God willing, on Monday, February 2, 2026, I will celebrate 25 years since my first column was published in this magazine. I vividly recall going to their offices to meet with Terence and Kenneth Creamer to pitch the idea of a customs excise column. I even had the name and the mocks made up.

Why this publication? When I was on university breaks, I would walk down the ramp of The Sanlam Centre in Amanzimtoti. On the ground floor was a CNA, and on one of the shelves was Engineering News, then still in newspaper format. To cut a long story short, Terence and Kenneth agreed, with a counterproposal to name it Trade@Work and, excitingly, the magazine would soon transition into a magazine format.

To my great surprise, Martin Creamer, the publishing editor, referenced the new column in his editorial, the most significant endorsement I could have asked for. I think that the circulation for the issue hit an all-time high. I can neither confirm nor deny who bought the extra copies. A few years later, Martin Zhuwakinyu became my editor, and one of his many attributes is his patience, which is nothing short of that of a saint.

Thank you to those of you who made the journey with me from the start and those who joined along the way for investing your time in reading the column.

What I have tried to do as the column evolved is to simplify customs, excise and international trade. This is an area that, in my humble opinion, is made out to be way more complicated than it should be. As Albert Einstein so eloquently said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

With that in mind, I also set about writing a book, the start of which I kept secret to spare my own embarrassment. In recent weeks, Wolters Kluwer Law released my book, Customs & Excises in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Customs & Excises.

In this book, I challenge the fallacy that the Customs and Excises environment is not susceptible to a coherent summary. The book provides a unique and innovative roadmap, supplemented with figures that can be used independently or collectively, to easily navigate the Customs and Excises cornerstones, concepts, methodologies, and procedures, and to provide you with a customs optimisation process derived from the lesson.

Customs and Excises can be reduced to a single lesson and condensed into one sentence: “The art of Customs and Excises consists of not merely accepting the terminology for its linguistic meaning; it consists of ensuring that the terminology, its context, its meaning, and its effective, efficient, and compliant application are fully understood, and appreciated, in both reference and application.”

Why tell you all this? Well, how closely have you been following South Africa’s trade negotiations with the US? Granted, ‘negotiations’ might be a tad intense, as both parties need to engage. Then there is the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). How familiar are you with Agoa – what it is, and what it is trying to achieve? More importantly, will it even be renewed for South Africa? So, with no trade agreement with the US and no Agoa preferential tariff access, where will this leave South Africa?

Then, on November 21, the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa initiated an antidumping investigation into ceramic and porcelain wall and floor tiles (excluding finishing ceramics) originating in or imported from . . . Want to guess against whom? Hint: against South Africa’s one BRICS ally – India – and three of its Southern African Development Community allies: Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In case you were wondering about Mozambique’s inclusion – it, along with the Southern African Customs Union, has an Economic Partnership Agreement with the UK.

Forget the adage “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”; perhaps 2026 might well be the time for the South African government to declare its ‘trade friends’ and its ‘trade enemies’. If you take exception to the word ‘enemies’, how about ‘adversaries’, ‘opponents’, or ‘rivals’?

Trade is war, make no mistake; there is no candy-coating it – everyone wants to win. The real question is: Does South Africa want to win?