The EconomistNovember 21st 2020 Middle East & Africa 431S
unday worshippersat the Holy Ghost
Coptic Church of Africa, where services
often last for hours, are used to the racket
coming from the pews at the back. But it is
not the sound of bells ringing or ecstatic
chanting. Rather, the clanking comes from
chains that shackle Father John Pesa’s “pa-
tients”. In Kisumu, Kenya’s third-biggest
city, Father Pesa has built a reputation for
“spiritually healing” the mentally ill.
Others have called it “psychological tor-
ture”. Rose Ojwang’s husband sent her 17-
year-old son to Father Pesa after the boy be-
gan hallucinating and behaving strangely.
Like other patients, he was shackled. He
grew thin, says Rose, because the church
does not feel obliged to feed its wards un-
less paid to do so. For two years the boy
went without proper medical treatment.
Rose’s grim story echoes the reporting
of Human Rights Watch (hrw), an interna-
tional watchdog, which found that the
church had kept no fewer than 60 people in
chains. Kenyan doctors say the practice is
common. Their country is not alone. hrw’s
report, published in October, found evi-
dence of shackling in 60 countries, from
Brazil to Indonesia. It reckoned that hun-
dreds of thousands of people who suffer
from mental illness have at some point
been chained or locked up. In countries
where such illnesses are poorly under-
stood, many sufferers never see doctors.
Kenya is anyway short of psychiatrists.
In Africa, on average, there is less than one
mental-health worker per 100,000 people,compared with 50 in Europe. Kenya has
0.19 psychiatrists per 100,000 people and
one psychiatric hospital. At the local level,
“mental health is a mess and mostly forgot-
ten,” says Iregi Mwenja of the Psychiatric
Disability Organisation, a Kenyan ngo.
“No family wants to shackle their child,”
says Kriti Sharma of hrw. But good care is
expensive and patients are expected to re-
cover in their community. Often people are
ignorant of mental health issues, or fearful
that the afflicted person may harm others.
But people seek out the services of Fa-
ther Pesa for other reasons, too. Mental ill-
ness in Kenya, as in many parts of Africa, is
often thought to be caused by evil spirits.
Traditional healers are called in before
health professionals. Father Pesa’s church
purports to flush out demons. It cites a mir-
acle in the New Testament when Jesus
drove demons out of a madman (who was
shackled) and sent them into pigs. In Ken-
ya’s Somali region, which is mostly Mus-
lim, many believe the mentally ill are pos-sessed by jinns(supernatural creatures).
It is hard to shake off such deep-rooted
beliefs. A health official who worked in
Mathari Hospital, the country’s sole psy-
chiatric one, tells the story of her mentally
ill brother. The last time he had a psychotic
episode he chopped off three of his wife’s
fingers with a machete. Yet the doctor and
her sister could not convince their mother
that he needed medical care. “Even as a
mental-health specialist, I still don’t have
any influence,” she laments.
There is some cause for hope. Kenya has
signed up to a World Health Organisation
initiative that promotes better care for the
mentally ill. Politicians are striving to
amend outdated laws, and the health min-
istry is wrangling for more power to moni-
tor facilities where patients are shackled. A
recent High Court ruling found that Rose’s
son had been tortured and ordered the
church to pay him 500,000 Kenyan shil-
lings ($4,590) in damages. But Father Pesa
continues to host patients. 7Legions of people with mental-health
problems are kept in chainsMental health in KenyaShackling body
and mind
How not to treat mental illness“I
’m not in the business of making
threats,” said Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign
minister, immediately before making one.
When asked in September whether Iran
was still considering retaliating for Ameri-
ca’s assassination in January of General
Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s most prominent
military commander, Mr Zarif was clear:
“The books are not closed.”
Ever since President Donald Trump or-
dered the drone strike that killed Sulei-
mani, Western spies have been alert to
clues as to where and how Iran might re-
taliate. Some think the blow may fall in Af-
rica, where Iran has spent years building
up covert networks and where it faces little
scrutiny from local governments.
Iran has a history of plotting on the con-
tinent—and failing. In 2013 police in Nige-
ria arrested three Lebanese men and un-
covered an arms dump in Kano, the biggest
city in the north. All three reportedly ad-
mitted to being members of Hizbullah, the
Lebanese militia-cum-political-party that
acts as an Iranian proxy. They said they
were planning to attack the Israeli embassy
and other Western targets.
A year earlier the police in Kenya arrest-
ed two Iranians who had hidden a stash of
explosives at a golf course in Mombasa, ac-
cusing them of planning to attack Western
targets. They were sentenced to 15 years injail. More amateurish still were the at-
tempts to free them. In 2016 two Iranians
were sent to Nairobi to prepare a legal ap-
peal. But they were caught planning an at-
tack on Israel’s embassy and expelled. Last
year Kenyan police testified that Iran’s am-
bassador had been swindled by two men
who told him they could get the convicts
released. The ambassador denies this.
The original bit of bungling in Kenya is
thought to have been the work of the Quds
Force, the foreign wing of Iran’s Revolu-
tionary Guard Corps. But the Quds Force
may be refining its playbook in Africa and
turning to locals for help.
A report to the unSecurity Council from
December accused Ismael Djidah, who was
arrested in Chad in 2019, of having helped
the Quds Force recruit and train terrorist
cells in the Central African Republic (car),
Chad and Sudan in order to attack Western,
Saudi and Israeli targets. Among Mr Dji-
dah’s contacts, according to the report, was
Michel Djotodia, a rebel leader who was
briefly president of the car,from 2013 to- The report accuses Mr Djotodia of
meeting Quds Force officials in Iran in 2016
and agreeing to set up a terrorist network in
exchange for Iran helping him reclaim
power. Mr Djotodia’s lawyer denies this.
A Western intelligence source says that
police in Niger also recently arrested a man
The latest chatter about Iranian plotting across the continentIran in AfricaLooking for the next target