H. Leroy Vail, who is an associate professor of history at Harvard, says the ANC itself might even split.
"There will be real politics in the Black community that there has not been before--not the facade of unity the people think of when they think of the ANC," Vail says.
Of course, some--like Abernethy--see the potential spintering as the positive side-effect of democratization.
But even Abernethy admits the Blacks are in a no-win position: If they stay together, they are accused of inflexibility. If they splinter, they are accused of lacking a cohesive vision.
"If a movement stays together, it is seen as authoritarian and without diversity," Abernethy says. "Or the notion is that the Africans can never get together."
All of which might make most scholars skeptical about the prospects for real reform in South Africa. But "as we have learned from went on in Eastern Europe," Vail says, "you can never tell what is going to happen tomorrow."
"I worry about being optimistic," Rotberg says, "but after a long drought, it has begun to sprinkle."