As I gazed across SW15, the postcode of the city famously known as London, at 00:01 GMT on January 31, Brexit – a portmanteau of ‘British’ and ‘exit’ – which signifies the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, had started. That was 1 318 days after the UK voted for the move.


As I looked outside, the scenes that were playing out resembled a New Year celebration. But perhaps not all Britons were involved in the celebrations, as the vote to leave was 51.9% to 48.1%.


As with a New Year celebration, there was a sense of promise and prosperity, but then nothing had changed from a mere second earlier. The existing challenges for the UK’s citizens remain, and there will also be many additional challenges.


After the lyrics of So Long, Farewell, a song from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s 1959 musical, The Sound of Music, have died down and faded away, the real tedious work of negotiating an agreement will begin.


Meanwhile, on January 31, the Bank of England launched its 50p coin for public circulation, with the message on one side reading: ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations’. If you thought this quote came from a prominent British politician, you were mistaken. I would venture to guess you thought this quote is attributable to the famed British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. It is, in fact, attributable to an American politician, the third President of the US, who, in this Inaugural address on March 4, 1801, which was titled ‘Friends and Fellow Citizens’, said: “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” He used these words to describe his policy of peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations. You may have spotted that the 50p coin does not contain the full quote – it omits ‘entangling alliances with none’.


The current British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has been quoting from Churchill’s speech of November 10, 1942, at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, titled ‘The end of the beginning’: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”


I must say I am irked by South Africa’s Brexit approach, as I stated in the October 04, 2019, instalment of this column, titled ‘SA’s Brexit approach: roll over and play dead’. You might recall that, on September 11, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition issued a media release titled ‘South Africa agrees new economic partnership agreement with the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit’. On November 5, the South African government released 11 documents on the ‘Economic Partnership Agreement between the Southern African Customs Union Member States and Mozambique, of the one part, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of the other part’.


What trade deals has the UK concluded so far? The answer was provided in a British Broadcasting Corporation article published on February 1: a total of 21 trade deals with more than 50 countries, out of a potential 40 trade deals with more than 70 countries. The countries involved include Andean countries, Caribbean countries, Central American countries, Chile, Eastern and Southern Africa, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Morocco, Norway, Pacific Islands, Palestinian Authority, South Korea, Switzerland and Tunisia. Just why South Africa was so eager to sign tells a story, a very sad story.


On an extremely sad note, my beloved Brando passed away. I treasure many an evening when you snuggled at my feet as I wrote my column.