What would you do if, one day, your pastor stood before you and confessed that the dreams, visions and “messages from God” he had been sharing for years were all distorted interpretations influenced by his deceitful superior, crafted to serve ulterior motives?
A court session in Mombasa invoked that unsettling question when Pastor George Mwaura, once a key preacher under suspected cult leader Paul Mackenzie, revealed that he had spent years in the church incorrectly interpreting dreams to deceive unsuspecting followers, many of whom later found themselves in the wilderness and ultimately buried in shallow graves.
Mwaura told the court that while serving as a pastor at the Good News International Church under Mackenzie, he misled followers by giving inaccurate interpretations of dreams.
“In fact, I pity myself. Those were false. The interpretation of the dreams I shared in church was false. I lied to the congregation because of the environment I was in at the time,” he said.
At that point, the judge, noticing how the reformed preacher held his cheek with a forlorn expression, urged him to speak openly, reminding him that if he had truly repented, there was no need for self-pity, for God is forgiving.
The judge also took a moment, briefly turning the session into a pastoral reflection, reminding the Shakahola murder suspects that she, too, believed in God and in His power to heal the sick, but that she would still reach for her medicine whenever she had a headache.
Pastor Paul Mackenzie (right) with Smart Deri Mwakalama (left) with 29 other accused persons who are charged with the murder of 191 Children in the Shakahola Massacre listen attentively to the prosecution witness Jimmy Mwavita Mganga, in this photo taken on 6th October 2025.
Photo credit: Kevin Odit| Nation Media Group
This came after the court was told that Mary Mwakalama, the wife of Mackenzie’s deputy Smart Mwakalama, had been diagnosed with an illness but refused medical treatment, believing instead that God’s healing power alone would make her well.
Mwaura was testifying in a case in which Mackenzie and his 29 accomplices are charged with the murder of 191 children in Shakahola between 2020 and 2023.
He said he interpreted his own dreams as well as those shared by other believers, but has now acknowledged that these interpretations were deliberately manipulated to advance a specific agenda.
“I used the word of God while sharing and interpreting the dreams. At the time, the dreams appeared to be God’s visions shared through the people because of the indoctrination planted in our minds. In the end, they had nothing to do with God,” he added.
The pastor, who later broke away from Mackenzie, told the court that while under the preacher’s control, he helped mislead followers by preaching against education, modern medicine and other doctrines that isolated believers from their families and society.
“I did encourage people not to go to school, or to hospital, and to isolate themselves from sin, but not in the way it eventually turned out. I disagreed with Mackenzie. I did not like the interpretation of the dreams because they were a hoax meant to serve a particular agenda. Mackenzie was not a genuine preacher; he was fake,” he said.
Paul Mackenzie at the Shanzu Law Courts on April 3, 2024.
Photo credit: File | Nation
Mwaura recalled a moment of sharp disagreement with Mackenzie after he attempted to leave the forest with a section of the flock when life in the wilderness became unbearable and far from what had initially been promised.
In the end, he managed to leave with only his family and about six others who were tired of life in the forest.
“There was no bitterness between us. I confronted Mackenzie seven times because of his doctrines and what was happening in the forest,” he said.
He told the court that although the government officially closed the church in 2019, the move did not yield much. When it was shut down, he said, Mackenzie announced that the church would now “move into the wilderness”.
“This is what happened. When the physical church was closed, the doctrines Mackenzie had imparted remained in the minds of his followers,” he said, explaining why people still flocked to the forest even after the church premises had been closed.
Locals from Shakahola Centre help dig up graves at Shakaola forest part of the 800 acres linked with cult leader Paul Mackenzie of Good News International Church on May 5, 2023.
Photo credit: Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group
Mwaura worked alongside Mackenzie as a co-preacher between 2018 and 2020, during which he also adopted the extremist teachings.
“Mackenzie convinced me to quit my job as a bus driver and join his church. My daughter also abandoned school and became an editor at his church, editing Mackenzie’s sermons,” he told the court.
While in Shakahola, he said, Mackenzie preached that a divine rapture would occur, during which his followers would ascend to heaven while “sinners remained behind”.
Mwaura said he disagreed with this doctrine, leading to friction between them.
His confession came as he recounted how a desperate phone call to State House helped unmask the deadly Shakahola operation, where Mackenzie is accused of leading his followers to their deaths.
Mwaura testified that a phone call to State House, Nairobi, helped accelerate the government’s response to growing rumours that the doomsday preacher was killing and secretly burying his followers inside Shakahola Forest.
Now reformed, Mwaura testified that after receiving intelligence from an insider that Shakahola, where he had once lived, had turned into a death trap, he immediately called State House seeking intervention.
“I was then given the phone numbers of security bosses in Mombasa and Kilifi counties. I contacted them and shared what I had been told by my close contact about what was happening in the forest,” he said.
Knowing that security agencies sometimes drag their feet on certain matters, Mr Mwaura said he did not stop at reporting the issue to the police.
“I had a journalist friend. I contacted him to highlight the issue. Within one week of the matter being made public, the police began the search and rescue operation,” he told the High Court in Mombasa.
Bodies exhumed from mass graves in Shakahola forest, Kilifi County are loaded into a vehicle during the operation on May 12, 2023.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Government pathologist Dr Richard Njoroge also testified, telling the court that out of the 191 children who died in the forest, the cause of death for 41 of them could not be established. He said the causes of death were categorised into eight groups.
Pastor George Mwaura, formerly of Good News International Church, testifies before the High Court in Mombasa on November 12, 2025, where Pastor Paul Mackenzie and 29 other accused persons are facing murder charges.
Photo credit: Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group
These were: unascertained (42 bodies), unascertained due to severe decomposition (68 bodies), features consistent with starvation (42 bodies), starvation (31 bodies), asphyxia with features of starvation (four bodies), manual neck compression (one body), traumatic head injury (one body) and starvation with features of asphyxia (two bodies).
“Unascertained and unascertained due to severe decomposition were terms used for remains consisting of complete skeletons with no flesh, soft tissue or fractures. Decomposition reduces the possibility of establishing the cause of death,” he said.
On starvation with features of asphyxia, Dr Njoroge explained that these bodies showed signs of lack of oxygen, which may be caused by manual strangulation, smothering, and disease processes affecting the lungs, among other factors.
“The starvation came first. The person was already starving, and then the asphyxia followed,” he said.
Regarding traumatic head injury with starvation, he explained that these bodies showed both blunt force trauma to the skull and signs of starvation.
“This means that in addition to a fracture on the skull, starvation was also observed. The trauma occurred when the victim was still alive. No reaction is observed in bodies that are already dead because they do not react to trauma,” he said.
The pathologist produced 191 post-mortem reports for all the victims. Toxicology tests on soil samples taken from the graves where each body was exhumed returned negative results.
The murder trial against Mackenzie resumes in January. More than 100 witnesses have already testified, with the prosecution aiming to close the case early in the month with the remaining witnesses, who number fewer than five.
