The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) said Monday it is increasingly concerned about sex parties that have gripped the second capital following weekend arrests of 57 youths.
Police responded to a call about loud noise in the city’s Lochview suburb and arrested the roisterers on Saturday night, according to the Chronicle newspaper.
Condoms, beer bottles and a traditional aphrodisiac known in the Ndebele dialect as umvusankunzi were recovered from the party venue, the paper added.
The young revelers, aged between 13 and 32, according to the newspaper, were charged with criminal nuisance and fined $5 each.
City deputy mayor, Gift Banda, said the local authority was engaged in a campaign with police and churches to discourage the dangerous behavior.
“Recently, we had a combined effort with the churches and the council where we held an awareness campaign discouraging these young children from engaging in such activities,” Banda commented.
He added that the culprits were children of “parents who are no longer around in most cases, who leave their houses in the custody of school-going children who abuse the absence of their parents.”
A rough count based on successive press reports show the number of youth arrested so far in connection with the sex orgy parties, known in youth circles as vuzu parties, exceeds 100 in Bulawayo.
Campaigners are concerned the trend is exposing the youth to drug addiction and sexually transmitted infections such as HIV.