President Thabo Mbeki will outline his plans for South Africa in a state-of-the-nation address Friday ahead of the third election since the end of apartheid, with analysts saying job creation will be high on his agenda.

Susan Booysen, a political analyst at the University of Port Elizabeth on the east coast, said the speech was Mbeki's last chance before the election to show what progress the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had made in 10 years of democracy.

"This is really the last opportunity for the ANC as a government to impact on the upcoming elections, so we can expect quite a bit of electioneering and a push with statistics on the progress that has been made," she said.

Mbeki, who was elected to office for a five-year term in 1999, will announce the election date - expected to be in April – next week.

South Africa's high unemployment rate - 35% of adults are estimated to be without formal jobs - will be a burning issue that Mbeki would have to deal with, Booysen said.

Although Mbeki has announced details of an ambitious public works programme that aims to create one million jobs within five years, he needs to announce something more, she said.

"The public perception is that the ANC have not done enough to create jobs and fight poverty," Booysen said, citing a recent survey by the state broadcaster, the SABC, which found that 90% of 3 500 respondents interviewed were highly concerned about unemployment.

"The president needs to use this opportunity to announce some imaginative job creation projects," she said.

John Loos, an economist at ABSA bank, said Mbeki would mention the government's economic successes in the past 10 years, particularly those during his five-year tenure.

"The government inherited a large debt in 1994 and during Mbeki's tenure they have been successful in reducing it," Loos said.

"The government is, however, not doing well enough at getting the economy to grow.

"President Mbeki needs to announce projects that will speed up growth, particularly through the privatisation of government-owned assets in transport and communications industries".

Tom Lodge, a professor of politics at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, said Mbeki could deservedly trumpet South Africa's peace efforts in central Africa, after peace deals were signed under his guidance in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

His falling point however, was Zimbabwe, where he refused to condemn President Robert Mugabe's government for human rights abuses, Lodge said.

"President Mbeki deserves credit with the government for establishing relations with important parts of world, like the European Union and North America.

"He has also done well promoting peace in central Africa, but continued to perform badly with Zimbabwe," Lodge said.

Analstys say Mbeki is unlikely to delve deeply into South Africa's Aids problem, despite the UN agency Unaids estimating that the country had 5,3-million infected adults at the end of 2002 - the highest number in the world.

In his state-of-the-nation speech last year, Mbeki devoted just one sentence to the disease.

Since then the government has announced that it will roll out a national treatment programme, including the provision of antiretroviral drugs, but many are unable to forget Mbeki's hesitancy in dealing with the disease.

"Many people are grateful that something is happening at last, but others will be resentful that the rollout of drugs did not happen years earlier," said one analyst who asked not to be named.

"I don't think politically strategically there is much more that Mbeki can do about Aids - it will be too much of an acknowledgement that he has not done enough". – Sapa-AFP.