The ANC's defeat in 2024 is likely if Nkosazana succeeds Zuma

For all the agonising over whether President Jacob Zuma can delay the inquiry into state capture ordered by former public protector Thuli Madonsela, or whether the Gupta family he enriches can continue operating in South Africa, or whether Hlaudi Motsoeneng continues to run the SABC with Zuma's hidden hand supporting him, there is one clear event that would stop it all in its tracks.

If the ANC vote in the general election of 2019 falls far enough below 50%, all of this ends almost immediately. A coalition of almost any combination of opposition parties would stop it. Even a coalition the ANC plays a part in could stop it.

Sadly, there is only a faint chance of the ANC sliding below 50% in the next 30 months or so - but the mere fact that the possibility actually exists is astonishing. It has taken a government of exceptional feebleness and depravity to bring the once powerful ANC to this precipice.

But if Zuma is able to control his succession in December next year and hand leadership of party and country to his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, much of the madness will continue.

That will have been the point of her succeeding him. It would make the prospect of a serious defeat for the ANC in 2024 much more likely. And, when that happens, the Great Trials will start.

The Great Trials will fall into two parts. Early in 2025 Zuma, who will then be 82, will face the fraud charges he had successfully avoided for 15 years. He will be found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison. By the time that trial is completed he will also be chief among the accused in the much larger trial of state capture.

The Gupta family will by then have permanently left South Africa for Dubai, from where they cannot easily be extradited. But a string of locals will have either left it too late to run or will not be able to afford to.

The charges will range from money laundering to theft, fraud, racketeering, aiding and abetting, receiving stolen goods, breaking foreign exchange regulations, tax evasion, lying under oath, breaching the oath of office and, of course, corruption.

The dock will be quite something. They'll all be there. Zuma, his son Duduzane, Brian Molefe, Hlaudi, former SABC chairman Mbulaheni Maguvhe, Salim Essa, former members of the boards of Transnet, SAA, Eskom and Denel, Tom Moyane and Berning Ntlemeza, former cabinet ministers Mosebenzi Zwane, Des van Rooyen and Faith Muthambi and collaborators such as Mzwanele (Jimmy) Manyi and Eric Wood.

The witness list will be huge. Everyone knows a little something about what these people have done to impoverish our country. Meanwhile, the new government will attempt to freeze the funds of any of the accused that may have found ways to leave the country. The great centres of banking and finance, relieved to see South Africa back on track, will co-operate with enthusiasm.

The Scorpions, or a service that combines the powers of prosecution and investigation, will be revived. It will be split into three specialist divisions. One to investigate and prosecute state capture in the Zuma years.

Another to investigate and prosecute the illegal externalisation of capital before 1994. And another to investigate the mechanisms under which money (outside of the Zupta circle) is still able to leave the country in breathtaking amounts.

Some of the offshore deals being done today look an awful lot like the Russian oligarchs of a decade ago getting their booty the hell out of Dodge.

As it turns out, the new South Africa has yet to be born. WB Yeats's poem The Second Coming is apposite for our moment. He wrote it after World War 1, recognising the decline of his civilisation. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ... The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.

The moment of our normality, or recovery, will be announced by the end of the ANC as a liberation movement and its birth as an opposition party; 2024 is the year. I shall hopefully be there to write about it, perhaps even in this great newspaper. The Great Trials will cleanse our society and teach us all, hopefully, that the price of true freedom is eternal vigilance. A Jacob Zuma must never happen here again.