Why some Ugandan pastors are turning to human sacrifice

Recent reports of ritual killings by Pentecostal pastors in Uganda include that of four year-old Trinity Nabirye Zabeela, whose blood was used for libation, and the head and body roughly interred in different places.

Kakira-based ‘Prophet’ Joseph Sserubiri, his lover, Felista Namaganda, both of who confessed to the killing, and their mentor, Pastor Israel Isama Buyinza of Nansana, all of Deliverance and Healing Ministries, have been detained over the matter.

Nabirye joins many small children who disappear, only to reappear as mutilated bodies.

Occasionally, drug addicts and paedophiles are linked to these murders. But the first-line suspects are usually witchdoctors. 

In this column, I often associate Pentecostal/Born Again Christian spiritualism with pagan/African witchcraft.

To many Ugandans, who have been conditioned to think that Born Again Christianity is the very antithesis of witchcraft, this paradoxical association needs explanation.

Over the centuries, organised ‘revealed’ religions have been slowly moderating some of their old untenable beliefs and working out flexible theological positions that take into account modern scientific knowledge and philosophical thought that debunk these beliefs.

Events like the Virgin motherhood, biblical miracles, the Resurrection, Ascension and a Pentecostal descent of the Holy Spirit are hard to take literally, but they can be re-interpreted and ritualistically celebrated as honoured traditional beliefs.

Pentecostals condemn this moderation as a decline of faith, blaming it on organised religion. They want a revival of faith in the raw power of God and other spirits as described in the Bible.

The Pentecostal preacher can be an innocent (but genuinely brainwashed) believer or a calculating con man. Countries like Nigeria and Uganda have far more con men; accomplished pulpit artistes whose amplified voices and other enhancing devices generate intense crowd emotional experiences.

When the emotions rise, they claim the Holy Spirit has come, terrified demons are scampering to safety, and the power of witchcraft is being demolished.

They use brands like “Tulumbe” and organise “combat” weeks to mimic battlefield attacks on demons. New Year’s Day is exploited to fake explosive divine ‘passover’ communication. But after these intense emotional experiences, the devotee goes home, and the spirits are not there. Neither does he feel the power. Like a drug addict, the hollow devotee periodically returns to the pastor to renew the experience.

Here lies the danger. In his delusions, especially if he also wants to become a pastor, an apostle or a prophet, the devotee may be imagining greater (and more permanent) spiritual power than these temporary highs.

He imagines power he can feel rushing in his veins; power to deliver hot sermons like the successful preachers with big cars and beautiful women; power to perform miracles like (he believes) they can. He gets morbidly depressed when this power repeatedly eludes him.

However, this addict has been taught by pastors to believe in the literal power of blood. Abraham nearly sacrificed his son. God did. African priests-cum-witchdoctors sacrifice animals like Abraham. Sometimes they sacrifice humans. The principle is the same. The devotee aspiring to raw spiritual power needs just another flaw in his confused thought processes to slide into the world of human sacrifice.

Some of Uganda’s Pentecostal leaders like Joseph Sserwadda of Victory Church now repeatedly spread the ridiculous idea that the end of the world is “very close”, giving equally ridiculous evidence.

 But just as they swiftly disown any pastor who stretches to human sacrifice the beliefs they have pumped into their followers, they will desperately disown any Kibwetere-styled deviant who stages a real inferno to fulfill their prophecy of end times.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.

[email protected]