South Africa's ruling party elects a new president; he assures audiences at home and abroad that he will herald an era of desperately needed reform leading to political and economic recovery.
Opinion is deeply divided. The optimists, in short supply after the ruinous misrule of his predecessor, cling to the hope that the new man will walk the path his new-era talk indicates. The pessimists suggest this is simply placing a better face on an organisation incapable of transcending change.
Anyway, what hope of the new man delivering? He sat in the cabinet of the old president doing nothing - visibly at least - to halt the rot of his calamitous policies.But when the new president delivers his state of the nation speech - his election as party president being followed by his assumption of the country presidency - he capsizes, in one address, the old order almost entirely.
The above is a reasonable working description of South Africa after FW de Klerk's election as leader of the National Party in early 1989. His predecessor, PW Botha, remained as state president for the next six months, and the "two centres of power" suggested implacable paralysis at a moment of national crisis and pending economic collapse.
Many of the historic elements cited above can, with some panel beating, fit the hinge-of-history moment South Africa finds itself in right now, some 28 years after De Klerk spoke to parliament for the first time after he had combined the roles of state and party president.
Of course, some fat health warnings on over-egging the comparison are necessary.
Even at this late stage, less than a month before parliament opens for its 2018 session, the identity of the speaker who will actually deliver the state of the nation address remains bewilderingly unclear. If it's not Cyril Ramaphosa, expect the tailwinds of anticipated change elevating our currency and sovereign prospects to reverse into headwinds.
Then there is the reminder of the late Israeli statesman Abba Eban that "history is baroque" and no two analogies, even in the same country, are ever exact. Indeed, a local policy analyst who I admire admonished me last year for suggesting that South Africa's economic crisis was so grave that only a presidential game-changer - just as De Klerk proved to be - could steer us away from the cliff of economic ruination. She suggested this was "unhelpful".In order to be indeed helpful, earlier this week in Durban, invited by the DA to deliver some thoughts on the "state of the nation", I suggested that Ramaphosa is a game-changer, although I added "it is very early days". His bold moves on shaking up the Eskom board are deeply encouraging, although to borrow from the cliché bank, "one swallow does not a summer make".
But a game-changer suggests that the field of play has changed. Just how profoundly was suggested by the Financial Times's Africa editor, David Pilling, reporting from this week's World Economic Forum in Davos. He enthused about the leadership changes here and in Zimbabwe and Angola: "There is a great upheaval, not to say a full-scale revolution, going on in Southern Africa."
My unexceptional remark to the party I dedicated my adult life to building drew a bizarre response from one of its provincial barons. He suggested that if I believed in Ramaphosa's game-changing ability, "I should join the ANC". Actually this young chap should, if he has any knowledge of football, know that when a game-changer comes on the field, you don't change sides, you up your game and, where necessary, change tactics.
For the moment no one knows precisely what "the great upheaval" means. New hope or false dawn? Not a perfect situation, but better than the alternative before Nasrec.
Voltaire reminds us that "doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one".
• Leon is a former opposition leader and former ambassador to Argentina..