Mbabane - A 20-year-old man with a craving for human blood has been found by a Swaziland court to be too dangerous to be released back into the community after he assaulted a woman and drank her blood.
“I am hungry,” Bongani Maphanga of Manzini shouted at his victim, Lucia Nyamane, as he repeatedly bit her in full public view outside King Sobhuza Memorial Clinic in Manzini.
Maphanga had thrown the woman to the ground, breaking her arm and fracturing her collarbone. He was biting her on the neck and shoulders when passersby, attracted by Nyamane’s screams, pulled him off his victim. The woman bled from multiple tooth mark wounds.
She was treated at the clinic.
Her attacker dripped blood from his teeth and lips as he was taken into police custody.
The Swazi media has been quick to label Maphanga a vampire.
When he appeared before magistrate Dumisa Mazibuko on Wednesday, he said: “Your worship, I sometimes have this overwhelming feeling that overcomes me and makes me want the taste of human blood in my mouth,” Maphanga told the court.
Mazibuko said: “I can’t let a man like you back into the public.”
Maphanga was remanded until sentencing. - Foreign Service