My Black Is No Murderer

By Pidson Kareire
Akiiki Joyce Kagusuru, 55, lives in Nabweru, Kawempe division, Kampala, with her last daughter Eunice, 25, and a daughter-in-law, the late Black's wife who is seven months pregnant.
On a Sunday afternoon, I traced her residence and conducted an exclusive interview. Memories of her son still fresh on her head, she welcomed us into her sitting room which had three different sets of Johnson sets. She sat opposite us and recounted Black's life.
The tall heavily-built woman with a wide gap between her upper teeth, said Black stopped staying with her when he approached 20 years. He would only pass by to greet her, when she still lived in Makerere Kavulu. She went to live in Nabweru, early this year, when her husband fell sick and later died. Since she had not married again after they separated, she stayed on in the house with her daughters.
She called Eunice during the interview, and asked her to bring all the Bukedde newspapers they had filed. She said when her daughter Namutebi of Wandegeya saw Black in papers, she started buying Bukedde to keep track of any news related to him.
She says, when the security officers took Black to her, she knew he would not survive.
“I looked at him and at the officers, I realised he was going to die,” she lamented.
Earlier this year, her son, John Waweru Apuuli alias Black, became a hot commodity in security circles and millions of shillings were used to track him down. Black made his mother become newsworthy Today, everyone wants to know the woman who produced the fearless gangster, a man who threatened to kill Col. Elly Kayanja, commander of Operation Wembley.
Born in 1947, to late Mzee Kagusuru at Nyaburara, Fort Portal municipality, Kagusuru did not go to school. At the age of 15, she got married to a Muganda called Sseguja in Nabweru, Kawempe. Unfortunately, they had a rocky marriage and she left after producing three girls.
In 1975,when she was at her father's home in Toro, she produced Black from a Kikuyu man. She fondly called Black, Apuuli. When Black was 12 years-old, she went back to Sseguja in Nabweru. She lived there for two years and produced a fourth daughter. This did not humour her husband and triggered off yet another conflict. Kagusuru packed her bags and left again. In all, Kagusuru had nine children, four out of wedlock. Black was the only child among her nine children who did not go to secondary school. He dropped out in primary five, while her other children went up to S.4.
It was at that time that she detected her son's traits of theft, when he habitually brought home stolen items. She advised him to drop the habit, but he was addicted to the trait. As a juvenile, his stepfather, Ssegujja twice dragged him to Kawempe Police Station.
When Black turned 20, he got a child of his own. His mother then told him that since he was man enough to father a child, it was time he started fending for himself.
Kagusuru says she knew her son was a thief, but he was not the killing type: “I loved him. Sometimes, I think he was killed out of malice. He had never fought his sisters, that is why I believe he was not a killer,” she laments. Kagusuru’s detest for theft is so deep-rooted, that she refused to accept any gifts from her son.
“Not even a handkerchief,” she confesses. “If I had accepted his gifts, the Wembley officials who searched my house, would have found them. They did not find any stolen items in my house.”
When he was shot dead, Kagusuru paid sh40,000 to mortuary attendants, then another sh40,000 to Lusaze people and sh80,000 to hire a pick up to transport the body. She was one of the veiled women who escorted Black's body to its final destination. She said, “Apuuli died, but he used to tell me that he was only a thief. He never killed any-body.”
Ends