On November 18 1978, more than 900 people died in Jonestown, a jungle settlement in Guyana, a small South American country that borders Brazil, Venezuela, Suriname and the Atlantic Ocean. They were members of the Peoples Temple, a religious cult founded in the US state of Indiana and led by the Reverend Jim Jones.
There is some discussion as to whether this was suicide, mass murder or a combination thereof — but they all died after drinking poison at Jones’s urging. If you watch video footage of the discovery of the dead, filmed from a helicopter, it’s a terrible sight. Bodies everywhere, hundreds of them, including children, lying in the grass like discarded pick-up sticks. The commentator’s voice-over says: “These were pictures that shocked the world. Views of one man’s dream, that he turned into a nightmare. A place of paradise, that became a hell for hundreds of people who put their faith in him.”
Jones told his followers in Jonestown that they had to commit suicide or their children would be taken away by the Guyanese military. Many drank a concoction called Flavor Aid, laced with cyanide and tranquillisers, that was found half-consumed in large barrels. History records that they used the grape flavour. (Flavor Aid still exists and comes in a variety of flavours, including cherry, raspberry, tropical punch and pineapple-orange. I’m sure it’s delicious.)
This is the origin of the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid”, which refers to those who blindly and foolishly follow a cause or a religion. Why Kool-Aid and not Flavor Aid, you ask? Shoddy reporting, essentially. Here’s a sample of that, from the journalist Charles A Krause in The Washington Post of November 21 1978.
“‘They started with the babies’, administering a potion of Kool-aid mixed with cyanide, Odell Rhodes recalled yesterday when I revisited Jonestown to view the horrifying sight of 405 bodies — men, women and children, most of them grouped around the altar where Jones himself lay dead.
“Rhodes is the only known survivor of Jonestown who witnessed a part of the suicide rite before managing to escape. He was helping Guyanese authorities identify the dead yesterday.
“Most of those who drank the deadly potion served to them by a Jonestown doctor, Lawrence Schacht, and by nurses, did so willingly, Rhodes said. Mothers would often give the cyanide to their own children before taking it themselves, he said.
“It took about five minutes for the liquid to take its final effect. Young and old, black and white, grouped themselves, usually near other family members, often with their arms around each other, waiting for the cyanide to kill them. They would go into convulsions, their eyes would roll upward, they would gasp for breath and then fall dead, Rhodes said. All the while, Jones was talking to them, urging them on, explaining that they would ‘meet in another place’. Near the end, Rhodes said, Jones began chanting, ‘mother, mother, mother’ — an apparent reference to his wife who lay dead not far from the altar.”
If we want to keep people safe from crazy cult leaders, we need to inoculate them against irrational beliefs
I was reminded of the Jonestown story by the latest religious tragedy in Kenya. The same Washington Post, which certainly has put in the hard yards covering crazy religious cults, reported this week that Kenyan police had discovered more than 70 bodies, mostly in mass graves, in a forest in eastern Kenya.
The dead were followers of the Good News International Church, a Christian cult whose leader, Paul Mackenzie, encouraged them to fast to death in order to “meet Jesus”.
They “believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves”, the publication reports. “Charles Kamau, a criminal investigation officer from the Malindi area, said most of the bodies retrieved from graves were children.”
By the time you read this, the death toll will be higher. According to the BBC, the Kenyan Red Cross said “112 people have been reported missing to a tracing and counselling desk it has set up at a local hospital”.
And as an employee at the Malindi mortuary told The Washington Post: “The information we have is that they are still digging up graves and they have identified almost 50 graves there, so we are expecting more bodies but not sure how many will arrive in the next hours or days.”
They looked, he said, “like they died of starvation”.
As with the Jonestown tragedy, it’s not evident if we’re talking about victims or steadfast believers. If we assume that those are different things, that is, for the sake of argument. “Walid Sketty, who works in the rapid response team of Mombasa-based NGO Haki Africa, said survivors resisted attempts to give them food and water when they were rescued,” the Post reports. “‘They’re saying they are doing this because it’s their religion, and that they want to do this,’ he said. ‘This is extremism of the highest order.’”
County assembly representative Samson Zia Kahindi told the publication that when the authorities had tried to rescue people two weeks before the bodies were found, they ran away and hid. “The preacher was heavily protected by his followers,” Kahindi said. He believed 50 children in the community had starved to death since January. “The month of March was set aside for all the children to die. The month of April was set aside for the women to die. May was for the men to die.”
Kenya is at least 70% Christian, and is susceptible to evangelical pastors, including ones from other countries.
According to the Post, Kenyan President William Ruto has likened the actions of Mackenzie to those of terrorists: both “use religion to advance their heinous acts”.
“There is no difference between Mr Mackenzie who pretends and postures as a pastor when in fact he is a terrible criminal,” Ruto said. “We must as a nation continuously look out for … people who are masquerading as religious people, yet what they do is contrary to the teachings and to the beliefs of religion.”
There are about 3,000 [gods] to choose from … Basically, you [as a Catholic] deny one less god than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more
— Ricky Gervais
I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. It’s not that easy to tell the difference between what Ruto might decide are authentic religions and ones such as Jones’s Peoples Temple and Mackenzie’s Good News International Church.
Ruto, like many other political leaders across the world, puts religion at the core of his political campaigning, “and he has been filmed leading prayer before the start of cabinet meetings and praying and kneeling down in church on various occasions”, according to The Washington Post. “His wife, Rachel Ruto, attends evangelical meetings held by local and international preachers in Kenya.”
For people like Ruto, there are true religions and there are fake religions.
It’s a subtle point. What makes the one true, and the others false? I’m reminded of comedian Ricky Gervais debating staunch Catholic Stephen Colbert on his show, and defining the difference between atheism and Catholicism as, “there are about 3,000 [gods] to choose from … Basically, you deny one less god than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more.”
I don’t want to appear to be making light of these tragedies, but if we think of how many South Africans fall for the mystical blandishments of Christian and other cultists, it appears that, for many of us, religion is the phishing that makes us susceptible to the follow-on scams.
Who can forget Lethebo Rabalago, leader of the Mount Zion General Assembly in Limpopo, who sprays Doom into the eyes and various body parts of his congregants? He told the BBC he had sprayed one woman in the face to heal an eye infection. She was “just fine because she believed in the power of God”, he said.
He also claimed that Doom can heal cancer and HIV.
The point I’m trying to make is that if we want to keep people safe from crazy cult leaders, we need to inoculate them against irrational beliefs. And we might be uncomfortable realising where those irrational beliefs come from, and where they’re fostered. Are the irrational bits of Jonestown and Malindi that people were convinced they needed to kill themselves to attain an afterlife, or is it ultimately the belief in an afterlife that is irrational?
Perhaps ironically, Kenyan media has reported that Mackenzie is refusing food and water while being kept in detention. Or perhaps that’s what being a believer demands of him.
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