Zimbabwe coup 'predicted' ten years ago. Time with a Gift of Tears

Latest news about the 'coup' in Zimbabwe has echoes from my unpublished but previously printed science fiction novel's predictions... I even got the year right! (And of course thankfully got some events and dates wrong!)

Ten years ago, I took advantage of an offer to get one of my unsold manuscripts (Time With a Gift of Tears) printed in paperback form – for the princely sum of £60 for ten copies.  I’d tried the science fiction time travel novel MS with a number of publishers and agents, without success. I’d just had my first book published, a western, but that publisher didn’t publish SF or fantasy. As the story was time-linked and it featured a unique time-travel gimmick, I wanted to get it ‘out there’ to establish some kind of provenance.

The story took place in the UK in 2020, at the beginning of a race revolt; the time traveller goes there from 2033.

All these years later, it needs rewriting, not least because 2020 is too close now; also, since I hadn’t predicted the massive surge in smart phone usage, the ubiquitous and pernicious social media, and the switch from laptop to tablets, and of course Brexit.  Some predictions in the book for pre-2007 were: an Iraqi exodus, a Sellafield Accident, Zimbabwe escapees, legalising of cannabis in UK, Britain expelled from the Commonwealth (never saw Brexit coming!), and a terrorist attack on Sellafield… Here’s the timeline for subsequent years:

2014                                African exodus; Racial uprisings in UK; all British police armed

2015                                Solent Islamic Fundamentalist nuclear blast; legalising heroin; Lawless August

2016                                Limited War

2017                Politically Correct legislation; Typhoid epidemic; 13^th Terror Scare; 

PC Legislation revoked; Zimbabwe settlement

2019                    Puritan ethics begin to sweep through UK; Asian Flu computer virus; Sexual Rebound to Puritan ethics

2020                                Race Revolt

2022                Race Revolt ended

2023                Common Sense return to norm after Sexual Rebound

2025                Compromise Peace; Race Revolt ended

It's been a long time coming, but it looks like Mugabe is going to be ousted; too late to save the country he has destroyed.

Needless to say, it’s fiction and not likely to happen – any of it. Still, a nice little coincidence!

Torn from today’s newspapers – the scum of the earth (1)

There are several groups of individuals who deserve the epithet ‘the scum of the earth’, but today we’ll look at those termed ivory poachers. ‘Poacher’ seems too tame a word for these people. Slaughterers, murderers, maybe?

A few days ago it was reported that these scum have reached a new low, by poisoning with cyanide vital drinking and bathing pools, killing more than eighty elephants. (BBC, Daily Mail et al). This happened in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park in July. Police say the poachers mixed a cocktail of cyanide and salt and water and poured it on to a number of salt licks – exposed deposits of minerals that the elephants use to get essential nutrients. Police found the mutilated bodies of elephants strewn around; some of the smaller elephants still had tusks, their size doubtless not worth taking. Poachers may get about £50 for each large tusk. Since discovering the carcasses, the police and rangers have searched nearby villages and recovered about twenty tusks, cyanide and wire snares. Nine alleged poachers were arrested and a South African businessman has been accused of being behind the poisonings.

Zimbabwe’s environment minister says ‘We are declaring war on the poachers… because our wildlife, including the elephants they are killing, are part of the natural resources and wealth that we want to benefit the people of Zimbabwe.’ (Here is not the place to examine where all the country’s riches have gone, Zimbabwe once being the continent’s bread basket and now just a basket case...)

Needless to say, a wide range of other animal carcasses were found near the contaminated watering holes – buffalo, lions, vultures, antelopes and jackals. Doubtless these despicable people are responsible for killing many more, since birds and animals will have fed on the poisoned carcasses.

In January 2012 a hundred raiders on horseback charged out of Chad into Cameroon’s national park and, carrying AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades, slaughtered hundreds of elephants in one of the worst acts since a global ivory trade ban was adopted in 1989. Twenty-five thousand elephants were killed illegally in 2011.  Ten Asian countries with the most ivory seized: India, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and China. Seizure of tusks is too late, of course: the animals are dead. Action is needed at the sharp end. And, to be fair, it is robust, but the numbers of poachers are great. In the first half of 2012, for example, six park rangers died protecting Kenya’s elephants, while the rangers killed 23 poachers.

China accounts for 4o% of the world’s trade in elephant tusks.

Some official ivory carvers in China tender the lie that they only use tusks from elephants that died of natural causes, or those acquired before the ban.  Swindlers use tea or Coca-Cola to stain ivory to give it an antique appearance.

CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species – has its work cut out, not only with regard to elephants, but also the rhino and tigers, among other at risk species.

For our ivory wedding anniversary, I drew this picture. The ivory looks best decorating the elephant.

At least in fiction, some of the bad guys can get their comeuppance!

BLOOD OF THE DRAGON TREES

Amazon.co.uk - http://goo.gl/fsLk3X

Amazon.com - http://goo.gl/wHQpQp

Laura Reid likes her new job on Tenerife, teaching the Spanish twins Maria and Ricardo Chávez. She certainly doesn’t want to get involved with Andrew Kirby and his pal, Jalbala Emcheta, who work for CITES, tracking down illegal traders in endangered species. Yet she’s undeniably drawn to Andrew, which is complicated, as she’s also attracted to Felipe, the brother of her widower host, Don Alonso.

            Felipe’s girlfriend Lola is jealous and Laura is forced to take sides – risking her own life – as she and Andrew uncover the criminal network that not only deals in the products from endangered species, but also thrives on people trafficking. The pair are aided by two Spanish lawmen, Lieutenant Vargas of the Guardia Civil and Ruben Salazar, Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios de las Canarias.
            Very soon betrayal and mortal danger lurk in the shadows, along with the dark deeds of kidnapping and clandestine scuba diving…