“Will the 20s roar like they did in the last century or will the outcome be different?” (Clem Sunter)

What exactly is in store for us South Africans in the Twenty-Twenties? It’s a vital question not only for business and for investors, but for us all on the most personal level.

Of course it’s also a question that’s a lot easier to ask than to answer. As Nobel Prize winning physicist Niels Bohr put it: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future” – witness the new COVID-19 coronavirus scare which has suddenly popped up with its game-changing impacts on the world and world economies.

Nevertheless as Clem Sunter (well known for his “High Road or Low Road?” speeches in the late Eighties) reminds us, we can and should still use scenario planning to ready ourselves for any one of a whole variety of possible futures. And in his article “The world and South Africa in the 2020s” (read it on Leader.co.za here) he discusses all the major global and local flags and scenarios to watch out for.

Let’s hope that his concluding “I give a return to the High Road trajectory, with all the flags I talked about turning green, a heads-up with a probability of 80%” holds true!