at play in the country: the church.The church has frightening, near despotic authority which it uses to wield the balance of human rights within its palms. It wields authority from enormously influential megachurches like those of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa, to the smaller startup churches that operate from the depths of the highest-density suburbs of the metropolitan provinces of Bulawayo and Harare. Modern day totalitarian regimes brandish the power of the military over their subjects. In the same way, the church wields the threat of eternal damnation against those who fail to follow its commands. With the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, for example, Emmanuel Makandiwa vocally declared that the vaccine was the biblical “mark of the beast.” In line with the promises of the book of Revelations, he declared that receiving it would damn one to eternal punishment.
Additionally, in just the same way that dictators stifle discourse through the control of the media, the church suppresses change by controlling the political landscape and making themselves indispensable stakeholders in electoral periods. The impact of this is enormous: since independence, there has been no meaningful political discourse on human rights questions. These questions include same-sex marriage and the right to access abortions as well as other reproductive health services. The church’s role in this situation has been to lead an onslaught of attacks on any institution, political or not, that dares to bring such questions for public consideration. But importantly, only through such consideration can policy substantively change. When people enter into conversation, they gain the opportunity to find middle grounds for their seemingly irreconcilable positions. Such middle-grounds may be the difference between life and death for many disadvantaged groups in Zimbabwe and across the world at large. The influence of the church impedes any attempt at locating this middle ground.
Additionally, because the church influences so many Zimbabweans, political actors do not dare oppose the church’s declarations. They fear being condemned and losing the support of their electorate. The church rarely faces criticism for its positions. It is not held accountable for the sentiments its leaders express by virtue of the veil of righteousness protecting it.
Furthermore, and uniquely so, the church serves the function of propping up the ZANU-PF party. The ZANU-PF mainly holds conservative ideals. These ideals align with those of the traditionalist Zimbabwean church. In short, the church in Zimbabwe stands as a hurdle to the crucial regime change necessary to bring the country to success. With a crucial election slated for the coming months, this hurdle looms more threatening than at any other time in the country’s history.
The impact of the church’s dictatorship on humans is immeasurable. Queer people, for example, are enormously vulnerable to violence and othering from their communities. They are also particularly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and infections due to the absence of healthcare for them. The church meets the attempts of organizations such as the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe to push for protection with cries that often devolve into scapegoating. These cries from the church reference moral decadence, a supposed decline in family values, and in the worst of cases, mental illness.
Similarly, the church meets civil society’s attempts at codifying and protecting sexual and reproductive rights with vehement disapproval. In 2021, for example, 22 civil society organizations petitioned Parliament to lower the consent age for accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Critics of the petition described it as “deeply antithetical to the public morality of Zimbabwe” that is grounded in “good old cultural and Christian values.”
Reporting on its consultations with religious leaders, a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee tasked with considering this petition described Christianity as “the solution” to the problem posed by the petition. This Committee viewed the petition as a gateway to issues such as “child exploitation … rights without responsibility … and spiritual bondages.” The petition disappeared into the annals of parliamentary bureaucracy. A year later, the Constitutional Court unanimously voted to increase the age of consent to 18.
A more horrifying instance of this unholy alliance between the church and the state in Zimbabwe is a recently unearthed money laundering scheme that has occurred under the watchful eye of the government. Under the stewardship of self-proclaimed Prophet Uebert Angel, the Ambassador-at-Large for the Government of Zimbabwe, millions of dollars were laundered by the Zimbabwean government. Here, as revealed by Al Jazeera in a four-part docuseries, Ambassador Angel served as a middleman for the government, facilitating the laundering of millions of dollars and the smuggling of scores of refined gold bars to the United Arab Emirates. He did this using his plenipotentiary ambassadorial status to vault through loopholes in the government’s security systems.
Importantly, Prophet Angel was appointed in 2021 as part of a frenetic series of ambassadorial appointments. President Mnangagwa handed out these appointments to specifically high-profile church leaders known for their glamorous lifestyle and their preaching of the prosperity gospel. Through these appointments, Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government earned itself a permanent stamp of approval from the church and access to a multi-million member base of voting Christians in the country. Mnangagwa’s gained access to freedom from accountability arising from the power of the endorsements by “men-of-God,” one of whom’s prophetic realm includes predicting English Premier League (EPL) football scores and guessing the color of congregants’ undergarments.
In exchange, Prophet Angel has earned himself a decently large sum of money. He has also earned the same freedom from critique and accountability as Zimbabwe’s government. To date, there is no evidence of Angel ever having faced any consequences for his action. The most popular response is simple: the majority of the Christian community chooses either to defend him or to turn a blind eye to his sins. The Christian community’s response to Prophet Angel’s actions, and to the role of the church in abortion and LGBTQ discourse is predictable. The community also responds simply to similar instances when the church acts as a dialogical actor and absolves itself of accountability and critique
Amidst all this, it is easy to denounce the church as a failed actor. However, the church’s political presence has not been exclusively negative. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, for example, was the first organization to formally acknowledge Gukurahundi, a genocide that happened between 1982 and 1987 and killed thousands of Ndebele people. The Commission did this through a detailed report documenting what it termed as disturbances in the western regions of the country. Doing so sparked essential conversations about accountability and culpability over this forgotten genocide in Zimbabwe.
Similarly, the Zimbabwe Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission has been involved in data collection that is sparking discourse about violence and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. In doing so, the Commission is challenging Zimbabweans to think more critically about what constructive politics can look like in the country. Such work is hugely instrumental in driving social justice work forward in the country. What uniquely identifies the church’s involvement in both of these issues, however, is that neither touches on matters of Christian dogma. Instead, the Commission responds to general questions about the future of both God and Zimbabwe’s people in ways that make it easy for the church to enter into conversation with a critical and informed lens.
The conclusion from this is simple: if Zimbabwe is to shift into more progressive, dialogical politics, the church’s role must change with it. It is unlikely that the church will ever be a wholly apolitical actor in any country. However, the political integration of the church into the politics of Zimbabwe must be a full one. It must be led by the enhanced accountability of Zimbabwean religious leaders. In the same way that other political actors are taken to task over their opinions, the church must be held accountable for its rhetoric in the political space.
A growing population has, thus far, been involved in driving this shift. Social media has taken on a central role in this. For example, social media platforms such as Twitter thoroughly criticized megachurch pastor Emmanuel Makandiwa for his sentiments regarding vaccinations. This and other factors led him to backtrack on his expressed views on inoculation. However, social media is not as available in rural areas. There, the influence of the religion is stronger than elsewhere in the country. Therefore investments must be made in educating people about the roles of the church and the confines of its authority. This will be instrumental in giving people the courage to cut against the very rough grain of religious dogma. Presently, few such educational opportunities exist. To spark this much-needed change, it will be useful to have incentivizing opportunities for dialogue in religious sects.
More than anything else, the people for whom and through whom the church exists must drive any shift in the church’s role. The people of Tunisia stripped President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of his authority during the Jasmine Revolution of January 2011. The women of Iran continue to tear at the walls that surround the extremist Islamic Republic. In just the same way, the people of Zimbabwe have the power to disrobe the church of the veil of righteousness that protects it from criticism and accountability.
In anticipation of the upcoming election, the critical issues emerging necessitate this excoriation even more. This will open up political spaces for Zimbabweans to consider a wider pool of contentious issues when they take to the polls in a few months. Above all, the people of Zimbabwe must start viewing the church for what it is: an institution, just like any other, with vested interests in the country’s affairs. As with any other institution, we must begin to challenge, question, and criticize the church for its own good and for the good of the people of Zimbabwe.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
Politics
Pattern of Life and Death: Camp Simba and the US War on Terror
The US has become addicted to private military contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability” in the so-called war on terror.

Though it claimed the lives of three Americans, not 2,403, some liken the January 2020 al-Shabaab attack at Manda Bay, Kenya, to Pearl Harbour. The US would go on to unleash massive airstrikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia.
“We Americans hate being caught out,” a spy-plane pilot and contractor recently told me. “We should have killed them before they even planned it.”
Both the Manda Bay and Pearl Harbour attacks revealed the vulnerability of US personnel and forces. One brought the US into the Second World War. The other has brought Kenya into the global–and seemingly endless–War on Terror.
Months before launching the assault, members of the Al Qaeda-linked faction bivouacked in mangrove swamp and scrubland along this stretch of the northeast Kenyan coast. Unseen, they observed the base and Magagoni airfield. The airfield was poorly secured to begin with. They managed not to trip the sensors and made their way past the guard towers and the “kill zone” without being noticed.
At 5.20 a.m. on 5 January, pilots and contractors for L3Harris Technologies, which conducts airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for the Pentagon, were about to take off from the airfield in a Beechcraft King Air b350. The twin engine plane was laden with sensors, cameras, and other high tech video equipment. Seeing thermal images of what they thought were hyenas scurrying across the runway, the pilots eased back on the engines. By the time they realized that a force of committed, disciplined and well-armed al-Shabaab fighters had breached Magagoni’s perimeter, past the guard towers, it was too late.
Simultaneously, a mile away, other al-Shabaab fighters attacked Camp Simba, an annex to Manda Bay where US forces and contractors are housed. Al-Shabaab fired into the camp to distract personnel and delay the US response to the targeted attack at the airfield.
Back at the Magagoni airfield, al-Shabaab fighters launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the King Air. “They took it right in the schnauzer,” an aircraft mechanic at Camp Simba who survived the attack recently recalled to me. Hit in the nose, the plane burst into flames. Pilots Bruce Triplett, 64, and Dustin Harrison, 47, both contractors employed by L3Harris, died instantly. The L3Harris contractor working the surveillance and reconnaissance equipment aft managed to crawl out, badly burned. US Army Specialist Henry J Mayfield, 23, who was in a truck clearing the tarmac, was also killed.
The attack on Camp Simba was not the first al-Shabaab action carried out in Kenya. But it was the first in the country to target US personnel. And it was wildly successful.
AFRICOM initially reported that six contractor-operated civilian aircraft had been damaged. However, drone footage released by al-Shabaab’s media wing showed that within a few minutes, the fighters had destroyed six surveillance aircraft, medical evacuation helicopters on the ground, several vehicles, and a fuel storage area. US and Kenyan forces engaged al-Shabaab for “several hours”.
Included in the destroyed aircraft was a secretive US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) military de Havilland Dash-8 twin-engine turboprop configured for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. A report released by United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in March 2022 acknowledges that the attackers “achieved a degree of success in their plan.”
Teams working for another air-surveillance company survived the attack because their aircraft were in the air, preparing to land at Magagoni. Seeing what was happening on the ground, the crew diverted to Mombasa and subsequently to Entebbe, Uganda, where they stayed for months while Manda Bay underwent measures for force protection.
I had the chance to meet some of the contractors from that ISR flight. Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu, the coastal town where I live. On one recent afternoon, they commandeered a bar’s sound system, replacing Kenyan easy listening with boisterous Southern rock from the States.
Sweet home Alabama!
An ISR operator and I struck up an acquaintance. Black-eyed, thickly built, he’s also a self-confessed borderline sociopath. My own guess would be more an on-the-spectrum disorder. Formerly an operator with Delta Force, he was a “door kicker” and would often—in counter-terror parlance—“fix and finish” terror suspects. Abundant ink on his solid arms immortalizes scenes of battle from Iraq and Afghanistan. In his fifties, with a puffy white beard, he’s now an ISR contractor, an “eye in the sky”. His workday is spent “finding and fixing” targets for the Pentagon.
Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu.
He tells me about his missions—ten hours in a King Air, most of that time above Somalia, draped over cameras and video equipment. He gathers sensitive data for “pattern of life” analysis. He tells me that on the morning of the attack he was in the King Air about to land at the Magagoni airstrip.
We talked about a lot of things but when I probed him about “pattern of life” intel, the ISR operator told me not a lot except that al-Shabaab had been observing Camp Simba and the airstrip for a pattern of life study.
What I could learn online is that a pattern of life study is the documentation of the habits of an individual subject or of the population of an area. Generally done without the consent of the subject, it is carried out for purposes including security, profit, scientific research, regular censuses, and traffic analysis. So, pattern-of-life analysis is a fancy term for spying on people en masse. Seemingly boring.
Less so as applied to the forever war on terror. The operator pointed out the irony of how the mile or so of scrubland between the base and the Indian Ocean coastline had been crawling with militant spies in the months preceding the attack at Camp Simba. Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”
ISR and Pattern of Life are inextricably linked
King Airs perform specialized missions; the planes are equipped with cameras and communications equipment suitable for military surveillance. Radar systems gaze through foliage, rain, darkness, dust storms or atmospheric haze to provide real time, high quality tactical ground imagery anytime it is needed, day or night. What my operator acquaintance collects goes to the Pentagon where it is analysed to determine whether anything observed is “actionable”. In many instances, action that proceeds includes airstrikes. But as a private military contractor ISR operator cannot “pull the trigger”.
In the six weeks following the attack at Magagoni and Camp Simba, AFRICOM launched 13 airstrikes against al-Shabaab’s network. That was a high share of the total of 42 carried out in 2020.
Airstrikes spiked under the Trump administration, totalling more than 275 reported, compared with 60 over the eight years of the Barack Obama administration. It is no great mystery that the Manda Bay-Magagoni attack occurred during Trump’s time in office.
Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”
Several al-Shabaab leaders behind the attack are believed to have been killed in such airstrikes. The US first launched airstrikes against al-Shabab in Somalia in 2007 and increased them in 2016, according to data collected and analysed by UK-based non-profit Airwars.
Controversy arises from the fact that, as precise as these strikes are thought to be, there are always civilian casualties.
“The US uses pattern of life, in part, to identify ways to reduce the risk of innocent civilian casualties (CIVCAS) (when/where are targets by themselves or with family) whereas obviously Shabaab does not distinguish as such and uses it for different purposes,” a Department of Defense official familiar with the matter of drone operations told me.
The Biden administration resumed airstrikes in Somalia in August 2021. AFRICOM claimed it killed 13 al-Shabaab militants and that no civilians were killed.
According to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Mustaf ‘Ato is a senior Amniyat official responsible for coordinating and conducting al-Shabaab attacks in Somalia and Kenya and has helped plan attacks on Kenyan targets and US military compounds in Kenya. It is not clear, however, if this target has been fixed and killed.
A few days after the second anniversary of the Manda Bay attack, the US offered a US$10 million bounty.
The American public know very little about private military contractors. Yet the US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”. “Americans don’t care about contractors coming home in body bags,” says Sean McFate, a defense and national security analyst.
These airstrikes, targeted with the help of the operators and pilots in the King Airs flying out of Magagoni, would furnish a strong motive for al-Shabaab’s move on 5 January 2020.
The Pentagon carried out 15 air strikes in 2022 on the al-Qaeda-linked group, according to the Long War Journal tracker. Africom said the strikes killed at least 107 al-Shabaab fighters. There are no armed drones as such based at Camp Simba but armed gray-coloured single-engine Pilatus aircraft called Draco (Latin for “Dragon”) are sometimes used to kill targets in Somalia, a well-placed source told me.
The US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”.
The contractor I got to know somewhat brushes off the why of the attack. It is all too contextual for public consumption, and probably part of army indoctrination not to encourage meaningful discussion. He had, however, made the dry observation about the al-Shabaab affiliates out in the bush near the airfield, doing “pattern of life” reconnaissance.
The strike on Magagoni was closely timed and fully coordinated. And it appears that the primary aim was to take out ISR planes and their crews. It was private contractors, not US soldiers, in those planes. I pointed out to the operator that those targets would serve al-Shabaab’s aims both of vengeance and deterrence or prevention. His response: “Who cares why they attacked us? Al-Shabaab are booger-eaters.”
With that he cranks up the sound, singing along off-key:
And this bird, you cannot change
Lord help me, I can’t change….
Won’t you fly high, free bird, yeah.
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