/RELIGIOUS BULLETIN 2/ KENYA: Charismatic Sects on the Increase

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 18 1996 (IPS) - Each Sunday, Ngonya wa Gakonya harangues his flock in the Uhuru (Freedom) Park here, urging them to rid Kenya, and Africa as a whole, of foreign religions and return to their traditional spiritual values.

“Why do we have to follow an imposed faith when we have our own,” the 50-year old spiritual leader shouts to his congregation, who all dress, like him, in long white gowns and carry long staffs, while the men and some of the women wear dreadlocks.

He claims he has 641,000 followers throughout Kenya.

“People come from all over Nairobi to listen to him,” says Kihu Irimu, a Kenyan academic who is doing research on Ngonya’s church, known as The Tent of the Living God.

Most of them, he says, are unemployed youths and other poor people who are attracted to the sect because, in addition to preaching a return to traditional values, Ngonya also focuses on their economic plight in his sermons, which he at times laces with criticism of the government’s performance.

Ngonya, who founded the sect in 1987, charges that the established Christian churches are against him because he encourages traditional practices such as polygamy and male and female circumcision. He feels the churches were behind a decision by the government two years ago to ban his sect.

“The Church leaders in Kenya don’t like me,” the 50-year old spiritual leader, who has three wives, told IPS. “They say I am anti-Christ.”

The ban put a temporary end to his prayer meetings, but the group has since reorganised. “We have been praying for the past seven months,” he said. “But we don’t know what will happen to us next.”

According to the National Council of Churches in Kenya (NCCK), an umbrella body of all mainstream Christian denominations, cults are on the increase in the East Africa country. There are some 1,000 churches listed at the state Registry Office but no one knows for sure how many unregistered sects compete with them for the souls of the 28 million Kenyans.