Several Leaders Cast Ballots In The Highly Contested Election In South Africa

South Africans began voting Wednesday at schools, community centers, and large white tents in open fields in an election billed as the country’s most important in 30 years. It could put the fledgling democracy in unfamiliar territory. President Cyril Ramaphosa voted Leaders with his wife, Tshepo Motsepe, in the Johannesburg township of Soweto.

The African National Congress party, which led South Africa out of apartheid’s brutal white minority rule in 1994, is defending its three-decade dominance. It is now the target of a new generation of discontent in a country of 62 million people, half of whom are estimated to be poor.

The lingering inequality, with poverty and unemployment disproportionately affecting the Black majority, threatens to unseat the party that promised to end apartheid with the slogan “a better life for all.”

After winning six consecutive national elections, several polls show the ANC’s support is less than 50% ahead of this one, an unprecedented drop.

It may lose its parliamentary majority for the first time despite being widely expected to hold the most seats. The leader of the Democratic Alliance cast his vote in Durban on Wednesday in South Africa’s election, which was seen as their country’s most important in 30 years.