Painfully and pitifully, I followed the bizarre spiritual misadventure of Rev Fr John Pesa 'One' of the Holy Ghost Coptic Church of Africa over the years.
For decades, the self-acclaimed spiritual healer presided over a cultish establishment at Mamboleo in Kisumu, freely indulging in peculiar, unorthodox practices.
For all his infamy, not many people seemed to know where he came from, how he came forth and where he was headed. His speech, dress and gait were the least appealing of religious expressions.
When he spoke, he garbled and left behind him mirth and sorrow in equal measure. Initially, I mistakenly thought that the stories of Fr Pesa chaining his faithful were bad rumours. That was until I saw video footage of hapless, shackled faithful attending worship and painting the walls of his facility.
To further affirm my fears, the self-declared virgin cum sodomy indictee appeared on TV, defending the abominable practice. It was unfathomable that in the present day and age, a private person could chain other human beings, hold them captive for years and get away with it.
But Rev Fr John Pesa was no ordinary mortal in the context of Kenya’s dalliance with the occult. The controversial cleric appeared to enjoy cordial ties with all the country’s five heads of state.
He survived two special processes set up by two different presidents in an effort to rid the sector of false prophets. The first was the presidential commission of inquiry into the cult of devil worship in Kenya, set up by President Daniel arap Moi in 1994.
Most recently, in 2023, President William Ruto set up a Presidential Taskforce on the Review of the Legal and Regulatory Framework Governing Religious Organisations chaired by Rev Mutava Musyimi.
When the latter team visited his church compound, they were more than horrified. They rescued at least eight persons chained in the church’s facility, with some members eerily describing the place a “small Shakahola”.
Earlier that year, the Kisumu County Government had dared to take Rev Fr Pesa head-on, petitioning for the demolition of the church facilities for harbouring 23 persons of unsound mind in inhuman conditions.
Rev Fr Pesa won on procedural grounds, gleefully walked out of the court humming a Christian hymn, and continued to detain his captives ever after. When Mutava’s report came out in 2024, it all but identified John Pesa’s church as a cult.
If a religious leader is charismatic, intolerant, controlling, divisive, abusive and demands too much of the faithful, they are most likely running a cult establishment, it said.
If the faithful consider their 'Apostle', 'Daddy', 'Prophet', 'Bishop', 'Pastor', 'Servant of God' a genius who is always right, who owns the exclusive means of knowing the truth and who is never held accountable for any action, they are most certainly wallowing in the miasma of a cult worship.
“Cult leaders often exercise an extreme degree of control over members' lives, including dictating what they can wear and eat and the kinds of relationships they can have. Conformity is also enforced by group members who police one another,” the committee said.
In Rev Fr Pesa’s cult, members were led like sheep, and power concentrated in his office, where he proudly, and prominently, displayed pictures of his association with top political leaders.
The committee identified cult leaders' mind-altering practices such as sleep deprivation, chanting, humiliation and starvation as the practices that incrementally broke down an individual’s defence lines and made them susceptible to the cult’s ideology.
Like many cult leaders before him, Rev Fr Pesa preyed on the vulnerabilities of those who sought his help, including those facing existential challenges such as mental health, and chained them into absolute submission.
Mutava’s committee cited the failure to prosecute members of cults or perpetrators of religious extremism as a big problem. Cult members get emboldened and continue to abuse and exploit members, leading to the proliferation of other cults.
Now that Rev Fr John Pesa is finally dead, the state can take advantage of the opportunity to permanently close his establishment and convert it into a museum against religious extremism.
Advocate of the High Court and a Senior Project Manager with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. The views expressed here are his own
