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Candidates Schalkwyk (top) and Buthelezi do last-minute campaigning RELATED VIDEO Natural sound video of soldiers voting, and election officials visiting elderly who cannont get to the polls Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K  ALSO: Nelson Mandela bids farewell  MESSAGE BOARD: South Africa elections

Some groups cast ballots Monday

May 31, 1999
Web posted at: 5:33 p.m. EDT (2133 GMT)

In this story: ANC favored to win Mandela campaigns among rich and poor RELATED STORIES, SITES

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- Some South Africans went to the polls Monday as politicians made last-minute efforts to win over undecided voters before a 24-hour ban on campaigning for Wednesday's second, all-race democratic elections.

Opinion polls showed about 15 percent of the country's 18.2 million registered voters had not decided which of the national parties they will back in the presidential and parliamentary balloting.

A moratorium on national campaigning begins at midnight (2200 GMT/6 p.m. EDT) Monday.

More than 100,000 police and troops, supported by 100 aircraft, were being deployed to help safeguard the voting, part of which began Monday when security force members, civil servants, the old and the infirm were able to cast their ballots.

Those who must work election day -- which has been declared a holiday -- also went to voting stations. Election officials brought absentee ballots to the homes of those unable to go to the polls. South Africans abroad voted last week.

Though some violent clashes were reported during campaigning, the run-up to the election had been generally peaceful, Sidney Mufamadi, the government's Minister of Safety and Security, said.

"Sufficient arrangements are in place to ensure a safe environment in which people can freely and fairly cast their vote," Mufamadi added.

Three people were wounded Sunday in classes between supporters of the ruling African National Congress and the fledgling United Democratic Movement at a rally in Cape Town.

ANC favored to win

Politicians campaigned sporadically around the country Monday after major rallies over the weekend.

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In the Indian Ocean province of KwaZulu-Natal -- where most of South Africa's 1.3 million people of Indian descent live -- Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi rode a campaign bus and stopped to meet voters.

Inkatha is a bitter rival of the ruling ANC, but Buthelezi serves in the Cabinet as home affairs minister. He was invited into an ANC-led government of national unity following the 1994 all-race elections that ended apartheid.

Opinion polls have shown the predominantly Zulu-supported Inkatha Freedom Party plunging out of favor among South African voters, with its support dwindling to just 6 percent from the 10.5 percent it polled in 1994.

Opinion polls show the ANC winning between 59 and 69 percent of the vote, with none of the other parties getting more than 10 percent -- and most far less.

But Buthelezi is a possible candidate for the largely ceremonial post of deputy president in a potential maneuver by the ANC to neutralize his party and avoid violence in the Zulu heartland.

The election marks a major transition for South Africa, with the retirement June 16 of President Nelson Mandela. He will be replaced by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki as the ANC's new leader.

The ANC received a boost Monday with the endorsement of the small but influential daily newspaper Business Day. The paper, aimed primarily at the white business establishment, is partly owned by a company run by a former top ANC official.

Mandela campaigns among rich and poor

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, who wrapped up his New National Party's campaign on Saturday in the Western Cape -- the only province where the former party of apartheid has a hope of being in government -- canvassed the security forces near Cape Town.

Mbeki spent his day at ANC headquarters, after addressing a rally of 80,000 people with Mandela on Sunday.

Mandela, who was to take a day off Monday, instead campaigned among affluent whites in the Johannesburg suburb of Sandton.

"I am saying to you, especially whites, stop being a minority and be part of the majority," the 80-year-old prisoner- turned-elder statesman told a throng of shoppers.

He then headed off to visit a poor black township on the edge of the city.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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