THE THICK END OF THE WEDGE
SA can help debunk some Brexit myths
The Brits will be desperate in a year or two. SA’s trade negotiators must be ready to be tough, writes Peter Bruce
It was probably no bad thing that Philip Hammond, the UK chancellor, chose SA as an early trip to test out how his government is going to get by in the world once (if) it leaves the EU. We have some lessons for the British, though I doubt anyone bothered to tell him. The whole notion of Brexit is grounded in romance. It’s a romance of industry, of Made in Britain, Sheffield steel, Jaguars and MGs, the Comet and Concorde. Romance for when British gramophones, shampoos and ships were the best in the world. When Japanese cars were the cheap pretenders. The thing is, the world has gone post-industrial. There’s nothing more to make, not in any big, tangible sense, that isn’t already being made well by someone else. It is something we South Africans seem to have realised ourselves. Remember all the nonsense about beneficiation and how mines would be compelled to sell their minerals cheaply to the state, which would then see to it that these were used to reindustrialise a prosperous and jo...
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