TREATMENT Action Campaign founder Zackie Achmat says the education system has failed black children and is worse than it was under apartheid.

Achmat was speaking at the 25th anniversary of the End Conscription Campaign at Spier, outside Cape Town, yesterday.

"The intellectual dispossession of African and coloured working- class children is far greater today than it was under apartheid. We love the [2010 Cape Town] Green Point Stadium but just one stadium, which could build all the libraries we need in our schools and to pay librarians," Achma said.

He said inequality in South Africa was "so deep that we have to ask ourselves: "Have we averted a civil war or have we merely postponed it?"

Achmat then spoke directly to Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who was in the audience.

He asked Motlanthe to use the 25th anniversary of the ECC to start talking about "sanctions against Israel."

"Under international law, Israel has broken every rule. We want to see visa restrictions on any Israeli political visitor, economic sanctions against Israel and a cultural boycott of Israel," Achmat said.

Motlanthe, meanwhile, called on the white conscientious objectors who refused to serve in the apartheid army to start a new project to build nonracialism in South Africa. He asked the 300, mainly white former ECC members, to do more to transfer skills to the younger generation.

Motlanthe asked them to "show young entrepreneurs the ropes" and "adopt learners from disadvantaged schools".

The event was a trip down memory lane, with historic posters proclaiming "Botha's emergency - legalised murder" and "No apartheid war - troops out of the townships" plastered on the walls.