Theresa May will be spending her last week in No 10 Downing Street after mounting what was a determined but ultimately failed campaign to get her country out of the EU in the best possible way.
Her choices were stark over the almost three years she was in office, and it was, in truth, not the UK she had imagined she would lead.
The reason the UK is now facing the hard yards of a divorce without any coherent plan except the blind faith of that old bluster called the British bulldog spirit, encompassed by a certain Boris Johnson, is that her beloved party decided to take its internal battles onto the national stage.
This is something to which we at the bottom tip of Africa can relate. The battles of the ANC have engulfed our national psyche since as far back as 2005, when former president Thabo Mbeki did the rightful thing in firing his deputy, Jacob Zuma.
Depending on who is winning the battle on any given Sunday, we've been stuck in a Woody Allen play - one of high neuroticism.
Let's be honest with ourselves - the ANC's December 2017 elective conference was a much bigger play than our most recent elections.
It engulfed us, and while at first the markets and the rand in particular could ignore the rot in the party, when the era of cheap money from the US came to an end some five years ago our fundamentals suddenly mattered.
Ever since, we've been bombarded with the term structural reform. I'll let you in on a little secret: the need was always there.
When former British prime minister David Cameron called for a referendum on Britain's continued stay in Europe, he brought his own party's factional battles onto the national stage. The cost has, so far, been steep.
Being in or out of the European family is a debate that has been in the party for decades. It harks back to the days even before former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, one of my favourite historical figures along with the US's Ronald Reagan, who I blame for much of what's wrong with the world - namely, global inequality that is at crisis proportions.
Anyway, back to the UK's now-shared experience of the Conservative Party's ideological battle that no-one has been able to ultimately win, regardless of evidence that suggests being part of Europe has been good. Put on a national stage, it's now become an emotive issue stirred by jesters such as Nigel Farage.
We have a familiar cast of characters. We've lived and continue to do so through such factional plays within our governing party, and our opposition parties are an extension of that theatre, the red berets in particular.
Has SA been the better for it? I'd have to suggest not.
May pays the price for Cameron's decision to put party before state and will go down as one of the worst leaders in that country's history.
Her much-beloved party, as old as the ANC, is left in a position where one wonders if it will ever recover from the ravages of that 2016 referendum.
Which brings me to the South African story and the choices before President Cyril Ramaphosa and his much-beloved ANC.
The truth is that in correcting the record of bad governance by the ANC over the past decade, there's much that has to be undone within the 107-year-old party.
As much as he has to focus on getting the country on an improved growth trajectory and deal with our many socioeconomic issues, it's inescapable that there'll be battles in the corridors of Luthuli House.
The question is, how does Ramaphosa avoid making all 58-million of us suffer the consequences?
His cabinet choices were perhaps his first test, and I looked out for the compromises he had to make, seeking out the names he simply couldn't exclude for the sake of organisational unity, even if it was at the expense of a malfunctioning department.
And you have to say, given the pool and how it's been muddied over the past decade's narrative of state capture and incompetence, these are compromises that, for now, can be stomached. One may wonder, perhaps cynically, whether Ebrahim Patel's five years of economic planning will now bear fruit in the ministry of trade & industry.
It's time now for Ramaphosa and his cabinet to actually lead, to make mistakes if needs be, rather than leave us, along with his party, amid uncertainty that has left the state paralysed.
And, more important, to take lessons from the UK, by keeping ANC battles in Luthuli House and off social media.
• Derby, a former Business Times editor, hosts Power Business on Power FM
