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Kanungu, Ugandaa
Cult leader prone to seizures


Shortly before their deaths on Mar. 17, members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God ate a meal, said prayers, sang hymns and then set themselves on fire.

That was the bizarre end to the cult which, according to family and friends of cult members, gave no indication that they planned a mass suicide. Neighbours characterized the cultists as “happy“ people who were making future plans for the compound. However, some cult members had hinted that something important was going to happen on the third weekend in March.

Inside the compound where cult members lived, 330 charred bodies, including 78 children, were found. The death toll, believed to be over 600, grew as 74 bodies were pulled from the soil of a sugar cane field planted recently at one of the cult’s properties. Two mass graves in a compound belonging to the cult 31 miles from the church in Kanungu yielded at least 150 more bodies, including 60 children and mostly women who had been strangled and hacked to death.

Police are treating the deaths as murders, saying it appears the cult leaders, whose fates are unknown, decided to kill their followers after persuading them to sell their belongings and hand over all their money. In return they were promised entry to heaven when the world ended. When the world did not end as cult leaders claimed it would Dec. 31, 1999, the followers began demanding their belongings back.

Formed 10 years ago, the Ten Commandments cult was led by a group of former Roman Catholic priests and nuns, and supposedly founded by Joseph Kibwetere and Cledonia Mwerinde, a former prostitute. Kibwetere claimed to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary and received messages foretelling the end of the world.

Cult members rose daily at 3 a.m. for an hour of prayers, then roused again at 5:45 and went without breakfast to work in the fields. Bedtime came whenever the leaders chose to stop preaching. Children weren’t allowed to speak or attend public schools. There was no speaking, no music, no soap, no snacking and no sex, and the rules were set by Kibwetere who was prone to frightening seizures when his authority was challenged.

Paul Ikazire, a Roman Catholic priest who once supported the cult but cut ties with it after becoming disillusioned with what he saw, said he was stunned to learn of the mass suicide. He remembers when the leaders first came to Rugazi in 1990 with a plan to join Roman Catholic leaders in teaching the values of the Ten Commandments.

“The main idea they came with was to help people come back to God – not to take over, but to join us.”

By 1994, Ikazire who had lived with the group but not joined officially, had decided to cut ties with the cult. Kibwetere and Mwerinde were angry and warned he would be dead by the end of the year, although they did not say how he would die.

After that, Ikazire lost contact with the cult. He won’t say whether he thinks the leaders are dead or alive or whether he believes they murdered their faithful followers. However, he’s sure that they never believed what they preached and only wanted to get rich.

 – Winnipeg Free Press, Evangelical Press News Service, Maclean’s, Time

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Last modified May 26, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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