On the morning of March 17, 2000, in Kanungu, Uganda, several hundred members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (hereafter MRTCG) died when a massive explosion ripped through their church.1 All those not killed in the initial explosion died in the subsequent fire, their potential escape routes—the church’s windows and doors—being boarded up and nailed shut. According to eyewitnesses, in the week or so prior to their deaths, members had sold their possessions “at throw away prices” or even burned them in anticipation of what one member referred to in a letter to his wife as “the closure of the ‘ARK’” that would precede the time when “the wrath of the Almighty God the creator is let down on to non-repentants” (UHRC 2002: 6.3, 2.6, original emphasis). Members also settled outstanding debts and engaged in frantic efforts to persuade their loved ones and lapsed members to travel to Kanungu, telling them “that the Blessed Holy Mary would appear to deliver a special message between 16 and 18 March 2000” (ibid.: 6.3). On March 16, members had a “last supper” at which they consumed, among other items, three cows that were slaughtered for the occasion. At midnight, one of the leaders, Joseph Kibwetere, deposited a number of documents, including the MRTCG’s Certificates of Registration, land title and its book A Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the Present Times with the police at Kanungu, before joining his followers in prayers and the singing of hymns in their church in preparation for the prophesied divine visitation (Bagumisiriza 2005).
In the initial aftermath of the fire, both the Ugandan police and the global media were quick to label the incident as a “collective suicide.” Even before detailed information emerged, the media were drawing parallels between the deaths in Uganda and other recent collective “cult suicides.” News programs and newspapers featured interviews with a variety of self-styled “cult experts,” who offered typically anti-cult interpretations of the incident. However, as the Ugandan police investigations continued, this interpretation changed. Between March 20 and end of April, the police discovered several hundred more bodies at various properties belonging to the MRTCG, all showing signs of having met a violent end.2 What had initially begun as an investigation into an apparent collective suicide had, by the end of April, been transformed into a murder investigation, with warrants being issued for the arrest of the MRTCG’s leaders on multiple murder charges. Although explanations evoking the specters of Jonestown, Waco and the like were still espoused in some quarters, in the months following the fire a new theory emerged: that the murder-suicides were the response to a crisis within the MRTCG precipitated by a prophetic disconfirmation in late 1999. Following the apparent failure of a prophecy that the world would end on December 31, it was claimed, significant numbers of members began to be openly critical of the MRTCG leadership, demanding the return of monies they had donated. In addition, several key members of the Movement defected. Faced with this crisis, and being either unwilling or unable to refund their dissatisfied followers, the MRTCG leadership allegedly set about liquidating opponents before engineering their own and their followers’ deaths, or, according to some, fleeing the country with the money.
The origin of the MRTCG can be traced back to an ‘epidemic’ of reported visions of the Virgin and Jesus that swept through Catholic circles in southern Uganda throughout the 1980s (Introvigne 2000; Mayer 2001). Yet several, often contradictory, accounts exist concerning its initial development (Walliss 2004: Ch. 6; Vokes 2009: Chs. 4–6). If we are to believe the account left behind by the MRTCG itself in its book, A Timely Message: The End of the Present Times (MRTCG 1996), the Movement developed out of the visions of several individuals: most notably Credonia Mwerinde (b. 1952), Angelina Migisha (b. 1947), Ursula Komuhangi (b. 1968), and Joseph Kibwetere (b. 1932). In the spring of 1981, it is claimed, Mwerinde began to experience visions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. Mwerinde kept these visions secret until nine years later, when she received another vision instructing her to “take these messages to all of the people we send you to without discriminating [against] anybody, without taking sides or being selfish” (ibid.: 1).
According to Mwerinde, the Virgin informed her that she had returned “to save the world” from destruction. The Virgin went on to say that God was angry that the Ten Commandments were being broken by humanity and had in His anger decided to “destroy them.” The Virgin pleaded with Him to allow her and Jesus to return to earth in order to command humanity to repent and obey the Ten Commandments before it was too late. God responded:
You cannot manage them. They are spoilt. I sent them my only son, Jesus Christ, who taught them, counseled them, cured their sickness, made their cripples walk, restored sight to the blind and made the dumb speak. Instead of being grateful to him for all this, they made him suffer; instead of becoming righteous, they killed him. Let me deal with them as they deserve and give them what they merit. (ibid.: 2)
The Virgin, however, prostrated herself before Him, asking for the chance to save a few thousand souls from destruction. Jesus, Mwerinde claimed, implored his father to allow her to return to earth and undertake the mission. Moved by these requests, God gave both of them His permission to spread word to the world, telling them “If only a few repent, it is those only that I will forgive, if they are many, so many will be saved; even if one repents alone, he will also be forgiven” (ibid.: 3).
In the nine years between Mwerinde’s initial apparition and the one instructing her to take the Virgin’s message to the world, several others who went to become central figures in the MRTCG reported similar messages. In the spring of 1984, Joseph Kibwetere, a former primary school teacher and politician, claimed that he had received a message from the Virgin and Jesus, instructing him “to repent, to completely reject all my sins, to pray more and to mortify myself” (ibid.: 21). If Kibwetere did so, he would be sent to his “neighbors to teach them to restore the Ten Commandments of the Lord God which they have abandoned” (ibid.: 21). Three days later, Mwerinde’s sister, Angelina Migisha, who had similarly received visions of the Virgin and Jesus since childhood but had, like Mwerinde, kept silent about them, reported an apparition in which the Virgin informed her that she had been chosen “to be a model for the Nation of Uganda in Restoring the Ten Commandments of God” (ibid.: 119). Migisha also claimed that Jesus had informed her that he and his mother had selected twelve entumwa or apostles, whose “mandate and vocation” was to bring people back to the Ten Commandments. Finally, in June 1989, a few weeks after Mwerinde claimed to have received her instructions to spread the Virgin’s message, Migisha’s daughter, Ursula Komuhangi, is said to have received an identical message, instructing her to spread the message amongst “all categories of people but especially to your fellow youths,” who were, the vision claimed, especially guilty of abandoning the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Commandments (ibid.: 34).
Subsequently based in Kibwetere’s home, Mwerinde attracted a number of followers (in some accounts approximately two hundred people), including several local priests. Notable amongst these was Father Dominic Kataribaabo who became the third leader of the MRTCG, and also the chief author of the Movement’s literature. Over a period of years, however, serious frictions developed within the household, not least because of Mwerinde’s erratic, and sometimes violent, behavior. According to accounts subsequently provided by Kibwetere’s family, Mwerinde would claim to receive messages from the Virgin via telephones hidden in cups and plates, informing her that, for example, Kibwetere should take his children out of school, or that he should sell possessions to feed his household. According to one of Kibwetere’s daughters, Edith, on one occasion, Mwerinde announced that the Virgin had told her that a sacrifice was needed immediately and that all Kibwetere’s children under five should be killed (Burke 2000). They also allege that Mwerinde beat followers and mistreated family members by, for example, denying them food or medical attention, claiming that she was following the instructions of the Virgin.
Consequently, in 1992, one of Kibwetere’s sons attempted to force the Movement from the property. The Movement, now numbering around 250, subsequently settled on a piece of land near Kanungu that had been bequeathed to Mwerinde by her father upon his death the previous year. The Movement called the site Ishayuuriro rya Maria (“Rescue Place for the Virgin Mary”) and built a settlement, comprising of a house for the leaders, separate dormitories for male and female members, a boarding school, two guest houses, kitchens, stores, a shrine, a cemetery, a poultry project, and a dairy farm with thirty Friesian cows. Several centers were also established in other towns (Banura, Tuhirirwe and Begumanya 2000).
Although media coverage referred to it pejoratively as a “cult,” strictly speaking the MRTCG is best conceptualized as a Catholic sect. As Mayer observes, in general terms, the MRTCG “cannot be separated from a wider religious milieu of popular Catholicism in Uganda” and represents a form of “selective traditionalism” (Mayer 2001: 2011). While it rejected some of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, such as communion in the hand rather than on the tongue and the practice of General Absolution, it nevertheless, unlike some Catholic schismatic groups (cf. Cuneo 1999), accepted the Pope as the legitimate head of the Church. One theme to emerge from the MRTCG’s literature was “Christ Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary say they did not bring a new religion but they came to revive what had been abandoned” (MRTCG 1996: 17).
Such concerns, along with descriptions of the apocalyptic fate awaiting the unrepentant, are expressed vividly in A Timely Message to the World. The first three chapters (approximately a quarter of the book) relate descriptions of Mwerinde’s, Kibwetere’s, and Komuhangi’s visions and outline in obsessive detail the ways in which humanity has been tempted by Satan away from the Ten Commandments, and some of the ways this situation can be amended. Also described are punishments that await those who continue in sinful ways. AIDS, for example, is depicted as a punishment from God for the breaking of the Sixth Commandment. Similarly, at the end of recounting her 1989 vision, Mwerinde relates a vision of hell in which
The people who are in hell are crying; they are burning but they cannot get to ashes instead they remain alive but with unimaginable misery and agony … You find in hell people of all colors, of all races, languages, the small and the great, the learned and the unlearned, short and tall, the rich and the poor, people with high social standing, everyone who failed to observe the Commandments is in this place. The hell fire does not discriminate between persons. (Ibid.: 20).
The path to heaven, however, was not straightforward, and Mwerinde warned how “those going to heaven are few” (ibid.: 20). Those who wished to earn their place must follow a life of piety and strict asceticism reminiscent of monastic rules. Members were expected to refrain from sex and were enjoined not to speak, aside from when praying or singing hymns. They also, again akin to monastic rules, followed a rigid timetable of prayer, fasting, and ascetic behavior. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were days of fasting, beginning at 3AM with prayers called “The Way of the Cross.” At 5AM, members would sleep, rising at 7AM to work until 1 p.m. They would then attend another hour-long prayer session, after which there was one hour’s free time. Following this, they would work until supper at 8 p.m. Their day would then end with night prayers from 11 p.m. until midnight. Members were also prohibited from wearing ordinary clothes, and were required to wear robes. Neophytes, for example, wore black, while green was worn by those “who had seen the commandments,” and green and white was worn by “those who were ready to die in the ark.” Members of all degrees also wore two rosaries around their neck, facing forwards and backwards, and carried a third in the hands. On occasions, a fourth would also be worn under the garments (Banura, Tuhirirwe and Begumanya 2000: 26–30).
Although conditions were undoubtedly harsh, they were more palatable than the apocalyptic fate prophesied for those who rejected the Ten Commandments. A Timely Message describes this fate, during what it terms the “Period of Chastisement” and the subsequent “Three Days of Darkness” in shocking and vivid detail. During this time, it is claimed, “there will be great tribulation upon all the people such that has never before been experienced by any person since the creation of the world” (MRTCG 1996: 46). The world will be racked by natural disasters such as hailstones, “hurricanes of fire,” snow, tornados, lightning, floods, storms, earthquakes, whirlwinds, and “disturbance of the soil.” Rivers and lakes will turn to blood, become poisonous, or simply dry up, while “clouds will fall from their position and hit the people, some will die, those who survive will remain miserable” (ibid.: 50). Women will give birth to animals, and animals will give birth to human infants. There will be fatal accidents involving cars and aeroplanes, as well as civil disorder, with religious denominations and nations fighting amongst each other, and families fighting amongst themselves.
Famine will strike, with crops being destroyed by locusts. Cattle will be either destroyed by adverse weather conditions or die from disease. Meat from slaughtered cattle will be poisonous, and cows will either not give milk, or give milk that is undrinkable. Other foods, especially alcohol, will turn to poison. The result will be cannibalism, with the strong eating the weak, and parents eating their own offspring or the offspring of others. “Fierce animals” and “frightening beings that are partly man and partly animal” will also wander the earth, “hunting for the person who has not got the Ten Commandments” (ibid.: 53, 48). Domestic animals, which “are already possessed by the devil,” will become poisonous so as to kill their masters. Devils will emerge from the underworld ‘to harass people’ and work “signs and wonders” so that “The people who will not have the Ten Commandments will accept the signs as coming from God” (ibid.: 47, 51).
At the end of the Period of Chastisement, it is claimed, several signs will appear to “mark the end of this generation” (ibid.: 59). First, a huge bird of prey with “claws similar to those of an eagle and … a crest on its head which was similar to that of a cock” will take up a position from which it is visible by the whole world. Next a “large crucifix” will appear that will make “all the earth tremble”(ibid.: 58). Finally, ‘a sound like that of a trumpet or bugle resounding like the sound of a bell’ will be heard, followed a period of silence across the world, until “three holy ones of God” appear to command that “THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN REDEEMED, GO TO TAKE UP YOUR PLACES!” (ibid.: 58, 59: original emphasis; cf. Matthew 24:31). Three days of darkness will follow, during which the penitent will go into buildings—referred to as “Arks” or “Ships”—to wait:
They were ordered to shut all the doors and not to open anything at all, All activities such as eating, praying … should take place inside for three days. Anything that remained outside in the dark turned into devil. These devils lamented and cried for three days after which they were thrown into hell. (Ibid.: 58)
At the end of this period, only a quarter of the world’s population (“the redeemed”) will survive to inherit the world. Drawing on the final chapter of the Revelation of St John (Revelation 21:1–2), A Timely Message describes how “I saw a new earth come down from heaven. This new earth contained every good thing of every type that pertains to the spiritual and the material well being of the human person. The new earth is very beautiful and it has plenty of light” (ibid.: 67).
Death and the underworld will be vanquished and Satan, in fetters, will no longer be able to tempt the redeemed, who will be given “new knowledge, new bodies and new material things that will be very beautiful” (ibid.: 54). “The new earth will be connected with Heaven,” and there will be constant visitation of people coming to earth from Heaven (ibid.: 60, 68). Indeed, Uganda itself will become “the New Israel, the second Israel,” which will in turn convert all other nations (ibid.: 60).
A decade on, there is still a great deal that we do not know about what transpired within the MRTCG in the spring of 2000. There was no detailed forensic examination of the scene or the bodies, that in many cases had been exhumed by inmates from a local prison using makeshift implements and were quickly reburied (Mayer 2011; Twesigye 2010). Uncertainty hovers over the numbers who died, with sources giving different figures. The possibility that further bodies lie undiscovered can also not be ruled out (UHRC 2002: 1).3 It is unlikely that this situation will improve; the Judicial Commission of Inquiry set up by the Ugandan government in December 2000 never received funding and so never met, and in March 2009, the Ugandan police decided to “temporarily shelve” its investigation (Atuhaire 2005; Mubangizi 2009; Bogere 2009).
In the initial stages of the police investigation, fraud was quickly highlighted as the most likely motivation for the murder-suicides. Officials within the Ugandan police quoted by the BBC, for example, stated they saw no purpose to the murders “unless the intention of the sect leaders was to take money from their followers” (BBC Online 2000, March 28). According to this theory, the Movement’s leaders had never been (or were no longer) sincere, but, rather, were intent on relieving credulous followers of their possessions. It is claimed this plan was derailed when, following the failure of a prophecy that the world would end on 31 December 1999 (itself possibly an attempt to obtain more money from followers), significant numbers of the membership openly criticized the leaders, demanding the return of their money and property that they had donated.4 Consequently, the leadership (possibly with the assistance of a few selected members or possibly hitmen from the Congo or Rwanda [Bwire 2007]) began to murder hundreds of dissidents, burying them in mass graves subsequently discovered by the police. Finally, the leaders set a date on which they engineered what to all intents and purposes appeared to be a collective suicide in order to kill the remainder of the members and cover their departure with their ill-gotten gains.5
A variation on this theory posits that the MRTCG leadership first predicted the end of the world for the end of 1992, and then the end of 1995, before finally settling on 31 December 1999. When the final date came and passed without incident, dissent began to grow (Atuhaire 2003: Ch. 6). The leadership took steps to quell this, however, by shifting the date forward. In an unpublished letter to a local newspaper written in January 2000, for example, Kibwetere claimed that
… my boss Jesus Christ, has appeared to me and given me a message to all of you that there are some people arguing over the message that this generation ends on 1/1/2000. On the contrary, the generation ends at the end of the year 2000 and no other year will follow. (Quoted in Vokes 2009: 6)
In early March 2000, Mwerinde provided more precise information, telling members that the Virgin had appeared to her and told her that the world would end on March 17 (Bwire 2007: 120). This raised the spirits of some, although other members were not convinced and demanded a return of their donations, a situation that clearly threatened the Movement’s financial viability and continued existence (Atuhaire 2003: Ch. 6). Others became openly disloyal, broke their vows of silence, and began to question the authority of Mwerinde and the other leaders. In an attempt to placate them, “Credonia promised that the Blessed Virgin Mary would refund the money from the sale of the members’ properties.” She also “asked her priests to record the names of those followers who were discontented” (UHRC 2002: 6.1). Those who submitted complaints were, according to witnesses, called to a meeting with the MRTCG leaders and never seen again. Those who asked where these individuals had gone were told that they had been transferred to another of the MRTCG’s properties or “that the Virgin had taken them to Heaven” (Atuhaire 2003: 85). Having thus “weeded out” the dissenters, the MRTCG leaders then began to plan for a collective suicide of the faithful.
The problem with both these theories is that an examination of the extant literature produced by the MRTCG shows that the prophecies concerning the end of the world related to the transition between 2000 and 2001, and not between 1999 and 2000 (Mayer 2001).6 In A Timely Message, for example, it is stated that:
When the year 2000 is completed, the year that will follow will not be year two thousand-and-one. The year that will follow shall be called Year One in a new generation that will follow the present generation; the generation that will follow will have few or many people depending on who will repent. Those who repent and come back to God are the ones that will come to Year One, of the next generation, and they will be called “the redeemed.” (MRTCG 1996: 53–4)
Similarly, the MRTCG’s certificate of incorporation, dated 1998, describes how one of its objectives
… is to notify all the people in the world to prepare themselves for the closing of this generation which is already at hand at each one’s door and also to prepare for YEAR ONE of the next generation after year 2000, which will consist of people who will enter the new earth where sorrow and misery are absent. (Quoted in Mayer 2001: 206)
Indeed, according to Mayer, the MRTCG “explicitly criticized those who were predicting the end of the world for 31 December 1999” (ibid.: 207).
Yet there is a significant amount of evidence that would seem to support the claim that MRTCG members believed that something momentous would occur on or around March 17, 2000. Kibwetere, for example, is reported to have written to his family the day before the fire, asking them to carry on “with what we have been doing because we are going to perish” (Borzello 2000). Similarly, Mwerinde is said to have told a friend less than a week before the fire that “we shall be going to heaven, and you will be hearing about us on radio and reading about us in newspapers” (quoted in Mayer 2001: 208). Such views were not confined to the MRTCG leadership. One member was quoted as telling a local man that he was leaving to go to Kanungu “because our leader received a message from God that on 20 March, we will meet Jesus and Mary” (BBC Online 2000, April 2, no pagination). The parents of one woman wrote to her “saying that they were ‘preparing to go to Heaven’” (BBC News Online 2000: March 21). In another case, one member wrote to his wife about “the closure of the ‘ARK,’” and of how “there will be no year 2001”:
As we follow directives from Heaven, we are supposed to gather in the selected area before the wrath of the Almighty God the creator is let down on to non-repentants. Keep my words on your hearts, there will never be the year 2001. Catastrophes will befall human kind and the indicators of such will be wars, crime increase such as murder, rape, robbery, etc. There will be a lot of fear among the human races! Appearance of strange animals and people will be noticed. I would request you that if you come across such, simply run and look for me. I will not fail to seek refuge for you. Whoever wanted his brother or family to perish? Do not stick to property. Simply leave it behind and run for your dear [life.] I will always pray for you, as I have nothing else I can do! May God guide you! (Quoted in UHRC 2006: 2.6)
One possible solution to this contradiction could be that, perhaps as a consequence of internal dissent, the MRTCG leadership moved the date of the apocalypse forward from 2000/2001 to March 2000. This explanation would seem to find a degree of support within A Timely Message, where it is stated that “The Blessed Virgin Mary … is warning us so often that if the people persist in disobeying and displeasing God, He will shorten the period stated and will close this generation before reaching to the year 2000” (MRTCG 1996: 61). Moreover, there is a clear precedent for such a course of action in the example of Aum Shinrikyo, where, as a consequence of internal and external pressures, Asahara Shoko moved the prophesied date of destruction from the turn of the millennium, to 1997, before finally settling on 1995 (Reader 2000).
A third theory is that the MRTCG committed collective suicide in response to real or perceived external opposition, which exacerbated the pressures within the group. In an influential theory of apocalyptic violence, John Hall and his colleagues have argued that when groups holding apocalyptic ideologies encounter opposition in the outside world they may engage in either a “warring apocalypse of religious conflict” and turn violence outwards against their real or perceived opponents, or, through an act of collective suicide, undertake a “mystical apocalypse of deathly transcendence” (Hall et al. 2000; see also Bromley 2002; Wessinger 2000). Indeed, Mayer has suggested that the deaths could perhaps be understood as a form of Catholic equivalent of the Dispensationalist notion of the rapture, with the elect being taken away from the earth (in this case by an act of collective suicide) prior to the beginning of the endtime scenario (Mayer 2011).7
Several pieces of evidence seemingly support such a conclusion. Primarily, the Makerere University report makes reference to a general climate of opposition and disapproval directed against the MRTCG by the local Catholic Church, claiming that “when Kibwetere announced the formation of his movement, he met with strong opposition from the mainstream Catholic Church” (Banura, Tuhirirwe and Begumanya 2000: 15–16). The report goes on: “this opposition would remain throughout the existence and operations of the Movement.” It also refers to how the MRTCG generated “a big controversy in the Catholic Church,” and how some leaders were excommunicated and seen as “rebels.” This, it is claimed, “made it unpopular even in Kanungu” to the extent that “people, especially the Catholic faithful, did not appreciate associating with an ex-communicated rebel group and they were warned by their religious leaders never to do so” (ibid.: 34). In his contribution to the volume, Banura goes so far as to claim that
… the scorn poured on the movement and its members together with a certain sense of isolation following the excommunication and suspension of the leaders from the mainstream Catholic Church may have led [the] leaders to found camps as locations where the movement could operate without any interference or hindrance. (Banura 2000: 50)
The role that the Catholic hierarchy played in the demise of the MRTCG is explored in detail by Emmanuel Twesigye, who argues that what he terms the groups “Marian martyrdoms” were engineered by a mentally ill Kataribaabo as “a holy means to liberate and save the Marian devotees from a hostile and perishing world … [and thereby] transform the faithful Catholic Marian devotees into angel-like Spiritual beings” (Twesigye 2010: 13). Far from being victims of either a mass murder or fraud, he argues, members “wanted to die” (ibid.: 69). According to Twesigye, the fledgling group ran into opposition from the Mbarara Diocese, particularly Bishop John Baptist Kabuki and Bishop Paul Bakyenga, the former of whom “waged a counter moral crusade” against it (ibid.: 149; cf Vokes 2009: 110–19). In 1991, the leadership of the MRTCG was formally barred from taking communion until they renounced their prophecies and returned to orthodoxy. The priests within the group were formally interdicted by Kabuki, and forbidden to celebrate the Eucharist or hear confessions. Kabuki also submitted a report on Marian apparitions in the area to the Pope and discussed his findings with him during an audience. Rather than renouncing their views, the MRTCG leadership moved out of Kabuki’s orbit to Kanungu. However, in 1999, Bakyenga was promoted to archbishop of the Western Catholic Province of Uganda, a position that would put Kanungu—and thereby the MRTCG—under his spiritual authority. The group also became involved in a land dispute with a local bishop, who joined Bakyenga in condemning the group and its prophecies as dangerous. Katirababo, according to Twesigye, reacted to this by sinking into “a severe and deep state of clinical depression, at the beginning of the year 2000” (Twesigye 2010: 153). In this state, he became delusional, convinced that God wanted him to sacrifice his followers “as a form of Christian martyrdom, and as a means to redeem and deliver them from the Catholic Church that had rejected them.” Kibwetere and Mwerinde (“who were also very depressed and probably suicidal”—ibid.: 153) confirmed that this was God’s will, and in the spring of that year the leadership began to “martyr” their followers.
The MRTCG would also appear to have been the victim of a degree of local opposition, although largely in its initial years. A document produced by the leadership in May 1995 provides examples of what it saw as ‘persecutions’ beginning in the early 1990s. These included an incident in June 1990 where, during Sunday worship, “a team of persecutors … closed all the outlets and started beating us and hurt us,” an attempt in December 1992 by parishioners from another church to demolish Ishayuuriro rya Maria, as well as a raid by an armed group in October 1993 who, after forcing the group from the compound, looted or destroyed what remained. Such was their fear that the MRTCG only returned to the compound a year or so later (Mayer 2011). The group had also fallen foul of the police and local authorities, although the most potentially damaging of these—the arrest of Credonia Mwerinde, Angelina Migisha, and others for “making house-to-house visitations and spreading religious ideas which the local councils thought were strange and dangerous,” as well as “allegedly recruiting and training guerrillas to fight and overthrow the government of Uganda”—was over a decade prior to the March 2000 fire (Bagumisiriza 2005: 78). In 1994, the local Resident District Commissioner (RDC) also wrote an official letter to the Ugandan president highlighting his concerns about the MRTCG, calling for it to be officially investigated (Twesigye 2010: 81). In November 1998, the school that the MRTCG had established at Ishayuuriro rya Maria was closed down indefinitely by the local district administration for “engaging in acts that violated the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, the Local Government Act and the Public Health regulations.” However, it continued to operate and to receive government funding until March 2000 (UHRC 2002: 5.1).
It is unclear, however, what role, if any, this opposition played in precipitating the March 2000 conflagration. Atuhaire acknowledges the existence of opposition but claims it had little effect, and that any complaints made against the MRTCG were not investigated by the authorities, who, citing religious freedom and observing that the MRTCG was a registered non-governmental organization (NGO), responded with indifference (cf. Bagumisiriza 2005: 13). Equally, Twesigye claims that little was done at the local level in response to the RDC’s 1994 letter because the Assistant District Commissioner (ADC), Rev. Richard Mutazindwa, was, he alleges, “friendly to the Marian Movement leaders,” writing an opposing report and supporting the group’s application to be recognized as an NGO. Such claims are echoed by the UHRC report, which states that the leaders of the MRTCG “deliberately kept as close as possible to Government officials, especially the local leaders,” by, for example, establishing camps near police posts, participating in community activities, paying graduated taxes and rents promptly, and voting “overwhelmingly” for the ruling National Resistance Movement in both the 1996 presidential and parliamentary elections and the 1997–98 local council elections (UHRC 2002: 5.7). The UHRC report further claims that the MRTCG also sought to influence local leaders through bribery; allegedly offering on one occasion “a very big envelope” to an official who had refused to support its registration as an NGO (ibid.). Indeed, the MRTCG had organized a “grand party” for March 18, 2000 in order to bid farewell to the outgoing ADC, Rev. Richard Mutazindwa, and welcome his successor (Banura 2000).8
It is, of course, possible that the dissent that allegedly developed within the MRTCG in early 2000 created a sense of paranoia within its leadership that resulted in the slightest outside criticism being perceived as persecution. There would appear to be some indirect evidence to support this possibility. In one message from the Virgin reproduced by Atuhaire dating from April 1998, members are informed that “in the year two thousand (AD 2000), you will encounter further persecution when you increase on your development.” They are then instructed:
… when you realize that the battles have approached you, you should take your important documents for custody with those responsible for the security, that is, the nearest police. Then you should start to clear the way for your souls. But you should not be afraid; those who preceded you experienced the same: Do you think that God had ignored the martyrs? (Quoted in Atuhaire 2003: 109; emphasis added)
As this is what did take place, it could be speculated that, at the very least, the MRTCG’s leadership felt a sense of persecution, perhaps brought on by a combination of internal pressures and the possibility of an official investigation.
A more recent theory that diverges radically from the preceding is provided by Richard Vokes in his volume The Ghosts of Kanungu. Vokes argues the MRTCG initially did not emphasize a specific date for the end of the world, but only began to do so after it was exposed to other Marian organizations in the mid-1990s, primarily through Katiribaabo. Rather than an attempt to flee external opposition or silence unruly members, Vokes argues, the March 2000 conflagration was the result of the MRTCG leadership’s interpretation of apocalyptic ideas within the global Marian movement in the late 1990s. He asserts that the claim that members wanted their possessions returned in response to prophetic failure encounters several problems:
… women were not handing over their property in expectation of the end of the world, but instead, in response to the serious misfortunes they were experiencing in the here and now. Moreover, at least some of these women would have joined the Movement sometime before it had developed a millenarian outlook (given that this shift was a later development). It is therefore unlikely that millenarianism could have been part of these women’s initial decision to join … given that most of these women had only turned to the MRTC[G] in the first place out of desperation with the sect representing some sort of “option of last resort,” it is difficult to imagine that they would have then later concluded that they probably were better-off on their own, after all. (Vokes 2009: 195)
However, without doubt the most radical aspect of Vokes’ thesis revolves around his analysis of the March 2000 murder-suicides themselves. Again rejecting the dominant interpretation, he claims, based on an interview with a former leading member of the group who departed prior to the fire, that those whose bodies were subsequently found after the fire had not been murdered in the early months of 2000, but had in fact died during a malaria outbreak in the region two years beforehand. The damage to the bodies, such as broken necks, that were interpreted by the police and media as evidence of foul play, was rather caused during exhumation. He speculates that those who died in the actual fire itself had been poisoned by a small number of members prior to the explosion and had therefore died (relatively) willingly rather than being murdered. Thus rather than seeing the MRTCG’s dramatic denouement as the final stage in a process of mass murder which had begun as a reaction to dissent, Vokes, to some extent echoing Twesigye, would have us believe that it was instead a willing collective suicide inspired by interpretations of global Marian predictions to which the group had been exposed for the better part of a decade.
Over a decade since the March 2000 conflagration, we are in the curious position of knowing more than we did, but finding that much of what we know is contradictory and/or based on evidence that either ambiguous or non-existent. It is unlikely that a definitive answer to what happened in around Kanungu in the spring of 2000 will emerge. Were the Ugandan police to re-open their investigation, much, if not all, of the forensic evidence that would form the basis of their investigation has been either unwittingly contaminated or destroyed during the initial investigation, or subsequently lost. We cannot be certain of basic facts, such as how many died at the properties owned by the group or, beyond obviously being burned to a cinder, how they died. While many accounts point to prophetic failure in 1999, if not before, no material produced by the group (at least that is extant) supports this view. Equally, any account that points to external opposition playing a role in the MRTCG’s dramatic denouement must square this with the support it apparently enjoyed, possibly as a result of bribery and corruption, from local authorities. While Twesigye’s account of the role played by the local Catholic Church in pushing the group’s leadership towards an act of collective suicide is interesting, his argument contains a number of internal contradictions. Equally, questions could be raised about the reliability of Vokes’s respondent; a man who, if other accounts are to be believed, could have played a role in the murders themselves. That said, of all the accounts of what happened in Kanungu in the spring of 2000, I personally find Vokes’s most convincing for several reasons, not least the quality of fieldwork on which it is based. Crucially, he answers the question of why, if the MRTCG had claimed the world was going to end in the transition from 1999 to 2000, there is no evidence of this in the group’s documents. Put simply, there was no 1999/2000 prophecy; the key date for the group was the shift from 2000 to 2001 at the latest. The views of pathologists and an expert on fire investigations, albeit relying on video evidence, are also noteworthy for questioning the doxa that the bodies typically believed to have been murdered in the spring of 2000 may have died some years before and of natural causes. However, as he acknowledges, even his account “is both partial and contingent” (Vokes 2009: 213), and could be challenged by new evidence.
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1 As with much of the story of the MRTCG, there is even disagreement about the exact numbers who died in the fire. The Ugandan Human Rights Commission Report (2002) lists the number as “over 500” while a list based on Kabale Diocese records lists 597 (Kabazzi-Kisirinya, Nkurunziza, and Banura 2000: 97-112). More recent estimates by Jean-Francois Mayer (2011) and Richard Vokes (2009) put the numbers who died at 311 and 400 respectively. Moreover, as Mayer observes, even were we to know the exact numbers who died in the church, the possibility of more graves remaining undiscovered cannot be ruled out.
2 Again, the figures for the number of those who died in these locations are approximate: 153 in Buhunga (Rutooma); 81 (after which the police stopped counting) in Rushojwa (Mitooma); 74 at the house of one of the Movement’s leaders, Dominic Kataribaabo, in Rugazi (Bunyaruguru); 55 in Buziga (Makindye), and 331 in Karengye (Kanungu).
3 See footnote 1. Additionally, Twesigye (2010: 39), for example, speculates that if the government had continued exhuming the bodies, the number of dead “would have exceeded 3,000.”
4 The UHRC report, for example, notes how, early in 2000, there are “stories of increased discontent among followers in regard to the restoration/recovery of their properties” (UHRC 2002: 6.1). Similar views were also expressed by members interviewed for a UK Channel 4 documentary on the MRTCG (Channel 4 2000) and in several of the accounts reproduced in Bagumisiriza (2005). See particularly the accounts of Mrs Rukanyangira (pp. 26–9) and Peter Ahimbisibwe (pp. 32–5).
5 One eyewitness, for example, later claimed to have seen both Mwerinde and Kibwetere sneaking out of the MRTCG’s compound late on the evening before the fire “carrying small suitcases” (Hammer 2000). Similarly, another witness, one Baguma Gaston, interviewed for the Channel 4 documentary claimed to have seen Mwerinde on the morning of the fire, driving away from the church to the north in a car with several of her relatives and an unknown man (Channel 4 2000; Bagumisiriza 2005: 51). For a similar account, see Nkurunziza (2007). This theory has never truly gone away despite there being little corroborating evidence to support them (Bagumisiriza 2005, Mayer 2011). In May 2003, it was reported that Kibwetere had undergone plastic surgery to hide his identity and was living in Israel (Odong 2003) and a recent (March 2011) Ugandan press article concluded that “it is unclear whether Kibwetere and Mwerinde died in the fire” and that the police “arrest warrants still stand” (Sempogo 2011). Vokes (2009: 215) also quotes a rumor, told to him “by a very high ranking official in Kampala,” that Mwerinde had survived and had fled to Belgium a few weeks after the fire, using her own passport. Kataribaabo had also, they claimed, “been tracked by the intelligence services as far as a Nairobi slum, before that trail also went cold.”
6 That said, there is some circumstantial evidence that could point to the transition from 1999 to 2000 as significant. According to Bagumisiriza (2005), the MRTCG had stopped growing food in April 1999, a situation that, while open to a variety of interpretations, could point to an imminent end of the world.
7 Compare with the case of Heaven’s Gate: see Walliss (2004: Chapter 4). Heaven’s Gate is Cusack, Chapter 5 in this volume.
8 See also the testimony of several individuals quoted in Bagumisiriza (2005); local security personnel (pp. 35–6), “a business woman in Kanungu Trading Center” (around p. 64) and Mrs Rukanyangira (around p. 27).