That achievement would also overcome a final frontier; they have defeated every other World Test Championship participant in a series at some point in their history.
New Zealand have been within cooey before.
On the 1961-62 expedition, they were 1-all going into the fourth match of the five-test rubber at Johannesburg's Wanderers when pace bowler Goofy Lawrence secured match figures of nine for 109 in an innings and 51-run trouncing. The visitors levelled the series 2-2 in the final fixture.
On the 1994-95 tour - prefixed in some quarters by "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" - the visitors won the first test of three back at Johannesburg. They subsequently became the first team in the 20th century to lose a three-match series from that position.
Perhaps their best previous chance of success was in the 2003-04 summer after a draw at Seddon Park and Chris Martin's career-best figures of 11 wickets for 180 helping deliver a nine-wicket triumph at Eden Park. New Zealand went to the Basin Reserve and lost by six wickets courtesy of a Graeme Smith fourth-innings ton.
An element of trivia adds fuel to any argument the New Zealand team's compass has swung 180 degrees from the scenes at Newlands when fans at home could have been forgiven for hiding behind the couch and eventually retiring hurt later in the evening.
The absence of Kane Williamson and Trent Boult meant no Black Cap who featured in the 2013 capitulation appeared in the 2022 redemption.
And who was the solitary South African? Current captain Dean Elgar, in the second of his 73 tests.
Nothing has been decided about Boult's return from paternity leave as yet.
If he's unavailable for the second test, that would only compound the romantic narrative that a fresh generation of New Zealand players have learned the lessons of their forebears.
Plus, the South African side are far from the Who's Who ensemble of the past couple of decades. Seldom, if ever, have they seemed more vulnerable.
