One of the attendees of the early Vuzu parties or Vuzooms, Leroy Mufudzi described their genesis in 2011.
Mufudzi told Sunday News that the Vuzu parties started at Bulawayo’s Hillside dams where a kombi owner called Max would bring students and girls from private colleges.
The kombi had a booming sound system, which suggests the origins of the name “Vuzooms”. Said Mufudzi:
The first Vuzu parties started at Hillside Dams.
They were held there and most people would just come to party close to the gate at Dams.
The masterminds of the whole Vuzu thing or I can call them the founders, were this guy called Max and others.
He was a dreadlocked guy and he had a kombi with a booming sound system. He used to take girls from Girls College using that kombi.
We would go there and the guy’s car would be the life of the party. It would be the only sound system and people would gather around it.
There you would find students from CBC, Girls College, Convent, Eveline, Townsend, Milton and Plumtree. The boys who had the most shine were from CBC and Plumtree.
It was a thing for private school kids so you didn’t have a lot of people from the western areas.
But as time went on, one person that goes to CBC that was from the western areas would bring another from the western areas and that one would bring another and on and on it went.
The parties have become a menace to the city as youths abuse alcohol, drugs and engage in illicit sex.
Police have recently upped the crackdown against the parties with hundreds of youths rounded up a few days ago.