Johannesburg  - South Africa's presidential frontrunner Jacob Zuma on Thursday appealed to the leaders of the country's Afrikaner minority, telling them Afrikaners were the only "truly African" whites.

Zuma is campaigning for general elections on April 22 that his African National Congress (ANC) party is expected to win.

This election is more exciting than previous elections since democracy in 1994 because of the emergence of a breakaway party of former senior ANC members.

The Congress of the People was formed by a group of ANC members loyal to ex-president Thabo Mbeki after the ANC ousted Mbeki as president in September last year.

Since 2007, the year in which he toppled Mbeki as ANC leader, Zuma has been reaching out to white South Africans, some of whom feel alienated by 15 years of policies aimed mainly at uplifting the previously subjugated black majority.

Praising Afrikaners as deeply rooted in the African continent, where Dutch settlers first landed at the Cape in 1652, he said: "Of all the white groups in South Africa, it is only Afrikaners who are true Africans in the real sense of the word."

Zuma, who is poised to become the country's first Zulu president, skimmed over apartheid, which was implemented by the Afrikaner National Party, in his address to the mostly middle-aged male leaders of a plethora of Afrikaner interest groups.

He even had praise for the controversial Afrikaner enclave of Orania, a privately-owned town in the remote Northern Cape province, to which around 40 white families retreated after apartheid to govern themselves.

Orania's self sufficiency was an inspiration in the fight against poverty, according to Zuma.

Zuma has been criss-crossing the country for months to try to shore up support for the ANC, which has more than two-thirds of seats in Parliament but has been damaged by the party split and several corruption affairs.

Only around 10 per cent of South Africans are white. Afrikaans is widely spoken by some mixed-race and black communities.

Zuma himself is accused of corruption in relation to a 1990s arms deal, when he was deputy president. His trial has been set down for August but his lawyers have been pleading with state prosecutors to drop the charges before the election.

The prosecutors are due to announce their decision on Friday. (dpa)