Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned last night, I was dealing with the way in which the hon. the Minister of Finance was handling this surplus of R88,000,000, and I was saying that the financial speakers of the Opposition were pleading like petty politicians that it should be distributed to the taxpayers. The hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson) says it is conscience money which must now be repaid to the taxpayer. The hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell) poses the question on behalf of the taxpayers: What is there in this Budget for me? The hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) also asks the question, how many people benefit from this Budget? That is typical of their petty politicking. One would say that this was election year. But at the same time the Opposition, as usual, is inconsistent when the hon. member for Constantia on the one hand wants the Minister to give this money back to the taxpayers and on the other hand he is concerned that the Government will not have the money for its great projects like the Orange River scheme, the implementation of the report of the Odendaal Commission and the development of the Bantu homelands. No, the hon. member for Constantia need not be concerned. His prophecy of doom will also be given the lie this time, just as happened in 1961, as was so effectively shown by the hon. member for Pretoria (Central) (Mr. van den Heever). It is exactly because the Government is now using surplus funds from revenue for capital works, for the great national undertakings, that it will be able to tackle those works, because by making funds available from Revenue Account for that purpose in times of economic prosperity, we are really making our capital burden for the future so much lighter. In the final result it is just like the financing of the private individual who in times of prosperity pays off his capital debt, or like the farmer who in times of prosperity pays off his mortgage bond or tackles new capital works from surplus revenue. In a young developing country like ours it is the patriotic duty of every individual to save, because in the final result that constitutes capital formation. It is not only financially wise for his own sake, but it is an expression of true patriotism; it is a symbol of responsible citizenship. In the same way it is financially sound for the Minister of Finance now to utilize his surpluses from Revenue Account for capital requirements.

The methods he applies are rather interesting. Nothing can be said about that R52,000,000 for the additional defence costs; we all agree with it. The placing of R16,000,000 to Loan Account is also another form of financing capital expenditure from surplus revenue. A very sound step here is the R3,600,000 which the hon. the Minister is using to extend the life of the marginal gold mines. If that were being done only to take a little more gold out of those mines, one might have questioned the wisdom of this step, but surely we are all living in hopes that eventually there will be an increase in the price of gold, and therefore it is a very sound capital investment to keep those mines going in order that they, when the price of gold is increased, will be able again to produce economically and once more become a great asset to the finances of the country.

I also want to refer to the R3,700,000 set aside for the small householder. I regard that as a capital investment also because a happy worker with a happy domestic background is a very definite capital asset. Here I just want to ask that the hon. the Minister should also extend this scheme to farms, because when a young farmer buys a farm a house is also included in the purchase price. Why should we not treat the young man who begins farming just as favourably as the young couple who want to acquire a house? I want to plead seriously with the Minister that he should extend this scheme to farms also, so that the young farmers who begin farming operations may derive the benefit of this concession in regard to transfer duties.

Then I want to refer to the R5,100,000 granted to pensioners by way of relief. This relief is of course not in the same category; it has nothing to do with capital investment, but it is a charitable gesture which will also have an influence on our economy. But here I want to ask that the Minister should use his initiative to remove another anomaly. It is generally admitted that our pensioners cannot come out on the pensions they have been receiving hitherto, and therefore in this Budget the pension is being increased to R27 per month, or R324 per annum in the case of an unmarried person. A pensioner cannot manage on less than R324 per annum, and therefore his pension is now being increased to that figure. In fact, last year already it was so increased. The Pensions of the next group of pensioners who have a private income of up to R180 per annum are also now being increased to R324 per annum. But now there is a group of people who have a private income of R312 per annum, and those people are still expected to manage on R312. Ever since the early 1950s they have been expected to manage on R312 per annum. When we admit that a pensioner cannot come out on less than R324 per annum, I cannot see how we can expect this poor man who has a private income to live on R312. Of course I know very well what the objection is to opening the umbrella wider. One does not know how many people will be able to shelter under that umbrella if one does that. But I have enough confidence in the initiative of the hon. the Minister of Finance and the hon. the Minister of Pensions to know that they will find a solution for this anomaly which compels one man to live on R312, whereas another pensioner may receive anything from R324 to over R500.

I hope the hon. member for Paarl (Mr. W. C. Malan) will forgive me if I do not follow his line of argument. I have another theme entirely that I want to develop. Sir, it seems to me that the speech of the hon. the Minister of Finance was much more remarkable for what it omitted to say rather than for what in fact it did say. The most pressing problem which faces the country at the present stage is, of course, the danger of inflation, caused largely by the pressure of demand and the fact that production is not keeping up with this demand. This inhibited production or bottleneck, as it may be called, is, of course, caused largely by the serious shortage of skilled and semi-skilled labour in all spheres of industry, apart, of course, from the dearth of professional and technically trained men. In the building industry alone we have seen figures which indicate that in the urban areas there is a shortage of about 4,000 artisans. The steel and engineering industry are handicapped by a shortage of nearly 3,000 skilled workers in the various branches. According to the labour adviser of the Federated Chamber of Industry, Mr. Barkley, the metal and coachbuilding trade, the chemical industry, the furniture and clothing manufacturers throughout the country are feeling the pinch. He said—

The secretary of the Motor Industries Federation described the shortage of skilled workers in the motor industry as quite critical. Sir, what did our piscatorial Minister of Finance have to suggest to overcome the pressing problem of labour shortages? He said in passing that: “The problem of bottlenecks will certainly require attention and as regard skilled labour the Government is doing and will continue to do its best through training and through immigration to alleviate the shortage. But employers can also do much more through the more efficient use of the existing labour force through organized systems of in-service training and through greater use of those types of labour which are not yet fully employed, such as the old workers and the partially disabled.” To me that is like trying to hook the shark of inflation with a lady’s hat-pin.

Far more far-reaching steps will have to be taken if the inflationary tendencies of excessive demand in relation to underproduction are in fact to be coped with. Certainly immigration is not going to do it. For all the efforts of the Minister of Labour and of Immigration we are not going to be able to get the thousands upon thousands of skilled immigrants that we require, because people are simply not leaving the older countries in their tens of thousands in the way they did in the ten years immediately following the end of World War II. Quite obviously too, in heavy industry and other industries the use of partially disabled people or old people is not the answer to the problem of labour shortage. It is true that the hon. the Minister of Finance did mention the training of skilled workers, and this is, of course, the obvious weapon that we must use. Unfortunately, though, I know that when the hon. the Minister talks about training skilled workers he is by and large thinking only of the training of White workers, who themselves are in short supply and in fact, according to the statement made by the Minister of Labour in the Other Place, are in full employment. I think he mentioned a figure of 1 per cent unemployment amongst such workers, and as one knows the international figure of unemployment is 2½ per cent to 3 per cent, which technically speaking means that the country is fully employed. But this, of course, applies only to White workers and registered Coloured and Indian workers. It does not apply to unemployed African workers who in fact do not have to register. I agree that from the ranks of semi-skilled White workers it is certainly possible to train people to take on jobs requiring higher skill, and indeed this should be one of the crash programmes which the Government should go in for; it should take semi-skilled White workers and retrain them for jobs requiring higher skill, and indeed both the Government and the employer should subsidize this period of retraining since it would pay them in the long run. There is also another way in which we can overcome the shortage and that is by reclassifying semiskilled jobs which at present are classified as skilled jobs and which are being done in fact by skilled artisans. We should be reclassifying such jobs down to the level of the semi-skilled job and training other workers to take them over and allowing those skilled artisans to do the work for which they are trained and that is a properly classified skilled job. The real key, though, lies in the full utilization of all our labour resources in South Africa and particularly our vast African labour force which is by no means fully employed in South Africa. According to the report of the Froneman Commission, there are at present 500,000 unemployed Black workers in South Africa. This is apart from the thousands of workers who are locked up in what I call uneconomic activities, either in the Native reserves or working on farms for marginal farmers, which themselves in fact are uneconomic activities. Sir, what are the ways in which we can utilize this labour; what are the factors which are inhibiting the proper use of non-White labour and particularly of Black labour in South Africa? One of the factors, though by no means the only one—and there is a tendency to over-emphasize this factor although it is by no means the only one, but nevertheless an important one—is job reservation. I will say in a moment why I think it is over-emphasized. The Minister of Labour told the Other Place that none of the prophecies of doom which had been made in 1956 about the disruption of our economy if job reservation were to be introduced had come true. He then went on to say that in fact of the 13 existing work reservations, eight were purely of local origin and therefore cannot affect the national economy as a whole; that two applied to small sections of the engineering industry and in fact have been suspended, and that the clothing industry reservation is mainly to maintain the status quo percentage of White and Coloured workers. The remaining two determinations, he told us, reserved certain occupations in the building industry for Whites in the urban areas in the Transvaal and the Free State, and for Whites and Coloureds in part of the Cape and Natal, and he said that exemptions were granted in certain cases. Well, Sir, no wonder the dread forebodings of 1956 about job reservation wrecking the economy have not come true. It is not because job reservation per se is not bad in itself; the real answer is that job reservation has never been properly implemented in this country, and therefore naturally the effect that everybody predicted, had it been fully implemented, has not come to pass, and thank heaven for that! One can at least thank heaven that this policy of job reservation has not in fact been fully implemented, because just as many other aspects of apartheid are incapable of implementation, so in fact we are going to find that the policy of job reservation is incapable of proper implementation. But what job reservation has done nevertheless—and it has created a bottleneck for this reason—is that it has stopped people from entering occupations which they otherwise might have entered, particularly Coloured workers, because they fear that job reservation is going to be imposed in that particular industry or occupation. The hon. the Minister of Labour has told us that the main reason for job reservation is to prevent employees, irrespective of race or colour, from being ousted from their traditional spheres of employment by employees of another race.

Sir. what on earth he means by the “traditional spheres of employment” in this day and age heaven only knows. One would really think that we were still living in the days of the seventeenth century, in the days of the old craft guild system where the master craftsman passed on the secrets of his craft to his son and so on, instead of living, as we do, in an age of rapid technological change, where all the processes of industrial development and industrial production are changing almost day by day. There is no such thing any more as a traditional pattern of labour, be it in South Africa or any other country of the world. If he meant to say that in South Africa it has always just been accepted that all the highly skilled jobs are reserved for the Whites, because they are well-paid jobs, and that all the low-paid unskilled jobs are reserved for non-Whites, then at least we would know what he was talking about, although one does not by any means accept that this is sound economically or that it is defensible in any other way. I must say though that I find it absurd that the hon. the Minister still goes on using these old arguments about the preservation of traditional spheres of labour—he really means for White workers against encroachments by non-White workers. One would think also that we were still struggling with the problem of poor Whiteism in this country and that we needed to adopt what was adopted in the ’thirties, namely, the so-called civilized labour policy, which in fact did nothing to solve the poor White problem. It may have supplied a few jobs for a few White workers on the Railways but it did not begin to touch the real problem of poor Whiteism in South Africa in the ’twenties and the ’thirties. What solved the poor White problem was, of course, industrialization, the absorption of those thousands of Whites into the industrial set-up in this country. Hon. members should stop being haunted by the spectre of poor Whiteism. It does not exist. What they should really be facing is the real problem of non-White poverty and non-White unemployment. That is the real problem in this country. The only people indeed who benefit by job reservation are the inefficient White workers. The efficient White worker does not require job reservation to protect his standards.

Sir, I have said before that there is a tendency to over-emphasize job reservation as being the main factor that inhibits the full utilization of our non-White labour force. I say this because (a) it has not been properly implemented and therefore is not such an overriding force, which is the reason, as I said before, why the dread forebodings about job reservation have not come to pass, and (b) there are also other much more important factors which inhibit the use of our labour force to its fullest potential. The first is influx control because it locks people up in these uneconomic activities in the rural areas and keeps them from selling their labour in the best markets. I want to say at once that influx control as far as I am concerned should not be used as job reservation for the urban African any more than I believe that job reservation is of any use in protecting the standards of White workers against encroachment by Coloured and African workers. To use influx control as a job reservation for urban Africans is equally stupid. Their standards should be protected by the rate for the job just as the White worker’s standards can be protected, and, Sir, if you fix decent minimum wages there is no reason why there should be any drop in the wages of urban Africans. The hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. S. J. M. Steyn) in an article which he wrote the other day said that the United Party supported influx control for sociological reasons, unlike the Government which supported it for ideological reasons. Neither is a good foundation for influx control. He mentioned that the sociological reasons were that the poor Africans who come into the White areas undercut the existing urban African’s wage standards and, of course, that we would have squatter townships and a high mortality rate. Because he did not want these poor Africans to suffer these dread consequences of the removal of influx control, he was in favour of maintaining it. Well, I must point out to him that (a) the job reservation argument falls away; it is no more valid in the case than it is in any other case; minimum wages can protect the standards, and (b) there is nothing to stop anybody from building houses if enough money is voted and indeed the Government has shown us that, and (c) as far as the question of poor Africans dying in the towns is concerned, as far as the question of high mortality rates is concerned, I would like to point out to the hon. member that the mortality rate in the reserves through malnutrition and starvation is tremendously high. Whether a man starves in the reserves or starves in the town is not going to make any difference to him. The only difference is that in the reserves he starves out of sight.

The other factor which, of course, inhibits the proper use of our labour force is this whole question of trade union recognition for Africans and the change of the definition of “employee”. In terms of the existing industrial legislation an African is not recognized as an employee. This means that he cannot join a legally recognized trade union; it means that all closed-shop occupations are denied to him and that he cannot really be admitted as an apprentice.

Don’t you know of the other channel which is more effective?

The hon. member is now talking about the collective bargaining machinery and I am talking about the admission of Africans into skilled trades, which they cannot enter by virtue of being denied the right to join recognized trade unions. The little works committees, or whatever they are, which have been set up instead of trade unions I do not for a moment think replace the effective bargaining machinery of trade unions. But the main reason, as I say, is that the system stops Africans from being trained in skilled and semi-skilled occupations. What we really should be doing is to reinvest some of this vast budgetary profit which the hon. the Minister presented to us in training and educating the African and non-White section of our community to play their part in the labour set-up of this country. Not only White managerial skill and capital but also African labour has contributed to the building up of our economy, and it would be wise for us to reinvest some of that money in the training and education of African workers. Sir, it has been said that this is a stingy Budget in many respects, and the stingiest aspect of all, of course, is the miserable amount, the pegged amount, which is set aside for the education of Africans—the R13,000,000 plus a certain additional amount for university education—and even that has been cut in this Budget. Sir, it would pay this country handsomely to go in for a crash programme of educating the non-Whites in this country. What is to become of the thousands of non-White children who passed Std. VI and Std. VIII and even Matriculation? Is their future for ever to be that of the drawers of water and the hewers of wood, or are they to be allowed to enter into the higher ranks of workers with some hope of a better earning potential in South Africa? I believe that this would not only pay us economically but politically. We would have political peace in South Africa and we would not have to spend this tremendous amount of R212,000,000 on defence. Sir, nobody has yet criticized this expenditure. I do criticize it. I criticize it because there is a choice; it is not as though we have no choice. If we change our racial policy so to allow economic and other opportunities for our non-Whites, we would not be facing the hostility of the outside world on the one hand and, of course, the growing problem of internal trouble on the other. I might say that strangely enough the one thing which could bring about outside intervention in this country would be if this R212,000,000 of defence expenditure were ever actually used against the internal population of this country. If we faced another Sharpeville we will never recover from it. The hon. member for Soutpansberg (Mr. S. P. Botha) quoted a UNO report here yesterday saying that we had recovered from the effects of Sharpeville. The one thing that we dare not face again is another tragic occurrence like Sharpeville. and therefore the building up of a huge Defence Budget is as far as I am concerned tackling the problem from the wrong end. Let us ensure racial peace in this country and then we would not have to stand this astronomical expenditure on defence.

I do not want to react to the speech of the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) because she always sounds only one note; she drags the Bantu into every debate in this House. She would like to send this debate in a different direction, but I do not want it to go in the direction in which she would like to send it.

I should like to come back to the policy of the United Party as announced here yesterday by the hon. member for East London (City) (Dr. Moolman), their agricultural expert. The hon. member said yesterday that only a very poor Government would have been able to prevent this economic prosperity, because he says South Africa is rich in minerals and other natural resources. I want to say that if the Opposition had been in power then, in spite of all our riches and all our natural resources, South Africa would not have reached the stage of development it has in fact reached. We know that the Opposition, both in the distant past and recently, tried to hamper all development in the country. Just remember what happened in regard to the establishment of Iscor, Sasol and Phalaborwa. As soon as we want to establish industries in this country, we find that the Opposition either tries to put a stop to it or to hamper it. They have always adopted the attitude that our country is not able itself to exploit those riches, and now that the Government has gone out of its way during the past 15 years to utilize and to develop the nautral resources of the country, with the result that to-day we are a prosperous country, they come along with this story that this is a weak Government. I should like my hon. friends just to listen to what the Economist says. It says that South Africa is on the eve of a second industrial revolution. This is what it says about South Africa—

The Economist then refers to large new undertakings like the new copper exploitation at Phalaborwa, new gold mines, new diamond exploitations; the plan to establish new steel works, the tremendous expansion of the provision of power, and also great possibilities for the fishing industry as the result of our linking up with Spanish interests.

Mr. Speaker, if people from abroad say this about South Africa, it just proves once again that the Opposition wants to belittle the Government, because they try to create the impression that all these things happen by themselves. If we had not had a Government as far-sighted as this one. we would not have experienced the present flourishing conditions. We find that the countries overseas recognize that we are making fast progress, but what does the Opposition do? The one hon. member says that we are progressing too fast and that we should even delay the Orange River scheme a little, but then the next Opposition member says only an hour later this country could have developed much faster. The one member of the Opposition walks to the left, the other walks to the right, and the next one walks backwards.

Mostly they walk backwards.

The hon. member for East London (City) referred last night to agricultural products which are being exported and which are subsidized. He emphasized the question of maize which is exported and subsidized. I am surprised that the hon. member did not first go and ascertain how the export losses are covered. Maize which is exported is not subsidized by the Government, as the hon. member wanted to intimate here.

I said the farmers subsidize it.

The levies paid by the farmers must subsidize those export losses. We also find that the Government subsidizes the consumer of maize in this country to such an extent that it pays a subsidy of 35 cents per bag on white mealies. It subsidizes yellow maize by 50 cents per bag. Then the consumer in the country still gets 37½ cents per bag in the form of a railway rebate. If all this is added, Sir, you will see that the Government subsidizes the consumer to an amount of between R10,000,000 and R13,000,000 per annum, just on the consumption of maize.

Now the hon. member for East London (City) says this R4,000,000 and the R12,000,000 to which he referred, and which represent the loss on the export of maize, should also be used further to subsidize the inland consumer. In other words, he wants the mealie-grower who pays that levy into the Stabilization Fund to use that levy to subsidize farmers in other branches of agriculture. Will the hon. member suggest that the wool levy paid by the wool-growers should be used to subsidize the maizegrower? It amounts to the same thing. [Interjections.] Yes, the hon. member wants the levy paid by the maize farmer to be used to subsidize the wool-grower and the producer of meat. The hon. member said yesterday that this R4,000,000 and the R12,000,000 should be used to subsidize certain consumers in the country.

Do you want to subsidize Japan?

The hon. member says we want to subsidize Japan. Mr. Speaker, this idea that foreign purchasers are being subsidized is quite wrong. During the past year we received for white mealies and for yellow mealies respectively 350 and 360 cents per bag at the coast. The foreign consumer must then still pay the loading costs, insurance, shipping freight, offloading costs and railage costs. The maize costs them anything from R4.25 to R5 per bag, depending on the world market price. It is therefore wrong to say that they are being subsidized. In fact, it means that the Government of this country does not subsidize the railage on import maize in the country, nor does it pay the handling and storage costs on export maize, costs which the Government has to pay in the case of maize for inland consumption. In other words, if the export maize is subsidized, as some people sometimes think in this House, it would not have been necessary to impose a levy on the maize-grower. If we also get the railway rebate and the subsidy which the Government pays the consumer in the country, we will have no losses. In other words, the export maize saves the Government those extra costs of storage, railage, etc.

The hon. member had much to say about the eggs which are exported. He said those eggs should be sold here more cheaply. Does the hon. member want the maize-grower also to subsidize the loss suffered on the export of eggs? Because those subsidies of R4,000,000 and R12,000,000 paid to those people have the result that he suffers less loss on what he has to export. The cheaper the poultry farmer can buy his maize, the more eggs he will produce and the larger will be the exports of that product which is exported at a loss. It will increase the losses. Now the hon. member for East London (City) wants the maize-grower to subsidize those losses also.

For the information of the hon. member for East London (City) I want to say that the Mealie Control Board and the Wool Board are already conducting experiments in the grass areas of the Transvaal and the Free State to see how the consumption of maize in the country can be increased by giving the sheep maize as a supplementary feed. By doing that, the wool clip will be increased; it will increase the lamb crop and will result in a better quality of meat being marketed. That money is being well spent. We cannot just give money for an experiment when we do not even know how it will work out. Experiments will probably also be made in regard to the feeding of cattle and to see whether it is economic to feed maize to cattle, and whether it will pay the farmer to do so. We make use of the Government’s Department for those experiments from beginning to end. The maizegrowers provide the maize, the cattle farmers provide the cattle, and the sheep farmers provide the sheep. By that means they pay for those experiments to a certain extent, but we make use of the Department of Technical Services to make these experiments for us.

We cannot do other than to say that we should be very grateful for having a Government which throughout all these years has been prepared to make money available in the interest of the farmers of South Africa. I therefore want to congratulate the Minister on this budget. It is evidence of a sound policy. Had we not had such a good Government, we would not have had such a good policy. The Opposition has always hoped that something would go wrong in the country so that they would be able to say that it was due to the policy of the Nationalist Government. They said many things with the intention of vilifying South Africa so much overseas that we would eventually lose our markets. When we became a Republic and held the referendum, the Opposition said that the products of the farmer would lie and rot because there would be no markets. Now that the country has become so prosperous since we became a Republic, they do not like it. They now want us to curtail our expanding trade and our exports.

I remember the prediction they made during the referendum. They now realize that those predictions were quite wrong, so much so that one of their own front-benchers is now saying that he is beginning to doubt whether he voted in the right way in the referendum, because he now realizes what would have happened to us if we had remained in the Commonwealth and had not become a Republic. We would have been much worse off than we are to-day. We would have had to dance to the tune of other countries in Africa if we were not a Republic.

We live in a country where the consumer can buy his requirements more cheaply than in any other country in the world. No other country has such a low cost of living as South Africa. In no other country in the world is income-tax as low as it is here, no other country in the world, not even the United States and Britain, has made as rapid progress as we have made in South Africa during the last ten years. In the financial sphere the outside world to-day says that South Africa is the giant of Africa and that the prospects in South Africa are very promising. America itself says that they must maintain good relations with us because they have the prospect of trading with us on a large scale. All the countries of the world to-day compete to expand their trade with South Africa. We are in this sound position to-day thanks to this good Government and the sound policy which is being followed. Once again we must thank the hon. the Minister of Finance.

I think the hon. member for Ladybrand (Mr. Keyter) was a little confused about the history of the referendum. He seems to think that the referendum was on the question of whether we should remain in the Commonwealth or not. Does he not remember that his Prime Minister sent a letter to each of us assuring us that we would remain in the Commonwealth? If voting for the referendum meant that we voted to remain in the Commonwealth, then he also voted for remaining in the Commonwealth. So what is this nonsense about saying that one of the front-benchers has doubts whether he should have voted against the Republic or not? The hon. member also made the categorical statement that under the United Party Government the country would not have developed to the extent to which it had developed under the Nationalist Party Government. I do not want to go into a detailed discussion on that but I just want to put one point to the hon. member: I think the horn member will agree that under the United Party Government we would have had a far bigger White population to-day than we have under this Government. We would probably have had a million people extra. If he is honest he will admit that because they have killed the immigration programme. He spoke about agricultural matters; with an extra million people, which is without any doubt the extra population we would have had, does he think we would have been faced with all the agricultural surpluses we have to-day? With the single exception of mealies, I should like to suggest to him that we would not have had any agricultural surpluses at all. I shall deal with the other points raised by the hon. member in the course of my speech.

The hon. the Minister of Finance began his Budget speech by saying “Growth and stability are the two main objectives of budgetry policy”. But surely the hon. the Minister of Finance left out something vital. Surely he should have gone on and said: “Of course, with the peculiar policy of separate development of my Government the Budget is the most important instrument of bringing about that separate development, if we are in earnest about it, even at the cost of growth and stability.” He should have added that, Sir. Instead of saying that the Minister went on to say: “Growth we have achieved, in what rich measure I shall presently show.” The Minister did show an impressive growth rate in the national income of about 10 per cent and about 12.9 per cent in the case of manufacturing factories and industries. But there is something very important which the Minister did not show and that is that this very growth was made possible by the further rapid integration of non-White labour, particularly Bantu labour, in the economic activities controlled and directed by the White man. I should like to give those figures to the hon. the Minister seeing that he left them out. He cited manufacturing industries as industries that have grown very rapidly. What happened in the employment position of manufacturing industries between December 1962 and December 1963? Employment in the manufacturing industry increased by 48,000. Of those 48,000 Whites only accounted for 10,000. In other words, there you have had further rapid economic integration. This economic miracle of which the Minister is justly proud was only made possible because his policy of separation failed in that particular year, failed rather more drastically than normally. Another industry the Minister singled out where there had been rapid growth was the construction industry. What happened in the construction industry? Employment increased there by 15,000 of which Whites accounted for only 2,000. Here again we have had one of the most rapid periods of integration that this country has ever witnessed. How can it be otherwise with our population facts as they are? The Minister is fully aware of the calculations made, for instance, by Professor Sadie, namely that the number of White workers that became available every year through natural growth was only 14,000. If we mant to continue to grow at the rate at which we have grown over the past ten years we cannot do so just on the basis of White labour; we can only do it on the basis of very rapid economic integration and that is precisely what has happened.

The amazing thing is that hon. members opposite who sing the praises of this Budget do not seem to realize that what they are really singing praise to is rapid integration and not apartheid. They claim that this rapid development over the past year was made possible because of Government policy. Surely it was made possible because the Government policy of apartheid had broken down completely. One of the amazing contradictions in South Africa to-day is that when there is a boom in our economy the Government’s policy of apartheid breaks down and if the apartheid policy has some measure of success as it did have between 1959 and 1960 and between 1961 and 1962 when the non-White labour force in the manufacturing industry only increased by 1,000 instead of 38,000 as it did in the past year, then, of course, they have some success with their apartheid policy. Surely this is one of the most contradictory Governments in the world. I can now already tell the Minister that if he lands his big fish of rapid economic growth he will find that the species he has caught will not be the specie apartheid but “Swart integrasie”.

The White Paper shows that in 1963 the gross domestic capital formation amounted to R1,408,000,000 of which public authorities and public corporations, largely under the control of the Government, accounted for about R562,000,000. Sir, it is this vast capital formation that has made possible the economic growth of which we are all proud in this House and which made increasing employment possible. But if we look at this Budget we will find that more than 90 per cent of the capital formation controlled by the Government itself is invested in the White homelands, not to mention the private capital formation. Surely, Sir, as long as this type of Budget continues it is inevitable that the Natives from the reserves and rural areas must come to the so-called White homelands, no matter how their citizenship rights in the White homelands are restricted and no matter how they are extended in the Bantu homelands even to the extent of one man one vote. Apartheid legislation can constitute them legal foreigners but they will be foreigners living permanently in the midst if the Whites in the so-called White homelands. If the great flow-back to the Bantu homelands as envisaged by the Prime Minister is to start 15 years hence, i.e. 1978, one would have expected a totally different Budget over the past 15 years. Surely the pattern should then have been to divert more and more capital investment to the Black homelands, because it is a fact that the flow-back cannot occur until more money is actually invested in the Black homelands than in the White homelands for the simple reason that until you create more jobs in the Black homelands than there are in the White homelands you cannot have a flow-back; because the Blacks are increasing far more rapidly than all the other population groups put together. I therefore say that until the Government follows a policy that brings this about apartheid will remain nothing more than a myth and a very dangerous myth. We have seen how it has isolated us in the international sphere. We see how it is causing instability in our midst. For the sake of that myth which the Government is not really making any effort to carry out, we have to endanger our whole future. They hang on to that myth just because it keeps them in power and for no other reason whatsoever. If the Government is in earnest about separate development they should surely have budgeted and planned a development programme of the order of that proposed by the Odendaal Commission for South West Africa. The population of South West Africa is over 500,000 of which about 420,000 are indigenous. When we look at the other facts about South West Africa we find that it is a territory that has not nearly reached the stage of economic integration that we have reached in South Africa nor are the Native reserves there as over-crowded as they are here. To make apartheid a reality there the Odendaal Commission recommends a capital expenditure of R115,000,000 over the next five years. Our population is nearly 30 times as large as that of South West Africa so surely if we want to make a reality of apartheid here our expenditure will have to be at least 30 times as great. One would therefore expect a capital expenditure over a period of five years of at least R3,500,000,000 or about R700,000,000 per annum. Or does the Minister want to tell the House that apartheid can be bought cheaper in South Africa than in South West Africa? Of course, any expenditure of this order for South Africa is so unrealistic economically and politically that the Minister does not even make an attempt to do it. For unlike South West Africa we have no fairy godmother to underwrite us. The Minister therefore contents himself with a Vote of R36,500,000 for capital development in the Bantu homelands this year.

Under the United Party Government, just to stop soil erosion and to develop the Native reserves as part of the Union of South Africa we would probably have been spending considerably more than that amount of money to-day without the myth of apartheid; but purely for economic and social reasons we would probably have been spending an amount of money far in excess of that.

Under-developed countries cannot develop by means of capital expenditure alone either. They need a vast administrative and technological programme. I am sure the hon. the Minister is aware of that. Again, before the trek back to the Black homelands can take place the Bantu community will have to produce more technicians and administrators from amongst their own ranks than the White community is doing at present for the same reasons that I advanced in the case of capital investment. Only then will the rate of economic growth in the Bantu homelands be able to exceed that of the White homelands, which is an absolute pre-requisite if apartheid is ever to become a practical policy in this country. What is the position, Mr. Speaker? In reply to a question by the hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) the following information was given in this House recently: Number of students at all South African universities: White: 45,705; Black: 1,471; Coloured: 783; Indians: 1,428. We see that there are nearly 30 times as many White students as Black students at university at the moment. With these proportions how is the Government going to start separating the races so that they will be separated by 1978? Does the Government not realize that for true separate development the educational level of the Blacks will have to equal that of the Whites? After all, the bulk of the Bantu can only live in their homelands if these homelands are highly developed industrially; if they have achieved the industrial development of, say, Belgium. Surely it is quite clear that only on the basis of advanced industrial civilization can the so-called Bantu homelands ever carry the bulk of the Bantu population.

Like any other budget of this Government, this Budget shows no awareness of the necessity of that educational development of the Bantu if apartheid is to become a reality. In fact, Sir, one of the most static statistics under this Minister has been that of Bantu education. If we look at the budgets for the past 15 years we will see how slowly the expenditure on Bantu education has increased. As long as this disparity between the educational levels of Blacks and Whites remains they cannot simply be separated. In other words, as long as we retain the present formula of financing Bantu education the Government has no hope of ever in future achieving its so-called policy of separating the races, a policy which they claim presents the only way in which the White man can maintain himself in this country.

To sum up, Mr. Speaker, this Budget, like every other Nationalist Party Budget so far, does not even attempt to translate the theory of apartheid into practice. Every year we have more and more blue prints and plans for apartheid from the Minister of Bantu Administration, restricting his citizenship rights, all based on the assumption that the Bantu will soon start moving back. But when it comes to the master builder, the Minister of Finance, to find the money for this beautiful plan, he is so appalled by the cost to the taxpayer of the venture that he just makes a few token provisions to satisfy his Cabinet colleagues for another year. Hon. members opposite are always ready in this House to tell us about the wonders of apartheid, how it will save the White man. But when it comes to voting money they forget all about it and what do they do? They sing the praises of integration. That is what they do when it comes to every Budget.

We on this side, of course, understand the dilemma in which the hon. the Minister of Finance finds himself. He is the Minister of Finance of a Government which has such an impossible policy that when he starts dealing with the real thing like Government income and Government expenditure he just has to ignore that impractical policy. We quite understand that; we don’t blame him for it either. We are rather disappointed that he did not do anything positive to cure grave defects in our society. I suggest that those grave defects are outlined in our amendment. I am sure most hon. members opposite will agree that those defects exist i.e. the shortage of skilled workers, technicians and scientists. I don’t have to elaborate on that; I think it is common cause that that is one of the gravest defects in our society at the present. The other is the fact that many of our aged and infirm are not getting their fair share of our increasing prosperity. Again I don’t think many hon. members opposite will deny that. Then we have the last anomaly that in a country with agricultural surpluses so many of our citizens live on the bread line or slightly below it. If we cured these defects we would be a fairer, richer and happier society. Never has a Minister of Finance had the room to manoeuvre to cure these basic weaknesses in our society as the hon. the Minister has on this occasion, because he finds himself with a fortuitous, unbudgeted, unexpected surplus of R88,000,000 which may grow still further. Of course the excuse of the hon. Minister and of the other side for not doing these things in respect of which I am sure in their heart of hearts they agree, is of course that thanks to the vast increase in military expenditure, if we go on increasing expenditure on social welfare, it might lead to inflation. Mr. Speaker, as far as the educational part of our amendment is concerned, it directly tackles the bottle-neck of the shortage of skilled and technological manpower, which the Minister himself realizes is the most immediate inflationary threat. So he cannot object to that. He should really welcome it. It is a far more positive approach than his own approach in his Budget Speech. In any event I would just like to remind him of what was said by Prof. Van Zyl of the Stellenbosch University Medical School two nights ago, when he pointed out that the vast expenditure on the military machine does not help much if you don’t have the qualified manpower for it. He was speaking on salaries for medical professors and in support is reported to have said—

He was referring to doctors in particular, but he emphasized that he was not just talking about the loss of doctors but of scientists in general.

But I want to speak more specifically on the question of agricultural surpluses on the one hand and malnutrition on the other. Now in the annual report of the Secretary for Agricultural Economics and Marketing, he says this on page 1—

1. (a) gradual increase in food production;
2. (b) a relatively static position in the per capita food consumption, resulting in an ever-increasing gap between production and internal consumption; and
3. (c) an ever-increasing dependence on overseas markets for disposal of agricultural products.

He points out that these are the three most outstanding developments and I want the hon. member for Ladybrand (Mr. Keyter) to listen to this because he attacked the hon. member for East London (City) (Dr. Moolman). Then he goes on to say—

Because of this widening gap between production and domestic consumption, the farmers have had to export an increasing percentage of their production, but as the report points out at declining prices because of the fact that international prices have declined in the past decade. Thus the export value of South African agricultural produce rose only 37 per cent in the ten year period from 1952 to 1962 whereas the volume increased 149 per cent. The farmers had to export 149 per cent more of agricultural produce and they only got 37 per cent extra for that. What is more, the Secretary for Agriculture points out that there is a danger that this declining tendency might continue because he points out that the developments now taking place in European countries do not augur well for the future. The fact is that agricultural production is increasing very rapidly in these temperate climate countries to which we export most of our products, and despite all the talk of the European community about free trade, so far they have not shown a great desire for free trade as far as agricultural products are concerned. From all this it is quite clear that for stability in agriculture an expanding internal market is absolutely essential. The Secretary for Agriculture makes that point himself, when he says on page 2 of his report—

He contrasts the gap between production and consumption in South Africa and says that it is gradually widening, so that our farmers have to export overseas to a market where the Secretary himself pointed out that the chances are that agricultural prices certainly won’t increase very much in future. We have the other anomaly in our society that a vast number of people do not have sufficient to eat. I would like to quote to hon. members from what Dr. M. D. Marais said as reported in the Rand Daily Mail on this question—

Then he goes on to say—

As Dr. Marais points out, of course the answer on the long-term is to increase their wages gradually, but this is a long-term process. For a very long time if we want drastically to improve the nutritional levels of this country, there is only one possible policy to follow. As the Secretary points out the consumption level is low in South Africa and it has remained static, although the Minister has pointed out that there has been a welcome increase in the last year. But there is little doubt that if we want to get an even rise in the future, it will be impossible to do it simply by increasing wages. We have had wages increased in the past ten years, and yet consumption has remained static. There is only one way and that surely is by considerably increasing the subsidies on food and making food cheaper for the lower income groups.

I think the Government should admit categorically, just as they have in the case of immigration, that they took the wrong step when they reduced the school-feeding scheme. A country that has reached South Africa’s level of development should be able to afford schoolfeeding schemes in view of the extensive malnutrition in South Africa. Just recently for instance, in reply to a question in this House, the Minister of Health gave a figure of 15,000 notified cases of kwashiorkor and we know that because this system of notifying kwashiorkor has only been instituted recently, that is probably an understatement of the real position. Apart from re-introducing school-feeding schemes, the Government should greatly increase the subsidies on certain basic foods, particularly those in surplus supply. In the second place the Government should greatly increase, as I have said, subsidies in respect of basic foods. The Government presently spends about R33,000,000 on food subsidies per annum. It seems a large sum, but it must be seen against the national income figure of R5,000,000,000 to see it in its proper perspective. If these subsidies were to be doubled, it could hardly have any inflationary effect on the present situation in South Africa. I see the hon.

Minister is smiling, but I will tell him why I do not think he has thought this out logically. The bulk of this expenditure, the increase in pensions for instance, will be spent on agricultural products. Now that is the one industry that despite the droughts in recent years, still has a surplus capacity, as is clear from what I have read from the Secretary for Agriculture’s report. Now surely an increase in your expenditure on food, on a commodity that is in surplus supply overall—I am not talking about the temporary drought conditions at the moment— cannot possibly lead to inflation, particularly if it is confined largely to those fodstuffs that are in surplus supply. The Minister must realize that if you increase your demand among your poorer sections of the people, your social pensioners, your lowest income groups, the effect of such extra expenditure is not nearly as inflationary as for instance an increase in expenditure as far as the higher income groups are concerned, because they go for the basic things in life, they go for food in the first instance, and that we had in surplus supply. Therefore this also will not embarrass the hon. Minister as far as his balance of payments is concerned.

The extra expenditure we recommend will therefore be a movement towards curing that weakness in our economy, it will be a beginning of a movement towards curing some of the most glaring ills in our society, because a large part of it will be spent on food and in training our youth. There again, surely an extension of our educational programme cannot nearly be as inflationary as other types of expenditure might very well be.

What we are in effect trying to say to the hon. Minister is: You can have your guns, but you can also have considerably improved social welfare without inflation or balance of payments problems. That is what we are saying to the hon. the Minister. We say it will make South Africa a much better educated country and lead to a fairer society, and may I suggest in conclusion to the Minister that making South Africa a fairer and more equitable society is as important a defence against external aggression or internal trouble than any amount of guns that we can ever afford to buy.

The main theme of the hon. member for Jeppes (Dr. Cronje) was what had constituted an essential part of United Party propaganda during the past years. In brief it amounts to this: The greater the prosperity in South Africa, the greater the integration. This political untruth has assumed new balloon-like dimensions with the publication of the first part of the 1960 census figures. The Chief Whip of the United Party said the following about the results of the census: “The picture presented in this report gives the complete lie to the apartheid policy. It shows that economic laws are operating despite and in opposition to the Government’s policy of separate development.”

Hear, hear!

The hon. member for Yeoville untimely with his “hear, hear.” The hon. the Leader of the Opposition raised the same cry, and when the hon. member for Jeppes raised the same cry I thought we were going to get a factual and economic argument in support of this propaganda story. What did he produce? He referred to the variation in the number of Bantu employees in industry during the last few months of 1963 in comparison with 1959, 1960 and 1961 and he said there was a slight decline from 1959 to 1961 and a resultant decline in the number of Bantu employees and that there was an increase of over 30,000 in 1963. I want to deal with all the facts of this silly story and if time permits me I shall towards the end of my speech return to the few other arguments advanced by the hon. member for Jeppes.

I want to make seven submissions in connection with this propaganda lie of the United Party and I shall prove them one after the other. The first one is this: There is no correlation whatsoever between the growth of the Bantu male population (those are mainly the industrial workers) in our urban areas from 1921 to 1960 and the corresponding growth of our industrial production. These two factors cannot be correlated in any way.

The second submission which I shall prove is that there is no direct correlation between the metropolitan Bantu population and the employment figures in industry. The metropolitan Bantu population figures to which the census refers has no relation with the employment in our industries.

The third submission which I shall prove is that there is indeed an absolutely direct correlation between the female Bantu population of the metropolitan areas and the resultant growth in the total population and that that is the key to the 1960 census.

Then I shall show how under the National Party regime the Bantu labour force in industry has been pegged and that there has even been a decline relative to production during a period of enormous industrial growth.

My fifth submission will be that the industrial growth in South Africa has been primarily due to an intensification of capital in industry and that that in turn has been made possible by capital formation, obviously backed by overseas capital, particularly the simultaneous growth of all sectors of our economy, and that our industrial growth is not primarily based on the presence or employment of Bantu labour. In the sixth place I shall show that the present pattern of metropolitan industrial development does not offer a solution to the problem of finding employment for the growing Bantu population and that the vacancies which are created for the Bantu by our industrial growth in the metropolitan areas do not meet the needs of the growth in population. Lastly I shall show that the policy of the National Party is the only solution to the problem of employment, namely by developing industries which call for an intensification of labour in the Border areas and in the reserves and by developing a diversity of economies in the Bantu’s own areas and by developing all sectors in the Bantu’s own area.

I shall start with my first submission that there is no correlation between the growth of the Bantu male population in our urban metropolitan areas between 1921 to 1960 and the growth in our industrial production. The metropolitan areas I have chosen are those of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Germiston and Benoni because over a long period they have been our oldest and most highly industrialized areas. In 1921 there were 242,300 Bantu males in those areas and in 1921 private factories produced goods to the value of R53,200,000. The Bantu male population then increased to 398,800 over a period of 15 years up to 1936. That was a growth in respect of the Bantu male population of 64.7 per cent. The production of private factories grew to R105,600,000, which is a growth of 99 per cent. The production of the private factories therefore grew at a faster rate than the Bantu male population. In 1951 the Bantu male population increased further to 658,800 in those areas, again a growth of 66.6 per cent. The tempo of growth was therefore practically constant over a further period of 15 years, but the production of private factories shot up to R555,800,000, a 429 per cent growth. Up to 1960, over a period of nine years, the Bantu male population again increased to 821,500 which was a 25 per cent increase in numbers and the production of private factories increased to R1,125,000,000, a growth of 102 per cent. My submission here is simply this: There is no direct relation between the growth of our industrial production with the growth of the Bantu male population in the metropolitan areas. The industrial growth is due to other factors.

What these facts indicate further is that there was a period in our industrial development from 1936 to 1951 when there was capital intensification because their production increased six times as fast as the Bantu population and that capital was further intensified after 1951 because industrial production increased four times as fast as the Bantu population over that period.

I now come to the second submission that there is no direct correlation either between the metropolitan Bantu population and the employment figure in industry.

So far you have proved nothing.

Nobody can be convinced if he lacks the ability to be convinced. In 1921 there was a Bantu male population of 242,300 in those metropolitan areas and in that same year 61,000 Bantu were employed in those industries. I had to make that calculation. Only “non-Whites” are given. By 1936 the number of Bantu had grown to 398,000, as I have already indicated, which was a 64 per cent growth in the Bantu male population, whereas the employment figure had increased much more up to 1936, namely by 90 per cent.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

If I still have time at the end of my speech I shall allow the hon. member to put a question. The further growth, which I have already mentioned, then took place, up to 658,000 Bantu, a 66 per cent growth, but in 1951 the employment figure rose to 375,000; a 215 per cent increase. The employment figure increased much higher over that period than the Bantu population, as I have already indicated; up to 1960 the Bantu male population increased by 25.5 per cent up to 821,000 whereas up to 1960 the employment figure decreased to 357,500, a 4.4 per cent decrease over those nine years, in spite of the 25 per cent increase in the male population figure. Once again the figures show that the number of Bantu males in those metropolitan areas had no bearing whatsoever on or was in no direct relation with the industrial employment figure. There was a period when Bantu were absorbed much faster in industries and then a period followed in which their employment in industry declined.

What are they doing there?

“What are they doing there?” That is a broad sociological question which we can discuss on another occasion, but their presence in the metropolitan areas is unrelated to their employment in industry. The most important aspect of these figures is, and I shall return to this in a moment, that from 1951 to 1960 there was a tremendous increase in industrial production without any increase in the number of Bantu employed, there was actually a 4.4 per cent decrease in the number of Bantu employed. I want to give the relevant figures in this respect: In 1951 our industrial production was R558,000,000 and by 1960 it had grown to R1,125,000,000, practically a 100 per cent growth in production against a 4.4 per cent decrease in the number of Bantu workers in those industries over the same period. That is the most significant statistical fact which, this has practically become traditional, gives the lie to the United Party statement that growing prosperity leads to greater and greater integration. That phenomenal growth in production over a period of nine years when there was a decline in the number of Bantu employed in industry was simply due to capital intensification in those industries. They mechanized more, more opportunities to produce were created for the human hand, and secondly it was brought about by the National Party policy. The third conclusion which I want to draw from this is that the solution of the Bantu employment problem does not lie in the industries with large capitals in our existing metropolitan areas. I think even the hon. member for Pinelands will be able to understand that if over a period of nine years your industrial production has doubled but there has been a decline in the number of Bantu workers in those industries, you cannot look in that direction for a solution to the problem of providing employment for the growing masses of Bantu which are already in our metropolitan areas.

I come to my third submission that there is an absolute and direct correlation between the presence of female Bantu in the metropolitan areas and the growth in the total number of Native population. We already find in 1951 that some of these metropolitan centres had a large number of Bantu women and the highest figure was in respect of Pretoria and Port Elizabeth. In 1951 already there were 53,000 Bantu women in Pretoria out of a total Bantu population of 122,000; 43 per cent of the total Bantu population therefore were women. Port Elizabeth had 34,500 out of 70,000, i.e., in 1951 49 per cent of Port Elizabeth’s Bantu population were women. The total national growth in these two cities which had a high percentage of women in 1951 were 63.3 per cent in Pretoria and 75.8 per cent in Port Elizabeth. That was the result of the presence of a high percentage of Bantu women. Cape Town had the lowest percentage of women in 1951, namely, 32 per cent of its total Bantu population. In Durban it was also 32 per cent and 33 per cent in Benoni; and the total population growth up to 1960 was 25 per cent, 36 per cent and 28 per cent. Where there has already been a high percentage of women present nine years previously you immediately find this dramatic general increase in the population and a relatively modest increase in the population where the percentage of women has been low. In 1951 the average female population in all those metropolitan areas constituted 38 per cent of the population and the average national growth up to 1960 was 39 per cent which once again supports my statement that the presence of female Bantu in big metropolitan areas was responsible for the growth factor. It was not our economical development which caused the urban Bantu population to increase. That growth and the economic prosperity have nothing to do with each other, as most people with an elementary knowledge of nature study will guess. The breach in connection with this matter was made before 1951. From 1921 to 1936 the Bantu female population increased by 242 per cent and from 1936 to 1951 they increased by 171 per cent. It is of interest to mention that under the National Party regime, although the growth was still far too rapid, it was at least controlled and brought down to 63 per cent during the nine year period concerned. Had the United Party wished to serve the Bantu in any way in regard to their employment problem, the United "Party would have been one of the most ardent supporters of the National Party in the recent debate when the National Party wanted to take steps and did take steps to combat the influx of Bantu women to our metropolitan areas.

I shall at least still have time to deal with my fourth submission, namely, that under the National Party regime the number of Bantu was pegged during a period of industrial growth. I shall deal with that in conjunction with the following point, namely, the growth of capital and the affect of that on the use of Bantu labour. In 1951—and here I have taken the figures given in the White Paper— the industrial production was R168,000,000 and according to Table G.6 of Union Statistics over 50 years 345,900 Bantu were employed in private industry. The Bantu then constituted 54 per cent of the total industrial labour force. Up to 1960 the production increased to R1,051,000,000 and the number of Bantu workers remained at 357,400. There was an enormous increase in industrial production of over R400,000,000 and there was an insignificant increase of 12,000 in the number of Bantu workers. But what is even more significant is that there was a steady decline in the percentage of Bantu industrial workers from year to year. In 1951 they constituted 54 per cent of the total number of industrial workers. In 1961 it had dropped to 51.8 per cent. In 1961 our industrial production increased to R1,125,000,000 but the number of Bantu workers actually declined and in 1962 there was a slight increase in the number of Bantu workers with a further increase in industrial production. In July, 1963, we attained an industrial production of R1,399,000,000 with 383,000 Bantu workers according to Table (B) of the aforesaid bulletin. I have already mentioned these figures but I want to mention them again. From 1951 to 1963 our industrial production increased from R618,000,000 to R1,399,000,000 and the number of Bantu workers increased from 375,000 to 383,000 over that period of nine years—38,000 more Bantu, or a ten per cent increase against more than a 100 per cent increase in production. What has now become of the argument of hon. members?

The whole situation is explained by the fact that we have developed an industrial structure of intensified capital in our cities. Unfortunately I cannot give the House the capital investment figures for the year 1951; the closest figure I can give is that for 1948. In 1948 capital investment in industry amounted to R296,000,000 and our annual production was R364,000,000, or 123 per cent of the investment. That capital investment rose to R913,000,000 in 1960 and eventually to an estimated R1,083,000,000 in 1962. What is significant is that as our capital investment increased there was a relatively slight decline in the value of production. In 1948 our production was 123 per cent of the capital investment because we had little machinery and many hands, but in 1962 our production was only 113 per cent of the capital investment because we had more machinery and fewer hands. In other words, the present pattern of our metropolitan industrial growth is not based on the employment of more Bantu labour, but on the more intensive use of capital by the acquisition of equipment and by using a more efficient labour force.

I want to conclude by referring briefly to what I really wanted to make the crux of the whole matter, namely, that the policy of the National Party offers the only solution to the problem of Bantu employment, namely, industries which use labour intensively, industries where they use little machinery but many hands and those must be established in the border areas and in the reserves. The Bantu must develop diverse economies. His agriculture must be expanded. How many prominent writers have not emphasized the fact that agriculture was the cheapest method and the method which absorbed the most human force to develop any under-developed country; to mention one, Bauer and Yamey in their “Development of Under-Developed Countries”. The Bantu must take up employment in his own business which form a very important employment factor in our White economy, and the public sector which is responsible for about 35 per cent of the employment in our White society, must develop alongside of him, and also his mining. The road which the National Party follows, therefore, offers the possibility of solving the problem of finding employment for the Bantu but the history of the past years has proved that that problem cannot be met by our metropolitan industrial development. Our industrial development has not led to greater integration but to a relative decrease in the number of Bantu employed and this country has prospered because the policy of the Nationalist Party has been carried out.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just sat down will forgive me if I do not follow him. I want to tell the hon. the Minister of Finance that not being a member of the “Gelukwensklub”, which is the preserve of members opposite, I cannot congratulate him on his budget, but I can congratulate him on catching this fish, particularly since I understand that since we have had the 90-day detention clause even the fish are afraid to open their mouths.

The fish which the hon. the Minister caught is a very substantial one, but the Coloured people got very little. They only got some of the bones with a little flesh on them. Despite the pleas I have always made to this House to grant pensions not on the basis of colour but on the basis of need, this has not yet been done as I had hoped would be done in these days of prosperity. Nor do I see any change in what I must denounce very strongly as the starvation wages still being paid to the Coloureds in South Africa. I must point out to the hon. the Minister, as I said to the hon. the Minister of Transport, that to talk of the prosperity of this country is a misnomer as far as the Coloureds are concerned, particularly those who are working in the Government service, because they are not benefiting from this prosperity. I want to show the hon. the Minister of Finance to-day that Coloured people in the employ of the Government are receiving wages which are completely below the bread-line, on the basis of proper civilized standards. I was hoping that with this vast surplus which the Minister has he would not give largesse or charity to the Coloureds, but that he would give them what is their due. I have before me a note about the wages paid to some of the people in the canning industry, amounting to R7.66 a week, including cost of living. The Minister heard to-day some of the answers given by the Minister of Labour about the extra hours these people have to work; it is 46 hours a week plus 32 hours of overtime. It is true that they get paid for the overtime, but these people have to work almost 78 hours a week, and what are their wages? R7.66, R6.50 and less.

For 78 hours work?

No, they get overtime. I am talking about the basic wages of these people and I defy any man in this House or the country to say that that is a wage we should pay.

But you were talking about Government employees.

The Government is a party to these wages, because these wages are fixed by Wage Board determinations. The Minister of Finance is particeps criminis to these low wages paid to the Coloureds. If the hon. member wants me to quote Government Departments I will do so. Take the Post Office, which is a Government Department. A Coloured youth starts there and after ten or twelve years’ service he gets R40 a month. He starts as a messenger and becomes a postman, and after ten or twelve years’ service he only earns R40 a month. Is that the wage which should be paid? I was told yesterday that many of the Coloured men who earn R40 a month are men of 26 who want to get married, and they do not get cost of living allowance. Is this the standard that you want the Coloured man to live on? Is it not a shame and a disgrace to the Government which has brought forward this big surplus, that the Coloured people should still be earning these miserable starvation wages? When will you try to improve that standard?

Then I come to this important question which has already been raised by some hon. members in regard to the importation into this country of skilled workers. Which other country in the world imports skilled workers when they have a reservoir of manpower sufficient to fill all the skilled posts required? It is no use telling me that the Coloured man is incapable, because here in a Government publication there is the photograph of a young Coloured man who is so brilliant that he got his B.Sc. degree in science with honours and he is now studying nuclear physics, and there is not only this one. If they had the opportunities you would find thousands, but you still want to import labour without giving these Coloureds a chance, the chance that they deserve in their own country. No, you would rather have the imported article.

What will his salary be?

He will not get a job. He is faced with all these obstacles. Will he get a job in the Government Service?

He will become a Coloured postman.

He may become a professor at the Coloured University.

How many professors are there in nuclear science?

The Coloured people are told that education is what they require, and listen to what the Government says to them—

What are these trades and professions? They are all closed to the Coloureds. How many Coloured engineers are there? There is not even a Coloured dentist. There are no Coloured technicians. We educate these men, and where do they go from there? He is faced by a “Berlin” wall. The Western people have denounced that “Berlin” wall. We have had a “Berlin” wall between the Whites and the Coloureds in South Africa for hundreds of years and we are afraid to break it down. All we do is to add more bricks to this wall between the Whites and the Coloureds, like job reservation. I ask the hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo)—I know he is sympathetic to the Coloureds—where will the Coloured boy go when he is educated? I say there are to-day thousands of Coloured youths walking about looking for jobs, any jobs, but the Government imports people from overseas instead of training these Coloured youths in the technical services. They overlook them. We educate them, but that is all. Where can this Coloured youth with his B.Sc. degree go? We have lost some of our most brilliant Coloured men. There is a Coloured youth who became a brilliant medical man and he is now a professor of medicine in America. We lost his services here because of colour prejudice. I say the time has come for the Government to throw off this Hottentot mentality that they have. That is a thing of the past. To-day the Coloured man has succeeded in adverse circumstances to make himself proficient to be able to fill any skilled job, and I make this plea: Give him that chance, and you will find that the Coloured man will not let you down.

The hon. member who has just sat down has raised important matters. He expressed the hope that his pleas would not fall upon deaf ears. I think he can take it that his pleas will be treated with the utmost sympathy. This side of the House is not indifferent to the matters raised by him. It is not for me to reply to him. I think the Minister can do so with more authority but I only want to say this to him that he cannot blame this Government solely for a state of affairs which has developed over many years. That was what he did and that was the impression he created and that was the impression the people in the Press gallery got from his speech. He is wrong in doing that and he should not do so again. Then he must also ask himself, seeing that this position had already obtained for many years before this Government came into power, how many professors of medicine there were at our universities at that time and how many of those people had the opportunity then of becoming what he wishes them to become under this Government. If he wants to be fair he should also paint the right picture to the Coloured population otherwise he creates the wrong impression and he will not serve the cause which is near to his heart. I shall leave his plea at that and say a few words about the Budget.

I want to say that this Budget is one which is in accordance with the best tradition of Budgets of the National Party Government. It is a Budget which, like its predecessors, engenders great confidence and which is evidence of a firm hand at the financial helm of this country. While I am talking about the helm let me also talk about the helmsman. On behalf of the country and this House I want to pay tribute to and thank that helmsman who has to stand at the helm and I want to convey to him my appreciation for the manner in which he is doing it. I think in years to come he will be known as one of the outstanding Ministers of Finance of South Africa, together with men like Mr. Havenga and Mr. Hofmeyr. In this financial era—and it is an era—where he has waved the wand over our finances he has put his stamp on the Budgets and on the financial structure of the country and that is a stamp of security and of great responsibility and prosperity.

This budget has strengthened still further that confidence which the country has in him and in the Government. The more I look at this Budget the more I like it. I would describe this Budget as an excellent, almost perfect, budget adapted to the demands and the circumstances of the period it has to serve. In 1962 the budget was directed at promoting the safety of the State. In 1963 the Budget was directed at promoting prosperity and progress in South Africa. To-day we have a Budget to promote continued growth as well as to consolidate the progress we have already made in the economic sphere and in ensuring the safety of the State.

I listened attentively to the Opposition and it seems to me they really have only one complaint against this Budget and they also wish to make a little political capital out of that which I do not hold against them. They ask: Of what benefit is this Budget to the ordinary man? They base that charge on totally wrong arguments and premises. The first argument they advance is that revenue has been under-estimated. Hon. members had the opportunity of discussing the estimates of revenue for the ensuing year but I did not hear them say that the revenue for the year we are just entering has been under-estimated. The hon. the Minister said he had based his estimate for the following year on a 7½ per cent growth in national production. Hon. members have not yet said that was wrong. They have not yet said that he was completely wrong in respect of next year, but most probably hon. members will again come next year and say we completely under-estimated the revenue last year as they are saying this year that we underestimated it last year. But what did they really say last year? On the 25th of March, in col. 3,300 of Hansard, the hon. members for Constantia (Mr. Waterson) said the following last year—

Last year the hon. member for Constantia was in complete agreement with the hon. the Minister in his assessment of the economic position in South Africa as it was at the time. He did not tell the Minister at the time that he was under-estimating his revenue. The Minister’s budget was directed at promoting growth and prosperity but at that time there was no guarantee yet that it would become a reality although there were signs of it; and the Minister based his Budget on that. Hon. members now come along afterwards and say: You under-estimated your revenue completely. But it is quite clear that they have not the slightest reason for saying that and it also very clear that the revenue has actually not been under-estimated. There has been a normal estimate of a normal expectancy and we are only too grateful that it is more than that but at that stage it was not an under-estimate at all.

Hon. members now go further and couple that with their next argument and that is the argument that we are over-taxing the public. That is actually what they are going to tell the people: You are being over-taxed; look at the surplus of the Minister of R88,000,000. But this surplus of R88,000,000 has nothing whatsoever to do with over-taxation. A portion of it is as a result of the wonderful, strong economic progress the country has made, and a very large portion is arrear taxation of previous years which has been paid. We have always had the position in South Africa and Ministers of Finance have always been in this fortunate position that they have had a nest-egg, tucked away, a nest-egg of arrear taxations of R40,000,000 or R50,000,000 or more. To use an agricultural expression the budgets were always based on the floor price. The Minister always knew that if anything went wrong with his calculations he still had that arrear amount tucked away and if things went all right he could use that to make concessions. But hon. members surely know that that nest-egg is now going to disappear. It is a dwindling asset; that is no longer something normal. This surplus of R88,000,000 of which a large share was due to that, is not something that they can hold out to the people as a normal surplus, something that can be handed out. That is also why their argument about over-taxation is completely wrong. Must we, like the Opposition ask, base our taxation proposals on that this year and make concessions on the strength of that only to find next year that we have not got it? What do we do then? Must we then tell the people that we are taking those concessions away? Surely that would not be right. If we find next year that because of this new financial method and structure of the Minister’s we can again show a similarly large surplus and that the growth has even been greater than he budgeted for this year, the Minister may probably consider it in the light of the circumstances which may then prevail. It is possible that relief may be granted later on, if the burden is so heavy, which I do not admit at all. This year, however, the Minister has handled the position correctly by devoting this large surplus to those matters to which he has devoted it, mainly to defence and Loan Account. We on this side of the House say that this careful way of the Minister’s of drawing up his Budget has built up a reputation of financial stability and conservatism for South Africa which is of inestimable value to us particularly in overseas financial circles and we are not prepared to sacrifice that great asset of our country simply on the insistence of the Opposition.

I now come to their insistence that the ordinary man should get something. I want to point out that it is actually wrong to play off the ordinary man against other taxpayers in this Budget. It is wrong to argue that way because other people are not really benefited. The taxation curve is being ironed out here. There were people who were over-taxed in comparison with others. The Minister is only putting that right and surely the Opposition cannot object to everybody carrying the same burden relatively.

But I go further. If I understood the hon. member for Constantia correctly he did not plead for concessions in his amendment and in his speech. He knows perfectly well that in future there won’t be arrear taxes that can be collected like this year. If I understood him correctly he said: “Let us establish a fund; let us do what they did in 1933 when we left the gold standard; we did not give that money away; we established a fund and with the money in that fund we did certain things throughout the years; let us establish a similar fund”. But the hon. member did not tell us whether he wanted to devote the entire fund this year to those things mentioned in his amendment; the hon. member for East London (City) (Dr. Moolman) did not tell us how much should be paid out in the form of agricultural subsidies; he did tell us what percentage should be paid out; he only said we should establish a fund. We still want to get clarity on that matter from the Opposition; they must tell us whether it is their intention to spend a portion of that fund this year still or what their plans are in connection with it.

Mr. Speaker, what benefit does the ordinary man get from this Budget; what do we all get out of it?

Nothing.

That hon. member says nothing. Five per cent, is at least being deducted from his income tax and I think he will welcome that; I do not think he will reject it. But he can forward his cheque for the full amount; he need not take that 5 per cent. What do we get out of this Budget? What does the middle and the lower income groups in particular get out of this Budget: They get employment facilities out of this Budget; they get the opportunity of earning salaries. This Budget refers to a 68 per cent increase in approved building plans. Is that not fantastic? That is what the ordinary man gets out of this Budget. This Budget refers to a 6½ per cent increase in the real per capita income. Is that not something which the ordinary man has received? This Budget refers to a 10½ per cent increase in personal consumption. That is what the ordinary man gets out of this Budget. That is what the ordinary man wants. The ordinary man says: “Give me work; give me an opportunity of earning money so as to provide for my wife and children; give me an opportunity of being promoted and of getting a salary increase; give me a Budget which will keep the wolf of inflation away from my door.” That is what the ordinary man asks. He wants the money he earns to retain its purchasing power and that is what this Budget ensures for the ordinary man. I say, therefore, that this Budget is pre-eminently a Budget for the ordinary man.

The hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) says the Minister should return certain moneys to the people but that he should just take it back somewhere else to reimburse Loan Account; he will then be spending the same amount of money. The hon. member did not plead for less money to be spent. What difference does it make whether you take the money from Revenue account and spend it or whether you take it out of Loan Account and spend it? What difference does that make to inflation. In essence it cannot make any difference to inflation. The one is compulsory and the other is voluntary. If there were a danger of inflation I would imagine that its solution would really be much less effective than this other method adopted by the Minister, namely, the method of compulsory saving, the method of retaining taxation moneys.

I wish to refer to the points raised by the Opposition in connection with Defence. Hon. members agree that it is right that we spend money on defence but they say we should borrow that money. The hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell) said our defence expenditure was unproductive and that for that reason it would promote inflation. But he did not object to the expenditure on defence as such. If it were unproductive, why would it be less unproductive if you spent it under Loan Account. Surely that won’t make it less unproductive. Why will it promote less inflation if you spend it under Loan Account than if you took that money from Revenue Account? It remains exactly the same thing. However, I deny that it is unproductive. Of this amount of money a good 60 per cent will probably be spent inside South Africa. That money will be spent on material and stores; it will be spent on wages and it will promote other activities. I want to go further and say that with this defence expenditure we shall create security and stability and confidence in the country; it will attract investment. We have seen during the past years how investment capital has been attracted to South Africa. I cannot accept, therefore, that defence expenditure is completely unproductive. On the contrary I take it that that portion which is spent in your own country actually stimulates the economy of the country; it promotes the economic growth of your country and it sheds other fruits in other sectors of your economic life; as a matter of fact in all sectors of the economy.

The Opposition wants us to do all the things proposed in this Budget because they did not suggest that they should not be done, but they say the money should come from Loan Account. That is precisely the difference between that side and this side to-day and it has always been there. Throughout the years this side of the House has followed a policy, from which the hon. the Minister actually deviated slightly last year, of not increasing the national debt unnecessarily. In this connection I just want to tell hon. members opposite that your budgetry machinery is not inflexible; it is not something which you cannot change. You adapt it yearly to economic and financial circumstances. There is nothing whatsoever to prevent any Minister from defraying certain expenditure from Revenue Account one year and from Loan Account the next year. The difference between this side and that side of the House has always been that this side has said that if possible you should transfer your surplus to Loan Account and that you should then finance certain expenditure from that. That side on the contrary has always said that you should rather borrow that money. Mr. Speaker, we have a national debt to-day of R2,788,000,000 and I wish to point out to hon. members that since 1948, when the National Party came into power, R560,000,000 spent under Loan Account came from Revenue Account. But under the policy of that side of the House we would have had to borrow that money. Over these 15 years, in terms of their policy, we would have paid R214,000,000 interest on the amounts we would have had to borrow from year to year. Had we followed that policy we would have had to make provision for an additional R33,000,000 in our Estimates to cover interest. That is what those hon. gentlemen advocate. We think we are following the right policy and that it can be justified before the country. In 1948 when the Government took over our national debt was practically 77 per cent of our national income and to-day it is approximately 56 per cent. We can pay it off within 7 months from our revenue as the hon. the Minister said on one occasion. In 1948 practically 10 per cent of our expenditure was interest; this year it is only a little over 5 per cent. It is perfectly clear, therefore, that we are very careful with the country’s money. We have done very well with the debts we shall be handing over to posterity, posterity who will in any case have many tasks to fulfil. Let us therefore saddle them with as little debt as possible. Of the money we owe to-day, we only owe 6 per cent to countries overseas, thanks to the policy of this Government. The balance we owe in South Africa.

I want to make one suggestion to the hon. the Minister. On behalf of many people, I think, particularly on behalf of organized agriculture, I want to thank the hon. the Minister very sincerely for the concession in regard to estate duty. I do not know how my suggestion will affect the hon. Minister’s Estimates but I at least want to ask that my suggestion be borne in mind in future. I am only asking for an investigation to be made by the Minister’s officials, if possible, before he finalizes his Estimates, to ascertain how it will affect the Estimates if the concession he announced were to be made in respect of the first two children, namely, R12,500 per child and that a concession of R15,000 be made in respect of the third and fourth child and a bigger concession in respect of the fifth and sixth child or further children. I feel that where the father of a large family dies his estate should not be burdened on precisely the same basis as the estate of the man with only one child, because that child will in any case receive a relatively larger legacy. With a view to the promotion of a bigger White population, I think that is a suggestion, which the hon. the Minister may perhaps have investigated.

I conclude by saying that the statement by the Opposition that nothing is done for the ordinary man in this Budget is absolutely without foundation. The arguments they advance in support of that statement, namely that revenue is being under-estimated and expenditure overestimated, and that the taxpayer is over-taxed in that way, is absolutely without foundation.

I know the hon. member for Queenstown (Mr. Loots) will not expect me to follow him in his paean of praise of this Budget of the hon. the Minister’s. It is obvious that I intend to take the correct line, which is the direct opposite to the line taken by him. The part with which I do agree, however, is the first part of his speech in which he pointed out to us that there can be no question about it that next year we are going to meet much heavier taxation. I would like, however, to deal with some of the extraordinary figures used by the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn), and I propose to do so very briefly. The hon. member was correlating human beings with machines. In the Bulletin of Statistics for January of this year the figures show that there was an increase in numbers employed from 1960, in manufacturing, of 18,000 Whites, 19,200 Coloureds and Asiatics and 29,000 Bantu. In the construction industry there was an increase of 2,600 in the number of White employees and an increase of 12,000 odd amongst the Bantu. Sir, to correlate figures of employment with construction and bring apartheid into it is surely an extraordinary mental process; it is completely unrealistic. The apartheid policy must be in poor shape when the Government has to put up its chief sophist to prove that getting blacker really means getting whiter, and I am sure that some time during the debate on the Estimates he will prove to us that black is white. He is a barrister and a very able barrister. He reminds me of George Robey’s song on barristers—

Proving white is black and black is white.

If it was not for the fact of the early-closing Act.

I would be standing at the Bar all night.

If there is a point I make it,

If there isn’t, I take it.

Sir, I now want to proceed with my own speech. The hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs is on his way to Geneva to attend the United Nations Trade and Development Conference. A hard task faces him. I cannot wish him harm, obviously, but the task will be hard. The Afro-Asians are bound to try to get South Africa out of the Conference, and then the question of our relationship with GATT, will arise. Of course, when one sees how this particular Conference is made up one wonders how far they are going to get. I cannot imagine that they are going to get very far, but there is no shadow of doubt that from this Conference matters are going to be referred to GATT., and it will require all our ingenuity if we are not to be adversely affected.

When business was suspended I was saying that the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs was on his way to Geneva and that I thought that a very hard task faced him.

Mr. Speaker, when we were forced out of the Commonwealth great fears were expressed about the future of our primary products which were enjoying the benefit of Imperial preference, which might be lost if and when the United Kingdom joined the European Common Market. As things turned out, President de Gaulle prevented the joining of the Market by Britain, but all the other members of the Market are in favour of such admission. These fears of ours in regard to our exports in the future have been lulled somewhat with the passage of time, but what is the true position? Many people are certain that political forces added to economic forces are bound to bring Britain into the Common Market, and the fears we held when the Prime Minister took us out of the Commonwealth will then return. Mr. Speaker, at that time Imperial preferences helped something around R100,000,000 worth of our primary products, and the preferences amounted to something around R10,000,000, in many instances representing the difference between a profit and a loss for much of our farming produce, more particularly fruit. Sir, we are facing this danger again. Those in this Government who hope for our present easy position to continue, in which we accept benefits without accepting responsibilities, and who hoped for a final break-up of the Common Market at Brussels last December after General de Gaulle had issued his most recent ultimatum, were disappointed, as a number of compromises were effected and the Common Market is now on sufficient common ground again to give us hope that in the Kennedy round-discussion to be held later in the year positive progress in the cutting of international tariffs will be made.

And where do we stand, Mr. Speaker? The U.S. Information Service issued on 6 March 1964 says this—

Mr. Speaker, we are not a developing nation in the sense of this quotation. This Government claims that we are or can be the workshop of Africa. That is true but unfortunately Africa will not take our products. If we are not a developing nation and if GATT accepts the American proposal we will have a lot of competition—some in existence already, others to be developed from these so-called developing countries.

If GATT approves these proposals and the United Kingdom does join the Common Market—and my own view is that both these things will happen—our position is certainly going to be parlous indeed. This Government’s policy precludes us from trading with our natural customers in the north, for the products of our factories, and certainly only a very small proportion of our factories can produce goods at a price competitive with that of similar goods from, say, Japan. Mr. Speaker, this may be a gloomy picture I am painting, but I hope the Minister will tell us something of the plans he has laid for Geneva, for GATT and the Common Market and that he will also tell us whether, if the Afro-Asians demand our expulsion from any association with GATT whatever, he will then retreat further into the isolation into which we are so rapidly going. I do hope the hon. the Minister will tell us something on that subject because it is most important.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to turn to the so-called border industries, the industries on the so-called borders of the reserves, with particular reference to the effect of this so-called policy—I repeat “so-called policy”—on the Witwatersrand. I must point out at this moment, too, that the question of the marginal gold mines is inextricably interwoven with the question of industries on the borders of the reserves, and I want to ask whether these industries on the so-called borders are to be assisted to compete unfairly with industries on the Reef, or will new industries that wish to establish themselves on the Reef obtain the same assistance? Sir, after ten years of pleading from this side of the House the Government has at last agreed to assist marginal mines by a scheme which, in the words of the Minister, is intended to lengthen the life of the mines concerned. The Minister said—

Mr. Speaker, this seemed a sound proposition on Budget day and in my opinion the recent statement of the hon. the Minister of Mines has removed to a considerable degree the fear that shareholders were to be the forgotten men in the proposals. Sir, the scheme is such a simple and obvious one that one cannot help sighing when one realizes that a little competent thought given to this matter in years gone by would have paid the country tremendous dividends. Think of all the gold locked up in mines which have already closed down—gold lost to us for ever—an enormous price for the country to pay for the incompetence of the various Ministers of Mines in the past. I say “in the past”; I exclude the present Minister; I must be fair.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to digress for a moment to point out that the present large Government spending on defence and the police, plus the shortage of skilled manpower, which in turn is accentuated by the demand for defence training, provides the classic situation for inflation. This present war situation in which we find ourselves is in our country for ever, while this Government is in power. During the last war we could charge and did charge half of defence costs to Loan Account as we could see an end to the conflict and we knew that it was only fair to leave something over for posterity to carry, but now we can see no end to this expenditure. Can this Government under these circumstances hold the fort against inflation for long if the expenditure under these heads continues on the present scale? Sir, the mining industry is a sitting duck, with a fixed price for its product, for inflation, and it will probably be necessary to expand the present scheme to a very considerable degree in the future. The Government must keep a close watch on the situation. Much more assistance will be needed in the future if this much-desired increase in the price of gold does not materialize. Perhaps the Government will soon be forced to devalue unilaterally—who knows? Judging by the way they are going it may be forced on us. The way they have run the country over the last 15 years, Sir, anything can happen. I have said that the question of the marginal gold mines is inextricably interwoven with the establishment of industries on the borders of the reserves and the establishment of industries on the Reef to replace the mines. The hon. the Minister has said—these are his own words—“this help will give the communities serving those mines more time to adapt themselves to changing conditions”. Sir, I want to say again that if this help to the marginal mines is right to-day it was right ten years ago. But that help was not given to them and it has cost the country plenty. I repeat what the Minister has said that this will give those communities more time to adapt themselves to changing conditions. This means, of course, that they will have time to establish or to help to establish industries to replace these marginal mines as they go out of existence. Unfortunately, Sir, this is only lip service. The whole future of the towns on the Witwatersrand really lies in the hands of a Department other than that of the Minister of Economic Affairs and the hon. the Minister of Finance. I must say the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs himself cannot be accused of assisting the establishment of industries on the Witwatersrand.

Mr. Speaker, I have no objection, nor can anyone on the Witwatersrand have any objection, to the decentralization of industry provided competition remains fair and that the industrialist who wants to start on the Reef is not faced with extreme pressure from Government Departments when deciding for himself where he will start his factory. Let us look at a few statements by Ministers or officials: The Deputy Minister of Mines said in Alberton that no industry with a proportion of more than one Black to one White would be allowed to start in that area.

When did I say that?

I shall read it to you. You said it on 14 December 1961.

Read what I said.

Here it is—

I think I have made my point. The hon. Minister of Economic Affairs recently said in Johannesburg—

The hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration said recently, when talking to the municipal people on the Reef—

What pompous arrogance, Mr. Speaker. Then the hon. Minister of Economic Affairs told us years ago: “When it is the question of the survival of the nation, that nation is prepared to bend and to break and to sacrifice economic laws.” And how he has succeeded in doing this!

Sir, without sufficient labour a factory cannot continue. How on earth are we going to attract industries to the Reef in the face of these remarks? What factories exist in which the proportion of Whites to Blacks is one to one? I ask the Minister to give us even one example. The process of killing off industry on the Reef is already in being. In Roodepoort, the constituency of the hon. Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration, a cement factory was forced to move a branch to Rosslyn, a so-called border area, because it could not get any more labour locally. Rosslyn is on the border of Pretoria—they have more Whites in Pretoria than we have in Johannesburg. Rosslyn is on the border of Pretoria, no further away from that town than Soweto is from Johannesburg.

My further information is that if a factory wishes to open in this country and has to import plant and machinery it is hampered in every direction, and to all intents and purposes it is told it will not get the necessary foreign exchange to pay for that plant unless it opens where the Government wants it to. And that place is not the Reef. What is going to happen to the Reef towns? The Minister of Finance says they are being given time to adjust themselves to changing conditions; the Minister of Bantu Administration and the Minister of Economic Affairs say they will not allow them to adjust themselves to these condtions, while the Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs says both things. Mr. Speaker, Alice in Wonderland is part of this country.

Let us turn to the costs involved in this crazy scheme of the Prime Minister’s to force industry to go where he wants it, to please his racial prejudices and flout economic laws, as the hon. Minister of Economic Affairs has already said he is prepared to do. In Zwelitsha the cost they have invested per Native employee is approximately R2,666. The report of the Permanent Committee for Location of Industry and the Development of Border Areas states that it will cost R5,300,000 to give employment to 1,850 persons. I have worked that out and it comes to an average of R2,865 per person. In Britain in the new towns it costs approximately R2,400 per person. In Rosslyn up to 31 October 1963 R1,159,660 had been spent plus R36,000-odd on railways. Personal inquiries reveal that approximately 165 Natives were employed there.

This means a cost of over R7,000 per head. I could go on quoting instance after instance in which cost per Native employed in new industries on the borders of the reserves is brought in.

Dr. du Toit Viljoen, replying to a question at the Convention of the Federated Chamber of Industries, stated that the country’s big problem was not raising wages but finding work for 132,000 South Africans per year, of whom 100,000 were Africans, and that the cost, going back to previous figures, would then be R700,000,000 per year to find work for 100,000 Africans. It has been calculated by industrialists on the Reef that it costs £4,500 per White employee, taken that factor as the standard, to establish an industry on the Reef as against £9,000 on the new gold fields. And it will be exactly the same in respect of the new so-called border industries.

Mr. Speaker, I charge this Government, firstly, that the assistance to the marginal mines is very late; it should have been given years ago. Secondly, that far from encouraging industry to come to the Reef, every effort is being made to discourage it. Thirdly, it is allowing Reef municipalities to spend time and money on inviting factories to come there without any scheme to assist them. I understand from the Press that in Randfontein an approach was made to buy an English textile mill, lock, stock and barrel, and set it up there. Textiles employ a large ratio of Black labour, Sir. It is rather extraordinary that this should have been started by the Randfontein Municipality and I would be interested to know whether that particular industry would be allowed to start there. The fourth charge is that the cost relating to these efforts to send industry to the so-called borders of the reserves is beyond the country’s resources, to such an extent that it can only be called a bluff, a bluff, however, which is hurting the Reef, every town on the Reef. If I am wrong, I hope the Minister will tell me where.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, can anyone tell me why the Government refuses to allow the Reef to be one influx control or labour area? The municipalities want this, industry wants this, commerce wants this, the people want this and the country needs this. I hope I will get a reply to that question too.

In the first place I should like to pay homage to my predecessor, Dr. Carel de Wet, who is to-day occupying the high position of ambassador in Great Britain. I also wish to thank him for the extremely efficient manner in which he represented the Vanderbijlpark constituency during the past 11 years. Dr. de Wet was not only the representative of his constituency but he also did his duty towards his nation and his country and no sacrifice was ever too great for him. On behalf of our constituency I should like to place on record our gratitude for what he has meant to Vanderbijlpark. Being as efficient as he is I also believe he will fulfil his task extremely efficiently and that he will win many friends for the Republic of South Africa. We know the Jeremiahs were very sceptical and cynical after the announcement of his appointment but to judge from the report which appeared in the Cape Times this morning he was a big success at his first public appearance. I just wish to read that report—

However, I leave it at that.

I want to confine myself to the phenomenal industrial development which is taking place to-day in the Vaal triangle and more specifically to the more beneficial use we can make of our labour force in that area. You will forgive me, Sir, when I say that the most rapid industrial development is to-day taking place in the Vaal triangle. The Vaal triangle consists of Sasolburg, Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark and that area may be regarded as the future heartland of our industrial areas. As you probably know within the next few years R86,000,000 will be spent there on extending Sasol plus/minus R20,000,000 on the Union Steel Corporation, R5,500,000 on extending the Vanderbijl Engineering Works Corporation, better known as Vikor, the biggest and heaviest engineering firm in the southern hemisphere and plus/minus R560,000,000 on extending Iscor, of which the major portion will be spent in Vanderbijlpark.

Mr. Speaker, these extensions will obviously mean a tremendous increase in the production of these industries and an increase in the labour force as well. I think the extension to the steel works at Vanderbijlpark which are to-day producing 1,250,000 tons steel ingots per annum will increase that production to 2,100,000 and eventually, after the second phase of the extension programme has been completed, to 2,700,000 tons steel ingots per annum. As I have already said this will mean that these factories and industries will have to be staffed and that they will have to increase their personnel. That staff will have to be found. Before I continue to try to find a solution I first want to analyse the personnel employed by such an industry. I wish to divide the personnel into two groups. The first is the monthly paid staff which consists of the administrative staff, technicians, scientists, etc. In the second group you find the daily paid worker or the worker who gets paid per hour, and that group in turn may be sub-divided in three further groups, namely, the artisans and they comprise electro-mechanicians, fitters and turners, riggers, plumbers and so forth; the third group consists of the apprentices and the fourth group of the operators to whom I shall return later.

We can meet the demand for manpower which will arise as a result of this extension to our industries by means of (a) immigration, (b) the better utilization of our existing manpower and (c) improving the productivity of the employee. I first want to deal with immigration. The position is, and industrialists in that area do this, that they concentrate on recruiting immigrants, particularly technicians and artisans, on the continent of Europe and in the United Kingdom. But whether the demand can be met in that way is doubtful. I then turn to the next method which is the better utilization of our existing labour force. I, therefore, also welcome the idea expressed by the hon. the Deputy Minister at Durban, namely, that we should make better use of our existing manpower.

I said I would return to the operating group. Who and what is the operating group in industry? The operating group consists of the unskilled man, the non-artisan. For one reason or another he has not undergone vocational training. It may have been due to financial reasons that he did not undergo that training when he entered the industry. We find a further group amongs them, the group which consists of those persons who came from the platteland, who did not have any vocational training and who had to seek refuge in industry. If we analyse the Industrial Reconciliation Act we find that 227 posts were created for operators, each one on his own guaranteed scale of pay. We find that only in respect of 21 of those 227 posts is it possible for the operator to earn more than the artisan. When we consider that in most cases the artisan is paid either an incentive bonus or a merit allowance, we find that not in the case of any of those 227 posts can the salary exceed that of an artisan. I think this is particularly the pool from which we can strengthen the ranks of our artisans.

The industrialists have the necessary facilities to train apprentices and I also believe it is the duty of the industrialists to do their duty towards the country in that respect and to avail themselves of those same facilities to give adult training to this group of operators of whom we can make much better use in future. That, however, will give rise to one problem, Mr. Speaker. In most cases you will find that those operators are married men and they will have to be financially assisted during their period of training. But the industrialist must not lose sight of the fact that such an employee who undergoes that adult training will not be totally unproductive during that period. From the second to the third years he will practically be 50 per cent or 60 per cent productive and I go so far as to say that in his final years he will probably be 100 per cent productive as far as the industrialist is concerned.

Then I think there is a group of which we do not make the best possible use and that group consists of those persons over 45 years of age. What happens in practice? Persons of that age who apply lor employment to the industrialists is regarded sceptically. He is regarded as old and decrepit. I think the industrialist must be conditioned in this respect to realize that those people can still mean a great deal to industry. The industrialist is only too inclined—naturally I am talking about people over the age of 45 who are still physically strong and healthy—to consider those people for less important work in industry only or of placing them in sheltered employment. I believe we can supplement our labour force from that source.

Thirdly, the increased productivity of the worker. Here I specially have in mind the person in the lower income group; the person with a big family and who carries a heavy financial burden. If you have such a person in your employ you cannot expect high productivity from him if he has financial worries. I think in particular of the lower paid group in the steel industry. I want to say immediately that it would be a very popular idea if I were to plead for increase salaries; I take it the wages laid down in industrial agreements were arrived at and based on assessment value and the value of the post. If you were to plead for higher wages for the lower paid group you would upset the entire wage structure completely. As I have said here I have in mind in particular the lower paid group in the steel industry. Iscor provides housing for them and we are grateful for that. House rent is also subsidized so that an employee does not pay more than 20 per cent of his gross income in house rent. I earnestly want to plead that industrialists should not base that subsidy on a fixed percentage of income alone but that they should have a sliding scale. An employee with an income of less than R140 per month should not have to pay, say, more than 15 per cent of his gross income in house rent. Then there should be a further concession of, say, ½ per cent or 1 per cent, for every additional member of the family. In other words, an employee who earns less than R140 per month with five children, and it is calculated on ½ per cent, will then not pay more than 12½ per cent of his income in house rent. I think if that employee could be met in that way we would have a happier employee; the labour turnover in industries will immediately be smaller and the production per employee will increase.

In conclusion I hope you will allow me, Sir, where I have already said that I represented the Vanderbijlpark constituency, Vanderbijlpark with its population of 60,000, White and non-White, and whose existence is directly due to the steel industry of Iscor, to pay tribute to the then Government who had the courage, the daring, the conviction and the confidence to establish our own steel industry. Iscor offers employment to-day to plus/minus 14,500 Whites and 14,000 non-Whites. During the last fiscal year R35,800,000 was paid out in the form of salaries and wages. The consumer had the benefit, in comparison with imported steel, of buying the South African product at plus/minus R27 per ton cheaper; by using our own South African steel there has therefore been a total saving of R44,000,000.

When we consider how costs of production have increased from 1939 to 1963 we find that the percentage increase in respect of all South African products has been 176 per cent. We now come to steel. The production cost of steel has increased by 126 per cent over the period 1939 to 1963. The production cost of steel in the United States of America has increased by 164 per cent; in the United Kingdom by 282 per cent, in Belgium by 305 per cent; in Australia, 313 per cent. I just want to make this further point that had the steel which Iscor placed on the local market been imported the costs in the form of foreign exchange would have amounted to approximately R141,000,000. To this must be added approximately R18,000,000 earned in foreign exchange by exporting steel. That brings the total amount of foreign exchange to approximately R159,000,000 because of the availability of Iscor steel. That has indeed been an achievement and we cannot pay too great a tribute to the then Government for having established our own steel industry in the Republic of South Africa.

Sir, it is my pleasant task to congratulate the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark (Mr. Henning) on his maiden speech and on the manner in which he has delivered it. It is obvious that he is talking as a person with knowledge of the problems of the industries in his constituency. I think from that point of view, his acquisition to this House should be welcomed, especially in view of the need on the Government side for members who can talk with authority on industrial and economic matters. I do hope that all the speeches which the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark delivers in this House in future will be directed on that high plane. I welcome him to this House.

Budget surpluses seem to have become a traditional way of life in South Africa, and this year’s Budget has certainly been no exception. The introduction of P.A.Y.E. has blurred the picture considerably, and made it very difficult for members to get a correct assessment of just what is at play in the economy of this country. It cannot be guessed with any accuracy, Sir, how much of the income-tax collections which were estimated at R581,000,000 for 1963-4 will come up to that figure, but it is quite clear that it will be considerably more. In that regard we must take cognizance of what is taking place as far as budgeting for defence is concerned. These increases are going to be a part of our legacy for having a Nationalist Government. We must accept it, Sir, that as long as that party is in power the increase in budgeting for defence will go on and on and on. The average taxpayer, therefore, cannot look forward to any concessions of tax in the future. Over and above that, we have the position as expressed by the horn the Minister of Finance, from which it is evident that he is as afraid of inflation as a cat is of watr. He feels that the public’s ability to spend or invest by making any tax concessions to them, will have an inflationary effect. But what is the true position? Inflation is invariably brought about when there is a shortage of manpower resulting in too much money chasing too few goods. But in South Africa we have that problem further accentuated by the fact that there is too much money chasing too few men. The Budget has provided millions and millions of rand for guns and bombs for the survival of White South Africa …

Hear, hear!

… but nothing at all to husband the country’s White manpower resources. Perhaps the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) will tell me how he is going to improve that position and give a “Hear, hear” in that regard. It is irresponsible remarks and actions like those of the hon. member for Cradock which are responsible for the wastage of brainpower from this country. The people who are leaving this country are people whom we can ill afford to lose. I should like to make a sincere appeal to the hon. member for Cradock and other members on that side of the House not to introduce any element whatsoever into this House, or outside this House, that will have a frightening effect on South African citizens, and cause them to stop to worry about their security and happiness in this country! We have to spend millions and millions in replacing these emigrants. Is it necessary to do so, when we can retain these people in our country? This shortage of skilled labour and management, on the other hand, can lead to nothing else but inflation and the wasteful use of our resources. We can ill afford either of these adverse consequences, especially from a long-term point of view.

Sir, the abundance of capital available at the present time is attributable very largely to the outstanding contribution that gold mining has made to our balance of payments, and I would like to indicate here what has happened in the last six years by giving comparisons of output as far as gold, merchandise exports and industrial exports are concerned. What do we actually find? For the last six years the gold output has increased by more than 50 per cent; merchandise exports increased by only 10 per cent in value, and the export of industrial products increased by very little indeed. It is exactly this situation, Sir, that should be receiving priority consideration, priority for the need of an intensive export drive in order to provide for the eventual diminution in the production of gold mining. Sir, there is no industry that can be established in South Africa that can provide the same value of exports as one individual gold mine. In that regard, I would like to bring to the attention of hon. members what the gold-mining industry has really meant to this country over, say, the last six years only. In doing so, I would like hon. members to realize the wonderful nest-egg that the Minister of Finance has got in his hands for the next six or eight years in the form of extra taxation from our gold mines; the newly established and rich gold mines which have come into production and which from now onwards will start paying taxation. What do we find, Sir? Taxation for the year ended 31 December 1958 amounted to R40,000,000, taxation for the year ended 31 December 1962 was R109,000,000—an increase in four years of 172 per cent! 172 per cent increase in taxation that has accrued to the Minister.

What is the percentage of the national income in both cases? What was the percentage taxation?

About 38 per cent. What was the position likely to be in approximately 1969? According to estimates, approximately between R139,000,000 to R145,000,000 will accrue to the Treasury in taxation. With all that in hand, surely the Government, which has been fully aware of this nest-egg, should have been able five and six years ago to make better provision for declining mines on the Witwatersrand, and should not have waited until they were egged on, forced on, cudgelled from this side of the House, in order to do something for those declining mines. Sir, we remember only too well the expressions of disgust on the face of the Minister of Mines and the hon. Minister of Finance every time when we brought up the question that something must be done for the declining gold mines, and although they had a report way back in 1957, making recommendations as to the manner in which concessions could be made to these declining mines, we had to wait seven years after that report, to see a simple scheme as the one now evolved bearing fruit. I would like to ask the hon. Minister of Finance in his reply to give us some clarity as to which mines—not necessarily stating them by name—will receive the benefit of this taxation concession. Does it mean that it will only be mines which are already showing a working loss to which this concession will be applied? Or will it be a mine which is on the verge of going over to a loss, which will also be given this concession? From the wording of the hon. Minister’s statement it would appear that a mine has to be showing a loss before this concession will become available. I hope that the hon. Minister of Finance will, however, decide that an approved mine can also mean a mine about to show a loss, because we think that that is necessary for the future.

I was interested, and pleased, to see the relaxation of import control which was given on Thursday, and this no doubt will relieve liquid pressure on our capital in the country. Also it will assist to make our local industry more competitive. And when we refer to a more competitive industrial attitude and approach, one cannot help criticizing the attitude of the Government in the establishment of the Cyril Lord factory at East London. I want to discuss this as one of the incompatibilities of the Government’s approach towards industrialization in South Africa. I do not want to discuss whether the Government has “been taken for a ride”, in the purchase and the valuation of the machinery that is in that factory.

What is your opinion?

I think that has been discussed in Another Place, with effect. But I would like to discuss the effect it is going to have on the cost of living of the ordinary man in the street. What do we find here? We find that whereas it was the intention, or the Cyril Lord people made it known, that they would spin and weave greycloth in this country, and thereby establish another industry, it is now apparent that they are doing nothing of the sort. They are importing the greycloth, the loom-state, from Japan in its raw condition and they are only finishing it off here in South Africa. But in order to finish it off, and to give this factory preference over other factories in South Africa and over the imported article, we find that the rebate which existed before and which is anything from 9c to 15c per yard, has now been withdrawn. The effect of that has been that all cloth has gone up by that amount of rebate. The imported cloth that has to be brought into the country is now practically the same price as the combined price of the cloth that is being manufactured from its unfinished condition. The effect of this Government decision is that it is going to push up the price of an article such as a shirt by anything from 50c to 75c, the price of a blouse by anything from 27c upwards, and the price of a skirt by roughly 22c upwards. All this has been done in order to carry out an ideological policy that the Government has embarked upon as far as establishing industries on the borders is concerned. In order to give employment to 200-odd Whites and 1,200 Bantu, the people of this country are going to pay roughly between R3,000,000 and R3,500,000 in extra duty, for household commodities such as shirts, pyjamas, blouses, nightdresses, and so on, and then it will still not be possible for this factory to produce anything like the consumption in the country. At the most they will be producing 3,000,000 yards of finished material, whereas the country requires roughly 30,000,000 yards. So in order to enable this factory, one day, to manufacture 3,000,000 yards of shirting and poplin, duties are being placed on 27,000,000 yards of poplin which will have to be imported into this country all the same. What it all amounts to is that for the sake of employing a few thousand workers in this Bantustan area, and giving impetus to the border factory policy, the Government has succeeded in disrupting an entire industry and making the public pay heavily for this policy! I believe that the Government did not believe that this Cyril Lord manoeuvre would ever be exposed and brought under close scrutiny, because the duties which have now been imposed on these everyday household commodities are actually more per year than the whole cost of establishing this particular factory. The question that we have to ask ourselves is: Where is this going to stop? Is this not just the beginning of a policy which the Government is going to pursue, regardless of what it will cost the country? If I am wrong in that assumption, will the hon. the Minister indicate to me whether a similar factory has not been established at Rosslyn—a border area—and the same principle being followed there? I refer to the establishment of a button factory in Rosslyn, where duty and preferences are now being given to this border industry for the manufacture of plastic buttons, metal buttons and leather buttons. All of these articles were coming in previously, free of any duty. This factory, however, is only producing plastic buttons, on which a duty is now being placed; it is not producing metal buttons and leather buttons, but a duty has been placed on those two commodities as well! You therefore have the fact that every commodity on which buttons are used is now going up in price. Take boiler-suits, overalls, where metal buttons are used on those garments—they are all being pushed up in price. These two commodities are not being manufactured here, but in order to encourage this factory to come to the border of a Bantu reserve, duties were willingly imposed in respect of all these articles. We on this side of the House and the public are definitely concerned that this situation should not continue, that the public must become aware of how far the Government is determined to go in order to make border industries a success, because if border industries are not a success, then Bantustans are not a success, and if Bantustans are not a success, the Government must fall. So the rest of us become expendable, as the hon. member for Benoni has very clearly shown—the rest of the country is regarded as expendable, but this policy must be pursued and must succeed.

May I conclude with a fervent request to the Minister to make one facility, at least, available to the Witwatersrand, to make the East Rand feel that we are not the “Cinderella” children of this country, that we do matter, that we do count, and ask him if he will not assist the hon. Minister of Transport to make roughly R10,000,000 available for the construction of our urgently needed South Main Reef Road. This road has been recommended as an urgency. There are 12 members in this House—three of whom are Cabinet Ministers—all of whom have given their blessing to this road and it has been established that it is a necessity for the industrial development of the East Rand and the Eastern Transvaal. The hon. Minister of Transport tells us, however, that this country cannot find R10,000,000 out of his R88,000,000 surplus in order to construct this urgently needed road, which will link up the Witwatersrand, all the East Rand towns and the Eastern Transvaal. If anything is criminal and if anything shows disregard, then it is this neglect of the building of this road. I appeal to the hon. the Minister to show some consideration and make the R10,000,000 available to the East Rand and the Eastern Transvaal.

I wish to associate myself with the congratulations which have been extended to the Minister of Finance for this outstanding Budget and the financial success attained this year.

Let me immediately tell the hon. member for Springs (Mr. Taurog) that it was a revelation to us to learn that it was United Party policy to make strenuous objection to defence expenditure, particularly to money spent on heavy machinery, defence machinery, etc. Can we take it that that is the direction the United Party will follow in future and what is their object, in these difficult times in which we are threatened from all sides, in objecting to defence expenditure? We must get clarity on that point because if that is the direction they want to follow we shall definitely make it known to the public.

I wish to refer to a point raised by the hon. member for Jeppes (Dr. Cronje) with reference to the matter dealt with by the hon. member for Ladybrand (Mr. Keyter). He said that had the United Party been in power they would have imported at least 1,000,000 Whites as immigrants to this country annually. In the first place I do not think it would have been possible for the United Party to import 1,000,000 people per annum.

Nobody talked about 1,000,000 per annum.

In that case you would have had 15,000,000 immigrants in 15 years’ time from Europe. You would have changed the whole character of the country. But supposing it were possible to get them, what type of person would have come from Europe, particularly after Europe’s reconstruction. You would have got the type that was unpopular in Europe, particularly the class of unemployed with which they were saddled there. But supposing it had been possible to get them here can you imagine, Sir, what disruption that would have caused in this country? The housing would have been lacking, there would not have been work for them and there would have been a mass of unemployed persons in the country. That is the old capitalist policy which that side has been propagating since time immemorial.

To plough the Whites under.

I am very pleased the hon. member for East London (City) (Dr. Moolman) is present because I wish to refer to a few of his remarks which I found very interesting. In the first place the hon. member accuses the Government of never having increased wages. On the one hand he wants wages to be increased and on the other hand he wants productions costs to be reduced. Can you for a moment imagine how anybody in this House, Sir, can reconcile those two points of view? Increased wages on the one hand and a decrease in the cost of production on the other hand. The minute wages go up production costs go up.

I want to deal with the third leg of the amendment of the Opposition which reads as follows—

And then—

Surely the most important basic foodstuff is maize. When you use maize various products of the country are affected. The hon. member says it should be subsidized to a greater extent. Maize is used in two ways. Human consumption accounts for the greater percentage of mealies consumed; more than two-thirds of the mealies produced are consumed by man. It is still the cheapest food to eat in South Africa. The maize consumed by man is subsidized by the Government to the extent of 34.5 cents per bag. Let me say at once that the Government does not subsidize maize which is exported but it subsidizes the local market. The subsidy in respect of maize for animal consumption is even higher, namely, an additional 15 cents. That has been the position for a number of years already. That means that maize for animal consumption is subsidized to the tune of 50 cents per bag. During the years that maize for animal consumption has been subsidized the consumption has hardly increased but human consumption has increased. We now want to know this from the hon. member: If a 35-cent subsidy by the State is not sufficient in the case of maize for human consumption and a subsidy of 50 cents in the case of maize for animal consumption what does he expect? The hon. member pleaded in particular for the subsidy to be increased in the case of maize for animal consumption. It will then have to be subsidized by even more than 50 cents per bag if you want to increase the consumption. Only then will you be able to absorb the greater portion of the 70,000,000 or 65,000,000 bags which are produced in this country.

What about the railage?

Yes, in the case of local consumption, you still have the railway rebate of 37½ per cent. The mealies which are exported are not subsidized by the Government. That would also be in conflict with existing international agreements. That is the reason why a loss is suffered on the export of maize, because in the case of export maize the full railage to the sea ports has to be paid; the 37½ per cent rebate is not allowed in that case. We should like to know from the hon. member what increased consumption does he expect; does he think it will be such as to have been worth while? The hon. member for Kensington laughed when the hon. member for Ladybrand referred to the wool levy. But according to this amendment that levy should not only be used in the case of wool. In the case of maize 90 per cent of the levy is paid by the maize farmers and the hon. member referred specifically to the R14,000,000 and the R4,000,000 levy in the Stabilization Fund. He says that must now be used to reduce the price and to subsidize the local market. Is the hon. member in favour of the one product subsidizing the other? If he is then the hon. member for Ladybrand was quite right when he asked why we should not be allowed to use the wool levy to feed our sheep so that we can produce a better quality wool for which there will then be a better market. The principle is the same. Is the hon. member pleading for that? He says the maize farmers should use their levy to subsidize certain other products so that those products may be sold more cheaply. Does the hon. member wish to apply that principle in respect of the wool levy as well? Should we also use the wool levy for subsidization?

Will you give me an opportunity to explain that?

The hon. member will get an opportunity when we discuss the Votes of the Ministers. The hon. member said quite clearly that that money should be used to subsidize foodstuffs.

We want stable markets.

We want to know from the hon. member to what extent he thinks we should go. The hon. member drafted his motion without thinking any further about the matter; without thinking how far we should go, and how the position of the one farmer would be justified as against that of the other. He thinks there will be a tendency towards lower prices if the product of the one farmer subsidized that of another. If he says the Government should do that I want to put this question to him: How large, does he think, should that subsidy be so that the consumption will be increased to such an extent that it will have been worth while and that the 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 bags of yellow mealies which are consumed to-day will be increased to such an extent that it will more or less absorb 58 per cent of the total harvest of 1965?

I should like to bring a few other matters to the notice of the Minister. The first is in respect of transfer duty. It is not very clear from the Press reports whether that reduction in the transfer duty only applies to the person who buys a property in a city. Let me say at once that it will be the first time that a principle is established whereby a differentiation is made between the town dweller and the farmer who acquires a property. I should like the Minister to explain this point to us. I hope this concession will not only apply to the acquisition of property in a town but also in respect of the platteland.

The other point is in connection with income-tax. Over the years the income-tax system has become more and more complicated as well as the forms that have to be submitted. It is practically impossible for a farmer to-day to devote all his time to his farming activities without engaging a bookkeeper, and what is more when it comes to the end of the year he has to have his books audited. In principle that is right but the position is becoming practically impossible as far as the farmers in the lower income group are concerned. I appreciate the arguments in favour of such a system and that we cannot differentiate between the farmers and the ordinary businessman, but generally speaking the farmers would welcome it if a system could be devised which would make their position easier. When this matter was discussed we argued that we could not differentiate but I think that ground has already been covered. I am not saying that is the right way but I wonder whether it would not be easier to deduct that portion when your product is marketed. I only make that suggestion for the consideration of the Minister because every farmer would welcome a simplified income-tax system.

The hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Wentzel) said that this side of the House objected to the defence expenditure. I think if he had listened closely to the debate he would know that the hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson) did not lodge any objection. We on this side realize the difficulties facing the country at the moment—a country without any treaties and a country becoming more isolated every day, and as a result it is very necessary for us to strengthen our defences, and we as a responsible Opposition do not object to the money being spent. Our only concern is the accounting for these funds and supervision. It involves considerable sums and the responsibility on the shoulders of the Government for the control of these funds is so great that it is necessary to see that there is proper control over this expenditure. But this argument will be developed by other speakers.

Then the hon. member for Christiana went on to talk about immigration and said that the hon. member for Jeppes (Dr. Cronje) had said that if our policy had been carried out the country would have had at least an additional 1,000,000 immigrants by now. He made some remarks about us opening our doors to immigrants and getting all types. He said that we would not have houses or employment for them. I should like to tell the hon. member—I am sorry he has gone out now—that the prosperity in Western Germany to-day is attributed to the 8,000,000 displaced persons whom Russia pushed over her borders. Those people came in with new ideas and built up that country. We see what happened in the U.S.A. and in Australia. I do not say that we should take anyone who comes but certainly we can be too selective. Do not forget that when we arrived in this country the Immigration Department did not meet us on the beach to ask whether we were suitable people. The hon. member also went into technicalities in regard to farming finances in connection with mealies. I would not like to take part in the argument, except to say that he said that the increased costs were due to the increased costs of labour. But that is not so. The increased costs are due to the rising costs of farming equipment. To-day we saw what can happen in the House when we had members of the farming community on both sides of the House not being able to get together as one body to help each other in this Parliament of ours, due to our political divisions, but had to debate their troubles across the floor of the House against a political background. It shows bow we are politically divided in this country, which is not to the benefit of the country as a whole. The hon. member also said something about the income-tax forms. I think not only the farmers but everybody finds that these are very complicated, and although the Receiver of Revenue will tell you that if you read, the small print carefully you will be able to understand them, in nine cases out of ten we have to employ a highly qualified accountant at a substantial fee to understand the various forms sent out.

The Minister of Finance has produced this record surplus of R88,000,000, which will probably be R100,000,000 when his final accounts are drawn up and one is disappointed that more has not been done for the intermediate class of taxpayer. It shows that this Government has not been able to come forward in all the time they have been in power with some positive social security policy, a policy to look after the man in the street. We are not all born millionaires and we are not all born to go to the top. We have those people who have to work all their lives and who have very little future when it comes to the evening of their lives, and it is the responsibility of the Government to look after these people. One of the things that should be done is to introduce social security. This Government took over the foundation of what the United Party left them, but they have never developed it. We have also seen the policy of ploughing back all our revenue surpluses to capital development. The Orange River scheme which will take years to complete will cost a lot of money but one wonders why the Minister of Finance did not consider financing this scheme partially from Loan Funds, and this also applies to South West Africa as well. The report in regard to that territory has not yet even been considered, but we are making provision for the expenditure of money in that territory. He is also making provision in his Budget for the Transkei; this money will be given in the form of a gift. I am not sure whether it is subject to the gifts tax. When you advance money to anyone you want to see a return and one of the faults of this Government is the lack of policy to ensure a return on this investment. The Government jogs along from day to day. If this Minister of Finance can have a surplus of R88,000,000, what do vou think the position would have been if the United Party were in power? [Interjections.] We would have had the greatest prosperity of any country in the world. We would have been the envy of the world, but to-day we are becoming more and more isolated. Our prosperity is brought on by isolation. We are living on our own income. We are very fortunate that we have gold and diamonds, and that is why we are living as well as we do to-day. but we cannot continue like that. In order to live in this country we have to export or die, and we must get to know the rest of the world. [Interjection.] In dealing with taxation, I say that the whole of our taxation system should be on a more equitable basis and the load of taxation should be spread over the population fairly evenly and justly. Over the years our taxation has become unbalanced, and some sections of the community pay more than others, and there should be a revision from time to time. The average individual may not pay so much in income-tax, but he pays more in indirect taxes. If he buys a bottle of whisky or brandy he pays an indirect tax, and he even pays an indirect tax on South African articles because there is a loaded tariff, as the hon. member for Benoni has pointed out. We agree that a country has to be taxed to pay its way, but let us examine one aspect of over-taxing in this country of ours, and that is in the motor industry. Over the years the motor industry and everything connected with it has been the pet hobby horse of all Ministers of Finance. When they want an odd million they know where to go to get that money. They either add a cent to excise or customs on vehicles or they add a cent to the price of petrol. It may be argued that everyone who runs a motor-car also pays taxes, but I still say it should be equitable, and they should not pay as much as they do at present. I have taken out some figures which are very surprising. I asked a question in the beginning of the Session and the reply given to me was that the customs and excise taxes on cars and spares, petrol and diesel fuel, tyres and tubes, amounted to R54,631,089. The excise duty on motor-cars amounted to R25,899,050. The duty on petrol is R22,126,285, and on automotive diesel fuel it is R2,205,748, making a total of R24,332,033. All this gives a grand total of R104,862,172.

From that we must deduct R30,000,000 which goes to the Road Fund, which leaves a net total of R74,862,172. Now we have not finished with that yet, because the Railways come along and take their cut, which also affects the farmers. The Railways make a profit of R13,346,935 on the transportation of petrol, and a profit of R3,920,218 on other fuel, giving a total of R17,267,153. It is a colossal sum, but we are continually told that the Railways are run on business lines and therefore we cannot get additional railways unless they are payable, but look what happens here. They derive a profit of R17,000,000 out of the motorist. They run 5,441 vehicles over something like 31,743 route miles, and what do they pay? Their vehicles come in duty free and they pay no licences and they make the wonderful contribution to the Provincial Roads Fund of R304,000. They also have a monopoly. The motorists in the country and in the towns, including the farmers, pay for the upkeep of those roads which the Railways use. This is all wrong, and it is one of the anamolies which should be adjusted. If the Railways cannot afford to run their road services they should get a grant from the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

That is a very good speech on the Railway Budget.

I know hon. members opposite are worried. But we are not finished with the motorist yet. In addition, the motorists, including the farmers, pay licence fees every year of R28,213,000, in addition to all the other money. We are told about the revenue of the gold mines, but here is a real gold mine. The real gold mine as far as the Minister of Finance is concerned, is the motor industry, and when I talk about the motor industry I mean everybody who has a motor-car. At one time it was considered that if a man had a motor-car it was a luxury, but to-day it is a necessity. [Interjections.] If the hon. member goes along to buy a Volkswagen he pays excise tax of R169. On a car that sells for R1,365 the excise tax is R182.60. The whole question of motor taxation is completely unbalanced and should be re-examined. I believe it is a matter which is worrying the Minister and I believe he has a committee which is investigating the matter. We hope that they will adjust the situation because I think from year to year it has become like the house that Jack built, and a little bit has been added here and there until the whole thing has become unbalanced. Finally, it must be remembered that every time a motorist goes to a garage …

He pays too much.

Every time he puts in a gallon of petrol he pays an indirect tax of 13.8c. In addition, if he lives in Johannesburg or Pretoria he has to pay the Minister of Transport 6c a gallon railage, although just recently it was still 7c. So he pays something like 20c in indirect taxation. That has been forgotten about. Do you know, Sir, why these taxes are put on? Because it is an easier form of taxation. The petrol comes out of the bulk tank and they collect the tax, and when the motor-car comes out of the assembly plant they collect the tax.

I have drawn the attention of the House to what I call unbalanced taxation and I think it should be re-examined. We on this side do not object to taxation, but we object to over-taxation and unbalanced taxation and we say that with the prosperity that we have at the moment we should use our reserves to plan for the future. Let the Government come forward with something solid. A social security plan, some security for our youth, a planned educational system, not just go on from day to day and hope for the best. Just recently the Minister of Economic Affairs relaxed import control a little. Why? Because he knew that inflation was creeping into the country and he had to do something about it, so just before he left he lifted the lid slightly. But taking these day-by-day steps brings you nowhere, and this Government is going there very fast.

Mr. Speaker, there are one or two points that I want to discuss. The last speaker will forgive me if I do not ask him how much he charges people who bring their cars to him for greasing or how much he gets for the petrol he sells. That is his affair and we do not begrudge him his profit, but I want to ask him please to leave the farmers alone because he knows nothing about farming.

I want to refer to something which was touched upon here by the hon. member for East London (City) (Dr. Moolman). The hon. member made certain comparisons. He first talked about maize. After the two speakers on this side had finished with him, very little was left of the case he put up, but I just want to say this to him: I am a wool-grower and I am very proud of it, and I am also very proud of the fact that we have an organization which is able to look after itself. The International Wool Secretariat is probably one of the finest organizations in the world. The hon. member must please not come and peddle here with the funds of the Wool Board and try to get subsidies to feed his sheep. We are man enough to pay the maize farmer what is due to him. Sir, the maize farmer is one of the greatest assets of this country. He exports maize on a large scale. The Maize Board must be congratulated on the wonderful work that they do, on the foreign exchange that they earn for this country and on the markets that they have created. We wool-growers are not envious; we do not begrudge them the price that they get for their product. Why should the maize farmer subsidize the sheep farmer in order to produce meat cheaply? I do not want to enlarge upon this because it is not worth the trouble.

But I was shocked by the statement which was made here by our old friend who is sometimes referred to as Jeremiah. I was shocked by the statement made by him about the Orange River scheme. Sir, if there is one thing which is near and dear to our hearts it is the Orange River scheme. That is why we resent it when people attempt to interfere with that scheme or when they suggest that its implementation should be delayed. This scheme is one which is worth so much to us in the Eastern Province and to the whole of South Africa that I am amazed to find that a member of the United Party is against the rapid development of that scheme.

Who is against it?

The Minister has given us enough money to carry on with the scheme, and the work is in progress. It will be a good thing for hon. members over there to go and see what is already being done; to see the wonderful planning which is taking place in connection with the tunnel which will cost R28,000,000 and in connection with roads which have already been surveyed and 100 miles of which will be tarred. We are against any delay in the implementation of this scheme; South Africa is against it, and every person in the Eastern Province will have something to say to those hon. members who talk about delaying the implementation of this scheme. The hon. member for Constantia, of course, does not understand the difficulties of the farmers. He does not realize to what extent the platteland has become depopulated. Now that we have a new solution to all our drought problems …

Does the hon. member believe that he has any right to complain, bearing in mind the fact that year after year Mr. Tom Bowker put forward a plea in this House for the implementation of that scheme?

I very gladly reply to the hon. member’s question. Is it not true that it was the hon. member for Cradock who piloted that motion through this House and that it was Mr. Andries Vosloo who seconded it? Is it not a fact that this whole scheme emanates from the Government and not from the United Party? They never pleaded for an Orange River scheme; it is true that on one occasion they did plead for a Fish-Orange River scheme, but I just want to tell the hon. member that it was this Government, this Prime Minister, who made this beautiful scheme possible by voting the money for it. We on this side proposed the scheme and our proposal was unanimously accepted by the House. This scheme is of so much importance to the farmers of our country that there can be no talk of delay. There are camps which have to be laid out; there are roads to be built, and the Government has already embarked on the preparatory work. When that water from the Orange River is carried via the canal to the Eastern Province and other areas, the whole of that part of the world will be converted into a flower garden. I go so far as to say that this scheme will produce greater results than even the Tennessee Valley scheme because there are so many factors which are going to prove helpful to us. In the Eastern Province, for example, there will be no fewer than ten power stations. Once the height of the dam wall has been raised to 60 feet the power generated there will be quadrupled and all the difficulties which have been experienced in the whole of the Eastern Province and in the Karoo throughout the years will be resolved. We feel therefore that it is absolutely essential to implement this scheme as soon as possible, and we resent the fact that a member should get up in this House and propose that the implementation of that scheme be delayed. Just think what that scheme will mean to us. The problem of droughts, the farmer’s biggest enemy, will be solved to a large extent. Sir, the Cabinet Committee appointed by the Government, with Mr. Steyn at the head of it, is accomplishing miracles in expediting this whole matter. We are grateful to the Government and the Department for the appointment of this committee which is solving problems for us within a month which would otherwise have taken a year to solve. We want to let those people know how much we appreciate the work they are doing.

Mr. Speaker, the fall of the canal there has to be planned. There are no fewer than seven places where excavations have to be undertaken; there are three towns which have to be laid out; there are national roads to be built; and I wonder where we are going to end if there is any delay in implementing this scheme. The first area, of course, which will benefit from this scheme is the Eastern Province, because we already have our harbours, we have our national roads, we have our railways. This scheme will, of course, cost a huge sum of money and the agricultural industry cannot bear the cost alone. Indeed, that will not be necessary because once power is available there will be a decentralization of industries and those industries will make their contribution to the cost. Sir, I simply cannot understand how the Opposition can come here and propose that this scheme should be delayed. I believe that the whole of the Eastern Province, the whole of the Cape, will vote against the United Party as a result of the attitude that they have adopted in this debate in connection with the Orange River scheme. I am sure that there is not a single English-speaking farmer in our part of the world who is going to vote for them again. Those English farmers are my friends and there is hearty co-operation between us. I am sure that the farmers in the Eastern Province, who are so unanimous as far as this matter is concerned, are grateful for the assistance given to them by the Government. Many of them had to sell a portion of their land because it was simply impossible for them to make a living there. To-day they are so grateful for this scheme that I am sure that they are going to erect monuments one day to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Water Affairs. Mr. Tom Bowker’s name has been mentioned here by the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker). Tom Bowker would certainly not have voted for any delay in the implementation of the Orange River scheme, nor will a single Eastern Province member vote for such a proposition. But I want to say to you, Mr. Speaker, that this scheme is not going to provide just a temporary solution in the drought-stricken areas; it is also going to promote the decentralization of industries. That decentralization of industries wifi be able to take place on a larger scale than in the Tennessee Valley. The facilities have already been provided there. After six years, when this water becomes available, the Government wifi reap the first fruits of this scheme, and when the scheme is further extended, as it wifi be extended later on, about 92,000 morgen of land wifi be under irrigation, and when that happens I foresee that this scheme is going to be one of the greatest national assets ever created by any Government in South Africa. Sir, we have our gold and we are grateful for that fact; we wish the gold mines every success; we wish all our industries every success, but surely secondary industry and the gold-mining industry must also concede some little place under the sun to the farmer. Mr. Speaker, there are hon. members here who sat with me on the Select Committee on the P.A.Y.E. system and they wifi be able to confirm that the income of 75 per cent of our farmers is less than R2,000. As a result of this scheme and other schemes which are at present engaging the Government’s attention, those farmers wifi be placed on a sound footing again. They wifi not have to flee to the cities. Where people are at present on uneconomic holdings they will be placed on economic holdings, and the whole of our agricultural industry will be placed on a sound footing. The only enemy which the farmer has in South Africa is drought; the farmer does not complain so much about the prices he gets but he does complain about the uncertainty of farming. I want to ask the Government now to remove that uncertainty as far as possible.

The risk factor.

Yes, I think the Government should give a little attention to the risk factor in the agricultural industry, because if one branch of the agricultural industry fares badly, it is no encouragement to other branches of the industry to extend their activities. I am thinking of the dairy industry, for example. We believe that the production of dairy products must be encouraged in South Africa because South Africa simply cannot do without milk. That is why we ask for a basic price which wifi be high enough to enable the farmer to make a decent living. That is all the farmer expects. We are very grateful, however, for what this Government has done for the farmers in the past. But what did the United Party Government do for the farmers? I recall the days when maize lay rotting at the stations; I recall the days when we practically had to give our wool away for nothing; I recall the days when they exported our maize and made a slight profit. What did they do with that profit? They deposited that profit into the coffers of the State, and it was only when the National Party came into power that that money, or at any rate what was left of it, could be given back to the farmers for the building up of a stabilization fund. I want to congratulate the farmers on the fact that they have built up their stabilization fund to such an extent that they can face the future with great confidence. I say therefore that the whole country will be up in arms if the United Party comes forward with a proposal, as the hon. member for East London (City) did here, that we should take the money of the maize farmer to subsidize the meat producer. We all know that the farmers are satisfied with this Government. Nobody can be blamed for the droughts.

Are the Free State farmers also satisfied?

Yes, the Free State farmers are also satisfied with the Government’s policy. They will never vote for the United Party while the United Party persists with their integration policy under which the farmers will be ruined. What hon. members on that side want is kaffir-farming; they want a lot of kaffirs to do the farming. They put forward such a strong plea here for the squatter system that one would have sworn they were kaffir farmers. We on this side feel that we do not need the squatter system; we want to stand on our own feet and we are prepared to pay decent wages to those people so that they can also make a living. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to say that we approve of everything that this Government has done in the past.

It was a pleasure to listen to the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) who spoke just before me. The hon. member realizes that the Orange River project will bring about new development, create new possibilities for expansion and give a tremendous impetus to our agricultural industry.

Mr. Speaker, when one considers the fact that the agricultural industry in the northern provinces is barely 50 or 60 years old, and that after the Anglo-Boer War there was virtually no agricultural industry, it goes wtihout saying that the agricultural industry in those provinces is much more susceptible to natural disasters and that the uncertain factors to which the previous speaker referred are far more noticeable there. In order to understand the position it is necessary for us to picture the drought conditions that prevail at present in the Northern Transvaal. I want to say here immediately that we are aware of the fact that things are going very well with many branches of the agricultural industry and the reason why things are not going well in the Northern Transvaal is simply because no rain has fallen there and because things cannot be made to grow by artificial means. Mr. Speaker, I want to pay tribute immediately and express our gratitude to the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing who has extended a helping hand to the farmers there who are finding things difficult. We also want to pay tribute to the departments and officials who have had to make decisions from time to time on the requests for assistance emanating from those areas. Those decisions often determined whether the farmer concerned could continue in the industry or whether he had to offer his services in some other sphere on the labour market. It is a pleasant privilege for me therefore to thank the officials and the members of the Farmers’ Assistance Committees very heartily indeed for everything that they have done to lighten the burden of the farmers in those parts. Various aid schemes were brought into being there but those schemes were only emergency aid schemes. The idea of these schemes was not to rehabilitate the farmers; the idea was only to enable these people to keep going and, of course, to hope for better days ahead. It has been said repeatedly recently—and this is a typical example of what often happens in this area—that the farmer farms on the Land Bank’s farm, with the money of the State Advances Recoveries Office, for the State. We do not say this derisively but we are deeply conscious of the seriousness of the conditions which prevail in the Northern Transvaal.

What has been the effect of the drought conditions in that area? It is no longer a problem which affects only certain individual farmers; it is a problem which affects the whole of the community. One-third of the congregation of a certain church in a particular area have left already. The area is becoming depopulated. The remaining members of that congregation can no longer meet their commitments. We have the problem in the schools that there are no longer sufficient children to justify the retention by these schools of their former grading. The teachers have to leave; the hostels are standing empty to a certain extent. This state of affairs results in a large measure of dislocation. The small businessman serving the farming community can no longer make a living. If he does not leave timeously he will go the way of so many others before him; he will have to go into liquidation. Even the organizations which the farmers have built up for themselves, the agricultural co-operatives, no longer have the turnover of products which they used to handle on behalf of the various control boards and they are no longer in a position, therefore, to give their members the customary and necessary financial assistance. We say that as a result of those drought conditions a problem has developed there which seriously affects the whole community there and which seriously disrupts the life of the entire community there. At the same time the depopulation that is taking place has resulted in a curtailment of existing services. The local people are losing opportunities of employment and we find that there is no longer the business turnover that there used to be. This has resulted in a deterioration of the economic position and of social conditions there, with a resultant psychological effect which can only be described as tremendously demoralizing. But we are grateful for the fact that in spite of all the problems that I have mentioned and the difficult times that the people there are experiencing, they have continued to maintain their self-respect, and it is because of this fact—a fact for which we are very grateful—that we do not come to this House to plead for charity or alms or to ask that moneys owing to the State should be written off; we are not pleading here for the subsidies proposed by the Opposition. All that the farmers are asking for is for an opportunity to continue to follow the calling that they love and to remain on the soil in which they have put down their roots. This being so, our plea to the hon. the Minister, because we are already aware of the reasons for this unfortunate position, is that an official inquiry be instituted to ascertain how those farmers can be timeously rehabilitated. All we ask is that an inquiry be instituted to determine what is needed. After that inquiry ways and means will then have to be found to consolidate the position of those farmers in their chosen calling once again, a calling which is indispensable to our national economy. Once that inquiry has been instituted we foresee that many of those farmers will have to be consolidated and resettled because they are farming on holdings to-day which according to present standards are uneconomic. A further degree of disruption will therefore be unavoidable in order to be able to act eventually in the best interests of those people. That is why we want to associate ourselves with the remarks of the hon. member for Cradock who became lyrical—and we do not blame him—about the development of the Orange River scheme. We also want to take the Opposition to task for suggesting that the aforementioned scheme be delayed because we believe that with the development of that scheme it will in all probability be possible— and we trust that this will actually be done— to place many of our farmers from the Northern Transvaal under the Orange River scheme so as to give them a better opportunity to rehabilitate themselves.

May I put a question to the hon. member? Will he tell us which member on this side asked that the Orange River scheme be delayed?

The hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson).

The hon. member who has just put that question to me ap parently did not listen to the remarks of his leader in the financial sphere, the hon. member for Constantia, who said that it would be necessary to delay the Orange River project and to give preference to other necessary services.

That is what the hon. the Minister said.

That was the whole trend of the argument on that side. Is it impossible for that hon. member to understand his own people?

That was said in the Budget speech. Read it.

I leave this subject, however, and I trust that it will be possible for the Government to agree to hold a departmental inquiry into conditions in the Northern Transvaal, not in order to determine the causes of this unfortunate state of affairs, because the causes are well known, but to find ways and means to solve the problem there. The existing aid schemes have been of great assistance to us. Five years have already gone by and as yet there is no absolute certainty of relief in the immediate future. Indeed, the opposite will probably be the case because even if it does rain soon, the fact still remains that those farmers have experienced a tremendous setback from which they will not easily recover for some years.

Mr. Speaker, this brings me to a subject which is of the utmost importance and urgency. Mindful of all the problems connected with the agricultural industry and mindful of the numbers of uncertain factors, which are completely unpredictable and uncontrollable, I feel that what we need is the establishment of an agricultural finance department which will, I am sure, cope very successfully with the agricultural problems which arise throughout the Republic from time to time. I say this because that department will be set up with the specific object of financing the agricultural industry under conditions such as these. Let us see what the position is at the moment. At the moment we have various State Departments which are trying very enthusiastically to be of assistance to the farmers. We are not being critical when we say this but we are all aware of the fact that they are not able to comply with all the needs of the farmers. We have, for example, the State Advances Recoveries Office which was originally not intended to fulfil the function which it is fulfilling to-day. Its purpose originally was to assist sporadically as and when a state of emergency in the farming industry developed. We find that 69 of these emergency schemes have been put into operation with Cabinet approval since 1935 when the Farmers’ Assistance Act and the State Advances Recoveries Act were passed. We are grateful for this, but we are even more grateful that the Cabinet in its wisdom decided in 1960 to make certain of those schemes permanent. The farmer knows now that he can depend upon the assistance of the State in time of trouble. But we also have the Department of Lands which since 1912 has been doing a limited amount of financing, more particularly for settlers. This financing ability was considerably increased last year, for which we are grateful, but this has merely resulted in a further duplication of existing services in another category. We have the Department of Agricultural Technical Services which also does agricultural financing to a limited extent; we have the Land Bank which is in fact not a State institution but which is, after all, State-controlled to a large extent. They have their own sphere in which they do agricultural financing. We have the Department of Water Affairs with its loans and subsidies. The farmer finds himself surrounded by a maze of organizations from which he can obtain assistance and this also results in the fact that his financial obligations are divided up amongst a number of Departments. This fact results in high costs, inconvenience and delay, and we say that much efficiency has also to be sacrificed because of this position. Our experience has been that all these Departments that I have mentioned have recently concentrated upon becoming more streamlined; they have tried to keep pace with the requirements of the farmer and for this reason they have from time to time adjusted themselves according to the requirements of the times and the circumstances that have had to be overcome.

I have already referred to the permanent schemes we have to-day, for which we are grateful, but it is very clear to us that a change will have to be made very soon. It is simply impossible to our way of thinking that an agricultural industry can continue to operate in the midst of so much uncertainty. There are many members who may perhaps tell us that the private financial sector ought to do that financing. Mr. Speaker, that is our problem exactly. The private sector is simply not able to undertake agricultural financing in South Africa effectively, even though it might want to do so. We know that the commercial banks and other financial institutions assist farmers appreciably by way of short-term loans, under certain conditions, for the purchase of implements and so forth, and even for the purchase of land, and we are very grateful on this score, but it is not effective simply because the agricultural industry in South Africa, more than in any other country, is subject to many factors which are beyond human control. Because of this fact, the risk to the investor is increased. This being so, the private sector is not inclined to risk its money in that industry, and that is why we have the unfortunate position—and this is something we experience almost daily—that it is when the farmer is in the direst straits that the private financial institutions become most concerned about their investments in that industry and the farmer is expected to meet his commitments at the most inopportune time—indeed, at a time when he is struggling to keep his head above water. We are grateful to those financial institutions which give our farmers additional assistance from time to time but from the nature of the case it is just impossible to expect the private financial sector to provide the farmer with credit facilities indefinitely. This being so there is only one other source of assistance to the farmer, and fortunately, that source is in the hands of the National Party to-day. We therefore take the liberty of approaching this Government, which has thus far assisted our farmers through these difficult times, to say that the time is ripe for action to be taken in that direction because a body of this nature will immediately be able to cope with those uncertain elements in our agricultural industry. It is obvious that when the State makes an investment in any agricultural project in this way the State will, of course, as a partner in the undertaking, want to have control over what is to become of that project. Assistance of this nature will therefore have to be conditional because the State will provide, when money is advanced, that that money is spent in a specific way and that it is used for a specific purpose. The introduction of a scheme of this nature will bring about greater stability for the individual farmer. We will then no longer encounter so many struggling farmers in the industry. Those unsuccessful farmers will gradually learn how to become successful farmers simply because the State will keep a watchful eye over their activities and supply them with the information they require. Mr, Speaker, we really hope that, mindful of the urgent needs of our farmers, it will be possible for the Government to establish a department of agricultural finance in the near future. With a view to the importance of the agricultural industry to enable the economic upsurge in the Republic to continue, we are not asking too much when we ask the Government to give serious consideration to this request. By this means we shall be able to place the agricultural industry, which is the backbone of our country, on a healthy and economic footing once again.

This afternoon I wish to deal with one or two points raised by previous speakers in connection with the Budget, which really surprised me. The one point was raised by the hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Wentzel) who said that if we had had an immigration policy years ago, as advocated by the United Party, we would have found ourselves landed with “what type of person”. Let me first tell the hon. member that that kind of remark does us no credit and it does himself no credit either.

What is wrong with it?

The answer to that, is quite simple and straightforward. The answer is, that persons responsible for introducing immigrants have machinery at their disposal to make quite certain that the persons who come here are desirable. That machinery was in action before and this Government put an end to it. Those, Sir, are a few facts.

The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) talks about the Orange River scheme and who was responsible for that scheme?

Every idiot knows that.

I would like to tell the hon. member for Cradock that apart from the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) who was one of the prime movers in this scheme, there were many other people who were interested in this scheme, who advocated it, and who printed pamphlets, and who put up action plans long before the Government took any interest in this scheme.

But we put it through.

Yes, the Government put it through but other people did the work.

The hon. member for Groblersdal (Mr. M. J. H. Bekker) referred to farmers. All he wants is a good, sound, healthy economy for the farmers. I think we can all agree with him there. What I would like to tell the hon. member is that there are many of us who know quite a lot about farming—not the wool farmers or the mealie farmers or the citrus or the sugar farmers but the farmers who struggle to make a living on smallholdings. The problem facing us as a country is to reconcile the increase in prices for primary produce, so as to make it a proposition for the producer himself to produce the produce, and to make it possible for the consumer earning a low wage or salary to buy these essential commodities. That is the reason at the back of this particular amendment moved by the United Party. My particular mission is to bring to the notice of the House something affecting those people whom it is my honour to represent. I am trying to reconcile two points of view, from the remarks which have been made here from time to time, and of which one reads in the newspapers all over the country as a result of speeches by members of the governing party. The Prime Minister said there would be no concessions to Coloured persons.

Where did he say that?

The hon. Minister for Coloured Affairs says we must do our best to uplift the Coloured man. The point is this that an awful lot of talking is done about what is to be done for the Coloured man in terms of words—uplifting him into a vacuum. The hon. Minister for Railways said he did discriminate—that was the word he used. As a result of questions I asked him, the only information I could get dealing with the employment of Coloured persons on the Railways was, that where Bantu were found to be redundant and superfluous to requirements he would offer the jobs to Coloured persons.

The hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) went to considerable trouble to tell me that that meant, I was endeavouring to introduce Coloured, Indian and Bantu workers to the Railways. That is the type of remark which makes the Coloured man believe, correctly, that the Government is insincere in its lip service to uplift him. The Coloured man says quite plainly, and quite straight, and quite honestly, and almost unanimously, that he is not interested in job reservation; he is not interested in the compulsion under the Group Areas Act; he is not interested in separate development. He rejects them. That is the Coloured man’s attitude. So I say, that in order to reconcile the attitude of the hon. the Prime Minister of “no concessions” with the attitude of the Minister of Coloured Affairs who, speaking in London, said: “Our job and duty is to raise the Coloured man”, is not easy.

I want to deal with one or two cases, which have come to my knowledge as a result of questions I have asked. We were told that there were many vacancies in the police and we were told the rates of pay. I would say that if the Minister of Finance would set aside a sum of money to deal with the very real problem of making friends with the Coloured man, to find ways and means of uplifting him; of giving him a better deal, or seeing that he is paid an adequate wage and salary, he would be doing this country a service. I say to the hon. the Minister of Finance, who has produced this enormous, globular, almost celestial, surplus, that the vast mass of people in this country, the wage-earner, the salaried man, the Coloured man, gets nothing. He gets literally nothing. To that, members opposite can quickly say to me—I shall say it before it is said— that our rate of tax is low. As the Minister of Finance knows so well, the indirect taxation is a burden on everybody and is so severe, that his Budget could not exist without it. Almost the whole of the R1,018,000,000 revenue is derived from customs, excise and from income-tax. When one examines the figures and sees the indirect taxation which has got to be paid by even the lowest in our economy, we find ourselves in the situation of saying that those who get R200 and down per month, have received no concessions whatsoever. I therefore appeal to him; I ask him sincerely, to reason with his own people to abandon the attitude, when any one or two or ten or 20 men ask for something for the Coloured community, of charging them with trying to upset the entire economy of the country by wanting to swamp business or trade or the Public Service with Coloured persons. What I say, Sir, is this, that Coloured people have every right to be employed in the Government service wherever it is possible. The Minister of Labour said the other day, that the manpower shortage was an exaggeration. Those words have already been thrown back in his teeth by any number of men engaged in commerce and industry throughout the country. I say here this afternoon, that the matter could be resolved quickly if an active and constructive programme was introduced to train the Coloured man and the Coloured woman. If they were given an opportunity of learning something they would be useful. I say our educational system should be so expanded as to be able to bring this about.

Many millions of pounds are spent on Bantustans and border industries. I want to ask the Minister of Finance how much money is spent on the promotion of industry in which Coloured persons can be employed? When I tackled the Minister of Railways he said the Railways were controlled by conventions. I put it to you, Sir, in all earnestness, that conventions of that kind, can never stand the test of public opinion nor world opinion. Coloured people live with us; they belong to us; they speak our language; they speak both languages; they go to our churches; they have our customs; they wear the same clothes, they have the same hates, loves, desires, anxieties and worries, and they are entitled to exactly the same as we have, and should get it.

You are invited to a cocktail party in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I am not interested in that type of irrelevant interjection. I plead for a group of people who have been neglected for a considerable time in spite of all, shall I say, sweet words which fall from the mouths of Government speakers. When the actual test comes we find that the Coloured person is left away on the outside. One has only to motor through this province, which I did quite recently, to see the conditions under which they live. Much has been said about agriculture. Nothing has been said about the Coloured person in agriculture. If anybody cares to take a trip along the Orange River he will see the conditions under which Coloured people live, and the conditions under which they are compelled to farm, the limited scope at their disposal, the horrible houses which are theirs to occupy, and the lack of facilities in all directions. That is their lot. If any member of this House cares to take a look at the various villages in the Cape Province—I only speak of the Cape Province, because I know it—and would see the conditions which are offered to Coloured persons in terms of the law, which is to-day, shall I say, the great flower in the buttonhole of the Government, he too would hang his head in shame.

It was my misfortune to miss the previous Minister of External Affairs. I hope the present Minister of External Affairs will take time off to see the conditions in the town of Beaufort West, which he represents, and see the conditions under which Coloured persons are expected to live. See if he can go into the forums of the world in international places, and defend what he sees there. The Irrigation Department employs numbers of Coloured persons in temporary capacities. These people have been in the service for upwards of five years. In reply to a question of mine as to whether or not they would be permanently employed I was told: When there is a vacancy. Those of us who work in public bodies know that if persons are employed in a temporary capacity for five to ten years, surely it is time the establishment was increased to take care of those people. The test of our progress, Sir, is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but whether we provide enough for those who have too little. And there are very many people in this country who have much too little. I say, with a Budget of the size of the one presented to us this week, with the estimates so badly framed that an expected surplus of R100,000 has been turned into a mere R100,000,000, we have earned the hatred of entrenched greed, because we are giving nothing to those who deserve the most.

One final point is the question of education, with which I shall deal in detail under the appropriate Vote. Let me just say now that I am astonished at the amount of money that has been found for the new Department of Coloured Education but which was not made available to the Administrator of the Cape Province when he was in charge of education. I want members of this House to know, that education for Coloured persons could have been compulsory. An ordinance was passed making it so. But strangely enough the hon. Administrator of the Cape Province has been kept short during all the years, when this controversy was raging as to whether Coloured education should be transferred or not. The answer always was that there was no money. There has been a Nationalist majority in the Provincial Council for some years. The Administration had the machinery, the technical people, the trained staff and the personnel to conduct it but under the guise that there was no money it was taken away. The Minister of Coloured Education told me across the floor of the House that he was only responsible from 1 January. I put it to you, Sir, that he knew for a very long time what was going to happen. Within three months an enormous sum of money is made available to the Minister of Coloured Education when the machinery was in existence for the Administrator of the Cape Province to do the job.

I now wish to deal with a matter which interests me and to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister of Finance to a state of affairs which I think might enjoy his attention. He has, after much pleading by many people over many years, undertaken to do something about the marginal gold mines. The City of Kimberley, which happens to fall in my constituency, was in the doldrums for years because of the slump in the diamond industry. To-day the diamond industry is well off and the city as such, together with all the towns in the Northern Cape has entered into an era of prosperity. I want to put it to the hon. Minister of Finance whether he does not think the time has come when the discriminatory company’s tax on diamonds, which is now 90c instead of 60c should be reduced and furthermore that the 10 per cent export tax on diamonds should be removed. I say that for one reason. It is true, that at the moment, the diamond industry is flourishing. It is paying enormous taxes. The Minister of Finance will be able to verify, that little of that money has found its way back to the area, from which it was taken. He will also say and produce figures to me showing that the price for diamonds is the highest it has been for years. I concede all these things, but I put it to him that with the mines getting deeper it becomes more costly to produce and profits begin to fall. Before the cities that depend on diamonds find themselves in the position of the marginal mines in the Transvaal, which had another economy handy to bolster them up, I suggest with all due deference that he pays some attention to dealing with that particular aspect of our economy.

I should like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister of Mines why has there been such a delay in developing the known deposits of diamonds in the Coloured area of Kamaggas and adjoining farms? The hon. Minister has kindly given me some answers in reply to questions and said that he had appointed a committee. I put it to you, Sir, that the hon. Minister must know that there is a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction among the Coloured community, who are vitally interested in this particular deposit which is believed to be rich. They cannot understand why proposals which, according to my information, closed on 30 November—have not been accepted or rejected. I think tenders were invited or offers were invited for the prospecting of the land. These closed as long ago as 30 November, yet nothing has been done. We are still appointing a committee. I think the hon. the Minister will concede that this scheme which was put out and closed on 30 November was only one of many. Many people have been involved; many people have been asked to give opinions and many people have been asked to give advice. I wonder whether the fact that that is predominantly a Coloured area and that the people there are Coloured persons who will be interested and get the lion’s share, I hope, of what comes out is the reason for the delay. I cannot understand why there is this inordinate delay. Nor can I believe or concede that the hon. the Deputy Minister does not know exactly what he is doing. I think he is a knowledgeable man on this subject.

I already have had a meeting.

Very good. Well, that answers the question. I was told the other day the committee was still being appointed. That was only three days ago. It is good to know that a meeting has taken place. [Interjections.] No, I am never asleep. If anybody is asleep it is the Nationalist Government. I make a suggestion that in regard to Coloured people, we set aside the conventions of bygone days and bygone years, and that we remove the prejudices and bias from our minds and that we approach the entire proposition de novo. I suggest, Mr. Speaker,—I am terribly sorry the hon. the Prime Minister is not here at the moment—that the time has come when we should reason together and not just present legislation to be thrust down the throats of the Coloured community. The Coloured community does not like it, and does not accept it, although it has to live with it. I put that across the floor of this House to-day, Sir, in the earnest hope and desire that it will not fall upon deaf ears.

The hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) will, I am sure, not resent the fact if I do not follow up the remarks he made but proceed immediately with the speech that I want to make. I want to acknowledge in advance the assistance I have been given by, amongst others, the Director of the National Food Institute of the C.S.I.R. I have also obtained some of my information from radio talks like The Challenger of our Times.

I want us to see South Africa against the background of greater Africa south of the Sahara in regard to our agricultural production and the food problem. South Africa consists of one-seventh of the area south of the Sahara; she has 10 per cent of the population and produces 25 per cent of the food; 15,000,000 tons of food are produced by South Africa annually, that is, one ton of food for each inhabitant. It is estimated that every inhabitant man, woman and child of all races in South Africa consumes half a ton of food per annum. This means that there is a food surplus of about 7,000,000 tons per annum in South Africa. The inhabitants of all other countries south of the Sahara up to the Limpopo number 150,000,000 and they produce about 45,000,000 tons of food per annum. At a consumption of half a ton per person per annum they will need approximately 75,000,000 tons of food although they only produce 45,000,000 tons. There is therefore a shortage of between 30,000,000 and 40,000,000 tons as far as they are concerned.

It is an unfortunate fact that the White man is gradually disappearing from the Black independent states in Africa. The White man is disappearing from the health services scene and also the information that he has been making available in respect of agriculture and his efforts to uplift the Black from his barbaric state. The result is that the shortage of 30,000,000 tons may easily be doubled during the next few decades. It is possible that hunger will reign supreme in the decades to come. What is the position, for example, in Ethiopia? This is one of the countries which accuses us to-day before the World Court. Ninety per cent of the people of that country are illiterate; 50 per cent of them are suffering from malnutrition. They have no resistance to disease becaue they are so undernourished. Their wages are extremely low; there are no homes for them. Even in the capital of Addis Ababa they live in mud houses. Forty thousand of them die annually from malaria; their herds of livestock are dying off; slavery is rife, one-third of the national revenue is stolen during the process of its collection. But Haille Selassie, the head of that state, has salted away an amount of R800,000,000 in Western financial institutions for his own use. In passing part of the pattern of life in China and in India is that tens of thousands die of hunger each year.

Black Africa will become impoverished in the process of becoming free and I mention these matters with a view to the possibility that South Africa may be able to market her products in Black Africa in future and that those countries may be able to pay for those products out of the millions of dollars which they receive, amongst others, from America, dollars that are rained lavishly upon them. In South Africa we have 100,000 independent farmers and they remain reasonably constant because of the interaction of sub-division on the one hand and consolidation on the other hand. Land ownership on a large scale does not give rise to great consternation on our part but we cannot say the same as far as land ownership on a small scale is concerned. Ownership of land on a large scale is not something that happens everywhere simultaneously with ownership of land on a small scale; and it is not permanent. It is a sporadic occurrence that takes place at odd places throughout the country but the position always rights itself in the cycle of consolidation and testation.

Our task is to reconstruct these 100,000 units so that they can be used in the best possible way with a view to supplying our own needs and exports. The population of the world to-day is 3,000,000,000 but two-thirds of these, as we know, are suffering from malnutrition, that is to say, 2,000,000,000. It is estimated that by the year 2000 the population of the world will be 6,000,000,000. Proportionately, therefore, the world will then require about 3,000,000,000 tons of food annually, and according to present indications. 4,000,000,000 people will then be suffering from malnutrition. South Africa must not only set an example to an unsympathetic Western world in regard to the need for the amicable co-existence of the various races, but she must also assist that unsympathetic world to feed the hostile East and Greater Africa. Even though we are a small and weak agricultural country we cannot shirk this difficult task. Our farmers must make a decent living. People suffering from hunger beyond our borders must be provided with food and our national economy must be strengthened. What are our prospects? [Interjection.] I do not know what that interjection was, Mr. Speaker, but interjections of that nature while I am dealing with a serious matter such as this remind me of the English saying: “It is better to be a witty fool than to be a foolish wit!” Well, an hon. member over there may get up and speak, and the people on his side will listen to him. There is another English saying which states: “No matter how foolish a person may be, there will always be somebody else foolish enough to listen to him!”

What obstacles are there which prevent our complying with this vocation? We experience a variety of acute setbacks of short duration which sometimes threaten to become chronic. These are enough to break our farmers economically. Farmers who previously had large banking accounts which they built up without State assistance find to-day that their banking accounts are overdrawn to the extent of R100,000. As a result of this fact a very dangerous tendency is unfortunately developing on the part of certain people and they have started thinking that farming in South Africa is no longer under any circumstances a paying proposition anywhere in the country. That is a pessimistic attitute which can do us no good. It is unnecessary and superfluous.

Because of these setbacks, it is necessary that assistance be given by the State. There is another great danger inherent in this fact. We must remember that the freedom of the farmer goes hand in hand with, and is maintained by self management. His freedom is of far greater value to him than some form of assistance which restricts that freedom, places that farmer under supervision and makes him subject to prescription rather than to information, which requires him to account for all his actions instead of enabling him to maintain himself as a free entrepreneur, researcher, and formulator of successful farming methods. In every farming unit the personality of the farmer as a free entrepreneur, researcher and a formulator of scientific farming methods must be preserved. His farming must bear that stamp.

Another great stumbling-block in our path which prevents us from achieving our ideal is the question of high land prices. There are certain maize-oroducing areas in our country where 15 years ago farms were sold at R20 per morgen and are now being offered and sold at R100 per morgen; there are certain sugar farms which ten years ago were purchased for R10,000 and which are now being offered and sold for R80,000. If one were to pay R6 per morgen, quite apart from wages for daily and seasonal labourers and quite apart from the cost of remedies for the prevention and care of diseases, then bearing in mind the fact that one needs 8 morgen of grazing per sheep, it costs one up to R50 even before the sheep are put onto the land.

The next hampering factor is drought, the drought which troubles us to such an extent year after year. The drought has already reached such proportions in the Northern Transvaal that when a farmer was asked when it rained in the parts, he answered: If I remember correctly it was last year on a Thursday! Mr. Speaker, it is because of these continual droughts that in one magisterial district which is about half as big as the constituency into which it falls and which includes our district, the farmers in August last year owed the Land Bank R3,713,806 and were in arrears to the extent of R372,836. The reason for this was the drought. I just want to add that the assistance given in terms of the Farmer’s Assistance Act since 1958 to the people in that same area, without including contributions in respect of production loans and loans for stock feed, rations and so forth, amounted to R720,254, with arrears of R61,609. The proportion of the amount in arrear to the amount borrowed is 1:4. Mr. Speaker, this gives us an indication of the critical position of the farmers who have to endure a drought of this nature year after year. I cannot resist the temptation to quote from Organized Agriculture in order to point out how drought affects the crop farmer as well as the stock farmer (translation)—

That has been the position of the crop farmer in the drought-stricken areas for as long as four or five successive years. I want to read another quotation with reference to the cattle-farmer (translation)—

These conditions have resulted in the fact that there are actually parts of our country in which things are going very badly although I want to deny once and for all that things are going badly for all farmers generally and that bankruptcy is staring them in the face. That has never been the case during the whole period of 15 years that this Government has been in power but it is true that sporadically things go badly. There are a few points that I want to make and I want to do so in pursuance of reports that I have received from a few places in my constituency. I asked them to send me reports on the drought and these are the reports:

Area B: 90 per cent of grazing finished; crops withered; anticipate 10 per cent return; condition of stock poor; boreholes deteriorating; 50 per cent of wheat crops destroyed by finches.

Area C: No crops on some lands; other lands, 12 per cent. Grazing poor; condition critical.

Area D: 30 per cent grazing; finch plague very serious; successfully combated, but, unfortunately, too late. Crops 10 per cent to 50 per cent.

I can go on in this way to show that the drought is a threat to us. It is also a fact that it stands in the way of the ideal that I mentioned at the start of my speech—of our possibly feeding the hungry masses of Africa and building up an export market.

Another factor is soil erosion. I want to quote from the Transvaler of 13 Feburary 1964. (translation.)—

The following also appears in this report(translation.)—

Mr. Speaker, we cannot allow this to be a stumbling-block. It is suggested in this report that this money should be supplied by our economy as a whole. I agree 100 per cent that the mines and commerce, as well as industrial undertakings, must be prepared to contribute towards the retention of our soil fertility, because if our fertile soil is washed away, all the gold that we mine and the oil which may still be discovered underground will not keep us alive.

A further factor impeding our progress in this regard is injudicious mechanization. Dr. Tomlinson dealt with this matter recently at Towoomba, Warmbaths, on a farmers’ day when he spoke on “The economy of mechanization in agriculture”. Sir, mechanization does indeed have its advantages, but it also creates problems. Advantages as well as problems must have increased considerably when we take into account that from 1940 to 1960 mechanization costs rose from 15 per cent to 40 per cent of total costs. What is more, from 1947 to 1957, the price of tractors in South Africa increased by 348 per cent as against 82 per cent in America. Therefore, although there are definite advantages to be derived from mechanization, the problems in connection with mechanization have also increased considerably. To mechanize advantageously the following facts must be remembered: (1) Non-Whites increase the cost of machinery as well as the rate of depreciation when they work with that machinery; (2) injudicious tractor purchases on small farms increase mechanization costs enormously. In order to combat these evils we must have (1) the selection and training of non-White tractor drivers; (2) advanced mechanical knowledge on the part of the farmer himself in his capacity as supervisor over his labourers on the farm; (3) the co-operative purchasing of mechanical equipment by smaller farmers in order to make the best use thereof. A sound basis is a medium tractor which can be used to plough and cultivate 80 morgen of clay soil, 100 morgen of loamy soil and 120 morgen of sandy soil per annum; and (4) formal agricultural training for all future farmers and the full utilization of existing services by practical farmers is and remains indispensable. One cannot emphasize this last point sufficiently; My acknowledgments to Dr. Tomlinson.

We thank the Government for what it has done and the way in which it has assisted the farmers over the difficult years. The farmers do not want charity. The Government has assisted where it has been able to do so and it will where possible continue to assist them in future as well, so as to make them all full-fledged farmers, men who can make a worthwhile living independently and who, as hitherto, will be able to make their contribution towards strengthening the economy of our country. Despite setbacks, I maintain that, with the good guidance given by this Government, coupled with the farmers’ own toughness and powers of endurance, the future of farming generally is indeed rosy.

I want to congratulate the hon. member who has just sat down on the speech that he made and I want to give him the assurance that the House as a whole enjoyed listening to him. He gave us a thorough survey of farming conditions in large parts of our country.

I want to come back now to the motion moved by the hon. member for Gardens (Mr. Connan) on one of our first private members’ days. As you know, Mr. Speaker, not very much time was allowed for that debate and I did not have the opportunity of protesting against certain allegations made by the hon. member on that day. I want to make use of this opportunity to do so now and I want to express my appreciation of the fact that the hon. member is present. I told him that it was my intention to reply to his speech if I was given the opportunity to do so.

In moving his motion the hon. member suggested that a commission of inquiry be appointed to investigate the general position of the agricultural industry. By that he meant at all levels and in all spheres and sectors of farming. The hon. the Minister replied to this request in due course and I just want to say that his answer probably had the general support of the House because it is certainly not necessary to have an inquiry made into farming in South Africa. We are acquainted with the position and so are hon. members opposite to a large extent. What I did not like about the speech of the hon. member for Gardens was that he found fault with the Government. The theme of his motion was actually that the Government was responsible for conditions in our country. I feel convinced, having regard to what other hon. members have said, including the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. Heystek) that the statement that the Government is to blame for conditions in the agricultural industry is devoid of all truth. Reference was made to bankruptcy. The hon. member for Gardens was strongly supported by the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk) who is always inclined in debates on farming matters to talk about the bankruptcy of farmers. I think hon. members who continually talk of bankruptcy whenever farming conditions are discussed, do the farmers a very great injustice. It is not the truth either. I agree that certain farmers do go bankrupt and that certain farmers do disappear from the farming profession but that has been happening over the years; we find in the business world and in every other undertaking that as a result of incorrect planning or incorrect management certain people fall away from time to time. In the farming sphere certain farmers are overcome by the forces of nature and fall away. That also applies to a limited number of farmers. But it cannot be said of the farmers in general. The theme of the hon. member for Gardens was that these conditions were due to the bad management of the Government. That is also a statement that is devoid of all truth. I do not think there has ever been a Government in South Africa which has been more sympathetically disposed towards the farmers than the present Government. I am not speaking as a politician now. The accusation is sometimes made that this Government is only a farmers’ Government. We find that other interested groups make accusations in the newspapers and remarks on public platforms about the sympathy that is shown by the Government towards the agricultural industry in general. And that is the truth. It is definitely not a question of favouritism. The Government is sympathetic because it is essential for every nation to ensure that things go well with the agricultural industry. Agriculture is the life artery, the fountain-head of every nation. I take it that the hon. member for Gardens is himself a very careful farmer; indeed I have learnt that he is, but if he is such an exemplary farmer, I want to ask why the farmers in his constituency do not send him to this House and why he has to represent an urban constituency in this House? There must be a reason for it and I think we must seek the reason amongst the farmers on the platteland. That applies not only to the hon. member, it also applies to the hon. member for Sea Point (Mr. J. A. L. Basson). I understand that he is also a very progressive farmer but he does not represent a farming constituency; he represents Sea Point. The same thing can be said of other members opposite. Do we need any better proof that the farmers support the Government than the fact that these good farmers whom I have just mentioned but who happen to follow United Party policy and politics are simply not considered as representatives of the farmers? They are not given the opportunity as the representatives of the farmers to plead the cause of the agricultural industry in this House. It has been said that the farmers are facing bankruptcy but I just want to add that the Government cannot make rain. We have listened here to the speech of the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. Heystek) in which he outlined the disturbing conditions in certain parts of the country, but no Government on earth can make rain. There is a further great problem as far as the farmers are concerned and that is the problem of marketing. A large proportion of our primary products is marketed overseas and we are dependent upon overseas markets. We cannot simply fix prices and say: “You must pay these prices”. These are conditions over which our farmers have no control and over which the Government has no control either. Accordingly that accusation against the Government does not hold water. As far as Government assistance to the farmers in South Africa is concerned I do not know whether we can think out any new formulae. I find it difficult to think of one instance in which the Government does not assist the farmers financially when it becomes necessary to do so. Take the question of the purchase of land by the Land Bank. What was the position in the past? One could only obtain a loan of 60 per cent of the valuation of the farm. The law was changed and to-day one can obtain a loan of four-fifths of the valuation for the purchase of land. What was the position of the Department of Lands in regard to the purchase of land? The maximum was £2,000. My colleague on the right used to be a member of the board and in those days advances for the purchase of land were limited to £2,000. The present figure is £11,500. Farmers who find themselves in financial difficulty are assisted in many other ways. There is the Farmers’ Assistance Board; we have State Advances and there are schemes for the purchase of stock and implements. Assistance has been given to farmers who have been hit hard by drought over the past years. In every case in which one has had the right to expect the Government to lend a helping hand, that support has been given. As far as the allegations of the hon. member for Gardens are concerned, I must say that they are devoid of all truth. I think we must be politically honest when discussing the interests of the farmers.

From time to time, when it becomes necessary to do so, hon. members on this side also advocate sympathetic treatment of the farmers, and we will continue to do so. From time to time we will draw the attention of the Government to conditions as we know them. As I have already said, agriculture is the life artery of any nation. After gold it is the second largest earner of revenue for our country. I just want to say in passing that last year the gross income of the agricultural industry amounted to R882,000,000 and the industry employed 620,000 non-Whites as permanent workers; I am not counting the temporary workers. The Government has to keep its finger on the pulse of the agricultural community and that is what it is doing. Many statistics have been mentioned in this debate by hon. members. I do not want to follow their example but I just want to mention with appreciation a few matters which I think merit the gratitude of the whole country. I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on the concession in regard to estate duty, the concession as far as income-tax is concerned, and the increase in the pensions of those people who are dependent upon their pensions. These are very fine gestures on his part and one has the right to expect concessions of this kind in a Budget such as this. The criticism of the United Party of this Budget thus far reminds me of what happened three years ago—one can go back even further than that—when the Republic came into being. I think of all the prophecies that were made on platforms throughout the country and in the newspapers which support the Opposition. We have the opportunity to-day to take stock and to cast our minds back to what was said at that time.

Blood and tears were predicted if we became a Republic and if we left the Commonwealth. It was predicted that the banks would close, that we would have strikes, that we would have unemployment and that there would be large-scale poverty. They even went so far as to predict bloodshed. What became of all those predictions? South Africa, generally speaking, finds herself in a stronger financial position than ever before. That is the answer to those predictions of the United Party to which we have had to listen from time to time. Hon. members opposite have found fault with this, that and the other but South Africa is grateful to the Government and is proud of this Budget. That is amply borne out by the comments which have appeared in the newspapers in general. What criticism do they offer? No criticism worth mentioning has been put forward. That is the answer. There we have the true barometer of the popularity of this Budget. I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister very heartily indeed.

I regret I cannot discuss adequately the speeches I have just listened to from the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. Heystek) and the hon. member for Lichtenburg (Mr. M. C. van Niekerk). I think they will agree that we have never had a Government in South Africa which has not been sympathetic towards the farming industry of South Africa. We have always been sympathetically disposed towards the farming industry in South Africa, because we are a developing country and being a developing country, we realize the importance of the farming industry. We realize to-day that it is most unfortunate that farmers have to leave the land. That is what is happening. I know that the hon. member for Waterberg has explained to us that the cause of it is: Drought. Drought has always been the enemy of the farmer in South Africa. I remember how when I lived in the constitutency of the hon. member for Lichtenburg we had two successive bad years: One year we had drought and there was no crop; the following year they had good rains, but we were plagued by locusts and again the farmers did not have a crop. Many of the farmers had to leave their farms and go to the diamond diggings. But the spirit of the Lichtenburgers was not broken. We celebrated that disaster by having a great debate “Wat is die ergste, sprinkane of droogte?” That has been the spirit of the farmers right throughout history, and not only the farmers in South Africa, but in every country. I was particularly interested in the information from the hon. member for Waterberg when he told us that Haile Selassie had been able to salt away his wealth in another country. I can assure him that nobody in South Africa will be able to salt away blocked rands while we have this Minister of Finance. He is now cogitating, and I think he is working out another scheme. As far as the last one is concerned, we told him at the time when he introduced it that it would have the effect it is having to-day. I hope he will be more successful next time.

Sir, I am not interested so much in loans and donations to farmers. I wish to discuss the donations that the hon. the Minister referred to in his Budget speech, donations to universities. In discussing that, I think we must go back to 1960 when the hon. the Minister introduced his first scheme. In 1960 he introduced a scheme in which he said that companies could donate 1 per cent of their taxable income to financing our universities’ laboratories, schools of technology, libraries, grants for technical books, and so on. That was his plan. But he said, in propounding his plan to us that if a company was prepared to make a gift, 75 per cent would go to the university of the company’s choice, but 25 per cent would go into a common pool to be utilized by the Minister of Education, Arts and Science. That was his proposal in 1960. The following year he came again to discuss donations and said, what we had expected, that the plan seemed to be a failure, that there had not been a good response. For very obvious reasons, which he saw! The hon. the Minister did not like the idea of it not being a success because he suggested that he had considered very seriously the abolition of the plan. But he did not abolish it. He accepted the advice of this party, he abolished the 25 per cent compulsory donation and said that any company could give the 100 per cent to any university of its choice. That was in 1961. In 1962 the hon. Minister came again and did not make much reference to the plan, but said the scheme would continue for another year. Then in 1963 I saw the first glimmerings of the hon. the Minister’s new plan. He said in 1963 that he was prepared to make this a donation over a period of five years—the scheme could continue for five years, instead of being renewed from year to year. There was the first idea of a five-year plan, but he did not follow it up. Now he has come along with the plan for this year, and I should like to read the operative sentence—

It is called the National Loan and Bursary Fund. The money has to be deposited, I understand, into this National Fund. The hon. the Minister is making the same mistake as in 1960. Again he is prescribing how the money is to be spent, instead of saying to a company that if it is prepared to accept this new scheme it will be permitted to devote its donations to any college or technical college or university of its own choice for deserving students. I think that is a good scheme, but to say the money must go into a national fund to be utilized by the Minister of Education will, I think, right at the beginning ensure that the scheme is not the success that the Minister hopes it will be. I hope it will be a success. [Interjection.]

I should like to say this in passing, although I do not wish to pursue the matter. I should like the Minister to think of a company in which I have a very modest interest. This company has to pay company tax to the Minister of over 50 per cent per annum, not 30 per cent, and in addition to that the Minister, as the shareholder under the gold mining lease, takes another 22 per cent. So the Government takes from this mining company and its shareholders over 72 per cent of the profits, leaving them 28 per cent. The Minister has this year very generously said to private companies they can plough back not 40 per cent but 45 per cent of their profits, but how much can you plough back into a company if all you have left is 28 per cent? But the Minister is not finished yet. When the dividends are paid out of the 28 per cent, those dividends are again taxed in the hands of the individual shareholders. Does the Minister think that a shareholder in that company would be very enthusiastic in giving 1 per cent of the company’s taxable income? I should like the Minister to give the question of gold mining taxation the attention it has been waiting for now for 20 years. Year after year that taxation formula has been tinkered with, and I think that if the Minister were to be generous, and say, as the Socio-Economic Planning Council said in 1947 “We are prepared to recommend working gradually towards bringing gold mining taxation into line with the taxation of other companies”, the whole position would be retrieved.

I want to go a little further. I do not think the Minister in arranging these donations really appreciated the seriousness and the magnitude of the educational position in South Africa to-day. It is very serious indeed, and for obvious reasons. I accept that the Minister has the modern conception of a university. He realizes that a university to-day is not a place of learning for the sons of the privileged people of the country only. It is not a place where a young man goes to debate and play rugby and sing Gaudeamus Igitur; it is a place where young people go to work, and the Minister, who occupies a very important position in regard to universities, will realize that to-day we are seeking out the best men we can find. But I think he is going the wrong way about it. I think he does not realize that education is not a luxury which it is necessary for the economy to support. Throughout the world to-day education is of course making new and increasing demands upon the economy, but at the same time the economy is making greater demands upon education. There is reciprocity. The two go together, especially in a developing country. We try to classify countries in the world to-day into these three categories: Those that are undeveloped, like the countries to the north of us; those that are fully developed, like the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, Western Germany and Russia, which, although it is not fully developed is developing very rapidly. In those countries, even where they are fully developed, they realize that it is essential to make this provision for technological training and for the training of the staff that the hon. the Minister of Transport referred to in his speech. I made a note of it so as to get it correctly. The Minister of Transport referred to the shortage of engineers and technological staff, and then he said especially technicians as assistants to the highly qualified men. That is very important. These various skills that we require have been described in industry as a “spectrum of skills”, from the highly qualified man, from the engineer, through the technician down to your artisan, who will be the lowest grade of trained man. I think the hon. the Minister appreciates that. We have to make provision for training these men, and for that we require planning. We require a plan, and not a suggestion made annually in this way, or in the ordinary Estimates that we receive from the Minister of Education. We require an investigation by statesmen, by the policy-makers, by economists, by industrialists, by statisticians, into the whole question of education in South Africa to give us a plan of what we are to do, especially to get men. We know the old Jingo song—

I think our Defence Department probably have the guns, and we have the money, but the question is whether we have the men in our higher education. That is the question. How are we to get the men? When we come to select them and look for men in the technological field, and men who are trained as technicians, the basis of their training is science and mathematics. If science and mathematics are not properly taught there should be an investigation into the teaching of science and mathematics. Investigations like this have been going on in countries throughout the world. One may perhaps say that they are vocational subjects. Perhaps they are, but in the development of our country, which is not a fully developed country, nor an undeveloped country, but a developing country, we have to make this provision. In making this provision I think it is necessary for us to say we will investigate how science and mathematics are taught at the very foundation of this superstructure of university education, namely the high schools. Every year young men leave the high schools and go to the university and they have difficulty in passing those subjects in the first year. I am not surprised. We have so many unqualified people in the secondary schools. A survey made by the Department of Education tells us that one-third of the high school teachers teaching mathematics are unqualified. I actually met a principal of a high school who said that he did not have one member on his staff who was a properly qualified teacher of mathematics. This is a very serious matter, and if it is true there it is true right throughout our system. Well, what are we to do? I think the first priority in our system of education in South Africa, especially university education, is to train teachers. When I say teachers I mean the teaching profession in the broadest sense, not only primary school teachers and secondary school teachers, but the teachers in the universities as well. They are the seed corn, and from them we will develop our system. A prominent investigator in Britain said that the standard of teaching mathematics had fallen so low that in 20 years the subject might not be taught properly—and that in a fully developed country! That is a serious danger with which we are confronted. [Interjection.] We must first ensure that we are training the right teachers, and then we must keep them. The hon. member for Standerton (Dr. Coertze) —I am sorry he has left—said in his speech that those people who had left South Africa, especially the university people, were now coming back. I do not think it is as simple as that. There are people who have left South Africa because they were fleeing from the wrath to come, but there are other people in our universities who have left South Africa for other reasons, one of them being that the scale of remuneration is not satisfactory. It is not easy to devise a satisfactory scale. I do not know whether the Minister knows of the work being done by a young Johannesburg scientist in this field, Mr. Kenneth Adams, who has devised a salary scheme for the teaching profession where the graph of the payment of salaries will rise fairly rapidly. Something of that kind will have to be done because if a man is qualified in mathematics and science to-day, he need not teach in a school. Industry will offer him a big salary. That is one reason, but there is another reason why they leave this country. They go to a more congenial atmosphere. They go to a university which makes provision for research, and where they can discuss research with other people engaged in the work. Therefore we must try to give our people those opportunities in South Africa. That is my second point.

I want to mention another aspect of this development before I leave the subject. I am asking for a ten-year plan. The Minister spoke of five years. The plan he initiated is just tinkering with the problem, in my opinion. In modern language, a five-year programme would be a crash programme, and I would even support that, but we want a scheme for ten years, a scheme prepared by people for a society that has not yet been created. Hon. members opposite know that they have a philosophy in politics with which we do not agree, but to both sides the development of our education is essential and there we can work together. We require development in South Africa as we envisage it in future. Hon. members opposite require this education for the South African state that they envisage, a state containing Bantustans, with which we do not agree. But whether you accept the view of the Government or of the Opposition, both sides agree that education should be developed. The hon. the Minister will realize that as I have been speaking I have been thinking, as he was, of the education of students at the universities for White people. What I have said applies a fortiori to Coloured education, to Bantu education and to Indian education. If education is essential for our White people, it is even more essential for our Bantu people if they are going to develop these states. Let us take a look at what we are doing about Bantu education. I think we are not doing what we ought to do. When one takes a look at the Estimates one should feel ashamed as a South African of what we are doing. We give Bantu education a pegged amount of R13,000,000 a year. In addition we say: “You will pay your own direct taxation.” In addition to that we say that the parents can pay at school as well. We do not do that in the case of White children. This Government, from Government sources, gives R13,000,000 a year to Bantu education for 70 per cent of the people of the country, and our provinces, for White education, for fewer pupils, spend R130,000,000 a year—ten times as much. I think we can do more. I know that the hon. the Minister says the amount is pegged. It is pegged in the Bantu Education Account. I think the time has come when we must debate this whole question of the Bantu Education Account. Here we have the Minister of Bantu Education running the Department as a bed of Procrustes. If he has to expand in one direction, he has to contract in another. We tell the world how many more thousands of children are at school. Why are there so many more thousands of children at school? Because we have introduced double sessions. If you have two sessions a day, naturally you can double the number of children without increasing the number of teachers or the cost. If you have four sessions a day for the teacher you could probably reduce the cost still further. I think we must get away from that. If we are going to develop Bantustans, or if we are going to follow our policy, then we must improve this system of Bantu education. I believe that for the future most of these people we are educating at the Bantu university colleges will have to be teachers, because a third to a sixth of your graduates in any community have to be teachers; I would say from 20 to 25 per cent. By “teachers” I mean teachers in the broadest sense: university lecturers, research workers and teachers in the primary and secondary schools. We shall have to do that for Bantu education. I think we have reached the stage now when we need a very serious decision on education in the future. I know we say that Bantu education has to be separate but, Sir, at the University of South Africa, when they have their courses up there in Pretoria, they all meet together—Bantu, Indian and Coloured. They attend the same course; they are doing the very thing to which the Government objected at Fort Hare. It is exactly the same thing, reported here, on the highest authority, by the departmental sheet, the Bantoe-onderwysblad. Out of their own mouths they are condemned! Now, Sir, I want to put this question to the hon. the Minister about these accounts. I see that the amount for Bantu education has been reduced this year by R3,500,000. Presumably that is because that money is the Transkei contribution. The Minister said in his Budget speech that there was a grant to the Transkei of R13,000,000. Does that grant of R13,000,000 include this R3,500,000? I think it is very important to know that. We are going to give R1,000,000 under this sub-head when we have authority to give R1,500,000. Why do we do this? Surely the time for us to assist Bantu education to produce the type of leaders they want is now. We must be prepared to do it; the old days have gone.

Finally I want to ask the Minister this question about the Transkei. There was a very important congress in Europe last year to discuss education for the whole of Europe, for all the developed countries of Europe. It was sponsored by the Ford Foundation. Should the Ford Foundation or the Carnegie Foundation be prepared to help in the Transkei what would be the hon. the Minister’s reaction? Let me just mention what the Rockefeller Foundation has been doing in Africa—

They have given $226,268 to the University of Ibadan for its over-all development; they have given $48,550 to expand studies at Makerere University College; they have given $86,000 for a maize improvement programme at the plant breeding station in Njoro, Kenya; they have given $75,000 to the Yale University in the United States for young Africans taking advanced legal training; they have given $22,800 to train African scholars at the University of London; they have given $10,000 to the Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa. Now, should they be prepared to assist us in the Transkei, what would be the Minister’s reaction? It is quite obvious that the Transkei has not sufficient money to develop the system of education that we would like to see, and if it does not have that money, how are they going to get it? Would our Government be prepared to allow these foundations to come in and assist?

Would there be any strings attached?

I do not know. I want to know what the Minister’s reaction would be. If the offer is made without strings, would he accept it?

What would be your attitude if it was made with strings?

If this country that is being promoted and assisted to obtain independence does not have the money, the obvious thing is to say that you will allow everybody else to contribute and help. I think that is only fair and reasonable. In the meantime I think we must give serious thought to the question of helping in Coloured education, a matter which was discussed here by the hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden). I am reminded of the joint sitting we had here in this House when the late Dr. Malan appealed to our party and went so far as to quote Shakespeare, he was so earnest in his appeal. He said: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.” That is the tide we are on now and I hope the hon. the Minister will take it at the flood.

It has apparently become the custom for the party on that side of the House to attack the governing party in regard to various matters, irrespective of whether or not they bring the name of South Africa into discredit in the outside world by so doing. The hon. member who has just sat down has had a great deal to say about training. Starting with the no-confidence debate we have been attacked by that side of the House because of the lack of trained labour, because of job reservation, because of the Broederbond and everything else. I just want to address this one remark to the hon. member before making my speech. Notwithstanding the millions that the Rockefeller Foundation distributed throughout the world like a Father Christmas, what is the position to-day in connection with graduates amongst the Bantu people? Last year there were only slightly more than 1,700 throughout the rest of Africa south of the Sahara while in the Republic of South Africa we had more than 2,400, notwithstanding the small amounts which we make available for the training of our Bantu. Last year we had 1,768,000 Bantu children at school which represents about 85 per cent of the entire Bantu school-going population. In addition to that, as the Christian guardians of the Coloureds, we had 317,000 Coloured children attending school. We are providing them with all their requirements gradually and in harmony with the development of the whole country. Before dealing with this subject the hon. member spoke as though we in this country were doing nothing in connection with training. I just want to say in passing that since the National Party came into power in 1948 four new universities have come into being and five new faculties—an engineering faculty, a science faculty, a dentistry faculty and an agricultural faculty. But we have also made bursaries available. I just want to mention in passing that it is not only the State itself that has made bursaries available. Bursaries have also been made available by the Railways; out of funds which it obtained from the Central Government the C.S.I.R. made more than 910 bursaries available for scientific training and the Public Service Commission also made 210 bursaries available during the past year. One can go on in this way but I do not actually want to discuss this point. I think the educationists on this side will deal adequately with the hon. member who—I say this with all respect—did something unpatriotic by comparing our country with foreign countries. With the limited means at our disposal the 3,500,000 Whites in South Africa are doing a tremendous amount for the non-White people and they are doing their duty as the Christian guardians of the non-White people within South Africa’s borders. Actually, I feel like continuing in the same vein but I know that there are educationists on this side of the House who want to reply to hon. members opposite. Not one of the hon. members to whom I want to reply is here; they make accusations and then they leave the chamber. The hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) who is a comparatively new member and with whom I shall therefore deal lightly, made the accusation that the National Party only talks about the Coloureds. Unfortunately, the hon. member has forgotten who the people are who are actually doing things for the Coloureds. He has forgotten that it was this Nationalist Government which established the tremendous housing schemes that we find today on the Cape Flats and throughout the whole country. He forgets about the University College of the Western Cape; he forgets about the Coloured Rural Areas Act; he forgets completely about the Coloured Education Act, with its broad pattern for the development of the Coloured in general, which was passed last year and in terms of which Coloured education was taken over by the Central Government. Apparently he thinks of one thing only and that is the franchise. In this connection the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) told us a few days ago that demands for the franchise and political rights make up only 9 per cent of all the demands made by the Coloureds. He proved to us that the non-Whites were more interested in matters such as wages, housing and so forth than in the franchise.

The hon. member for East London (City) (Dr. Moolman) could find only one thing to talk about and that was, “drought, drought, drought”. In the past the hon. member always added the question of a fodder bank but he has apparently now got out of that groove after 30 years; he has now become wiser and he has not raised the question of a national fodder bank in this debate. But immediately after he referred to the question of drought he made a number of accusations. Amongst other things he referred to what he described as the basic flaw in the agricultural policy of the Government. He followed this up by saying that the Government was doing nothing to promote the interests of the farming community. The hon. member finds fault with the training facilities that are made available to our farmers. He also finds fault with the technical basis on which the whole agricultural policy is being built up in these modern times in which we are living. Mr. Speaker, these are what I consider to be fundamental matters and when we come to these fundamental matters it is clear that the hon. member is making a very big mistake.

Let us look for a moment at what the Department of Agricultural Technical Services has done for agriculture. A tremendous change has taken place since 1948. Not only has the Directorates of Agricultural Research and Agricultural Field Services been set up to coordinate agricultural research and agricultural field services, but many other innovations have been introduced, such as the Divisions of Agricultural Mechanization and Agricultural Engineering. These form the nucleus of a future Research Institute for Agricultural Engineering. What has taken place under these Directorates? A number of new research institutes and divisions have been established. Originally there were three of them. These three have been enlarged to what they are today and four have been newly-established. There is also a research institute for citrus and sub-tropical fruit. I cannot mention all of them because my time is too limited, but I do want to mention a few of them. There is the institute for fruit and food technology at Stellenbosch; the institute for viticulture and wine-making at Stellenbosch; the institute for the protection of plants at Pretoria; the horticultural institute at Roodeplaas, Pretoria; the veterinary institute at Onderstepoort and the institute for animal husbandry and dairying at Pretoria. Other institutions besides these have also been established. These are all experimental farms and research stations which have been brought into being because the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services has wanted to build up modern agriculture scientifically so as to comply with the requirements of the times. We now have an experimental farm at Ermelo, a pineapple research station at East London, experimental farms at Elgin and De Dooms, a citrus research station at Addo and Citrusdal and a karakul farm at Upington. The Upington farmers made that farm available and the farm itself has been valued at R150,000. It is an experimental farm. These are only some of the things that have been done by this Department and then the hon. member for East London (City) finds that there is such a terrible basic flaw in our agriculture! We can take the matter even further, Mr. Speaker.

The question has been asked as to what the State is doing to promote farming. It has been said that the State has failed to make training facilities available to the farmers. When this Government came into power there were only three faculties of agriculture in existence—at the Universities of Stellenbosch, Pretoria and Natal. A fourth one was established in 1958 at Bloemfontein University. In 1948 the number of students enrolled in those three faculties totalled 479. By 1961 their number had increased to 1,236. We go further. In 1948 we only had 46 teachers of agricultural subjects at those three institutions. Now, in 1964, that number has increased to 210. The hon. member for East London (City) continues to find fault with the agricultural services in South Africa. I want now to discuss the basis on which our agriculture is built up and the scientific part that it plays.

Let us see how the farmers make use of these facilities. From 1948 to 1958 the State made 668 bursaries available and the control boards, under the guidance and control of the State, made a further 712 bursaries available. Altogether 1,380 bursaries were made available. One cannot say therefore that any fault can be found with the State in this regard. I feel rather ashamed to say that the farmer himself must take the blame in this regard; he has not reacted to the extent to which the State has given him guidance. That is apparent from the figures. We have five colleges in the country—at Glen, Potchefstroom, Cedara, Groot-fontein and Elsenburg. In 1948 there were 323 students at these various colleges. In 1956 there were 532, in 1959 558 and last year, 560. Accommodation was available for more students at those various colleges. Last year there were 560 students at those colleges but accommodation was available for 659. There were only 95 students at Cedara but there was accommodation there for 103 students; there were 94 students at Elsenburg although there was accommodation there for 96; there were only 62 students at Glen although there was accommodation there for 102. There was ample opportunity for students to study at the college at which they could be given the requisite training. But that is not all; the accusation goes further. The accusation has always been that we do not have an adequate number of trained staff. But what is the actual position? In 1947 the staff of the Agricultural Technical Services Division totalled 2,218 but in 1963 they totalled 4,474. When we analyse this figure we find that in 1947 we had 93 extension officers while in 1962 there were 234. Research workers: In 1947 we had 718 and to-day we have 1,324. Technicians: 438 in 1947 and 1,077 in 1962. There were 294 staff members in the general division in 1947 and 1,822 in 1962. This proves conclusively that the accusation of the hon. member for East London (City) is quite unfounded. The hon. member sucked a number of these accusations out of his thumb. I cannot express it in any other way. It was unfair of him to make those accusations and, to my mind, unjust as well.

The hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. G. de K. Maree) has tried to reply to the accusations made by this side in respect of the handling of the agricultural industry in South Africa. The hon. member saw fit to quote passages to us from some pamphlet or other which was drawn up for him either by the Department or by the Information Service of the Nationalist Party during some previous election. What did the hon. member say then? He went on to say that they had established all the new directorates in the Department of Agricultural Technical Services. Very well. They did reorganize the Department; they did establish a Directorate of Research, etc., but what we want to say to the hon. member for Gordonia and the Nationalist Party is this: We are not satisfied with the amount of research that is being done. We know that the number of research projects is being increased every year, but the question that we want to put to them is this: To what extent do the results of that research reach the practical farmer? One of the fundamental problems in this country is that although these things are being done there is such a shortage of extension officers and trained technicians capable of conveying that information to the farmer, that the farmer does not get the benefit which he ought to get from this research.

Has the hon. member forgotten about the Rautenbach Commission? That commission was appointed by his Minister of Agricultural Technical Services. The commission was appointed to help him to alleviate the tremendous shortage of technical staff that exists in the Department of Agricultural Technical Services. To what extent has the Department implemented the recommendations of the Rautenbach Commission? The hon. member should look at the questions which were replied to last year by the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services and there he will see to what extent they have succeeded in overcoming this tremendous problem of shortage of staff, a problem which they themselves admit does exist. The hon. member then draws this doubtful inference; he says that it is not their fault if the farmers do not make use of the services which are made available to them!

I want to deal with something else this afternoon. The greatest problem which the farmers in South Africa are experiencing at the present time is the problem which was mentioned here by the hon. member for East London (City) (Dr. Moolman), and that is that the farmers are simply unable to maintain a decent standard of living as a result of the downward tendency in the prices of agricultural produce. That is something which the hon. member for Gordonia cannot deny. That is why more and more farmers are leaving the platteland every year. That is the problem which faces the Government, and unless the Government solves that problem they cannot boast that they are sympathetically disposed towards the farmer of South Africa.

The other matter with which I should like to deal is the charge made here by the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker). He says that the hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson) alleged that we wanted the implementation of the Orange River scheme to be delayed. What nonsense! What the hon. member for Constantia said was that the shortage of manpower would force us to delay the implementation of certain essential schemes in this country. That was said not only by the hon. member for Constantia but by the hon. the Minister of Finance himself. The Minister of Finance himself made that statement at page 23 of his Budget speech. He said—

The hon. the Minister then went on to say what certain employers could do to improve the position—for example, by better organization and better utilization of labour, including older people and partially disabled people. Then he went on to say—

That is what the hon. the Minister of Finance said. He then went on to say—

The hon. Minister of Finance himself referred to this matter, and now that the hon. member for Constantia draws the sound inference from that statement that it may even mean that a scheme such as the Orange River scheme will possibly have to suffer later on, the hon. member for Cradock interprets it as a suggestion by this side of the House that the implementation of that scheme must be delayed. The hon. member for Constantia merely stated that as a result of the shortage of manpower in South Africa, which is also recognized by the hon. the Minister, certain capital programmes would necessarily have to be delayed to a certain extent—not because of United Party policy but as a result of Government policy. They have the money but they do not have the manpower to tackle it.

I want to come now to the matter that I want to touch upon this afternoon and that is the shortage of manpower in this country. I do not think there is anybody who will deny that this problem does exist. No person in this House will deny that we have a shortage of trained technologists, scientists, managers and medical practitioners. I just want to quote, for example, what was stated by Dr. Frikkie Meyer in a foreward to a journal issued by the National Development and Managerial Society in January 1963—

That is the view of an expert body in this field, and one asks oneself whether, with our small population of something like 3,000,000 Whites, we shall be able, in spite of the best immigration schemes, to cope with the development which lies ahead; whether we shall be able to do so without making great sacrifices in our country. And having put this question, the next question that arises is this: What can we do to have more trained people, more scientists, doctors, managers, etc. at our disposal? Where should we start? Where are we to get them? Everybody admits that immigration is a wonderful way of helping to solve this problem, but this problem of a shortage of trained manpower is not one which is peculiar to South Africa; it is a problem which exists throughout the whole world. There is a shortage of manpower in all developing countries. In the first place therefore we in South Africa must not imagine that we can solve this problem through immigration; we should see whether we cannot get this trained manpower from the ranks of our own people, from the ranks of our White population in this country. I contend that the time has come when, as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said this year, we should work out some sort of crash programme in an attempt to meet the requirements of our country as far as trained manpower is concerned. How can we do so? We are grateful for the fact that we have approximately 45,000 students at our South African universities, including the University of South Africa. I feel that we should start with highly trained people, or with the people we need most, in other words, we should start at the universities which have to train these people. We are grateful for the fact that we have 45,000 students at our universities, but is that the maximum number we can have at our universities? Is that number adequate? Have we an adequate number of universities in this country? I believe that we should start with our youth, with the boys and girls who are not in a position to obtain university training. I believe that there are hundreds of boys and girls in this country who would like to receive university training but who in the nature of things cannot afford it because it is so expensive. As my witnesses in this regard I want to call Mr. J. P. Coetzee, director of military production in South Africa and Dr. S. P. Ligthelur, who is head of the Department of Physics at the University of Potchefstroom. A few months ago these two men wrote an article which appeared in the Huisgenoot and in which they said that we were wasting our most precious manpower in South Africa. They refer in this article to investigations made by the Department of Education, and they estimate that by 1965 we will have a shortage of 15,000 scientists and a shortage of 2,600 engineers. They point out that if we want to cope with the Iscor expansion costing R560,000,000, with the Sasol expansion, the Orange River scheme, the Pongola project and the oil refinery projects which we contemplate tackling over the next ten years, we will be faced with a tremendous shortage of manpower in South Africa. Surveys made by them disclosed that we were losing about 250 boys and girls every year who are unable to go to university because they themselves or their parents lack the funds. If we lose 250 potential students every year who cannot attend university because they do not have the funds, it means that over a period of five years we lose more than 1,000, and naturally the longer the period the more we lose. What can we do?

In spite of the fact that the Minister of Finance has made provision for R13,000,000 in his Estimates for universities and for an additional few million rand on Loan Account, and in spite of the fact that he pays 70 per cent of the cost of universities, has the time not come when a commission of inquiry should be appointed to examine the possibility of providing free university training in South Africa for capable students who do not have the means to go to university? We do not say that this must be done, but we feel that the time has come to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate this matter. It is true that bursaries and loans go a long way towards improving the position. South Africa would not be the first country in the world to adopt such a system. There are many other countries in the world where university training is free. Is this not the appropriate time, in these circumstances, to see to it that such a scheme is called into being for young people whose parents are not in a position to pay for their university training?

[Inaudible.]

The hon. member ought to know that.

I have no quarrel with you on that score.

In that case I am grateful, because I think if hon. members on the other side are prepared to join forces with us in this regard, we shall be able to do something to improve the position.