A FRIEND of mine in London sent me an amazing betting statistic. If you had wagered a paltry £5 on a trifecta of Leicester City winning the Premier League in May, Britain voting for Brexit in June and Americans electing Donald Trump president last week, you would have won a staggering £13.5-million. So unlikely were these seismic shocks that practically no one saw any of this coming. The pundit Nassim Nicholas Taleb, nine years ago, achieved fame and fortune with his “Black Swan” thesis, events of low probability but of devastating impact. The waters of the world are crowded with these once rare creatures. Not that South Africa has been devoid of such sightings either: who would have bet that last December we would run through three finance ministers in just four days? More recently, the admired old-new finance minister Pravin Gordhan, stands like Horatio on the bridge trying to hold back the ratings agencies armed with their lethal downgrade-axes. Who would have bet that he would b...
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