JOHANNESBURG -- President Nelson Mandela's ANC, which currently rules South Africa jointly with black and white opposition parties, has ruled out coalition rule beyond 1999.


Mandela's ANC, ending a two-day meeting to discuss the country's political future Sunday at which a set of guidelines on the shape of the future constitution were adopted, said it would work for a post-apartheid charter which entrenches majority rule.


"We have adopted a comprehensive set of constitutional policy guidelines ... to provide the framework for the building of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa on which government is based on democratic majority rule," said South Africa's First Deputy President Thabo Mbeki.


Mbeki said the guidelines would be used at the Constitutional Assembly, which at present is drafting a final constitution.


South Africa's interim constitution was completed in November 1993 and expires in 1999. The government wants the final constitution completed by June 1996.


Earlier ANC secretary general Cyril Ramaphosa told delegates: "There will be no enforced coalition rule beyond 1999. The NP can eat their heart out."


Ramaphosa's and Mbeki's remarks appeared to rule out coalition rule of up to 20 years as envisaged by the former ruling National Party of Second Deputy President F.W. de Klerk.


The ANC won an overwhelming majority in last April's polls, but the NP and Inkatha polled enough votes to secure a place in a five-year government of national unity.


Commentators said the ANC announcement was not unexpected.


Steven Friedman, from the independent Center for Policy Studies, said only the NP had believed it could perpetuate a coalition and it had been out-manoeuvred by the ANC in constitutional negotiations.


"The old argument was that the NP had to be in government because the NP was the gateway to business, the civil service and the military -- the problem is that statement is no longer accurate," said Friedman.


The ANC meeting also addressed the issue of whether South Africa should adopt a United States or Canadian type of federalism as demanded by Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and his Inkatha Freedom Party


Buthelezi has said his party will walk out of the assembly next Wednesday unless the ANC meets a pre- election pledge to bring in foreign mediators to arbitrate on its demand for provincial autonomy in a federalist constitution.


Rightwingers who are not part of the ruling coalition have also said they will soon table their proposals for self-determination in an Afrikaner homeland.


Ramaphosa of the ANC said: "The divide in opinion over a federal or centrist government was not manifest within the ANC. Delegates backed a stance that the country should not be fragmented. We believe our proposals really should finally resolve this debate between federalism and unitarism so that our country is not fragmented in any way and provinces cannot set up their own kingdoms."