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Cape Town - Trade union Solidarity on Sunday called for an affirmative action Codesa after former foreign affairs minister Pik Botha accused the ANC of lying about the practice.
According to Fin24's sister publication Rapport, Botha accused the ANC last weekend of violating the negotiated settlement of 1994 through the way in which affirmative action is being implemented.
Rapport reports Botha said during a discussion of Solidarity deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann's book The Naked Emperor that there never would have been a settlement if the National Party government had known that the ANC was going to implement affirmative action in the way that it is currently being done.
Rapport also quoted former president FW de Klerk as having said that the present implementation of affirmative action goes against what was agreed in the constitutional negotiations.
Solidarity's Hermann on Sunday said it transpires that the South African affirmative action model is incompatible with the 1994 agreement.
"This raises serious questions about the credibility of the 1994 settlement. If it is to regain its integrity, the original negotiators of the 1994 settlement will have to make public their intention with affirmative action stipulations.
"We also need a new affirmative action settlement; one to which all South Africans are committed. This can only be achieved with a new affirmative action Codesa," said Hermann.
Botha's attack on the way in which affirmative action is being implemented follows Minister Alec Erwin's remarks last week at the South African Business Club in London, when he said that affirmative action no longer applied.
Erwin, in a question-and-answer session, said affirmative action is dead in many respects and is no longer applied in practice because there is such a skills shortage in South Africa.
He was defending the country's affirmative-action policy, saying South Africa would have had a greater skills shortage if it had not been for affirmative action.
Hermann said the true objective of affirmative action - to correct imbalances - had been lost.
"We must resuscitate affirmative action. National consensus on affirmative action has been destroyed by the fact the process has degenerated into a race circus.
"Decisions are made on the basis of a race ideology that is more likely to harm the masses than to benefit them."
He said a new Codesa - Convention for a Democratic South Africa - on affirmative action will have to investigate ways in which the unmet expectations of the masses may be satisfied without alienating the minority.