Poverty is colourless and black and white people need to work together to eradicate it, ANC Treasurer-General Mathews Phosa said on Friday.

"The ANC thinks that poverty is colourless, there is no such thing as white poverty. There is poverty," he told journalists following his address to the Afrikaner Poverty Conference in Centurion. He said the ruling party would draw on the expertise of other party members to find a solution to solve the problem. Improving skills transfer was one such way of doing this.

"We want blacks and whites in partnership in a balanced manner, let blacks teach whites and vice versa. It is not a racial thing, we must kill that racial thing."

Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder agreed that poverty was colourless, but that there were different reasons for the advent of white poverty. He said affirmative action had played a role in creating white poverty.

Mulder said surely the aim of affirmative action was not to create another group of poor people. "It's just not common sense."

Sapa