Teenagers involved in Bulawayo’s notorious “Vuzu” party culture are reportedly abandoning traditional house parties and adopting new tactics to evade detection by parents, guardians and law enforcement.
According to the National AIDS Council (NAC), teenagers are now hiring kombis, loading them with alcohol and drugs, and travelling to various destinations while drinking, partying and allegedly engaging in sexual activity on board.
Vuzu parties became notorious as unsupervised gatherings where alcohol and recreational drugs were freely available, often accompanied by risky sexual behaviour among young people.
The parties, usually held in private homes in both high-density and low-density suburbs, became associated with substance abuse, underage drinking and unsafe sexual practices.
Reports suggested some boys competed to have sexual encounters with the highest number of girls, often without protection, raising concerns about the spread of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
NAC programmes officer Douglas Moyo says the traditional Vuzu party is disappearing, not because the problem has been solved, but because young people have changed tactics.
Speaking during an engagement programme at Isilwane Youth Centre in Old Pumula, Bulawayo, Moyo said authorities had set up a provincial multi-sectoral committee involving security agencies to tackle Vuzu parties, prompting organisers to devise new ways of operating.
“As a community of Bulawayo, we now have new strategies through a multi-sectoral committee at the provincial level involving security agencies, where we have come up with measures to deal with Vuzu parties. The teenagers know that,” said Moyo.
“What they have since done is transform the Vuzu party into something different. They hire a kombi, get in with their girlfriends, alcohol and other substances, then simply drive around with no destination.”
Moyo said the mobile gatherings, known to teenagers as “mjeje”, are increasingly hard to detect because they do not draw attention like traditional house parties.
“Along the way, anything can happen inside that kombi. They are drinking, smoking and engaging in sexual activities while moving around. The famous Vuzu parties are no longer there. If you go looking for houses with loud music in the suburbs, you may not find them,” he said.
“That’s another version that we still need to deal with. We have engaged traffic police and CID officers to be on the lookout for these kombis. Most of them have tinted windows and are well-decorated and attractive-looking vehicles. They thought we didn’t know, but we know.”
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