TODAY could be an historic day in the turbulent story of SA’s evolving democracy, one we may look back on as marking the moment when, even as we found ourselves at the nadir of decline, things suddenly began to change for the better.

We have been through our long and difficult struggle years, which culminated in the triumphant defeat of apartheid. Then, after a brief golden era of vision and hope under Nelson Mandela, we entered a phase of confusion during which president Thabo Mbeki lost his way and took us into the dark valley of AIDS denialism, which destroyed him — and delivered us into the hands of his ill-chosen deputy, Jacob Zuma.

That, in turn, has been followed by seven pestilential years of corruption, moral decay and economic decline, that has brought us to the brink of disaster.

But today is an election day, a day that I hope, even dare believe, holds within with it the possibility of opening up a new chapter in our political life that will lead to a better future for all our people. That in itself is a dream that has been too long deferred, but hopefully may yet be within our reach.

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Yes, I know these are only local government elections, but with 278 municipalities and some 8,500 candidates involved they will reach into every corner of the country and test the pulse of the electorate as a whole. That, I suggest, is what makes these the most important elections since the birth of our democracy in 1994.

We are in trouble as a country because we have been badly led — excruciatingly so — for the past seven years by the administration of President Jacob Zuma. It has been a corrupt administration, led by a man who has spent those seven years waging a “Stalingrad Defence” to avoid going to court to face trial on 16 charges (including 783 actual payments) of corruption, fraud, racketeering and money laundering.

In that time Zuma has established a patronage network within his administration to help protect himself from prosecution. Seven years of grappling with impending prosecutions and scandals: The arms deal scandal; the Nkandla scandal; the Nene scandal; the Gupta scandal; the SABC scandal; the South African Airways scandal. The whole place stinks of scandal, and there is no way the people of this country are going to enjoy a better life as long as the scandals continue.

They must be brought to an end. And the only way to do that is to rid the country of the man at the centre of all the scandals. Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

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I have written before that today’s elections are really a referendum on Zuma. If his party, the once-great ANC, which he has tainted beyond recognition, fares really badly in today’s elections, I believe that will jolt the members of that party into doing what they have not had the courage to do until now, which is to recall Zuma from the presidency.

They must be made to realise that the future of the ANC, as well as their own political futures, will be at stake if they fail to do so.

Under Zuma’s leadership the ANC has become a grievously divided party. It has pretty well wrecked the tripartite relationship which gave it its strength. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has been split in two, with the powerful National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) breaking away and now pledging to give its support to ward candidates of an incipient new opposition party called the United Front.

At the same time the South African Communist Party, once hailed as the vanguard party of the liberation movement, has clearly cooled off in its relationship with Zuma’s ANC, and I suspect may also go its own way after these elections.

The ANC is itself also deeply split, with something akin to an internal civil war being waged between Zuma and his clique of fellow corruption beneficiaries, and the party headquarters at Luthuli House under secretary-general Gwede Mantashe. Nothing has brought this to light more clearly that the recent dismissal of the party’s Western Cape leader Marius Fransman, and Zuma’s attempt to reinstate him. As we go to the polls today, no-one knows what Fransman’s actual status is.

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For a ruling party to get itself into such an unseemly tangle a few days before a vital election, demonstrates just how incapable the ANC is of managing its own affairs, let alone those of the country at a critical moment in our history. The party is simply drowning in a morass of incompetence and confusion.

It is in the eight big metro councils that the heaviest blows can be struck against Zuma. Those are the engines that drive our national economy. All were once secure ANC strongholds, but today four are in the balance — Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth), Tshwane (Pretoria), Greater Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni (East Rand) — and are likely to end up with coalition partnerships.

The loss of any or all of those big councils would be a heavy blow to the ANC, sending a signal that the tide of public opinion is swinging against the liberation party. And party members will get the message — that the decline they are suffering is due primarily to Zuma’s corrupt and inept leadership.

The fact that the ANC’s main weakness is in these big cities conveys its own message. It is in the industrialised urban areas that the ANC is losing support. That is where the new black urban middle-class is fast emerging, the so-called “smart blacks” whom Zuma so despises and who in turn are growing increasingly fed-up with him.

To an increasing extent the ANC’s main strength now resides in the rural areas — particularly in the old Bantustans, which the Zuma administration is assiduously keeping under the control of the unelected tribal leaders, just as the old National Party used to do. Traditional law prevails there, and the well-paid tribal chiefs are the local “Gauleiters” (overbearing officials) who keep the people — especially the women — under their thumbs and safely loyal to the ANC.

Therein lies the dichotomy that is dividing and paralysing the ANC. SA is the most modern, industrialised country on the continent. Its people are modern, urbanised folk attuned to city life. But for the past seven years they have been ruled over by a man whose whole ethos is that of a traditionalist who is out of tune with this new SA. Today’s message must be that it is time for him to go.

• Sparks is a former editor of the Rand Daily Mail.