South Africa is due to go to the polls tomorrow for the third time since the collapse of apartheid, with President Thabo Mbeki's ruling ANC party confident that it will again sweep to victory.

The African National Congress (ANC), which under Nelson Mandela ended decades of white minority rule, could even clinch a symbolically important two-thirds majority in parliament.

While there are few concerns of violence on voting day, some 20,000 police have nonetheless been deployed at polling stations in KwaZulu-Natal province, the traditional Zulu homeland.

The province, one of the key electoral battlegrounds, was the scene of violent clashes in the run-up to the 1994 elections. Some 12,000 people killed in fighting between supporters of the ANC and the Zulu dominated Inkatha Freedom Party.

Mr Mbeki said today however that the country was confident in its future. "There is a changing mood in South Africa.

"You will find it among the white population, the coloured population and the Indian population. I think it is to do with the reduction of the level of fear of the future."

"The country has moved on. South Africa of 2004 is not South Africa of 1994. There is a much greater sense of national unity."

South Africa's 21 million voters will have the opportunity to elect representatives to the national parliament and to the legislatures of the country's nine provinces on Wednesday.

The new parliament will then convene on April 23 to elect the President, with Mr Mbeki widely tipped to win a second and final term.

Some polls predict that the ANC could garner as much as 73 per cent of the vote, up from 66 per cent in the 1999 elections and 62.7 per cent in 1994.

Mr Mbeki also dismissed fears that voter apathy could reduce the turnout to below levels seen in the two previous post-apartheid elections. "I have no doubt that there is going to be a very big turnout in conditions of peace and stability," he said.

The President also downplayed speculation that the ANC is waging an all-out electoral onslaught to win a two-thirds majority in parliament, a result that would give his party a free hand to change the constitution.

"The ANC has never mentioned a two-thirds majority. We haven't set any figure," he said. "We seek a decisive mandate from the people of South Africa. It is important that you have a government that enjoys decisive support," he added.

A survey released on the eve of the vote showed that Mr Mbeki is South Africa's most trusted politician by a considerable margin.

Far behind Mr Mbeki was Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party, and Tony Leon, the leader of the mainly white Democratic Alliance.

Mr Mbeki, 61, is seen as a pragmatist who, while lacking the charisma and magic of Mr Mandela, has succeeded in keeping South Africa stable and its economy growing.

As leader, he has been criticised for his late response to the Aids crisis that kills 600 South Africans a day, and his failure to persuade President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, South Africa's most important neighbour, to end his repressive policies.