Star Force’s reign of terror

IT is hard to separate truth from fiction when one talks of the legend of the one-time Bulawayo street gang known as Star Force.

When those who grew up in Nkulumane, where it is thought to have originated from, speak of the gang, it is with a mixture of awe, excitement and fear. The stories about this group and its leaders send a chill up the spine of the hardest of men. Years after the gang disbanded, the stories about Star Force may tickle any eager listener.

Anyone who grew up in Nkulumane or surrounding suburbs knows the stories. This was the same gang that, according to urban legend, forced a headmaster and his teachers to sing the country’s national anthem backwards. How they did this no one knows or cares to explain.

While machete gangs are running amok around Zimbabwe, hacking their way into infamy, writing their way into the history books with blood, Star Force had in the early 90s already had a tool of their own to spread alarm and despondency.

“Andrea Mutonono was the most ruthless of the Star Force members. I remember they loved using shovels and he would go to the shops at Munyoro and demand that they give him the alcohol he wanted or he would destroy the shop,” said Gloria Ndlovu, who once lived opposite the gangsters in Nkulumane 10.

“I don’t know why they loved using shovels. They preferred to use shovels and bicycle chains,” she said.

Living near Mutonono sometimes made one an accessory to crimes they sometimes did not know about.

“At one time he took cases of booze from the bottle store and dumped them near my window. My neighbour alerted me to this and since he lived in the house opposite mine I told him I don’t want to be arrested and he said he understood and came to take the alcohol. He then came with his shovel and told my neighbour that because she was someone he lived in the community with, he wouldn’t beat her up but instead he would break all the windows in her house. He went on to do just that,” said Ndlovu.

Star Force’s actions sometimes seemed to have been plucked out of the liveliest pages from a crime thriller. For those who lived near them during the height of their reign of terror, however, they were not the loveable outlaws urban folklore has made them.

“Andrea and Casper were the ones that seemed to be most alike in thought. They were so daring that when they wanted a girl they would come and take her from her parents and there was nothing that they could do.

“There used to be a disabled man called Polite that lived with his family and he would ask that young guy to pick a stick and start hitting him until it broke. When it finally broke he would pick his own stick and start hitting his disabled relative. It didn’t matter how much he cried, he would hit him until the stick broke. He would call that training,” she said.

From police officers to teachers, no one was spared when Star Force took to the Nkulumane streets.

“I got to know about Star Force after I moved to Nkulumane because when I started staying there those guys gave me a baptism of fire,” said former Sunday News Sports Editor Phineas Mukwazo.

“Those guys attacked me and I decided to retaliate because I believed that the pen is mightier than the sword. I said I will use my