Should you be reading this column on the date of its publication – July 13 – it will be the second and last Friday the 13th this year. I hope you are not superstitious or suffer from triskaidekaphobia, an extreme or irrational fear of the number 13.

And it is only 260 days to the day when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland – the UK, in short – is set to leave the European Union (EU). The UK’s exit from the EU has come to be known by a singular word, Brexit, which is a blending of British (or Britain) and exit.

Two-hundred-and-sixty days to go. Is that a long or short time? Well, it depends on your perception. For instance, the Ephemeral mayfly and the whitefly of the Susquehanna river have a life span of 24 hours. Quite a few flies would have perished by time Brexit dawns.

Speaking of dawn, but thinking of dusk, there is something that entices the world for 260 days, uninterrupted. It is called the Beacon of Maracaibo, which is considered to be one of the strangest weather phenomena in the world. To experience it, you would need to travel to Venezuela and, specifically, to the Catatumbo Delta, where the Catatumbo river empties into South America’s largest lake. It is there that an ‘everlasting lightning storm’ rages unabatedly for up to ten hours on each of the consecutive 260 nights. Unsurprisingly, it is the most lightning-concentrated spot in the world. This lightning is said to have guided sailors for centuries, and has found infamy in Spanish poet Lope de Vega’s 1597 poem, The Dragontea.

Ironically, with the clock ticking towards to 23:00 on Friday, March 29, 2019, the UK government appears to be rudderless and without a lit beacon. The only thing that remotely resembles a beacon is the ever-dimming mandate that the referendum delivered. The mandate was for the UK to leave the EU.

So, while the UK and the remaining 27 members of the EU are to-ing and fro-ing, among other things, South Africa might well be missing a bit, particularly in this unfolding era of Trumponomics. What about ‘South Africa First’? Undoubtedly, the power has shifted in UK-Africa trade relations, and, in particular, in UK-South Africa trade relations.

So, why is South Africa not seizing the initiative? The UK is in dire need of negotiating trade agreements and trade preferences. There is even an element of the UK replacing, possibly even retaining, the EU’s trade agreements and trade preferences with other countries.

The obvious question is why South Africa would be inclined to conclude an identical trade agreement with the UK that it has (‘enjoys’ might be a bit of an overstatement) with the EU. Let us cut to the chase: South Africa (well, South Africa and the Southern African Customs Union, or Sacu, and Mozambique) negotiated an economic partnership agreement with the EU, which was effectively a compromised trade agreement, as it had to take into account the interests of all the then 28 EU member countries. Sacu, although essentially as single country as far as tariff and trader policy is concerned, is already mobilised to effectively and efficiently negotiate with the UK.

South Africa is holding a number of aces, or holding all the cards, which, if you are unfamiliar with the card idiom, means that a single player is holding all the resources or advantages needed to be in control of a situation. So, why then is South Africa not seizing total control of the situation?

If anything, South Africa should not heed the words of Kenny Rogers’ 1978 song, The Gambler: “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, Know when to walk away, know when to run . . .”