Proud To Be A Cannibal

They should ask for advice on how to get good meat, instead of jailing me — Sseruwu
A scintillating aroma of well roasted muchomo hit the villagers. When they looked around, they saw smoke, rising from the bushes on the outskirts of the SCOUL sugarcane plantations in Lugazi. “This must be either a hunter or a goat thief,” one of them said. They agree and decide to have a look.
“We watched him from a distance and identified him as Benedict Sseruwu, 26, a resident of our village. He was greedily pulling at a piece of roasted meat,” Aloni Musoke, LC 1 chairman of the area said.
It took sometime before he saw them. Through that time, he cut pieces off the bones, ate them, cut more pieces and munched away. When he saw his spectators, his face frowned! “What do you want with me?” he asked in a growl.
The villagers did not answer. “I caught my animal and killed it. You have no business intruding in my private affairs,” he said. Sseruwu is a well known bush game hunter. He is a resident of Mangira village, Nakibano parish, Nagojje. His nauseating story was first broken by Bukedde, The New Vision’s sister paper.
“Why do you eat game meat in the bush?” The LC 1 chairman asked, as the villagers moved close to him.
“No one tells me where I should have my muchomo,” Sseruwu replied. The villagers have all along suspected him to be the goat thief. This was their chance to pin him. But as they closed in on him, Sseruwu jumped and took off like a cheetah. None of the villagers could manage his speed.
Villagers came back to the spot were they found him and checked. Under a dirty tarpaulin, they discovered the partly roasted body of a three-year-old child. Sseruwu had chewed the left leg and he had began munching at the right leg. Everyone was bewildered!
“We realised that no one would match his pace since, cannibals run very, very fast,” a resident said.
The dead body had been buried three days before. The father of the dead child lives in Ggaba in Kampala.
Sseruwu, the cannibal, is related to the dead child’s mother. He is son of the late Wasswa Mulyabusolo and Nzerena Nampima. His father, Mulyabusolo was also a hunter. He had wild game at his home most of the time.
Villagers thought that this might be a one off. However, three days later, Sseruwu was nabbed digging up another body, four miles from his village. This time, he was nabbed.
Sseruwu has unkempt hair and rarely washes his clothes. His feet and fingers have been colonised by jiggers. His clothes are yawning for the next pint of water.
Once you reach his home, you meet a mud and wattle structure. The house is overgrown with bushes. Residents say that all these are signs of cannibalism.
“He was my friend for sometime, but when I noticed that he was peculiar, I left him,” Mbowa, one of the villagers said. His wife Nekesa left him before a a year in marriage has elapsed, complaining of a gross marital problem.
Residents said that Sseruwu has never ran out of meat in his house.
“We have all along been thinking that this meat is hunted, little did we know that he was actually eating dead bodies,” another resident exclaimed.
Sseruwu himself has not denied that he enjoys eating human flesh. When The New Vision visited his cell at Lugazi police station, he at first refused to talk, however with a little more, coaxing, he obliged.
“Do you eat human bodies?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered. He kept quiet for a while, before adding, “It is not a crime to eat something that has been thrown away.” He equated dead bodies to scrap. “If you cannot use it, I can,” he said.
“For how long have you eaten dead bodies?”
He craned his head and smiled momentarily. His teeth were black, un-cleaned for years perhaps.
He then answered: “Ten years...,” kept quiet for a moment and added, “It is not a crime.”
“What attracts you to dead human beings?”
I expected a clear answer. Instead, he asked:
“What attracts you to dead animals like cows? “Cows and other animals are edible. Everyone knows it,” I answered. He grinned at me, the only time he did it, then answered,
“When a person dies, he changes from human to something else, he or she is meat that should be eaten. It is not a crime,” Sseruwu added. “Other animals eat each other, why not us,” he defended himself. “There is no crime,” he added.
“How did you learn to eat dead bodies?”
“I do not remember, but it is not a crime,” he insisted.
“I don’t want people who waste things. Once you throw away such meat, I can’t allow it to happen,” he answered.
“Will you be happy if your body is eaten when you die?”
“I will be dead and useless,” he answered.
Sseruwu said that there are so many other people eating dead bodies in his village. For him, villagers are just jealous because he always beats them to the nice meat.
“This is hatred. They hate me because I conquer all the good meat. They should seek advice from me, instead of putting me in prison,” he lambasted.
Sseruwu went ahead to give a list of his competitors. All of them residents of the area. However, the LC 1 chairman Aloni Musoke, said that they don’t know any other cannibal. “These are just tales. He is just mad,” the chairman said.
However, the blemished nature of this area in as far as cannibalism is concerned dates as way back as the colonial days. The story goes that two well known residents of a village called Bukunja, not far away from Sseruwu’s home. The cannibals, Kawulu and Nsizabazungu ate a 13-year-old girl called Daliya. Both were sentenced to death by the colonial court.
Sseruwu’s brother, Christopher Mwanje said that Sseruwu has got a history of mental derangement. “He is just mad. He does not know what he is doing,” Mwanje said. However, during the interview with The New Vision, Sseruwu responded to all questions coherently. Apart from his torn clothes and dirty body, there was no sign that he was mentally deranged.
According to a psychologist, Sseruwu and other cannibals are perverts, who should be taken to a mental hospital and checked. “Cannibalism is caused by mental problems. They are out of touch with human feeling. They behave like wild animals because of mental derangement,” he said.
Police at Lugazi said that Sseruwu has got a case to answer. “Disturbing the tranquillity or peace of the dead is a very serious crime,” a police officer said. Under the penal code, there is also the cannibalism law. This one was made during colonial days after yet a cannibalism incident in Mukono. The law, that outlaws acts of cannibalism is still operational today. Ends