HBO announced a documentary premiering on its Max app September 26 and Black Twitter had plenty to say about the matter.
Savior Complex centers around Renee Bach, a white American missionary who went to Uganda on a missionary trip, and started a charity for malnourished children. She then started treating the sick children herself. There was just one problem: Bach had no medical qualifications to do so.
According to HBO, “the three-part docuseries examines the thorny complexities of foreign aid work done in the name of humanitarian and religious ideals.”
HBO posted a trailer to its official account on Twitter/X. That’s when things got heated.
Multiple users questioned the integrity of HBO making a documentary on this particular subject while others pointed to the Ugandan investigative documentary titled The Messiahs That Were Not by Munjuni Raymond and Next Media Uganda as an alternative.
Other users observed that Bach settled in a Ugandan court after allegedly impersonating a doctor and performing medical procedures she was not qualified to attempt.
In a 2019 article for The Guardian, Ugandan writer Alon Mwesigwa chronicled the stories of the families affected by Bach’s actions after the missionary and her charity abandoned Uganda. Bach’s charity, according to Mwesigwa, attempted to pass itself off as a ministry working to end malnutrition, but in reality operated more like an unsanctioned clinic.
Multiple reports from the mothers of children who died at Bach’s facility indicate Bach attempted to pass herself off as a doctor, reports Bach refutes. Her organization replied to requests for an interview with a press release in June 2019 that vilified accusers of Serving His Children as “reputational terrorists” who were attacking Bach and her organization “using the platform of social media to create a false reality without factual evidence.”
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