Mr. Speaker, I beg to give notice that I shall move to-morrow—

1. (1) That as from Thursday, 22 June, Standing Order No. 26 (Automatic Adjournment at 10.30 p.m.) be suspended for the remainder of the Session; and
2. (2) That Saturday, 24 June, shall be included as a sitting day, Government business to have precedence; and on that day the House shall meet at Ten o’clock a.m. and business shall be suspended at a Quarter to One o’clock p.m. and resumed at a Quarter-past Two o’clock p.m.

I may just add that this proposal to suspend the automatic adjournment is not made with the object of having an all-night sitting, but merely for the purpose of concluding work which has almost been completed.

I move—

In moving the third reading of this Bill, I just want to say something in reply to questions put to me by the opposite side of the House. I realize that this is not the occasion to discuss these points, and therefore I simply want to say that I heartily welcome an opportunity for the discussion of the policy of the I.D.C. and other State corporations, and I hope that we will have an opportunity to do so early next year.

Bill read a third time.

I move—

Mr. Speaker, this is a short amending Bill which consists of only ten clauses, all of which are being moved with the approval of the Medical Council. As a matter of fact, most of them are being introduced at the request of the Medical Council. Clause 1 of the Bill amends Section 2 of the existing Act which deals with the constitution of the Medical Council and the Pharmacy Board. The Minister is entitled to appoint two medical practitioners to the Medical Council, one of whom must be either the Chief Health Officer or the Deputy Chief Health Officer. Hitherto it has been the practice that he always appoints the Chief Health Officer. In the case of the Pharmacy Board the Minister is entitled inter alia to appoint one medical practitioner who must also be either the Chief Health Officer or the Deputy Chief Health Officer. Hitherto it has been the practice always to appoint the Deputy Chief Health Officer. It can happen, as is the position to-day, that the post of Deputy Chief Health Officer is vacant. It is now proposed that when that is the position the next most senior official can be appointed to the Pharmacy Board. This amendment therefore reads as follows—

Clause 2 of this amending Bill amends Section 7 of the principal Act. Section 7 of the principal Act authorizes the Medical Council to appoint committees and to delegate functions to them. Sometimes the Medical Council appoints such a committee to investigate disciplinary matters under Section 81 in order to establish in the public interest, whether a member of the profession is fit to continue with his practice, whether he is fit to prescribe and to possess habit-forming drugs or whether he is addicted to habit-forming drugs. Such a disciplinary committee may at the same time make recommendations as to how any malpractices can be stopped, but the recommendations only come into effect when the Medical Council approves of them. It may be six months before this happens. In other words, such malpractices can continue for six months. The Medical Council has proposed that it should be provided that the recommendations of such a disciplinary committee can come into immediate operation and remain in operation until the Medical Council has an opportunity to decide on them. If such a decision is not confirmed within six months, the relevant recommendations of the disciplinary committee will lapse.

Clause 3 of the Bill amends Section 22 of the principal Act which empowers the State President to prescribe what degrees can be required of persons before they can practise as dentists, chemists or medical practitioners. At the same time it is laid down that foreign degrees can only be recognized in three cases, namely: In the first place when such a degree gives the holder thereof the right to practise abroad as well; in the second place, if the standard required for such foreign degree is not lower than those applicable to a South African degree; and in the third place if the foreign country concerned has already granted South Africa reciprocity, in other words, if South Africans holding medical degrees which enable them to practise in South Africa are also allowed to practise abroad with those degrees. Section 22 also authorizes the State President to make certain exceptions in the case of medical practitioners. The first amendment now being proposed is to the effect that exceptions can also be made in the case of dentists. This is also being done at the request of the Medical Council. Then there is yet another amendment. Under the existing Act, the State President can grant exemptions to foreign medical practitioners allowing them to practise in South Africa when such practitioners accept posts in State institutions, in educational institutions, or in hospitals. In such cases they can be registered by the Medical Council for a period of five years and thereafter for such periods as the Medical Council deems fit. The position is that the Medical Council has found that a period of five years is altogether too long. It may be for example that the Medical Council is not certain about the qualifications of a certain medical practitioner, but nevertheless wishes to register him for a shorter period. With this in view an amendment is being proposed which will make it possible for the Medical Council to register a medical practitioner under these circumstances for a period of less than five years. There is a further amendment being effected to Section 22 by this Bill, namely, that exemption may also be granted to interns; just as exemptions can be granted in future to medical practitioners and dentists, so it will be possible to grant exemptions to interns.

Clause 4 of the Bill amends Section 24 of the principal Act. Under this section every qualified person, when he applies for registration as a medical practitioner or a dentist, must be domiciled in the Republic. This requirement relating to domicile does not cause any problems in the case of medical practitioners, but does create problems in the case of chemists. That is to say, it often happens that just after young chemists have completed their examinations, they are immediately offered bursaries for further study abroad. Then they cannot wait for a few months until they have received their degrees and have been registered in South Africa, but they accept the bursaries and immediately leave for abroad. However it is of great value to them if they are regarded as registered chemists and not merely as students, but this means that the young chemist must return specially to South Africa to be registered. The amendment now being proposed is aimed at removing this unnecessary restriction. As I have said, Section 24 lays down that to be permitted to practise in South Africa, a person must be domiciled here in South Africa. There was probably a reason for this requirement originally, and it was probably to protect the medical practitioners of South Africa against being flooded by medical practitioners from abroad. In reality, however, this requirement no longer serves a useful purpose because to be domiciled in South Africa simply means that one has to be here in South Africa and that one intends residing permanently in South Africa. The “intention” is something to which only the person concerned can testify—in other words, a foreign medical practitioner can come to South Africa and simply say that he intends residing here permanently and he then acquires the right to practise. The domicile requirement in reality therefore did not protect South African medical practitioners in the past. It was therefore not only worthless, but at the moment it is also a handicap. There is no such domicile requirement in England, but there is one here in South Africa. We therefore expect British medical practitioners to be domiciled here in South Africa before they can practise. This requirement still remains although it is worthless. At present a considerable number of medical practitioners are practising and specializing in England, something which is of the greatest value to South Africa. On the other hand, a number of English medical practitioners are practising in South Africa and we not only have a shortage of medical practitioners, but we also expect a worse shortage in the future. We therefore do not want to place any obstacles in the way of these medical practitioners practising in this country. For this reason it is proposed that the domicile requirement should be repealed.

Clause 5 of the Bill amends Section 35 of the principal Act. This section authorizes medical practitioners not only to practise as dentists, but also to provide dental services except that they may not provide false teeth. After long deliberation, the Medical Council has now recommended that as far as dental services are concerned medical practitioners should in future only be allowed to provide such services in cases of emergency or where no dentist is readily available. This restriction allows each medical practitioner a wide measure of discretion because he must decide for himself whether a case is an emergency or whether a dentist is not readily available. Clause 5 of this Bill gives effect to this recommendation of the Medical Council.

Clause 6 of the Bill amends Section 41 of the principal Act. Section 41 empowers the Medical Council and the Pharmacy Board to inquire into complaints of improper or disgraceful conduct on the part of a registered person. If such a person is found guilty, penalties can be imposed on him. However, when a formal charge is lodged against such a person and an inquiry is instituted, it casts a cloud over his practice and it harms his reputation while such complaints are often found after formal inquiry to be completely unfounded. Under the circumstances the reputation of the medical practitioner is unnecessarily harmed. The Medical Council now proposes an improvement in this regard, namely, that when a complaint is made against a medical practitioner, the Medical Council must first be able to negotiate with him in order to establish whether there is really any substance in the complaint. If the Council is then convinced that there are really grounds for complaint, it will proceed with the formal charge.

Clause 7 of the Bill amends Section 72 of the principal Act. Under this provision the Minister after consultation with the Medical Council can issue regulations governing and regulating the handling and acquisition of certain habit-forming drugs. It has been found necessary to widen the scope of these regulations and to give wider powers to the Minister for this purpose so that he can also authorize the commanders of ships and aircraft as well as midwives to keep and use habit-forming drugs such as morphine or pethidene in cases of emergency.

Clause 8 of the Bill amends Section 81 of the principal Act which provides that the Medical Council and the Pharmacy Board can hold an inquiry when they receive information on oath to the effect that a registered person is not conducting himself properly. At the request of the Medical Council it is now proposed that a statement on oath should not be necessary because it sometimes takes such a very long time before the information can be sworn to. The Medical Council will be able to act in terms of this amendment on information which is not on oath.

Clause 9 of the Bill amends Section 83bis of the principal Act under which the Minister in consultation with the Medical Council can make regulations regulating the donating of blood, that is to say controlling blood donor services and blood donor organizations, but it does not have any power to control the infusion of blood. The infusion of blood can be very dangerous if proper precautionary measures are not taken to ensure that the blood of the donor is compatible with that of the recipient. Clause 9 of this Bill now gives the Minister the power to prescribe that certain information must be provided to the Department and to prescribe certain regulations dealing with the conditions under which blood may be infused.

This is a brief explanation of the provisions of the Bill and I hope that I shall have the support of hon. members. I move.

The hon. Minister said at the outset that this Bill had the approval of the Medical Council. As a matter of fact, I understand that the provisions contained in the Bill are actually being introduced at the request of that Council. If this is so, then obviously we must give serious consideration to these proposals because the Medical Council consists of responsible people. We find therefore that the clauses of the Bill are acceptable and constitute an improvement to the principal Act. I think I should, however, touch on what we regard as the salient features of the Bill. These are, first of all, Clause 2. The position under the principal Act is that the findings of a committee appointed to inquire into disciplinary charges against a medical practitioner do not take effect until such time as the Medical Council has met and has confirmed the decision of the committee and in view of the fact that the Medical Council may not be convened for four or even six months after the committee reached its decision, certain abuses and dangers may arise. The particular danger I see is that relating to a medical practitioner who is addicted to drugs. If an interval has to elapse between the recommendation of the disciplinary committee and the confirmation thereof by the Medical Council, this drug addict may continue his drug-taking habit. This is against the interest of the practitioner himself and also of the public. It may mean that in that intervening period this drug addict can, through prescriptions, lay in a stock of drugs. Such an interval is, therefore, detrimental to the practitioner concerned, and also not in the interest of the general public. The proposed amendment is, therefore, a sound one.

Clause 4 contains a very important provision, one which is long overdue. It facilitates, namely, the registration of South Africans and others who are overseas and doing postgraduate work, etc., or possibly serving an internship. Under the terms of the principal Act these persons were placed under a disadvantage since before they could be placed on the register they would have to return to South Africa. This is a definite hardship and I am glad that this is rectified by this clause. The position will now be that those South Africans who are overseas are being enabled to register through correspondence by submitting proof of their qualifications. I am also glad to learn that, apart from medical practitioners and dentists, this provision will now also apply to chemists. This constitutes a welcome elimination of what previously had been a difficulty and a bone of contention.

Clause 5 is, as far as the official Opposition is concerned, regarded as a contentious clause as there are feelings among us both in favour and against this particular clause. In view of this difference of opinion, we on this side of the House will enjoy the privilege of a free vote on this clause to enable members to vote in accordance with their own feelings in regard to the matter. As this is the only contentious clause in the Bill for us, it would perhaps be appropriate to enlarge a little upon it. This clause amends Section 35 (3) of the principal Act reading as follows—

The Bill now introduces an amendment to the effect that a medical practitioner may perform the functions of a dental surgeon only in the case of emergency or where no dentist is readily available. There are some who feel that the existing provision should not be interfered with, and a general medical practitioner should be allowed to carry on as he has been carrying on over the years. My personal conviction is that the dental surgeon follows a specialized course of study over a period of five years, while the medical student does not follow a specialized course in dental surgery. What he does receive in this respect is an extremely limited form of teaching. In view of this fact I feel that the dental surgeon, having undergone a specialized course, should enjoy a measure of protection. In terms of this Bill, a medical practitioner will now be restricted to cases of emergency and to cases where no dentist is readily available. The expression “not readily available” is somewhat vague and I would like the hon. Minister to clarify the position for us, that is, what its meaning and interpretation is. Does it imply that when a dental surgeon closes down his chambers, say at 5 o’clock, it will be regarded that a dental surgeon is not readily available? Assuming a dentist lives five miles outside the urban area in which he practises, would that be interpreted as the dental surgeon not being readily available? The amending clause as it stands is somewhat vague and I would be grateful if the hon. the Minister would give some clarity to the meaning of these words “not readily available”. However, during the Committee Stage there will be speakers who will give the opposing viewpoint against the clause. I am merely expressing my own personal approach because, as I explained earlier, this party is privileged to enjoy a free vote on what is regarded as a somewhat contentious clause.

Clause 8 is, I think, quite important because, under the principal Act, when an inquiry takes place it is necessary, where allegations are made, for those allegations to be made under oath. Quite a number of people are sensitive about this and are afraid to make allegations on oath. When a preliminary examination is set in train, where allegations are made, the necessity for those allegations to be made on oath is now excluded. This, I think, is a definite improvement.

Clause 9 is merely a tightening up of the regulations with regard to blood transfusions. I think that the tightening up of these regulations as outlined in this clause is another important improvement.

I do not wish to say anything further on this matter beyond telling the hon. the Minister that in view of the fact that this Bill has the approval of the Medical Council, notwithstanding the difference of opinion on Clause 5, it is our intention to support the second reading.

I want to say a few words about this Bill. Like the hon. member who has just resumed his seat, I feel that we should give the hon. the Minister every support in putting this Bill through as soon as possible. It has already been presented to the Medical Council, they have studied each of the clauses and have reached agreement on them. I think those of us who know medical practice is conducted to feel that these clauses as a whole constitute something that is needed by the country.

I now want to say a word or two about the clause dealing with domiciliary practise. Here I must say that at no time has it been more important for us to have reciprocity with those countries with which we have had it in the past, than it is now. We are very short of doctors both for practise and for teaching purposes. The universities lack considerable numbers of good teachers. We have the material in this country but unfortunately, because of the shortage of doctors throughout the country very few of these people are available for teaching purposes. For that reason alone I am very pleased that this Bill is being introduced so that overseas doctors can come to our country and start teaching right away. If these people do come here they must be given an opportunity of teaching in those areas where new medical schools are going to be instituted. I am hoping that the hon. the Minister will bear in mind the fact, now that tribal universities have been established by the Department of Education throughout the country, it is not sufficient to have these universities dealing with certain subjects only. The sooner that medical courses are introduced into these universities the better it will be for the whole of South Africa. But until we have sufficient teachers to instruct university students, and this applies to White, Black and Coloured universities…

Order, order! That subject is not now under discussion.

Mr. Speaker, it has a direct bearing on this clause dealing with domiciliary exchange. I think that is one of the reasons why this clause has been introduced into the Bill, so that people from overseas will be given the opportunity not only of practising here, and not only coming here to lecture for temporary periods, but to remain resident in our country. That is something which we should encourage.

I now want to say a word or two about the question of allowing the general practitioner to extract teeth. I do not think that this matter is as important in the country districts as it is in the towns. I am one of those who feel that dentistry should be left to the dentist, but obviously in country areas where there is an insufficiency of dentists—as I said yesterday, in the Transkei there are only eight dentists for 1⅓ million people—obviously, in places like that, medical practitioners must be given the opportunity to extract teeth. However, the danger is this, that to-day the universities are not teaching medical practitioners to extract teeth. There is no course in dentistry. If the hon. the Minister is going to allow medical practitioners to take out teeth, I would say to him that a short course at the expense of some other subject should be introduced in medical schools in order to teach doctors to extract teeth properly. They do not have to learn how to drill or how to make teeth or any of that sort of thing, but for emergency work there should be a specified course which need last only a couple of weeks.

Not at the expense of the patient.

These things are never done at the expense of the patient. I must say that every dentist that has been produced in the country…

Order, order! The hon. member should not allow himself to be led astray by interjections.

Mr. Speaker, some hon. members need a little bit of education in these matters, and one has to tell them these things otherwise they wander all over the place.

In the towns the question becomes very important. Here I do not think that the general practitioner should be in competition with the dentist. In the same way as general practitioners have their rooms open for certain hours, so do the dentists. Normally the dentists close their rooms at a definite hour, but I think that the Dental Society should now encourage the dentists of the towns to have emergency phone numbers. It so often happens that a tooth is taken out during the day, the dentist is not available in the evening, and the patients are forced to go to the medical practitioner to stop the bleeding. If the dentists were available—and this is where the difficulty comes in—if the dentist is available by telephone, at an emergency telephone number, there is no reason for the medical practitioner in a town where there are dentists to compete with those dentists. I say that we who are general practitioners do not want to take their work. There may some doctors who would snatch any 5s. that comes along, but I think that these are very rare exceptions. However, in the country, the general practitioner should be allowed to extract teeth, but he should not take his dentistry any further. He should know how to take teeth out, and he can only learn that by a short course during his studies.

There are other matters in this Bill with which I should like to deal, but they can wait until the Committee Stage is reached when we will deal with each clause separately. At this stage I would like to give way to one of the other speakers.

I should just like to say something in connection with Section 72 of the principal Act to which it is now being proposed to add three sub-sections, bis, ter and quat, which will give the right to commanders of ships and aircraft and also to a trained nurse to possess and to distribute drugs. When I see this I wonder why Section 65 of the Act is not being amended. We had the difficulty in connection with Section 65 that prosecutions were instituted against chemists who gave these drugs to patients on a prescription by a medical man but where, e.g., in terms of the law, the address of the person was not given, or the degrees of the medical man did not appear on the prescription form. These people were prosecuted and thereafter the Attorney-General was asked not to prosecute if the offence was just a technical one. But this section still stands in the Act unchanged, and if the Attorney-General wants to do so he can take action against such chemists. I feel that these are trained people who have issued these drugs on the prescription of a trained medical man. But they were hampered by so many restrictions when supplying drugs to people that it led to difficulties. Now it is being proposed in the amendments to Section 72 to grant these powers which are so strictly controlled in connection with the qualified medical man and qualified chemist to people who know nothing about medicine or disease. They are now being allowed to have drugs with them in aircraft or ships and to dispense them to people in their discretion. I feel that that is not fair and right. Something should be done in regard to the discrimination in this matter. We can, perhaps, still say something in favour of granting leave to nurses to give drugs to people. I just do not know how we can bring these two sections into line, where properly trained people are restricted in regard to dispensing drugs, but where here the right is given to people who know nothing about medicine or drugs to dispense and administer them, in their discretion. It seems to me that these two sections are in conflict with each other, and I would like the Minister to explain to us how he proposes to correct this anomaly.

We have no objection to the passage of this Bill and I shall not hold the House up for more than a few seconds. I rise to say that and, in the second place to associate myself with the plea made by the hon. member for Rosettenville (Dr. Fisher) a few moments ago about the institution of courses in dentistry at medical schools. Like the hon. member I do not believe that fundamentally the general practitioner should be encouraged to pull teeth. I certainly think that in present circumstances where our general practitioners are not trained to do so the less they do so the better. However as the hon. member has pointed out, for some considerable time in the future it probably is going to be essential that general practitioners do pull teeth, in various parts of the country at any rate, and for so long as that is so it would be very much in the interests of the patients if some proper training were given to medical students in the kind of dentistry that they may have to perform.

In general, I believe that Clause 5 of this Bill suggests the right sort of arrangement, namely that medical practitioners should only pull teeth when there is no option in the matter, and I believe the Bill as it stands should go through with the minimum of objection.

This Bill has been vetted by the Medical Council and I hope that it will receive the support of the whole House. Perhaps, before explaining it completely I might say that it would be wise on my part if I were to make clear to the House what are the functions of the Medical Council. The common impression is that the Medical Council is there to protect the doctors. That is a fallacy. The Medical Council is there to protect the public and to see that public gets a well-educated and well-behaved medical profession. In the course of its functions controlling the behaviour of the medical profession, it applies certain penal powers. It is usually regarded as a court of ethics, and in practise, when it functions as a court of ethics it has no real difficulties. However there have arisen over the years certain difficulties in connection with other functions in which it is acting as a court. This relates to the question of habit-forming drugs, and in connection with medical men who have become mentally or physically incapable of carrying out their practice—chiefly mentally. The mental side of it may be that a man, while not fit to be certified, while not so bad that he can be certified for internment in a mental hospital, is nevertheless a danger. In practise no committee which tried a doctor on the part of the Medical Council can, except in very minor penalties, bring deterrent penalties into force. It has been found in practise that to wait until the next council meeting is not in the interests of the public. It is not in the interest of the public that a doctor who is abusing drugs, or a doctor who is mentally or physically incapable, should be allowed to continue to practise. The Medical Council has now asked Parliament to pass a law enabling its courts, where it considers that it is in the interests of the public and of the doctor himself, to bring its penal clauses into force immediately, subject to the revision by the council at its next meeting.

Another difficulty has arisen in connection with the penal clauses, and that is mentioned in Clause 6 of this Bill, which gives the council power to negotiate with other doctors without actually bringing them before an inquiry. It has been found in practise that certain doctors—mostly recently qualified, but not always so—carry on undesirable practises and do things which the rest of the profession do not like and which, if they are persisted in, may bring the doctor within the ambit of the penal clauses of the council. Up to now it has not been possible for the council to call these people before it quietly, or to summon them before the President or a small committee and give them advice. It has not been possible to say to them “Look, we know you are doing this, it has been reported to us, we are not going to do anything about it but we would like to warn you”. That is the reason for this clause referring to negotiations. I hope that this clause, too, will go through the House.

The hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) is concerned about the new clause whereby captains of aircraft and of ships are allowed to carry certain habit-forming drugs. This has arisen because it is really only within recent years that this country has had ships of its own. Formerly nearly all ships were registered in some other country. In regard to aircraft, the aircraft of the South African Airways come within the jurisdiction of the Medical Council, whereas the aircraft of other countries which fly to this country do not come under the control of the Medical Council. It is not intended, in general, to give large quantities, or even very small quantities of habit-forming drugs to these officers. However, a large number of sea-sick remedies, for instance, do contain habit-forming drugs. And to be in possession of a large number of these remedies, as is sometimes necessary, or even to have small doses of morphia, puts the captains of aircraft or ships in a position where they are breaking the law by carrying those remedies. It is therefore hoped that this clause will be passed so as to enable our ships and aircraft not to be at a disadvantage against other ships and other aircraft.

In the same clause permission is given to midwives to carry habit-forming drugs. Midwives are trained to give injections, that is part of their training. Up to now, however, they have not been permitted to carry drugs. They are sometimes faced with problems of patients in great pain or where it is necessary that these drugs should be used. It is not intended that these people should have free use of drugs, but it is intended that if they ring up the doctor—who may be ten or 15 or 20 miles away—and he says “Give this patient a dose of morphia”, or something of that nature, the midwife will have it to give the patient so that the patient does not have to wait until the doctor arrives.

How are you doing to prevent her from using it without the instructions of the doctor?

I am coming to that point. She will be given at most, one or perhaps two doses. She will be expected to keep a record, and before she can replace those drugs she will have to account for those that she has used. There will be a check because the doctor can be communicated with to establish whether or not he ordered the use of those drugs. This is simply an effort to make available to patients, without delay, certain drugs which are believed to be necessary.

Will she be allowed to purchase these drugs at a chemist or must she have a doctor’s prescription?

I am very sorry but I cannot answer that question at this stage. I will however find out for the hon. member.

Thank you very much. You are on the Medical Council, you should know.

I have forgotten. This clause which allows doctors to come in without to domiciliary clause is very important. South Africa is the only country, so far as we know, which has this clause, and it was a meaningless provision in most respects. For instance, a doctor who fulfils all the requirements of registration in medicine could be registered if he wrote a letter from Durban. But he could not be registered if he wrote a letter from Moçambique or from Europe. Doctors are sometimes very anxious, before they burns their boats in, say England, or some other country, to know that there will be no hitch about their registration in South Africa. They do not want to sell their practice, in say England, and then come over here and find that as a result of some technical flaw in their certificates or something like that, they cannot be registered. Difficulty has arisen in the past in that respect. We feel that these people should know before they leave their homes overseas that they will be acceptable, professionally, in this country.

In the same clause there is another item which should perhaps be explained and that is this: the council has power to register doctors who would not, in the ordinary way, meet with all the requirements of the council. They can be registered for a special purpose. They can we registered, for instance, if they come over for study. They can be registered if they come over for research work. That was why this clause was introduced. They can be registered as missionaries. In most cases in the past these doctors have been missionaries and have been registered under the condition that they must work in certain areas. There are a lot of Swedes among them, for instance, who go to Zululand and other areas and work only in those areas. When this amending clause to the original Act was first introduced, it was made for a period of five years. The Medical Council has had difficulties arising from the fact of this five-year period; not in connection with the missionaries but in connection with this new group which, with the rise in the reputation of our schools. is coming from overseas to do post-graduate study or work on special problems which arise in this country. We do have certain special problems which the Americans for instance can elucidate, world problems, because of our peculiar circumstances.

To register a man for five years for that work has given rise to certain difficulties. Once he is registered here there is nothing to stop him practising. He may only be coming over for a year’s work or two years’ work and he is confined to that work. But when that period is up, he has been registered and the fear is that he will go on working in the hospitals, to the detriment of our own people when he is, in fact, someone of whom we do not totally approve. He may not fulfil completely the requirements laid down by the Medical Council.

In connection with the question of whether allegations must be made on oath or not, the difficulty that has arisen here—as was mentioned by the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (City) (Col. Shearer)—is that you have people who do not want it to be known who made the statement. It can even be that a doctor’s wife may inform against her husband; an anxious wife whose husband is drinking, an anxious wife whose husband is drugging, wants to take some steps to stop it but does not wish to go to the police or to a lawyer and make an oath against her husband. She therefore writes a letter. Again, the evidence may appear in a newspaper. The evidence may appear in an advertisement inserted in the newspaper by a doctor. The Medical Council does not want to have to try and get the editor or the printer to come and swear an oath that that is the paper of that particular day. It is therefore in that type of case that the council wishes to be enabled to act on allegations not made on oath. I can however assure this hon. House that all evidence is always taken on oath.

Mr. Speaker, I think those are the only important items in the Bill. I do not propose to speak at length on the dental question. This is one aspect on which I have my own ideas but I have accepted the majority decision of the Medical Council which is that this should be carried out in this way.

I should like to make a request to the hon. the Minister, following upon what the hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) has said in connection with Clause 7 where habit-forming medicines are carelessly entrusted to unqualified persons. I can quite understand the argument in favour of that and I am not against it. But I should like to ask the hon. the Minister to ensure that stringent limitations are imposed and that the position is properly controlled. It may easily happen that the position can slacken gradually. not only as far as the people handling those medicines are concerned, but it may be very harmful to the public itself. Only people who have come into contact with persons who are addicted to this type of medicine have an idea of the tragedy that is occasioned where proper control is not exercised. The only reason why I got up to speak was to plead that no matter who is responsible that person should ensure that strict control is exercised.

Mr. Speaker perhaps I can reply very briefly to a few points. The hon. members for Oden-daalsrus (Dr. Meyer) and Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) have referred to a point of very great importance. However, I might just point out to them that they must not get the impression that this Bill contains all the requirements. The restrictions will of course be laid down by regulation. This clause only authorizes the Minister to make the necessary regulations—to authorize midwives, the commanders of aircraft and ships to use morphine and other drugs. But the exact provisions will be embodied in the regulations and I assure the House that great care will be taken to ensure that the regulations cover the position fully and adequately.

The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (City) (Col. Shearer) asked me what the interpretation would be of the words “not readily available”. Naturally the words are very, very wide indeed. “Not readily available” does not mean available only on a particular day or year or over a particular period it means not readily available at any particular time. Supposing a man has severe toothache and he would like to have a tooth extracted but finds that the dentist cannot see him, nothing would prevent him from going to a medical practitioner. As I say, the words give a tremendous amount of latitude. They will merely serve as a guide to our medical profession not to attempt to perform extractions, or to do dentistry when there is a dentist readily available. It is only an indication or a guide for the future.

I may remind hon. members that all our medical schools give very little training in dentistry to doctors. The courses which medical students follow are optional. They do see certain procedures, sometimes they are allowed to participate themselves, but they get no actual training in dentistry at all—at least, not necessarily. It is optional to them. Where it is optional in our country for medical men to have dental training, it is very inadvisable for medical men who have had no such training to attempt to perform dentistry where a dentist is readily available. To a very large extent we find that in our country districts there is a shortage of dentists, but that is not always because there are not sufficient dentists, but because there is no inducement to the dentists to set up practice in these towns on account of competition from the medical men. Our medical men should accept it as a rule that they should perform extractions only in cases of emergency and where a dentist is not readily available. Immediately they accept this, I think an opening will be made gradually in the country for dentists to start practising. In other words, by accepting this amendment of the Act we will be doing a service to the country districts.

Seeing that chemists are worried about Section 65 and its application, I merely wish to ask the Minister whether he will not reassure them and say that if they commit a technical contravention of Section 65 they cannot be prosecuted until such time as that section is revised.

The point which the hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) has now raised is strictly speaking not an amendment of the section, but I know that the chemists would have liked an amendment to the section. This has not been allowed because there are various difficulties which must first be solved. Just allow me to remind the hon. member of what the position is. It appeared that there were many chemists who had a large number of unsigned prescriptions and who had issued drugs on a large scale to persons whose identity could not be established; at least the police could not establish which patient had actually made use of them. There were other malpractices as well. This gave the impression that the provision of possibly harmful drugs was not always satisfactory and that malpractices were taking place on a large scale. It is very difficult for the police to prove, if the prescription is not signed, or the name of the person does not appear in it. that malpractices are actually taking place because how can the police call a man as a witness if they do not know who or where he is? The position became practically impossible. When a large number of prescriptions had been found in a man’s possession and the police suspected that the statements made by the person concerned might not be true and that there might be malpractices, the police had to prosecute him on the technical charge that the prescriptions were not signed by a medical practitioner or that the name of the patient did not appear on them. But I have assured the chemists that when it is apparent that it was perhaps just an error, we as a Department will not insist on a prosecution,but where malpractices are actually suspected and the chemist cannot explain the position to the satisfaction of the police, we shall have no option but to institute a prosecution.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

As hon. members know the Parliamentary Pensions Act has been amended from time to time to adapt it to changing circumstances. This Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1951 and since then it has been amended several times. Section 11 of the principal Act makes provision for the payment of special pensions. Apart from the ordinary pensions payable to Members of Parliament, provision is made for special pensions for Ministers, Deputy Ministers, office-bearers of Parliament and Administrators and foreign representatives. The Act was amended in 1958 in respect of the last mentioned. We find that all these amendments were effected to cover the same position, namely, where Members of Parliament of this House or of the Other Place are appointed to positions of greater responsibility. In those cases mainly three considerations were observed, considerations which I believe will be observed in all similar appointments. The first consideration which I hope will always be observed is that people are appointed to more responsible positions on the strength of their experience. The people who are appointed are persons with exceptional experience and most of them are senior members. Secondly they are persons with a peculiar knowledge of certain matters. A member of this House who has a peculiar knowledge of foreign affairs may be appointed as a foreign representative. In the third place a person may be appointed on account of his administrative ability. Many posts require outstanding administrative ability and a great personality which will enable such a person to control every situation. That is the reason why the Act was changed from time to time as the appointments were made. In terms of this Bill, which is very simple and clear, the Commissioners-General who were appointed in terms of the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 will be included. In those cases too the persons appointed were mostly senior persons and persons with a peculiar knowledge of certain matters. This Bill envisages that when a Member of Parliament is appointed as a Commissioner-General direct from Parliament, he will be entitled to a special pension when he retires. That is mainly the principle contained in this Bill. It makes provisions for the objects that I have outlined. That principle has already been accepted by this House in other cases. It is accepted in the case of Members of Parliament who are appointed to positions abroad. It was also accepted in 1958 in the case of Members of Parliament who are appointed as Administrators of the different provinces. The principle is that when such appointments are made the law is amended to make provision for the people who are appointed to those more responsible posts. Such a person may become an Administrator or he may have been an Administrator. There have been cases where persons who were Administrators had returned to Parliament and in those cases similar provision was made. Such persons remain members of the parliamentary pension scheme while they occupy the other position. They therefore retain continuity. Although he may not have been a Member of Parliament for the requisite number of years he remains a member of the scheme; the continuity is maintained even in respect of his new appointment. They also pay the necessary contributions as they would have paid had they remained Members of Parliament. They pay the compulsory R12 per month as laid down in the principal Act. The pensions of the Commissioners-General will be calculated on the basis of R150 per annum for every completed year of service as Commissioner-General. That is the special pension. Their pension will, therefore, be calculated on the existing basis. In their case it will be calculated on the same basis as that of the Deputy-Speaker and the Chairman of Committees and the Chief Whip of the Government Party and an Administrator. It is also specifically provided that they will receive no other pension. They will not receive any other pension when they retire. They will receive the ordinary pension and this, special pension on the specific condition that the two do not total more than R2,550 per annum. By way of illustration let me give the House this example. If you are a member of this House and you are appointed Chief Whip and you remain Chief Whip, you receive a salary of R5,000 per annum, plus an arbitrary allowance—it depends on the duration of the session—of approximately R2,680. That is in respect of the person who remains here. The other is the case of the person who is appointed Commissioner-General. He receives a salary of R5,200 per annum plus an allowance of R1,600 per annum. He is, therefore, in a worse position than the person who remains here. He was a senior person who was appointed because of his peculiar knowledge and because he was considered fit to undertake the responsibility, but he is in a worse position than the person who remains here. This Bill in the main deals with the inclusion of the Commissioners-General in this Parliamentaryscheme, it enables them to remain members of the scheme. Clauses 3 to 6 deal with that. The other clauses, Clause 6 amongst others, deal with cases which are provided for in the principal Act and which are changed by the Interpretation Act of 1957 where “Minister of Finance” is substituted by “Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions”. While that substitution is already effected in the Interpretation Act, we merely wish to put it right here.

The remaining clauses deal in the main with the procedure to be followed by Commissioners-General when they decide to re-join the pension scheme or decide to remain members. Let me take the example of a Member of Parliament who, before the date on which this Bill comes into operation, served as Commissioner-General for an uninterrupted period and who still holds that position to-day; he can decide whether he wishes to rejoin the pension scheme as from that date. The present Commissioners-General can decide. If he decides to do so he will have to make his monthly contributions of R12 from that date and any pension which is payable to him in terms of the principal Act will cease. When he eventually retires his pension will be re-calculated on the basis laid down in Section 14 of the principal Act and the two periods of his pensionable terms of office will be taken into account, his pension as a Member of Parliament and as Commissioner-General. Such a Commissioner-General will also have the right to say that he prefers that his period of service from the date of his appointment to the date on which this Bill comes into operation should be regarded as a pensionable term of office for the purposes of the Act. Somebody with, say, six years’ service may decide to rejoin the scheme; he remains a member for four years from the date on which this Bill comes into operation and in that case that period will be taken into account for the purpose of his pension. If he does that he will have to pay the monthly R12 in respect of that period and any pension that he has received will have to be refunded by him. The said period will also be regarded as a pensionable term of office when his pension is calculated in terms of Section 14 of the principal Act. If a Commissioner-General decides not to rejoin the Parliamentary pension scheme he will not be entitled to any pension in respect of his term of office as Commissioner-General. As I have said, it is part of our Parliamentary pension scheme. These Commissioners-General are compelled by law to live in the Bantu homelands. I think that is one aspect that has not been provided for, but where they are taken away from their businesses and home to occupy a full-time position. where they are taken away from Parliament where they could have advanced, it is no more than right that we make this change. I hope the House will accept it in that spirit.

Since the original Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1951 there have been several amendments to it, viz. in 1956, 1957 and 1958. The Minister in his introductory speech made reference to the necessity for these amending Bills, namely, to link up Parliamentary service where a member of Parliament has been appointed to the Diplomatic Service or where special pensions have been provided for certain officials of Parliament. The last amending Bill brought Administrators also into line to enable those persons who were members of Parliament, on having been appointed to what can be regarded as higher posts, to continue their pension contributions whilst holding these particular posts and to secure for them, by virtue of their office, increased pension rates based on an increased pension related to the particular office, up to a certain ceiling. Now this Bill, in essence, deals with Commissioners-General and the intention is to offer them the privilege of linking up their Parliamentary service with their service as Commissioners-General, to enable them to continue their contributions so that they will receive on retirement an increased pension.

In so far as the Commissioners-General are concerned, their pensions will increase at the rate of R150 per annum up to a ceiling of R2,400. In other words, they will be placed on exactly the same basis as the Administrators. Now comes the crucial criticism. These Commissioners-General are a link in the Government’s ideological chain, the object of which is the creation of independent and sovereign Bantustans. We on these benches have consistently opposed the Nationalist Party ideology and the Government’s determination to create independent sovereign Bantustans. I have no intention of going into the pros and cons of the situation, but in view of the fact that we associate with the appointment of Commissioners-General the ultimate goal, the attainment of these independent and sovereign Bantustans, we on these benches reject this Bill and we will not vote for it in the second reading.

I want to look at this Bill from a different angle from that of my colleague. May I say that I appreciate that the hon. the Minister, as Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions, had the job of piloting through this Bill although in essence of course it is a matter falling to be dealt with by the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development.

Why?

Because it is associated with the post of Commissioner-General, which is a diplomatic appointment. They are neither administrators nor executive officers. They are there as a link to take information from the territorial authority to the Government and vice versa. They are the channel of communication. There is no indication at all as to what the Government’s proposals are in regard to these gentlemen.

Order! That is not under discussion now.

With respect, we are being asked to provide pensions for a certain grade of people, and I want to know why we should. What are the functions of the Commissioners-General? Surely I am entitled to debate that, and say that I think they are entitled to pensions because they serve a useful purpose, or to say I do not want to give them pensions because they do not serve a useful purpose. With Administrators, it is true, they may hereafter be abolished by Parliament, but as the law stands at present and as far as one can see in the future that is the form of government the provinces have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy and the post remains. But there is nothing to show that this post will remain, and it is for all practical purposes pinned on to membership of this House. The Bill says so specifically, so that a member of this House, having been appointed as a Commissioner-General, he can now have for pension purposes his service in this House linked with the service as Commissioner-General. There are certain diplomatic representatives who are linked up in the same way. Reference has been made by the Minister to the link with the Administrators. I want to say quite frankly that I was a little unhappy about linking up the service of the Administrators with their Parliamentary service. We are starting to throw the net very wide and I wonder how much we will throw it when we go so far, because these gentlemen are not Administrators. They do not serve the functions of Administrators and they do not have the powers or privileges of Administrators. These are diplomatic posts. When we adopt the principle and extend it that an honourable member of this House, having served here for a certain period which would in itself qualify him for a pension, either because he has reached the ten years necessary or a lesser period which can be tied up for pension purposes with further service in some other capacity, we are extending the principle, and just how far are we going to be asked to extend it? It is quite true that members of Parliament can be translated into other functions of government, and we are now creating not only a precedent but almost a tradition that a member of Parliament, having served here for a certain number of years, whether is was long enough or not to qualify him for a Parliamentary pension, has now established some kind of a right that if he is translated to some other sphere his service is linked up for pension purposes. It is not my duty or intention to let my mind range over the variety of posts which may be filled by members of Parliament, but it seems to me that we now have a situation where ex-members of Parliament in that position will be entitled to come along and say: You did it in the case of a man who became an Administrator and a Commissioner-General, so why not do it in my case? That worries me. It is linked with Parliamentary service, but let us look at it from the other side. It is not linked with the excellence of the service being rendered in the new post, or with the functions performed in the new post. Whether there is a difference between the Administrator’s job and the functions he performs is beside the point. What matters is this, that the pension is not being provided for the excellence of the service rendered but merely because the men concerned were members of Parliament, so that their service, excellent or otherwise, has no bearing on it. I say that for this reason, that again it opens the door to a particular type of pressure. If you get a man who is a Commissioner-General but who has not been a member of Parliament, possibly because of his great knowledge of one of the Bantu languages, etc., he qualifies for a pension under this Bill but not as a member of Parliament, but at a later stage the Government may decide to appoint him as an Administrator, Again the excellence of his service has nothing to do with his pension. He may serve for ten or 20 years, but he is not entitled to a pension, neither under the original Act nor under this Bill. So we are not giving him a pension for the quality of the service he has rendered. The pension is not attached to the position he occupies but to the fact that he was a member of Parliament. We are not only establishing a precedent and extending it in this Bill, but we are reinforcing it by refusing to give a pension to the most able Commissioners-General who become Administrators, for no other reason than that they did not serve as members of Parliament. That is the point I want to make. I say that this is extending the principle to an undue extent. It is true, as the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (City) said, that it is extending it in connection with a development for which we have no sympathy and which we propose to abolish as soon as possible, but for the moment I leave it at that. In my opinion, this is the wrong principle which is being adopted. It has no justification unless we review the whole position of pensions for people who may occupy official or semi-official positions as a recognition of the need for a pension after service to the State, irrespective of whether it is based on membership of the Other Place or of this House. We make that the basis and then extend it and we are opening the door to claims by every ex-member of Parliament who can claim that he went from Parliament to some other service of the State and is therefore entitled to tie up his period of service in that other capacity with his service as a member of Parliament.

I have allowed the hon. member to make his point, but he must come back to the Bill now.

With respect, I am dealing with the Bill.

No. the hon. member has been going too far.

I am dealing with the question of pensions for Commissioners-General. The Minister himself referred to pensions for Administrators and I believe I am entitled to say that I object to the granting of pensions to Commissioners-General under these circumstances because it extends the principle. But I do not propose to take the matter any further. But I claim the right to say that my speech has been relevant and within the four corners of the Bill. The position is that on this side of the House we object to this extension of principles. We believe that the Government is taking it too far. We do not believe it is a good principle to have pensions for people who can claim that they were once Members of Parliament and who after having accepted some other appointment now claim that they can tie up their periods of service for pension purposes. If the Government feels that what is now being done is illogical and they want to go back to destroy the link with the Administrators, I will vote for it. I believe that our pension laws for Parliament should be retained very strictly within the ambit of Parliament and that the extension of that principle is wrong. While I was unhappy about the Administrators, there was still something to be said for it, but there is nothing to be said for this further extension and we shall vote against the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to convey my appreciation to hon. members for the frank way in which they have discussed this matter. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (City) (Col. Shearer) has placed emphasis on the principle which I have set out, the principle which has consistently been followed in this legislation, namely that we maintain the link between the service of a person who has served here and who is then promoted. He has repeated the examples I have mentioned where a person leaves here and is appointed an Ambassador. He then retains continuity as far as his pension is concerned. The hon. member approves of this in principle. He also approves of the fact that this Parliament applied the same principle through our 1958 legislation to Administrators. My argument was that the underlying principle was exactly the same. As regards the officers of the House, an amendment was effected at a later stage. I can just say that while the principle is exactly the same, there is the proviso that every amendment must be submitted to this Parliament. It is quite correct that hon. members should say how they feel on this occasion—whether they are for or against the amendment. It is our considered opinion that the functions of Commissioners-General are responsible functions, that they are functions which will increase in responsibility; that these are functions which call for a high degree of integrity, ability and knowledge. Just as applies in the case of the appointment of Administrators, the Government appoints a person who in its opinion is able to carry out these functions. Exactly the same position applies here. The hon. member for South Coast has been quite honest and frank and I appreciate it. I mention the case of the Administrators, not with any ulterior motive, except merely to elucidate the principle. I know how the hon. member feels personally.

What bothers me is that we have established a precedent and extending it.

I know that this troubles the hon. member, but despite the fact that the provision we made at the time troubled him, the whole House adopted that principle unanimously. Consequently, although it troubled him. he had to submit himself to the decision of this House in that instance. The House in its wisdom took that decision. The hon. member says he was not in favour of the 1958 amendments, but despite that this House adopted them.

Hon. members have in any case emphasized one matter very strongly, namely what they call “the linking up with the parliamentary system”, of which they emphatically approve in certain instances, if I understood them correctly, such as for example when someone is appointed to a post abroad. In such instance they approve in principle of this “linking up”. In those cases where a person becomes an Administrator, they also approve. I can just say, with reference to what the hon. member for South Coast has said, that we have one case of a Commissioner-General who has not been a Member of Parliament, namely Dr. Eiselen. But Dr. Eiselen cannot be brought under the parliamentary pension scheme because he has been appointed a Commissioner-General. That is excluded.

That is very unfair.

No, it is not. The position is that people who are retired officials and who are then appointed to these posts also receive other pensions. But as far as these cases are concerned, it is specifically laid down in the legislation that they must be linked to the parliamentary pension scheme and that they must have paid in full their contributions to the parliamentary pension fund. Only if they do so and their service has been linked up. can they benefit from this provision. The hon. member has referred to the case of the Administrators. I just want to say that I have made inquiries. We have not yet had such a specific instance, but I am told that Administrators can become members of this parliamentary pension scheme whether they are Members of Parliament or not. As I have said, we have not yet had such a case. We have had the case where a person was formerly an Administrator and later become a Member of Parliament and was a Member of Parliament at the time of the change in 1958. Under those circumstances his case was included in the scheme. I think it is right that it was included. At that time I discussed the matter with the Chief Whip of the Opposition and that was decided on at that time in consultation with all sides of the House. We all accepted the position.

What happens to overseas representatives?

They are also included. If a person has been here for three years or seven years, and he is then appointed he can elect to pay in the necessary contributions and then he can remain a member of the parliamentary pension scheme. If he then completes the remaining number of years required by the Act, he can come back and on his retirement he will be paid this pension plus R150 for each year of service as an Ambassador. This is a matter which the House has already discussed very fully. The question of the desirability of the existence of the Bantu homelands is not under discussion here. That is a matter which has been fully discussed on previous occasions. I do not want to go into that, but I just want to say that from time to time when they set out their policy, one forms an impression of what the policy of the Opposition is. The policy of the National Party is that these homelands will now be developed, but the payment of these pensions is linked to the basis I have mentioned—the same basis as that applying to the Deputy-Speaker, the Chairman of Committees or the Chief Whip for example. There is a ceiling and they may not go higher than that ceiling. In this regard hon. members opposite have said that the Bantu homelands must be recognized in general. Their intention is also to develop the Bantu homelands towards greater independence but their eventual aim is a federation. Well, those are things for the future; these are matters on which the Parliaments of the future will have to discuss, but if it comes about that there is a federation, any future Parliament will have to amend this Act again and will have to make the necessary provision. I do not want to discuss that aspect now because that aspect is not dealt with in this Bill. I think that I have dealt with all the aspects which are covered and I move—

Motion put and the House divided:

Ayes—82: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker, H. T. van G.; Bekker, M. J. H.: Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, P. J.; de Villiers, C. V.; de Villiers, J. D.; Diederichs, N.; Dönges, T. E.; du Pisanie, J.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; du Plessis, P. W.; Erasmus, F. C.; Faurie, W. H.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Froneman., G. F. van L.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; le Riche, R.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, J. A.; Maree, W. A.; Martins, H. E.; Mentz, F. E.; Meyer, T.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Muller, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Nel, M. D. C. de W.; Niemand, F. J.; Otto, J. C.; Pelser, P. C.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Sauer, P. O.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, J. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Uys, D. C. H.; van den Berg, G. P.; van den Berg, M. J.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; van der Merwe, J. A.; van der Merwe, P. S.; van der Walt, B. J.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C., van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; van Staden, J. W.; van Wyk, G. H.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Viljoen, M.; Visse, J. H.; Vorster, B. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Webster, A.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: J. J. Fouché and D. J. Potgieter.

Noes—44: Basson, J. A. L.; Bowker, T. B.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Butcher, R. R.; Connan, J. M.; Cronje, F. J. C.; de Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Eglin, C. W.; Fisher, E. L.; Frielinghaus, H. O.; Gay, L. C.; Graaff, de V.; Henwood, B. H.; Higgerty, J. W.; Holland, M. W.; Horak, J. L.; Lawrence, H. G.: Lewis, H.; Lewis, J.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Moore. P. A.: Oldfield, G. N.; Plewman, R. P.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Ross, D. G.; Shearer, O. L.; Smit, D. L.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Steytler, J. van A.; Swart, H. G.; Tucker, H.; van Niekerk, S. M.; van Ryneveld, C. B.: Warren, C. M.; Waterson, S. F.; Williams, T. O.

Tellers: N. G. Eaton and A. Hopewell.

Motion accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr. Chairman, you will remember that during the second reading debate I objected to the principles contained in this clause. I asked that the old Union Day should be retained. The replies I received were not satisfactory. I also said that if we could not be satisfied we would again raise the matter in the Committee Stage. At this stage I would like to say that what I cannot understand is why the Government selected 31 May as Republic Day. We have already indicated that we have no objection to a Republic Day as a public holiday. We have no objection at all because it is the beginning of a new era in our history. I would like the hon. the Minister or the Deputy Minister to explain to us why 5 October, e.g. the day of the referendum, was not selected as Republic Day. In my opinion that would have made it possible for us to retain 31 May as Union Day. I think our hon. friends also admitted in the second reading debate that Union Day was the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. It was the end of an era of unpleasantness, bitterness, division and strife, when our great men then got together and instituted a new era, and from that new era we have progressed to where we are to-day—from bitterness and strife to unity. During that period we made attempts from time to time to implement the unity which was made possible then. One of the hon. members opposite said that we should not make every day which is a prominent day in our history a public holiday. I admit that; it is impossible. It is for that reason, I think, that we committed the “monstrosity”, if you will forgive me for using this word, of confusing the Day of the Covenant, Blood River Day and Dingaan’s Day with one another. Here we are now making the same mistake. Because we do not want any more public holidays, or because we consider that we are now entering a new era, the Government says: One of those days must go, and they now propose that it should be Union Day. None of us can deny that there have been certain outstanding days in our history which should not be tampered with, and one of them. I think, is Founder’s Day, because that was the beginning of our existence. That is an outstanding day which should not be tampered with. A second day with which, in my opinion, we should not tamper is Kruger Day. I often wonder whether we could not have joined the two together, because for the republicans Kruger is the outstanding figure…

The hon. member must confine himself to the provisions of the clause.

I am trying to do so. I just want to explain…

The hon. member is trying to do so by a rather devious route.

So we also have another outstanding day, the Day of the Covenant, with which we dare not tamper. But in my opinion Union Day is also a day with which we dare not meddle. We often hear just lately from hon. members opposite—and I accept that they mean well—that we should reveal a good spirit towards each other; that there should be a good spirit between us, but then we should not take away certain things in regard to which we all feel the same, and if there was one day in regard to which we all felt the same it was Union Day. For that reason I would like to move—

This amendment although relevant to the subject matter of the Bill seeks to increase the number of public holidays and therefore to extend the scope of the Bill. This was not contemplated at the second reading and I regret that I cannot accept the amendment.

As was apparent from the speeches made by my colleague, the hon. member for Maitland (Dr. de Beer) and I myself during the second reading debate, we realize that as a result of the establishment of the Republic, it is necessary to make certain changes to the names of certain of our public holidays. We have already given our views on replacing the Queen’s Birthday by Family Day during the second reading debate and I do not want to enlarge on that any further. But we come back to the new name for Union Day, and I think that we must once again consider the proposal embodied in Clause 2 in this regard. All of us regarded Union Day as a special public holiday. Apart from the religious holidays, Union Day was the most important holiday in the calendar of the South African people. Although it was called Union Day, it was traditionally our South African National Day. It was South Africa’s day; it was the day of the birth of Union; it was the day of which the various elements which to-day constitute South Africa were united, Union Day was traditionally celebrated as our national day.

When business was suspended, I was discussing the important place which Union Day as a public holiday on 31 May held in South Africa. Apart from the religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas Day it is of course the most important holiday for us as South Africans. Traditionally, apart from the name of the holiday, it has been a holiday which has become our South African national day, the public holiday on which we have reaffirmed our loyalty to South Africa. The question before the House is whether the name which the Government proposes substituting for Union Day is the best and the most suitable. I am convinced that it is not the most suitable name for this important day, 31 May. I can fully appreciate that in this hour of triumph of the National Party, now that they have established the Republic, they want to give expression to this triumph in the name of the new public holiday, namely Republic Day, but I should like to analyse this matter objectively. We must appreciate that things have changed and that it is no longer the position that only one important constitutional step has taken place on 31 May. In fact two important constitutional steps have been taken by the South African people on the same date. The one is the establishment of the Union of South Africa and the other is the establishment of the Republic of South Africa. My objection to the name “Republic Day” is that it only gives official recognition to one of these important steps. It may well be that certain members feel that it is the most important step. There are other members who consider that the original establishment of Union was of greater importance. Apart from that, seeing that the people of South Africa have in fact taken two important constitutional steps on one day, I think that it is a pity that only one of those steps will officially be recognized by legislation. That is the first reason why I consider that Republic Day is not a suitable name for this public holiday. In the second place, I consider that unnecessary emphasis is being placed on the mere form of our government. In the past we were a monarchy, but we did not describe 31 May as Monarchy Day or King’s Day. We called it Union Day. We did not call it Union Day because we were a Union and not a monarchy or a republic.

What about “Empire Day”?

We are not discussing “Empire Day we are now discussing Union Day. There is no reference to “Empire Day” in this Bill now before us. Let us discuss the present position which has arisen as a result of changed circumstances in South Africa. Union Day was not a day which placed the emphasis on our form of government. It was a name which was used to give recognition to the establishment of a new nation, irrespective of whether it had a monarchial or a republican system of government. I think it is unnecessary always to place emphasis on the external form of our government. What is of far greater importance is that we are all South Africans and that we are an independent state irrespective of the form of government of that state. Furthermore I want to suggest that the name “Republic Day” is not unique to or characteristic of South Africa. There are many republics in the world just as there are many monarchies. I consider that it would be better if we were to give a name to this important national public holiday which is unique to South Africa and which is not merely the description of a form of government. It may be said that Union Day was not unique to South Africa either. I think that it was in fact unique to South Africa. There was no other state in the world which was known as “the Union” or “die Unie”. Union Day was a name which was unique to South Africa. All the nations of the world could identify us by that name.

Hon. members opposite and the Minister who has introduced this Bill may argue that because the name of this state was previously “Union of South Africa” and is now “Republic of South Africa” it must inevitably follow that the name of this public holiday should be changed from “Union Day” to “Republic Day”. But I want to point out that the name “Union Day” was not only the name of the state. It also described the form of the state; it was also the name of a tremendously important event. It is far more important not only because it was the name of South Africa—“Union of South Africa” or “Unie van Suid-Afrika”—but it was also a recognition of the form of the state; it was a recognition of the unification of the various parts of the country which constitute the South African state. For that reason it behoves us to think carefully about the name we are going to give to the one public holiday which is to be our national or South African day of celebration, and for these reasons I want to move as an amendment that the name of this important public holiday should be “South Africa Day”. We expect that of all South Africans irrespective of their attitude towards republics or monarchies, that they should in the first place be South Africans, that they will give their supreme loyalty and love to South Africa—not to the form of government which may prevail in South Africa at any particular stage. I hope that this common loyalty, this common patriotism will become ever stronger and that our people will also thereby show greater respect and love for the new constitutional form into which the South African state has now been moulded. I can tell hon. members opposite that respect and love for a form of government cannot be forced on citizens. It must grow from the wishes of the people, and if it is not a spontaneous love, if it does not flow spontaneously from the attitudes and the hearts of the citizens of the country, it is valueless. We all have a common love for South Africa. Let us use this factor which we have in common in order to build up a greater patriotism and perhaps a greater love for the new form of government into which South Africa has been moulded amongst the citizens of South Africa. For that reason I move—

At the end of this second reading speech during which the Minister of the Interior replied to an argument used by the hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Eglin), which is the same argument the hon. member has now used, the Minister said that he wished to sum up the relationship between 31 May 1910 and 31 May 1961, as follows: On 31 May 1910 an engagement took place, but the actual marriage only took place in 1961. Mr. Chairman, I want to come back to this metaphor of the hon. the Minister because I think that it embodies the very point which will arise when we give this day the name “Republic Day There can be no doubt whatsoever that what happened on 31 May 1910 was in fact a marriage. As a matter of fact it was a marriage in which no divorce was possible. The possibility of the secession of one or other of the provinces has often been raised since then, and no responsible body has ever agreed with the people who believed that secession was possible. It was not only the coming together of the various parts of the country which now constitutes our country; no, it was their marriage. It represented the unification of the four parts, and it therefore represented the founding of our country as we know it to-day. To go further, if there was an engagement—I am not an historian, but if the hon. the Minister wants to find an event in history which he could describe as an engagement, it was probably when the National Convention met to see whether they were going to marry. I leave that point. The fact of the matter is that the marriage took place on 31 May. And what happened on 31 May to take the comparison further, is that the couple who were married in 1910 moved to another house. They went to another type of residence; they adopted a different form of government. The union which took place in 1910 continued undisturbed from 30 May 1961 to 2 June 1961; the relationship of the various parts of the country vis-à-vis one another has not changed because of the change in our form of government. Because this concept is so important, I have analysed it; if there is one day, one historic day which should be commemorated amongst our public holidays, it is surely the day on which our nation as it exists to-day was founded. The hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) has said that he has no objection whatsoever to the change in the form of our government being commemorated. I too have no objection to its being commemorated in one or other way, but I adopt the attitude in principle that as far as importance is concerned it cannot compare with the day when our nation as it exists to-day was founded and that day should be commemorated in such a way that it will commemorate the founding of our country rather than one or other change in the form of our government or change in one or other Act. Precisely because the change in our form of government was accompanied by a change in the official name of our form of government, namely from “Union of South Africa” to “Republic of South Africa”, I consider it all the more fitting that the name which we are now going to give to this most important public holiday should be the name of our country, the name “South Africa”. The name of our State was the “Union of South Africa” and it is now the “Republic of South Africa”, and I think that we shall all give the same loyalty to our country, irrespective of the form of government and the name of that form of the government which is also reflected in the full name of our country. But what is essential, what remains, is the name “South Africa”. I want to express the hope that the Minister will still seriously consider, even at this stage, accepting the name “South Africa Day” for this public holiday.

South Africa is the product of the ideals of both national groups. The Republic of South Africa is indeed something important because the Republic as such gives constitutional form to South Africa. The content of this form, the essence of that form, remains “South Africa”. When we speak of national unity, we must at the same time speak of common national ideals, and this unity of national ideals, of national loyalty and national love, we find in “South Africa”, in the content and not necessarily, at any rate at this stage, in the form, the constitutional form which South Africa has adopted. Without Union there would never have been a Republic of South Africa at this stage. When we go back in history, and here I want to refer to what General Smuts said in 1902, when we stood at the grave of two of the Republics which did not represent the ideals of the two other provinces at that stage, he said that that fight was fought for the independence of all South Africa. Not for the ideals of Afrikaans-speaking people, nor for those of the English-speaking people, but for that great concept “South Africa” which is common to both national groups. For that reason I too should like to see that we do not emphasize the form of government which we happened to have given to South Africa, the constitutional form, which at this stage cannot yet be our common ideal. It is the ideal of one of our national groups, one of the sections of our nation. We can achieve the national unity in South Africa which we cannot achieve at this stage at any rate through the form which South Africa happens to have adopted. I should therefore like to support my hon. friends in saying that we should place the emphasis on the essence, on the content, and not on the form as such.

The discussion has produced nothing new after what was said during the second reading debate. I therefore do not consider it necessary to devote much time to what has been said here. The hon. member for Hillbrow has asked: Why call 31 May “Republic Day”? And in the same breath the hon. member referred to 31 May 1902.

Not to-day, but at the second reading.

He has referred to 31 May 1902 and also to 31 May 1910. The hon. member has referred to two historic events, and then the hon. member inter alia made this further point: Why not call 15 October Republic Day? I do not think this is the time to deal with those arguments. They should have been raised at the second reading. But what I do want to emphasize is that 31 May 1961 was the culmination of a process which had its origin prior to 31 May 1902 and of which 31 May 1902 was only a beacon. And in the same way 31 May 1910 was also just a further step. But the completion of this process, the rounding off of this process, its culmination was reached on 31 May 1961. And that is its significance.

With whose assistance?

That is not at issue at the moment. I would rather not answer that question, because it is a silly interjection. The point is this: Here a process was taking place, a process of nation building, a process during which the nationhood of South Africa was given its full expression by what took place on 31 May 1961 and may I just say that the way in which the Republic was established on 31 May 1961, the peaceful way in which this State was born, is proof that the people of South Africa have accepted the birth of the Republic on 31 May 1961 in the spirit in which it was established. The whole population accepted it in that spirit. For that reason it can be the central concept around which we can unite ourselves as a nation. I therefore cannot see the argument that we should now suddenly depart from what we have already in effect accepted in principle at the second reading.

The hon. member for Pinelands has mentioned a second point. He wants to place the emphasis on “Union” because, he says, there is only one Union.

Of South Africa.

Yes, but if one refers to the Union of South Africa, one could just as well speak of the United States of America. In English the initials are the same, or for example the Union of Soviet Republics. It is therefore not an argument to say that there is only one Union. My point is this: If there is only one Union of South Africa, there is also only one Republic of South Africa. That brings me to my next point, namely that it is not South Africa which the State of which we are discussing signifies, but the “Republic of South Africa”, because when one thinks in general terms of South Africa one can think of a region which covers a larger area than the Union of South Africa or the Republic of South Africa. But it is the Republic of South Africa which gives substance to a specific state concept. I am sorry that I cannot accept the amendment of the hon. member for Pinelands and the amendment of the hon. member for Hillbrow has of course been ruled out of order in any case.

The hon. the Deputy Minister said in the first place that nothing new has emerged to-day in comparison with what has already been discussed, but what about my amendment, even though it was ruled out of order?

Order! The hon. member may not discuss it.

No, Sir, I do not want to do so, but I just say “What about it?” Surely that is something new. I in fact had a new idea, namely…

Order! That is not in order.

With all respect, Mr. Chairman… [Interjections.] I wish hon. members opposite would rather get up and make a contribution to the debate, but their mouths have been zipped. They dare not.

In the second portion of the reply of the hon. the Deputy Minister…

On a point of order, may the hon. member for Ventersdorp (Mr. Greyling) tell the hon. member for Hillbrow “That is a lie”?

Did the hon. member say that?

Yes, but I would like to explain the circumstances.

No, the hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it.

In the second part of his speech the hon. the Deputy Minister referred to my arguments during the second reading, and he is quite correct. What he told me here in his reply was in line with the second reading arguments I advanced. The episodes and the eras, and the culminating date he mentioned is precisely the one I mentioned. One of the culminating dates—we cannot get away from that—the most important one is the one which culminated, which concluded, a period of bitterness and strife and dissension in our country, viz. 31 May, Union Day. In my opinion that is the most important day, as I said during the second reading, the day which introduced the process of becoming a nation. It is for that reason why, with all respect, although it is a better proposal than the one contained in the Bill, I cannot agree with the proposal of the hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Eglin). I have another objection. I thoroughly realize that becoming a Republic in South Africa is the culmination of another period, but it is for that reason that I say it does not give us the right to abandon what we already have, namely an important day like Union Day. Therefore I am not so much concerned with 31 May, but I want to retain Union Day. I want to see that perpetuated. That is why I deeply regret that the amendment moved by me was ruled out of order, although quite correctly. All we can do now under the circumstances, until such time as there is a change of Government, is to support the proposal of our friend on our left. But I want to say definitely that we could also have thought of other days for the establishment of the Republic. In America, for example, they celebrate 4 July as Independence Day.

Freedom Day.

Yes, as you like. We can follow that example also, but that is not the general feeling—the feeling is for Union Day as such because it was the culmination of strife and bitterness and dissension. Therefore we on this side in future will seriously consider, and I hope it will not be long, restoring this day as a public holiday in South Africa to commemorate what took place on Union Day in 1910.

Hon. members opposite are accusing us of not taking any interest in the debate. I just want to say that to us on this side of the House the position is so self-evident and it is so obvious that no arguments are necessary. But what has now disturbed the silence is the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Miller) who sat there laughing in a cynical way and asked derisively: “With whose assistance?” That sort of member in this House and in our country…

Order! The hon. member must come back to the clause.

Mr. Chairman, bearing in mind the promise which his Chief Rabbi made on behalf of his church regarding the Republic…

Order! That has nothing to do with this clause.

Sir, may I just say that that is a violation of that good faith and the promises which have been made.

I have listened carefully to what the hon. the Deputy Minister has said in his reply, and with all due respect I must say that his reply shows signs of confusion, signs of a misunderstanding of what this side of the House has said. But in case we have not made our point clear, I want to try to make clear once again what we are aiming at. The hon. the Deputy Minister criticized the hon. member for Pinelands for saying that by giving this name “Republic Day”, we were not making it clear that we were necessarily referring to one particular republic because there are hundreds of republics in the world, whereas if we were to adopt the name “South Africa” we would be referring specifically in the name of this public holiday to our own country. The hon. the Deputy Minister’s answer to this argument was; yes, but when one refers to South Africa, one might be referring to a far wider area than that which falls within the borders of our country. I really do not think that there is anywhere in the world where one can go and say: “I come from South Africa” and find people thinking that one comes from Angola, Moçambique or the Federation. South Africa is a constitutional concept and means our country. South Africa is the name of the country in which we were born and which we love, and “Republic”, although no matter how much it may mean to many people as a desirable form of government, is the description of a form of government. If South Africa were to become a monarchy again, which no one expects and few people desire, would we then celebrate “Monarchy Day” on 31 May? Or if South Africa, which heaven forbid, were to become a dictatorship, would we celebrate “Dictatorship Day”? All we are urging is that the name of our national day should relate to the name of our nation in the constitutional sense. Our national day should relate to the name of our country. That is why we are making this proposal. The hon. the Deputy Minister has not put forward any counter-argument as yet. The only answer we have had on this point was that given by the hon. the Minister of the Interior in the second reading—which I have already discussed—when the Minister suggested that the real marriage of the four parts of our country took place on 31 May 1961. I have answered that to the best of my ability. During this afternoon’s debate we have not been given any reason for the name now proposed, except that the hon. the Deputy Minister maintains that the struggle to establish a republic in South Africa started prior to 1902. Well, if it must be commemorated, do so in one or other suitable manner, but not by abolishing the day in our calendar which commemorates the establishment of our country. That is what we want, namely that South Africa’s name should be honoured on “South Africa Day”, on the day on which our nation as such was established, and that it should always be commemorated in such a way that every part of the population of South Africa as a whole will be able to participate and will be able to feel that they have a share in the celebrations.

I was quite prepared to be persuaded by the hon. Deputy Minister, but I found his reply very unconvincing, indeed I sensed that he himself was unconvinced. His arguments against the proposal which I put forward in the form of an amendment certainly were not such that they could have persuaded anyone with an open mind on this matter. It is important that he should realize that we did not, as he suggested, advocate the retention of the name “Union Day” under all circumstances. I can see the importance of Union Day, I can see the importance and the historical significance of 31 May 1910 and what happened on that day, but I did not want to press that we should retain the name “Union” for our premier national public holiday. But to the extent that “Union”, to the extent in the past that Union had a peculiar South African character, which Republic will not have, I think it would have been a better name to have. The hon. Deputy Minister says that because the United States are called the United States of America, therefore we should not have called “Union Day” “Union Day”.

I never said that.

He said that because you already had the United States of America, therefore the name “Union” was not a good name to have for a public holiday in South Africa. I believe that up and till the time of the Republic, “Union” was the perfect name to have given to our premier national holiday. It not only reflected a situation, but it reflected an event. It reflected the getting together of the peoples of South Africa. What is more, I do believe that whereas “Republic Day” can mean anything—it could refer to any republic anywhere in the world—at least it could be said for “Union Day” that other nations did not identify themselves with this concept of “Union The hon. the Minister has objected to “South Africa Day” on the grounds that it is too vague. The hon. Minister stated that the concept “South Africa” is not something that is “confined to the land mass which is the Republic of South Africa”. If the hon. Minister is correct, and I do not agree that he is correct, because I think everybody knows where and what South Africa is, then I think at least if he wants to be logical and follows the consequences of his own argument, then he should call this public holiday “the Republic of South Africa Day”, because, Mr. Speaker, if the argument is that “South Africa” is not clearly defined in terms of my proposal, then he must concede that “Republic” does not necessarily mean” the Republic of South Africa”. I do not want to press this point, but I put it to the hon. the Minister: If it is his desire to see that the name of our national festival is something that is peculiar to South Africa, something which in his opinion must not only reflect the character of our Constitution, but the fact that we are a nation, then the least that he should propose is that this should be changed to “Republic of South Africa Day”. I believe that the most important thing that we all have in common is not our attitude towards republics or monarchies or forms of government, but our common love and loyalty to South Africa. I believe that that is the point which should be emphasized. If the hon. the Minister is not prepared to accept my proposal, I would like him at least to indicate to this House, why in terms of his own arguments he is not prepared to have this called “Republic of South Africa Day”.

If ever there was anyone in our history who was acutely attuned to South Africa, it was the composer of that wonderful song “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika”. We are now discussing our great national day, and I wonder whether when we celebrate that national day and we sing “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika”, our national anthem, we must sing “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” for the “Republic of South Africa”. In accordance with Langenhoven’s feeling, I feel, seeing that South Africa is the crux, the essence of the establishment of this nation and national unity in South Africa, that we must be as closely attuned to South Africa as Langenhoven was in South Africa’s national anthem, namely “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika”. I believe the hon. the Minister is making a big mistake and the House will be making a big mistake if they emphasize the form and push the content and the essence into the background. “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” will fit “South Africa Day” perfectly and not “Republic Day”.

Question put: That the words “Republic Day” in line 15, proposed to be omitted, stand part of the clause.

Upon which the Committee divided:

Ayes—82: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker, H. T. van G.; Bekker, M. J. H.; Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, P. J.; de Villiers, C. V.; de Villiers, J. D.; de Wet, C.; Diederichs, N.; Dönges, T. E.; du Pisanie, J.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; du Plessis, P. W.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Froneman, G. F. van L.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; le Riche, R.; Luttig, H. G.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, J. A.; Martins, H. E.; Mentz, F. E.; Meyer, T.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; Mullder, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Nel, M. D. C. de W.; Niemand, F. J.; Otto, J. C.; Pelser, P. C.; Potgieter, D. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall. J. J.: Sadie, N. C. van R.: Sauer, P. O.; Schlebusch, J. A.: Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, J. H.; Strydom, G. H. F.; Treurnicht, N. F.; van den Berg, M. J.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; van der Merwe, J. A.; van der Merwe, P. S.; van der Walt, B. J.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; van Staden, J. W.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Vorster, B. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Webster, A.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: W. H. Faurie and J. J. Fouché.

Noes—46: Basson, J. A. L.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Butcher, R. R.; Connan, J. M.; Cope, J. P.; Cronje, F. J. C.; de Beer, Z. J.; de Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Eaton, N. G.; Fisher, E. L.; Fourie, I. S.; Frielinghaus, H. O.; Gay, L. C.; Graaff, de V.; Henwood, B. H.; Higgerty, J. W.; Holland, M. W.; Hopewell, A.; Horak, J. L.; Lawrence, H. G.; Lewis, H.; Lewis, J.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Moore, P. A.; Oldfield, G. N.; Plewman, R. P.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Ross, D. G.; Shearer, O. L.; Smit, D. L.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Steytler, J. van A.; Swart, H. G.; Swart, R. A. F.; Tucker, H.; van Ryneveld, C. B.; Warren, C. M.; Waterson, S. F.

Tellers: C. W. Eglin and T. O. Williams.

Question accordingly affirmed and the amendment dropped.

Clause, as printed, put and the Committee divided:

Ayes—83: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker, H. T. van G.; Bekker, M. J. H.; Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, P. J.; de Villiers, C. V.; de Villiers, J. D.; de Wet, C.; Diederichs, N.; Dönges, T. E.; du Pisanie, J.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; du Plessis, P. W.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Froneman, G. F. van L.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.: Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; le Riche, R.; Luttig, H. G.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, J. A.; Martins, H. E.; Mentz, F. E.; Meyer, T.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Nel, M. D. C. de W.; Niemand, F. J.: Otto, J. C.; Pelser, P. C.; Potgieter, D. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Sauer, P. O.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Steyn, J. H.; Strydom, G. H. F.; Treurnicht, N. F.; van den Berg, M. J.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; van der Merwe, J. A.; van der Merwe, P. S.; van der Walt. B. J.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; van Staden, J. W.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Vorster, B. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Webster, A.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: W. H. Faurie and J. J. Fouché.

Noes—46: Basson, J. A. L.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Butcher, R. R.; Connan, J. M.; Cope, J. P.; Cronje, F. J. C.; de Beer, Z. J.; de Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Eglin, C. W.; Fisher, E. L.; Fourie, I. S.; Frielinghaus, H. O.; Gay, L. C.; Graaff, de V.; Henwood, B. H.; Higgerty, J. W.; Holland, M. W.; Horak, J. L.; Lawrence, H. G.; Lewis, H.; Lewis, J.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Moore, P. A.; Oldfield, G. N.; Plewman, R. P.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Ross, D. G.; Shearer. O. L.; Smit, D. L.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Steytler, J. van A.; Swart, H. G.; Swart, R. A. F.; Tucker, H.; van Ryneveld, C. B.; Warren, C. M.; Waterson, S. F.; Williams, T. O.

Tellers: N. G. Eaton and A. Hopewell.

Clause, as printed, accordingly agreed to.

Remaining Clauses and the Title of the Bill put and agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill reported without amendment.

When the House adjourned last night, after the very attentive and quiet period that we had here, the hon. the Minister of Lands was good enough to come and grace the House with his presence. He made one or two extraordinary interjections. I want to come back to the hon. the Minister. I am pleased that he has come out of his siesta to pay attention to this. The hon. the Minister said that it is time that a tariff of fees was laid down for the medical profession. This statement arose out of something I had said earlier. I had said that there was an insurance company with a very large group of people who were attached to their medical aid plan and who were presented with fees which they incurred by visiting doctors, but the full amount of those fees were not paid by the insurance company. I then said that I thought that the hon. the Minister of Lands was interested in one of these companies. At that stage the Minister said it was high time a tariff of fees was laid down.

Mr. Speaker, I took the Minister’s interjection to mean, in the context of what I was talking about, that it would be this insurance company in which the Minister is interested that would lay down the tariff of fees for the doctors. Perhaps the hon. the Minister does not know, but a tariff of fees is laid down for doctors. This tariff of fees is laid down by the doctors and it is scrutinized very carefully by the Medical Council. If the hon. the Minister should, through his dealings with doctors, think that they are overcharging any patients, then surely he should do the right thing and go to the right quarter and discuss the matter with the responsible body. If he knows of any individuals who have been overcharging he should report them likewise.

The question of medical aid in our country to-day is so important that the whole structure of the health of our community depends upon their success. To-day over 1,000,000 people subscribe to medical aid societies throughout the country. As I said last night, there are medical aid societies which are sponsored by employers, and there are two or three which are sponsored by insurance companies. There have been no complaints about the medical aid societies which are run by the employers, and there has been very little trouble between the Medical Association and any of these medical aid societies. But there has been trouble with the insurance companies, and some of it has led to litigation.

It is our contention, Mr. Speaker, that no medical aid society should be conducted for a profit. There should be no profit making on the sick. As long as we have insurance companies that are attempting not to show a loss—shall I put it that way—and are using the contacts that they make through medical aid for other purposes such as life insurance and motor-car insurance, then they have nothing to cry about if they must manage to make ends meet. I do not think, and I am sure this House will agree with me, that any society which cares for the sick should show a profit.

That brings me to what is probably the most important aspect of medical aid as it faces the country to-day. I feel that there are too many people who earn too little money and are unable to belong to medical aid societies. These are the people that have to be helped. Their incomes are too small for them to be able to contribute towards medical aid societies, and it is really for these people that medical aid societies are in existence. What can be done to help them? I will repeat what I have said over and over again. I think the time has come in this country for a correlation of all the good that medical aid societies can do for the people. Let us see whether or not the Government can subsidize the subscriber to belong to these medical aid societies.

You know a commission has been appointed to go into that.

Yes, we have had a commission sitting, and that commission will report in October. That commission will certainly say, if it has done its job properly, that the cost of being sick in South Africa to-day is so high that it is well-nigh impossible for the ordinary individual to meet the costs.

It is cheaper to die.

And they will say that something must be done to help these people. That is what the commission will probably find.

We will have an opportunity of discussing it.

Yes, we will discuss it in October—or whenever it is that we come back.

I would like the hon. the Minister of Health to take this into consideration immediately. Forget about insurance companies. The one thing I am asking him to do, is to forget about these insurance companies for the moment. Forget about profit-making concerns and see whether or not the Government can devise a plan whereby they can subscribe towards a voluntary health scheme which can be joined by everybody who wishes to do so. I do not wish the Government to take over this health scheme. I think that that would be a mistake. But I would like to see the Government assist the subscriber so that even those with a low income will be able to pay their way. I am sure that if the Government were to take it upon themselves in this way, the employers of labour would also put their hands into their pockets and make a contribution towards this welfare scheme that we are suggesting to-day. Let it be a health scheme in which the individual, the employer and the State all play their part. Let those three interests come together and each pay a share towards the scheme.

I have gone to a lot of trouble, Mr. Speaker, to see whether or not such a scheme is feasible. The hon. the Minister probably knows that a wonderful scheme has come into being in Australia to-day. The health services that are provided in that country are second to none, and what is being done there can easily be done in this country. We have the complicated position of having to deal with a large group of our population who do not earn sufficient to pay into any health scheme, and I am now referring to the Bantu. They will have to be treated according to their means. We cannot expect them to contribute to a service of this nature on the same basis as the White man who is earning a larger salary. But I say that they should receive the same treatment nevertheless. And the only way that they can get that treatment is for the doors of the hospitals to be opened to them by contributions for the services rendered at a level which is comparative to their wage earnings. For the White people and for the Coloured people I say that the time is passing too quickly for us to get this started. The work that is being done by the multiplicity of medical aids to-day has to be admired. They are doing yeoman service for the people. I think that the whole structure of our health in South Africa would collapse entirely if anything should happen to the schemes which at the moment are working so very well as far as medical aid is concerned.

Mr. Speaker, everything in our power should be done to make sure that these schemes are sponsored by every employer of labour. It is up to the hon. the Minister to do his level best to see that he takes an active interest in what is being done by the individual, and to see how he can help those bodies to function properly. With the large number of medical aid societies that we have in the country to-day, it is obviously impossible for them all to give the same service and all to charge the same fees. I would say that we must find ways and means of getting all these people together and making sure that we all pay the same for the services that are rendered by these societies. The doctors would welcome this. The Medical Association has done its best, not only to encourage these medical aid societies but also to sponsor their own. With the basis that we already have, with the structure that has already been provided voluntarily by these bodies, I say it would be an easy matter for the hon. the Minister to help solve this problem which faces the country.

Together with the medical aid schemes as they are to-day we must devise ways and means not only of making sure that the healthy can be assured against illness, but we must also see that those people who are not well, who have some physical or mental defect, shall be accepted on an equal basis for treatment by the various companies that sponsor these matters. It is a pity that so many of the ill are kept away and so many aged people are kept out of these schemes. I think that with our population in South Africa we require every able-bodied person to be kept fit and well and to be kept working for as long as possible. The only way you can do that is to have a plan whereby everybody can enjoy the services which are there to be utilized. It is far easier for the medical profession as a whole, too, to treat people on the basis of medical aid than to treat them privately. They are assured, in 90 per cent of the cases, of a regular income. They know that there will be a minimum of bad debts. They know that there will be no undue delay in the payment of accounts. They know that they can concentrate on the work in hand. But the way things have been going until very recently has been most unsatisfactory. There has been a diversity of fees and a diversity of services, and there has been the impossibility of getting the required beds in hospitals. There has been a prohibition against certain people entering hospitals because their wages were too low to enable them to afford it. And so the whole picture has been twisted and turned and distorted until we find that nobody has yet come forward with a proper plan devised for the whole population so that every person in this country can enjoy that which is there for the asking.

Together with that, Mr. Speaker, I want to make an appeal, again, to the hon. the Minister to make sure that personnel are available for the future. He must remember that it takes seven to eight years to produce a doctor, five to six years to produce a dentist, and if he does not get going now and find ways and means of producing more doctors and dentists and more of those people associated with those professions, we are going to find ourselves in very serious difficulties in the years to come.

I had not intended participating in the debate, but hon. members opposite invited me to do so last night, and hon. members opposite are accusing us when we allow them to say their say and when we allow them as much time as they want, of being too cowardly to rise and defend our case. It was not necessary for us to do so, because we agree with our case. But they say we are too afraid to do so.

Yes.

There they are saying “yes”. Every speaker who has risen opposite has only spoken on one subject. The last speaker did vary his theme a little, but for the rest, from one end to the other, they have only spoken on one subject, namely the colour policy of this Government. When an hon. member rose opposite, we could say in advance, as we also did yesterday afternoon, that they were going to say: We are isolated, we are without friends; we are without capital; we have nowhere to go and we stand alone.

That is all true.

Wait a moment; I am coming to that. It went so far that the hon. member who opened this debate on behalf of the Opposition yesterday smiled at me. This was the only time he has smiled at me, but I could not be sure whether it was a grimace or a smile—it was when he was angry with me. So serious is the position amongst hon. members opposite that everything this side of the House does is wrong, and there is not a good word to be said. Whatever we on this side of the House offer, hon. members opposite condemn. Then hon. members are always putting forward the reproach that all that is going wrong in South Africa to-day has nothing to do with the position in the outside world. Our colour policy is to blame for everything, and time after time hon. members rise and say that this Government should resign because of its sins. Let us just analyse for a moment what will replace this. Government. Mr. Speaker, after all there is a reason why we are implementing this colour policy, and that reason has after all been very clear to hon. members for years past. It seems to me that they will continue to make a fuss about this racial policy for the rest of their lives. What should we do? [Interjections.] What would hon. members opposite do if this. Government were to give way? What would we find? After all they only have one policy open to them, the policy of those friends whom they say we have lost and whom they will satisfy. What will satisfy these friends? If hon. members can only read and understand one sentence, it is clear what the friends whom we have lost as a result of our colour policy would expect of them, namely complete equality. Now it seems to me you will not allow me to say it is hypocritical, but it is so one-sided to expect something of me which hon. members opposite do not want to do; it is so one-sided to say that our colour policy is the cause of all our difficulties, but their colour policy will be accepted. It is. quite clear that their colour policy will not be accepted either, if they do not accept equality.

I do not see the hon. member for Simons-town (Mr. Gay) here, for whom I had a particularly high regard. We have been together on various occasions and we have appeared together in various places where he has earned my greatest respect, and I was convinced that if this hon. member adopted a standpoint, it would at least be a justifiable standpoint and a most chivalrous one. To my regret the hon. member read from a letter yesterday. Yes, I was convinced that when he sought a stick, it would at least be fair in his attacks. But he came here yesterday with a letter from an officer who has been discharged, and he said the officer had been discharged because he was not a Nationalist. [Interjections.] I take it that if the hon. member knows the Minister of Defence as I know him and he had gone to the Minister with that letter and said that irregularities are taking place…

But he did so.

You have had enough time to talk. If he had gone to the Minister and told him that this was his grievance, then as I know the Minister of Defence he would have listened to that grievance in every detail. But no, this is what I am disappointed about. The hon. member for whom I had the highest regard has destroyed all that regard by dragging that letter across the floor of the House in public as though the Nationalist Minister of Defence has allowed a person to be discharged from the Defence Force simply because of his political convictions while there is no question of that. There is not one person on this side of the House who would be satisfied if a man were to be discharged in that way. But hon. members now say that they want unity. The Minister of Transport expressed himself severely but not one hon. member opposite asked the Minister whether he meant that, because they wanted to have an opportunity to use his statement in a later debate. That is why none of them asked what he really meant. They want to interpret the Minister’s statement as meaning: “We do not want anything to do with you.” I am obliged to take up the cudgels with the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Prof. Fourie). I am very sorry that the hon. member said what he did yesterday. One can pity an hon. member who has had the privilege and the good fortune to become an educated and capable person and who then refuses to use that ability. There are so many other people in the world who would have liked to have that opportunity. The hon. member’s car has gone off the road and now he is sitting in the ditch and it’s cold, and now he and the United Party are blaming the Government for that, but they will remain there until they can prove to the world that they are prepared to fight on behalf of South Africa. The car of the hon. member for Germiston (District) has skidded off the gravel so often and he is also sitting in the ditch with his new friends because it remains simply impossible for South Africa to accept their policy, namely that there should be the same degree of equality as the Asian States in the Western world want. I now ask hon. members: If it is true that they want to protect South Africa as we want to do, should a halt not be called to this practice of putting these ideas into the mind of the Black man to the effect that at least half the Whites agree with him regarding the rights we want to give him but which hon. members opposite describe as oppression and not rights at all? Hon. members opposite are spreading the idea amongst the Bantu in every speech made in this House and sent out into the world that half the Whites of South Africa agree with the Asian States and want the equality for which they ask. I therefore ask hon. members: Is it not possible for them to see the position in this light? Do they believe that we want to do everything possible to destroy South Africa? If they believe that, then I say: Stay in the ditch.

Mr. Speaker, having listened to the hon. member who has just sat down, I can only say that I believe the financial situation must embarrass the Minister a great deal, but I cannot imagine that it has embarrassed him anything like as much as the speech of my old friend who has just been on his feet. One can understand when one hears a speech of that kind why it is that the Government side has not been able to stand up man for man in this debate and why the Cabinet has been so silent. The general theme of the hon. gentleman seemed to me: Why are we not prepared to fight for South Africa as he is? Sir, I can only say that I saw a number of Transvaal regiments in the last war and I do not believe I could have missed the hon. gentleman if he had been amongst the soldiers serving. Where was he?

Mr. Speaker, when the hon. the Minister introduced his Budget earlier this year, he made a number of remarks which have been referred to by many members on this side. What interested me was two remarks he made almost as an introduction to his Budget speech. He told us that he had drafted his Budget on two assumptions. The first was that South Africa would remain a member of the Commonwealth, and the second was that if South Africa were to be expelled it would not necessitate his Estimates having to be changed. What is so interesting is that this part of the Minister’s speech is not reported in the Hansard of the debate. I have since ascertained that the Minister was in no way to blame for it, but it would seem to indicate that that part of his speech was not drafted by his Department and was probably a hasty after-thought on the part of the Minister himself.

His first assumption has been proved to be palpably and tragically incorrect. His second assumption, that he has not changed his Estimates, may of course be technically correct in that he has not indicated any changes in the amounts to be devoted to the various Departments, or his taxation proposals, but I believe that the physical and financial consequences of the wrongness of his first assumption have been borne out by two very important statements on financial policy which the Minister has had to make in the past few weeks. The second one he made on Friday and it amounts, in my opinion, to a reversal and a repudiation of the most solemn undertakings given by him and his predecessors that in no circumstances will non-resident shareholders be deprived by this Government of their right to repatriate capital invested in South Africa. Sir, it was not only a reversal of policy, but a tragic admission that under this Government South Africa is no longer able to honour its obligations to those investors abroad whose capital we sought and encouraged in South Africa in the past. It is tragic that it should come at this time when the Minister has quite casually told us in introducing the second reading that the loan that was to be repaid on 1 June was only converted to the extent of some R43,000,000 and that some R30,000,000 was still outstanding.

You are all wrong. You probably read the Argus, or you listened to the hon. member for Pinetown.

No, I did not read the Argus. I listened to the Minister, and what the Minister said was that there was going to be some difficulty in respect of loan capital. He said that within the next few months R128,500,000 worth of loans was due for repayment, and he said that in respect of the loan due for repayment on 1 June, amounting to some R70,000,000-odd, R43,000,000 had been converted and R30,000,000 was due for repayment. Is that correct?

It is not correct.

Then do not let us argue about things that are wrong. If the Minister will tell me I will be only too pleased.

I said there was a loan outstanding of R75,500,000, that up to date only R43,000,000 had been resubscribed, leaving a balance of R30,000,000 which had to be redeemed, and I doubted whether we would be able to get sufficient new money in. I never said that we would not get in the R30,000,000. I said that I doubted whether we would be able to get the whole of the R30,000,000 to redeem it. I have my statement here.

There seems to be no essential difference between me and the Minister. If the Minister wishes to read his statement I have no objection. It is no good wasting time arguing about facts which are in dispute. Then may I put it my way. The Minister indicated that in the next few months loans amounting to R128,500,000 were to be redeemed. He indicated that of one loan which was to be redeemed some R43,000,000 had been converted to new loans and that some R30,000,000 was outstanding. I think that establishes all that I wanted to establish, which was to inquire from the Minister where that R30,000,000 was coming from. There are various ways in which that R30,000,000 can be found, but I think that what we are owed by the Minister is a very clear explanation of where the money is coming from. We know there are various ways in which he could get it. I have no doubt that he could get it from the Public Debt Commissioners. He can even print more money and get it from the Reserve Bank. But what the public wants to know is where is it coming from, since it does not seem that the public are prepared to subscribe that additional amount. Now, is there any difference between us?

I am sorry, your premise is wrong. I will read my statement: “Slegs R43,000,000 van die lening van R75,500,000 wat op 1 Junie terugbetaalbaar was, is in nuwe lenings omgesit, en die huidige aanduidings is dat nuwe kontantsubskripsies die tekort van ongeveer R30,000,000 nie sal opmaak nie”.

That is exactly what I said.

I do not know whether the hon. member accepted that it might be £29,500,000, because he talks as if it will be R30,000,000. I say it will not be R30,000,000. As I understand the hon. member’s argument, he accepted that I had said that there would be a shortfall of R30,000,000. What I in fact said was that the full R30,000,000 would not be supplemented (sal nie aangevul word nie) out of new loans. It might be R1,000,000 or R10,000,000 or R20,000,000 which we will in fact get. All I said was that I did not think we would get the full R30,000,000. That negatives the hon. member’s whole premise, because he assumes that the whole of the R30,000,000 will not be obtained by us.

Sir, if ever a Minister put his head into a noose here, it is this Minister. If ever a Minister has backed up every single word I said, it is this Minister. That is what his statement means. He does not believe he will get the whole of that R30,000,000. I said there would be a shortage of about R30,000,000 and I want to know where that money is coming from. There are various ways in which it can be got. What method is the Minister going to use to get that amount of money so that he does not further weaken confidence in South Africa overseas? Because, you see, Sir, the whole of what has happened in respect of his limitations on the repatriation of foreign capital is merely one symptom of an amazing reversal of policy which has taken place by this Government in the last few months, not as the result of circumstances beyond its control, but as the direct result of the actions of this Government, the actions for which this Government must take responsibility.

At the time of the Budget the Minister told us that the body economic was healthy and what it wanted was something in the nature of a stimulant or a shot in the arm to induce greater activity. That was also the theme of his Budget speech the year before. He noticed that there were certain depressing signs, namely that there had been an unusual outflow of capital in the last two years and he tried to counter the deflationary effect of that outflow of money by creating bank money to take the place of the capital which had been repatriated. He succeeded to some extent because the level of economic activity was, if anything, on a higher level in the early part of this year than it was last year. This year he wanted to go even further in that direction and he used his powers to enable the banks to reduce the amount of money which they have to have on deposit with the Reserve Bank to create further credit, and thereby afford an internal compensation for the loss of capital that has gone out of the Union. But what he apparently overlooked was that there was such a loss of confidence as the result of the policies of this Government and of our withdrawal from the Commonwealth that overseas investors were looking for a market for South African securities, and because of the measures he took to a large extent he helped to create that very market here in South Africa for overseas investors wanting to offload their stock. And the Government welcomed it. They thought it was a wonderful thing and that they were doing the right thing. The Minister himself said so. He said that our South African investors were able to buy in those securities at what he thought were fair prices. But what has happened now? So much money has gone out that to meet the difficulty of the fall in our foreign exchange and reserves, the Minister has now had to make a complete somersault. Now we find the Minister engaged in deflationary measures by increasing the percentage of money the banks have to have on deposit with the Reserve Bank, increasing the rates of interest generally, imposing import control, to try to counter the loss of reserves and foreign exchange. I will confess that he was faced with a cruel choice. He had to take the choice of either taking deflationary measures which might have a decreasing effect on the economy, or on the other hand, placing an embargo on the repatriation of foreign capital. And now what has happened? In fact, he has had to take both measures. Having tried the first measure unsuccessfully, he is now busy with the second measure, having placed a limited embargo on the repatriation of foreign capital. That is a step which I fear will destroy the confidence of overseas investors in South Africa to an extent unprecedented in our entire financial history. Severe as these steps are, I fear they will not succeed, because if I understand anything about finance at all there is going to be a good deal of trading in blocked capital and the Minister will find that he has not plugged all the loopholes, and I think he will find that this trading in blocked capital may debase our currency; because there is a very old law in economics which says that bad money drives out good money. The good money is hoarded and the bad money gets into circulation. The Minister may well find that what he has done will have repercussions which he cannot foresee at the moment, and which may result in his having to reconsider the entire position of our currency. The tragedy of all this is that there are obvious ways of getting around this ban on the export of capital rendered liquid by the sale of shares on the South African register. I am quite sure the Minister himself, were he still practising his profession, could find quite a number of ways, and I can assure him that if he cannot I can advise him. But what is fundamental is that these steps merely deal with symptoms and do not go to the root cause of this whole crisis. I believe that the crisis is due to one thing only, and that is the complete collapse of confidence in South Africa on the part of the overseas investors as the result of the policies followed by this Government. The Minister smiles. Can he explain why these overseas investors are withdrawing capital from South Africa at a time when they are getting better rates of interest here than in any other country in the Western world for comparable security? Has he had the opportunity of talking to the representatives of the stock exchanges who visited South Africa and who made the point that they could get better returns here than anywhere else in the world for sound investments? Why are they taking their money out of the country? It is because of lack of confidence in this Government and their policies. The tragedy is that there is no country in the Western world which inherently is sounder economically and where the chances of rapid economic development are better, provided the country is properly managed under a decent Government.

The other difficulty is that overseas investors will get no encouragement at all if they discuss their position with people in a similar position in South Africa, because the Chambers of Commerce and Industry and a very large number of those interested in the economic life of the country have warned the Government from time to time what the results of their policy will be. They cannot say that they have been taken by surprise. They have been warned of the dangerous consequences of their policy. What is so incredible is that this Government should have miscalculated, because it has been warned not only by the commercial and industrial people in South Africa, but also by the Opposition throughout the entire referendum campaign last year and throughout the last 12 or 13 years what the results of its policies may be. It was warned during the referendum that should we cease to be a member of the Commonwealth there might be economic repercussions which no one can foresee. I think the whole trouble is that this Minister and this Government have failed to appreciate what the effects of both its internal and external policies have been on the investing public overseas. When one speaks of South Africa’s international position, when one speaks of her external policies, one is reminded of the statement made by Lord Hume the British Foreign Secretary, in December last year, I think—

Sir, that is a great and powerful country like Britain. We are out of the Commonwealth. In which community of nations are we to-day? We are out of an association which I heard described by Sir John Maud, the British Ambassador now, as embracing one quarter of the world’s population, covering one fifth of the world’s surface, doing about one third of the world’s trade and rooted in all five continents and stretching across all seven seas. We are out of that association.

Canada is not.

And yet Canada is threatening devaluation.

Yes.

I expected that. Sir, that we should have such a childish interjection from the man responsible for guiding the destinies of South Africa passes my understanding. Why is Canada devaluing? Canada is devaluing because she has had so much capital from overseas that it has raised her cost structure… [Laughter.] It is news to hon. members opposite. They know nothing about it. I have taken the trouble to find out. I was in Canada last year when the Minister of Finance introduced his little budget and one of my comments at the time was “this will lead to devaluation”. Why is Canada devaluing? Because there has been such a flow of capital from the United States of America to Canada that her cost structure has risen to the point where she cannot compete in world markets. Look at the Minister over there smiling. Our position is completely the opposite. We are so short of capital that we have not the money to develop our industries, and the hon. the Prime Minister tries to draw a parallel between the situation in the two countries. If ever there was ignorance displayed abroad, it was from that hon. gentleman. It is fortunate that he has his Ministers of Finance and Economic Affairs. Let them deal with it. I suggest that the Prime Minister should keep off this point; I do not think that he really understands it.

Sir, what is the effect of our withdrawal from the Commonwealth? I have indicated that it means that we are now part of no international association except the United Nations Organization, but I do not regard that as a very great source of security to us. It means that although there has not been the automatic cancellation of trade treaties entered into as part of the Commonwealth preference structure there may be many other repercussions the consequences of which we have not seen up to the present time. We know that it will mean that we shall lose representation in many organizations outside the Commonwealth. We know that it means also that we will no longer have the benefit of the political, the economic and the technical information supplied by United Kingdom embassies throughout the world. We know that we shall lose the services and benefit offered by the Commonwealth specialized agencies, like the Shipping Committee, the Air Transport Council, the Telecommunications Board, the scientific offices, the joint research services, the numerous agricultural bureaux, the Press Union, the Parliamentary Association. It looks as though that will be the development, although I understand that in many cases negotiations are still afoot. Perhaps the biggest loss of all is that we shall be excluded from the Commonwealth technical agencies. I wonder whether people in this country realize what we have lost by ceasing to be a member of Unesco. We are out of Unesco now, and this was the one means of keeping in touch with many of the technical developments in the outside world. It would seem that we shall lose our membership there as well. Even if we do not understand the implications of what it means to be alone in the world, it is quite clear that foreign investors do and that overseas financiers seem to have a very shrewd idea of what it all entails. You see, Sir, the formula for the nations of the Western world since 1945 seems to have been a policy of forming voluntary and dynamic associations of inter-dependent free states in what are called multi-purpose organizations. One will agree that none of them themselves are necessarily self-sufficient, and I think perhaps in this context we have forgotten what General Smuts said in 1948—

He visualized South Africa playing her full part in regional security and in the development of Africa. It is quite clear that the Prime Minister, Dr. Malan, valued our membership of the Commonwealth because he believed that only there could we get the security which would enable us to have national unity internally. As a result perhaps of that point of view, by 1955 the Union Government formally agreed that the defence of Southern Africa against external aggression lies not only in Africa but also in the Middle East as well as in the southern sea routes. But despite that agreement, when the International Conference came in Nairobi in 1955, there was no success in establishing an Africa command organization, for reasons which I need not go into, and the Nato powers which participated in that Conference in their way must have been very disappointed. But nevertheless African security in a dangerous world is necessary to bolster the Central Treaty Organization which has succeeded over the area formerly influenced by the Bagdad Pact and also Seato. It is vital for the continuance of those organizations, and the Union is essential for a proper organization of African security. The result was that after Nairobi Britain and South Africa agreed to plan communications, supply and repair bases and things of that kind together. To what extent is that going to continue at the present time? We have had no indication yet in the debates during this Session. We do not know to what extent that arrangement will be continued. The result is that when it comes to security in the field of external relations, all we have is the Simons-town agreement, a vast dependence upon the Western powers and, ironically enough, upon the emerging states of Africa, with virtually all of which we have no diplomatic relations at all—and for that we are dependent for our external security as well as our seaward security—and now that we are out of the Commonwealth our own desires as White men in South Africa are not likely to receive the consideration that they received in the past, nor our economic needs for defence, except perhaps in Portugal which has the same troubles that we have. Sir, one is reminded of what Mr. Macmillan said last year—

Sir. we are not only isolated, we are also unpopular. We who were so popular in the past have become unpopular under this Government and we have an Achilles’ heel of which the world is not unaware and that is the position which we occupy in respect of South West Africa over which we hold a mandate. I do not propose to deal with this matter in detail. There is nothing which frightens this Government more than the mention of South West Africa. It is quite clear that in that regard we are open to attack on two fronts. One is at the United Nations Organization, and the other is because the manner in which we have conducted our mandate may be the subject of investigation by the International Court of Justice, should that court decide that it has jurisdiction in this matter.

Are you not ashamed of yourself?

There is nothing that frightens these people more than the mention of South West Africa because their consciences are guilty in that regard because their policy has been so stupid and so uninformed for so long in that regard.

Are you thinking of the election?

Here again I am not going to go into details because of the delicacy of the matter, but I am going to read out once again to these hon. gentlemen who are so very frightened indeed what the columnist Dawie said in the Burger last Saturday.

Ask him whether he is not ashamed of himself.

This is what he said—

And you are using it now as a lever.

Sir, I am beginning to believe that hon. gentlemen opposite are not only uninformed but they are very, very frightened indeed. This is what this columnist goes on to say—

And the members too.

I go on to quote—

Sir, my conscience is clear on this matter. I raised it some years ago and I raised it again last year. I offered full co-operation to the Government, if I was informed what was happening. I was rebuffed within 24 hours. I have kept my peace; I have not warned South Africa what might happen. Here is a review of a book in the Nationalist paper, probably the most responsible in the country, and it is interesting to note that the columnist proceeds these comments with the statement—

Sir, the views which are expressed by this columnist are quite frightening for South Africa. I do not propose to say whether or not I agree with them. Here you have merely a superficial handling of this matter. I have studied it very deeply indeed, and I want to say that it is. an absolute tragedy and I say it is a reflection upon the sense of duty of the members of this Government that this warning should have come from a columnist in a Nationalist newspaper instead of from responsible Ministers on that side of the House. Not a word have we had from them on this issue, except the story that the matter is sub judice, and therefore they can give no information at all. I have questioned them on this matter before and not a word have we had in reply except regret that the matter is mentioned. I think this whole situation reflects once again the insensitivity, the blindness, the obstinacy on the part of this Government in respect of the effect upon overseas confidence and investors of the external policies of the Union of South Africa. If our external policies have had that effect, then I believe that perhaps our internal policies have been of even more importance because this Government has consistently failed to appreciate two fundamental things internally. The first one is this, that when an economy is under pressure it is the weak link or weak links in that economy which snap first, not the strong links, and one knows from experience, once a weak link goes, what effects it can have upon the chain even though the other links are healthy and strong. One knows what enormous difficulties can be caused by the snapping of any weak link. The weakness in our economy to date has been that the manufacturing groups of our industries does not export sufficient to pay for the raw materials, the machinery and the equipment which it wishes to import for that purpose. In fact, its external currency deficit only a few years ago was of the order of £175,000,000. To-day, Sir, we are outside the Commonwealth. To-day Great Britain with whom we have done a great deal of trade is flirting with the idea of joining the common market, something which may affect us adversely.

Is that the Government’s fault?

And the other members of the Commonwealth?

My hon. friend says “the other members of the Commonwealth”. Sir, their memories are very short. During the referendum I warned time and again that Britain might join the common market and might make terms for herself and other Commonwealth members and that we might be excluded, but they laughed because they knew nothing about it. I do not think they understand it yet, but I warned them at the time. I am prepared to wait and keep silent. We will see what happens. I have been right so often, and they realize it only too well. [Laughter.] Sir, how they laughed when I first said in this House that the result of our becoming a Republic might be that we will find ourselves outside of the Commonwealth. How the Prime Minister laughed! And now?

I said so myself.

What happened when I warned the Prime Minister that if they continued to treat the Cape Coloured people in the way they do, they may make common cause with the Bantu in South Africa? Sir, it does not make you popular to be proved right; it makes you unpopular.

With the electorate.

That is wishful thinking.

I have said that that is our weakness. We are faced with the fact that Great Britain is flirting with the common market. We are faced with the fact that we cannot always expect our balance of trade with the Federation to be as favourable as it has been over the past few years. If there is industrial development there, it is natural that the balance of trade will not be as favourable as it was. Our markets amongst the territories of Africa have received set-backs—no one knows that better than the Minister of Economic Affairs—because of political action and the question that now faces us is this: What are the prospects of markets for South African manufacturers in other parts of the world? The hon. the Minister has had his missions overseas. He has been making inquiries and they have issued some reports. How long is it going to take to make up the backlog? How long is it going to take us to find new markets? To what extent can we compete in those markets under present conditions? It looks as though that gap which is the essential weakness in our economy is likely to remain. It makes one realize to what extent we are dependent upon the foreign exchange earned by the mining industry, by wool and by certain of the agricultural products which we have exported up to now under Commonwealth preferences. But there is something else that is interesting, and that is that it is precisely in those industries upon which we are dependent for this foreign exchange that the ratio of Europeans to non-Europeans employed in the industry is at its lowest. It is in those industries that we are most dependent upon non-European labour and the fact is that under present conditions that preponderance of non-European labour cushions the impact of external competition in respect of South African manufacturers and that in turn determines the living standard of our South African population. Sir, when you realize that we are governed to-day by a Government intent upon converting that labour into citizens of foreign states, then you realize how vulnerable the position is in South Africa at the present time. That is the first factor that the Government seems to overlook. The second fundamental factor that the Government continually seems to overlook is that it can only carry out its plans in connection with the development of the reserves at a tempo high enough to absorb even the natural increase of the population, at a tempo high enough to ensure rising living standards for the Bantu people, if there is rapid economic expansion. I think the Prime Minister knows that.

I wonder.

But rapid economic expansion in its turn depends upon availability of capital and skilled workers. At the present moment both capital and skilled immigrants into South Africa are being frightened away by the policies of this Government, and this last step by the Government in placing an embargo upon the repatriation of certain capital from South Africa may very well spell the final doom of this Government’s policy of separate development in the reserves. I wonder if they realize what they have done. I believe that by this step they have done more than by any other single step since they have been in power to undermine the whole of their policy of separate development in the reserves in this country. I want to say this too: There are many of us who believe that unless we have rapid economic expansion, we are going to be faced with a lowering of standards of living and we are going to run the risk of undermining the standards of Western civilization as we know them here and the Western institutions which we have grown up to respect in this country. I believe we can only maintain those Western institutions and that Western civilization that we know if we remain an integral part of the Western world. But the policies of this Government are not only cutting us off from the Western world economically but spiritually as well, and I wonder what the Government is going to do to meet this situation. I know that there are hon. members opposite who just laugh and who will go in the same way as they have always done. The tragedy is that you are reaching the stage where something has to be done, and I believe that a Government which was free and vigorous would go into the fundamental causes of our troubles and would try by means of courageous reform to remove those causes. The tragedy about hon. gentlemen opposite is that they are not free to act as the best interests of South Africa dictate. They have become embedded in the concrete of those very prejudices which they exploit in order to keep a portion of the electorate behind them—those very prejudices which they have been using for 13 years to try to remain in power, and they are getting a misplaced faith in negative and repressive action. They place undue emphasis upon separation of the races, always at the expense of those sections of the population who are politically powerless. They have created an image of South Africa in the world, an image which they cannot destroy without destroying the very steps which they climbed in order to come into power. Many of those hon. members sitting there know in their hearts that reforms are necessary but they dare not undertake them. The hon. the Prime Minister himself seeks from time to time to give some new positive content to his policy. He cannot succeed because every time he tries, he is dragged back by the very fears which have been engendered by him and his party amongst the people who are following him to-day.

What about you changing your policy?

Sir, the United Party has always been prepared to change its policies in the interests of South Africa. The trouble about this Government is that it puts its party first and South Africa second.

The electorate put us first and you second.

They did not, you know!

The tragedy now is that even if they are prepared to change I do not believe that they can change the image because that image has become so inextricably bound up with them and what they have been doing that as long as they occupy the seats of power in this country, that image will never change and the opinion of the outside world of South Africa will remain what it is.

You are starting your election fight a little bit too soon.

Always thinking about elections!

Sir, there is an old Afrikaans expression “wat die hart van vol is loop die mond van oor”. I can see the dilemma of the hon. the Prime Minister. I know that his members do not want an election; I know the difficulties with which he is faced. If there is anything causing him sleepless nights at the moment it is this very issue. No wonder we got this interjection.

No, I am worried about your future.

But we will come to that. I promise the Prime Minister that we shall not disappoint him in that regard.

You are not disappointing us now.

Let me put the position this way: Because this Government is powerless to effect the reforms necessary to improve South Africa’s position, it is for that very reason that the Prime Minister is flirting with the idea of a general election in South Africa before things get too bad. That is why he is worried.

He is trying to shake his head and can’t.

In the meantime this Government is trying to drag South Africa further upon this unhappy course and to disguise the true nature of what has been happening in the country up to now. Look what has been happening. A Radio South Africa, once an institution of which we were all so proud, is increasingly becoming an instrument for Government propaganda.

Disgraceful!

It is beginning to resemble the broadcasting systems of some of the totalitarian states. Sir, what is the other thing that is happening? Day after day from that side of the House there are attacks upon the free Press of South Africa. Those attacks become more and more virulent.

The yellow Press.

We have had, Sir, attacks upon the free Press in South Africa to the extent that there is a justified fear arising that these attacks may be translated into action to curb the activities of that Press which are trying to warn the people of the position in the country. What it amounts to is that the Government which is becoming powerless to alter its ways, is now considering measures to hide the consequences of its errors from the people whom it governs. That is the tragic situation which we are in. And now something else is happening. The hon. the Prime Minister is trying to act as a political opportunist and he is trying to make the best of the situation in which he is landed. He is unable to redress the wrongs that have been done to South Africa, and his tactics now are to call upon the people of South Africa to unite behind him in order to ward off the dangers which he and his policies have created for South Africa. What is their record? They have forfeited the warm friendship of many great countries of the world, and now they are seeking to get the people of South Africa to join behind them to condemn all those who differ from them. They ask us to become united. They want the unity of a people besieged, confined to a laager of their own making, a laager constructed not against our enemies but against people who are eager to be our friends. The tragedy is this that the powers that matter in the Western world. I believe, are eager to be friends with South Africa. I cannot state it better than a writer in an article that I read the other day. not even a fortnight ago, who said—

I want to go further and say that priority No. 1 in this regard is a change of Government, because the face that this Government presents to the world cannot be changed.

Do you want an election?

I would be very happy. My worry is for the Prime Minister. I think South Africa needs a new Government. I think it needs a Government first of all that instead of trying to frighten people into the sectional laager of the Nationalist Party would be prepared to work for real national unity in South Africa, national unity based on mutual respect for each other’s traditions, language, culture and background, and a mutual faith and a common ideal. I think South Africa needs a new Government which instead of forcing foreign ideological policies on the people, which conflict with all the ordinary laws of economics, like the development of border industries, like job reservation, will have regard to sound business principles and accepted economic laws in formulating policies for the country, a Government which will put better incomes for more people as priority No. 1 to make the life of the agitator more difficult, a Government which would get investor confidence abroad and good trading partners at home. I don’t want to say an awful lot about this position, but I think it is enough if we say that we believe that it is the duty of the Government to create a proper climate for investment, and to provide the essential services which private enterprise cannot tackle. We believe that the less meddling there is in sound private business the better, but we appreciate that for industry to be decentralized—we accept that; it is a good thing for it to be decentralized; it need not be forced into areas for ideological reasons—it will be necessary for the Central Government to provide water, power and essential services. In other words, we believe that it is not for the Government to tell you where to put your factory, but to help you to build it where your business prospects are brightest.

I believe there is a third reason why we require a different Government. We require a Government which instead of allowing economic development to slow down to such a pace that it cannot keep up with the increase of population, as is happening to-day under this Government, to slow down to such a pace that it cannot keep up without allowing overall real standards of living either to fall or to stagnate, a Government which has a dynamic policy for industrial expansion, which if properly applied would see the real income of the population doubled in less than a generation—a Government which instead of failing to provide sufficient jobs for a growing population and trying to protect those that there are with a policy of job reservation, can provide jobs and rising living standards for our whole population. What good is it, Sir, to reserve jobs for the White garment workers in Germiston, when you kill the Germiston industry by moving factories to the reserves, because you there allow the employment of workers at lower wages than those paid in the White areas? You see, Sir, what we need is a Government which instead of talking of parallel development and states within states, and the dismemberment of South Africa into a series of sovereign non-European states…

You want us to talk about a racial federation?

No, not racial federation. Race federation. That is better.

Is it a Black South Africa you are aiming at? Clause 3!

Sir, the interjection of the hon. the Prime Minister is so tempting. Perhaps you will assist me, when I deal with that in a moment. Instead of these things, instead of the dismemberment of South Africa into a series of sovereign non-European states, a government that believes that different races can live together within the borders of one state, provided certain things are recognized. First that the fruits of Western civilization must be shared with those members of the non-European races who have shown that they have the capacity to take joint responsibility with us for the future of South Africa, the recognition that White leadership must be maintained, the recognition that you cannot go on governing people without proper consultation at all levels and giving them a say in the machinery of government, and the recognition that it is not right to extend political rights to any new section without the approval of a decisive majority of the electorate.

You see, Sir, this Government has gone on. It has now alienated the Cape Coloured people and forced them into the hands of communist and Bantu groups, instead of accepting them as part of the Western group in South Africa, and treating them accordingly. Until recently the Government was still talking about the repatriation of the Indians. It treats them as though it has no policy for them. It allows the Group Areas Act to be applied to them in such a way that it is threatening their traditional means of livelihood. Sir, those policies have got to be replaced by a policy which will accept the Cape Coloured people as part of the Western group, will accept that the Indian population is a permanent part of the population of South Africa, and is prepared to negotiate with them to decide their future political status in South Africa. No government can continue in power here in South Africa if it continues to regard the urban Native as a temporary sojourner in our industrial areas, with political rights only in embryo Bantustans still to be created. One has got to be realistic, one has got to accept that they are a permanent part of the population. You have got to accept that they must have home ownership in their own locations in this White area, and you must make of them a responsible property-owning middle class and entitle them, in respect of the responsible ones, to exemption from the pass laws, and with representation in the Parliament which decides their destinies, and a real stake in the maintenance of law and order. Sir, South Africa can’t go on with a Government which promises the Natives in the reserves independence, and then does nothing about developing the reserves, a Government which is not prepared to use White skill, White capital and White initiative to develop those reserves, to raise their standards of living, or to train them in the essential principles of elective government.

All wrong.

The hon. the Prime Minister says that it is all wrong. Is the hon. gentleman prepared to tell me that the standard of living of the Natives in the reserves has increased in the last 20 years?

Of course it has.

If you have regard to the real value of money, the hon. the Prime Minister will find that he is making a very, very risky statement indeed.

Sir, I have emphasized certain differences between the policies of this Government and the policies of the Opposition. But it is when you come to the ultimate aims of those policies, and here I come to the interjection of the hon. the Prime Minister—that the divergence in those policies becomes most noticeable. We believe that what is required is a Government which will accept the Cape Coloured people as part of the Western group and as co-defenders of Western civilization in South Africa, a government which instead of talking of sovereign independent Bantustans, associated with a mixed state on a Commonwealth basis (a Commonwealth of which we may not even be allowed to remain a member), sees in the future a federation of races in South Africa, unified and under the control of one central government, working for common ideals and a common patriotism in South Africa.

Beautiful words!

I think the hon. the Prime Minister will agree with me that he wants this new republic—which I hope will be a federation of races one day—to be a system in which the standards of Western civilization are maintained, and respect for Western institutions continued. For that reason we need a government which instead of progressively undermining all principles on which Western civilization is based and the political institution which we have learned to respect and to value, is prepared to accept that the dignity of every individual as an individual is important, that the maximum freedoms must be allowed, consistent with the safety of the state. Such a Government would of necessity condemn the invasions of the freedom of the individual inherent in the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act, the Church Clause. Nor would it permit the continuance of invasions upon the freedom of the people which are inherent in the Prohibition of Interdicts Act, which does not provide equal access to the courts for all sections of the population. And I think it could be relied upon to combat any attempts to curb the freedom of the Press and the use of a state radio as a propaganda machine.

There is one last issue in respect of which changes are essential and that is in reference to our international relations. May I say that perhaps only the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is not here to-day, realizes better than we do how easy it is to lose overseas confidence and what an uphill battle it is to restore it once you have lost it.

I have indicated earlier that while we have lost membership of the Commonwealth, we have not become part of any other international grouping. Earlier speakers have asked “Where are our friends?” The hon. the Prime Minister not so long ago has said that his policy was a policy of friendship towards the Western world, but I believe that while the policies of this Government are maintained, it is possible that many of the states of the Western world may regard friendship with South Africa with some embarrassment. Therefore I believe that what South Africa needs instead of a government which has lost our Commonwealth membership, which has been condemned at the United Nations Organization, as no other government has ever been condemned, which has lost our friends in the world, is a government, Sir, which because of the essential fairness of its policies and the realization that the various peoples who go to make up our population are of different standards of civilization, and because of its attempts to raise the standards of living of all sections of our people, can earn the respect and friendship of the Western world.

But what do we find? This Government says that the only thing that will achieve that is “one man one vote”. The party on my left, the Progressive Party, says you can only achieve that if you abolish all discrimination on the grounds of colour. I believe that they are both wrong. I believe the Progressives are wrong because they don’t realize, no matter what a Black man’s standard of education, it does not make him any less good a Black nationalist. I believe the Government is wrong in that it fails to appreciate the vast volume of goodwill which still exists among the non-European people for the European in South Africa. I believe it is wrong also because it does not appreciate that the people of the Western world understand the special position of the European in South Africa. They understand how necessary it is for Western standards to be maintained, and they see every day in the emergent states of Africa how necessary it is for White leadership to be maintained.

Perhaps I have outlined an ambitious programme, but this is a time of crisis and the big question is: How long will we have to find a solution and what use will we make of the time available? The changes I have suggested, I think, are supplementary one to the other and they should be combined into a bold plan to reform South Africa and everything to do with it. Reformation of that kind cannot be long delayed, because the way things are developing now, every step taken by this Government is one more irrevocable step in the direction of disaster, and we are getting nearer and nearer to the point of no return every day.

But if there is one of these objectives that I have outlined which is more urgent than any of the others, it is the vital need to combine the energies and the talents and the patriotism, of both the Afrikaans- and English-speaking communities into a joint crusade for the restoration of South Africa’s prestige and its prosperity.

The hon. the Prime Minister has lately talked of national unity. What he wants, I think, is the unity of the grave. He wants to unite people behind him in defence of policies, which have already palpably failed. He wants us to fall together because he can no longer stand alone on ground which is shifting out from under his feet. He knows, and good sound Afrikaners of the Republic know, to what extent they are criticized for policies which have been undertaken by this Government. I don’t believe the Afrikaans-speaking people deserve to suffer for that. I believe that this Government, instead of offering them the chance to show the world the great qualities that are inherent in their character and in their history, is asking hundreds of thousands of Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking South Africans, whom they have not yet misled, to commit themselves to the errors which this Government has made in the period in which it has been in power.

Sir, in this frightening plan, the hon. Prime Minister must not succeed. If the hon. the Prime Minister decides to take the plunge, screws up his courage and decides that now is the time for an election, before the public decide how serious the situation has become, then I believe the public would have an opportunity to elect a new Government which will give a different and healthier purpose to the great might which we could find together in national unity in South Africa. The purpose of that unity should be to correct the mistakes made by this Government, to create a new image of South Africa of which we could all be proud and which the world would understand.

We should come together dedicated to the task of restoring South Africa’s honour, her prosperity, and giving to all her people that good name which we preserved through the ages. We should try to maintain those standards of civilization which we as a product of Western thought and culture share with the Western world.

The tragedy is that this Government has failed. The hon. the Prime Minister has failed to hold South Africa’s place in the civilized communities of the modern world. I don’t believe that they will manage to restore it. I believe you require a new Government to restore it, a new Government in which both sections of the community are represented, not a sectional government as the present one. I believe that it will afford a mighty challenge to those who love South Africa. But I think I know the people of South Africa well enough to know that no matter how great that challenge, no matter how great the sacrifice if the interests of South Africa are involved, they will not be found wanting when the call comes. We, Sir, on this side of the House have shown that before. We have shown before when South Africa called that we were prepared to answer. Very many members on the other side who talked big to-day about fighting for South Africa were not to be seen when the call came. I believe that that call is coming again in a different way. I believe it can only be answered by a Government in which both English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking people are represented. I believe it can only be answered by a Government which stands for true national unity and not sectionalism; that is why I support the amendment which is before the House at the moment.

I have listened attentively to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, and I think that one can divide his speech into three main sections: In the first place, he has dealt with economic matters. In the second place the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has wept over the grave of South Africa’s lost membership of the Commonwealth; and in the third place the hon. member has given us the old customary vague statements and generalizations which we have heard so often before. But what has surprised me, and allow me to say this at the very outset, is that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has pictured a Government which is in such difficulties, both internally and externally, that it is on the point of collapsing. If that is the position, if the picture which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has described is correct, then I am only surprised that he has not challenged the Prime Minister to hold an election. Then after all he has a very good opportunity to defeat this collapsing Government. No, Sir, after listening yet again to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, I am once again convinced that what South Africa needs in the first place is not a new Government; South Africa needs a new Opposition. And. Sir, you will forgive me if in all humility I ask the hon. the Prime Minister whether he does not think the time has come when the Government should call for tenders for a different Opposition.

There is one point on which I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, and that is his statement in referring to his party, namely: “The United Party is always prepared to change its policy.” Perhaps he did not put it in exactly that way, but that is more or less what he said. As a matter of fact, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition reminds me of the American politician who was addressing his audience. He ended his speech with the following words: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, these are my sentiments; if you want them you can have them; if you don’t want them, I can change them.”

We have now heard that three times before.

I say that the speech of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition can be divided into three parts. In the first place he has set out his attitude towards certain economic matters. I am not an economist. I therefore do not intend following the Leader of the Opposition in that regard. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition is not an economist either, and I do not think it would be fair to the House to have two hon. members discussing something of which they know nothing on the same afternoon. For that reason I do not want to take that matter any further.

As regards the attitude of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in that he has wept over the grave of our lost membership of the Commonwealth, that is a bygone matter. Everyone in South Africa accepts the position, and I am just surprised that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has considered it necessary to reopen the matter. (Daardie ou koeie uit die sloot te grawe.)

Do the people accept the price, the cost involved?

The hon. member now says that this old cow will get the prize at their show. As far as the third aspect is concerned, namely his vague statements and generalizations, these are matters which we have fought out at many elections in the past and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition did not win. I do not know what hope he has of winning an election at this stage with vague statements and generalizations. I therefore do not want to follow the hon. the Leader of the Opposition any further, except to the extent that I refer to him later in my speech.

I think the time has come that we should perhaps take this opportunity to take a look and see what the general political position in South Africa is, and more specifically what the position is behind the scenes. One sometimes sees things on the surface; one sometimes reads about things in the newspapers; and one does not know exactly what is happening behind the scenes. I think that for the moment we should look behind the scenes of South African politics. I want to do so with particular reference to the attitude of the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Prof. Fourie) who has now announced that he is joining the Progressive Party. I do not think the hon. member has actually joined the Progressive Party, and if I were hon. members over there, I would not rejoice over him at this stage. The hon. member for Germiston (District) has been flitting around for a long time and I really think that he has only made an emergency landing in the ranks of the Progressive Party because his fuel has run out. As soon as he has refuelled, I am afraid that he will leave. But it is interesting to note that since 1948 the tendency in South African politics has been one of increasing majorities for the National Party, the governing party, the party which has become ever stronger, and I make bold to say that the National Party to-day is stronger than ever before in its history.

And South Africa weaker.

No, it is not South Africa which is weaker. The hon. member’s difficulty is that he thinks the United Party is South Africa, and when it becomes weaker he thinks South Africa is becoming weaker. By the same token the hon. member makes another mistake, namely that he thinks that the National Party is South Africa, and when he attacks South Africa, he thinks he is attacking the National Party. That is another mistake the hon. member makes. Sir, I say that it may be profitable to see for a moment what is going on behind the political scenes in South Africa. As the National Party has become stronger and stronger, as members of the United Party, both its leaders and other people who support it, have realized that they cannot use the United Party to get into power again, certain undercurrents have arisen, certain movements have started behind the scenes. And when such a movement has been building up behind the scenes for a while, it starts coming to the fore. It is interesting that the people who come forward always describe themselves as so-called Nationalist supporters. And when they do so, the Press refers to them as “intellectual Afrikaners”. An “intellectual Afrikaner” is always someone who skates on thin ice and who tries to cast suspicion in advance on his own people, his own morals and traditions. The moment one does that one is an “intellectual Afrikaner” in the eyes of the Press, and, Sir, it is being done for this reason, namely that the enemies and opponents of the National Party realize full well that this party will remain in power for so far as one can see into the future if something is not done about it. That is why we find that in recent times so-called meetings have been held which so-called thinking people have attended; and the public outside have been told that these thinking people are supposedly in the main Nationalists who are seeking solutions of our problems. Many people have genuinely begun to believe that that is so, but as a matter of fact these are not thinking Nationalists who have come together in this way, but they are frustrated “Sappe” (United Party supporters) who are coming together in this way.

Were you there?

No, I was not, but certain of that hon. member’s supporters were. I am going to tell him what his supporters who were there are saying. These people who are supposedly so concerned and who are seeking light, are not trying to gain support for the United Party; they are trying to gain support for a policy which is closer to that advocated by the Progressive Party and, Sir, as I see the position and according to the information reaching me, one of the leading figures in these movements behind the scenes is the hon. member for Namib (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson). I am sorry he is not here.

He is never here.

That hon. member has become the Elvis Presley of South African politics. He is never here. The hon. member is playing an important role in these movements, and Prof. Nic Olivier is another person who has a hand in this matter. Inter alia they have held meetings with Mr. Broeksma who was a candidate for the United Party at an earlier election. These meetings have sometimes been concluded with tea parties at the home of Mrs. Stott of the Black Sash. We can therefore see what a political potpourri this is. This whole series of movements amongst this leftist group culminated in a meeting being held in Hermanus. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows Hermanus quite well. A meeting was held at Hermanus and a memorandum was drawn up on the basis of the discussions which had been held and which were supposedly attended by thinking Nationalists. I shall read a few extracts from this memorandum issued by the Hermanus meeting—

They then give a survey of the political position in South Africa, of the seats held by the various parties, and they go on to say that in order to defeat this Government, the following must happen—

They go on to say—

These so-called Nationalists say that an attempt must nonetheless be made to defeat this Government. They then say that with that object in mind there are various alternatives which can be adopted—

1. (a) A change from within the ranks of the Nationalist Party;
2. (b) The strengthening of the United Party to such an extent as to enable it to capture the requisite number of seats from the Nationalists;
3. (c) A coalition between a section of the United Party and a section of the Nationalist Party;
4. (d) The merger of all opposition groups, that is, the United Party, Progressive Party and National Union Party;
5. (e) The establishment of a new political party;
6. (f) The establishment of an action group to exert influence and pressure on Parliament with a view to enforcing a “coming together” of people from the various parties on the basis of a moderate policy, which has a reasonable prospect of being accepted by the electorate, and which presents a reasonable hope of coping with the country’s immediate problems.

They then discuss “the prospects of a change within the Nationalist Party”. After analysingthis aspect, they say—and this is why the Leader of the Opposition has not issued this challenge—

The National Party is too solid, and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition can put this in his pipe and smoke it, the Nationalist Party has never stood more solidly behind the hon. the Prime Minister than to-day This is the objective finding of these people.

Are you speaking on behalf of your party?

Of course, I am not a member of the United Party. I can always speak for my party, but that hon. member cannot do so until he has been given instructions by his backbenchers as to what he should say. In this memorandum they then deal with the second aspect, and this is what is interesting, and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition could safely listen to this. The findings of the Hermanus action group are as follows—

Then they go on to say—

And now the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) can listen—

We saw this again this afternoon—

That is what a Nationalist has written.

No, Sir, this was not written by a Nationalist as the hon. member claims. It was written by someone in his party who knows him too well.

Tell us who wrote it.

I have told him who were responsible for this meeting which was held. I read further—

And then they come to the final blow—

Now, I do not know whether or not this is true. The fact of the matter is simply that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has said that the financiers of the world do not trust either the National Party nor the policies of this Government. I do not know whether that is so and I do not want to argue with him on that point. But what I do want to tell him is that South Africa’s own financiers who are of his way of thinking, have no confidence in his policy and his party and that being so how can the outside world have confidence in his party and his policy? If Mr. Oppenheimer who is the mouthpiece of the financiers and capitalists of South Africa, does not have confidence in the policy advocated by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, how can the other capitalists of the world have confidence in that policy which he advocates in South Africa? They go on and say that the United Party is nevertheless still a factor, and I want to give this to the hon. member as a consolation—

They then discuss the next alternative, namely coalition—

Do you approve of that?

The hon. member knows after all where I stand. I am not so sure he knows where he stands. On this point they write as follows—

They then discuss the next alternative: “The merger of all Opposition groups”. This is where the hon. member for Namib comes in. He had to pat himself on the back for what he had achieved in this regard hitherto. They say—

They now indicate the direction in which the hon. member for Namib wants to lead the United Party—

This is the great party of the hon. member for Namib and the small party of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition! But they then say that even if one could bring about this “merger”—

And one would need the wisdom of Solomon to get those hon. members to agree to a “common policy”—

They then discuss the alternative of “the establishment of a new political party.” and come to the conclusion which is what we all know, that a new political party has no right of existence in South Africa, and even if one could establish such a party, it would very soon disappear. They then deal with the next alternative, namely there is only one way to weaken confidence in this Government in order to try to make it see matters differently, or if necessary to bring it to a fall. They say—

Pressure must be exercised on the Government and pressure must be exercised on individual members; articles must be written; anonymous letters must appear in the newpapers, supposedly emanating from Nationalists who are dissatisfied with the Government’s policy; organizations must be exploited in order to further the aims of the “Action Group”. Such Action Groups must meet in various places.

Is this a sort of English Broeder-bond?

The hon. member has one; it is not necessary to have another one. These organizations must now be established in various places. And one such organization is that of Mr. Wilkinson in Natal, from which we have received this circular. This is a very pious document. I do not know whether hon. members have read it—it contains beautiful sentiments. It is a most pious document, but as is true of many pious things, it is false. That is the problem. It is false because this is merely the façade, the front behind which it hides. But the whole idea flows from these secret discussions which have come to the conclusions, which I have just mentioned, as to how this Government can be defeated.

The facts will defeat you.

The hon. member says the facts will defeat us. With all due respect, I honestly think that in the sphere of fantasy the hon. member is a person to whom I would listen. He is an expert in that sphere. But when it comes to facts—facts do not fly above the clouds; facts are to be found on terra firma, and the hon. member’s political feet have never been on terra firma. The hon. member knows that.

The fact of the matter is simply that I thought it would be a good thing to lift this curtain a little at this stage because many people may be under the impression that these people are sincere when they say that they are so-called thinking Nationalists, that they are supposedly seeking for a solution, and that the National Party supposedly no longer satisfies them. I therefore submit that these people are not Nationalists. They are the handyman of the leftist groups in South Africa which want to try by these means, after coming to the conclusion that the National Party can only be defeated by white-anting it—by using these methods to sow suspicion against the National Party amongst the electorate in order to undermine the National Party by so doing. I prophesy that to an ever-increasing extent we shall find these action groups coming to the fore; we shall see how opinions will be expressed in the correspondence columns of newspapers; we shall see pamphlets here and everywhere else: They will always pose as Nationalist supporters. No, Mr. Speaker, they are the spiritual children of the United Party who have run away from that party and are trying to undermine the National Party by this method because they realize that if one relies on the United Party, one is relying on a broken reed.

Why do you not give us the names of these people?

I have told the hon. member what the position is. I want to be quite honest and say that I have not seen the attendance register of the persons who were present there. It has not been given to me. I have been given the memorandum. This is the memorandum which was drawn up after the Hermanus meeting. But I find it strange that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is making such a point of this particular matter. It has really struck me.

I understood that they were former Nationalists.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has now put questions to me. I have said that I do not know who attended these meetings because I do not have the attendance register. He now says that he understands that the people who were there were former Nationalists; perhaps he can enlighten us; he apparently has more information on this point. What we do know, and this is common ground between the Leader of the Opposition and I, is that a meeting did take place at Hermanus, that people did attend it, and—I take it—that a memorandum was drawn up.

You look more worried about it than we.

No, we have no reason to be concerned because the finding of these people is that we cannot be defeated. Why then should I be worried? If I was worried about it, then it would be just as silly an argument as that of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to the effect that Canada has had to devalue because it has too much investment capital and the hon. member surely does not want me to make myself guilty of such an argument.

I just considered it my duty, seeing that I had this information in my possession—which is authentic—to warn those people who may be misled by this type of discussion, by this type of pious talk, by this type of person who poses as a Nationalist supporter, that they are in fact not people who support the policy of the National Party or its beliefs. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows as well as I that there are in fact only two alternatives in South African politics. The one alternative is that which the National Party advocates and the other is eventually that advocated by hon. members of the Progressive Party. To tell the truth, they will only be the right-wing of the leftist group which will eventually rise here. But the hon. member knows that he and his party will eventually disappear. It is not only I who says that. The newspapers which support him at the moment are saying it. It was put very well and most aptly by the Rand Daily Mail in a leading article which appeared on its front page on 28 October 1960 when the paper said the following—

That is what the Rand Daily Mail says. But, it says, the time is not ripe to accept that policy, and for that reason we must use the United Party in the meantime. A time will come, and it is most essential that during this period we should put this alternative very clearly to the public of South Africa, when there can only be two policies and when there will only be two movements in South African politics. That is the conservative movement of the National Party under the leadership of the hon. the Prime Minister: and the leftist movement in politics, of which those hon. members will only represent the right-wing. Despite the propaganda of the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. Mitchell) and Simons-town (Mr. Gay), all persons, Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking, who are conservative and who want to serve South Africa and who love South Africa, will only support one policy, and will do so to an increasing extent, and that is the policy of the hon. the Prime Minister and the National Party. For this reason—and I want to conclude with this—because the hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows this as well as I, despite everything he says, despite the questions to Ministers by hon. members opposite, the Leader of the Opposition has not put forward a constructive challenge to the effect that South Africa should have an election. That is why the Press which support him are so petrified at the very idea that there may be an election. That is why hon. members opposite are inspired by the same fear that this may happen.

This party has been elected by the people with increased majorities. During its existence it has been faced with many problems. One after the other it has overcome them, and this party is the party which knows that the people will trust it to deal with these problems with which South Africa is faced to-day because it is the only party which can tackle these problems on a South African basis and solve them on that basis.

When the Nationalist Party fought the election in 1929, they issued a pamphlet in which they warned against the so-called Black danger. After listening to the document which the hon. the Deputy Minister has just read to us. it seems to me that if the Nationalist Party decides on an election, it will issue a pamphlet which will point out a new danger—not the Black danger but the brain danger, the danger of people who want to think.

As far as that document itself and its contents are concerned, it is clear that it does not emanate from the United Party. It is clear that it has not been drawn up by supporters of the United Party, particularly when one notes the criticisms it contains. This is a sign that on that committee which sat in Hermanus—I do not know who these people were, but one can infer this from the contents of the pamphlet—there were people who were former Nationalists and who feel strongly and severely critical of the Government. This is a new development which has come to the fore in recent years.

I cannot help saying that the hon. the Deputy Minister was in fact wrong when he said that the Prime Minister should call for tenders for a new Opposition. If his own Minister of Finance were to call for tenders to-day to repay their loans, he would not receive any offers. That being so, who is bankrupt—that side or this side? It is not for me to speak about an election, but I can assure the hon. the Deputy Minister that the United Party has never been afraid of an election, whether it comes to-day, to-morrow or at any other time. We are not afraid to have our actions tested wherever possible. I only hope that during this election we shall not have documents such as this one, dealing with Black danger.

The hon. the Deputy Minister has said that we can safely examine what is happening behind the scenes in the Opposition. I wonder whether I cannot lift another curtain so that we can see what is happening behind the scenes or behind the granite curtain of the Government. Then we will understand why these attacks are being made on people who think for themselves, intellectuals on that side and on this side. Does the Deputy Minister regard people who think for themselves and who approach matters critically such as “Dawie” of the Burger, Theo Wassenaar and Prof. Nic Olivier as all being “frustrated Sappe” to use the words of the Deputy Minister, just because they criticize the policy of the Government? Or is this once again a sign that unless one is a member of a small group behind that granite curtain, one is an outcast as far as that side of the House is concerned; that the Government seeks and finds its support amongst people who cannot or do not want to think for themselves; that this is support which is based on emotional incitement, and that quite a different picture exists behind that curtain to the one which they depict to the rest of the country?

The fine talk which we hear in the House of Assembly is quite different to the arguments which are used to gain support for the Nationalist Party. I have an example here. I have here a journal which is issued by the Jeugbond of the National Party. Its name is the Jeugbonder. The House will remember that when the Prime Minister came back from overseas after withdrawing us from the Commonwealth, he told us how sincerely he regretted that this had happened, how tragic a development it was, that it was something which he had not foreseen, and that he could only hope that it would all be for the best. That is what he told us and the world. But let us see what the official Jeugbond journal of the National Party had to say about our withdrawal from the Commonwealth. On the front page appears—

This journal says that the Republic’s first triumph is that it has been taken out of the Commonwealth. Is this the behaviour of a Government which has gone to the country and said that what they wanted was a Republic within the Commonwealth? How does the Prime Minister reconcile his words with these? But let us see what the leading article of this journal says—

I still remember the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) saying: One thing I can at least say is that there is not one single person in South Africa who is glad that we have left the Commonwealth. Not one? There are thousands.

Let me give another example showing the position behind the iron curtain. We find that hon. members rise and plead for a better attitude towards other countries in Africa, that we must seek co-operation and work out an African policy. I wonder what the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs would say if he were to read these words in the leading article of the Jeugbonder—

Mr. Speaker, please tell us how this is to be reconciled: On the one hand they speak of raw, blanket kaffirs in referring to other countries of Africa and the Commonwealth and their leaders, but nevertheless they urge sounder relations and improved markets for our products in Africa. Quite a different attitude prevails behind this curtain to that represented by this false front.

The hon. the Deputy Minister has said that the National Party is stronger to-day than it has ever been in the history of South Africa. As has been correctly said by way of interjection. it may be in a stronger position, but South Africa is in a much weaker position. We remember the weeks before the referendum and the days before 31 May when we were told that we could expect a new" utopia in the Republic; we could expect greater prosperity, security, unity and peace. I now ask hon. members opposite to tell me with a clear conscience that we are experiencing greater prosperity in South Africa to-day than we did prior to the referendum and prior to 31 May, as well as greater security and greater unity.

Prosperity? In the past few days we have suffered one setback after the other like thunderclaps. We are struggling to pay our own national debts—and when a country cannot pay its debts, the position is really sombre. It seems to me that a bankrupt policy is going to lead to national bankruptcy. if this goes on. The free flow of money has been drastically restricted. Import control has been strengthened. All these new measures do not indicate that greater prosperity has come to South Africa, but that there may be other results. Money will become dearer. Less capital will be available for the development of our own industries. There will be fewer job opportunities which will cause increased unemployment. There will be more bankruptcies. Even great financial institutions, institutions similar to banks, are experiencing difficulties to-day. I put a question on the Order Paper regarding a certain financial institution and I was shocked at the reply we were given and the extent to which the bank’s affairs were supervised. We have been told what has happened in connection with Langeberg Koöperasie, and how the farmers are finding it difficult to obtain money from the Land Bank because a large part of that institutions capital is also invested in the Langeberg Koöperasie. I ask any hon. member opposite: Where is the promised prosperity under this new deal to-day, now that we have left the Commonwealth?

While the Deputy Minister was speaking, he did not once try to defend his party’s policy which is really the matter under discussion during this debate. While we are facing a disaster, the Deputy Minister makes fun of a few pamphlets which he has scratched out. Is this the way to look after the country’s interests?

We have been told that despite the fact that we will be out of the Commonwealth, we shall be just as secure in the international sphere as before. Can the hon. the Minister of Defence say that we are more secure to-day than we were before? We have seen what has happened. Unavoidable steps have had to be taken in respect of our defence, and vast expenditure has had to be incurred. I warn that this is only the beginning and that additional millions and millions will be asked in future from the nation to spend on our Defence Account. Conscription has in effect been introduced for the first time. Are these indications that we are more secure to-day under the new deal?

It is being ever more widely felt that if the people are asked to judge on this Government in a few months time, hon. members opposite will be shocked by the result. Greater security? We now find for the first time that there is a vote of 95 to nil against us at UNO where our friends have now completely abandoned us. Is there greater security when we have to shiver at the things happening at the north of our borders and when we think of the threats which have been mentioned by my leader and the possible dangers which may arise if the World Court decides against us? Such dangers would not have arisen if we had still had the friendship of the Commonwealth.

I can perhaps just reply to the statement of the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. Bootha) to the effect that under the United Party régime the rest of the world would also have been our enemies because they would never have accepted our policy. My reply is this. It is not the United Party’s object per se to gain the support of all the rest of the world for our policy. We do not expect any party in South Africa ever to gain the support of the whole world, but here the emphasis is on the word “whole”. We find that the Government has the whole world against it at UNO, while I am convinced that the United Party would not have the whole world against it, but that it would in fact have the support of a significant part of the world. That is all we ask. We do not expect all the communist and Afro-Asian countries to vote on our side at UNO or even the majority to do so, but what we do expect is that if a United Party Government were in power, the other countries of the world would see that there is a more tolerant attitude towards our great problems and a desire to create a new impression of the Republic, by a policy which will be more in line with enlightened thought elsewhere in the world. When we have that, we shall have achieved something and we shall not have a 95 to 0 vote against us again. Then we shall have a considerable number of countries which will be neutral or which will support us.

Are you advertising the Kruithoring?

I cannot think of a worse advertising medium than that journal. The Kruithoring is the hon. member’s official journal and not mine.

Where is the greater unity which has been promised? Where is the attempt by the Government to show that it is not merely a Government for one section, but of the whole country? Is there one single English-speaking person in the Cabinet or on that side of the House? Is that a sign that they are trying to seek national unity? The Prime Minister has the opportunity to appoint additional members to his Cabinet. He can appoint another two Ministers and he can appoint another four or five Deputy Ministers. He has the opportunity. Why is it not being used?

He can simply get rid of the Minister of Bantu Administration.

Now that we are speaking about appointing and dismissing Ministers, it seems to me that the Government is concerned about certain members of the Native Affairs Commission because I understand that another one is to resign on 1 July, namely the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) (Mr. J. A. F. Nel). I should very much like to hear the Minister of Bantu Administration explain why not only the hon. member for Westdene (Mr. Mentz) but also the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) is to be moved out. Perhaps the hon. the Minister can tell us what the reason is.

What is responsible for the difficulties in which we find ourselves to-day? The fault lies in the first place with the policy of the granite curtain which regards all criticism as something of the devil, which even condemns criticism from their own ranks as criticism of exaggerated liberals and frustrated “Sappe”. The frustration is not to be found on this side but on that side as a result of what has happened in recent days. There is a lack of direction on that side as regards colour policy. It is pointless talking about the gradual removal of the Natives from the White areas to the future Bantu areas while statistics show that the number of Natives in the White cities is not only increasing but is increasing more rapidly than ever before. What is the position in Johannesburg? Under this Government, Pretoria, the capital, has for the first time become a Black city which has more Natives than Whites. Is this how the policy of developing the Bantu areas is progressing? I think there is one town where the number of Natives has fallen, namely Stellenbosch where there has been a decline of a few hundred in four years. I have calculated that it will take Stellenbosch 450 years before all the Natives are removed, and this is the only case where there has in fact been a little progress.

We find this lack of direction in respect of the development of the reserves. I do not want to go into that but it is clear that we cannot expect to develop the reserves if we do not allow White enterprise, capital and initiative into those areas. Even the Burger and the Tomlinson Commission have advocated this, but it is rejected. There is a lack of direction in respect of the policy regarding the Coloureds. I asked the hon. the Deputy Minister the other day about the policy of “a state within a state” for the Coloured people and he said that this was not yet the policy of the National Party, but he said that this was one of the possibilities which may come in the future as regards the Coloured people. It is a good thing that we as well as the Coloureds should remember these words, namely that the Prime Minister has in fact held out the possibility of a state within a state. I now ask the Government to explain how such a state within a state will look in practice. When the Prime Minister used those words, he must surely have known what he meant, and all we ask is that he should say what he meant.

I do not want to express a general condemnation over the Government. Slowly, here and there, it seems as though they are beginning to realize that the United Party has been right for all these years. I am thinking of their immigration policy where after all these years they are now realizing that the United Party has always been right, but we ask the country: What should the country prefer: The genuine policy which we advocate or the second-hand acceptance of this policy by the Government? I admit that at the moment sound measures are being introduced in respect of Bantu councils in the cities. This is something which we have advocated, but this action is being taken too late. However, it is a recognition that they have always been wrong in the past and that they are now starting to admit that the United Party was right. They are admitting this every day through their immigration policy, the development of the Native areas around the cities, and the relaxation of the application of the pass laws—all these things about which we have warned them. Now they are admitting that the United Party was right.

The worst mistake the Government has ever made was that it believed that strong action (kragdadigheid) and an inflexible attitude represented the policy which would save us in South Africa. The danger is that a strong policy achieves success once or twice, or perhaps even five times, but once it fails the whole country is destroyed. Then everything is completely destroyed. That is the great danger and the danger is that the people of South Africa may think: Here a strong policy has been a success and we must do so again. History has shown that when one follows a strong and inflexible policy, one’s first mistake is the last one. I do not mind if that happens to the National Party, but I do mind about my country. It is for that reason that we have a policy which is flexible and it is for that reason that we advocate a policy of adjustment…

To what?

To the realities of the position in this country and elsewhere in the world, as well as adjustment to the attitude of the thinking people whom the hon. member is supposed to represent here.

We are all thinking people. [Laughter.]

I want to conclude by emphasizing once again that we do not know what is going on in the mind of the Prime Minister regarding any election which may be held in the future. I find it interesting to think that even hon. members opposite are being kept in the dark by their Prime Minister in this regard, that they are also being placed behind a granite curtain, and that they, judging by the speeches we have heard this afternoon, shudder at the possibility of an election. But as far as we are concerned, we have never yet been afraid of any test. We believe that in the future the common sense of the people of South Africa will triumph.

We have had quite a lot of discussion during the course of this debate on the lack of confidence which has led to the difficulties in which South Africa at present finds itself, but I want to be a little more basic than that. I want to deal with what I believe to be the major source of the lack of confidence, and that is, as everybody in this House knows, the question of race relations in our country. I do not think anybody can deny that the lack of confidence which exists in South Africa has its basic roots in our race relations. The fact that our race relations are worse to-day than they have been at any time since Union is in essence the main cause of the trouble in which we are to-day. Overseas people interested in our country who look at South Africa know that the whole prosperity of our country depends upon putting our race relations on a better basis and creating a stable society, but we cannot create a stable society unless our race relations improve. Everybody in South Africa knows that. So it is on this cardinal question of improving our race relations that I want to address a few words to the House.

There is no doubt that many sections in our country are extremely troubled about the state of our race relations. I have no doubt whatever that hon. members opposite are also deeply concerned. They tell us that race relations have never been better. I do not think that informed people will accept that. I believe that hon. members opposite are just as concerned about our race relations as anybody else.

They are much better than in the rest of Africa.

There we hear that parrot-cry again, but nobody believes it. All sections of our churches are deeply concerned about our race relations. Our professions and commerce and industry are deeply concerned, and every political party is concerned.

Now, how would one set about improving race relations, given the chance to do so? What would be the easiest and simplest way to bring about a better state of affairs? I think the Prime Minister himself, in a speech he made during this debate, has given a lead in this connection. I do not think he meant to do it. He certainly did not mean to do it in relation to the problem in South Africa, but the Prime Minister was dealing with South Africa’s relations with the world at large, and he admitted that our position in the world at large was very difficult and that our relations with the world were very bad and difficult. He came to the question of how he saw our situation in relation to the world at large and how he would improve it; and this is what he said—

He mentioned that as far as South Africa was concerned its Government would continue to consult and explain its point of view to the other nations ranged against us, in the hope of finding some point of agreement. Surely that is the correct recipe which could be applied to the internal situation in South Africa? Here we have different races whose relations are becoming increasingly difficult. We have rising suspicions and antagonisms due to a variety of causes. Surely the time has come when the statesmanlike thing to do is to consult with one another, and particularly to consult across the colour line, because that is where our greatest difficulties lie. Surely that is the thing which should be done at the moment. The Leader of the Progressive Party has appealed again and again for just that thing to take place, for consultation to take place across the colour line between all sections. As hon. members know, in relation to moves which have taken place to try to bring about such consultation, the hon. member for Queenstown (Dr. Steytler) has pleaded for just that to happen and has indicated that he himself would be deeply interested in co-operating in any such form of consultation. The Leader of the Opposition himself has made a plea for interracial consultations of a certain kind and almost everybody who is interested in this matter has made a similar plea for consultations.

I just want to mention some of the high-level pleas that have been made for consultation in recent times. There have been very many; I cannot possibly detail all of them, but I want to mention some of them. There was, for instance, a convention held in Pietermaritzburg. Leading citizens in Natal, led to a great extent by a very eminent South African, Dr. Edgar Brookes, set about holding a gathering across the colour line to see what points of agreement could be discovered—a kind of consultation across the colour fine. The scheme was simply to consult and see if people could possibly reconcile difficulties and find points of agreement. Sir, that was an extremely successful meeting. I believe that its effects so far as Natal is concerned will last longer and will be more far-reaching than many people realize, because to a great extent it set people thinking in terms of consultation and co-operation rather than in terms of antagonisms and clashes. What was done in Natal was a very important thing and I believe that its effects are going to be very far-reaching. Then we had a plea from the members of the staff of the University of Cape Town who made a strong plea for consultation. What did they say in their plea? They diagnosed the basic problem of South Africa. They said—

They went on to make a plea for consultation across the colour line, for consultation between all different sections to discover points of agreement. That was the plea that came from the University of Cape Town. A little later on 47 prominent citizens of this city made a similar plea. Their diagnosis was this—

They, too, pleaded for people to get together and to consult. Then we had a call from 91 members of the staff of Rhodes University. They said—

This is what they suggested should be done; they said—

In other words, here we have another strong plea for consultation and for getting together to find points of agreement.

Then a plea was made by Dr. Brookes, who put forward a 27-point programme on which he thought agreement might be reached. I won’t enter into all the points that he suggested. However, he made that plea and the idea was that people should be set thinking in a constructive way to see whether they could not agree on such points. Sir, many other and lesser bodies have made appeals that people should get together across the colour line, so the mood of thinking people to-day in this crisis is to consult and to get together to see if we cannot find points of agreement. What was the Prime Minister’s attitude in regard to this demand for consultation and for getting together and consulting? The Prime Minister saw a danger in this and let me say here that I found his attitude contradictory. Earlier on I quoted his recipe for putting our relationships on a good basis in relation to the world at large. I quoted from what the hon. the Prime Minister had said as to how he proposed to put South Africa on a better basis in relation to the world at large, through consultation. That is how he proposes to do it and yet when it comes to the internal situation he takes a different viewpoint. He says—

Sir, the Prime Minister is against coming together because he thinks that if people get together it will be nothing but a breeding ground for Communism. But what is the position? I have said that there is this widespread demand for people to get together to consult to try to find points of agreement, and whether the Prime Minister likes it or not that demand is continuing and there is no doubt about it that this demand will result in action. People will get together and they will consult. Let me say at once that I think perhaps the Prime Minister may have misunderstood the intention of people who want to get together when he said that he was absolutely against anything in the nature of a convention. If, of course, he had in mind the possibility that people might get together with the idea of holding something in the nature of a national convention to alter constitutions or something of that kind, then of course he was right in objecting. But nobody has had that thought in mind. Let me say at once that I would regard an attempt at anything of that sort as being quite futile and nobody has demanded that sort of thing. The only way in which such a movement could take place would be if the Government were to give the lead. If the Government were to call a national convention with the idea of consultation and bringing about constitutional changes or finding a different basis of association between the different groups, then it would be a different matter, and I think it would be an extremely wise thing for the Government to do. It would have to be done by the Government and by Parliament Sir, we realize that, but what people are demanding to-day is not that kind of convention, because it would be impracticable unless the Government were to give the lead and unless it were done at the highest level by the Government and Parliament.

What is wanted at this stage is not only consultation across the colour line and between different sections and groups, but people must be put in a frame of mind where they will seek points of agreement, where they can agree on common action, on common ideas and possibly even common policies. The only way in which you can discover the extent of agreement that may exist in our country is by arranging consultations. What can be achieved by a movement of this kind—a movement which I say will go on, because the South African public is in a mood to consult today—and what could a high-level consultation, especially across the colour line, achieve in South Africa to-day? First of all, it would establish to a great extent the principle of consultation, which is in itself very important. We in this corner of the House believe in consultation, especially in consultation across the colour line. We attach tremendous importance to consultation. The party on my right also stands for the principle of consultation, and they have said so. I will merely say this in passing that the United Party has not given much evidence of practical consultation. I do not know what consultations they have undertaken. I do know that when they have been invited to take part in consultations they have generally found an excuse not to take part. I only hope that that is not in line with their policy. I hope that the United Party and other parties, even including the Government Party, will respond when such opportunities of consultation are opened up. Anyhow the principle of consultation is important and a movement of this kind will help to establish that principle. It is important, as I say, to discover points of agreement.

There may be points of agreement not only in our political life but in other respects which we do not suspect to-day. My idea is that grounds of agreement may exist which we cannot determine unless we try to discover whether or not they exist. For example, take the question of non-discrimination. We in this corner stand firmly for the principle of non-discrimination on a colour basis. Hon. members opposite maintain that they stand for the same principle. They profess that that is their policy. The hon. the Prime Minister himself has said that the policy of that side of the House does not discriminate on colour basis. Well, here is something perhaps on which there may be very wide agreement. On that principle perhaps we could get very wide agreement, and that is something important to know and to discuss. If we could agree firmly on a principle of that kind, then we are better placed to see how it can be translated into fact.

We have had a lot of discussion in this House in regard to the development of the reserves. This is a political question. We may find that there is a larger measure of agreement in regard to the development of the reserves than people in the political world imagine to-day. Every party in this House stands firmly for a policy of maximum development of the reserves. Here is something in respect of which we may find that agreement in principle is very much wider than is realized. Then there is a simple but very fundamental question, and that is the question of treating all people in South Africa as human beings with human dignity. Everybody professes to stand for that principal, so if we could get general agreement on that principle and agreement on how to translate it into fact, then I think we would go a very long way in this country, because it is a great source of friction when people are not treated as human beings with human dignity. I believe that on a simple fact like that there could be widespread agreement. One could go through the list and suggest other points on which agreement might possibly be found.

But the important thing is to get together and to talk together to see whether we can find points of agreement. There is certainly a very strong urge to-day among all sections of the Opposition, and I believe among sections on the Government side, for consultation. There is an urge for people to meet and talk over their problems and see whether they can find points of agreement. Sir, if the leaders in South Africa do not get into a frame of mind where they will seek points of agreement, where they will think on constructive lines of getting together, then our future is indeed bleak. But I do not believe that is so. I believe that most South Africans, whatever their beliefs, have this great urge, especially at this moment of crisis, to seek points of agreement, to get together and to talk together. That does not apply only to consultation across the colour line. It applies to the two main sections of the Europeans in our country as well. I as an observer of political affairs in this country am very much saddened by the deterioration in the relationships between the Afrikaans and English-speaking sections in this country. It saddens me immensely. I see the causes of that deterioration on all sides around us. Potentially and factually this should be a problem that we should not even speak about to-day; it should be a problem that should have disappeared 20 years ago, but unfortunately that has not happened. Today there are increasing antagonisms, suspicions and difficulties and every South African should pledge himself and should have the strongest urge to move in the other direction, and that is for us to get together.

How can we do it? We can only do it by coming together and by consultation and by talking together and discovering points of agreement and wherever we can rejecting points of disagreement. The same thing applies all along the line. It applies between Black and White, it applies between Coloureds and the other section and all the different races in our country. Surely the principle of getting together and consulting is so simple and so fundamental that it scarcely requires arguing in this House. I say that if that is so, then let the leaders in South Africa do something positive about it. As I say, there are movements afoot to consult across the colour line, and I believe it will be possible for everybody who has the same feelings that I have tried to express to-day about this matter to translate these sentiments into action in one way or another. I hope that something of this kind will take place.

Sir, I believe I cannot conclude better than by quoting from a speech made by a very eminent South African, the principal of the University of Cape Town, Mr. J. P. Duminy, who in a speech the other day expressed sentiments which I commend to this House. He said—

That is what he felt and I am sure he was right in saying that. He then went on to say this—and I am sure that in a sense this was directed at Members of Parliament—

I should like to refer to one or two of the matters raised by the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Cope), but I do not want to do so immediately. I first want to refer to the appeal which the Opposition have made to Mr. Harry Oppenheimer to support them in the attitude they have adopted in depicting this pessimistic economic picture of South Africa to the House. They have outlined a very exaggerated, pessimistic picture of South Africa’s economic position and they attribute this position solely to the racial policies of the Government. This is contained in the amendment of the hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson) and the amendment moved by the hon. member who spoke on behalf of the Progressive Party.

The hon. member for Mayfair (Dr. Luttig) has referred to the remarks made by Mr. Oppenheimer. We have already become accustomed to this. It has become an annual institution for Mr. Oppenheimer, clothed with the official status of the chairmanship of a great company such as Anglo America, to use the occasion of Anglo American’s annual meeting as a platform for disseminating his politically biased opinions.

At the expense of the shareholders.

Yes, this is being done at the expense of the shareholders and with all the authority which the shareholders have vested in Mr. Oppenheimer. I say that we are accustomed to that. I at any rate do not regard this as a sound phenomenon in our politics, and I regard as a much less healthy phenomenon in South Africa when we note that when Mr. Oppenheimer speaks as chairman of Anglo American and when he issues his speech in a well-published brochure, he always warns the Government to take note of the racial tension in South Africa. He spoke along these lines this year as well. He holds the Government’s policies responsible for the position. But the position is that he does not always speak only in his capacity as chairman of Anglo American, and we find that when he discusses the same matters elsewhere, he never expresses himself in these terms. When he can be called to account and cannot propagate his politically biased opinions unchallenged, he does not express himself in these terms. Thus we find that in the course of this year he spoke at Stellenbosch by invitation. His theme was “The Role of Overseas Investments in South Africa” and inter alia he said this, as reported in the Argus of 24 February—

And then he said—

Not the Government’s policy; he refers to “our racial attitude”. Here he associated himself with the students of Stellenbosch. He referred to “our racial attitude” and this also includes the racial attitude of the hon. members of the Progressive Party. He then said—

This is the problem as he put it: Africa is on fire; the people distrust our stability; they are afraid to get into the way of these African states; they feel affronted by “our” racial attitude, and then Mr. Oppenheimer said—

But what does he say when he is addressing the annual meeting of Anglo American? Then he says—

He tells Anglo American that social, human and political problems are the real causes. But he tells Stellenbosch that overseas misunderstanding is the cause.

The two statements are not contradictory.

These are the terms in which he speaks. When he is addressing influential shareholders, he would have achieved a far greater effect if he had told them, as he told the students of Stellenbosch—

Why does he not tell this to his shareholders who have far greater influence and who could carry out such a request or instruction from him far more effectively? Here Mr. Oppenheimer spoke as a South African to an audience which could call him to account and he did not put forward the type of statement he makes in his annual report. If he will adopt such an attitude in future, he can mean a great deal to South Africa, and particularly when he speaks along these lines in his capacity as chairman of a great South African company. If the United Party or the Progressive Party want to rely on Mr. Oppenheimer’s knowledge and his attitude, then we have just as much right to rely on the analysis that we are not dealing with the reasons which he mentions in his annual report, but with the reasons which he mentioned at Stellenbosch where he could be called to account.

Mr. Speaker, the economic position of this country is not only bound up with the position in Africa but with the position of the world and anyone, whether it be the hon. the Leader of the Opposition or Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, who refuses to appreciate and to recognize that the economic conditions prevailing in this country are often the result of political conditions elsewhere and that we are simply faced with a world position in which we can expect this sort of thing, is either so obsessed with the desire to make political propaganda or is completely naive, and I do not think there is scope for either of these attitudes in our political life to-day. The sooner we get rid of them the better. None other than President Kennedy recently appealed to the Press in America to apply self-censorship; on that occasion he used these words which unfortunately were not reported in the South African Press. He said—

Mr. Speaker, these are words which should reach anyone in South Africa with ears to hear with. What President Kennedy said is as applicable here as it is in the U.S.A. We must see this whole development in its overall context. As far as I am concerned, allow me to say this: We are not accountable to nor do we owe an apology to anyone for the economic position of South Africa, least of all the poverty-mongers of the Opposition. The reasons for the conditions which we are experiencing to-day are clear to anyone who has eyes to see with, and to blame this Government for the position is going very far. We shall be creating a very dangerous illusion for ourselves if we think that we shall bring about a change in these conditions by changing our racial policies. Where in the world to-day has racial tension decreased as a result of any change in policy? Has racial tension increased or decreased in the United States as a result of the increased pressure aimed at integration? In Britain where all possible tactics are used to counter it, it is increasing. We find the same in Ceylon, Malaya, Singapore, India and Canada. There is nowhere in the world where racial tension is not increasing, despite the measures which are being applied elsewhere and which are now being prescribed or offered to us. It is fantastic to think that sober people can expect that we should believe that by changing our racial policy, by making minor adjustments, we can create a position which will influence the world position as it exists to-day to such an extent that the economic effect of these factors on South Africa will differ from that being experienced under the present racial policies. That is a dangerous illusion. If the Opposition is really under that illusion, then this is perhaps a dangerous opposition. But just as dangerous as it will be for us to labour under that illusion, so dangerous will it be for us to accept that we are faced with a temporary position; that this is something which has arisen to-day and will disappear to-morrow. To-day we are faced with this world situation; South Africa is part of the world as it exists to-day. We shall have to live with this position and we shall have to adjust our national economy to it, and in this economic situation which we are entering industry and commerce will have to play a very important role and that role is not to submit political solutions to the Government, as the Chamber of Commerce did last year. Only last year the Chairman of the Board of Trade and Industries spoke here in Cape Town and referred very critically to the actions of commerce in another field.

When business was suspended, I was saying that in the economic situation we are now entering, commerce and industry will have to play an important role and I said with specific reference to commerce that its role would not be to submit political solutions to the Government. I then came to a statement made by Dr. Norval, Chairman of the Board of Trade and Industries, last year before the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce and Industries in which he expressed himself very critically regarding the role played by commerce and industry in our economy and in which he stated inter alia—

That is a statement made by Dr. Norval before the Chamber of Commerce; this was criticism which he submitted to them directly, and from my little experience with a small industry I can say that commerce is making it practically impossible for a small industry in South Africa to obtain distribution channels through South African commerce. I can also say that I have found that commerce makes unreasonable demands in respect of discounts to industry and that it expects industry to bear the whole burden of commercial financing. These are things I want to mention in connection with the general remarks I want to make regarding what we have all found when we enter a shop. I can count on the fingers of my one hand the number of times a shopkeeper has praised or recommended a South African product to me as against a foreign product. It is in this sense that commerce can render a service not only to the client, but to South Africa, at a time when South Africa has every right to claim such service from commerce. Let us assume that the distributive trade will initially be detrimentally affected by the introduction of import control. It will very rapidly be compensated by the rapid development in the production field.

There is another sector in our economy in whose name various appeals have been made to the Government during this debate, namely the gold mines. I want to say that in this situation which we in South Africa are experiencing as part of the world and seeing that appeals have been made to the Government in the name of the gold mines, it is perhaps a suitable opportunity for us for our part also to say that there are expectations and demands that the gold mining industry will also do its duty to South Africa. Because the gold mining industry for the large part controls the English language Press in South Africa—we can in effect say that it controls the entire English Press. And in the situation with which we are faced to-day in South Africa, we would be failing in our duty if we did not put it very pertinently to the gold mining industry what the demands are that South Africa is making of it. I could refer to this Press as the English Press, as it likes to call itself, but I do not do so because it cannot lay claim to that description because the same Press which publishes English newspapers also publishes Afrikaans newspapers. The same Press which publishes the Argus and the Star also publishes the Suid-Afrikaanse Stem and the same Press which publishes the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times also publishes the Landstem. For this reason it cannot lay claim to the description of English Press. Nor does it have the right to call itself the English Press because it is not representative of the political attitude of the average English-speaking person in South Africa, because the ordinary English-speaking person in South Africa does not have any share in that Press and that Press most certainly does not reflect his opinions. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has referred to the Press to-day and has repeatedly stated that this is “the free Press” of South Africa. If the Leader of the Opposition wants to persist in calling that Press the “free Press” he is free to do so, but everyone with a little knowledge knows that as far as the Argus group is concerned, over 49 per cent of its shares are held by or are under the control of the gold mining companies and the Chamber of Mines, and that as far as the Associated Newspapers are concerned, more than 49 per cent of their shares are controlled by the Union and Rhodesian Mining and Financing Company together with the Bailey Trustees. There is no question of it being a free Press. This Press can only speak in the name of the gold mining industry and in no one else’s name. It is tied to the gold mining industries and if anyone has any doubts in this regard he can just read what Lindsay Smith has to say on this subject, namely that nowhere in the world do we find an equivalent position where the Press is controlled to such an extent by one industry. It is because this Press is controlled in this way by the gold mining industry that we do not only appeal to the Press in the situation in which we find ourselves in the world to-day, but we appeal to the owners of this Press who after all exercise control and who determine the policy of that Press. And if I may put it briefly, I want to say that the appeal which we make to this Press in the first place is that they should cease inciting Black against White in South Africa, they should cease undermining law and order, and they should cease publishing untruths, particularly untruths about South Africa. There are many examples which one could quote. They swarm. One can find such examples in every newspaper every day. But allow me just to give a few. I say that in the first place they must stop inciting Black against White. Here I have an article which appeared on 14 July 1960 in the Daily Mail, one of the most important newspapers of Associated Newspapers, after the Congo events.

It was written by Allister Sparks, presumably the Mail’s political correspondent. He writes—

He then goes on to discuss the “thoughtful Africans”. And then he says of the Whites—

He continues—

And then he refers again to the Blacks and to a reply which he received from one whom he describes as “an astonishingly lucid tea boy” who supposedly spoke to him. Referring to another, he says that he was surprised at the reply because of “its originality, its paradoxical truth and the mature thought required to produce it”. If this article was not aimed at placing the White man in a position of stupidity and prejudice as compared with the intelligence and impartiality of the Black man. then I should like to know what the object was. If these newspapers continue to publish this sort of article, bearing in mind their circulation amongst the Bantu, then they must surely expect this to result in incitement, if it is not already incitement. I say that these newspapers will have to realize that they have a responsibility not only as regards the revenue of their newspapers, not only to the gold mining magnates, but to all the Whites of our country and to all South Africa. They will have to stop subverting law and order. I want to refer to a leading article in the Star which appeared on 15 May this year, and I shall be glad if the hon. member for Parktown will listen to this for a moment. It refers to “the current enthusiasm for a multi-racial national convention” and then the article says that the present method is to appeal to the Prime Minister to convene such a multi-racial convention. But it then goes on to say—

And the paper then indicates the object which it thinks could be achieved by such a convention—

What the Star is doing here is to reject all democratic and constitutional methods, including the United Party and the Progressive Party, and it is proposing that a new constitution for South Africa, a new order in South Africa, should be born from such consultation and such a convention. Here we have coldblooded encouragement of the non-Whites, the Coloureds and the Bantu, to gain a share in the Government of South Africa through the medium of a multi-racial convention. It is not only taking up a stand against the Government’s policy. It is encouraging the non-White to reject constitutional methods and gain a share in the government of South Africa by this method, and what is so reprehensible is that this newspaper is asking the English-speaking people of South Africa, the White English-speaking people of South Africa, to stand with the non-Whites against the Afrikaner, the “12 per cent of the population as a whole”, the 12 per cent of the total population which the White Afrikaans-speaking people represent, according to the 1951 census. This is the reprehensible course which this newspaper is following. I ask the United Party, I ask the Leader of the Opposition whether they approve of these things. The Leader of the Opposition is not listening because he does not want to hear what I am saying. I ask the members of the Progressive Party and I ask the hon. member for Park-town (Mr. Cope) who has advocated a national convention to-day, who has advocated consultation which should result in a national convention, whether he approves? If they do not do so, why do the English-speaking people of South Africa not rise and oppose these newspapers which allege that they are speaking in the name of the English-speaking people? I ask them whether it is in the interests of South Africa that these things should go on? In the name of the Whites of South Africa, and of all South Africa, I ask the Opposition to appeal to the gold mining magnates who control this Press. If the gold mining magnates want to make an appeal to us throughthe medium of the Opposition, then I in turn ask them to make this appeal to the gold mining magnates. It is of infinitely greater importance than the profits which they advocate in the interests of the gold mines.

With reference to this one matter I just want to refer to what Mr. Stanley Uys has said. Prior to 31 May there was a great deal of agitation in connection with a proposed strike which was to take place, and after this attempt failed, the Sunday Times published a survey on 4 June written by Stanley Uys dealing with the reasons for the failure of the strike. He made this remarkable admission—

That is the point I want to take up. The strikers represented the means of obliging this Government to convene a multi-racial convention. These newspapers to which I am now referring, these mining newspapers, whole-heartedly advocated the strike and they whole-heartedly advocated this convention. In this sense I regard them as the central point, as the instrument which on the one hand was used to incite the strikers in order to bring about the strike and on the other hand to oblige the Government to convene a multi-racial convention. which, as the Star said, was to establish a Government which would replace this Government and introduce a new order in the place of the existing South African order. My time does not allow me to discuss still further the untruths which appear in this Press. They have been discussed repeatedly in the past. But I once again submit very specifically that if this Press continues with this incitement of Black against White, the subversion of law and order, with this dissemination of untruths, we shall have to find a means of exercising that critical discretion which this Press refuses to exercise over itself.

The first part of the speech of the hon. member for Innesdale (Mr. Marais) was spent on an argument with Mr. Harry Oppenheimer. He seems to be unware that Mr. Harry Oppenheimer has left this debating Chamber a considerable time ago already. But I think it is rather typical of hon. members on the other side to live in the past, and I do not really blame him for that. I, however, certainly have no. intention of intervening in this debate between him and Mr. Oppenheimer. The second part of his speech was to the effect that we on this side seem to imagine that all dangers facing South Africa flow from Government polices and that we blame everything, all the troubles that we have, all the dangers facing us, on the Government. That is simply not true. Our quarrel is not that all the dangers facing us to-day have been made by this Government. Our quarrel is that all the fantastic dangers facing us in this dangerous world are aggravated by the policies of this Government. If you want evidence of that, Mr. Speaker, you can just see the reaction of our enemies and our friends. Our enemies are comforted by the policies of this Government; they are the only people who rejoice whenever the Government takes a step like withdrawing from the Commonwealth, and our friends are dismayed. Our whole argument, and I want to make that quite clear is that we realize that with or without this Nationalist Government in the world situation to-day, all White people in this country, all Westerns in this country are faced by grave dangers beyond the control of anyone of us. But the tragedy is that the Government follows policies which can only aggravate these dangers and which in no way meet them, and which in no way, as I would try to show in my speech, tend to minimize in anyway these dangers and thereby can save Western civilization in this country.

The third part of the hon. member’s speech was an attack on the English Press, which my hon. leader called the free Press”, and he tried to argue that because the shareholding was highly centralized, it could not be a free Press. On that same argument, how free can the Nationalist Press be then? How many shareholders are there in the Nationalist Press? The argument that because the shareholders are highly centralized, you cannot have a free Press, would apply three or four times as strongly in respect of the Nationalist Press as to the English Press. And he cited examples to show that in fact the English Press is a comparatively free Press. From the very quotations that he read, it appeared that this particular person who wrote that article apparently backed the Progressives against the United Party. The test of how free the English Press really is, is how little control is exercised over the writers and the editors of the English Press. It is a fact of which hon. members must be aware, namely that amongst English journalists you find liberals, you find United Party supporters, you find Progressives, you find Basson Party supporters, and even Nationalist Party supporters.

Oh no!

Surely that is the case. Applying that same test to the Nationalist Press, can the hon. member mention a single United Party supporter, or a Basson Party supporter, or a Progressive Party supporter, writing for the Nationalist Press, let alone a liberal? I think they have their doubts sometimes about “Dawie”, but nobody seems to go so far as to accuse him of being a liberal or a Progressive, but he is the only deviationist as far as I am aware of, in the whole Nationalist Press in this country. I think that really shows how false this attack is on the English Press. But of course the hon. member is just following what the Nationalist Press has been preaching for the last six months, they have conditioned him for this very attack. His very own Press it is that has laid the foundation for his attack here to-night.

Hon. members opposite are out to paint beautiful pictures of what South Africa will look like in 20 years’ time or 40 years’ time if we follow their policy, to save White civilization, as they say. Mr. Speaker, apparently they have a gift to look into the future to see what is going to happen to mankind and humanity here in South Africa, an insight which we on this side don’t claim to have. But I have been very sceptical about this power of theirs to look into the future and my scepticism has been greatly strengthened recently by certain forecasts made by the hon. the Minister of Finance not three months ago. You will recollect, Mr. Speaker, that he donned the garb of a medical doctor and made a very thorough diagnosis of the body economic of South Africa, and then on the basis of that was rash enough to make certain forecasts of what was going to happen.

May I ask the hon. member a question? If the United Party were to come into power to-morrow, what would they offer the Western nations and the Afro-Asiatic bloc for their friendship?

The reply to that would require a long speech and I have not got the time for that now. This is a debate on the Appropriation Bill, and much as I would like to enlighten the hon. member, I do not think this is the occasion to do so. As I was saying, the hon. Minister of Finance was rash enough to look into the future too and make predictions. I would very briefly like to ask the House to cast its mind back to certain predictions made by him. In the first place. you will remember, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. the Minister said there was no reason for a drastic tightening up of import control. That was said on 15 March. Within two months import control was tightened up very drastically. That is one respect in which the hon. Minister was completely wrong in his forecasts. In the second place he spoke about interest rates. Interest rates on certain types of Government securities had just been increased by a ¼ per cent. He said that that would foot the bill and our situation did not require any further increase in interest rates. On 5 May, not quite two months afterwards, the bank rates went up by ½ per cent and we have seen the steady rise of the whole pattern of interest rates in this country until quite recently the building societies also put up their interest rates. There again the hon. Minister took a look into the future and after two months he was proved to be completely wrong. Then about the capital outflow. You will recollect that the hon. the Minister said that foreign shareholders and foreign investors who still had investments in this country were not of a panicky type and the chances were that the outflow of capital would not continue. How wrong the hon. the Minister was again! But I would like to read to the House what on an earlier occasion the hon. the Minister said because of that particular belief of his. I refer to the occasion of the opening of the new Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and I would like to read to the House what he said on that occasion to disabuse hon. members’ minds once and for all of this idea that hon. members on the other side can look into the future. I am sorry to have to do this to the hon. the Minister of Finance, but this is a particular illustration. There is nothing personal about it, but it is an illustration of how difficult it is to forecast the future. The hon. the Minister on that occasion addressing a gathering of very important people, important people in the financial world, on 6 February, had this to say to the chairman of stock exchanges from all the most important Western countries in the world—

Even on a short-period forecast like this on a relatively simple question of economics, the hon. Minister has been terribly wrong. How can the nation believe the Government that the road on which they are leading us is going to end in this wonderful picture they always paint of a White Republic on the one hand and seven little Black republics bordering this White Republic?

The hon. Minister also ended his Budget speech on the note that in the Republic our economy would rise to new economic heights. I think he has already tacitly admitted that that will not be true. The amazing thing is that of course on purely economical grounds the hon. the Minister was right in his analysis. Nothing economically has changed for the worse as far as the world is concerned, or as far as we are concerned. In fact, according to recent figures, our gold production and the sale of our gold has been much higher thanlast year, I think to the extent for the first five months of R58,000.000. Our exports have been higher. The hon. the Minister knows how these two are stimulating factors in our economy. That should make for boom, for expansion. Why is it that the hon. the Minister has been so terribly wrong, even in the political field the hon. the Minister has been completely wrong. We left the Commonwealth, but when the hon Minister made his Budget speech the day before we left the Commonwealth, the hon. the Minister was aware of that risk and he discounted it in advance, on the authority of a famous economic doctor which he quoted at the time. I don’t know whether he still believes in that economic doctor, but I think he must admit as an honest man that he was proved to be totally wrong. The serious effects of our leaving the Commonwealth are already felt. Why was the hon. the Minister so wrong there. I think in the first place…

Force of habit.

I think in the first place the hon. Minister totally under-estimated the serious effect of the outflow of capital on our economy, and in the second place I think he over-estimated the remaining overseas confidence in this Government’s policies as far as overseas investors are concerned. The hon. Minister that day stated that it would not make any difference whether we were in or out of the Commonwealth. Confidence was seriously impaired by the fact that South Africa was expelled from the Commonwealth. Mr. Speaker, up to the time of the Budget speech, the Government and the Minister tried to neutralize the economic effects of the vast outflow of capital, by expanding bank credit, bank money. That was the official policy. Even in the Budget speech itself it was reflected that the Government thought that the right medicine for the economy in that situation was to create credit and stimulate economic activity. It was only some months later that he realized how wrong this prescription of his really was. I do not want to elaborate on that. My hon. leader has already indicated that all that the creation of credit caused was of course to enable the jittery foreign investor to shed his shares and to sell them to the South African investor, but it took a couple of months after the Budget for the hon. the Minister to realize that. He then immediately switched round in his policy and started to increase the interest rates, and squeeze credit, but before this new policy had time to take effect, the hon. the Minister has come with this prohibition on the repatriation of foreign capital, this new measure which to a very large extent makes it impossible for overseas investors to withdraw their money from South Africa. This step can only mean that the Minister and the Government have lost all confidence in us ever restoring the confidence of the foreign investor in South Africa. It is an act of desperation. This step while it will undoubtedly stop, if not completely very largely, the outflow of foreign capital it will certainly also stop the inflow of foreign capital for a very long time as far as South Africa is concerned. To use medical terms to which the hon. the Minister seems to be addicted: This is a two-edged scalpel. it cuts both ways. We have really, after 13 years of Nationalist Government, come to the fateful stage in our economic history where we must accept the fact—and it is really the acceptance of that fact by the Government itself, and only on that basis is is possible that one can explain the latest step on Friday prohibiting the transfer of capital from this country back to overseas countries. I say we must accept the fact that with this Government and the policies they are following at present. South Africa will, in future, have to live without foreign private capital. The Government might be able to arrange borrowings at high interest rates with international agencies, but as far as the inflow of private capital is concerned, I think that that will be minimal in future as long as this Government stays in power and we are forced to follow these policies.

Some Nationalist propagandists are already saying that this is really all for the best in the best of all possible Nationalist worlds. That is the argument for the stopping of the inflow of capital. I read an article in one of the free papers that the hon. member for Innesdale (Mr. Marais) referred to—I am sorry that he is not in the House at the moment—written a few days ago, in which it was argued that this step means that the Government need not follow deflationary measures, they can now inject purchasing power into the economy, that there was now no danger of devaluation and now no danger of unemployment because this leak has now been stopped. The capacity that hon. members on the other side of the House have of making a virtue out of dire necessity is absolutely amazing. We had the experience when drastic import control had to be imposed a short while ago and when the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs—who, above all, should know better—tried to make out a case that that was really in the interests of South Africa and that that would stimulate our economic growth. I do not have the time to go into that at length, to-night, but I suggest to the hon. the Minister that he should read the transcript of a talk given by Professor Sadie and recently published in the Radio South Africa publication on the question of the adverse effects of import control on any economy. He points out that whilst it might look to the layman to be a good thing it actually damages our whole economy from a long term point of view by diverting investments in an arbitrary manner, and not necessarily into the most economic sectors of the economy.

As I say, Mr. Speaker, hon. members on the other side of the House possess this capacity of turning necessity into a virtue. Whenever there is a calamity anywhere elsein the world, they immediately seize upon that with great glee and say “Things are worse in the Congo, they are worse somewhere else, you should be very pleased that under this Nationalist Government things are not worse than they are in this country They say, “Things are much worse in Kenya or in the Congo. We had a fine example of that to-day, when the hon. the Prime Minister, on the basis of information which seems to be incorrect, jumped in with great glee and sized the idea that Canada had devalued. Why that should bring joy to hon. members on the other side of the House I cannot understand, and I include the hon. the Prime Minister in that. I do not know whether he is preparing the country for devaluation, or what the purpose was, but it so turns out, according to this evening’s paper, that that information is entirely wrong. All that Canada has done is to try and see, by means of financial manipulations if they can decrease the value of the Canadian dollar within limits that have existed for a long time and so push down the value of the Canadian dollar which, at the moment, is about 101 to 97 American cents. The same newspaper report bears out the contention made by my hon. Leader, that the trouble with Canada is that they have too much American capital. They have such vast reserves. Their reserves of foreign capital are two-thirds of that of the United Kingdom, and very largely that comes from America. It is because of this vast inflow of capital that they feel their currency is too strong as compared with United States currency and as compared with their general cost structure.

They fear American financial domination.

It turns out that there is really not devaluation in the classical sense of the word. [Interjections.] I have no doubt that a lot of political pressure will be exerted on the hon. the Minister to try and infuse purchasing power into the economy again by creating more money. If the hon. the Minister falls for that, I am very sorry to say that if he does reverse the policies which he instituted a short while ago—which I think are correct policies—the policies of deflation, of the restriction of credit and increasing interest rates—if as a result of political pressure, because it is well known throughout the world, that, politically speaking, inflation is more acceptable particularly when having an election, than deflation—if the Minister is forced to accept this it can only lead to inflation in South Africa. And in the end inflation must lead to devaluation. It is manifest that with our present reduced supply of imported goods as a result of the cuts of imports, which will be anything between R100,000,000 and R200,000,000 with that amount of goods less on our markets if the Government follows policy of injecting purchasing power into the economy, it can only lead to inflation. Despite what has been said about the capacity of local industry to make good the shortfall in imported goods, the truth of the matter is that it is quite impossible, over a short period of time, for our industries to make that up. So that if the hon. the Minister reverses his present policies as a result of political pressure, he will be sadly disillusioned in a couple of years’ time. As I say, that can only lead to inflation and, in the long run will do serious damage to our very important export industries. I think that the prime principle of any Government should be to try and keep the cost structure of our export industry down, particularly one like gold, where the gold mines are facing the problem of fixed prices with costs slowly creeping up.

The fact of the matter, Mr. Speaker, is that if we have no future inflow of capital into this country it cannot, by any clever economic manipulation, be neutralized to have no effect on the country as a whole. It must lead to slower economic growth and lower standards of living for the entire population. The voluntary sacrifices about which we have so often heard from hon. members on the other side are now going to become compulsory sacrifices, forced on us as a result of the consequences of the policies which have been followed by this Government up to the present time. The choice which lies before the country is simply one of making sacrifices. We will have to make economic sacrifices because of the cessation of the inflow of capital into this country. The only choice before the Government is one of inflation or deflation. It is a question of whether we are to take our medicine by way of inflation or deflation, resulting from Government policies. Do we want to make our sacrifices the one way or the other way. That is the only option that really lies before us.

These are the hard facts of economic life. In the past foreign capital has been a very large portion of the risk capital in this country. It has played a very important role in development, particularly of the mining industry and the manufacturing industry. These are the two sectors of our economic life which have very largely contributed to the economic growth of the past. Because, Mr. Speaker, both of these industries have a high capital efficiency. If you invest a certain amount of capital you get a fairly high return from these industries. It is for that reason that the improvement in our national income and in our standard of living have, in the past, depended so very largely on the growth of the mining industry and the manufacturing industry. I know that it is popular to-day to argue that, after all, foreign capital constitutes only ten per cent of total investments in this country. Some people say it is only five per cent, depending upon what year they take. They say, what does it really therefore matter, even if we have to do without that it will not slow down our economic growth to any considerable extent. If the hon. the Minister would look at our economic history since 1948 hewill see something rather remarkable. He will find that up until 1954 we had a fairly high inflow of foreign capital, varying between R100,000,000 and R185,000,000, p.a. He will also find that over that period the net private capital formation was, despite fairly big variations from year to year, on an upward trend. The rapid growth of industry in that period was very dargerly the cause of the increase in our national income and our standards of living. The first drastic drop in the inflow of foreign capital occurred in 1955. If the hon. the Minister looks at the figures of net private capital formation, he will also find that since 1955, when this great drop occurred—which in recent years has changed into an outflow of capital—he will find that over that period our net private formation has shown a downward trend, despite fairly wide variations from year to year. I think that that very largely explains why our economic growth has slowed down so considerably in the last four years.

Mr. Speaker, that indicates that this popular new idea, this quantitative thinking that, after all, foreign capital only constitutes 5 to 10 per cent, depending upon what year you take, is quiet wrong. This is rather a stupid sort of an argument because if you do not get any capital, if we have a situation such as we had last year when we lost R190,000,000, you might just as well argue that as far as South Africa is concerned South Africa is now in the fortunate position of being able to export capital.

Until 1954, in fact, the percentage of private foreign capital to private capital formation varied anything between 20 per cent and 50 per cent, and those were our years of our most rapid economic growth. The explanation is quite obvious. When you bring capital in, apart from its own importance, you also bring in technical know-how. In so many new lines of manufacturing and new lines of development we simply do not have the technical know-how in this country. The know-how has to come with the capital from overseas. If we had to finance these industries, even out of our own savings, our rate of economic growth would be very much slower. That is why it is so important, quite apart from the purely economic aspect of the extra capital available for investment, to have the vast amount of technical know-how that you introduce into the country by bringing in foreign capital, and which makes for rapid economic growth.

The two most important effects of having no foreign capital in the future in South Africa will be, I think, in the first place the complete impossibility of the massive development of the Bantustans in terms of this Government’s policy. In the second place, it will make nonsense of this Government’s newly adopted policy of massive immigration. I would like to tell this hon. House what I base these assertions on.

If we look at the past 13 years, we will see that there has been very little economic development in the reserves. If one challenges this hon. Minister and the Government with that fact, their answer always is “But we have had to spend, in the last 13 years, vast sums of money on housing for the urban Natives and in providing them with transport facilities A figure was mentioned by this hon. Minister during this Session of Parliament to show that more than R200,000,000 had been spent, firstly on housing the urban Bantu adequately and secondly, providing them with transport facilities. And we were told that was why the Government could not afford to invest large sums of money in these Bantustans. If we look at the period between the years 1949 and 1958, we see that South Africa had a net in-flow of no less than R833,000,000. That was capital from overseas. If, with that vast inflow, the Government could not afford to spend more than R200,000,000 in the Native urban areas, how are they going to find the far vaster amount required for the Bantustans, without any capital inflow in future? Where is the money going to come from? How can we invest large amounts when, on the hon. the Minister’s own showing, with an inflow of over R800,000,000 no more than R200,000,000 could be afforded to be invested in providing housing and transport facilities for the urban Natives? It is quite clear that our own domestic savings will all be needed if we are to maintain economic growth, in the so-called White areas of South Africa, merely in order to stop a drop in the standard of living of the people who live here. We will not be able to divert any large percentage of our own savings unless we can get overseas capital to develop the Bantu reserves.

As far as large scale White immigration is concerned, we will only be able to have large scale White immigration in the next 30 years if we have rapid economic growth and rapidly rising standards of living. Because that is precisely what is happening in the Western countries from which we have to draw our immigrants in future. If you look, in particular to the Continental countries you find that in the last five years, while our economic growth has been very slow, the increase per capita income has risen in the so-called common market countries at an average of about 5 per cent per annum. At that rate, with our economic stagnation and with their rapid growth, it will only be a question of time before this country will simply not be able to afford to draw immigrants out here, because people do not leave Europe to come and earn a lower income in a strange land. They leave Europe if they can get higher incomes in South Africa. So the slowing down in our economic growth as a consequence of the stoppage of the inflow of foreign capital will seriously impair the immigration policy which this Government has at last announced after 13 years which the locusts have eaten. The Government has lost for this country 13 years during which we could have been building up our White population, and we are now reaching a phase when, unless we can have rapid economicgrowth and rapidly rising standards of living—which, to my mind, will only be possible if we have a new inflow of foreign capital—unless we have those conditions it will be impossible to have large scale immigration.

Mr. Speaker, the crisis that is now forced on us therefore means that our chances of strengthening our White population will be seriously impaired, and the development of the only positive aspect of apartheid which can be defended anywhere in the world, the rapid development of the Reserves, will become impossible of carrying out. This is the result of the so-called granite policies of which we have heard such a lot. Hon members opposite will say—and I have listened to them again and again—that we must have these granite policies because that is the price we must pay for keeping at least a large part of South Africa White. That is their whole argument, and a very old argument—we must at least keep a large part of South Africa white.

Who told you that?

The hon. member and his colleagues have told me that. And I shall shortly show them how wrong they are.

I never told you that.

Mr. Speaker, let us see where these policies will really lead us to. I will examine this position on the admissions of hon. members such as the hon. gentleman from Vryheid (Mr. D. J. Potgieter) who has just made this interjection. Let us see what sort of Nationalist land of promise they are leading us to. The hon. member for Vrvheid can take his choice. he can take 1981 or 2.001. Let us see what will happen if these policies which have been followed for thirteen years are to be continued into the future. In the first place, we will have so-called white areas which will really have a mixed population. On the admission of hon. members on the other side of the House, all the Indians and all the Asians will still be living in the so-called white areas. On every demographic calculation, on every calculation of what the future population will be, it is equally clear that by the year 2,000 the numbers of Indians and Coloureds together will not be appreciably less than the number of Whites. They will be fewer but they will not be appreciably less. In the White areas therefore, we will have a mixed population of Coloureds, Asians and Europeans. But that is not all, Mr. Speaker. In the same White areas, if the Bantu reserves cannot be developed massively—and I have already pointed out why that will be impossible—we will find that the so-called Black population in the so-called White areas will exceed the population of the Europeans, the Asiatics and the Coloureds put together.

Hon. members on the Government side of the House are always saying “What will your policy lead to, it will lead to a mixed population”. It is quite clear that their policy will lead to exactly the same population mixture. But the significant difference will be in other respects. It will not be as far as the population mixture is concerned, that will very largely be the same. What will the significant difference be? In the first place the White percentage of the population will be much smaller because of the impossibility of large scale immigration, and because this Government in the past stopped immigration on a large scale. That will be the one significant difference between the end result of their policies and the end result of our policies. In the second place, economically speaking we will all be much poorer because the Government’s racial policies are leading to the loss of confidence by the west and by the investors of the world in South Africa. But the biggest difference will be politically. If we are to take hon. members on the other side of the House seriously, this mixed population of ours which we will have in the so-called White areas of South Africa will have three Parliaments. They will have a White Parliament, a Coloured Parliament and an Asian Parliament. But the populations will be so intermixed that the authority of each of those Parliaments will run over the same geographical areas. That is the position as I see it.

A state within a state!

According to the principles enunciated by the Government side, they do not want to restrict the development of any people, so each of these Parliaments will have to be sovereign. So you will have three sovereign Parliaments in the same area governing three different sets of people who work in the same factories. who walk in the same streets and who live the same economic life.

And who drink the same liquor.

Yes, and who drink the same liquor. Can the hon. the Minister of Finance, as an ex-constitutional lawyer please explain to us where the one sovereignty will end and where the other will begin…

He is very ex-constitutional lawyer now.

And that is not the only political difference we will have. We will have the so-called White area in South Africa. the so-called White Republic which, as I have already said will have a majority Black population. But the difference will be that these majority of Blacks will all be foreigners. They will all be citizens of foreign states, citizens of the Black republics round about South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, if the rest of Africa is a lesson to us, I will be very surprised if these Blackrepublics are very friendily disposed towards South Africa. They will have the majority population in this country, but will they be friendily disposed towards us? Will they not. like every other Black republic in Africa, try to form links with both West and East, with Communism? Can one imagine any other government in the world that creates its own fifth column on such a fantastic scale as this Government policy intends to do? [Time limit.]

A great deal has been already said in this debate, and I should like to say just a few words on one aspect of what has been said here since the debate began. I want to say this in all calmness because I am a very calm person. I have never heeded anything which has not been said in calmness. The hon. member over there is laughing like a maniac. I do not know what the trouble is. I am not aware that I have said anything that is wrong.

I want to talk about the relationship between the Afrikaans- and the English-speaking. That was the basis of the speeches of many hon. members on the other side. But I want to say at the outset that I do not regard the Afrikaans-speaking members who sit on that side as representatives of the Afrikaans-speaking and the masses outside.

Why not?

Because I regard them as hangers-on of another great section in this country. I want to talk about the English-speaking and the representatives who sit over there, who represent the English-speaking section here and who are supposedly regarded as such. I want to confine myself exclusively to them. I want to say that there is an enormous gap between the Afrikaans-speaking and the English-speaking… [Interjections.] I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that as far as we can judge from the remarks passed by the hon. members on the other side, there is a big gap between the Afrikaans- and the English-speaking. Our outlook and our philosophy still differ widely; that difference is so great that I am convinced that in spite of all our efforts, which can be regarded as honest efforts, it will still take more than one political generation for us to come together and to bring about the much-discussed and much-vaunted unity which is our ardent desire. I attribute this difference in our philosophy in the first instance to the fact that the Afrikaans-sneaking section is more mature politically than the English-speaking section.

The poor English!

No, I speak well of them. I say that the Afrikaans-speaking people are more mature politically, and that must be attributed to the fact that the historical development of the Afrikaans-speaking people, as one section of the White group, has been different from that of our English-speaking friends. Our history proves that.

Is that what happened at Rysmierbult?

Yes, there was indoctrination there that I would welcome and that I should very much like to continue.

And that is why they are mature?

This political maturity which can be regarded as the great difference between the Afrikaans-speaking and the English-speaking is part and parcel of our history. The political thinking of the English-speaking section in this country is much more integrated and bears a much closer resemblance to the present European political thinking. It bears very little resemblance to genuine South African political thinking. Their approach, because of their lack of political maturity which has its roots in South African soil, differs from ours. We view matters and problems, particularly in times of crises, from different angles, as the debates which have taken place in this House have clearly shown. I say that these views and philosophies which form the basis of their political immaturity, are reflected very clearly also in the attitude of the English-speaking in any crisis or on any great occasion such as the establishment of the Republic of South Africa, for example. In this crisis in which we find ourselves as White people—South Africa, Africa and the entire world—we find that this is not a South African crisis only. We are simply experiencing the consequences of the crisis which has its focal point elsewhere. I say that in this crisis in which we are finding ourselves at the present moment, the English-speaking are demonstrating a lack—and I do not hold it against them—of independent political thought. I as an Afrikaans-speaking person have learnt all these years to think for myself and to think independently in the political sphere.

In your caucus too.

I shall come to that hon. member in a moment. I should like to have a word with him.

He is a renegade.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, is the hon. member for Langlaagte (Mr. P. J. Coetzee; entitled to call the hon. member for Namib (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) a renegade?

Mr. Speaker, I do not mind his doing so at all.

The hon. member for Langlaagte must withdraw those words.

Mr. Speaker, he is nothing but a renegade.

The hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it.

Mr. Speaker, I say that I as an Afrikaans-speaking person and my fellow Afrikaans-speaking citizens have learned throughout the years to think independently in the political sphere. We have not had a mother-country to obscure our thinking. We are severed from our mother-countries and we have developed an independent national political thinking. That fact has contributed to the development and the establishment of independent political thought as far as the Afrikaans-speaking section is concerned, more so than in the case of our English-speaking friends. This lack of independent political thought, this lack of maturity, brings with it an unrealistic approach to genuinely South African problems. This unrealistic approach one finds evidenced in all the debates which take place in this House. If there is something which surprises me, it is that adults who sit on the other side of the House and who were born in South Africa propagate the worst political unrealities that one can imagine with great eloquence, and in the most bombastic terms. I am thinking of the speech of the hon. member for Musgrave (Mr. Williams). It was an excellent speech it was full of dramatics; it was clothed in magnificent sentences; it was decorated and decked out with an admirable vocabulary. But, Mr. Speaker, it was permeated with political unreality of as gross a nature as one can find anywhere on earth. This had the result which it must inevitably have, namely that it was followed by the speech of the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Prof. Fourie) because it released in the mind of that hon. member the bitterness which he dispensed yesterday. This is the result which has always flowed from politically unreal thought. This lack of realism is revealed by the confusion and has as its result the confusion which one continually notices when those members are faced in this House with a choice in respect of certain crises and problems with which we are faced. I want to mention a few. Take the doubt and confusion which prevail in the ranks of our Opposition who are mostly English-speaking; take the doubt in respect of every great matter which we have tackled in this House. Take the Flag Act. Take the confusion on the long road we have followed to independence. On every occasion confusion has prevailed in their ranks. They could not decide. They were dubious and they adopted a doubting attitude in this House. They made a big fuss, but as soon as they had kicked up the dust, just as quickly did the dust settle. Take the flag issue in 1928 and the present flag struggle, and take the citizenship struggle and the struggle for a national anthem. Every time, as a result of this political unrealism which is based on political immaturity, we have had this confusion in the ranks of the Opposition. There sits the hon. member for Florida (Mr. H. G. Swart). In his political heart he differs tremendously from the vociferous member for Durban (Point) (Mr. Raw). They will never agree because the hon. member for Florida has greater political maturity than the hon. member for Durban (Point). One can rely to a far greater extent on the opinions of the hon. member for Florida in respect of political matters than one can on the political thinking of the hon. member who sits over there in the corner and who is also starting to be a little bitter, namely the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Oldfield). The reason for this doubt and confusion, this inability to do what we must do and this inability to understand what we must do in order to defend our fatherland in a time of crisis and to combine all our resources during a period of setbacks, is to be found in the political immaturity of our English-speaking friends opposite—Not all of them outside, but these members whom I regard as the representatives of the English-speaking people. Our national unification will have to develop and take shape as our English-speaking people achieve greater political maturity. This is an essential condition for national unity in South Africa. But. as I have said, I have a great deal of sympathy for them because the sources from which they derive sustenance are very biased, unpatriotic and hostile to their own homeland. They are also antagonistic to everything which their allies, the Afrikaans-speaking people, do with the best of intentions. But these sources are also inciting another section of the population, the Black man in South Africa, in order to recruit him and to use him against the Afrikaans-speaking republican, as has been the position throughout history and as is the position to-day as well.

Go on, that is not true.

What are these sources? The first is the Press and I know they will once again say “oh”. But until the South African Press gets rid of their imported un-South African editors, for so long will we be saddled with this agitatorial, unpatriotic Press. But these sources are open. They also drink from the sources of imported spiritual leaders. The seminary which has been established for English-speaking students in Grahamstown is one of the best things they have done. There spiritual leaders will be trained who will not ascend the pulpit as spiritual leaders have done in the past and are still doing to-day,not to use the Bible and to spread the Word of God, but to use it for political purposes.

Like Ds. Boshoff.

I say that until such time that our English-speaking people also seek their spiritual leaders in South African and Afrikaans soil, for so long will this be a source which will have a poisonous and paralysing effect on the English-speaking people and for so long will the English-speaking section of the population be hampered and lack the ability to develop a feeling of true national unity without necessarily having political unity. All these imported spiritual leaders, editors and principals of private schools are

And the Prime Minister?

… engaged on the un-South African indoctrination of that section of our population in every sphere. That is why there is in effect this complete failure, of some of these English-speaking members who have to represent the people outside to understand the Afrikaans-speaking people. There are certain English-speaking members here who never read an Afrikaans book or newspaper or attend an Afrikaans play. They have absolutely no contact with us because they are drinking from springs which are indoctrinating them in an un-South African way. They play no part in our national activities. That is why our English-medium schools are running short of English teachers. That is why we find in English-medium high schools that the language spoken by the staff in the staff room to-day is Afrikaans. They have withdrawn themselves. That is why they have totally withdrawn themselves from the general national life and have no part to play in it. That is why in the important professions and trades they are distinguished by their absence. But we hope the new Republic will give us the opportunity so that through the spirit and through that which will be possible in the Republic we can have a genuinely South African indoctrination of our young people, both English- and Afrikaans-speaking. That is why I say I welcome this new Republic, this new era, because it gives us free play to indoctrinate along the right lines, and time will bring maturity. The common pride and joy which will arise through the exploitation of our own resources which no country to the north of us can equal, and the results which we can achieve, will contribute to a unification process and the cultivation of a genuinely South African spirit such as we would like to have in the Republic. But not only our natural resources. We have all sorts of institutions through which we shall be able to utilize our spiritual resources together and by so doing build up a joint pride and joint achievements. Then we shall be able to join in giving. We shall not simply ask and never be able to refuse. The Progressive Party only asks, while the White man throughout history has only been giving to the Black man. Over and above the work which the Black man has done for us in the past, he has never given anything yet, and in return we have given him food, medical services and protection, and we have given him bread to eat. But the Progressive Party only asks. They have never learned to refuse because refusal rests on pride in that which is one’s own. But they have so little of that which is truly South Africa that they do not have the courage to refuse. And refuse what? We say we shall give bread, medical services, houses and education. We have given everything in the past but we refuse to give one thing. We shall not give political rights, and if we have this spirit which we can build up together, we shall also have the pride to refuse. No, I say that there is hope. I want to conclude. There is hope that the Progressive Party will disappear, and that the United Party will disappear as a political factor of any significance in the Republic. Slowly but surely the population will block off the maze of this so-called democracy with its so-called famous freedoms and the tower of democratic hypocricy as revealed at the moment, particularly by the Press, which says that Press freedom is one of the five great freedoms of the world, will gradually be destroyed; this hypocricy which flourishes under the guise of so-called democracy. There is hope that we shall break through the wall which all these enemies, these foreign and evil elements, have built up between us and the Black man. We shall break through and we shall reach the Black man. We shall “go across the colour line”, but not with the same intention as certain of them. We shall break through the colour line and in future we shall grind them to dust between White nationalism and Black nationalism. But I say that while we have responsibilities and duties as Afrikaans-speaking people, so the English-speaking people have an equal duty, namely to drink from the greater national fountain and to contribute, just as we do with the same enthusiasm and in the same spirit. They also have a duty to achieve national unity.

I really do not blame the Whip of the Nationalist Party for suggesting to the hon. member for Ventersdorp (Mr. Greyling) that he has spoken long enough. In fact, I had not thought that I would live to experience in this so-called new era of national unity the sort of speech we have had from that hon. member. I am sorry the hon. the Prime Minister was not here to listen to that speech. I think in fact that the ambition which the hon. member for Ventersdorp cherishes in his heart might have been given even a further set-back if the Prime Minister had been here. [Interjections.] I do not want to follow the hon. member for Ventersdorp along his metaphysical and totalitarianspeech this evening. I simply want to test its validity by two or three things he said.

In the first place, I want to ask him whether he really believes, as he said, that all English-speaking South Africans are politically immature if they do not belong to the Nationalist Party?

I did not say that.

That is what the hon. member implied. But if an Afrikaans-speaking person does not belong to the Nationalist Party he is a renegade.

I did not say that either.

Then I apologize, but the inference was clear, and I want to ask the hon. member, if an Afrikaans-speaking member from this side of the House moves across to that side of the House, whether he then becomes a convert and not a renegade, like the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) and Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker). When the hon. member talks in terms of political maturity, I want to say to him that he is sadly biased and completely unobjective in his viewpoint, and that his viewpoint really is that unless you hold the beliefs and propagate the policies of the party to which that hon. member belongs, you are immature and unreliable. Is that the basis on which to attempt to build the new unified South Africa which we hear so much about? Sir, one hears these ghost stories of the hon. member about imported editors of the English Press, the imported teachers and professors who apparently do so much to break down the things for which that hon. member stands. But he does not mention who these imported editors are supposed to be. I wish he would acquaint himself with the facts and tell us who these imported editors are. But I shall leave the hon. member there.

There was an imported editor of the Transvaler.

That is untrue. That is a dirty remark.

Order!

On a point of order, is the hon. member entitled to say that it is a dirty remark?

I claim that I am entitled to say to that hon. member that it is a dirty remark, because it is one.

The hon. member must withdraw it.

What must I withdraw? The word “dirty”?

On a point of order, may I ask that the hon. member withdraw that remark?

I said that I would withdraw the word “dirty”.

I said it was a darned dirty remark.

The hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it.

Sir, will you allow me to raise objection to the kind of observation that came from the other side which elicited this remark from me? It was a reflection on the Prime Minister.

We cannot swallow it from you any more.

Order! The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) must keep quiet. Did the hon. member for Pretoria (District) (Mr. Schoonbee) raise a point of order?

No, I say I raise objection to that kind of remark.

On a point of order, the hon. member for Heilbron said “We will not put up with that sort of remark from you any longer.” I ask that he be asked to withdraw that remark.

Order! What did the hon. member for Heilbron say?

I said we cannot swallow the remarks made by the hon. member for Durban (Point) (Mr. Raw) any more.

On a point of order, I challenge the words of the hon. member for Heilbron. He said: “We are not going to put up with it.” He did not say “sluk”.

Order! The hon. member must accept the hon. member’s word.

The hon. member withdrew the word “dirty” and said “foul”.

I did not. I said “unfounded”.

The hon. member for Sunnyside may continue.

The hon. members for Pretoria (District) and Heilbron obviously were not in the Chamber or did not listen to the remarks of the hon. member for Ventersdorp in regard to importations. This simply servesto make my point that what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander in the eyes of those hon. members. I intend now to leave the hon. member for Ventersdorp and to deal with something more important.

It is not true, and you know it.

The hon. member cannot say that, and he must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, but he ought to know it.

In this Bill we are being asked to vote a very large sum of money for the needs of the country. What has disturbed me and most members on this side of the House is the very little interest which has been displayed in the debate by hon. members opposite. Those benches are not only empty now; they have been consistently empty right throughout the debate, and then we had the sort of speech we have just heard. There have been very few contributions from hon. members on that side, and so there is very little for us to reply to but a great deal for those hon. members to reply to.

I want to revert to an earlier speaker, the Deputy Minister of Education, who in the course of a very clever debating speech made several points. I am sorry he is not able to be here this evening. I want to suggest that in making debating points it is always advisable to see that the points made rest upon the facts. In this case the Deputy Minister sought to blame the United Party, because he said that we no longer have the confidence of the financiers of South Africa. In a speech delivered at the Natal University on 27 March this year, Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, the financier to whom the Deputy Minister referred by name, said this—

Does this sound as if the Deputy Minister’s allegation that we have no support from the financiers of this country is true? [Interjection.] That hon. member who interjects, despite his so-called erudition—I hope he knows the word—has the mind of a nursery-school child, and I am not going to spend any more time attempting to put into his head what a series of teachers, professors and lecturers have obviously failed to do.

May I ask a question? Can the hon. member tell us how many organizers his party had in the field two years ago and how many they have to-day?

If that hon. member thinks I am so naive as to give him campaigning information, he has another think coming. He will find out when he fights Fort Beaufort again, if he gets the nomination, which I doubt.

Sir, the next point which was made by the Deputy Minister consisted of the reading of a document which purported to be the record of proceedings of the conference held at Hermanus recently by a group of people. The Deputy Minister told the House that these people were obviously leftists or people inspired by leftists, but he did not know who they were. He came here and made an allegation about the drafters of this document and said they were obviously leftists and then admitted that he did not know who they were. Is that a responsible act? [Interjection.]

I appeal to hon. members to keep quiet.

In future I think I will speak in the mornings, Sir. Finally the Deputy Minister said that he saw the future political division in this country as being a division between the Nationalist Party on the one hand and the Progressive Party or their successors on the other. That unfortunately is typical and characteristic of the thinking of so many of my hon. friends opposite. They do not admit the possibility of a party of moderation and conservatism. In fact, they do not admit of it because they do not wish such a situation to continue to exist. They hope for complete polarization, the right and the left. That is the classic wish of extreme parties all over the world. In the early days of the National Socialist Party in Germany there were the communists and the national socialists and there was a strong Social Democratic Party in the middle, a centre party, and both the Communist Party and the Nazis concentrated their efforts on destroying the centre. That, as I say, is typically and characteristically and tragically true of the thinking of hon. members opposite, that there are only two alternatives, apartheid and one man, one vote; the Nationalist Party and something which is to the left of the Progressive Party. But that is not so. That was not the doctrine of our forbears in this country, nor of the forebears of those hon. members, and thank heaven it will never be the doctrine of the members on these benches.

The hon. member for Bellville (Mr. Haak) earlier in the debate took his usual line. He told us how well it was going with South Africa and how badly with so many other countries. Apparently, if one is to believe that hon. member, he is very much like the doctor who says the operation was a great success but the patient has unfortunately died, because the parlous state of this patient is inherent in the admissions and the actions of the hon. the Minister of Finance in the pastfew days and weeks. Admittedly other countries have their difficulties, but any particular set of symptoms can be the result of different diseases. I want to say that our symptoms are the consequence of the granite policy of separate development. That is where our economic ills spring from. The fact is that our economy, which is fundamentally sound, this potentially wonderful economy, need not ever have been exposed to the consequences of this particular disease. Other countries are not so fortunate. Their economic ills spring from other factors. Our economic ills spring from factors which lie directly at the door of this Government, and which could be remedied if it were not for this utter and absolute refusal to reassess and to think and to admit the possibility that they may sometimes be wrong. It is because our economy is so tied to and hampered by this ideological attitude which passes for a policy that we find ourselves in the position in which we are today. How has the Government reacted to this very serious economic and financial situation? It has reacted in three ways, firstly the financial restrictions and controls which have been mentioned by the Minister of Finance and many members on these benches. Secondly, this Government has reacted by attempting at this very late stage to introduce a mass immigration scheme. I have here a Press report of an announcement made on 14 August 1946, by a previous hon. member of this House. It was made just before he departed for Paris to attend the peace conference. You see. Sir, in those days the representatives of the Union of South Africa, as it was then, were welcome at peace conferences. The gentleman concerned was the then Prime Minister of South Africa, General Smuts. This was 15 years ago and this was what he said then—

Further on Sir,—

Now, Sir, 16 years later in the Main and Supplementary Estimates, as part of the appropriation which we are being asked to make, there is the sum of nearly R3,000,000 for the purpose of launching an immigration scheme. What I have quoted was the immigration policy of the United Party in 1946, the immigration policy which was immediately stopped when this Government came into power in 1948. But in addition to that, following upon this policy of strengthening the White population of South Africa, this party, as part of its election platform in 1953, suggested positive measure to increase our domestic White population—we suggested mothers’ allowances, family allowances, maternity grants on an increased scale. And what was that policy called by hon. members on that side of the House? It was called the “konynbeleid the rabbit policy. I am very glad that at this very late stage some attempt is going to be made to procure for us in this country a stronger White population. But I am afraid I cannot say,” better late than never I am afraid this is too late. It is too late because of the reasons indicated by my hon. friend the member for Jeppes (Dr. Cronje). I am afraid that we are attempting to do something which is now impossible or very nearly impossible. I think this is irrevocably too late and I think the Government will not have any success with their immigration policy.

The third reaction to the present situation on the part of the Government has been a sudden change in its defence policy. There has been a sudden realization that in order to have a Defence Force that is worth while, money will have to be spent on it. I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister of Defence for the steps he is taking in this regard. I am sorry that he has not seen fit to take this House and the Other Place into his confidence in a secret session, but I want to say that I believe that he is proceeding along the right lines. Again, Sir, this is years too late. The hon. the Minister is in the position of a man who goes out hunting in a lion-infested jungle without knowing how to shoot. That is the position in which he is at the moment. This is much, much too late again. After 13 years of hearing, “Keep South Africa White”, “Vote for the Nationalist Party”, “Save White South Africa”, etc. We suddenly havea realization on the part of the Government that they cannot keep a country White without White people in it. After 13 years of talking about our adequate Defence Force and the excellence of our equipment and training system, we find the hon. the Minister of Defence, not his predecessor, but the present Minister, saying that it is time he did something about this, and that he wanted the co-operation of everybody in this country, which we on this side of the House will readily give. We have always given our cooperation in defence matters. We give it readily if we believe that the matter is being seriously and properly tackled. Most of our ills are economic ills certainly, but many of our other ills also arise from the so-called apartheid policy of this Government. This policy has been formulated many times and in many ways and most recently by the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development as the Bantustan policy and the promotion of self-government for the Bantu policy. Yet self-government remains a pie in the sky. It is a positive aspect of apartheid which remains something that may be achieved in the distant future. The very small sums spent on it illustrate that, while at the same time all the negative aspects of this policy are being carried out. Unless there is a departure, unless there is an honest and sincere attempt to develop our Bantu reserves, which are called Bantu homelands by those hon. members, our economic ills will continue. But this is a very difficult problem, this is a problem which goes in a vicious circle. In order to restore confidence overseas something has to be done about the positive aspects of apartheid, something has to be done about developing the reserves, but in order to develop the reserves confidence must be restored otherwise the money is not forthcoming. So I am afraid this Government is caught on a wheel of its own making and I really think that they deserve our sympathy in the sense that they are attempting to achieve the impossible. Where they do not deserve our sympathy is when they continue along this path. I say in the words of the poet: “In all this weary road you tread, there is nothing but the night.”

We have come to the end of yet another of those sessions which we have so often had in past years: When the session is over, the position in the country is just as bad as or even worse than it was when the session commenced. We are ending this Session with the same absolute lack of co-operation between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans in the government of the country. The Government has not been able to announce one single step aimed at rectifying this undesirable state of affairs. Amongst the non-Whites the Opposition against the Government took on such proportions during this Session that even the threat of a strike resulted in the entire Police Force and a large section of the Defence Force being called up and all meetings and sports gatherings being prohibited so that even elected members of Parliament were not allowed to hold meetings in their own constituences without the arbitrary permission of a local magistrate. One wonders in passing how many million of rand this episode with all its preparations, planning and defence measures, cost the country.

As far as immigration is concerned, we are experiencing the phenomenon to-day that ships which previously brought immigrants to South Africa are now taking on emigrants who are leaving our shores. In the economic sphere we are faced with increasing difficulties. We all know what the snowball effect will be of the uncertainty and lack of confidence which the Government is arousing. When we go home after this Session, we are leaving here with the freedom of the individual still more restricted than it was last year, and with the clearest indications that the Government desires for its own political advantage to restrict the traditional freedom of the Press, that is to say the freedom to criticize which is the basis of a democratic country.

The decline has been even more marked in our foreign relations. Throughout the entire world words are being changed into deeds. Foreign criticism is now being converted into action. We have already lost our member ship of the Commonwealth which was the first tangible price which we have had to pay in the international sphere for the Government we have. The second price which we are paying is our complete exclusion from Africa. Quite a few countries have already refused to recognize our new Republic and I foresee the day when a White South African will experience difficulty in taking one step outside his own country into Africa if a change of Government is not made in this country timeously. The third price which we shall have to pay if a change is not made in time, is our control over South West Africa. That is the picture which we have before us at the end of this Session. It is no wonder that the Government feels obliged to hold an election as soon as possible. It knows in its heart that it will not be able to stop this process of decline, and that it may still be able to gain a victory if it can ride into office on the wave of the republican victory, but that it will no longer be able to do so in two years’ time. There can be no other sound reason why it wants to hold an election than a clear lack of confidence in its own position if it should serve out its normal period of another two years. I must honestly say that the mere fact that the Government finds it necessary to hold an election, a full two years before its period of office expires, or is even considering doing so, is the most hopeful political sign which we have had in our country for years. There is open opposition amongst our businessmen, our intellectuals and the Afrikaans spiritual leaders who are quiterightly demanding that there should be no fundamental conflict between a man’s Christian beliefs and his politics. The hon. the Deputy Minister of Education has claimed this afternoon that the members of the so-called Hermanus discussion group were really only a group of frustrated “Sappe” (United Party supporters). Are people like Prof. D. J. Kotze, Dr. P. A. Verhoef and Dr. Jac J. Muller, all of the Stellenbosch Inseminary, Ds. Steenkamp, the moderator of the synod of the D.R. Mission Church; Mr. W. A. de Klerk; Dr. Daan Steenkamp who is an official in the Minister’s own Department; Prof. Frikkie Fourie; Prof. C. H. Badenhorst of the D.R. Mission Church’s training school; Mr. Kobus Louw, registrar of the Western Cape Coloured College—are these people who participated in the discussions frustrated “Sappe”? There is not the slightest doubt that the impact which the intellectuals and the Afrikaans spiritual leaders are making is yielding results in an unexpected way. Allow me to remind the Government then even its re-election at a snap election will not necessarily mean that it will be secure for another five years. In the short political history of South Africa there have already been three instances where Governments have been broken in the middle of their term of office.

No matter from what angle I regard the results of this Session—as a South African, or as an Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner, or as a White man, or as a South-Wester—the Government has not produced anything which gives us any hope for the future. As a South African I welcomed the establishment of our Republic. For republicans such as us it was a sentimental event of importance, but the importance it will have for South Africa and its population as a whole in the long run will not depend on the minor constitutional changes which we experienced on 31 May. The real significance of the establishment of the Republic will depend entirely on the political content and character which we are going to give to the new Republic. The first urgent necessity facing us is that a basis must be found whereby the Afrikaans- and English-speaking people can rule the country together, whereby they can unite their talents and can use their experience to bring about a rearrangement of race relations in South Africa. It is fantastic to think that in the face of all the dangers threatening us to-day, both internally and externally, the Government persists in ruling the country through one language group alone. Not only is this harmful to South Africa, but in the long run it is also going to harm the Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner, because the Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner and he alone is going to be held responsible for all the mistakes which are being made. We already have the position that the Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner is being picked out and isolated both inside and outside South Africa and is being used as a scapegoat for everything which bears the mark of injustice in this country. I therefore say that in the interests of the Afrikaans-speaking South African and in the interests of all the people of South Africa we must immediately get a government which represents both White language groups in this country. I know the National Party cannot do so. It was noticeable that the hon. member for Ventersdorp (Mr. Greyling) admitted in his speech to-night that his party could not do so, and that in their eyes it would still take a full generation before the necessary co-operation between the Afrikaans- and English-speaking peoples could be achieved. The reason why the governing party cannot do so is because over the years they have practised an exclusiveness, they have furthered a sectionalism which has detrimentally affected Afrikaans life as a whole. I have just read a report in a newspaper dealing with the “Protea Shooting Club” in Port Elizabeth which is bilingual, and the “Afrikaanse Skietklub” (Shooting Club) for women which is Afrikaans-speaking. A dispute has broken out between the two. The Protea people have received their instructions from the police in both languages. The “Afrikaanse Skietklub” however has insisted on its members being Afrikaans-speaking only and that they should be instructed in Afrikaans only. But their constitution provides that only people who are “Christian National” can become members of the club! Even in the National Party itself, the English-speaking people who do join the party are organized into separate branches in various places. In Johannesburg there is the “John X. Merriman branch of the National Party ”. The English-speaking persons who join the National Party there are segregated into “English-speaking branches”. In Natal they have an “Emily Hobhouse English-speaking Branch of the National Party”. Even in the ranks of the National Party the English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking people are segregated on a language basis. If an English-speaking person joins their party, he must strike up his own tent in the backyard.

Mr. Speaker, the road is wide open in South Africa for Afrikaans/English co-operation. But if we want to achieve this aim we shall have to get away from the old Nat/Sap division which we have had hitherto, and the sooner we do so the better. In order to achieve this, we shall also have to reform our educational system. I think that it is criminal that up to their 17th year, children go to schools which are only attended by children of their own language group. When they are 17 years of age, they have to go out into life, into the business and social worlds, and they find that their school was not a true reflection of South Africa as it is. I do not want to argue with the educationists. I accept that mother tongue education is the best method of education, at any rate in the lower grades. But then mother tongue classes for both language groups must be provided in the same school, under the same roof. in the same hostel, andon the same sports fields. The best system is still parallel education in the same class. I attended a school where I sat with my Afrikaans textbook next to my friend in the same class who had his English textbook; and the teacher taught us in both languages alternately, with the result that one had the full benefit of one’s mother tongue but still heard the second language and became accustomed to it.

As regard the position of the Coloureds, changes will have to be effected immediately in the new Republic. The Coloured is irrevocably woven into the area and the way of life of the White and nothing can change that. We forget so readily that the Coloureds constitute a minority group. They do not even represent half the White population. They can therefore never be a threat to the security of the Whites. If the Coloureds are a threat to the continued existence of the Whites, then the struggle is irrevocably lost—if ever a minority represents a threat. The first step which is required to establish sound relations is to abolish compulsory measures which do not solve anything, which merely create friction and animosity and which insult and humiliate the Coloureds’ sense of dignity, and which in the long run it will in any case not be possible to maintain. The argument which speakers continually use—the hon. the Deputy Minister of the Interior used this argument in the House a little while ago—is that there are only two alternatives—and that is apartheid on the one hand and integration on the other hand. There is nothing in between. This argument is false; that is not the choice. The policy of the Government is not apartheid, but is compulsory legal apartheid; and the counterpart is not integration, but compulsory legal integration. Those are the two extremes. The obvious thing in South Africa is that we should reject both. In the southern States of America the American Federal Government is applying compulsory integration and for that reason there is trouble there. Here the Government is applying enforced apartheid and that is why we are having trouble here. Basically it is the same thing because it is the compulsion factor which is the cause of the trouble. The only sound alternative to compulsory apartheid and compulsory integration is natural human relations which represents a basis on which the White man will be able to maintain himself. Or are there hon. members opposite who really believe that 3,000,000 Whites will not be able to maintain themselves on the basis of natural human relations against little more than 1,500,000 Coloureds? What point is there in having two entrances to places where people buy their stamps—one for Whites and one for non-Whites, and just next door there is a shop which has only one entrance where one buys one’s clothes and one’s food. If one applies compulsory apartheid in respect of the one, one should apply it in respect of the other as well. And then one goes from one absurdity to the other. May I go so far as to say the Nationalist who has a shop and has only one entrance and one counter for Whites and non-Whites together, is either not honest in his politics or does not agree with his own party’s policy—one of the two. The effect of a policy of natural human relations would be that no one would be forced by law to apply apartheid and no one would be forced by law to apply integration. If a man wants to have a café or a bioscope for Whites only, let him then have one for Whites only; if he wants to have one for Coloureds only, let him then have one for Coloureds only; and if he wants to have one for Coloureds and Whites or for anyone who wants to come, let him do so. Let every man decide for himself what he wants to do. The White man will always be able to go to the caé which is reserved for Whites. I do not think that it is the task of a government to control by means of laws and regulations the minutest detail of every aspect of a nation’s life. Natural human relations represent the only basis on which a spirit of lasting, sound and happy co-existence can be created between the Whites and the Coloureds. The sooner we accept and apply this, the better it will be. As far as achieving any clarity regarding the political position of the Coloureds is concerned, the present Session has been the greatest failure of all. After the hon. the Prime Minister told the whole world in London that his policy was aimed at achieving full economic and political development—I quote “full economic and political development”—for all racial groups, including the Coloureds and the Indians, he was quite unable in this Parliament to explain that policy in terms of practical politics. The best he could do was to put forward the concept of a state within a state with even the idea of two parliaments in the hope that this Parliament would regard this as practical politics.

The fact of the matter is that the whole idea of a state within a state is a communist concept, which is intended for communists with dual ties—that is to say their own national state together with the communist international or world state. No wonder that not one member on that side of the House has supported the Prime Minister in this policy and that one after the other they are smothering this concept of a state within a state. A week or two ago we even had the experience that the governing party had to announce that it could no longer see far ahead nor could it explain its policy for the future. The hon. the Deputy Minister of the Interior addressed a Nationalist Party conference at Goodwood the other day and in despair he said this—I am quoting from the Burger of 10 June 1961—

Just imagine, Mr. Speaker. The governing party which has always said that it has a complete policy for everything, even for the far distant future—when it comes to its Bantu policy it even speaks in terms of a few thousand years—now suddenly admits that it can no longer see that far ahead. But when another party does so, the governing party says it has no policy. Every time one discusses racial policy, the Government uses certain standard arguments. When one analyses these arguments, one finds that not one of them holds water. The one argument is that if one gives a man an inch, he will take an ell. That is a completely false argument because if a man is strong enough to take everything, he will not ask one to give him an inch—he will take everything. The other argument is that if one goes as far as A in granting certain rights, then one must also go as far as B, etc. We have just dealt with a Bill in this House which gives the urban Bantu a certain measure of local political control. The Bill gives the Bantu a form of joint responsibility in controlling the urban areas. I welcome this; it is one of the few rays of light in this Session, but if in future the Government again uses the argument that if one takes a certain step A, one will be obliged to take step B, then it is condemning its own policy, and we must assume that it will have to go further in granting political rights to the Bantu who are established in our cities. The point is simply that if one party can say: I am going as far as A and then I am stopping, then another party has just as much right to say: We are going as far as B and there we are stopping. Another argument which is used very frequently is that we will in any case not convince the world, so what point is there in trying. I have never heard such a despairing approach nor such an unrealistic complaint. Who asks the Government to try to satisfy the whole world? America, Britain, Germany and France do not satisfy the whole world; nor do they try to do so. The whole communist world is against them. Every country has its opponents and South Africa will always have her opponents, but then a country must ensure that it behaves in such a way that it at least has a few good, strong friends. Our Government, however, behaves in such a way that it does not have even one good friend in the world. Time after time one hears Western statesmen complain that our Government does not want to give them even one small opening which will make it possible for them to assist South Africa in warding off the worst onslaughts on us. When one cannot make friends, Mr. Speaker, one at least tries to neutralize some of one’s opponents, but the Government does not even try to do this in the case of its foreign policy. But apart from that, I know of no one on this side who asks that the Government should allow foreign countries to prescribe to it. The obvious way to behave when we are dealing with racial matters is to establish a contented non-White community in our country and once one has established a contented non-White community in the country, it follows logically that much of the opposition from abroad will disappear of its own accord. If the people in the country are satisfied, the people outside after all have no reason to criticize South Africa. Mr. Speaker, I do not think that we have ever had a government in South Africa which has been so weak in the diplomatic field as the present Government. In what position do we find ourselves as regards South West Africa? Towards the end of April I warned the Government and I said that the present uncertainty regarding the position in South West Africa was having a fatal effect on the economy of the territory. One South West member on the Government benches after the other rose in this House and contradicted me. They painted a picture which made it appear as though everything was moonlight and roses in South West. But shortly afterwards the following report appeared in the Burger (22 April 1961)—

That is the position in South West—industrial and commercial stagnation. That is the position we have in South West to-day as a result of the policy of the Government and the resulting uncertainty. I want to say here as a representative from South West that I lodge the very strongest objections against the fact that the Government does not consult anyone in respect of this important matter…

Who do you represent?

I represent far more people than that hon. member could ever hope to represent on his own.

Who?

There are far more people in this country who support my attitude than do that of the hon. member over there. Allow me to say this, Sir; I lodge the strongest objection against the fact that in respect of this important matter of South West the Government does not consult anyone and that it leaves the handling of the South West matter—which affects the whole future of South West Africa—to the discretion of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We all know the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs; weknow his good qualities but we also know that emotionally he is not properly equipped to deal with such an important matter where to a large extent we must rely on the goodwill of other countries. I have a book on my bookshelf entitled: “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,” and every time I see it, I think of the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is probably the only Minister of Foreign Affairs in the world who measures his success by the number of friends which South Africa loses. If the Government regards the question of South West as too delicate to discuss in this House, it could at least consult the representatives of South West, the Opposition and the various parties in the country and keep them informed regarding the question of South West. There are steps which can be taken and which can safeguard South West’s future position if only we act timeously and with vision. But if the Government refuses to take the drastic action which the position calls for, I can tell the Government that bitterness will arise in South West, not only against the Government but against the Union as the mandatory power because after all the Union is responsible for the Government which it elects to rule South West.