A number of opposition parties hammered the ANC on the results of affirmative action (AA) policies in their current format at a business function in Sandton on Wednesday.

"BEE has not worked – it is a great idea but in its current form it has been about 8-10 percent successful," said Narend Singh from the IFP.

"A few are getting much and the effect is not being felt by the poor," he added.

Connie Mulder from the Freedom Front Plus went so far as to say that AA should be phased out over the next five years as it is not creating jobs but instead sidelining minorities who had skills. He said even if all the whites were removed, this policy would still not achieve its stated aims.

He called for children born after 1994 to be excepted from the policy immediately and for the policy to be removed when a post had not been filled in 90 days.

He said for the economy to compete it needed to be based on "merit without discrimination".

Skills auditing in the civil service

Bantu Holomisa from the UDM called for skills auditing in the civil service, while Helen Zille from the DA said "crony entitlement" should be eradicated.

She noted that in Cape Town she had seen BEE output improve from 40 percent to 50 percent by adopting competitive and fair bidding processes via a points system model rather than just lining people up and discussing what they wanted.

She said this had seen infrastructure spend increase to almost R4-billion and jobs growth triple in the area. Zille is mayor of Cape Town.

Gwede Mantashe from the ANC responded by saying that it was incorrect to say only people with connections to the ANC had benefited from the policy and challenged the opposition to study a list of the top 100 earners in the country.

He said that based on past imbalances, BEE actually needed to be implemented aggressively rather than slowed down. "To reverse that will take time," he said.

He also noted that it was "cold and lonely" at the top echelon of business for blacks in SA.

Another key area of criticism by opposition was crime and the disbandment of units like the Scorpions. Another major call was for improved education and management in the police force, rather than just more policemen. All opposition parties in turn also called for far more to be done to improve education in SA, as it was the root of the poverty problem. Most opposition parties also said that quiet diplomacy had not worked when it came to Zimbabwe.

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