Afrikaners and Zulus share a history of struggle for freedom, identity, and recognition, IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi said on Friday.

"Just as you fought for the preservation of your cultural identity, language, and values as we negotiated a democratic settlement, I fought for the recognition of the Zulu kingdom and the Zulu monarchy," he told the Afrikaner forum convened by his party in Pretoria.

Buthelezi said injustices of the past had been pursued through affirmative action and broad-based black economic empowerment to re-address them, but what worried him was the ANC's recent recommitment to affirmative action when already the first generation of South Africans wholly educated under a new dispensation were entering the job market.

"We may not yet have reached our goals. But there must be a sunset clause to affirmative action that clearly defines the goal post."

He said Afrikaners had a role to play in South Africa.

"We need Afrikaners to put a shoulder to the struggling wagon of South Africa and get it through the drift."

Buthelezi said the IFP had signed a memorandum of understanding with Solidarity trade union in which they rejected the implementation of affirmative action on the basis that it unfairly discriminated against other South Africans.

Earlier, Solidarity's Dirk Herman told the forum the union had called for a moratorium on affirmative action on all essential and scarce skills.

Sapa

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