Various leaders cast ballots in the highly contested vote in South Africa

South Africans began voting Wednesday at schools, community centers and in large white tents set up in open fields in an election seen as their country’s most important in 30 years.

It could put the young democracy in unknown territory.

President Cyril Ramaphosa cast his vote alongside his wife, Tshepo Motsepe in the Johannesburg township of Soweto.

At stake is the three-decade dominance of the African National Congress party, which led South Africa out of apartheid’s brutal white minority rule in 1994.

It is now the target of a new generation of discontent in a…