BY NQOBANI NDLOVU
ANTI-DRUG culture shows will now be held at secondary schools every term as government through the Youth, Sports, Arts and Recreation ministry seeks to counter vuzu parties that are widespread in Bulawayo.
Vuzu is a local term used to describe a party attended mainly by secondary school students, where alcohol binging, casual sex and drug abuse take place during school holidays.
A government ban and arrests of teenagers attending vuzus has done little to deter the organisers from secretly planning the notorious parties, where there is free booze and drugs.
Ministry of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation acting director Rita Kutsirayi admitted government was failing to eradicate the vuzus, hence a new counter show
was being unveiled.
“It is in this light that the youth anti-drug culture show is being established by the ministry of Youth, Sports, Arts and Recreation to challenge the youth (O and A Level and out of school youth) to campaign against the drug abuse culture during school holidays on social media applications in artistic forms, that is through poems, storytelling, motivational speaking, arts, songs and drama to combat the infamous new culture (vuzu parties and drug abuse), which is ripe in Bulawayo during school vacations,” Rita Kutsirayi said while announcing the launch of the schools anti-drugs campaign.
The launch would be held at the Mhlahlandlela government complex in Bulawayo today.
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“The youth anti-drug culture show is a school holiday programme/event that would be hosted during the last week of school holidays, three times a year, because it is during these times that the drug culture is more prevalent through the vuzu parties,” Kutsirayi said.
Bulawayo stakeholders recently organised an #AntiVuzu stakeholders’ meeting in the city, where attendees were shocked by the goings-on at the parties that are a favourite for learners.
Police have said they will be taking the anti-vuzu parties’ campaign to schools because arresting the youths was proving a futile exercise. In May, over 120 youths were arrested at a vuzu party in Bulawayo’s central business district.
“…However, in the long run, we want to include children in primary schools, mainly because of what we have observed from this group of children partaking in these parties,” Inspector Abednico Ncube was quoted saying.
Reports show that during these parties, the teenagers drink hard liquor, smoke marijuana, consume broncleer cough syrup, popularly known as bronco and also indulge in sex orgies.
