By Davet Muzwidzwa

GOD gave us animals that tend to give examples of the characters of human beings.
From time immemorial, our folktales have narrated to us the story of Tsuro na Gudo.
In real life, there are people we have regarded as daft and unreasonable as vaGudo vangu.
Other people have been described as Tsuro Magen’a,cunning and witty.
Some people have been regarded as vipers that strike without warning.
The most reasonable animal in most folk tales is Kamba the tortoise.
Kamba in most cases is credited with making calculated decisions and vision.
If you are regarded as a buffalo, you are very short tempered and give surprise attacks all the time.
The list goes on and our ancestors used this personification of wild animals to educate us about personalities we would meet in real life.
Much as this is true in human personalities, this can also be true for the world governance systems.
To describe personalities of some world governments in the way our ancestors did, I decided to look at an animal called a vampire bat.
A vampire bat feeds on blood of living animals without necessarily killing them.
Vampires suck blood from cattle, giraffe, dogs and humans without alerting them.
The bat can suck blood from all of you in the family without being noticed for the rest of its life.
You will hear people saying “ndakatemerwa nyora nemuroyi husiku.”
The vampire bat has mastered its act and achieves its mission of sucking blood with precision.
It always operates at night and is not trusted by other animals as it can fly like birds yet it feeds its young with milk.
It has a very sharp sense of smell and razor-sharp front teeth to cut the smallest incision into the vein that will discharge copious amounts of blood for the feasting.
The most powerful tool the vampire bat possesses is its flattened and cuddle soft nose which is its powerful massage apparatus.
Its saliva is also said to kill the pain of the injured part.
The victim relaxes as the blood is sucked.
When full, it licks the area of any blood stains to destroy any evidence to the victim that some blood was shed overnight.
The unfortunate circumstances where it would lose its customer is when it infects the customer with rabies or anthrax.
That is very unintended.
The vampire bat would like to suck blood from this person forever.
Some governments in the world are vampire bats.
When they come to Africa, they always come in the camouflage of darkness. Many unsuspecting Africans think that they come to help.
Africans look at these countries as ‘friends’ and would quickly rush to them for assistance.
In the process, their blood is sucked.
For an example, Mutoko villagers are well known producers of tomatoes in Zimbabwe.
Mbare Musika survives on tomatoes from Murewa and Mutoko.
On average, a single village may have about five-10 hactares under tomatoes throughout the year.
Some donors will come to Mutoko and offer these villagers a community garden to grow vegetables.
A team from the country of origin is dispatched to Mutoko to site a modern community garden made of security fencing and standard poles.
They will quickly fence a one-acre piece of land for a garden.
The whole village is expected to fit into this one-acre garden, where each villager can only have a single 10 square metre vegetable bed inside.
Then of course in some instances they may drill a borehole in the garden.
The village women will start singing praises of the donor country.
Below is the bill of costs for the Mutoko Garden Project:
Indirect Costs
l Air fare for donor agent from Europe: USD2 000
l Accommodation two weeks:
l USD3 000
l Car Hire V8 SUV for two weeks
l USD3 000
Total Visiting Costs:
l USD8 000
Three trips per year:
l USD24 000

The European donor will find a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) or the local NGO will find a donor for the project whichever comes first the difference is the same.
Funds that benefit the local NGO not villagers
l Three Vehicles (4X4) to drive to Mutoko garden:
USD90 000
l Wages for field and office staff:
l USD135 000
l Rent (Harare) for Mutoko Garden Support Centre:
l USD24 000
l Travel and subsistence for NGO staff to Mutoko:
l USD45 000
Total NGO costs per year:
l USD294 000

Note that the vehicles are for the director, accountant and field officer of the NGO.
The garden will need to be fenced, a borehole drilled and assembled and seed and fertiliser need to be purchased.
Funds that actually get to Mutoko Garden
l Sixty Fence poles at USD10:
l USD600
l Fence, 280 metres at USD5 per metre: USD1 400
l Borehole drilling and fitting:USD4 000
l Seed and Fertiliser (One acre) USD3 000
Total Garden Costs: USD9000

Summary of the Project
l Total Indirect and Local NGO Costs: USD318 000
l Actual Garden Expenses: USD9 000
Total Project Cost: USD327 000
Percentage benefit to Mutoko Garden: 2,75 percent

Only 2,75 percent of the donor income reached the Mutoko Garden Project.
It is very clear from this analysis that the Mutoko project is not the reason why the European donor is here in the first place.
One can see that the NGO is the major beneficiary.
Europeans are not that daft like vaGudo to spent USD318 000 in order to invest in Mutoko only USD9 000.
With USD327 000, the European donor could give each villager her own borehole and a fenced garden.
From the spread of income, it is clear that the NGO is more important to the donor than the Mutoko Garden Project itself.
As to why that is so, there could be several reasons.
The starting point is to note that, this donor is as cunning as Tsuro Magen’a. Regarding how the donor feeds, one can say, like the vampire bat.
The Mutoko garden project is intended to massage the people of Zimbabwe as blood is being sucked.
It could be that the person masquerading as a donor wants black granite from Mutoko and would use the garden project to know who is who in Mutoko. Given a chance the agent will corrupt people around the black granite so that he can get it for free leaving scars on the once beautiful Mutoko for no benefit to the Mutoko people.
The second reason is to get back at President Robert Mugabe who repossessed land from the whites.
They would be prepared to pay anything to get back at President Mugabe and ZANU PF for the ‘unforgivable sin’ of repossessing the land.
Given a chance, the vampire bats will suck all the diamonds, gold, emeralds, crocodile skins, ivory and platinum leaving permanent scars on our landscape and the Zimbabweans will have nothing to show for that.
Vampire bats suck blood in a way that the victim will never notice or complain. Above all, the vampire bat will not pay for the blood it sucks.
In the meantime, the entrepreneurial initiative of the Mutoko villagers is compromised for a mere 10 square metre vegetable bed.
Eventually, the Mutoko villagers will abandon the NGO garden and go back to their ways that feed their children and send them to school.
However, the villagers will not be able to relate the granite that leaves Mutoko for peanuts and the growth of the opposition to this NGO that is driving Luxury cars in their name.