South African President Thabo Mbeki and opposition leaders have wrapped up their 100-day long election campaign leaving their banners with political slogans still breezing on streets on Tuesday.

All opposition parties were getting quiet on the eve of the third general elections slated for April 14, but the 62-year-old incumbent president is still busy with his program. He is visiting ANC operations centers to inspect the readiness of the organization ahead of the election.

According to the ANC, he will brief the media at the national operations centers while touring local elections operations centers in Soweto and Sandton in Johannesburg.

Opposition leaders made a final pitch for votes on Monday as security was beefed up in KwaZulu-Natal province, a key province ahead of landmark elections held 10 years after the end of apartheid.

President Thabo Mbeki's ANC party is on track to win a resounding victory in the general elections on Wednesday, perhaps even clinching a two-thirds majority in the national parliament.

About 20,000 police were out in force in KwaZulu-Natal province,where the African National Congress is seeking to wrest control from the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which has held sway in the province since the first democratic elections in 1994.

Three ANC party workers were killed at the weekend while an IFPadviser was shot dead in a separate incident on Friday, police said, adding that it was unclear whether the murders were politically-motivated.

The violence in KwaZulu-Natal province remains a far cry from the pre-election clashes in 1994, when more than 12,000 people were killed in fighting between ANC and IFP supporters.

The ANC, which for decades led the struggle against apartheid, has set its sights on winning KwaZulu-Natal and strengthening its hold on Western Cape province, where it was forced into a power-sharing agreement after the last vote.

Sensing the challenge from the ANC, Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi addressed a rally of thousands of his supporters, many of them dressed in traditional Zulu attire, in his stronghold of Nongoma, home to Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini.

"The people of this province want respect of their king. However, the ANC has over again shown no respect for the king," hesaid.

"The stronger the IFP is after elections, the better South Africa would be," Buthelezi said, citing AIDS, poverty, crime, corruption and unemployment as issues that his party was committedto addressing.

Independent Electoral Commission chairperson Brigalia Bam said in Pretoria she was optimistic that polling would proceed smoothlywith a high voter turn-out and that voting in KwaZulu-Natal would be peaceful.

"It has been quite silent in Kwazulu-Natal in recent days. Any incidents there have been brought under control in a very effective manner by the police and the reports from the other provinces have been amazingly quiet," she told reporters.

Source: Xinhua