By John Chiahemen

President Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday that he would invite the opposition to join the government even if his African National Congress is easily re-elected as predicted next month.

总统姆贝基星期六表示讲邀请反对派加入政府。

Mbeki told reporters that while the ANC was quite capable of governing alone, its overriding interest was the unity of the country still struggling with the traumatic legacy of apartheid.

姆贝基告诉记者，虽然ANC（非国大）可以独自完成政府工作，但现在最重要的任务是修补种族隔离带给南非的伤害。

"Our interest is to unite the people of South Africa," Mbeki said after addressing a stadium crowd in Matipane, in the Limpopo area on South Africa's northern border with Zimbabwe.

"So after the elections, let's invite other people to come and work together for the progress of this country."

Campaigning for the country's national elections on April 14 has reached top gear with just over two weeks left and tensions have been mounting along traditional political fault lines.

Mbeki was mobbed by rural supporters in the farming district, many seeing a South African president for the first time. Far away in KwaZulu-Natal on the Indian Ocean coast, police held their guns at the ready as Zulu opponents tried to disrupt a rally of the ruling party.

Pollsters are predicting a massive ANC win in this poll, the third since the 1999 election that swept it to power under anti- apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and ended white minority rule.

Mbeki is campaigning for a second and constitutionally final five-year term on a promise of creating more jobs and getting the country's majority blacks out of a poverty trap.

While the opposition has taken him to task on issues, notably his government's handling of the country's two critical problems - HIV/Aids and crime - the ANC's appeal as the party that liberated South Africa's black majority from apartheid remains strong.

Mbeki has tried to reassure concerned South Africans, notably whites, who fear the ANC could use an expected two-thirds majority win in parliament to tinker with the country's delicately balanced constitution.

He acknowledged that opposition leaders could rebuff his offer to join the government as they largely did in 1999.

"Some have said we do not want to be part of the government, we want to be in the opposition. That is fine."

But those who are willing to join would be welcome "so that we work hard for the benefit of this country," he added.

Asked whether he would retain Zulu opposition leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi in his government, Mbeki said: "I don't know who is going to be in the cabinet, not even the ANC."

The ANC entered a pact with Buthelezi's Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) after the 1999 elections to prevent a return to the bloody feuding between ANC and IFP supporters that killed 20?00 people in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere in the runup to the 1994 poll.

Buthelezi has pronounced the accord as practically dead and tensions have returned to KwaZulu-Natal since the ANC made it an electoral target to capture the only one of South Africa's nine provinces not under its control.

Police cocked their guns when a large group of IFP supporters tried to disrupt an ANC election rally in Ulundi, Buthelezi's hometown in KwaZulu-Natal, according to a Reuters witness.

The IFP supporters backed off.

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