Zawadi: Madame President for Afrika

Contents

1

OPERATION AFRICA

2

VIMAAC

3

PRE INAUGURATION LUNCHEON

4

GROWING UP TALKING TO A PICTURE

5

CONUBA GENE BANK

6

6 POLITICS

7

JUMA

8

THE TRANSGENIC MADNESS

9

POOR AFRICANS, OR ARE THEY?

10

AIR SAFETY

11

FAMILY REUNION IN SYDNEY

12

HOLIDAY EXTRAORDINAIRE

13

ANTI-TECHNOLOGY DESPERADOS

14

THE GENEVA ACCORD—PREPARATIONS FOR A WORLD GOVERNMENT.

15

ZAWADI CHANGES HER COLOR

16

AN INTERNET WEDDING

17

MOVE TO ZANZIBAR

18

CHANGE AFRICA GROUP (CAG)

19

THE INTERNAL THINK TANK (ITT)

20

THE ELECTIONS

21

LITIGATION IN ANTANANARIVO

22

BEAUTIKA’S GALA

23

DEATH IN THE PENTHOUSE

24

Stella

25

ZAWADI’S INAUGURATION

1

OPERATION AFRICA

The soft-ringing from the miniature alarm that was built into her earring awakened Zawadi at six-thirty in the morning. With a subconscious timer that was nearly as exact, she normally did not need to use the alarm, but she could not afford to gamble on this particular day. Nor could she forgive herself if anything went wrong. It was a Saturday, but no ordinary Saturday. It was the day she would be inaugurated as the first President of the United Africa.

Far away in Ottawa, president Gonzales, the president of the American bloc, consisting of USA, Canada and Mexico, had installed Operation Africa. Several of NASA’s top men and CIA had been for months at basement of his presidential palace as they watched Zawadi’s every move on a giant screen, thanks to NASA’s latest espionage device that pored through walls of concrete and metal. The device was so thorough that it even read documents as they lay on the table. On that particular morning, simultaneous images of the goings on in Zawadi’s residential house, her office, and that of Gebre Bayou, her closest political aide were on the screen.

Danny Foggerty, the elderly NASA chief, was the brain behind Operation Africa, with the aim of tracking developments regarding Zawadi’s quest for power in Africa. The CIA, which was still the most powerful intelligence agency now belonged to the American bloc rather than to the USA alone, and provided the required intelligence for Operation Africa. Only a handful of people knew about the project, or even why it was instituted in the first place.

‘This is going to be another secret until we are all dead’ said Lukas, one of the men working on Operation Africa as he pushed a mug of black coffee away from his view for the screen.

‘Absolutely not’, said his colleague. ‘I bet that China and India have similar plans as we have. Don’t fool yourself. If we succeed, they will tell the world why we are doing what we are doing. If we don’t succeed, it will be us to spill out their secret.’

‘Why are you so sure they are playing the same game?’ asked Zach, the second NASA technician. ‘I hope you are not a double agent.’

‘Come on—there is activity in Gebre’s office. Its my turn to take a snooze so here, take this,’ said the third man, a specialist in espionage, as he handed the mouse-like device to Lukas and disappeared to his bedroom at the basement.

Even as they kept vigil on Zawadi and her close associates, the NASA men kept wondering whether it was not too late to change anything.

‘To me the die is cast,’ said Lukas. I do not think we can reverse anything at this point. ‘Her inauguration is this afternoon.’

‘It ain’t over until it’s over,’ interjected Wendy Forester the chief CIA man on Operation Africa, who had just entered the room just in time to hear Lukas’s doubts. The CIA did not want to divulge what they knew about Zawadi to the NASA team in Operation Africa. Wendy was determined to keep them at the technical level as much as possible.

‘We are winning anyway, whether she gets inaugurated or not,’ was all Wendy was willing to divulge. ‘I have assured president Gonzales as much.’

The battle for world power was an ongoing one. The American bloc had long sensed that a united Asia was their greatest opponent, not Europe. With China and India, plus the rest of the Asiatic countries forming the greatest economic power, it was a matter of time for them to align enough of the rest of the world to give them political power too. The American bloc had always kept the political power—mainly due to their nuclear might. However, this balance was very delicate and could be overturned by the slightest of events. Was Africa the deciding factor? Only time would tell. The paparazzi had made a big issue of the fact that Zawadi held the key. Speculations about whether she would say or announce something during her inauguration were rife. The truth was that even the paparazzi did not know what was really happening, and in which direction things would go.

That Saturday morning, Zawadi lay in bed for a while to reflect on the hectic events of the previous few months that culminated in her election. Reflecting on the past was not one of her strong points. The ambitious, forward-looking Zawadi never lived in the present either. She preferred to live in the future, a technique that was introduced into her life by her high school psychology and philosophy teacher, Gwen Fimola.

‘Learn from the past and move on’ was Gwen’s famous line that had had a profound impact on the impressionable teenage Zawadi, except that she concentrated on the moving on part so much so that it alarmed her at times. She often feared that she would end up being a hopeless dreamer with nothing to show for her life. The events that had unfolded in the previous few months were a testimony to the fact that Zawadi’s fears were wrong. That morning she was anticipating a monumental milestone in her life, and one that only a select few get to accomplish in a lifetime.

Not wanting to be distracted from preparing herself for the day ahead, Zawadi proceeded to the bathroom to unwind from the rigors of the campaign frenzy to which she had given herself with great abandon. In hindsight, she had not known that she possessed so much energy. Now the hard task was behind her, to give way to an even harder, if exciting, task. The task of leading the now 80-state continent of Africa to an unknown future with far-fetched promises that even she did not believe she was able to deliver to her electors. She often wondered about where her audacity had come from. The quixotic thought of leading Africa in un-chartered waters sent adrenaline flowing through her blood. Such was the stuff that animated her, that made her tick.

2

VIMAAC

The elaborate inauguration was to start at 3 p.m. in Cote d’ Ivoire that Saturday, with an inauguration luncheon in Conuba, Zawadi’s country of birth. This was a mistake that Zawadi regretted consenting to, as it would mean hurrying from the luncheon to the main function. Juma Tilimbuza, her long-time friend and husband, purposely made himself busy in order to leave her alone. He did not have a choice, anyway, because she intended to spend the time alone—meditating for the better part of the morning, before the luncheon.

Between the bathroom and the living room was the fifteen-meter square exercise room, and the largest room in her modern bungalow, reflecting the importance Zawadi placed on keeping fit. The floor was covered with a thick green carpet of simulated Kikuyu grass made of soft synthetic fibers. The soothing outdoor effect of the room would have been better if the room wasn’t littered with exercise machinery that made it look a little un inviting. Keeping fit and maintaining her target figure was so important to Zawadi that she placed life-size photographs of her ideal figure hung on all four walls. She even placed a picture of her real head to help her to focus on the goal.

Thousands of vibrating rubber rods gave Zawadi a tingling sensation as they massaged her body repeatedly as she lay with her eyes closed in her indispensable VIMAAC. This was a VIbrator cum MAssager cum ACupuncture machine, hence its name. The acupuncture mode, which used laser technology instead of the traditional needles, was rarely used except in case of an ailment that needed correcting. Like Pavlov’s dog, Zawadi’s body usually got the calming sensation even before stepping into the machine. It was her favorite exercise machine because from it she got so much from doing very little. All she needed to do was to lie down and let the machine do the rest. In a world where nothing was free, what she got from the VIMAAC seemed more than she put in. Besides, it was the perfect setting from which to plan her day, her life. Perfect for any day and especially this day.

Zawadi still remembered the day when in one VIMAAC session the idea of joining African politics came to her mind. The idea looked so real and possible. Later, after hours of pondering on it, the idea was frightening. She wondered why her thinking sessions in the VIMAAC were so different from other times. It was almost like she had two different personalities. Often the thinking mode in her was so stimulated that she would need to write the ideas down as soon as she left the VIMAAC. She even consulted Dr. Wan Hu after the first six months of using the VIMAAC, seeking for an explanation to the changes that she had noted, and supplemented his views with her own research on the issue.

‘All human beings have a creative self that often gets submerged under the weight of anxiety, stress, anger and a host of other things’ explained Dr. Hu. ‘This creativity is at its best during relaxation. The brain is in charge of the entire body. It would seem that the creative part of the brain gets last priority when the brain is inundated with millions of other urgent hostile sensoriums. In total relaxation, the creative part resurfaces, and will turn out creative ideas as long as you encourage it by your active participation.’ Zawadi could not argue with that. She only wondered why she had not discovered it sooner. In retrospect, she was glad that she followed some of those ideas. At least one of them had yielded in a big, if frightening way.

In her own search, Zawadi discovered that the phenomenon of creativity had always intrigued scientists. When Albert Einsten, the German-born American inventor died in 1955, scientists removed his brain to find out whether his physical brain looked different from those from ordinary people. It did not. At least on the surface. Zawadi further found out that scientists in her time still thought that creativity could be stimulated artificially, just as it could be sent to sleep.

That Saturday morning, Zawadi was in no mood for scientific philosophy, and would rather enjoy the soothing feeling that encompassed her whole being as her legs, feet, trunk, and arms were massaged and bent according to the pre-programmed schedule of the VIMAAC.

For some thirty minutes, she alternated the vibrator and massage modes several times before doing some aerobics for a further twenty minutes, her mind occasionally drifting to the events before her.

Exercising in the VIMAAC must have made her hungry. She ordered herself a heavier breakfast than usual. Ordered was exactly what she did; though she was in her own house with no servants. The electronic maid, as she was referred to, prepared meals according to programmable orders. Alternating clicking noises and timer sirens that emanated from within the electronic maid attracted no attention, as the compact food processor made of a mini regular oven, a microwave oven, and a refrigerator made Zawadi’s breakfast. After using this machine for many years, the noises were hardly noticeable any more.

The electronic maid was an invention that combined many single inventions to make one new one. All the ready-to-cook ingredients of the meals were stored in the refrigerator part. With sophisticated automation, these ingredients were delivered to the processor that had in-built recipes for various menus, and then relayed to the oven, casserole dish or frying pan, as the case required. Computerized mini robots ran errands inside the wonder electronic maid, supplemented by electrical delivery systems. A display panel on the outside of the electronic maid showed the action happening inside at the particular moment it was happening. The output end of the electronic maid was even furnished with cutlery and a one-foot wide purple conveyor belt that took the meal to the table. That morning, Zawadi had ordered coffee, two croissants and two eggs, before jumping hastily under the shower.

A fresh looking Zawadi, obviously bathed in endorphins from the VIMAAC session, walked out of the shower twenty minutes later to the welcome of a sweet aroma of coffee that infiltrated the whole house. She had switched to the naturally decaffeinated coffee which grew without the demonized alkaloid. It was believed to be a mutant that had lost its caffeine, and played into the hands of a health-crazy society to replace the tedious methods of de-caffeinating the common Coffea arabica, robusta and liberica. Indeed, the natural coffee was a thing of the past. An enriched coffee essence was grown and cloned in laboratories in temperate as well as tropical countries, prompting protests from all the countries where natural coffee was originally grown, which included Far East, India, South and Central America, Africa and the Caribbean Islands. These countries got together and sued the rest of the world for hijacking their crop and commercializing its essence in what was called ‘the great coffee robbery’, and won the suit.

To her astonishment, Zawadi noted the electronic maid had delivered not only what she had ordered, but also pancakes and toast, and an extra pot of coffee. For a moment she thought she must have made a mistake by touching the dial twice, before realizing that the orders were different.

‘No need to draw your gun, it’s me,’ came from behind the kitchen door before Zawadi could figure out the mistake. It was Gebre.

‘I want to have breakfast with you for the last morning when I do not have to call