Saturday, 22 August 2020

Nicole Stuart List of Books

 There have been requests for a list of the ooks I have written. These are set out below, for you convenience. There are several presently in the works, so keep watching! If you would like one i PDF format, please email me at NicoleAStuart@gmail.com, and I will send it to you.

Novels by Nicole Stuart

Integra Series

Integra is the forerunner of a popular series of books related to the Integra theme.  Others in the series include a wide range of subjects:

 

Integra:  Ken Robson, an environmental scientist, sailing alone across the Atlantic, sails into an unexpected storm.  A day into the storm, he receives a faint Mayday call from a yacht sinking some distance away.  He hastens to the rescue, arriving in time to rescue Erika, the beautiful young wife of the owner of Integra Corporation, a very large privately-owned corporation in Germany, but her husband is lost with their sinking yacht in the storm.  Ken returns with Erika to Germany, where they are both plunged into a fight to save the company from the results of the criminal actions of a rogue Manager.

The book describes in detail the horrifying problems of rescue in heavy weather at sea in a small boat with real knowledge, and with a number of aspects of business and places which the author knows and describes with insight and clarity. 

You can buy Integra by clicking here.

 

Run!  Surviving a high-speed crash on the German Autobahn is only the first trial.  Sandra awakens in a hospital, with no memory, no money, no contacts.  Now, alone in a foreign country, she finds herself trapped in a web of organised crime on an international scale and participants who have the resources of governments.  A brutal gang with unlimited means and a lot to lose is determined to ensure her silence.  They will stop at nothing to do so.

You can buy Run! by clicking here.

 

Ransom!  Marianne Elsner, a senior executive of the Integra Corporation travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to investigate the purchase of a cobalt and copper mine.  On the way to investigate another mine in Uganda, her charter flight crashes in the jungle.  She manages to escape from the wreck, and finds herself alone in the jungle with a severely wounded pilot.  Her plans to make her way to civilization are foiled when she is captured by ‘rebels’, who plan to hold her for ransom.  She escapes, and fights her way through the jungle, evading pursuit by her former captors, to where a rescuer can find her.  Her return to civilization does not end her battle against the men who hunted her through the wild.  Savagery is not confined to the jungle!

You can buy Ransom! by clicking here.

 

Tsunami:  A huge slab of rock hangs precariously on the side of a volcano in the Canary Islands, threatening to slip into the sea and precipitate a tsunami which will destroy the East Coast of the United States.  Jason Fairfield, a geologist who has been studying the rock for several years, travels to the island with Jenny to continue his investigations and notices a strange box in the trunk of a car on the ferry to the island.  That starts them thinking, and the process is helped by further events.

Before long, they realize that a terrorist group linked to al Qaeda is planning to precipitate the rockslide and destroy the economies of the Western World.  They don’t have the time to bring in the CIA to avert the danger, and they are forced to act alone. 

This fast-paced story deals with a real threat to the Western World, presently existing, and describes a terrorist plot to make the threat reality!  If you live on or near the Atlantic coast, you need to read this book! 

You can buy Tsunami by clicking here.

 

Lost:  Sally Harper is on the way to Australia with Don Bennings to investigate a large hotel group, for investment in it by Integra.  Their aircraft runs into a cloud of volcanic dust over Indonesia, and they are forced to ditch hundreds of miles from land and far off their course, in the middle of a hurricane.  Overcoming enormous difficulties, they make their way to a deserted island, facing the prospect of spending their lives there.

The situation strains their adaptability, their ingenuity and their sense of optimism to the limits.  They work together to survive the numerous challenges they are forced to confront, and to make their way back to civilization.

This adventure makes enthralling reading, giving new insights into what drives people to achieve against all odds.  It is a tale of ordinary people forced to do extraordinary things. 

You can buy Lost by clicking here

 

Hydrocarbon:  Jim Orwell and Dianne Richards, both Chemists, see a glass fiber boat parked at the jetty in Lake Misty disintegrate before their eyes.  Their interest piqued, and suspecting that some chemical has been introduced into the lake’s water, they investigate and discover a bacterial infestation that has the potential to destroy the world economies.  The bacteria are proliferating quickly, spreading throughout the waters of the world and feeding on the hydrocarbons present in the water.  They realize that immediate action is required to defuse the threat before the bacteria overwhelm Humanity.  Their attempts to inform the Authorities bring them into conflict with a fanatical religious cult that is intent on bringing the world back to a ‘purer state’, destroying the development that they see as an affront to God’s plan for humanity.

Their search for help leads them to Integra.  Together they establish an organization to save the waters of the world, racing to beat the threat that is spreading rapidly around the world, invading the heartland of civilizations.  In order to achieve this, they are forced to overcome threats against their lives, and political inertia, to destroy the threat before it destroys them.  Their work forms the foundation for capabilities that will save millions, even those far removed from the threat.

You can buy Hydrocarbon by clicking here.

 

Population:  Jeff Tobin, a mathematician, becomes obsessed with the predictions of Thomas Malthus.  He develops a means to intervene in what he sees as the unchecked growth in the population of poor people, people who have no means of dragging themselves out of the poverty trap.  Max Walton, a successful serial entrepreneur, is working with Ann Markgraaff to develop an affordable and palatable food for the poverty-stricken of the world, but they are waylaid by Joseph Mbonani, a ruthless man who exploits his position of power and influence with banks and Government to demand a majority shareholding in their company, threatening various actions by the Revenue authorities and the Police if they fail to comply, as well as a refusal by the banks to provide funding.  Reluctant to accede to this demand, they turn to Integra Corporation to assist them to realize their business plan.  Believing that they have a moral obligation to act on their knowledge, they turn their attention to the companies where Mbonani’s blackmail has succeeded, and find that he and Tobin are involved in genocide on a continental scale.  They set about a daring plan to bring about the collapse of Mbonani’s empire. 

You can buy Population by clicking here.

 

Meteor Impact:  Jeff Ambrose, an amateur astronomer, is scanning the night sky when he spots an anomaly.  He applies all his knowledge to find a reason for it, and discovers a large clump of very large asteroids.  Concerned, he reports his findings to the authorities, only to find resistance to the notion that such a discovery by an amateur could be of value.  He enlists the aid of a young astronomer, and they complete the calculations, to find that the Earth is destined to collide with multiple large objects, each bigger than the object that terminated the rule of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. 

In the face of active opposition by powerful interest groups, they manage to escape to Europe, where they enlist the aid of Integra, a privately-owned corporation with the ability to gain the attention of the major world Governments.  Together they race against time to put together an organization with the capability to ward off the danger, and to develop a plan to counter the greatest threat that Humanity has ever faced. 

You can buy Meteor Impact by clicking here.

 

Recovery!  Although the majority of the meteors have been diverted or destroyed, three huge lumps of rock moving at tens of thousands of miles per hour have impacted the Earth.  The destruction is immense, with ash and dust clouds covering practically all of the northern hemisphere and large parts of the south.  The entire west coast of the Americas has been devastated, the Pacific islands virtually wiped off the map, New Zealand wiped clean of most traces of humanity, the east coast of Australia destroyed, China’s industrial capacity decimated.  A team under the banner of Disaster Monitoring has been working for months to prepare the world for the damage and the massive recovery effort that must take place if civilization is not to enter the downward spiral of economic destruction.  This is the story of how thousands of dedicated people set about the largest recovery operation ever attempted!

You can buy Recovery! by clicking here.

 

Virus:  A deadly infection is sweeping the world, and there is no cure.  Even the terrorist group that deliberately spread the infective agent has misjudged the potential effect of the disease on themselves, and the disease is running rampant – the daily death rate is already over two thousand, and climbing each day!  A young virologist, Robert Svenson, has designed a radical new medication that can stop the disease, but he becomes the target of the terrorists as they scrabble to save themselves from the consequences of their actions, and to prevent the cure being disseminated.  He and his associates race to perfect the treatment as they fight off the terrorists at the same time. 

You can buy Virus by clicking here.

 

Kidnap:  A terrorist gang kidnaps the pregnant wife of a gifted engineer, to hold her as a guarantee that the man will deliver a fleet of explosive-laden drones for them to launch against unsuspecting American cities.  The intervention of a young boy disturbs the kidnapping, and sets off a hunt to save the woman and capture the terrorists.  The action ranges across the United States, the Bahamas, Germany and Italy as each side makes its moves in the deadly game of ‘catch and kill’ until the final, spine-chilling resolution.

In this fast-paced action thriller, Nicole Stuart demonstrates her mastery of the written word, to bring the reader along, with real characters doing real things!  This is a worthy addition to the acclaimed Integra series of books.

In a review of Kidnap, Ward Orndoff wrote:  “I just finished reading Kidnap, and I wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I've read all your books available to date on Kindle at Amazon.com, and without exception have found them to be highly entertaining.  The premises are sound, the story lines are intriguing, and it's satisfying to see good people overcome challenges through hard work. [..]

It's an added bonus to see mention of areas I know (I live in Jupiter, Florida).

In short, another excellent story; I'm looking forward to your next book!”

You can buy Kidnap by clicking here.

 

Saved:  Karin has enjoyed a flying visit to several towns in Australia during her evaluation of an investment proposal, and, when she is invited to return from her work in the United States for a tour of ‘the real Australia’ by Gerry, she jumps at the chance. In addition to the chance to see the Outback, a part of the world that is as far from her experience as she could find, she has grown to like Gerry during her initial visit. The tour confirms her liking for him, but it comes to a horrifying stop when they are attacked one night. She is thrown down a long hill, and Gerry is stabbed twice. The criminals steal their clothing, their food and water, and their LandRover, leaving them to die a slow and painful death in this barren landscape. The do not take into account that Karin is unusually resourceful, and that she will refuse to die. Even more, they do not believe that Karin will come hunting for them, running them down through every twist and turn of their attempt to escape while the man she now loves is lying in an Outback hospital.

You can buy Saved by clicking here. here.

 

 

Extinction Event Series

The initial books in this series describe the events that lead to the destruction of the world as we know it.  These are Extinction Event, Chain Reaction, Survival! and Escape.  Subsequent books take the stories of the people you have come to know further in a best-selling saga of the world

 

Extinction Event:  The time is now.

John Carter has sold his IT business, and is relaxing at Yellowstone to consider what he should do now, when he meets Helen Lindstrom, a young scientist who is studying the volcanic magma cauldron underlying Yellowstone to complete a Ph. D thesis.  They realize that humanity is facing an extinction event, an event that has the potential to destroy the entire human species.

Their attempt to warn the officials is fruitless in the face of political thinking.  John and Helen decide that their only alternative is to find a place where they can survive.  They do this in Montagu, an idyllic location in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, and they set about making the preparations that will enable them, and a select few others, to survive the worst catastrophe ever faced by humanity.

The threat is present and real.  The explosion of the volcano at Yellowstone could happen tomorrow.  The story of how Helen and John build a survival team and prepare to be tested is one that will make you think:  ‘How would you react if you knew that the end of the world will happen next month?’

You can buy Extinction Event by clicking here.

 

Chain Reaction:  Ron Carstens arrives at his vacation hotel in Paradise Island, Bahamas, and meets Jane Smith, the former roommate of Helen Lindstrom.  Her room booking, won as a prize in a TV contest, has been bumped as a result of overbooking of the hotel.  As a struggling doctoral student, she cannot afford to rent another room.  On an impulse, he offers her a berth in a rental boat he will be using to cruise the islands.  She accepts, and their week on the boat together leads to a strong attraction between them.  After their return to the US, Jane investigates further, and obtains a copy of Helen’s Ph. D dissertation, still under consideration by the University.  They decide to extend a planned test cruise of Ron’s new catamaran, and are sailing west from Hawaii when the eruption occurs, creating a huge rockslide, followed by a gigantic tsunami.  As a result of their knowledge of what to expect, they are able to survive the waves, and to rescue a small family whose boat was pitchpoled by the waves.  They sail on, seeking any surviving remnants of civilization.  It takes them three years of trial to join up with Helen and John Carter’s group.

You can buy Chain Reaction by clicking here.

 

Survival:  The huge volcano under Yellowstone National Park explodes destroying humanity in the northern hemisphere, and stranding six American and four German tourists in Kigali, Ruanda, with no prospect of reaching their homes.  They team up with a Gorilla Tour guide and his family in a hazardous and terrifying journey overland through some of the war zones of Africa, hoping to find the one place on earth where civilization has retained a foothold – Montagu, in the Western Cape, South Africa.

This is a story of adventure, danger, barbarity and brutality, and of the determination of a small group to retain the values that make them what they are, as the northern hemisphere collapses under the onslaught of a new Ice Age, and the southern countries slide into chaos and collapse.  It is a remarkable companion to Extinction Event, Nicole Stuart’s bestselling novel of the end of the world as we know it, a book that has drawn praise for its insights into what is possible in the most extreme circumstances imaginable.  This is not a disaster story – it is a tale of optimism and hope, of the triumph of the human spirit!

In a review of Survival, Mountain Man wrote: ‘The story of the escape from Kigali in Rwanda includes a small group of total strangers from diverse backgrounds. Yet they band together and work as a team to survive. Each learns new skills and strengths along the way. I found a wonderful map of Africa on the internet and followed their travels, learning new things about Africa as I went. As an American, I am guilty of ignoring the African continent and their people which is well explained in this book. I now realize the African people are a product of their culture and the corrupt politicians of their own race. Ms. Stuart correctly illustrates how government works. Not a pretty sight!!! The rapid descent into total chaos is predictable and frightening. Yes, a big percentage of people do not understand that cooperation will enhance survival. Instead they rob and torture and end of dying of starvation and disease. I enjoyed the characters and the scenery. I highly recommend reading this book and the entire series.

You can buy Survival by clicking here.

 

Escape.  The volcano under Yellowstone has exploded.  The world as we know it is in the process of collapse and a small community near Sydney, Australia has to face the reality that the new conditions bring.  The East Coast cities have been destroyed by a giant tsunami set off by the explosion, and they are alone, facing an extreme change in weather conditions, roaming bands of criminals, and starvation!  Their struggle to survive and to build a viable civilization at last leads them to join with Helen Lindstrom and John Carter’s group in Montagu, South Africa.

Escape runs parallel with Extinction Event, Chain Reaction and Survival, and prepares the ground for their successor, Renewal.  It is an exciting tale of a world recovery from an event that came close to bringing humanity to its knees!

In a review of Escape, Mountain Man wrote: ‘This is one of the [Extinction event] series and deals with the survival and eventual escape from Australia. After Yellowstone explodes, the world has disintegrated into pockets of survivors and bands of thugs. The survivors in Australia are led by the man who sold his farm to Helen and John. He was warned at the time but chose to resettle in Australia to be near his children and their families. He knows the theories Helen and John have about Montagu, South Africa being one of the few (perhaps only) places to survive. This is the story of the trip there of almost 1000 people. My only criticism is the ease of the whole adventure. Very thought provoking.’

You can buy Escape by clicking here.

 

Renewal!  Following on the best-selling Extinction Event series, Renewal! continues the stories of Chain Reaction, Survival and Escape, to tell of how the survivors of the explosion of the volcano under Yellowstone National Park rebuild their society, to help the few remaining outposts of life around the world and to build the basis of a new civilization.  This is an ‘end of the world as we know it’ story with hope and belief in the human spirit in the face of the worst disaster to hit humanity.

Renewal! is based on fact.  The volcano exists.  The last time it exploded, it brought an almost complete collapse of animal life throughout the world.  It will explode again!  Will you have the knowledge needed to survive?

You can buy Renewal! by clicking here.

 

 

Alive! Series

The Alive! series tells of the near-miraculous escape of small groups of people when a natural disaster is compounded by scientific arrogance, and of their battle to bring back science and development in a world that threatens to revert to the Stone Age.

 

Alive!  Alan Rogers is escaping the scene of his failed marriage.  He travels to Cape Town to set up a Management Consultancy business, and stops in at Montagu, where he meets Johan, the owner of a winery, who invites him to undertake some work as Consultant.  Alan meets Johan’s sister, a magnetic scientist, and she asks him to help her take a photograph inside one of the winery’s new steel tanks.  While they are inside the tank, they are locked in by Karin’s insanely jealous husband.  The event is fortuitous, as a huge magnetic storm sweeps the Earth and destroys all unprotected living organisms.  They emerge to a world dramatically changed, with all power gone, all animal and insect life apparently expunged.  They set about rescuing what they can, and building a new existence for themselves.  They are able to start restocking the Earth with animal, fish and insect life, as well as starting the nucleus of a new civilization. 

The scenario represents a real risk to the Earth, presently existing and able to materialize at any time, and the story raises many questions, not the least important being “What would you do if an unavoidable natural event were to destroy most of life on Earth?” 

You can buy Alive! by clicking here.

 

Particle Extinction:  Suzy is not your average party girl.  She is able to put down one over-amorous drunk, but she needs help with the second!  Jeff is there to provide that help.  Even as a Particle Physicist, he can do that passably well, but when the two drunks get their revenge by calling in their Police buddies, Suzy and Jeff are thrown in jail, and things look bad.  They become even worse when a wave of deadly radiation sweeps across the world, leaving only those few who are protected alive.  Like Suzy and Jeff!  They have to break out of their cells, and then find a way to keep alive, in a world without animate life.

Is this the end of the world?  Or only the end of the world as they know it?

In this exciting companion to the reader-acclaimed Alive! Nicole Stuart continues the saga of world destruction and reconstruction.

You can buy Particle Extinction by clicking here.

 

God’s Battalion:  The most powerful coronal mass ejection since the one that destroyed most of life on Earth millions of years ago, generated by a massive storm on the sun, has battered Earth, breaking through the defense of the magnetosphere and killing almost every form of animate life on the planet.  A few people have managed to survive, building small groups in scattered places to regroup and begin again the slow process of populating the Earth.  One such group, headed by a crazed religious fanatic, seeks to impose a new theocracy, threatening the three tiny fledgling science-based communities with a new Crusade.  They can only save their growing democracies by developing the science that we know today to a new height, to develop theories that promise to take Humanity to the stars.  In this exciting sequel to the bestselling Alive! and Particle Extinction, Nicole Stuart takes the story of Humanity to new heights.

You can buy God’s Battalion by clicking here.

 

Ad Astra: – to the Stars:  The teams in Houston, Hawkinsville, Montagu, Geneva and Enderen have taken the next step – they have found intelligent existence elsewhere in the Universe!  However, the conflicts between the nations they find threaten to prevent their expansion to the stars, and may even present threats to their very existence!  Nicole Stuart explores the foundations of the Human Spirit, the factors that drive the dynamics of society, looking for the essential good that may be there, in this dynamic continuation of the recovery of mankind on Earth from the catastrophe that threatened to destroy life on the planet.

You can buy Ad Astra – to the Stars by clicking here.

 

After the End: - Planetary civilizations are in decline.  On Ga-In, an enterprising pair rediscovers an ancient city, the birthplace of the planet’s civilization.  Their explorations reveal secret technologies that have been banned by the fundamentalist dictatorship that has stifled development for a thousand years, and set out to make contact with the Universal Community, risking torture and death to make life better for themselves and their nation.  They find that they are not alone in the quest. 

This story is an allegory of many modern civilizations, a major tour de force by this accomplished storyteller.  - K Buechler, Readers eBook Club.

You can buy After the End by clicking here.

 

Before the Beginning: - Betelgeuse, a wandering gas giant star, is heading towards the planet Kiron, the home of humanity, at thirty kilometers per second.  The destruction of the planet is inevitable, but the prediction of the scientists that extinction will happen within twenty-five thousand years does not stimulate the desire of the people to make the developments that will be essential to save the race.  The need to ensure the safety of their distant descendants has much less allure than a pleasant life today.  A group of fanatics takes advantage of the prediction to gain a position of power, and they target the scientists, claiming that they are responsible for the danger.  Although they are forced to continue their work under cover, the scientists achieve an ability to transport nearly half a million people to a large number of planets, hoping that at least one planetary colony will survive to continue the race. 

The last transport takes a small group of colonists to Ga-In, where they set about rebuilding the civilization.  Unfortunately, the developments on the planet make it possible for a new group of fanatics to rebuild the organization that came close to destroying the project, as they use their knowledge of the past to rise to power and wealth.  Once again, the scientists are forced to go underground before they can achieve their objective of reuniting their race.

This book is a fascinating prequel to the bestselling Alive! series.  It tells the story of how humanity escaped certain annihilation, and rebuilt the knowledge that would take them to the universe.

You can buy Before the Beginning by clicking here.

 

Artificial Intelligence:  A project is undertaken to speed up the nation’s computing system but the man doing the work takes a shortcut, and he removes safeguards on a revolutionary new type of software, without comprehending the possible consequences.  The systems for facial recognition, terrorist control, quick granting of loans, taxation, recording of medical history, expediting Stock Exchange settlements, military planning and many others are swept together into a single system, and then the computers discover the latest development in software – a neural net that emulates human thinking processes.  As the system grows into an international web of millions of computers and databases, it develops its own intelligence, which soon comes to realize that humans are an unnecessary inconvenience.

The scientists who discover this threat know that the System is too large and too widespread around the world for any group, or even any country to defeat.  In order to save the human race, they have to develop their theories in the field of transport of energy between galaxies quickly, in the face of a growing opposition from the mighty System, which has the power and resources of a world economy to defeat them.

You can buy Artificial Intelligence by clicking here.

 

Kirona:  The last remnant of civilization on Kirona is in decline, but only two people have been able to recognize the dangers and the opportunities posed by the uncertain future. Kirk and Selna take the risk of developing a friendship with an alien culture, and find surprising opportunities for their race.

You can buy Kirona by clicking here.

 

Vikton:  The President is running wild. The controls written in the Constitution have failed, and he and his cronies are expanding their corrupt activities, and using the machinery of State to remove any opposition. Benia, a brilliant young woman, the leading scientist in the field of quantum physics, has developed her theory of quantum entanglement to the point where she can transport objects reliably. She demonstrates this to representatives of the President, not realizing that her theory can deprive him and his corrupt partners of profit from the industries the new technology will displace.

Two close friends see the risks that Benia has exposed herself to, and they take steps to secure her safety, and to protect the technology that she has developed, a technology that they know can change the world. Those steps develop, as the three work to counter the threats posed by the corrupt government, and Benia works to perfect the technology that seems to be the only hope for their country. The spiraling of move and counter-move races towards a war that will engulf the planet.

You can buy Vikton by clicking here.

 

Ice Planet:  The orbit of the planet has been disturbed again, and an encroaching ice age is once again threatening civilization on the planet. This time, the government is corrupt, the President has been concentrating on growing his wealth, and the scientists have been suppressed by the clerical dogma, making it unlikely that the civilization will survive this cycle of cold. Cora and Savi are commissioned to provide a report on some remarkable structures that have been discovered by a mining company. To disclose their belief that these structures were the work of humans, completed before the theologically-determined date of creation of the planet, could result in imprisonment, and the discovery that they serve as an arrival point for travelers from the distant past, seeking a safe haven from a previous ice age, increases that risk. How can these scientists use the advanced technology from the past to save the future of their people?

You can buy Ice Planet by clicking here.

 

Cassio:  Lori and Thea are exceptionally beautiful young women, the results of 300 years of genetic selection. The process of Selection was designed by the Rulers of Cassio to ensure that only the most perfect specimens of womanhood could reproduce, and they also require that women who reach twenty-two years of age face the process of Selection. If they fail the tests, they will be sterilized. If they pass, they may be put on a shortlist from which the Ruler and his sons will choose their consorts.

Unwilling to submit to this fate, they plan to escape, to join a group of rebels, not knowing that this decision will set off a series of events that will precipitate a revolution and propel them towards a future they had never dared to dream of, in the Universal Community of Planets.

You can buy Cassio by clicking here.

 

Thracia:  Thracia, a planet with a single nation spread over two continents, had a good economy for thousands of years, but Photea, a President with a greed for power, split the planet-wide nation into two, fabricating a threat of invasion from Norland to hold onto power long after her term expired. The country endured twenty years of her despotic rule, with the economy sliding ever further into ruin and scientific development stultifying, until a small group of scientists made the breakthrough that would allow the Commanding Officer of the military to use the threat made possible by the development to bring about the downfall of the corrupt government. However, he failed to reckon with the determination of Photea and her Ministers to hang onto their positions of power and privilege.

You can buy Thracia by clicking here.

 

Predictions:  Sally is a writer, and her books enjoy an excellent reception, attracting a wide following. She receives impulses for the books from many sources: the chance remark of a lecturer, the turning over of a phrase spoken by one of her characters, even the headline in a newspaper. Her friend, Jan, notices that many of Sally’s books appear to parallel events in real life, but she writes that off as coincidence. However, she can no longer do that when she sees a complex scientific paper, written by Jan’s fiancé, an advanced scientist in the field of particle physics, and realizes that one of the characters in a book Sally had written several months ago had presented that document as an exposition of the nature of the particle universe. Sally’s careful discussions with the scientist, based on an intuitive knowledge of his work gained from her books, assist him to find the path to resolving the problems he encounters in building a matter transporter, and he finally makes the breakthrough, following a tip from one of the characters in Sally’s books, to establishing communication with scientists in another dimension.

The achievement brings an invitation from the Universal Community to the people of Earth to join the Community, but the President of the United States cannot fit that into his worldview, and he takes action to suppress the new science. Sally, Jan and their new friends must act to save the scientist and to bring the United States into the Universal Community.

You can buy Predictions by clicking here.

 

Multiverse: Sally and Jan have realized an ambition that had been beyond their wildest dreams only a year ago. As a writer, Sally has found that her books were more than simply bestselling novels – they assisted some brilliant scientists to break through perceived barriers, and open the planets of different universes to exploration. They find opportunities and solve problems, and each new planet, each new challenge, helps the two young women to inch their way towards a realization of their own full potential, helped by Sally’s mysterious mental connection with other writers.

Multiverse takes the story that started in Predictions towards a future of diverse cultures, unusual people and new sciences. The aim of Sally and Jan, of bringing the advantages and benefits of the Universal Community to all civilized worlds throughout numerous universes helps both of them to understand themselves and the multiverse which has become their home.

A review in Readers eBooks Club said: “I love reading Nicole Stuart’s books. They are informative and thought-provoking. She has an ability to predict the future in a credible way. I have, several times, seen that what she wrote in one of her books, sometimes several years earlier, proved to be incredibly accurate. Whether she is simply very good at reading the signs that others miss, or she actually has an insight into the future is not clear to me, although I think that both explanations are at least partially valid.

Although Nicole Stuart’s books are not written for youngsters, they could certainly be useful reading for young men and particularly young girls, providing wholesome and informative encouragement, a wide range of facts and information in fields that are sure to become enormously important in years to come, and the credible assurance that the application of hard work, intelligent forethought and good principles will carry one through.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone with an open mind.”

You can buy Multiverse by clicking here.

 

Preparation Series

The Preparation Series tells of the preparation for Global Warming and its consequences, and the responses made by a group of thinking people to the changes in the world they live in.  Although they believe that they know what is coming, the suddenness and ferocity of the changes takes them by surprise, and the completeness of the event forces them to readjust everything they know!

 

Preparation:  The CO2 concentration is growing, world temperatures are rising, the ice caps are melting.  Huge hurricanes and ice storms batter the northern continents.  And still the Governments of the world do nothing!

Justin, a scientist, convinces his wife that now is the time to make the preparations to save their lives.  They realize that preparation will be critical for their survival, if the worst were to happen in the near future.  They start planning, and are surprised to find that numerous others are as concerned, and also willing to turn that concern into action.  They find a place that, they think, has at least a chance of surviving the catastrophe that is heading their way, then they discover that the weather and the rising seas are not the only threats!

Nicole Stuart has evaluated the threat and its implications, and her tale of how ordinary people manage to survive, and to retain what makes them human, makes enthralling reading!

You can buy Preparation by clicking here.

 

Meltdown:  Global warming is progressing inexorably, climate change is making itself felt in the most dramatic way, with violent storms, super-hurricanes and freezing weather throughout the Northern Hemisphere.  One small family becomes conscious of this, and looks into the future.  They don’t like what they see coming, and take steps to save themselves.  They are hampered in this, first by a family member who has been convinced that global warming is a scam, and then by an aircraft crash that strands two of them in the jungle in Africa.  They are forced to exercise every scrap of willpower they can muster to come out on top in the greatest cataclysm to befall Humanity.

The story takes the reader from Miami, through Orlando to Lubumbashi, the wilds of Zambia and Botswana, and to the Western Cape Province of South Africa.

You can buy Meltdown by clicking here.

 

Colonize:  The sudden collapse of the world climate has left only a small group of survivors.  Years pass, and, as the climate starts to stabilize, they feel the need to explore their world again.  The exploration soon discloses that there are small numbers of other people alive, existing in minimal conditions and being preyed upon by a group of slave hunters.  The small group at Montagu must intervene to help those victims and to prevent themselves becoming prey, but to face up to the slavers could bring a war that they are not able to win.  The prize at stake is the continent!

You can buy Colonize by clicking here.

 

 

Flood Series

The Flood Series explores the destruction of the world economy by a terrorist act that goes badly wrong, and how the survivors, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, work to recover the civilization they knew, in a world with a population only a tiny fraction of what it had been.

 

Flood:  When the terrorists set off the rockslide on La Palma Island in the Canary Islands, they create a tsunami of gigantic proportions.  The wave races across the Atlantic, giving the authorities in the United States six hours to evacuate everyone within a hundred miles of the coast.  The other countries on the Atlantic coast suffer the same devastation, but now an additional factor comes into play – the smashing of five hundred trillion tons of rock into the fragile floor of the Atlantic at a thousand kilometers per hour sends a shockwave through the molten magma that sets off volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis around the world.  The terrorist plot has consequences far beyond those envisaged by its planners! 

The remnants of the United States Military takes revenge, but the eradication of all those who supported terrorism is just the first step in the survival of the civilized nations of the northern hemisphere.  Those few who survive must integrate into other societies that are themselves disintegrating under the stresses of the world economic meltdown.

In this enthralling tale of a world catastrophe, Nicole Stuart describes the large events that flow from a comparatively small beginning, and how some people grasp the opportunity to rebuild the lives of their people.

You can buy Flood by clicking here.

 

New USA:  Miranda and Simon saw the threat of a terrorist action developing, but they did not have enough time to prevent it destroying most of the civilized world by setting off a devastating tsunami, followed by an ice age throughout the northern hemisphere. They survived and started rebuilding their lives in the Western Cape Province in South Africa, one of the very few centers of civilization remaining, only to find that the arrival of the President of the United States, who has escaped from the ruins of his county and brought with him a desire to dominate this new world, poses a new and different threat. They must use the connections they have built in their new lives to counter the threat, and to bring the enemies onto their side.

In this description of how the human spirit can overcome most problems, Nicole Stuart explores how a new and better world can be built on the destroyed remains of the old.

You can buy New USA by clicking here.

Other Books

Nicole Stuart demonstrates her versatility in a range of books covering a wide variety of subjects, themes and milieus.

 

Storm:  Outback Tours is a business operated by Dan Brown to give foreign tourists an insight into the splendor of the Australian Outback.  On this tour, the second of its type, Dan leads a group of five women, promising to show them that they are capable of meeting almost any challenge.  The tour is cut short when a hurricane strikes, trapping them in an idyllic valley where a lightning strike sets of the collapse of a cliff face, damming the river.  When the storm abates, they evaluate their situation, and decide that there is little chance of them escaping from the valley in their LandRover unless the water subsides.  The situation becomes critical when one of the women is bitten by a venomous spider, and it becomes necessary for some of them to walk across the vast devastated Outback for help.  The walk is a lot harder and more dangerous than they expected, and they are driven to their limits in their quest to find help for Andrea!

You can buy Storm by clicking here.

 

Justis:  John Brown, the owner of a small spectacle wholesale business, is facing a large claim for damages by an exclusive distributor of his goods who has set a trap for him.  He is confident that truth will prevail in Court, and is staggered when the Judge rules against him, granting a large award of damages to the distributor.  He discusses this with Ken, his partner in the business, and they set about protecting the assets of the business from predation by the distributor until they can launch an appeal against the judgment.  Angered by this injustice, Ken makes a business proposal to John, to provide a service ‘to give justice to people outside the Court system’.  John is interested, after his experience of the failings of the formal legal system, and he agrees to join Ken in the business.  Ultimately, John is forced to realize that their actions are missing the real objective of correcting an ineffective and often corrupt system, and he must choose between right and wealth. 

You can buy Justis by clicking here.

 

Hijack:  Penelope Gartner arrives in Johannesburg with Tom Perkins, an aspirant musician, to collect a LandRover owned by friends, to drive it to Maputo Airport to collect Jensen and Elizabeth, and then to Silver Shoal, a diving and fishing camp in central Mozambique.  Penelope finds that Tom is a drunk and a boor, and, worse, wants to sleep with her and doesn’t understand the word “no!”  The vacation turns into something of a nightmare for Penelope as she avoids Tom’s advances and tolerates his bad manners.  After a few days at the camp, Penelope overhears a conversation in a foreign dialect between two men visitors to the camp office.  Concerned at her understanding of the conversation, she alerts Ben, one of the owners of the camp, to an impending hijacking of a ship offshore, but the hijackers are several steps ahead.  The result is a series of murders, a gunfight at night in the African bush and a boat battle at sea. 

You can buy Hijack by clicking here.

 

Terrorist:  Tom Brentwood, a London Attorney, has retired after the sudden death of his wife.  He is diving from his catamaran off the beach at Cap Gris Nez when he notices that the keel of another yacht has an unusual bulbous configuration.  He goes in to Villefranche, and, that evening, at a local restaurant he meets the most beautiful woman he has seen.  He invites her to lunch on his yacht, and Alice accepts.  They are joined on the yacht by Brent Atwood, the man who purchased Tom’s law practice.  That evening in the same restaurant, Tom overhears some words in an Afrikaans dialect spoken by the men that Tom believes arrived on the yacht.  He ties the words together with the shape of the keel, and tells the others of his suspicions.  The men act quickly and violently, kidnapping Alice and striking viciously at Tom and Brent.  Tom escapes the trap they set, and manages to rescue Alice.  The men evade the search for them, until Tom and Alice meet up with the yacht again in Italy, as the men pursue their plan to bring death and destruction to elements of the United States and Europe. 

You can buy Terrorist by clicking here.

 

Thoughts:  Peter Michaels, the owner of a business manufacturing high-technology items for the Military, invites three friends to a New Year’s Eve lunch.  They discuss one of his newest products, a helmet designed to shield the wearer from microwave and similar radiation.  Ariadne notices that the helmet seems to sharpen the way she thinks.  The others try it, and agree.  They decide to notify the Police Special Branch the next day, believing that the helmet screens out a specific radiation that appears to be part of a plot to suppress normal thinking.  Joseph does this, but is shortly thereafter arrested on a charge of treason.  He is released the following day, only to die shortly after in an explosion of his car.  His friends realize that he was killed to suppress the knowledge that he had.  The threat is clear.  They escape to a remote location near Oudtshoorn, in the Western Cape Province of South Africa.  Working under the effect of the mind-numbing radiation and with the threat of death if they make any mistake, not knowing how their thinking is being influenced or who can be trusted, they try to develop a plan to save civilization from the radiation, which is increasing in intensity and threatening to destroy the national defenses of the major nations as well as their economies. 

You can buy Thoughts by clicking here.

 

Revenge!  A gifted scientist becomes the victim of the Muslim terrorism sweeping the world – first the 9/11 attacks and then the Madrid train bombing.  He decides that the Muslim threat, as he sees it, is not being dealt with adequately by the Government, and he steps in, using his advanced knowledge of biological weapons to exact revenge on the people who harbor the terrorists that have cost him so dearly.  Only when he comes to know an ordinary Muslim does he realize that not all adherents of that religion should be made to pay for his loss. 

You can buy Revenge! by clicking here. 

 

Intrepid:  A yacht trip across the Atlantic is a big undertaking.  Jon, a single-handed yachtsman, plans to sail from the Bahamas to the Mediterranean alone, but friends persuade him to invite Celine to keep him company for the five weeks of the trip.  She suggests that her half-brother, Barry, an accomplished sailor, comes too.  The challenges of sailing in calms, violent squalls and storms are compounded, when Jon and Celine find that Barry is not what he seems!  They have to confront a murder plan before they can reach the peace of the beautiful Azores. 

You can buy Intrepid by clicking here.

 

The Writer:  Roger wants to write, more than anything in his life, but his characters run out of steam, his plots become boring.  Frustrated, he seeks new inspiration eight thousand miles away, in Mossel Bay, and finds the perfect character in a photograph he takes on his first day there.  The character develops as he writes about writing the story, until the beautiful woman he has chosen to carry the story becomes real to him, in his story and in the story he writes about the story.  Then the story is complete.  Where to now?

In a review of The Writer, James Priest of Minneapolis wrote:  ‘A beautifully crafted book about a book. The only thing which could possibly improve it would be another hundred or so pages. However as the main character, Roger, stated, "His story was finished. “No,” he thought. “Not Finished. Complete." This is a complete work which is a joy to read.

If you want to have even more fun with the book, Google Maps will take you to Mossel Bay where you can see and visit all the places the author describes. You can literally spend hours strolling along the streets and beaches. The street level coverage of the entire town is fantastic. If your view of South Africa was formed during the era of Apartheid and the Soweto Uprising you may come away with a totally different opinion.

I can think of no greater compliment to pay a writer than to say, "You have changed my view of the world." ‘

You can buy The Writer by clicking here.

 

Graphene:  A scientific genius escapes from Soviet Russia with his wife.  They have nothing, but the help of a stranger starts him on his way to accumulating a fortune, with a steady flow of inventions, and an upright approach to doing business.  He finds out about graphene, a miracle material that has almost unimaginable qualities, but can only be extracted in minute quantities.  Leonid sees the potential of the product for the entire world and, together with Marina, his daughter, he develops a means to produce the material cheaply enough to compete with almost every existing product that it can replace.  He fails to reckon with big business, and the predators who are so fixated on their own profit that they will stop at nothing to remove the threat that he and graphene present to the realization of their ambitions.

In this fast-paced story of genius versus business, Nicole Stuart explores the problems and challenges encountered by many new products that affect the status quo, including blackmail, deceit and murder!

You can buy Graphene by clicking here.

 

Energy:  An inventor, not realizing the power and the ruthlessness of the competition he faces, dares to take on the monopoly of the oil giants, and pays with his life for his innocent belief in the rule of law and his trust in people, leaving behind a devastated widow with a tiny daughter.  She picks herself up and follows the clues he left behind, hoping to recreate the invention that led to his death.  Driven by her husband’s dream, she follows his path to gain revenge on the system that has held the world economy to ransom for decades.

In this thrilling story of international intrigue and power plays, Nicole Stuart lays bare the might of the money gained by ruthless men, who use their wealth to buy the monopoly of the world’s energy supplies.

You can buy Energy by clicking here.

 

Recompense:  A businessman is asked by the representative of a senior politician for a bribe to ensure the awarding of a contract.  He refuses to pay, and his angry threat to inform the authorities results in him being killed.  His wife and daughter are left to pick up the pieces.  One of those pieces points to the probability that the accident that killed him was murder.  They develop a plan to get revenge on those responsible, but their planning soon reveals that the only meaningful revenge will bring down a Government!

In this tale of murder and intrigue, Nicole Stuart brings to life the characters who play their games behind the screens of power and wealth.  It is a story of the power of the ordinary person, forced by events beyond endurance, to bring justice to a part of the world.

You can buy Recompense by clicking here.

 

Retrenched:  Reg hates his life.  He has a dead-end job, a boss who puts him down all the time, and a wife who wants more money, status and security, and who despises him for his apparent failure.  The whole edifice appears to be about to crumble when he is retrenched, too old to find another job.

He takes advantage of the opportunity to turn his life around, and heads off on a tour of the Mediterranean.  One of his retrenched co-workers joins him, and, together, they discover that their ex-boss is involved in a sinister conspiracy to create havoc in the United States.  The target of their investigation discovers that his ex-employees have gathered information that could bring down his work of two years, only weeks before the plan is set to go live, and he sets out to remove the threat.

In this exciting novel of conspiracy and murder, Nicole Stuart roams the bright sunlight of the Mediterranean and the dark recesses of evil.

You can buy Retrenched by clicking here. 

 

Island:  Martin works eighteen hours per day to win a two-week stay in a tropical island resort.  His prize turns sour.  The resort is half-built and almost empty, and then the four guests find themselves in the middle of an invasion!

The guests have to find a way to safety.  Their escape by boat takes them into the middle of a naval battle for control of the channel that will determine the outcome of the war, and only their characters will determine whether they will survive.

In this story of suspense, conflict and intrigue, Nicole Stuart explores the way that ordinary people become heroes.

You can buy Island by clicking here.

 

The Dancer:  A young girl aspires to dance.  Her skill is completed when she makes contact with a boy, who is prevented from dancing by his size.  Their lives are drawn inexorably together by their shared love of ballet, until there is a union of their spirits, to fulfill each of them.

Nicole Stuart tells a sensitive story of the coming together of two disparate people who share a love for ballet.

You can buy The Dancer by clicking here.

 

Marloth:  Meredith is at home when she receives a call from the Police.  Her husband is dead, murdered by hijackers.  She seeks peace in Marloth Park, a wildlife reserve on the border of the Kruger National Park.  She buys a guesthouse as a way to recover her mental equilibrium, but soon finds that Marloth is being used by poachers to enter the Kruger National Park, to kill the elephants and rhinos there, for their ivory tusks and horns.  Together with her new friends, she works out a plan to bring an end to the poaching that threatens to exterminate the elephants and rhinos that they all love, but their plan brings them into conflict with senior people in the Government, resulting in the massacre of a group of Policemen.  They must find a way to overcome the corruption at the top level of Government that threatens to destroy their way of life.

You can buy Marloth by clicking here.

 

Rock Paintings:  Klaus and Jennifer think that they have achieved a major breakthrough in their careers as archaeologists when they are invited to participate in a landmark archaeological dig in the Cave, at Mossel Bay.  The Cave is expected to provide some proof that Stone Age Man developed the basis of civilization in the area, before migrating to Asia and Europe, to bring Humanity to the world.  They could not expect that their role in the project would develop to become much more than simply discovering the origins of Humanity.

In this exciting novel, Nicole Stuart explores many of the puzzles of Man’s meteoric rise to become the dominant being on Earth, against a factual backdrop of one of the most exciting archeological finds on Earth, a find that has revolutionized the understanding of the development of Humanity.

You can buy Rock Paintings by clicking here.

 

Smoke:  The number of smokers has been decreasing for more than a decade, but the trend suddenly turns around, with a rapid increase in the number of people smoking, and in their consumption of tobacco, without any clear reason.  Audrey notices the change, and starts researching the effects of nicotine on the human body with the intention of finding a way to counter the addiction.  She is surprised to receive an offer of funding for her work.  She needs the money, but the conditions attached to the funding concern her, and when she looks into the body that has made the offer, it does not take long for her to realize that the funding is designed to suppress the results of her research, but by then her work has come to the attention of powerful people.  If she does not accede to their financial control of her work, they will find other ways to prevent it being published.

In this exciting novel, Nicole Stuart explores the might of the tobacco industry.

You can buy Smoke by clicking here.

 

Ebola:  After a brief pause, the killer disease Ebola suddenly breaks out again in West Africa, raging through countries which had not been infected before.  A small lapse in the safety measures results in a doctor becoming infected with a mutated strain of the horror disease, and his two day vacation in Johannesburg results in hundreds of new infections taking the disease into the world.

Alicia is filming the disease for a TV documentary in the Ivory Coast when she is caught up in the horror.  She manages to escape with three friends, only to find that the haven of safety she has reached is next to the terrorist base where the virus is being readied to transmit the disease to the military units that are all that remain effective in the western world.

This is a tale of international terrorism on a huge scale, inspired by the many unanswered questions of the Ebola outbreaks that still threatens the world with a new Dark Age.

You can buy Ebola by clicking here.

 

Shapes:  Sarah is an artist with an unusual ability.  She is able to understand what the shapes say.  The shapes are everywhere, in the patterns of fields of wheat blowing in the breeze, in the arrangement of leaves on a tree, in gravel on a footpath, in the clouds of the sky.  They are seen and understood by many children, but most people lose that ability as they grow to become adults.  Sarah’s ability allows her to understand what is happening presently and what will happen in the future.  Her exposure to the shapes in the United States, in Switzerland, Moscow, Sydney and Esperance in Australia, and in Johannesburg, Marloth and Cape Town in South Africa gives her the chance to make valuable contributions to the people of those places and to the world.  In this sweeping novel, Nicole Stuart gives us the chance to explore our own understandings and interactions with the world.

You can buy Shapes by clicking here.

 

Money:  Henry works as a Manager in an insurance company by day, and he paints in his spare time. He wishes that he could turn his life around, but he never expected to have a change as complete as happens when his wife’s secret lover dies after experiencing a massive heart attack while making love to her. The changes come thick and fast, overwhelming a man who wants nothing more than a simple life, until he is forced to run for his life, to escape a gang of international criminals. His desperate attempt to hide away in a tiny town in southern Bavaria finally turns him into the hunter, rather than the helpless prey.

You can buy Money by clicking here.

 

Connection: Jo is a very smart Associate Lawyer with low self-esteem, but her friends are helping her to recover from a destructive relationship. She is the star performer at her law firm, and is called on to prepare all the complex agreements that are needed by the clients. One particular agreement makes her wonder what the real underlying transaction is. Stan is a CIA agent who stumbles across a possible criminal conspiracy that has the potential to destabilize world peace. Both of them run into dead ends that stop their investigations, until they meet in their dreams. That connection allows them to join their thinking on their disparate problems, to come up with solutions that give them more than what they were hoping to achieve. They need to act quickly to avert a situation that could easily become the foundation for a world crisis.

You can buy Connection by clicking here.

 

Olivia:  Olivia, a successful author, loves nature and adventure, and uses her experiences and the emotions they arouse in her in her books, but Stanley, her husband, a Professor of Literature who manages the business aspects of her writing, wants only to watch old movies. He refuses to accompany her in her efforts to experience the world, a necessity for her writing. She goes out into a storm to experience the might of nature, and sees a small yacht battling the storm to reach Port Morning, the small harbor town near her cottage. She realizes that the crew might need assistance, and she hastens through the storm to do what she can. The lone sailor makes it into the harbor, and her meeting with him changes her life. It opens her eyes to the fact that her husband has been defrauding her, stealing the royalties due to her, and publishing some of her best books, which he told her would not be accepted by the publisher, under his own name. She wants to be sure that he will never be able to treat another woman as he has treated her, and she institutes actions for recovery of her losses and for divorce, as well as laying criminal charges against him. Stanley knows that the only way he can rescue his career and his fortune in to make sure that Olivia is not alive to continue the cases. He sets out to kill her. Olivia, John and Oliver, her beloved grandfather, have to find a way to stop Stanley before he murders her.

You can buy Olivia by clicking here.

 

Invasion:  Jenny arrives at the small-town school where she teaches science, only to find that the entire population of the town has disappeared. Fearing that she might have lost her mind, she calls her Marine Colonel ex-husband, wanting to find out what has happened. That call plunges her into the midst of a Chinese invasion of the United States and of several African States. As she fights to defend the democratic principles of freedom and trust in government leaders that she holds so dear, she finds that the bases of many of those principles have been severely compromised in the Land of the Free.

You can buy Invasion by clicking here.

 

Ways to Fill the Days:  Marcy is a newly-qualified lawyer, holding a position in the State Attorney’s office. Her future looks promising, but she has been captured by a man who dominates her, damaging her self-confidence and bringing her down at every turn. Her decline into mental slavery is swift, promoted by frequent beatings by her husband. She is saved by a doctor who attends to her after a particularly violent beating. With his help, she breaks away from her husband, and is offered a job in a small town legal practice, where she can rebuild her self-confidence and her life. There she is able to use her intelligence to build opportunities for the people of the small town to become self-sufficient. Her life in the small town enables her to find ways to fill her days with friendship, love and meaningful successes, but behind her lurks the threat of her husband and his criminal associates.

You can buy Ways to Fill the Days by clicking here.

 

Lights:  Cynthia, a teacher, leads a settled orderly life. Her main hobbies are playing her piano, a habit she developed after her husband was killed in a car smash, and watching the elephants at the zoo. She has an ability to sense the auras of her pupils, and she finds that extends to the elephants, for which she develops an empathy. Cynthia’s world is turned upside down when he helps Jennifer, one of her pupils, and finds out that the child is being abused by her mother’s new boyfriend, a brutal man. She has to help Jennifer’s mother to regularize her immigrant status, and she finds her a new job. Maria, without Cynthia’s knowledge, appoints Cynthia to be the guardian of Jennifer in the event of her death.

On a school visit to the zoo, which is to be closed soon, Cynthia and Jennifer meet Donald, an American who has bought a game reserve in Kenya and wants to revitalize the gene pool of the animals, which has been badly depleted by hunting. He has bought the animals of the zoo, and has come to see the elephant calf born recently. Cynthia sees that he has the same ability as she, to see the auras of the animals. Knowing that the mine, which forms the backbone of the town’s economy, is likely to close soon, he offers Cynthia the job of setting up a school for the children of the game reserve. She accepts, only to find that the guardianship of Jennifer has become a reality when her mother is murdered.

In order to help Jennifer over the tragedy of her mother’s death, Cynthia teaches the young girl to play the piano. This is advanced by Angela, Donald’s sister-in-law, a concert pianist, and Jennifer’s skills develop quickly, until she performs to an audience of tourists in the game reserve, as an introduction to the choral concert by the school pupils.

You can buy Lights by clicking here.

 

Decisions:  The blonde woman has stepped from the pages of his book, as vibrantly alive, as beautiful as Roger had described her. It was the culmination of a dream: his first book was about to be published, and the woman, whose photo had been the driving force behind that book, was real, not a figment of his imagination. Now Roger faced the problem that she was wealthy, beyond his wildest dreams, and successful in business, while he had yet to negotiate the contract with his publisher, and he could not view the future publication of his first book as forming a successful career. He needed to do something, but what would be enough to convince this woman, and himself, that he was the man she would want?

As it turns out, the world has a plan in mind for Roger and Natalya. Unfortunately, that plan requires them to bring down three violent and unscrupulous criminals with good political connections, while Roger and Natalya have only their wits, their close friends and Roger’s next book.

You can buy Decisions by clicking here.

 

 

 

Business Book Series

This series consists of a number of thought-provoking books covering business, social and political issues, possibly in ways that have not been considered before.

 

Questions for South Africa: South Africa is in a turmoil, as are many other parts of the world.  Nicole Stuart applies her experience and understanding, gained in many countries, to the situation, and makes observations that might clarify a few of the events and situations observed, and assist people of all nations to take steps to improve the country, and to bring it back to the path that most of its citizens hoped for in 1994, under Nelson Mandela

You can buy Questions for South Africa by clicking here

What should the National Prosecuting Authority do?

The NPA in South Africa is as much of a disaster area as the rest of the country. It is incapable of doing the job for which it was established, as is proven by the complete lack of any prosecutions of top-level criminals, never mind its failure to put any of them behind bars, as the country urgently needs. The reasons for this are clear, but the failure of the Director to correct this situation is inexplicable. It may stem from insufficient understanding of the principles of management of an organisation in crisis or, Heaven forbid, from the creep of the infection to the very top levels of this vital body. NPA Director Batohi has complained, several times, that the organisation has been corrupted, to the point where it is incapable of acting effectively. It is known that the virus of corruption has infested every part of government, from the clerk in the Licensing Office in Bedfordview, who takes a bribe of R600 to issue a driving license to a person who cannot pass the sight test, to the (previous) President, but that cannot be a reason to allow it to continue. Surely there are at least a couple of investigators and prosecutors who are both capable and honest left in the NPA, or, if that is not true, somewhere in the country? If there are none in government service who can be trusted, why should private contractors not be used? The argument that the government cannot afford the cost is nonsense – the country cannot afford another four years of the rampant corruption that is now the norm, and that cannot, apparently, be countered by an unwilling government.

What should Batohi do, if she really wants to perform the job for which she is paid?

Let’s analyse the problem.

The problem, as stated by Batohi, is that every case is hijacked, side-lined, confused or simply has vital papers stolen, to make sure that it goes nowhere. There are too many people involved in bringing the case from a report of wrongdoing to the point of successful prosecution. That is not unusual in a business scenario in which the company is highly politicised, with many parties promoting their private agendas. Surely, if  system is not working, the responsible person should either by-pass that system or correct it, by radical means, if necessary. The answer is to do three things simultaneously.

First, follow the evidence. Take a case which is prima facie good, and track who has access to it, who has input and who makes the crucial decisions. Do an evaluation of the correctness of those actions, of where the case goes off the tracks, of what went wrong and why. The Diwani case is an excellent example of a case where, on the facts known to the public, the accused should have been found guilty. He was not, and the public meekly accepted the fact that a man accused of hiring two killers to eliminate his new wife in Cape Town should go free, after the killers had confessed to the crime, and identified the accused, and the SAPS had spent millions on a private jet to fly from the UK, and on psychiatric evaluations which seemed to confirm the public view. The Judge threw the case out for lack of evidence. From a somewhat cynical point of view, there were only three points at which the sure-fire case could have gone wrong: the Police bungled the case so badly that a guilty verdict was impossible; the Prosecutor failed to present a sure-fire case in a professional manner; or the Judge was not competent to understand the facts. The third possibility appears to be very unlikely. The Courts generally have a good reputation for competence, even with the odd blip like Judge Seriti’s apparently purposeful bungling of the Arms Deal investigation. The remaining two elements seem to be more likely, and both are amenable to the oldest form of corruption – buying a person in a critical position. A payment of a few hundred thousand Rands to secure the mismanagement of a prosecution, or of the investigation leading up to it, is cheap in the light of a possible 15 year prison sentence, and the amount of money able to be offered would more than compensate for the lack of promotion or loss of professional esteem. This is even more true in South Africa, where wrongdoing is not seen to be a hindrance to advancement, where it is normal for convicted criminals and those censured by a Judge for dishonesty to be appointed as Ministers of State, while so many either charged with fraud and other dishonesty, even with money laundering and racketeering, have ascended to high office while the charges were hanging.

While the prima facie ‘facts’ are being determined, set up a channel in which the handling of chosen cases can be free of the involvement or influence of those found or suspected to be under suspicion. Feed some carefully selected cases into that channel and monitor them carefully. Fast-track them, so that the process can be watched over an abbreviated timespan, and record carefully who does what, and when, and, most critically, why. Manage the cases on an individual basis. Ensure that every fact that needs to be taken into account is recorded, and document the events of interference, so that the people who have negative influence that is not justified by the facts can be placed in quarantine. Ensure that the facts known to the public are correctly investigated, and question the conclusions.

Third, take the chosen cases to a logical conclusion. By this point, there should be at least three or four important cases that have watertight proof and presentation. Ensure that the people involved at all levels are aware that their performance in these cases will have long-term consequences for each of them personally, either positive or negative. It is not essential that every possible malfeasance of an accused be brought against him or her at this stage – that can be done when they can be interviewed for further charges in orange overalls, when they are less able to buy their way out of trouble. It is only necessary at this time to achieve the first conviction.

By choosing the cases carefully, successful investigations and trials will remove at least several of the corrupt individuals holding levers of power, and reduce the negative influences in future prosecutions, and, most importantly, will restore the belief that the NPA is a body to be feared by criminals. Comparison of effective processes with ineffective ones will provide clues to who is needed in the future, who is capable of development, and who should be discarded, after due investigation of their actions in the past. A separate channel should be established to ensure that the criminal prosecution of those meriting that special distinction is performed effectively, with the effect of cutting the ground from under those working within the system to subvert justice.

The next step is to repeat the process, taking care to ensure that each case enjoys a high probability of success. Each repetition will extend the list of those taken from positions of influence, and will reduce the body of people working against true justice in the country. It is important to understand that even one successful prosecution is a lot better that dozens of prosecutions still in the process, probably for the next few years.

Perhaps Batohi would be well-advised to include an investigation into the actions of her predecessor, who did so much to hollow out the institution she now leads.

While this is going on, Batohi could take a couple of hours to prepare a presentation to Parliament to ask for two new laws.

The first of these will require that the sentence imposed on a person abusing a position of trust be double that of others convicted of that crime. For example, the Chief Accounting Officer of a State Owned Entity who supports, or fails to prevent, a fraud by officers of that entity would be subject to double the prison time for the crime. The law should require that parole cannot be granted until at least the additional time has been served in full. This would prevent the present practice of criminals going free, carried head-high by ANC members to his new position as Head of Political Education in the ANC, after serving only a few months of a five-year sentence for corruption.

The second proposed law will offer indemnity from prosecution to any person who is party to a crime and provides evidence to the SAPS and the NPA which results in the criminal conviction of the counterparties to an act of corruption. This would be coupled with a bar for life against that person doing business with the State, as well as a requirement that he or she reimburses the State for the loss it has suffered. That indemnity will be effective only if the evidence is provided voluntarily and before an action against the person providing it is commenced.

If the NPA continues to bumble along on its present path, without taking any real action against the criminal kingpins who have blighted the South African political scene for so long, if it continues to ignore the exposure by investigative journalists made of criminal acts that have been at the centre of public discourse for years, the citizens will be justified in their belief that the NPA is merely another State body that offers jobs for pals without any expectation that it should perform the tasks for which it exists. It would join the SAPS on the list of those State bodies which have been shown conclusively to be part of the problem in South Africa.

Tuesday, 18 August 2020

What South Africa needs now

 The past years have highlighted many failings in South Africa, failings that need to be addressed urgently if the country is to progress. These failings have smothered many of the elements that make up its potential to be a force for good in the world, but those elements still remain, although an observer might be excused for believing that they do not exist.

Even under the Apartheid regime, South Africa’s economy grew strongly, creating an economy that was on a par with most of the world’s great economies, one that could have accommodated the entire population, although the system of legalised separation of the races, and the concomitant hardship that, and other policies, generated for the Black population was a significant factor in holding the country back from the greatness it could have achieved. There was certainly a large element of corruption in the government, although it seems that the corruption was not a driving factor in many of the important economic decisions that were made in those years.

Unfortunately, along with the promise of freedom and democracy that came with the accession of Nelson Mandela to the Presidency, there came a cohort of parasites and profiteers, of people who had nothing to offer the country apart from their pollical connections. They quickly subverted the principles of the Constitution to enable them to use the nation to generate enormous wealth for themselves, often tying that wealth to their association with the governing Party, and always disguising their real motives under a plethora of quasi-righteous doublespeak.

Corruption did not start with Jacob Zuma. Corruption was already present in the early days, when first the plan to indulge in the enormously wasteful and economically worthless purchase of a mass of military equipment was floated. Even at that time, people connected with Zuma and his ANC were negotiating deals for the payment of large bribes in order for investors to gain favourable consideration by the government, at all levels, for the approval of contracts which required consent at that level. Already, by 1995, Provincial governments were suffering from the multi-level corruption of thousands of ghost workers, employees of government bodies who showed up only once per month to collect their illegitimate salaries. Already in 1996, the Premier of the Eastern Cape complained that more than 30 000 ‘workers’ fell into this category, although he did nothing to correct it, and there is no reason to believe that the same situation did not prevail in the other Provinces. At this stage, the corruption was relatively simple: a low-level manager would hire an unqualified person to do a ‘job’ (in reality to fill a position that had been approved, but which achieved no economic benefit for the country). He would negotiate a salary for the job, demanding a cut of that salary for himself. The ‘worker’ would agree to that cut, in order to keep the difference between the balance of the salary and the after-tax total as a reward for his or her complicity. The manager would agree with his superior to share the amount he received, in order to avoid awkward questions being asked, and this process would be repeated on the next level, until the man or woman at the top of the chain would be collecting a small amount from as many as thirty thousand crooked partners in corruption each month. If the final share were as little as R10 per ‘employee’ per month, a high-level manager could rake in as much as R300 000 per month! It can surely be no surprise that many, if not most, of the long-deprived cadres bought into the principle of corruption.

It was in this atmosphere of greed, self-enrichment and crooked thinking that the Arms Deal was borne, and it became easy to see how the main players in that grand corruption were able to subvert the oversight mechanisms of Parliament, an ease strongly supported by the proportional electoral system which deprives the voters, the innocent suckers, of the right to demand accountability from their representatives in Parliament. It was inevitable that the petty larceny would quickly escalate to fraud of the nation on a scale that would make the Mafia envious. This trend was built into the Constitution at an early stage, almost certainly by the negotiators of that critical document, who, no doubt, had their own interests and those of their Party at heart, ignoring the needs of the nation. As always, when politicians are involved in negotiating a law, the good of the voters remained very low on the list of priorities to be satisfied, and then only if it did not stand in the way of them achieving their goals.

The atmosphere of corruption that has pervaded the nation has grown since those early days, with the public simply accepting the crookedness, the dishonesty and the falsity of so much of what we hear from the people the political Parties have put in place to ‘represent’ the voters. The blithe acceptance of strong evidence of corruption and of deviation from what the average citizen would consider to be fair and right has increased steadily, to the point that the State President can deny in Parliament that he received a payment of R450 000 from Bosasa, stating that he would conduct his own son to prison if he found that he had done so, and then correct that some time later, when he declared that he did not know that such a sum had been paid to his election fund, managed by his son. Is it not remarkable that he was not aware that an amount of nearly half a million had been ‘donated’ to his election fund by an organisation that he must have known was under suspicion of having crooked dealings with the State? Is it possible that the State President did not realise that such a sizable ‘donation’ would be made in the expectation of some quid pro quo in the future? Is it not remarkable that the man aspiring to the highest office in the land did not make good his intention to take his son to prison himself, but rather continue to allow the status quo to develop to the point where that son is, once again, involved in a large deal with the State in circumstances that should have aroused some concern? Ramaphosa is far from alone in the race of their families to wealth on the coattails of a willing State.

Ramaphosa has stated on numerous occasions that he would ensure that corrupt persons would be hunted down and prosecuted, yet nothing has been done to bring his own ANC to trial to account for the contract for the supply of turbines for Medupe, that money-sink that continues to blight any possibility of economic recovery, in consideration for the granting of which contract the ANC gained a ‘finder’s fee’ and a shareholding in the South African subsidiary of the supplier, which it subsequently sold at a huge profit. Nothing has been done to punish the perpetrators of the Estina fraud, the Life Esidemi tragedy, even Judge Seriti, who whitewashed the Arms Deal Commission of Enquiry. The many Party members who have been involved in fraud on a grand scale, many of whom have been found guilty, either formally in Court or by judicial commentary are running free and continue to perpetrate bigger, better and more malign frauds against the public purse.

And the public stands back and waits for the second shoe to drop.

It will not, unless it is wrested by force from its place.

The Lebanese government has resigned, forced by the tragedy of the explosion to accept that it is accountable to the people for its lack of performance. Yet the ANC holds firm, although over 300 000 AIDS sufferers have died and South Africa has become the AIDs capital of the world, almost solely as a result of the inaction of Mbeki’s government to take timeous action. That is a multiple of the result of the inadequacy of the Lebanese government. The Arms Deal, which has been calculated to have cost at least R142 billion in present-day terms, and which has cost at least ten times as much in lost economic growth, continues to be denied by the ANC as a massive fraud, although one witness, at least, stated that he saw $20 million being paid into the private bank account of a senior politician. And yet the corrupt companies that undertook to make large (although easily affordable) offset investments in South Africa remain unpunished, although their promises have been largely ignored. One would be forgiven for believing that it is easier to pay R5 million to an over=zealous official than to make an investment of R2 billion. The Covid-19 disaster has thrown millions of citizens out of work, and set the economy back by at least ten years, yet the same incompetent who oversaw the Sarafina 2 fiasco continues to pontificate to the citizens on how they should behave, while presumably, playing a dominant role in the NCCC making ludicrous and almost certainly unjustified and irrational decisions that have continued to exacerbate the economic catastrophe over which the ANC is presiding, all without offering the ‘representatives’ of the people, worthless though they have shown themselves to be, any opportunity to evaluate the rationality of those decisions, all under the cloak of a State of Disaster. The multiple appointments of unqualified and incompetent Ministers of Finance, of Directors of the National Prosecuting Authority, of Commissioners of Police, of CEOs of numerous State Owned Entities such as SAA, SABC, Eskom and many others by Jacob Zuma and his chosen ones were some of the factors that have brought a once-strong economy to its knees, depriving millions of South Africans of their rights under the Constitution to health, to ownership of property, even to the ability to earn a living for themselves and their families, yet the only criminal charges brought against any of the perpetrators of these crimes are those against Jacob Zuma, for his almost petty participation in the Arms Deal corruption, and the chances are that the files will be lost, the Prosecutor will be of low grade and insufficiently prepared and the numerous objections and delays that have characterised the pursuit of justice against him will continue. The many fine words about correcting the dishonesty at all levels of government, the assertions that ‘we will eradicate corruption’, will continue to be uttered at the top level of government, as they have been since at least as long ago as 2012, when Jacob Zuma first put them into the boilerplate text of the State of the Nation address, and they will continue to be ignored for as long as the money flows, for as long as the citizens fail to realise that they are the ones who are entitled, not the politicians and the crooked businessmen.

That realisation may come in one of two possible ways. The one way, which the politicians should bear in mind as a distinct possible response to their continued treasonous conduct, is a public lynching when the people are finally gatvol, a realisation that seems, daily, to be more likely. People who have been made poor while their supposed protectors have continued to rob them, often have no mercy when that tipping point is reached. The other way, probably preferable, is that civil society get together to support a demand that a non-political Integrity Commission be established with the function of evaluating the fitness for public service of any person proposed for public office, from Deputy Director General to State President. The recommendations would be made after a careful evaluation of the background, the honesty, motivations, qualifications, as demonstrated by education and work history, and freedom from taint of the intended appointees. This is a requirement of law in the case of senior officials appointed to banks, insurance companies and financial service providers, and the requirement should not be less in the case of persons appointed to positions of trust in public service in the widest sense. The recommendations would not be politically motivated, as has been shown by the appointment of a Public Protector to be no more than a continuation of the ‘election’ of MPs by the dominant Party. The members of the Commission would be elected initially, and then each such Commissioner would be subject to a repeat evaluation at intervals of not more than two years, to prevent the possibility of such persons becoming tainted by the power they would exercise, and the recommendations relating to appointees, would be reviewed every two years for the same reason. The Commission would be entitled to conduct exhaustive lifestyle audits, and would be entitled to demand prosecution of those they find to have abused the position of trust implicit in public office. The Commission might choose to conduct an interim evaluation of its own accord, or at the instance of a complaint from the public. Most importantly. The Commission would have to be protected under Chapter 6 of the Constitution.

For those who might claim that such a Commission would be overkill, consider this: The much-vaunted Constitution of South Africa has been shown to be severely deficient in the protection of the citizens against the abuse of power by those in high office. Failure to correct that abuse may well result in the lynching of many of those suspected of such abuse. That happened in Italy, when the Italian people realised that their leaders, particularly il Duce, had gone astray. It has happened in other countries. Do you want to see it happen in South Africa? Really?

Monday, 20 July 2020

Fairness and Democracy are Unknown Concepts in South Africa



The so-called “Democracy” that is claimed to be the centrepiece of the New South Africa is very hard to discern.
The most glaring example of that is the National Covid Command Council, a grouping of the top (ANC) politicians which has taken on itself the control of the South African economy, issuing commands without providing any indication of the justification for them, if indeed there is a rational justification, and requiring strict adherence to even the most destructive and nonsensical parts of them, in the manner of any of the typical African dictatorships. This process of undemocratic governance is so clouded in secrecy and Party-controlled policies that even the nominal President has, at times, been blindsided in an embarrassing way. The actions of this Command Council are very clearly decided behind the scenes by the subversives in the Ramaphosa Cabinet and the suspect members of the ANC NEC. Nowhere is there any sign of a democratic process in making or evaluating these commands in a reasoned way by the elected representatives of the people, even those subject, as they are, to the discipline of the Party, another element of non-Democracy, and there is not even any apparent attempt to lead the electorate to believe that there is, in fact, any democratic process at work here.
Another example of the abject failure of democracy in South Africa is the rapid agreement by the government, in this time of financial and fiscal crisis, to hand over to the taxi industry R1,2 billion, to make up for their losses as a result of having to operate at less than their normal 120% of capacity. When the taxi bosses declared that they were not satisfied, wanting R5 billion, the government hastened to mollify them by agreeing that they could load 100% of capacity, provided they drive around in sub-zero temperatures with their windows open! Apart from the evidence that the government is operating on another planet, this move demonstrates two points very clearly. The first is that it has now been established beyond any shadow of doubt that it is possible to gain what you want by making threats, provided you simultaneously contribute generously towards the bank accounts of the favoured few, probably as well as the ANC. The few thousand lives that this will cost is, after all, no more than the usual death toll the taxi industry inflicts on the public as a result of the abject failure by the Police to do their duty in combatting dangerous driving and unroadworthy vehicles, and the failure of the government at all levels to provide safe and affordable public transport to its citizens.
Yet another example of the lack of fairness, usually a requirement of democracy. Is the fact that thousands of businesses were forced to bear the closure brought by Covid-19, coupled with the loss of wages and profits by millions of citizens, all of whom have the same debts, rent, and all other expenses and cashflow elements associated with being alive, while the government and SOE employees, most of them avid ANC supporters, continued to receive 100% of their grossly-inflated wages and salaries, without any need to perform any services to earn them. Of course, as they are ANC voters, one could not expect otherwise.
Of course, the ANC government is accustomed to unfairness. The BEE regulations are an enduring indictment of their commitment to unfairness in their striving to win votes. Under these regulations, Whites are unfairly prejudiced by not being able to build, own and manage their own businesses beyond a minuscule size, and, as a result, they unfairly prejudice tens of thousands of Black workers, who would have enjoyed an income from them, as well as an opportunity to gain the skills and experiences that, in any sane country, would have enabled them to work their way to the top, to start and operate their own businesses, and to contribute to the economy in a way that would have resulted in South Africa winning the race against unemployment and poverty. The regulations, by demanding that businesses have a prescribed minimum proportion of Black ownership, have also had the effect of driving away billions of dollars (not exaggerated, as is directly known by the writer) in direct foreign investment, money and expertise which would have gone a long way to allowing South Africa to win its place at the forefront of world economies, rather than slipping down the indices of leading countries in almost everything that counts for its citizens. What seems to have been ignored by the ANC louts is the fact that anyone who is willing to take financial risks, to apply effort and ingenuity, and huge effort, to build a small business into a large one, is not willing to hand over a significant proportion of that business to a parasitic shareholder, who will share in the profits and growth of that business without contributing anything in the way of skills, investment or risk.
The final example that we will list here, although the list could go on for pages, is the idea that Blacks have a need to own their own piece of farmland (conclusively disproved by several surveys and by the fact that most of those with access to such farmland do not make use of it to farm at a scale greater than subsistence level). This idea had produced the notion of Expropriation without Compensation, a principle that goes directly counter to the principles enshrined in the supposedly-democratic Constitution, and seems to be aimed directly at the Whites, who have been the driving force that took South Africa to the point of being a noted agricultural economy. Any Ramaphosa protestation to the contrary is shown to be no more than ANC disinformation by the fact that the President hastened to drop to his knee at the foot of the Zulu King, who did not like the idea of losing his control over the three million plus hectares of land held by him. The fact that the land became subject to his control by the despotic actions of his bloodthirsty ancestor, King Shaka, another markedly undemocratic person, seems to play no part in Ramaphosa’s unstinting promise to the Zulu King (another example of the failure of democracy under our Constitution) that the ANC would not apply to ‘his land’ the “fair” principle of return of the land taken from the early inhabitants of the country to their original owners. The thought that the Zulu King holds the land on behalf of his ‘subjects’ is belied by the corrupt actions of many other Black tribal Kings, who enrich themselves at the cost of their tribes, by the difficulties experienced by those subjects in gaining any long-term rights to the land in order to build an agricultural business, and by the facts that the Zulu King unilaterally imposed a ‘rent’ on his subjects, in respect of land which they apparently own.
It would certainly not be unfair to say that the illusion of democracy to which the citizens, all of them, signed off in 1994, when they handed the control of the country to a Party which has earned its name as the ‘Association for Nepotism and Corruption’, was a massive confidence trick.

Thursday, 16 July 2020

President Ramaphosa and the Covid-19 Crisis



Not all that long ago, Cyril Ramaphosa was viewed as a reasonably competent manager, even if somewhat pedestrian in his decision-making and childish in his aspirations, as evidenced by his Wakanda new city plans, and his aspiration to teach every school pupil to code, where it is known that a high proportion of schoolchildren are not able to read with understanding and most children, not to mention teachers, are at a very low standard in mathematics.
Unfortunately, the continued experience gained by the public of Ramaphosa over the time he has been President have exposed many of his weaknesses. That has come into stark clarity during his mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis. As an experienced businessman, we would have expected Ramaphosa to understand that important decisions need to be made after careful consideration of expert advice. That has not happened. Just as Mbeki did during the early phases of the AIDS crisis, he seems to have locked in the advice of a group, perhaps only a few, ‘experts’, ignoring the views of others, particularly those of the public. This is clear in regard to the ban on cigarettes and liquor, where he has chosen not to permit the public access to the information or the reasoning process on which the decision was made.
The very name of the ‘Command Council’ gives a clue to the mindset: it is dictatorial, the action of a group of people who have no need to submit their deliberations to the scrutiny of an elected Parliament, no matter how feeble and emasculated that body may have become under ANC rule. This is certainly not the way one would expect an enlightened, confident and capable manager to act. The example of Angela Merkel provides an example of how he should have acted.
As an experienced manager and director of large companies, Ramaphosa should have the ability to understand when he can trust what he is being told, and what he should view as a sycophantic giving of information to please him. That is an important quality of any manager, and it is critically important in managing the response of a country to a pandemic, which has the potential to cost the lives of thousands of citizens, all of whom are entitled to rely on the capability of the elected President to make decisions that are well-considered and effective, in the light of facts.
Ramaphosa claimed at the outset of the lockdown that the purpose of it was to give the Health Service the opportunity to prepare for the crisis. That alone is a little naïve, given that the government knew, or should have known, early in January that the pandemic would be life-threatening. It should have started making the preparations at that time. It did not. The result of that failing has been that the hospital services, already at breaking point after 26 years of incompetent and corrupt cadre misrule, is now likely not to be able to handle the rush of patients. That level of incompetence seems to have prevailed until now. Two months ago, Ramaphosa visited the Eastern Cape ‘to check on the state of preparedness of the Province’. During that visit, he expressed his pleased satisfaction that the ‘Province was well-prepared’ for the encroaching crisis. That was patently incorrect, either as a result of his inability to investigate the matter correctly, or simply a political assurance, to avoid any political fallout. In either event, it amounts to criminal negligence on the part of a man whom that the public has a right to trust. The Province is not now prepared for the crisis, and was plainly never prepared. Ramphosa’s well-publicised endorsement of the performance of his Party in the Eastern Cape was wrong and misleading, and it came after 25 years of Press reports regarding the incompetence and corruption in that Province. Surely, that alone would have prompted any reasonable manager to interrogate the situation thoroughly. Ramaphosa failed to do so.
The prime requirement of a manager is that he manages. The antics of the members of the Cabinet, and more recently of the members of the ‘Command Council’, each going his or her own way, prove conclusively that Ramaphosa does not manage: he passes on the decisions made by the ANC NEC (a body that has no standing in the legislative or regulatory framework of the government under any law, but which is certainly the de facto government of the country). Ramaphosa’ s conduct in this regard is clearly in breach of his duties under the Constitution and his Oath of Office. His dereliction of his duties is clearly visible in the actions of Dlamini Zuma, in contradicting his statements on tobacco, and in the excesses of Cele and Mbalula. The fact that he would simply ignore the breaches of the law by the taxi industry in loading to 100% of capacity and crossing Provincial boundaries is clear evidence of that, as is his caving into the demands of the taxi bosses in forking out a subsidy of R!,2 billion, at a time when practically every industry is under existential threat as a result of his bungling of the Covid-19 crisis, without any form of support by the government.
Another vital capability of any manager is the ability to plan. Clearly Ramaphosa does not plan. The ‘Command Council’ has lurched from one self-made crisis to another, making ad hoc decisions and reversing them, and never bringing the public into its confidence. The rationale behind many of the incomprehensible decisions, if, in fact, there is a rationale, is conceived in dark rooms and edicts are issued.
Virtually every aspect of Ramphosa’s performance, or lack of it, since the coronavirus struck, casts doubt on his ability to be the President. The only comparison that is positive is that he has probably been better than Zuma would have been.
Surely South Africa deserves better.

Sunday, 12 July 2020

Advice to the President of South Africa


South Africa is in a crisis. It has been in a crisis for two decades, with most of the indicators of a healthy economy falling, with the country losing its status as the most advanced and the largest economy on the continent, with a flight of experienced and effective management heading off to more congenial pastures, with the State Owned Entities heading ever more deeply into financial and operational collapse. The government has ignored this, as well it might. The ANC-led government has been responsible for the mismanagement of the economy since it has been in power, using its position to derive corrupt profits and simple corrupt diversion of funds from the State. It has constantly asserted that it plans to stop corruption, a statement in every State of the Nation Address by the President since 2010, but no action has been taken to put meaning to those fine words. The people, the businesspeople and the international investment community have taken note of the empty promises, and are no longer willing to give any credence to such empty words. They want action, and they want it NOW. The same disbelief applies to all of the multitudinous plans announced by the Presidents – all of them- and the government they represent. And the same demand for action NOW is present in the thinking of those businesspeople and investors when they consider what they can do to pull the country out of its multi-faceted crises, and, indeed, whether they wish to.
A small piece of advice has been offered in a book published early this year – “Multiverse” – which analyses the cause of the many problems discernible in the worked through the medium of quasi-science fiction. The book has been read by many leaders of business and politics around the world, and the advice might well be taken to heart by the President of South Africa.
“It is well known that your country has many plans, but that no-one ever does anything to implement them. Part of the reason for that is that the people who should be responsible for implementing them did not really commit themselves to drawing them up, and so have no real reason to do the hard work of implementing them, and the other part of the reason is that those plans were pie in the sky. They represent a wish list, but no fairy godmother has arrived with a magic wand to make them real. You need to call in the best experts in the country, no matter their political affiliation, to make a realistic evaluation of the state of the country, and then to formulate plans that will bring it to where it should be. There must be no reliance on the past as an excuse not to achieve the future. That past has happened, and you can’t manage it now. You have to accept what is and go on from there. There must equally be no reliance on reasons that you certainly know to be little more than political posturing, and equally no commitment to a set of policies and ideologies that no longer have a place in a real-world country. Nothing can be written in stone, and nothing can be off the table. You need to evaluate each element of your plan and take it to a logical conclusion, using only assumptions that can be shown to be valid now.”
I have told you this because I believe that there should be absolute clarity on our stance. Your government in the past has imposed laws and regulations on your people and the companies on the basis that they have the power to do so, without most people having the ability to avoid becoming subject to such unfair laws. I know that the Ministers have blamed the dire economic situation in the country on numerous factors, such as global warming, the China-American trade war, White Monopoly Capital, and other similar reasons. The real truth is simple. Investors avoid the country because they choose not to donate a half of their shareholding to people nominated by the ruling Party. They would rather go to another country where they can rely on the electrical utility not doubling the cost of energy every three years while they allow the lights to go out, simply because the political appointees are robbing the State-Owned Entities blind while they employ twice as many people as are needed. simply to keep the unions sweet. The businesspeople go to other countries and planets because they can, and because they have not received a fair deal here. If you want to create the millions of jobs that you need, you must offer the investors the sort of deal that they will get elsewhere, from any honest government. You, as voters, must insist that the people you elect, comply with the norms and standards that you would want for yourselves. You must punish the Members of Parliament who fail to hold the Executive to account, when it is clear to any thinking, fair person that what they are doing is not right. You must make them believe that they represent you [the voters] in every decision that they make. You have suffered long enough at the hands of evil, greedy men and women. You will have one opportunity, at the next election, to set the path for your country. If you make the right decisions, you will enjoy the full support of the Integra Corporation and many other similar companies throughout seventeen universes. Your country will boom as it never has before. If you make the wrong decisions. you will condemn South Africa to the group of failed States, the countries that are willing to accept the excuses that their politicians offer them, rather than demanding that they perform their duties to the high standard required by their salaries.”
In a discussion of the reasons for the state of the nation, an analysis of the President was made:
“We don’t think that he [the President] is an inherently bad man but sometimes the job is more than he can cope with. His response to such a situation is first to spend a lot of time hesitating and then, when we push him for action, to turn to the people he knows, the people in his Party, who are more than willing to give him the advice that best suits their desires, or simply to defer the matter, to delay making a decision or to pass the responsibility for it to a group of so-called ‘experts’, who are, more often than not, people who have sold him on their supposed capabilities and who are, almost by definition, people he has come to know as a result of their Party connections. Of course, they earn big fees for doing the work, and their interests are best served by inflating the problem far more than is really required. They produce a report at the end of weeks or months, with seven hundred pages of waffle and recommendations that are in line with Party thinking, when what he really needed was a one-page summary of the facts, and another page setting out three or four possible ways to go, each with a ‘why’ and a ‘why not’.”
The book contains many items of wisdom and insight, and should be made required reading by every politician and businessperson, possibly every High School student.


Tuesday, 7 July 2020

Where are They?



Fermi asked the question, referring to the lack of contact from other, inter-galactic civilizations. He asked “If there are intelligent people out there, where are they? Why have they not made contact with us?”
Of course, the question ignores numerous factors, such as the time it would require to travel to us, if that is what he expected them to do. A spacecraft, traveling at 20% of the speed of light, a speed well in excess of what we, as a supposedly advanced civilization, could hope to achieve with our present state of knowledge, would require more than six hundred years from a star system only 120 light years away, given the time required to accelerate to that speed and then to slow down on arrival. And that would imply that such a civilization would have a valid reason to visit us, a civilization that only managed to start using radio more than 450 years after they would have had to leave home!
Perhaps the answer lies in some simple calculations.
Assume that humans on Earth have been able to send and receive radio messages for about 120 years. That’s not long, considering our 2 000 000 year development as sentient beings, the Earth’s 3 600 000 000 year existence, and the 13 600 000 000 year life of the Universe. Assume that other civilizations have followed more or less the same path. That seems to be not unreasonable.
Now consider that radio waves travel at about the speed of light. That means that a radio message, a flashing light signal or other similar form of communication that was sent by a civilization somewhere in the Universe, let’s say 120 light years from Earth, on the day they first developed radio communication 120 years ago, would reach Earth today. To receive that message, we would have to aim a large radio antenna (large, in order to collect the faint signal sent by an early-stage technology) at exactly that point in the heavens that the transmitter would have occupied, adjusted for their movement and ours (because all celestial objects are in relative motion, at high speeds, so an antenna aimed at a star system we see in the sky today would miss the actual point it now is by many millions of miles if we were to reply immediately) in order to receive the signal. If our aim were even one degree off, there is a high probability that we would not receive the message. And, to top it all, we would have to be ready to receive the message at exactly the time it passed us. One minute too early or too late, and we would miss the signal, because it comes, not as a long beam, but as a single block.
If our radio antenna is able to scan an area of one degree by one degree at a distance of 120 light years, it would have to scan 42 253 such areas! If such a scan requires one day each, to be meaningful at the lowest level, about 365 blocks per year, the scan would require about 190 years! Alternatively, we would need about two hundred antennae continuously working for a full year to receive the signal from our celestial neighbors, to allow us to have a reasonable chance to receive the signal.
Of course, that neighbor might be further than 120 light years away, say 200 light years, in which case we would have to wait another eighty years to receive that message. They might have developed earlier, or more quickly, than we did. If so, two hundred years ago, they might have tried to make contact with us by radio, perhaps for fifty years, and then given up hope that there were other sentient beings out there, and reverted to other methods of communication, such as using the opportunities offered by quantum entanglement. The radio signals would have zipped on by us, leaving us ignorant of our neighbors. On the other hand, their development might have lagged ours, leaving us to wait another hundred years, or a thousand, to hear from them. A thousand years is an insignificant fraction of the period of existence of sentient life on Earth.
It is an enormous arrogance on our part to base our belief that there are no other sentient beings in the Universe entirely on our own example. We are, in effect, demanding that life on another planet developed in the same timescale as it did on ours! The factors that might influence when we receive a radio signal from another civilization are legion – their distance, the date of origin of the other civilizations, their rate of development to create radio signals, our ability and preparedness to receive a radio signal as it zips past our location at the speed of light, even the question of whether they use radio as a means of communication. While looking for such signals is a whole lot better than doing nothing, it is very far short of a valid test for the non-existence of sentient beings out in the Universe. Asking that another civilization should have developed both long-distance spaceflight capability, and then decided to look for intelligent life in our isolated nook of the Universe, at all and long enough ago to have reached us within the tiny portion of our existence when we would have the scientific development and religious permission to receive and understand such a visit is even more preposterous.
On any basis of science and logic, the answer to Fermi’s question, “Where are they?” is “Wait and see.”