We have in the past week or so been horrified by reports of very disturbing goings-on at the East African Pentecostal Churches of Kenya outlet in Kianjai, Meru County.
Pastor Daniel Mururu has been arrested and is likely to face multiple charges, ranging from rape to radicalisation.
The horrifying details need not be repeated here, but serve to remind us that we are still not through with the Shakhalola forest massacre. More than 400 people were starved, strangled, buried alive or bludgeoned to death under the false doctrine of Pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, who promised his followers a pathway to heaven.
In the wake of Shakhalola, President William Ruto appointed a taskforce led by Baptist clergyman and politician Mutava Musyimi to look into ways of taming rogue religious bodies that exploit the faithful, usually through grabbing their wealth, sexual assault or leading them onto the dark path of violent extremism and radicalisation, or doomsday cultism.
The taskforce presented its report towards the end of July, with far-reaching recommendations on regulatory mechanisms for religious groups.
However, rogue religious organisations are not the only problem, and therefore the issue will not be solved by any number of laws, policies and regulations.
Captive to religious cults
The bigger problem lies with us. It beggars belief that persons of sound mind and body can fall into the entrapment of charlatan preachers and false interpretations of the scriptures.
The law can do very little about a person who willingly becomes captive to religious cults, surrenders all worldly wealth to a church leader who is enjoying heaven on earth, and neglects family and community obligations to owe sole allegiance to some con in priestly robes.
We cannot legislate against stupidity. And this stupidity extends beyond religious fervour, to the political arena.
The biggest problem with our politics, and biggest threat to our democracy, is that too many of us are willingly captive to charlatans in political leadership. We surrender our minds, bodies and souls to the leaders who we somehow come to believe represent the way to realisation of our ethnic and community aspirations.
We come to stupidly accept that when our ethnic kingpin makes it to State House, we become part of the gravy train; yet all evidence dating back to first President Jomo Kenyatta conclusively shows that the only beneficiaries are the leader, his close family and political allies.
The rest of us are voting machines, cheerleaders and podium dancers, or hired muscle and cannon fodder in the event of violent conflict.
We are mindless automatons who will jump into the fire or chop of someone’s head when our messianic leader—be it President Ruto, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, opposition leader Raila Odinga, former President Uhuru Kenyatta, or other ethnic chieftain—so directs.
Regression to cultic leadership
We are the problem. The Gen Z revolt promised to liberate us from the established mindsets that make us prisoners of fraudsters and charlatans, but the political and financial elite regrouped to claw back lost ground.
Now, we are in serious danger of going back to default setting. That is why the broad-based government is stubbornly pushing ahead with the outrageous deal with the Indian Adani Group for development of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, despite all the red flags on a partner mired in debt and corruption.
The classic vendor-driven procurement cannot be good for Kenya, only individuals, but no one in government and the governing clique will move to halt a corrupt deal because it has been sanctioned by the demigods in leadership. I can bet my last cent that the large delegation despatched on the India mission to supposedly carry out due diligence on the Adani Group is fully-funded by the very same company.
The regression to cultic leadership is well illustrated by the propaganda campaign launched to counter the Gen Z revolt.
Billboards have been erected all over the place supposedly preaching peace, which in itself is not a bad thing, but no one in State House paused to consider what it means to use the ‘Peace, Love and Unity’ slogan?
For many who lived under the abuses, destruction and unbridled corruption of the Moi regime, return to the Nyayo Philosophy holds untold terror. That is where we are headed.
