Supporters of the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed the country since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, gathered in a soccer stadium in Johannesburg to hear a speech by the party leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, 71.

The ANC, which faces an unprecedented challenge to its parliamentary majority in Africa’s most industrialized economy, has been losing electoral support for the past two decades, and Wednesday’s general election could be a watershed moment if the party once led by Nelson Mandela falls below 50% of the national vote for the first time, as some polls suggest, forcing it to seek coalition partners to govern.

Thousands of supporters clad in the ANC’s black, green and gold colors heard Ramaphosa acknowledge some of the grievances of South Africans, notably high levels of poverty and unemployment, which disproportionately affect the country’s black majority. “We have a plan to get more South Africans into work,” the president promised.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) held a rally in Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city and its traditional stronghold, where its leader, John Steenhuisen, asked supporters if they were “ready for change.”

While ANC support has declined in three successive national elections and appears set to fall further, no party has emerged to replace it — or even seriously challenge it — and that is unlikely to change in this election, though a loss of its outright majority would represent the clearest rejection yet of the party that spearheaded the anti-apartheid movement and is credited with leading South Africans to freedom.

South Africa, a nation of 62 million people, struggles with poverty, high unemployment, some of the world’s highest levels of inequality and problems such as corruption, violent crime and a lack of basic services in many areas.

The ANC’s persistent failures have led many of its supporters to drift away over the past two decades to an array of opposition parties, some of them new, resulting in a record 52 parties registered to contest Wednesday’s election.

South Africans vote for parties and independent candidates, under a system of proportional representation, not directly for their president, who is elected by parliament for a five-year term.

If the ANC falls short of winning at least 201 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, it will need to reach an agreement with one or more other parties to reelect Ramaphosa, a one-time protege of Mandela, for a second and final term.

The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) held its final major pre-election rally in the northern city of Polokwane, the hometown of its leader, Julius Malema.

“The people of South Africa must decide if they want unemployment,” Malema told supporters.

The MK (uMkhonto we Sizwe — the ANC’s military wing during the struggle against apartheid), a party founded earlier this year by Jacob Zuma, who was last week ruled ineligible for the presidency by South Africa’s Constitutional Court, rallied supporters in a township outside the eastern coastal city of Durban. Zuma did not attend, but his daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, addressed the rally, where MK supporters chanted, “Run, Ramaphosa, run.”

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