First Book

Tinashe Rutumhu's first novel is about to be published.

INTELLECTUAL TRAFFICKERS
A heavy, cold, menacing atmosphere clouds Cape Town as February dawns.
Driven by lust, greed and covetousness, high school friends Lisa, Allen, Jeffrey and Trish form a formidable criminal intellectual force. Employing a sophisticated understanding of modern criminal intelligence, in the blink of an eye they manage to substitute doctored vehicles for the expensive cars of ministers, business tycoons and other influential people. An early morning newspaper advertisement ignites the sequence of events that unfolds.
Exhilarated by their accomplishment, they infiltrate the Cape Medical Institute posing as highly qualified doctors and set out to profit from smuggling human body organs. To achieve their objective, babies are infected with the deadly HIV virus, someone is seduced and another person gruesomely silenced…
Children disappearing into thin air and links to drug barons send shivers through the residents of Durban and Cape Town. Trish defects to the CIO team. Will they be able to achieve their objectives before the drunkard Head of Central Intelligence Office, whose son is also missing, closes in on them?
If caught, a harsh judgment awaits them but what they fear most is being branded as intellectual failures. To defend their title and pride, they resort to firearms and violence, betraying their intellectual superiority.
Lust, passion, intellectual arrogance and descent into evil are compellingly intertwined as you turn page after page…

An Essay
by Tinashe Rutumhu

Raising a child is a long and perilous journey but let me share with you this small message arising from the point of view and experiences of a 20 year old male who has seen youth from all quarters. A lot of the advice comes from adults but I want to speak as a person who has gone through or observed all these things.
 
In this modern world our children tend to be exposed to different illicit and illegal activities. Mainly in their adolescent they do go into pornography, alcohol and drug abuse. This bad exposure can be blamed on a media that has created a way of life and an industry that feeds off it
 
As a parent, you would have reared your child from infancy to this adolescent stage. Therefore you will be able to detect changes in the character of your child. Let us say your child has become recluse. For example he is always in his bedroom watching television and surfing on the internet.Previously maybe he was outgoing and suddenly he just wants to live in seclusion. As a parent you need to ask yourself why? What if he is watching pornography on the internet all day, to the extent that all his thoughts are programmed only to think of nudity and sex? Interest in life is lost and the only companion will be his laptop. So as a parent you need to monitor his or her activities on the internet. Best of all put parental control programs to avoid exposure to these mind corrupting sites.
 
Another indication of a problem is when your child just suddenly starts to jump meals giving excuses and avoiding meal times. Often it results in the child consuming nothing at all. This problem needs to be identified before he has gone deeper into the dungeon. With a symptom like this, you will know that your child is into drugs mostly. As with most drugs, what usually happens is you will have loss of appetite, followed by weight loss. It also goes hand in hand with shabbiness. Your dear smart and neat child will no longer have time to look after himself. Due to misbehaving, an ill-disciplined character will emerge. No respect for the peers or elders will be seen.
 
Marks will drop at school and if no one notices, the drop will become drastic. There will be absconding classes, misbehaving and late nights out. These are followed by many excuses being brought up both to parents and teachers. If not controlled, hard partying will follow and this will drive the child deeper into the abyss. School expulsion will follow and sometimes money will just disappear in the home. Many reasons will be given to fork out money from the parents in order to pay for the ever amounting cravings. Gadgets, items and some materials will disappear from home as they would be needed for selling to get instant cash to purchase drugs and alcohol.
 
These same symptoms are commonplace, the child being silent, recluse, losing appetite, marks dropping at school, lies being summed up every day, asking for money every time, ill discipline, things disappearing and shabbiness. These symptoms which will haunt you as a parent, so quick remedial action will be needed. Counselling and rehabilitating your child will be the best medicine or referring him to an expert in the field of dealing with children like this.