but for all the wrong reasons

Simultaneously, flawed elections will generate military power seizures, triggered by fraud in counting ballots or decisions by incumbent governments that their opponents were ineligible to run.

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There will be other outbreaks of civil war fuelled by food and fuel shortages or environmental collapses such as failed rains, and such crises will spill over to neighbouring nations because of the movement of impoverished, hungry refugees and not enough resources to help.

The ghastly civil war in Sudan will continue, producing what the International Rescue Committee has termed the world's single most horrific humanitarian crisis. There are millions of refugees, still more facing starvation, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths of people just trying to survive the carnage. This misery will continue.

Even those countries blessed with abundant oil, natural gas and gold mining will continue to suffer kleptocratic regimes and exploitation by shadowy foreign investors. In sum, for Africa, more of the same.

And for South Africa?

Upcoming local elections will generate further fragmentation of the ANC as a national force. In the results, the ANC will find few safe zones, given the success of an often chaotic MK party in KwaZulu-Natal, or the DA and several of the mini-parties in Gauteng.

In turn, this will provoke a revolt among ANC party stalwarts and a push to replace the top leaders with a cohort of younger, lesser-known individuals. But it will not stop the disintegration as several regional party bigwigs defect to other parties — or simply retire from active politics.

Meanwhile, the country's economy will continue to be unable to grow sufficiently to absorb the millions of younger, unemployed people who are desperate for work.