White South Africans have been made to feel like second class citizens in their own country by employment policies which discriminate in favour of blacks, according to the country's former president, FW de Klerk.

Mr de Klerk, who as South Africa's last white leader between 1989 and 1994 was largely responsible for dismantling apartheid, said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph: "The implementation of affirmative action has led to a substantial percentage of, not only Afrikaners, but of all whites and coloureds and Indians feeling that their groups are being reduced to a sort of second class citizenship."

The intervention of such an influential figure will fuel growing demands by opposition parties and even some within the governing African National Congress party for the policy to be scrapped, as the country faces a dire shortage of skilled workers.

The measure was introduced in the late 1990s, to tackle the legacy of apartheid under which blacks were excluded from many jobs. However, it is deeply resented by many whites and is often cited, along with crime, as the main reason why an estimated 840,000 whites have emigrated in the last 10 years.

Mr de Klerk said the problem was the way the policy was implemented: "If affirmative action reaches the stage where it becomes institutional racial discrimination, it becomes absolutely unconstitutional."..............

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