South Africa is in a crisis, Inkatha Freedom Party president Mangosuthu Buthelezi said on Thursday.

"We are in a crisis. It is a crisis of leadership, of morality, of security, social justice and productivity," Buthelezi told the trade union Solidarity's 2009 congress in Muldersdrift, Johannesburg.

"We are in a crisis, and we need to make a decision that will change the looming consequences."

The long-time president of the largely KwaZulu-Natal-based opposition party said South Africans could prevent the "looming consequences" by voting on 22 April.

He said the country did not have a "true democracy" and was seeing the "beginning of a one party state".

He urged South Africans not to emigrate, with the global financial crisis making this option "unviable".

"I urge you not to look for the way out of South Africa, but to look for South Africa's way out of this crisis."

He said the country lost the skills and investment of a million whites who emigrated after 1994.

"Government's attitude to South Africans living abroad is that they have deserted us and we should desert them."

He added that returning South Africans were receiving "little assistance" and "little incentive" from the government.

Buthelezi said his party, with Solidarity, rejected the implementation of affirmative action "to the extent that it discriminates against any South African".

"While we must redress the social injustices of our past, there must be a shared understanding of what the finish line looks like and where it has been set.

"Without a clear vision, we will never fully emerge from the shadow of social injustice," he said.

There were "serious problems" with the country's macro-economic policies and the country was in "desperate need" of a more flexible labour market", the IFP president said.

"South Africa is in desperate need of a more flexible labour market and a free market economy, but instead it is almost impossible to run a business under the strict regulations imposed by government."

Sapa

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