I move—

In terms of Standing Order No. 66, the debate on the third reading of the Bill will be extended to three hours, excluding the reply of the member in charge.

Mr. Speaker, the long discussion which took place over this Bill in Committee revealed, I think, that our worst fears concerning this Bill were fully realized and fully justified. For that reason, Sir, I move as an amendment—

I do so because in the opinion of this side of the House the Bill, as it stands before us, has not in any way been materially improved by the amendments introduced by the hon. the Minister. It remains a Bill in which there is an invasion of certain concepts which we have tended to regard as basic to the Christian way of life of our country. It invades the free enjoyment of family life amongst a section of the population; it invades to a tremendous degree the freedom and the dignity of every Bantu individual in South Africa outside the reserves. It does more than that, Sir, it not only perpetuates but it extends the migratory labour system with all its concomitant problems in respect of the social and the moral life of the individuals concerned. I think we all appreciate the problems we have with migrant labour in South Africa and the difficulties which would result if we tried to get on without that system. But I think we also know that it is not something we would like to see extended beyond its present field. I think this Bill does exactly that.

It does something else. It places dangerously arbitrary powers in the hands of officials without any obvious legal safeguards to ensure that those powers will be exercised in a manner in which, I have no doubt, the hon. the Minister hopes they will be exercised. You see, Mr. Speaker, we are faced with a Bill in which the powers given to officials are so great that one feels the doors to corruption and the temptation to corruption will be made wide open. It does not matter whether we agree with the Bill or whether we do not agree with it, the tragedy is that the responsibilities are such that we may be faced with corruption spreading as a result of the powers which are going to be entrusted to officials under these changes. [Interjections.] Hon. members get upset when I talk about corruption. We have already had a few unpleasant instances of officials responsible for ordering the daily lives of our Bantu population. Those instances have been a most disgraceful blot on our administration in this country.

For instance?

My friend asks “for instance?” Does he not know what happened at Paarl and here in Cape Town? He is supposed to be a member of the Bantu Affairs Commission and he feigns ignorance of these things! Opportunities are being created here for dangers of that kind which fill one with a great deal of worry.

This Bill tries to deal with the problem of the labour tenant system. I am not talking about squatters. We are all against squatters. So far as squatters are concerned we believe steps will have to be taken against them. I am talking about the labour tenant system. I believe the measures taken in this Bill are of such a kind that they may seriously affect the agricultural economy in certain areas in South Africa. The Bill does more than that, Sir. It intensifies control over the individual labourer to a point where I can only describe him, as I have described him before, as becoming an interchangeable labour unit. By doing that we are creating a situation where the labourer has the minimum of security; he has virtually no security at all. What happens at the end of his working days; when he reaches the age of 65 and the woman reaches the age of 60? If he has been self-employed what chance has he of being allowed to remain in the urban area in which he has lived his whole life? If he has been employed by others and his usefulness comes to an end what is going to become of him? What chance has he under this Bill of being allowed to stay in the urban area where he has lived his whole life? Under this Bill it is free to an official, the moment the Bantu is out of a job or the moment he reaches 65, to send him to a reserve to which he has never been in his life. I go further. Because of this type of legislation we are putting at a minimum the opportunity of developing, what I call, occupational traditions. It is at the minimum because the labourer has so little security. Where you do not have occupational traditions developing in your labour force you get a falling off in efficiency and no development of that pride in the skill at a particular job which leads to efficient production in any industry in the world. We are placing these people in a position where the labour bureaux will dominate their lives economically. That is the effect of this legislation.

I do not believe the Government intends that with this particular legislation but I do not suppose that matters. I do not suppose it matters because I regard it as an inevitable concomitant of the pattern of legislation and policy which this Government has tried to apply in South Africa. The fact that the Government has had to come to Parliament with amendments to 11 laws in this Bill whose third reading we are to-day asked to pass is to me a symptom of the failure of that policy. Look at the situation in which these people are placed. They have very few of the rights of citizenship in the Republic. They are promised in return that they will get citizenship and other rights in Bantustans to be created at some future time. But the tragedy is that the restrictions to which they are subjected in this legislation are reality now and those Bantustans do not exist yet and where they do exist the rights given them are not yet full rights of citizenship. Look at the powers this Minister is taking. In this Bill the 7,000,000 Bantu who are outside the reserves are particularly affected. I know the hon. the Deputy Minister has given certain assurances in regard to changes he will introduce in the Other Place but I have to deal with the Bill as it is before us at the moment. As we have it before us to-day it affects all those 7,000,000 Bantu outside the reserves, but it affects most particularly those permanently urbanized Bantu—probably a million or more—who have lost all ties with the reserves; their comings, their goings, the jobs they can do, their conditions of service, their visits to the reserves, their ability to have their wives and families with them, everything is controlled in this legislation. It affects that group whose goodwill it is most important for us to have if we are to maintain law and order in South Africa and carry the Bantu population with us.

I must give the warning again that legislation of this kind quite emphatically is going to damage even more the image of South Africa overseas. It is right to say that we must solve our own problems in our own way. I agree that is a right I demand for South Africa. But at the same time, it seems a pity that that image which has been tarnished to such an extent as a result of legislation of this kind passed by this Government should be further tarnished by the changes introduced by this hon. Minister. It creates a state of affairs which I believe is sociologically unsound because I wonder, when this Bill is applied in all its detail, how many married Bantu in the Republic will be living with their wives and their families. This is not designed to make it easier for them; this is designed to make it a lot more difficult. This legislation is going to make it almost impossible for that stable Bantu middle class to develop in our urban areas. This legislation is going to make it even more difficult for home-ownership ever to be accorded those people. I want to quote to the hon. the Minister what his namesake, the hon. the Minister of Housing, said only the other day quoting from the Russian newspaper Isvestia. He quoted from that newspaper which in trying to advance communist ideologies said—

Isvestia recognizes and this Minister recognizes that one of the bastions against Communism is home-ownership, the ownership of property and family life. I wish the hon. the Minister for Housing would talk to the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Development.

You want to give them home-ownership in the White areas and I do not.

Mr. Speaker, that is a remark unworthy even of this Minister. He knows very well what the situation is. Sociologically this legislation is unsound, but economically it can be dangerous, because if it is badly administered, if it is wrongly administered, the powers under this Act given to the officials are so wide that it can have an effect on the economy of the country. There are powers given here, Sir, which are so tremendous that they are quite frightening if you see what the Minister can do in respect of the type of work that can be done in certain areas, how much labour a man will be allowed, what jobs the labour can do. The hon. Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, sitting here so quietly this afternoon, is going to be the most powerful Minister in the Cabinet, far and away the most powerful Minister in the Cabinet. He is going to have an empire of his own. But he is going to be in the position where he can be a wrecker as well, where he can do a great deal of harm to the economic life of the country if the legislation is not properly administered. And what is so tragic is that this Bill creates new injustices for the Bantu people, firstly because the Bantu is now placed in the position where you do not find a free employer negotiating with a willing labourer to try and fix the terms of his contract, of his salary, etc.

Have you read the Bill at all?

I read the Bill. The difference is that I understood the Bill when I read it. Under this Bill negotiation will take place through labour bureaux, and what is the choice before the, Bantu? Sit in the reserves where they are in the position of hardly being able to make a living, or to come under the labour bureau system as evolved in this Bill. The old protection which a Bantu who had been for a certain time in a certain job or who had been for a long period permanently settled in an urban area, that protection is being watered away and removed under this Bill. The Minister has the power now to terminate service contracts under certain circumstances. He has watered down the provisions slightly compared to what the Bill was originally.

No, Sir, this is a Bill which not only for those reasons but because of the dangers involved in this system of so-called aid centres and youth centres, placing officials in the position where they are invading the sphere of the courts, is very dangerous. They are invading the sphere of the courts, they are invading the sphere where trained officials should be administering justice. And there are virtually no safeguards as to how those powers are going to be exercised. That is why I want to say again that this legislation is doing more to destroy the bulwarks we have here in the Republic against Communism and against revolution than any other piece of legislation that has been before us up to now, and it does so because every Bantu, regardless of his education, regardless of his status, regardless of his standard in life comes under this sausage machine. How, Sir, are you going to keep those people on your side in the maintenance of law and order?

That is why as far as this side of the House is concerned we want none of this Bill, we want none of this legislation and that is why I have moved the amendment that this Bill should be read “this day six months”.

The Opposition said that its opposition to this measure would be a fight to the death. This fight has, however, proved to be a Don Quixote exhibition, a battle against chimeras and windmills, a fight in connection with which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon again opened the debate from his side but could not speak for longer than 12 minutes on it. That is its fight to the death! In order to emphasize its opposition, the Opposition made use of its Leader to introduce the second-reading debate, as he has again introduced the third-reading debate to-day, and in the second reading, as well as to-day, he described this Bill as one which degraded 7,000,000 people to being a “pool of interchangeable labour units”. Mr. Speaker, his unbridled criticism made only one impression on me and that was that he had not read the Bill, as again appeared from this one incident to-day when he said that no Bantu could any longer freely offer his labour and no employer could freely accept his labour because it all has to go through the sausage machine of the labour bureau, whereas the hon. the Deputy Minister has repeatedly emphasized on more than one occasion, and proved it by the provisions of the Bill itself, that the employment would be just as free as in the past, although the employer would later have to register the employment of a Bantu with the labour bureau. That is all. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition’s unbridled criticism, as I have said, only gave me the impression that he relied on the faulty inferences drawn by the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) who, according to my information, persuaded the United Party caucus to wage a battle to the death against this Bill. Other Opposition speakers followed their Leader during the second-reading debate and vied with one another in their condemnation of this measure, and we even had the reckless statement made by the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) that this Bill will institute gas chambers to dispose of the Bantu. But as the debate progressed through various stages, the intensity of the criticism of the Opposition decreased, as the speech of the Leader of the Opposition showed to-day. It dwindled to a mere trickle of water which it became increasingly apparent was being swallowed up by the sands of the desert.

This Bill has three main characteristics which I want to emphasize. The first is that the Bantu labour pattern in the White area is being confirmed and developed on principles which are traditional and as such have been respected and maintained by all previous Governments in South Africa. Secondly, points of friction in the Bantu labour pattern in the White area are being removed. Thirdly, all attempts at integration in order to negative the policy of separate development are effectively being thwarted by it.

I should like to review the criticism of the Opposition against the background of the effect of this Bill. As I say, the Opposition is acting on the advice of their so-called specialist on Bantu affairs, the hon. member for Durban (North), who at one stage himself admitted that he had made a great mistake. The Opposition had originally seen a great bogy in this measure, which they held up to the world as legislation which would destroy Bantu family life in our towns, and which would change the great mass of the Bantu population into a big “labour pool of interchangeable units”, and that it would lead to the mass removal of populations. They tried to see this bogy in every possible provision of the Bill, and every innocent word was treated with suspicion, but unfortunately the Bill could not put them on the tracks of that bogy and they therefore even went so far as to allege that the memorandum was misleading and inaccurate. So we had the peculiar phenomenon that extremely farfetched and at times utterly naïve examples were dragged in, in the same way that the hon. the Leader this afternoon still referred to the Paarl incident, intimating that there is now corruption in the Department of Bantu Administration. I want to reject it with the contempt it deserves. Sir, at times their examples were completely unrealistic. They could not succeed in substantiating the bogies they tried to scare up. In my own mind I am quite convinced that all this is a game on the part of the Opposition. But what is now the result of this game which is being played with such unbridled and reckless criticism?

There is only one inference which can be drawn, viz. that although the Bill has sound characteristics which the Opposition has deliberately ignored, it was grasped at by the United Party in order to make propaganda with a particular political object with which I want to deal. In the past we always said, and the United Party always denied it, that their criticism was simply aimed at besmirching South Africa overseas. The United Party always maintained that it was merely criticizing a bad Nationalist Government. For the purposes of my argument I will now accept that they criticized this legislation simply in order to criticize the Nationalist Government. But in so far as South Africa itself is concerned, this criticism has no effect in this country because every voter knows that this legislation is in line with the traditional Bantu labour legislation which has developed in South Africa over the years and that this Bill grants much relief to the Bantu, that it gives labour security and stability to the employer, and that it ensures flexibility and adaptability for the official who has to implement it, and does not encourage corruption, as was alleged by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, In so far as South Africa is concerned, the United Party criticism was completely futile, but that is not the case in so far as countries abroad are concerned.

I want to state definitely that the object of the game played by the United Party in regard to this Bill is deliberately to vilify and calumniate the present South African Government in the eyes of our friends overseas so that the United Party can thereby incite foreign countries against South Africa in order to foster foreign intervention against the Government in South Africa, and to come into power by means of that intervention.

Are you not ashamed of yourself?

I am not ashamed to say this, because I will prove it. It is clear that the United Party has given up all hope of coming into power in South Africa through the electorate, and that it now wants to do so by means of a deliberate attempt to put people overseas up in arms against this Government by means of, inter alia, giving them a grossly distorted and false picture of this measure. The United Party in this debate has tried to put the searchlight on its slogan that it has a policy acceptable overseas by making this measure the subject of its campaign of vilification against the present Government. Even on the occasion of his speech at Windhoek on the report of the Odendaal Commission, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition dragged this measure in willy-nilly and he said the following—

So severe is the new Amendment Bill that I believe that only the workers under Stalin’s first five-year plan could appreciate how difficult is the position of our urban Bantu workers.

Why make such a false, untrue, inaccurate and deplorable statement about South Africa’s Bantu policy, which the Leader of the Opposition knows also traditionally forms part of the policy of his party, and the more so in a debate on a report dealing with South West Africa, which everybody knows is a very delicate subject for South Africa at the present moment? Why did he have to drag that in? Of course the United Party has only one object in doing so, just as in the case of its reckless and unfounded criticism of this measure, viz. to try to obtain international intervention in South Africa. I want to tell the United Party that it is playing a dangerous game, because that party must remember that it will not be they who will come into power in South Africa, but possibly a Black communist Government.

A second fact became crystallized in the discussion of this measure, viz. that the United Party has accepted the Bantu in the White area as a permanent citizen here. That is what the United Pary was forced to do by its vilification of this measure, which is alleged to be a slave law which treats Bantu in White areas merely as labour units. In order to dissociate itself from this evil legislation, the United Party emphasized that the Bantu in the White areas are permanent citizens. In doing this, the United Party has abandoned the underlying basic principles of all former legislation dealing with Bantu in the White areas which are being maintained and extended in this measure. To accept the Bantu as a settled element in the White area, as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has again done this afternoon, is in conflict with the basic principles of the Native Labour Regulation Act of 1912, because that Act treats the Bantu in the White area as a temporary labour force and on quite a different footing from that of the White labour force. The logical result from which the United Party cannot now escape is that if this Bantu labour is to be regarded as a settled element in the White area, the Bantu may no longer be discriminated against. Is the United Party willing that the Bantu should receive equal treatment with the Whites in every sphere of labour? As settled citizens the Bantu can at least expect of the United Party that they will not be subordinate to any other co-citizens. A second conclusion which flows from the standpoint of the United Party that the Bantu is a settled element in the White area is that the basis of the Natives (Urban Areas) Act is now being abandoned by the United Party. I must point out that this Urban Areas Act was introduced in 1923 after a commission had been appointed by a S.A. Party Government, and in 1945 this Act was redrafted also by a United Party Government. The basis of the Natives (Urban Areas) Act is that the Bantu are a temporary labour force in the White area, and as such are housed in separate residential areas on a temporary basis, and for that reason the Bantu were given no property rights there either by the 1923 Act or by the 1945 Act, which were both Acts passed by the United Party or the old S.A. Party. On what moral or other basis does the United Party want to segregate in separate residential areas the Bantu who are now recognized by them as permanently settled citizens? Are these settled co-citizens going to be dealt with by the United Party as second-class or third-class citizens who are herded together in ghettos? If the United Party wants to recognize the Bantu in the White area as permanently settled citizens, then it must allow them not only to acquire property rights but also the right to choose whether they want to live in Parktown or Houghton or Sea Point or Rondebosch.

What about the Coloureds?

Any other standpoint adopted by the United Party would ridicule its own standpoint that the Bantu in the White areas are permanently settled co-citizens.

This measure emphasizes our standpoint that the Bantu constitute a temporary labour force in the White area and that their accommodation in urban Bantu residential areas is justified only if they work in the White areas, and that they are not co-citizens with us in the White area, and that the Bantu therefore have no civic rights in the White areas.

I come to the third consequence of the United Party’s recognition of the Bantu as a permanent section of the population of the White area and that he is a settled co-citizen in the White area, a consequence from which the United Party cannot escape, namely that it means that the United Party no longer abides by the provisions of the Natives Land and Trust Act, because as settled citizens in the White area the Bantu must surely have the right, as co-citizens, to buy land wherever they want to. The present measure before us emphasizes the principle of the Natives land and Trust Act of 1936 that Bantu in the White areas are not a settled element but that they can obtain property rights only in the areas set aside for them or made available for them, i.e. the schedule for released areas.

The hon. member for South Coast (Mr. B. E. Mitchell expelled the Progressives from the United Party because they supported the purchasing of land for the Bantu, which he refused to do because it was for the purpose of the Government’s Bantustans. By his recognition of the Bantu as permanently settled co-citizens in the White area, he has now surpassed the Progressive Party, because his settled Bantu co-citizens must surely have the right to buy land wherever they like, and like any other citizen, just as the hon. member for South Coast can buy land wherever he likes if he has the money. By recognizing the Bantu in the White area as settled co-citizens the hon. member for South Coast has not only admitted that land can be bought for Bantustans, but much more land than was specified in the 1936 Act. The United Party cannot escape the consequences of its standpoint that all its co-citizens, Whites as well as Bantu in the White area, should at least enjoy the same property rights. Or will the United Party again treat the Bantu co-citizens as second-class citizens who will be recognized in the White area as settled co-citizens by the hon. member for South Coast merely so as to be the hewers of wood and the drawers of water of the hon. member for South Coast and the hon. member for Drakensberg, who made such a fuss in regard to this Bill?

What class of citizens are they in terms of your policy?

In their own area they are the masters just as the Whites are masters in the White area.

There is a fourth consequence from which the United Party cannot escape, having recognized the Bantu as co-citizens in the White area. That is the matter dealt with by Chapter IV of the Natives Trust and Land Act, viz. the Bantu labour on the farms in the White area. This present measure again emphasizes that the Bantu on the White farms are there simply to work, and because the labour tenant system is in conflict with that principle and makes the Bantu an inhabitant of the White farm, this sytem is being curtailed and must gradually disappear. This was particularly opposed by the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk), supported by the hon. member for South Coast, and to-day the hon. the Leader of the Opposition also supported them.

They relied particularly on the Natal Agricultural Union. I just want to deal with the standpoint adopted by the Natal Agricultural Union in this regard. The Department of Bantu Administration made inquiries from that Union and was informed that the standpoint of the Natal Agricultural Union was precisely the same as that of the S.A. Agricultural Union, viz. that the ideal was to put all farm labour on a full-time basis, and secondly, that the Natal Agricultural Union was therefore in favour of the disappearance of the labour tenant system, but in view of the fact that this system was deeply rooted in Natal and that it supplied the present labour needs, its abolition should take place in an evolutionary manner as and when sufficient labour becomes available and alternative accommodation is found for the labour tenants. That is precisely what is envisaged in this Bill, but the United Party comes into conflict with it by its statement that the Bantu in the White area are settled co-citizens. The result is that the United Party wants to retain labour tenants as a permanent part of the population of our White farms and wants to give them equal treatment with other co-citizens as a permanently settled section of the population, and does not merely want to give them the right to occupy land. I asked whether the United Party desires further blackening of the White rural areas? Their standpoint is a total denial of the 1936 Act which divided South Africa into an area where there can be White property rights and one where there can be property rights for Blacks. This principle is reaffirmed and strengthened in this Bill.

I come to a third fact. During the discussion of this measure it has also become clear that the Opposition wants to destroy the system of migrant labour and in its place wants to settle the Bantu in the White area as a permanent part of the population of the White area. The United Party had much to say about the breaking up of family life which it alleges will result from this Bill. At one stage the Opposition made that its main objection. The logical consequence of the standpoint of the United Party is the blackening of our White cities and towns and of the White rural areas, which will lead to the total elimination of the White population in South Africa.

The effect of this measure will be just the opposite and it will ensure that the White area with its White population will always be preserved.

It certainly is a tragedy for this country that the hon. member who has just sat down should speak with authority in this House. It is a tragedy that a gentleman with his views should hold the responsible position he does. He, after all, is deputy chairman of the Bantu Affairs Commission. He is supposed to look after the interests of the Bantu. He speaks with authority. He has been tipped as a future Cabinet Minister. I only hope that the tip is as far off the mark as was the information given by the Minister of Information in regard to the contents of the Bill which we are now discussing.

The hon. member for Heilbron stooped to a depth I have not witnessed in this House before when he accused this side of the House virtually of treachery. He said that the whole object of our opposition to this Bill was to influence the outside world to take steps to see that this Government is ousted from office so that we can take over the Government. I have never heard such a base suggestion made in this House before. I sling it back in his teeth. The hope of all thinking people in this country is that by our criticism and by our action in standing up against this Government and setting forth our policy and criticizing the actions of this Government, we will get the world to postpone judgment on South Africa and to realize that there is a party in this country, that there are people in this country, who think differently from the Government and who are prepared to give all sections of our population a fair deal. The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Frone-man) said that this Bill would in fact lighten the burden of the African. I am still waiting for somebody to give me an example of that. The Deputy Minister endeavoured to do so, but what did he say? Families were to be assisted to follow the head of the family out of the urban area when the head of that family was in fact driven out, and that assistance was to be given so as to keep family life intact. What hypocrisy! The very basis of their policy is to stop the Bantu from having his family living with him in the urban areas. It is their policy which is breaking up family life. If the Government is so keen on preserving family life, why do they not encourage the Bantu worker who lives here permanently to bring his wife and family here? The Deputy Minister said one of the yardsticks to test this Bill was of the harmonious way of life we must try to ensure amongst ourselves. We hoped that examples would be given as to how—to use his words—“the well-meant application of the measure would make possible greater orderliness in the way of life of the Whites as well as the Bantu”. Unfortunately no such examples were given. We waited throughout the debate to get those examples of how we would achieve this harmonious way of life. Reading through the speeches of hon. members in earlier stages of the Bill and listening to the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman), who has just spoken, we ask: For whom is it to be made more harmonious? Are the Bantu going to be taken into consideration at all in this effort to bring about a more harmonious way of life? The whole object of this Bill, as instanced by the hon. member for Heilbron, is to change his habit of life and employment; in the same way as they have brought about a change in our habit of drinking, so we are trying now by this Bill to bring about a change in the habits of employment of the Bantu and of the White man.

The hon. member for Heilbron said this Bill would be effective in combating the blackening of the rural areas, and he pointed out that in the Free State in 42 towns the numbers of Whites had decreased and in 67 the number of Bantu had increased. He deplored the fact that in the town of Kroonstad there were 29,000 Bantu, Bethlehem had 17,000 and Bloemfontein had 76,000. The Bantu, he said, in the districts were increasing, and the districts were much worse than the towns. He was quite frank in saying “that in extending the control formerly applied to the urban areas to the rural areas as well throughout the country, this measure will render a service of inestimable value to the nation”. In fact he said that “if this control was not enforced South Africa would easily develop into a shapeless, coffee-coloured and cosmopolitan mass”. Those were his words. What an admission of failure of the Government’s policy of separate development! It is an indisputable fact that not only the cities but also the rural areas are getting blacker and blacker and the whole policy of separate development is failing; and because the Government is becoming desperate and sees that there is no hope of the practical implementation of its policy, it brings forward measures of this nature to try to satisfy its followers that it is trying to do something to bring about separate development. Sir, this measure will not bring about harmony anywhere. I cannot see how the Minister can expect it to do so, especially after speeches such as we have just heard from the hon. member for Heilbron. It will exasperate the employer and bring uncertainty and despair to the employee.

The hon. member for Heilbron says it will bring this shapeless, cosmopolitan mass—a new phrase he has coined—under control, and he justified the measure on the grounds that it “effectively controlled a large labour force in the White area and gives it mobility, and it keeps that labour force what it really is in the White area, namely a “temporary factor”. He said over and over that this labour force will be merely a temporary factor. He says the objects of this Bill are to amend the Labour Regulation Act to “assist the Bantu in the White area not to overlook the primary purpose of his presence in the White area”, and it amended the other two Acts for the same purpose, viz. to make it quite clear to the Bantu that his sojourn either in the urban or in the rural areas is only temporary. Sir, why must the Bantu be assisted not to overlook the fact that he is here in a temporary capacity and that the primary purpose of his presence here is to work here temporarily? Simply because he is not a temporary labourer. That is why he has to be assisted to remember why he is here. The fact is that he is here permanently, and it is idle for that hon. member to talk about its being the traditional policy to treat him as a temporary sojourner. The laws passed by his own Government provide that if a Bantu has lived in the urban area for ten or 15 years continuously he has certain rights. His own laws provide that Bantu born in the urban areas have certain rights. They are not temporary sojourners. When we passed an Act a few years ago dealing with the resettlement of Bantu in the Western Areas of Johannesburg, we dealt with Bantu who had freehold title rights. They were given those rights by Paul Kruger, and I think they still hold freehold rights in Lady Selborne and Grahamstown and other places. They have a right to live there permanently, and they have the right to hire a piece of land for 30 years in a municipal area. Does the hon. member not know that? Surely if a Bantu is given the right to hire land for 30 years, does the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) suggest that he is not being treated as a permanent labourer? After all, how long must you reside in an area before you become a permanent resident?

Government members in their arguments regard the Bantu here as not being permanent residents; they can only be permanently resident in the Bantu areas. Now I ask any one of them, including the Minister, to tell me what area the Bantu can regard as his permanent home. Can he regard the land which is historically his—the term which is so often used to-day—as an area where he can live permanently? Can he regard the area up to the Fish River as land where he historically has the right to live? Not one of those members opposite can tell us where the boundaries are of these areas where the Bantu can live permanently, with the result that all the Bantu are living in a state of uncertainty. There can be no justification for saying that the majority of the Bantu living in the White areas are not here permanently. All the reports point the other way. The hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Ross) quoted extracts from the annual C.S.I.R. reports, which show that half of the Bantu living in the urban areas can be regarded as urbanized, and of those not fully urbanized less than one-fifth follow a migrant pattern. I should like to remind hon. members that the Bantu had the right to vote for Members of Parliament, first on the Common Roll and then subsequently they had their own Members of Parliament.

Are you going to restore them to the Common Roll?

It is no use talking about the Common Roll. We promise to give them certain political rights; we promise to give them back political rights, so that they will have representation in this House. I want the Minister to reply to this, because the hon. member for Heilbron could not answer it. I asked him what the difference was between the position of the Coloured man and the Indian and the Bantu, and the hon. member for Heilbron made nonsense of the colour policy.

I shall be only too pleased to answer your question, but you know I cannot do it in this debate.

We are dealing with the questions raised by the hon. member for Heilbron and other hon. members opposite in regard to the citizenship rights of the Bantu. Surely if the Bantu is to be deprived of all rights of citizenship, so must the Coloured man and the Indian. I hope the Minister will explain to us what the difference is.

Sir, the policy of the Government is impracticable. Under the most favourable conditions they cannot possibly hope to accommodate all the Bantu in the so-called Bantu areas. The Prime Minister himself last week admitted that border industries are not developing fast enough to help to solve the major problems confronting the Government in its efforts to implement its policy of separate development. He referred to the expanding Black population in the cities and the mounting unemployment in the homelands, and he especially referred to the poverty in the Ciskei. Unless the Government can provide a home and work for the Bantu in the Bantu areas, they have no right to keep the Bantu here merely to fulfil the wants of the White man, and to tell him that he can work here while we need him but the moment we do not need him he must get out. Sir, the Bantu is a fellow-citizen of this country. They cannot wash their hands of their responsibility in that manner. The hon. members for Pretoria (East) and Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker), in defending this Bill, dealt with the position in other countries and they said that we were not as harsh in this country as were Western Germany, Switzerland and America. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort dealt mainly with Western Germany and America, and he read the text of an agreement between the U.S. Government and the Mexican Government to try to reduce the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico into the U.S.A. Now I ask with whom has this Government made an agreement with regard to the Bantu entering these urban areas? What is the use of quoting an agreement between two other countries as justification for this Bill? He told us that the aid centres which are referred to in the Bill are like the camps established on the Mexican border where Mexicans can stay until their labour is required in America. But the position is quite different here. He attempts to justify the measure also by saying that it helps to keep the communists out of the urban areas. But is that the object of this Bill? Year after year we pass more security measures giving the Minister of Justice power to deal with communists. Have we not given him enough powers already? Every time we are told he has not enough powers but he must have just one more power. I say that if the communists are still coming in and we need legislation of this nature to prevent it, then the Minister of Justice is not doing his job and should be sacked. We cannot pass legislation in every Bill to deal with communists. The member for Pretoria (East) said we were not being as harsh as the Swiss Government, which gets in 700,000 foreign labourers every year to do the work there. He said they did not allow the foreigners to bring in their wives and children with them, and that was the justification for us not to allow the Bantu to bring his wife and family into the urban areas. He said they were particularly selfish in granting rights and privileges to foreign workers, but surely his approach is quite wrong. The Swiss Government is dealing with foreign labour. Then he went on to say—

What is wrong with that?

I ask whether this Bill is being introduced to stop the Bantu from doing manual labour and to encourage our boys and girls to do it? If that is what they want, why do they not apply job reservation and reserve manual labour for White youths? That is no excuse for introducing a measure of this nature. We have all sorts of laws to protect the things he wishes to protect. But hon. members opposite forget that Switzerland, Germany and America are dealing with foreigners, and we cannot apply their laws to our country. Whether the Government likes it or not, the Bantu living in this country are fellow-citizens. They have no other country. If the Belgians do not wish to work in Germany, they do not have to go. They go there to seek employment because they can earn more money there. But our Bantu have no choice. Willy-nilly they have to come under the protection of this Government. It is our duty to look after all these people who are commended to our charge. That is stated in the prayer we say in this House every day, that we should look after the people committed to our charge, and these people are committed to our charge. They do not choose to be committed to our charge, but in fact they are, willy-nilly. [Interjection.] The hon. member over there asks what rights of citizenship they have. I say the fact of the matter is that they are fellow-citizens and they have to have some rights.

What citizenship rights do you wish to give them?

When the Government passed the Transkei Constitution Bill they made provision for citizenship for the Bantu in the Transkei, but at the same time they kept the Bantu of the Transkei as citizens of this country, and it is stated in the Act that they will not be absolved from their duties and obligations as citizens of South Africa. He is a citizen of South Africa. [Interjection.] This must horrify the outside world, when they hear members like the hon. members for Heilbron and Pretoria (East) attempting to liken the Bantu in South Africa to foreigners seeking work. Surely the speeches made by those hon. members will be quoted by the Africans at UN as justification for their claim that this Government is not treating the Bantu as citizens of this country, and they will claim the right to interfere, based on those speeches.

You are not prepared to treat them as citizens, and you know it.

That is quite wrong; of course we treat them as citizens. We recognize the fact that they have nobody else to look after them, and there is an obligation on us to see that they get work. If this Government wishes to treat them as foreigners it should make provision for them to live in a foreign country, and it should give them homes.

Who gave them homes?

The Nationalist Government gave them homes, but where? In the White urban areas, and they are spending millions in building railway lines and subsidizing buses to take them from those residential areas to their work, an admission by the Government that they want them there; they need them there; they cannot do without them. Therefore they make provision for them in the urban areas, but now we are told that all this housing and the amenities provided for them are only given to them as temporary sojourners, people who can only use those facilities while they work for the White man, and as soon as the White man has no more use for them they must get out.

What are you going to do for them?

We are prepared to give them a fair deal in this country.

What fair deal?

We are prepared to treat them as citizens.

What rights will you give them?

Does the hon. member for Vereeniging treat the Coloured man and the Indian as citizens?

Yes, I do.

What political rights will you give those people?

You know full well.

They have no political rights at all. How dare those hon. members cast stones at us merely because we wish to discriminate in regard to the type of political rights we give to the non-Whites? Now they say we are not prepared to give them any political rights at all. The hon. member for Vereeniging knows why we of the United Party are not prepared to give these people equal political rights. He knows it is all nonsense to say that we want one man, one vote. What he is trying to do is to say that because we will not give one man, one vote, we will give them no rights at all. That is his line of attack.

The responsibility to look after the Bantu rests on the Government. They are citizens of the country and the Government cannot ignore that fact. They are citizens, the same way as the Indians are. Admittedly the Prime Minister a few years ago said in this House that the Indians were no responsibility of his, but he has changed his outlook now, and he is trying to make friends—it is the new look. Be kind to the English and the Indians and the Coloureds, but I say he is estranging the very people whom he should try to befriend, the Bantu. They are the people who count in this country and who cannot be overlooked, and this Bill will not assist us in making friends with the Bantu. This Bill will not bring about harmonious living together in this country. The Minister has not told us whom he consulted among the Bantu. We see from recent statements made by the only people who can speak for the Bantu, like Chief Poto in the Transkei, that they denounce this Bill. Those are people elected by the Bantu to the Parliament of the Transkei and they can speak for the Bantu. The difficulty has always been to know who speaks for the Bantu, but here are people elected by the Bantu and they denounced this Bill, and they challenged Chief Kaiser Matanzima to say what he thought of it, but he has kept quiet. He is in a difficult position. But I say that if we want to be neighbourly, then surely this Bill should have been discussed with the Transkeian Government. The American Government consulted the Mexican Government. If we have consulted with the Transkeian Government, I ask the Minister to tell us that and also what their views are.

As I said, in our prayer every morning when we meet here we ask that we may advance the good of those whose interests have been committed to our charge. By passing this Bill we are not advancing the good of those whose interests have been committed to our charge. They have been committed to our charge and they can do nothing about it; they have no say in the matter. By passing this measure we are only going to use them for our own interests and then return them to the reserves where they have no hope of eking out a living. I say that this measure is a blot on our statute book, but what is more of a blot are the speeches made by the hon. member for Heilbron in trying to justify the actions of the Government.

I want to congratulate the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) on the support which she received from the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes). The hon. member attacked the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) and, amongst other things, objected to the fact that the hon. member for Heilbron referred to the treason that is being committed against the Republic by hon. members of the Opposition. But I want to remind him of two speeches made by hon. members of his party. I want to remind him of the speech made by the hon. member for North-East Rand (Brig. Bronkhorst) in which he said that the Government could only be removed from office by means of a shock from outside. I want to remind him further of the speech of the hon. member for Wynberg (Mrs. Taylor) in which she expressed the same idea when she said that it would only be by means of outside interference or because of some crisis or other that this Government would be removed from office. The hon. member for Transkeian Territories may perhaps know a great deal about the Transkei but it appears to me as though he knows very little about what is happening in the urban areas. The hon. member referred to the provision made by the Government for houses for the Bantu working here. Sir, when that party was in Government they made no provision for their Bantu workers but simply allowed them to set up squatters’ camps around the cities. [Interjection.] The hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller), who has just interrupted me, knows that this is true. The hon. member for Transkeian Territories referred to the leasing of houses on a 30-year basis and he said that this proved that these Bantu were permanent inhabitants here. Apparently the hon. member does not know that those Bantu have to pay off their homes just as in the case of any other person who has obtained a loan from a building society. That house does not become the property of the Bantu until he has paid it off but the land never becomes his. How can the hon. member mention this as a proof of the permanency of the Bantu working in the urban areas? The hon. member spoke about the “policy of breaking up family life”. I want to ask him and the United Party whether they will allow any Bantu working in the White areas to bring his wife and his children to those areas without any control being exercised in this regard at all?

No, only in regard to those living here permanently.

Why does the hon. member not want control? Why should there be no influx control? The hon. member referred repeatedly to “fellow-citizens” and then again to “citizens”. What in his view is the difference between “fellow-citizens” and “citizens”? If the United Party regard the Bantu as being “fellow-citizens”, then they should not compel them to live in certain areas or in specific Bantu locations; then the United Party should allow them to live wherever they please. They should not confine the Bantu to certain residential areas.

What about the Group Areas Act?

The hon. member spoke about “fellow-citizens” and he also spoke about the granting of political rights. It is very easy to see the direction in which that hon. member and the United Party are heading. The United Party are heading in the specific direction of having their race federation plan implemented with the assistance of the Bantu vote. It is for that reason that the hon. member has made such a fuss here about the question of political rights.

I want to refer to a further point made by the hon. member. He maintained that the apartheid policy of the Government had failed and that more and more Bantu were entering the cities. But we are dealing here with a measure which does at least aim at trying to restrict the influx of the Bantu into the cities and we find that the United Party are opposing it. What sort of logic is this? One cannot expect that party to be logical at all.

Mr. Speaker, the Opposition spent a great deal of time in debating this Bill before the Easter recess and we read in the newspapers that they would get their second wind in this regard after the recess. But judging from what has been said by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member who has just sat down it does not appear as though they have indeed got their second wind. The longer hon. members of the Opposition have debated this matter the more obvious the haphazardness, the vagueness and the ambiguity of the United Party policy in respect of the presence of the Bantu in the White areas has become. In this debate the United Party and the Progressive Party, with the moral support of the Liberal Party and the liberalistically-inclined leftist section of the Press, have joined forces to oppose every important clause in a so-called fight to the death, as the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) has already said.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition was the first speaker on the Opposition side at the Committee Stage and he made an important statement on behalf of his party. He told us that his party had decided not to move any amendments but to oppose every clause because, according to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, this was a Bill which they regarded as being absolutely irreconcilable with the attitude adopted by the United Party. This attitude of the Opposition of not wanting to move amendments is not at all in conformity with their general policy and with their policy in the past. The official Opposition did not even make use of the most elementary parliamentary machinery at their disposal, which was made use of by the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) on behalf of her party, and that was to move amendments. But apparently they did not know to which clauses they should move amendments because any amendments which they would have had to move would of necessity have been in conflict with the principles laid down in Act No. 21 of 1923, the Urban Areas Act, as well as with Act No. 45 of 1945, the Urban Areas Consolidation Act, which was placed on the Statute Book by the United Party when they were in power. I say again that hon. members did not know to which clauses they should move amendments. I want to ask them again, to which clauses would they have wanted to move amendments? This was something they could not do because otherwise they would have been acting in complete conflict with the principles of the Acts placed on the Statute Book by their own Government. By adopting the attitude of not wanting to move amendments but simply voting against the various clauses, the United Party have revealed their lack of judgment, of perspicacity and of logic; moreover, this attitude of the United Party is characteristic of the political egg-dance that that party tries to perform whenever and wherever it suits them to do so. The United Party are opposed to the application of the policy of influx control as applied by this Government and as is being amended by this legislation. The United Party in the person of the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) have assured this House that they are not in favour of the complete suspension of influx control. The United Party still want to apply influx control but apparently on a sociological basis. The Government are accused of wanting to control the influx of the Bantu into the White areas on an ideological basis. Sir, the United Party owe it to the White voters—and even to the Bantu who may be concerned in this regard—to state frankly what precisely this sociological basis is, or precisely what they have in mind with their policy and what they consider will be the effect of their policy.

Mr. Speaker, the United Party and their predecessor, the South African Party, started surrendering many years ago and began to follow a laisser-faire policy. They followed a “let things develop” policy in the application of important legislation like the Urban Areas Act of 1923 which General Smuts himself introduced. As long ago as 1931, Mr. Jan Hofmeyr stated in his book “South Africa” that the influx of the Bantu into the urban areas (and the platteland) could no longer be curbed. On page 315 he writes—

He mentions it specifically—

I just want to refer to the policy of surrender that was being followed as early as in 1931 by the predecessors of the United Party—the South African Party. On page 319 of his book Mr. Hofmeyr has this to say in a similar connection—

This was the policy of surrender of that party. It was a policy of flight, of escapism; it revealed a spirit of defeatism; it was their way of following the line of least resistance and it led to the pathetic laisser-faire or “let things develop” application of the Smuts legislation of 1923 and later legislation during the years 1939-48. The United Party did absolutely nothing to enforce that important legislation with the result that the influx of the Bantu to our cities gradually increased. What was worse, it led to the fact that we had tens of thousands of Bantu squatting around our large cities.

And what has happened over the past 15 years?

That hon. member is settled here in Cape Town; he knows very little about Bantu affairs as far as the northern provinces are concerned.

Mr. Speaker, is it the policy of the United Party to regard the urban Bantu as a permanent and established citizen of the Republic? If the United Party answer affirmatively in this regard, my next question is this: Are the United Party also prepared to give the Bantu permanent land ownership in the White areas? Where precisely must that land ownership be given to them? Moreover, the United Party must also tell us frankly how much land they are prepared to make available to the Bantu in this way. Do the United Party want to make more than the more or less 7,250,000 morgen of land promised to the Bantu under the 1936 Act available to the Bantu as permanent property? While the 1936 Act by implication seeks to make land available for Bantu ownership only in the Bantu reserves or, at most, in the areas adjacent thereto, the United Party apparently want to make land available to the Bantu as their permanent property in any part of the Republic. I want to ask the United Party whether they are going to increase the quota laid down under the 1936 Act, bearing in mind the morgen and morgen of land that are already being used for Bantu housing in the urban areas. How are the United Party going to demarcate that area? Sir, the present United Party who are now fighting so strongly for a permanently established Bantu community around and even in our White cities have already deviated to a large extent from the segregation policy laid down in 1923 by General Smuts. The United Party have denied that Smuts policy. In 1923 General Smuts was the founder of the legislation governing the presence of Bantu in the White urban areas. He stated expressly that the Bantu could not obtain permanent domicile in the White urban areas. General Smuts motivated his attitude as follows (translation)—

General Smuts himself deleted the clause which was originally in the Bill and which made provision for ownership rights to be given to the Bantu in the urban locations. By doing this General Smuts saw a means of preventing the Bantu becoming a permanent inhabitant of the White area. The National Party Opposition at the time, in 1923, supported the Smuts measure wholeheartedly because the National Party has always been a party which has fought for the interests of the country on the basis of principles. Where do the United Party, the heirs of the South African Party, find themselves to-day?

The policy of this Government is still the same as that followed by the National Opposition in 1923. Furthermore, the Government has remained unswervingly faithful to the promise inherent in the 1936 Act to the effect that the Bantu should be given land in the Bantu homelands, or, at most, land adjacent thereto, but that no Bantu should be allowed to become a landowner in the White areas. For this reason the Government believes that the ethnic bonds binding every Bantu to his homeland must remain strong. The United Party do not want those ethnic bonds to remain.

Another question which the United Party have also not yet answered in the debate on this measure thus far is whether they want to allow the Bantu into the White areas for any other purpose than to provide the necessary labour. It is also clear from the record of the debate of 1923 when the Urban Areas Act was placed on the Statute Book that General Smuts and the majority of the South African Party Government never intended the Bantu to become permanent inhabitants in the White areas but that they should simply remain temporary workers selling their labour here. I want to refer now to a lecture given by General Smuts in his series of “Rhodes Memorial Lectures” which he gave at Oxford in 1929 when he was Leader of the Opposition. He held the same views then. I want to quote what General Smuts said and I want the hon. member who interrupted me just now to listen attentively to what I have to say—

Measures making provision for the introduction of passes and for the refusal of ownership rights to the Bantu were deliberately passed in order to eliminate the possibility of the permanent domicile of the Bantu in the White areas. This point of view and norm that the Bantu should remain in the cities only as long as his labour was needed there was afterwards followed by all successive Governments.

This Bill before us restricts the entry of the wives and families of the Bantu into the White areas. The electorate want to know from the United Party whether every Bantu worker working in the Republic will be permitted without reserve by the United Party to have his wife and children, even those living in the Bantu homelands, living with him in the White areas. It appears that the United Party have once again completely denied the Smuts’ policy. General Smuts also had this to say in the series of Rhodes Lectures which he gave at Oxford in 1929—

Here we have a clear proof of the emphasis which was also placed by General Smuts on migratory labour and the retention of ethnic bonds, as well as the desirability, or more strongly still, the necessity, for the wives and children of the Bantu to remain in the Bantu homelands.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has referred here in previous speeches to a Bantu middle-class. The United Party want to establish a Bantu middle-class in the urban areas and in this connection I have the following questions to put to the United Party: What will be the percentage of this so-called middle-class? Are the United Party now going to differentiate between Bantu and Bantu; in other words, are they going to create class differences amongst the Bantu? Are the United Party also going to establish a Bantu middle-class of this nature in the Bantu homelands? If they are not going to do so, they will be acting unfairly towards the Bantu in the Bantu homelands; what is more, if they do not do so, they will be making a syphon of that Bantu middle-class or of the Bantu who consider that they should be elevated to the Bantu middle-class, which will draw the Bantu from the Bantu homelands to the White areas.

Mr. Speaker, I want to conclude. The policy of this Government is still the same as the policy followed by the National Opposition in 1923; the Government is still holding firmly to its former policy. I also want to bring this point home to the United Party. On the one hand this Bill aims at curbing the influx of the Bantu into the cities while at the same time stimulating a return flow from the Bantu urban areas to the Bantu homelands, and doing so as justly as possible. I want to assure the United Party that the law-abiding Bantu welcome this legislation because under its provisions they are protected against the workshy and the superfluous Bantu who often prey on those law-abiding Bantu like parasites, no matter where they may be. The Government is making an honest effort to progress in the direction of finding a solution of this difficult race problem and, at least, to put a stop to the increasing influx of the Bantu into the White areas. This corkscrew movement, this wriggling movement of the United Party for the sake of temporary or momentary political party profit, makes no impression upon the thinking public. What has to be decided is the future of South Africa, both for White and for non-White, a future which must be built upon peaceful relationships.

It is remarkable to hear the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) make a speech here on exactly the same sort of lines as that made by the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman). They both remind me of someone I know, someone called Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith thinks he is Napoleon. Mr. Smith went to his psychiatrist wearing a cocked hat with his arm in his jacket. The psychiatrist said to him: “You know, I know your difficulty; I have had many people like you here before; don’t worry.” Mr. Smith replied: “I am not worried about myself, doctor; I am worried about my wife. She still insists on calling herself ‘Mrs. Smith’.” That is precisely the attitude adopted by the hon. member for Heilbron and by the hon. member for Pretoria (East). We, Sir, are the ones who are smearing the name of South Africa by saying the things that we do about this Bill! They are not smearing the name of South Africa; they are merely putting through a Bill which is so abhorrent to the principles upon which South Africa has based its Government since Union and before Union that we are compelled to oppose it. Indeed if we did not oppose it, if we were to support this Bill, I think it would do South Africa far more harm overseas, because I believe that then people overseas would think that every single White man in South Africa was mad, and not just those who support measures of this kind.

Sir, when the hon. member for Pretoria (East) talks about the principle in this Bill being the same as the principle contained in the Urban Areas legislation, then I think the hon. gentleman must just go back a little and consider why that legislation was introduced. One of the reasons why it was introduced, one of the reasons why we thought it was necessary to have influx control in 1945, for example, was to protect those very people whom we regarded as having a right permanently to remain in the urban areas. That was one of the purposes of that legislation; that is the basis upon which we start, that is the basis of our approach to the Bantu people who live in the urban areas. [Interjection.] When the hon. member for Pretoria (East) talks about the “hands-up” policy of the United Party he must remember that when this “Hands-up Government” went out his Government got into power in 1948 and they have been in power for 15 years. He must remember that in that period 1,000,000 more Bantu came into the urban areas, into industry and commerce.

What happened while you were in power?

Sir, who has a “hands-up” policy? This is the Government which believes in separating the races, and in spite of that 1,000,000 more Bantu have come into the urban areas during this Government’s régime. And what does the hon. member over there have to say about it? He can only look to what has happened in the past! Well, let him look to what has happened in the past ten years and let him examine what is happening here. It is not going to help him, it is not going to help us and it is not going to help South Africa to dwell in the past all the time. Sir, this thing has happened and it will continue to happen. For goodness sake let us try to find some sort of formula to try to meet it. I think this is quite the most frightening Bill that I have ever seen produced before this House.

We know you are a coward.

Order! The hon. member for Ventersdorp (Mr. Greyling) must withdraw that remark.

I withdraw it.

One thing that does frighten me is the attitude of hon. members who sit over there. I know what is going to happen. I know that when the division bells ring there will be a sycophantic rush to go and vote in favour of the “Ayes” on the third reading of this Bill, because I know that that decision was taken in their caucus. I know that they do not care what is said in this House;

I know they do not care what argument is put up here; they will nevertheless vote “Aye” when the division bells ring, and that is what frightens me. What frightens me is that they have got themselves into such a mess and that they have got South Africa into such a hole that they do not know which way to turn. As my hon. Leader said, this Bill is an admission that they have no policy whatever for South Africa; it is an admission that they are not prepared to follow out the logical consequences of their own policy. As has been pointed out before to-day, this Bill comes before us as the quid pro quo, as the complementary legislation of the Bantustan legislation. This Bill is complementary to that legislation, and it is introduced at a stage when there is not one single Bantustan properly established. There is the Transkei; that is all. They do not even know where the borders of the Transkei are going to be. There are going to be another seven Bantustans; they do not know where those are going to be, and for the hon. member for Heilbron to come here and say that in their own areas the Bantu have the same sort of rights as we have in our areas is just so much absolute poppycock. What is the justification for this Bill?

Are those not Bantu areas?

Of course they are Bantu areas but to say that the Bantu in those areas have the same rights as we have in our areas is just so much nonsense. To say that they have those rights in the Transkei is just so much nonsense. The only justification that can be put forward for this Bill—not that I agree that it is a justification—is when all those seven or eight Bantustans are given complete independence. Then you might be able to say that they are all foreigners and that we can treat them as we like in our areas because they are not citizens of this country. When that day arrives then all the arguments which have been used in this regard may well be true but the fact of the matter is that we are faced with the situation to-day that we have all these Bantu in our urban areas. [Interjections.]

Order!

But he is not making a speech!

On a point of order, is the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) entitled to reflect on the chair?

The hon. member may proceed.

If this legislation is not complementary to the Bantustan legislation and is not necessary at this stage to be complementary to such legislation, then I think another reason must be suggested as to why this legislation has been introduced. I think it has been introduced because it gives immediate practical effect to a philosophy of government which this Government has espoused, not only in relation to the Bantu people but in relation to other people as well. That philosophy of government is the one which they have determined they are going to use in respect of the solution to the Bantu problem of South Africa. Sir, the hon. member for Heilbron was very worried when the hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to the machinery in this Bill as being similar only to that found in Stalinist Russia, but I want to ask him in what other country one finds machinery such as this.

It is not to be found in this measure—and you know that.

The attitude towards the Bantu who are going to be put through these labour bureaux is precisely the same as that adopted in Stalin’s Russia. They are being established for precisely the same purpose and with precisely the same philosophical background; and that philosophical background is that it is the duty of the State to determine what every individual will do.

May I ask a question.

I am not prepared to answer any questions.

You are too scared!

On a point of order, is it parliamentary for the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) to say the hon. member is too scared to reply when he has every right to refuse to answer a question?

Order! I did not see the hon. member and he cannot therefore get up to speak.

It is in effect totalitarian rule; I am not allowed to say it is communist rule because that would be out of order, but it is found nowhere else than in communist countries. It is totalitarian control of everything and everyone in South Africa which this Bill so well manages to achieve for this Government. As my hon. leader said the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development is going to be one of the most powerful men in the Western world; he will have power to control every facet of our lives if he wanted to.

It is apparently the policy of this Government to produce some sort of incentive for the industries to go to the borders. But they do not have to try to provide incentives because under this Bill, they can force any industry to go to the border areas.

Nonsense!

It is no good the hon. member saying this is nonsense. It is not a nice thought but it is nevertheless true. If the hon. member would look at Clause 9 he would see that power is taken there for the State President to determine the classes of employers to whom Bantu labour may be made available for employment by such labour bureaux. What else does that mean when you consider that the power is also given to make different regulations in different places? What else does that mean but a complete totalitarian control over commerce and industry in South Africa? What else does it mean considering that under this Bill you cannot get any Bantu labour anywhere at all except through a labour bureau?

You said exactly the same thing in regard to the so-called Church Clause and nothing came of it.

I was not here when the so-called Church Clause was discussed.

Your colleagues said the same things.

Quite apart from the fact that this Bill stinks of totalitarianism

Order! I do not think the hon. member should use the word “totalitarian” in relation to this Bill.

I protested about five minutes ago about that.

There is another aspect of this Bill which is not altogether founded on Western democratic principles and that is the relationship it brings about between the State and the individual, particularly in relation to the Bantu. It bears the very hallmark of that which is the opposite of Western democracy; the antithesis of it. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether one single Bantu or one Bantu organization has expressed its approval of this Bill? I do not believe there is one. We have read about discussions with the Bantu. Looking at the Bantu newspapers you do not find one word of acceptance amongst these people of this Bill. If we had had representatives of the Bantu people in this House they would have rejected it out of hand. Is that not a factor we have to consider especially when hon. members on that side of the House start moralizing about this Bill, when-they tell us that the moral foundation on which it is based is that everyone is going to be equal in their own areas? [Interjections.] There you are, Sir. In other words, this is the alternative to government by consultation, government by a means which is found only in totalitarian countries.

We have a Bill which provides not only where the Bantu can go and work but which decides whether they can go and work, what work they are going to do, for whom they are going to work and where they are going to live and whether they will be allowed to live with their family. When hon. members talk about all they have done for the Bantu in the way of housing they must remember something else. They must remember that they themselves provide all this housing on bases of 30 and sometimes 40-year leases. But further than that in a place like Umlazi they provide housing on freehold tenure to these people. They can own those houses and I have no doubt that in the case of Kwa Mashu, which at the moment is a Bantu township on a 30-year lease, when that is bought and becomes trust land, the Bantu will be allowed freehold there as well. Here we have people in the township set up by this Government and the local authority who own their land but in terms of this Bill they can be removed entirely from that area.

Don’t you know that is part of the Native territory?

They are going to be part of the Native territory. That is the fiction on which this Bill is based. Nevertheless the Government takes the power under this Bill to remove those people from the housing which they own and send them to some reserve and put somebody else in those houses. Does the hon. the Minister deny that that power is given in this Bill?

That is ridiculous.

If that is ridiculous the hon. the Minister should produce a Bill which excludes such people from the operation of this section of the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, this Bill will change nothing in South Africa. It will change none of the facts of South Africa. It will change the Government. This Bill is quite unworkable. Far from being based on the traditional modes of life in South Africa it is a reversal of trends in South Africa. It will change nothing of the facts of South Africa. The economic laws of this country will not be bent in the end by this Bill but it will change the attitude of the Bantu to South Africa.

I have no doubt that it will change the minds and the attitude of the Bantu to every single White man in this country. It must inevitably do so, Sir. Let us be realistic and face up to the fact that it is their attitude in the end which will determine whether the policy of this Government or of any other Government is going to work. I cannot think of any Bill more calculated to ensure that no Government whatever, which is a White Government, will ever succeed with a Bill such as this. This Bill is calculated to remove from the urban Bantu every vestige of security, every reason to remain with Western society, every reason to repeal Communism, every reason to repel any form of gangsterism, to repeal any form of mass movement. I think of nothing more calculated to do that than this Bill. Here we are deliberately destroying something which this Bill itself acknowledges is going to remain, namely, a great mass of responsible urban Bantu workers, whether we regard them as permanent or not. We are destroying that nucleus which has all these years kept those people on the side of law and order and on the side of Western democracy.

It is perfectly clear to me that the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes) adopted an attitude here to-day about which I think his party will not be very happy. What did the hon. member say? He said that the Bantu in this country were his “fellow-citizens”. Well, if they are fellow-citizens of hon. members over there then they should also enjoy political rights in the whole of South Africa. The hon. member said that he was prepared to give them political rights in this House. He talked about 7,000,000 Bantu. Hon. members on the other side are prepared to give those 7,000,000 Bantu eight representatives in this House. Eight only for 7,000,000! Would the Bantu be satisfied with that?

Will they be satisfied with eight Bantustans?

They will be satisfied with it, but they will not be satisfied with eight representatives in this House.

May I ask the hon. member a question? Does the hon. member regard the Coloureds as fellow-citizens?

It is precisely because we regard them as fellow-citizens that we propose to grant rights to them in their own Council, but we are not prepared to give them any rights in the White man’s Parliament. It will not avail the hon. member for Transkeian Territories to try to run away from that argument; his whole argument was that they were our fellow-citizens. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said the same thing; he said that their few remaining rights were being taken away from them. What rights are being taken away from them, and what further rights does the Opposition want to give them? Does the Opposition want to give them the unrestricted right to live in any part of South Africa?

You know what our policy is.

Will the hon. member tell me of what rights they are being deprived? I do not think the hon. member himself knows what his party’s policy is. We have been trying over the past 15 years to find out what the policy of the United Party is.

It has also been stated that nobody knows where the borders of the Transkei are, for example. The policy of the Opposition is one of race federation, and in terms of their race federation policy the Transkeian Natives are to be given representation in this Parliament. Where are the borders of their Transkei going to be?

Where they are to-day.

Are the borders of the Transkei under the race federation policy going to be the present borders? According to their race federation policy there is going to be a Transkei, and if there is a Transkei then there must be borders. All I want to know is where the borders of that Transkei are going to be. [Interjections.]

Order! Hon. members must stop making continuous interjections.

What has been the attitude of the whole of the United Party throughout this debate? It has been accepted by everybody that it is necessary to exercise control and, in the second instance that redundant Natives must be removed from the urban areas. That principle is one which is also advocated by the hon. member for Transkeian Territories. He said absolutely the same thing; he also said that control must be exercised; he also said that the redundant Natives must be removed. Did the hon. member not say that in his second-reading speech? He said that if control were lifted the Natives would flock into the White areas. He said that the surplus labourers and the unemployed Bantu must be removed from the cities. Is that not precisely what this Bill seeks to achieve? Those are the four principles to which this Bill seeks to give effect. In the circumstances I cannot understand why the United Party voted against the second reading of this Bill. If they are in favour of control, if they are in favour of the removal of redundant Natives, they should have voted for the second reading of this Bill and they should have tried in the Committee Stage to bring about improvements to clauses which they felt were wrong. That is what they should have done, but they did not do so. They cannot blame me therefore when I say that there is absolutely no difference between them and the Progressive Party. The Progressive Party say that they are against influx control, and the United Party voted against the principle of this Bill.

Has this Bill nothing to do with the Bantustan policy?

This Bill deals with the question of control and the question of redundant Natives. The United Party voted against the principle of this Bill, and they should have tried in the Committee Stage to improve the Bill.

May I ask a question? Has the hon. member no idea as to the contents of the 1945 Urban Areas Act?

The 1945 Act also deals with the question of control, but that Act was piloted through this House before the present industrial development in South Africa. One cannot use the machinery of the 1945 Act to control present-day conditions. Twenty years have elapsed since the passing of the 1945 Act and it is quite impossible to use that Act to-day. The 1945 Act also deals with Natives in the White areas. Why did hon. members opposite vote against the principle of this Bill? They did so because they do not want control; that is the whole point. They voted against it because they do not want control. If they are in favour of control then they should have voted for the second reading of this Bill, and they did not do so. We are entitled therefore to tell the public that the United Party want no influx control at all, and that is precisely what we are going to do; we are going to proclaim that fact from platform to platform. I am perfectly entitled to say this. The hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) and I will be holding a meeting in my constituency on Friday evening, and I am going to tell my constituents that the United Party are against the principle of this Bill. I should like to know how the hon. members for Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. Plewman), Port Elizabeth (Central) (Mr. Dodds) and Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) are going to explain their attitude to their Port Elizabeth constituents.

The hon. member for Transkeian Territories says that they are in favour of control and that sort of thing, but the United Party say that the only reason why they are against this Bill is because it violates human rights. In the first instance they object to the labour bureaux. Why do they suggest that the establishment of labour bureaux violates human rights? Why is the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) against these labour bureaux? Why is the Leader of the Opposition against them? The purpose of these labour bureaux is to ensure that there will be no influx of Natives into the White areas. The whole idea underlying these labour bureaux is to keep the Natives out of the White areas, but hon. members opposite are against these labour bureaux. Am I not entitled then to say that they are against influx control?

Read the Fagan Report.

The Fagan Report was brought out in 1947, which was before this present industrial revolution. In any event Mr. Fagan looked at this matter through borrowed spectacles. Hon. members opposite say that this Bill will bring about economic uncertainty, but is the position not in fact that these labour bureaux will bring about economic stability? Surely it is a question of supply and demand. If the labour bureaux find that there is an adequate number of Bantu in the White area to meet the needs of a certain industry, they will not allow additional numbers to enter that area. This will give stability to both the employer and the employee; it will give security to the employee. Is that not a good thing? Will it be better to allow the Bantu to enter the White area, without employment and without housing, and to let him lead a life of crime? Would that be humane? Are they to be allowed to come here and walk the streets for months without employment? Would that be a humane application of this Bill?

It has also been stated that no provision is made in these labour bureaux for the professional Bantu. Have hon. members opposite not read this Bill? Professional Bantu are excluded from the operation of the labour bureaux. It has also been stated here that the family life of the Bantu is being destroyed. The Bantu males who come here will, of course, be migratory labourers and they will not be allowed to bring their wives with them. Clause 10 (c), however, provides that a Bantu who has lived here for ten or 15 years or who was born here may have his wife and his children with him in the urban areas. In what way is the family life of the Bantu being interfered with? Moreover, a Bantu female may enter the White area for 72 hours. She can visit her husband and children without a permit, and if she wishes to remain for longer than 72 hours she has to obtain written permission. A Bantu female of 21 years of age is also entitled to enter the White area if she obtains the necessary permission from her guardian or her father. What happens now to the United Party’s story that the family life of the Bantu is being disrupted completely? Is that type of thing that makes me wonder whether the United Party really want this legislation. The hon. member for Durban (Musgrave) (Mr. Hourquebie) and the hon. member for Johannesburg (North), whose sympathies are really with the Progressive Party, bitterly attacked this Bill; they had some nasty things to say about it. Their sympathies are actually with the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman), but they refuse to join her party because they would like to remain members of this House and they know that if they join her party they will never be re-elected.

The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) has already drawn attention to the statement made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition for foreign consumption that this Bill is similar to Stalin’s five-year plan. What did the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) say? She said that this Bill went back to the Middle Ages. She again talked about Nazi Germany and said that this Bill was similar to the legislation of Nazi Germany. She went on to say that this system was similar to the caste system in India. That is the sort of thing that hon. members opposite have said about this Bill. Must I accept then that they are sincere when they say that they are in favour of control? Must I accept that they are sincere when they say that the redundant Bantu must be removed from the White areas? Must I accept that they are sincere when they say that certain undesirable types of Bantu must be removed? What is their attitude in connection with the cancellation of contracts? The position as far as the cancellation of contracts is concerned is simply that when a member of the P.A.C. or of the A.N.C. enters into a contract and the safety of the State is at issue, then that contract may be cancelled. The hon. member for Mus-grave is entirely against that. He says that this is all nonsense. Mr. Speaker, if we go to the electorate and tell them that the United Party are opposed to the cancellation of a contract entered into by a saboteur, do you think their constituents will still support them? Will the electors not draw precisely the same conclusion that I have drawn and that is that the United Party is absolutely opposed to control?

That is not the position, and you know that.

Why then did the hon. member not put forward a different proposal in the Committee Stage? He wanted to know why the Minister wanted powers to be able to take steps against persons who made themselves guilty of subversive activities. He must not try to get away from it now. The hon. member says that the hon. the Minister has the power to remove anybody if he does not like him. But surely that is not the position. If that is the position, why then did the hon. member not move an amendment to rectify the position?

May I say in conclusoin that I am perfectly certain that this Bill will be welcomed by both the Whites and the non-Whites in South Africa. The non-White will welcome it because he knows that if he comes to the White man’s cities there will be employment and housing for him; the White man will welcome it because he knows that there will be stability as far as his employees are concerned and, moreover, he knows that as far as this part of South Africa is concerned it will always remain White.

I am sure the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) (Mr. J. A. F. Nel) will not want me to enter into his private war with the Opposition. I shall leave his remarks in that regard unanswered. I only want to say it is very nice to belong to a party which does not have to draw fine distinctions between fellow-citizens born in rural areas and fellow-citizens born in urban areas. It is also very nice not to have to draw a distinction between persons who have been in a town for ten years and employed by one employer being allowed to have their families with them and persons who have been employed in a town for nine years and not being allowed to have their families with them. It is much easier to talk frankly and openly about admitting that everybody born within the borders of South Africa are fellow citizens who should enjoy the fundamental rights of mobility, etc., enjoyed by the White citizens of this country and that they should also enjoy social, economic and political rights as well.

I now want to come to the Bill itself, the third reading of which we are now considering. This is the seventh time since the Government has been in power that the Urban Areas Act and similar legislation have had to be amended in a most drastic form. The hon. member who has just sat down told us that from now on White South Africa can be quite satisfied that the safety of the citizens of this country will be ensured, because this Bill will see to it that from now on there will be stability and no more of the difficulties we have experienced in the past. I want him to know that despite the six amending laws which were passed previously, the increase in the African urban population between 1951 and 1960 has been in the neighbourhood of 45 per cent. All the laws in the world are not going to stop the movement from the rural areas to the urban areas, irrespective of legislation and irrespective of statutes. There have been movements from rural to urban areas in every country that has experienced an industrial revolution. The movement to the urban areas will continue and the Government will in no way be able to change the economic facts. In each case where the Urban Areas Act has been amended one finds that the intention has been to whittle away rights, to tighten influx control, to restrict mobility, to remove freehold rights which Africans enjoyed and steadily to reduce their trading rights or their right to carry on business in urban areas. All these Acts of 1952, 1954, 1956, the two Acts of 1957, the Act of 1963 and the legislation now before us have all been designed with that in mind, until one finds now that no African under this legislation will be able to move freely, to take up employment freely, to reside where he wants to and to have his family with him, not even that small exempted class of Africans who despite all the laws in the past, have managed to acquire certain statutory rights of residing undisturbed in the urban areas, of seeking work in the urban areas and of having their families with them in the urban areas. This is the final attempt by the Government as far as the immediate future is concerned to tighten the legislative strait-jacket for the Africans. Other speakers have pointed out that there might be some ethical justification for all this if viable independent Bantustans were already in existence, but all of us know that it is not so. Not only has only one Bantustan constitutionally been set up, but even that one area is not a viable nor a fully independent area. Therefore it is a complete fallacy to say that Africans enjoy rights in their own areas and therefore should be content to have rights removed in so-called White areas. This is one argument which has been used over and over again by Government speakers. It has no firm foundation. There does not exist one single viable Bantustan as yet, and even the hon. Prime Minister himself pointed out that there is a growing problem of unemployment in the area which is at the moment the only Bantustan.

The other main argument used in this debate by Government speakers is that the Government is merely carrying out a tradition in South Africa which has always existed, the traditional way of using Black labour in South Africa. That was the argument used by the hon. member for Heilbron and by other speakers on the other side. It is true that an entirely new pattern is not being introduced by this Bill. I said so at the second reading. This is not an entirely new pattern. For many years, Africans have had their movement circumscribed and have not been able freely to take up employment and so on, with the exception of the small group to which I have referred. It is equally incorrect, however, to say that Africans have never enjoyed any rights of permanency in the urban areas. The very fact that Africans could enjoy freehold rights at one stage, the fact that Africans had trading rights, which were considered as permanent rights, the fact that commission after commission has at least given de facto recognition of the existence of a class of permanently urbanized Africans as long ago as 1932, proves that. In 1932 the Native Economic Commission pointed out that there was then, long before the real industrial revolution of the ’30s, already a permanently urbanized class of Africans, and the Native Economic Commission of 1932, made the statement that to continue to employ Native labour in the towns and then behave as if it were not there, was clearly absurd. It recommended certain changes. That was after the Stallard Commission, after the first Urban Areas Act of 1923, but as long ago as 1932. And then of course there was the de facto recognition of a permanently urbanized Native population by the Fagan Commission which reported in 1947, and which in fact envisaged a change in direction at least of the legislation pertaining to urban Africans. The hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) quoted at length from speeches made by General Smuts way back in 1929. Does he not know that in appointing the Fagan Commission General Smuts made the categorical statement that the whole attitude towards Africans in urban areas had to be reconsidered. His words were “The time is now ripe for a new Native policy in regard to the Natives in the urban areas of South Africa.”

After the “hands up!”

If the hon. member really thinks that, that his laws have made any difference to the economic facts of this country, he is deluding himself, as I certainly believe he most frequently does. Because whether it is the “hands up” policy of the Opposition or the stringent control measures of the Government, has not made the slightest difference: The urban African population has gone up by 45 per cent over the last ten years. So why the hon. member thinks his party has accomplished anything is beyond me. The fact is, that de facto recognition was given to a permanently urbanized population as long ago as 1932, and reiterated again in 1948. What is more, that de facto recognition was translated into law by de jure recognition by the very fact that there was an exempted class of Africans—those who were born in the area, or those who had been here for 15 years or ten years in employment, as the case may be. So there was even de jure recognition of the actual enjoyment of rights, permanently, by the Africans in the urban areas of South Africa.

I want to come to this word “traditional”. I am sick and tired of this word “traditional”. It is used over and over again in South Africa as an excuse to maintain the most outmoded measures of racial discrimination. Anything that the Government wants to do to maintain “wit baasskap” is put down to tradition in South Africa. There is no idea of flexibility, no idea of adaptability to circumstances, nothing like that, only “tradition”. It is a word that does not even have any sense in modern terminology in the technological field. Whoever heard of the traditional use of labour? As if there have not been vast changes in technology! I have no doubt that the traditional way in which farmers ploughed their fields was to use an ox dragging a plough behind it, but I would say that the modern farmer is most likely to be found on a tractor, or having his Natives on a tractor. I have no doubt that the traditional means of transport used by the farmers of South Africa was to travel into town on an ox-wagon, calling on the leading ox which (I am told by my friend here) was commonly called “Swart-land” to get a move on. It is unlikely to find farmers these days using ox-wagons for transport. They will most likely be found behind the wheel of a flashy new Chevrolet car. So “traditional” means nothing as far as the use of labour is concerned. It changes every single day, and despite job reservation and everything else, South Africa has had to adapt itself to changes in the technological field, and to use semi-skilled, stabilized machine operators where formerly we only used unskilled African labour in our factories. I want to ask hon. members what they think this country would be like if it had stuck to so-called traditional means of employing labour in South Africa. Do they think we could enjoy the prosperity we are enjoying now if we only had unskilled African wage-earners in this country, instead of that large class of semi-skilled wage-earning Africans which is on the increase all the time, adding to our internal market and to the prosperity of every single White man in this country by virtue of providing a market for agricultural products and the goods of secondary industry? What do they think our national income would be like in South Africa to-day if we were sticking strictly to what is called the traditional use of labour? I wonder if anybody has thought of the economic effects of this Bill, if in fact it were capable of implementation, which I do not believe it is—that is the one saving grace. One piece of law after the other is put on the Statute Book which cannot be properly implemented. But the whole development of secondary industry in this country has indeed been built on the development of a stabilized labour force in South Africa which can be properly trained to take advantage of some of the technological changes which I have mentioned. Migratory labour has no part in the modern industrial state, and it is absurd to try and turn the clock back and use migratory labour. It all forms part and parcel of the Government’s mania for control.

What about the mines?

The mines would be delighted if job reservation could be removed and if they could use African labour on more skilled jobs. Of course. And it would be to the benefit of everybody, including the inhabitants of the constituency of the hon. member for Krugersdorp, because it would certainly give the marginal mines an additional lease of life, and it would not mean the displacement of one single White man. But as I say, that is all part and parcel of the Government’s mania for control. This busybody Government cannot resist putting its nose into every single facet of life of the inhabitants of this country. It is true that the majority of Bills are aimed at the non-White inhabitants. This Bill is called the “Bantu Laws Amendment Bill”, but this by no means obviates the fact that it will affect the lives of White men in South Africa as well, because the two communities are completely dependent on each other. This Bill is going to affect the White man because it is going further to inhibit his right to hire labour as he wants. In a normal democracy the Government interferes only to see that labour is not exploited, to see that decent wages are maintained and that proper hours of work are in fact laid down. But other than that it leaves things to the normal reactions of supply and demand in the labour field. Not this Government! Before anybody can take on a single worker in an urban area, that person must have received not only the approval of the labour bureau in the town, but if the Native comes from the rural area he must also have received permission to leave the outside area and come in to seek work. We have the absurd position in South Africa that although employers are queuing up for labour, there are men being endorsed out of the urban areas because a labour bureau official decides that a man having lost one job is not suitable for any of the other employers who are asking for him, irrespective of whether he is a semi-skilled worker or not. Back he goes to a rural area where he has again to get permission from the local commissioner before he can come in again.

He can get work with other employers.

That an employer may want to take on a specific man whom he knows about and who may have been employed by somebody who has given him a strong recommendation. That does not seem to matter, because the Government must control this man’s movement. Irrespective of the fact that the man has found a job and that an employer is willing to take him on, he may not stay and take that job. He has got to go all the way back to the rural area where he has again to get permission to come into the town, and then if he is lucky he joins the pool of labour, and again if he is lucky, he might find himself in a job which is suitable to his particular capabilities. In this country therefore everything is done by a system of permits, a vast army of bureaucrats controlling every facet of life of non-Europeans, and willy-nilly of the Europeans as well.

The whole of this is, as I say, part of the attempt on behalf of the Government to make apartheid work. There has been a lot of big talk about “rather being poor and White than rich and mixed”. Well I have yet to see any White man who is prepared to make any practical sacrifice in order to prevent South Africa from remaining what it is, which is “mixed and rich”. As I said earlier, the only good thing about apartheid is that it is, in fact, incapable of implementation. That is also the best one can say about this particular measure.

I have so far confined myself to the effects of this measure on the economy of this country. Now I want to deal for a moment with its effects on human relations in this country. Individual Africans are being shunted around at the whim of White employers; they are being deprived of all the normal rights of mobility, of the right to sell their labour in the proper markets, and of the right per se to set up families. As such they take the full brunt of these laws. While all of us in an economic sense feel their effect, it is the African who takes the full brunt in the human relations sense. On him is left the brutal scar of racial grievance and of hopelessness. In him will be fostered a feeling of recklessness because there is nothing for him to lose. The most astonishing thing about this Bill is, of course, the naïve belief which all members of the Government have, from the hon. the Deputy Minister to the hon. member for Heilbron, who so eloquently spoke about stability in this country and the rights of and the betterment of conditions for the Africans, that by putting this measure on the Statute Book the Government will have disposed of what it considers to be a problem, i.e. the presence of Africans in the so-called White urban areas of South Africa. It is almost as if by removing from urbanized Africans the status of permanent residence, it will per se banish any demands on the part of Africans in our midst. Or simply by calling people temporary sojourners or migratory labourers, one per se removes all the needs and wants and desires of the Africans. If I may put it in a nutshell: The Government appears to imagine that the African is a disembodied pair of black hands, present in the White areas to work for the White man as long as the White man has need for those hands. They are completely disembodied, divorced from being a human being; in other words, without any of the needs of a human being and without any of the natural demands and aspirations of human beings. Well, Sir, this is physically just not the case. Whether Africans are present in our midst as migratory workers, whether they are here as temporary sojourners, or whether they are here as permanent urban dwellers, they remain human beings with the desires and wants of human beings. Simply to consider a man as a labour factor does not change him from a human being into simply a disembodied pair of hands.

This, then, is the lesson the Government is going to learn and it may very well learn it the hard way. The hon. member for Kempton Park said I made a dangerous statement the other day in this House when I warned the Government that if an attempt was made to implement this Bill, particularly as far as African women were concerned, there would be trouble in South Africa. It cuts no ice with me if it is said that the responsibility would be on my shoulders if there were to be trouble. It is an old Nationalist trick to pass unjust laws and then try to blame the people who protest against those laws for the effects they have.

But you are telling them that.

Again he seems to imagine that the African is just a pair of hands not knowing what effect this Bill is going to have on him. I think the hon. member ought to go down to one of the Bantu Affairs Commissioner’s offices and watch the effect on Africans as they are being endorsed out of the urban areas and as they are carted off under the pass laws. Let him then see what the effect is on the African. In fact, they do not need me to tell them that they are having a bad time; they do not need me to tell them that when they come out of gaol they are going to be in exactly the same displaced state of insecurity. It does not need me to tell a person that because he knows it himself. He is, after all, a human being—something the hon. member has forgotten. Again one can only warn the Government with every bit of sincerity at one’s command that laws like this can only achieve one thing, i.e. build up this top-heavy structure of racial grievance. Hon. members seem to think they can control the situation for their lifetime. Probably they can. But they cannot do so for their children’s lifetime. All of us must learn the lessons of history that unless you have a people who have consented to be governed in the way they are in fact being governed, changes will come sooner or later. It is my purpose to try and persuade the Government to ensure that these changes should come peacefully and not by means of violence, which I believe to be otherwise inevitable.

And so, Sir, for these reasons, i.e. because I believe that this is a dangerous Bill; because I believe it is an unjust Bill; and because I believe it takes the direct opposite direction to the direction South Africa should be taking, I again want to voice my opposition against it.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman), who has just sat down says that this is the seventh Government measure “to whittle away rights”, to use her own words. Every time a measure is piloted through this House the Bantu is told that all his human rights are being taken away from him. The Bantu is told the same story time and again, and that is that every right that he formerly enjoyed is now being taken away from him. What I object to is the way in which the hon. member says these things. Mr. Speaker, as you know I have a good deal of knowledge of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. As you know they cause a fever. I have nothing against the personality of the hon. member for Houghton but what I object to is the fact that she employs the tactics of the political malaria-carrying mosquito to infect the Leader of the Opposition and his henchmen with the disease of irresponsibility of which we again had evidence here to-day. The Leader of the Opposition and his followers must remember that they too have a responsibility in this House. Under a democratic system it is the responsibility of an Opposition to say what is wrong with a measure and to suggest ways and means of improving it. Let me put it this way: If a mechanical engineer designs a machine and it is the function of another mechanical engineer to criticize that machine and to point out its defects, then the engineer whose exalted task it is to point out the defects must not only run down the machine, as the Leader of the Opposition did here this afternoon. He must not only heap abuse on this measure, without mentioning a single defect in it. If an Opposition does that, then it is not serving its purpose. The fact of the matter is that in the course of this third-reading debate we have not heard a single reason from the Opposition this afternoon as to why this legislation should not be brought into operation immediately. What then is the use of the things said here by the Leader of the Opposition? He said, for example, that this measure violated our Christian way of life. What useful purpose does that statement serve? Does the hon. the Leader of the Opposition want to play a new role here? Instead of putting forward constructive criticism of this measure, does he want to imitate certain religious bodies in this country? Does he want to represent things in an even more terrible light than they do? Does he want to outdo these people in distorting the facts as far as the policy of this Government is concerned? Is that what he is trying to do? That is not what he is being paid an additional allowance for! He is not being paid to compete here with certain so-called religious bodies which entirely ignore the true facts of the situation. It is not the duty of a Leader of an Opposition to compete with those people—to see whether he can utter more untruths and whether he can besmirch South Africa’s name more than they do. His duty is to judge this measure in the light of the facts and then to point out where the measure is wrong; it is not his duty to say the things which he said in this House this afternoon. For the umpteenth time the Leader of the Opposition said here this afternoon—and nobody knows better than he himself that what he said was not true …

Order! The hon. member is not allowed to say that. He must withdraw those words.

I withdraw that statement, Mr. Speaker. But I want to point out that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition ought to be informed and he should know therefore that in saying what he did here to-day he was not giving the correct picture. All he succeeds in doing is to give the outside world a distorted picture of legislation passed in this House. That is all he can achieve by saying what he did here. And what does he achieve in presenting this distorted picture to the outside world? All he can possibly achieve by utterances such as those he made here this afternoon—and one does not know whether that was really his idea—is to increase the pressure exerted upon South Africa from abroad. On a previous occasion when we were discussing legislation similar to this measure the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and one of his front-benchers said that this Government was passing legislation which was designed to throw the Bantu into gaol—those were his words—merely for worshipping. Very many years have elapsed since that legislation was passed in this House, and I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition or anyone of his followers to quote the case of a single Bantu in this country who was imprisoned for worshipping. Sir, one can be as calm and as good-natured as one likes but when one’s country is besmirched in this way in the eyes of the outside world, when the facts are so distorted, one’s whole being revolts against it. Here we have a country with a democratic form of government; the Opposition have the right to criticize everything the Government does, but they abuse that right because instead of trying to improve measures they besmirch and prejudice this country in the eyes of the outside world.

Mr. Speaker, last year people from abroad sat here on the Gallery listening to speeches made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and other speakers on his side, and do you know what their comment was? They said afterwards: “Who are those people sitting on the opposite benches? They do not talk as if they are from South Africa! They talk as if they want to cause an upheaval, a war, in South Africa.” Those are the words they used. That is what they had to say about the Opposition, “They talk like foreigners and not like South Africans”. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, did members on the other side make a single remark here to-day which will not be interpreted by people who do not know the Opposition as emanating not from people who wish to defend South Africa but as emanating from foreigners who are trying to see how much harm they can do to South Africa’s name in the eyes of the world? Hon. members opposite make this type of speech not with a view to placing the Government on trial before the electorate but in order to harm the Government, and more particularly, South Africa, in the eyes of the outside world and to increase the pressure exerted upon South Africa from abroad.

I agree with the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) (Mr. J. A. F. Nel) that what that side of the House visualizes is not going to materialize. In the circumstances we are not going to attach any such interpretation to their words, but what we are going to do is to place those words of theirs before the tribunal of the nation and ask the nation to pass judgment on an Opposition which constantly finds pleasure—I repeat, which constantly finds pleasure—in besmirching South Africa’s name in the eyes of the outside world.

[Inaudible.]

The reason why the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker) puts that question is simply because he did not take part in this debate. He might not have heard what was said here today, or if he did hear it then he was deliberately turning a deaf ear to it.

As a South African I am ashamed to hear how our name is besmirched by the other side.

I challenge the hon. member to prove that. Why do hon. members opposite not mention names?

I mention your name.

I challenge the whole of the United Party to prove the accusation that they made here that we are going to put the Bantu in gaol merely for worshipping.

Is it not because the Opposition exposed that clause that the Government did not act on it?

That is a very clever attempt to get out of the difficulty, but it does not behove the hon. member. The world was told by the Opposition that in South Africa a Bantu was thrown into gaol merely for worshipping. But as far as these seven measures are concerned, what sense is there in replying to the nonsensical statements made by the Leader of the Opposition and his henchmen and telling them that there is no such thing in this law if they are simply going to repeat the same statements to-morrow or the day after to-morrow? And they repeat those statements not with a view to improving the Bill but so that those statements can be used against us by our enemies at the UNO. That is their object. I wonder when the day will come when South Africa will have an Opposition that will adopt a South African outlook in criticizing legislation with a view to improving it and not with a view to distorting the facts? Sir, the time will come again when the Opposition will be subpoenaed specifically to appear before the tribunal of the nation as far as this measure is concerned. It will be a sad day for South Africa if the hon. member for Germiston (District) and a few other hon. members opposite are no longer there, but it will be a joyful day if we can get rid of certain members opposite, because South Africa’s name will then no longer be besmirched as it is being besmirched at the present time. But apparently there is a constant struggle going on in the ranks of the United Party, a struggle promoted by a political element whose aim it is to bring South Africa under fire to such an extent that sooner or later an untenable position will be created here either because of pressure from abroad or through a revolution.

This measure is necessary because with our rapid industrial development, unless we have this measure, there will be an influx of labour into certain areas with resultant unemployment while in other areas there will be a shortage of labour and many Bantu will suffer because they will be unable to get employment. The United Party know that one of the factors that was responsible for their downfall, particularly on the Rand, was the fact that instead of exercising control they allowed Bantu to flock into the cities without control and to set up squatter camps. If we were to heed the plea made here by the Opposition and by the hon. member for Houghton, we would have unheard-of conditions within just a few months and we would find that so many Bantu flock into the cities that squatter camps would again arise, in spite of our large housing schemes. That is something, of course, that the Opposition would very much like to see because they will then be able to say: “The very things for which we were kicked out in 1948 are again taking place under the National Party Government.” Sir, the Nationalist Party Government is keeping a watchful eye on these things; it is keeping pace with the rapid development of South Africa, and that is why it is necessary for this measure to be put into operation with the utmost speed.

One is compelled to listen to the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. M. J. van den Berg) not because of the content of the speeches, but because of the sheer noise with which they are accompanied. But I want to reply firstly to what was said by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) (Mr. J. A. F. Nel) who, I regret to say, is not here now. He, like so many other speakers on the Government benches, attempted to make out that because the United Party Opposition has voted against this Bill, it was against any form of influx control and was in favour of an unlimited and uncontrolled flow of Bantu from the rural to the urban areas. It is the sort of smear which is thrown up by Government members so often when they are unable to meet the arguments advanced by us. What requires to be said has been said before but needs to be said again in this debate, and that is to refer hon. members to the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act of 1945, which was passed by the United Party Government and which established influx control; which made provision for the control of idle and disorderly Natives in the towns, whilst at the same time preserving the rights of those individuals who could be fairly said to be permanently urbanized and responsible members of the urban Bantu community. The Government in 1945 was faced with an industrial revolution which had taken place in South Africa during the war. There was a rapid influx of Bantu workers to the towns principally because of that industrial revolution, and we had a measure introduced in 1945, typical of the United Party approach to things, which introduced merely that measure of control which was desirable to meet the situation in the interest not only of the townfolk but also of those who were coming in. Anyone who has any contact with the urban Bantu to-day will appreciate that that form of influx control protects not only those coming in but also those already established as urban Natives. In those circumstances one has great difficulty in following the argument which was taken a step further by hon. members opposite, and that is that this Bill deals merely with influx control and prevents a stream of Bantu people coming into the towns uncontrolled, and that that is its sole function; that it deals only with squatters and labour tenants, and then we are asked how we on this side can oppose this Bill. It cannot be said too often that laws to deal with influx control, and laws to control the disorderly elements in the towns, the squatters and the labour tenants, have been on the Statute Book for years. There has been control for 20 years or more in respect of all those things I have mentioned, and every argument we have had that this Bill should be accepted because those things require control carry one not an inch further. Our objection to this measure is that it goes far beyond the provisions which exist at present, and it goes to the roots of the personal relationship between employer and employee, and it destroys that relationship. That is one of the principles basic to this Bill, which is quite new in our legislation, and that is why we are opposed to this Bill. In addition, the influx control measures and the measures to control the Bantu in the urban areas, his housing and his living in an urban area, are far exceeded in this Bill, and this Bill is aimed at the destruction of that type of community, namely the established urban Bantu. That is another reason why we are opposed to this Bill in principle. Anyone who has the slightest grasp of this Bill must accept that the objections we have raised go far beyond the various arguments on this aspect of the matter which have been raised.

There is one further aspect which was raised by the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto). He said unless you have control of this kind, if you accept that the Bantu is a citizen of South Africa, how can you limit the areas which he will inhabit; how will you limit him to certain areas? But there is no difficulty in regard to the Coloureds and the Asiatics as to where they can live and in regard to their taking over the whole of the country for their occupation. That problem does not arise. Up to the present time, in regard to the housing of the urban Bantu, there has been not the slightest danger that the Bantu will take over the whole country. In fact, these vast Bantu townships which have been built by this Government—and they are not temporary shacks but brick houses for which a 30 years’ lease has been granted in many cases—have been able to be controlled, and the size of the township is in proportion to the demand for housing which in itself is in proportion to the amount of labour which is necessary for industry.

[Debate having continued for three hours, business interrupted.]

Mr. Speaker, within the limited time I have to acquit myself of my task I unfortunately have to do a little injustice to numerous members and to the debate because I shall not be able to reply fully to all the points raised here to-day and I shall also have to refer to general matters which have flowed from the Committee Stage. I shall therefore have to hurry and hon. members must forgive me for not replying in detail to all of them.

I wish to start with the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and I want to repeat what I told him the other day namely that he, as the Leader of the Opposition, occupies a dignified position in this House and he should not allow himself to be degraded by his party to do the dirty work which he again had to do here to-day. I think he has capable backbenchers who can do that work. It was striking to notice how the Leader of the Opposition struggled to-day to state his case, firstly, because he did not have a case, and how he could not muster the facts he had to muster. The Leader of the Opposition did not do his case, his position and his person any good today and I am sorry to have to say that to him. I tell him that in all friendliness because I rather like the hon. the Leader. I was sorry that the hon. the Leader again had to do something to-day which he did previously in this debate, something which I took very much amiss at the time and which I again took amiss to-day. Actually the Leader of the Opposition is the only culprit who again dragged into the debate the argument about corruption, the opportunity which this legislation, according to him, is supposed to be creating for numbers of officials throughout the country to be corrupt, officials of our Department, I take it, Bantu Affairs Commissioners and officials of municipalities and of the Department of Justice. I have never yet taken the trouble to count but there are probably many thousands of officials throughout the whole country concerned with the administration of Bantu affairs, municipal officials and officials of Bantu Education and of Justice. Let me repeat that the corps of officials come out of this with flying colours. I am not for one moment saying that irregularities have not taken place. Hon. members know of such cases but we also know that measures exist to combat them and that those measures are applied irrespective of the persons concerned. But those are the few exceptions which must be attributed to ordinary human weaknesses. But I deny the general charge with the contempt it deserves. The Leader of the Opposition as well as other members opposite have adopted a very unreasonable attitude. On previous occasions the courts of the Bantu Affairs Commissioners have been discredited and the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) also distinguished herself in that field to-day. But the Leader of the Opposition did something very improper to-day when he referred to the officials who are concerned with these matters in the belittling way in which he did. During the course of this debate we had another example of that and I wish to refer to that briefly. I purposely waited right till the end in order to hear whether the Opposition would express one word of appreciaton for the memorandum which explains this Bill but they did not.

Hon. members opposite made various efforts to represent that memorandum as a false piece of work. Even as far as its distribution was concerned they had all sort of things to say. The hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) will remember them. Let me tell hon. members that the officials—one in particular—who were concerned with the compilation of this memorandum did an excellent piece of work. I followed the preparation of that memorandum very carefully and on numerous occasions I regarded it from one point of view only and that was that of the ordinary member who wished to read and study the Bill and I have to admit that that memorandum must undoubtedly have been of inestimable value to the ordinary member. However, we have not had a single word of appreciation from the other side for it. That does not promote a feeling of goodwill towards our officials. The Opposition should realize that our officials also wish to co-operate with them and they do so daily and the Minister’s and my instructions to the officials are that they should co-operate with the Opposition. But is this treatment any encouragement to the officials? I think the Leader of the Opposition has adopted a very unpatriotic attitude. [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister says they are simply “Black-Sash” stories and I agree whole-heartily with him.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to-day to the provisions of the Bill and he said they undermined and weakened the labour traditions of the Bantu. I just want to correct him by saying that it is exactly the policy of the United Party which will have the effect of creating labour instability. I have a suspicion, as Oom Kaspaas would say, that it is the specific object of the United Party to create labour instability because the United Party are in favour of a relaxation of influx control, as the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) (Mr. J. A. F. Nel) has so very effectively pointed out. They are in favour of practically no influx control. We experienced that at the time when they were in power. They allowed an unlimited inflow so as to have a large labour pool available from which you could draw as many workers as you wished and naturally when there is a surplus supply of labour the wages are low. I have already dealt with that and do not wish to do so again, but I said our labour bureau system which would control the influx of Bantu to the urban areas and canalize them to the employers was a stabilizing factor of immense economic and social importance to both the Bantu and the employers. It assures the Bantu that there will not be a surplus supply of labour, a fact which has a beneficial effect on wages, and according to our policy the Bantu are allowed into our area in order to work here. It is a guarantee to the Bantu that when he comes here to work he will receive a reasonable wage. In other words our policy gives the Bantu and the employer economic security. Therefore, the Leader of the Opposition should actually accuse himself of that which he accuses us of.

In order to reassure them I want to say this to-day to the Leader of the Opposition and to a few hon. members opposite who have again to-day referred to the so‘called permanent presence of the Bantu in White areas and their right to own houses and property. During the past three years alone we with our Bantu policy in South Africa have created many more opportunities for them to own land in the right places than the United Party and all other Governments did prior to 1948. The Leader of the Opposition ought to know, and if he does not know it the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes) will be able to tell him, but not the hon. member for Durban (North) because he has already briefed his Leader incorrectly in these debates, that at the moment we are busy with nearly 70 Bantu towns in the Bantu homelands and in each one of those towns the Bantu may own property if he wishes to do so. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. S. J. M. Steyn) asks what they do in those towns. They live there and they are the proud owners or tenants of those houses. During the past three years we have in that way opened the door to many more Bantu to become property owners in South Africa than all the governments put together did prior to 1948, but in the right place. I now wish to refer to the remark made by the hon. Leader to-day when he tried to play off the Minister of Housing against me. Let me correct him. As I understood the statement by the Minister of Housing he said two things of fundamental importance. He was attacking Communism and saying that they did not favour property ownership and we know that is so; secondly, he said our policy was that everyone should have the right to own property in his own area and I agree with the hon. Minister. That was why I gave the example of how we were giving the Bantu the right to own property. I cannot speak about the Coloureds or the Indians to-day. They get their rights in the right places. [Interjections.] I have indicated how we were creating those opportunities for the Bantu in their homelands; we encourage them and we make it easier for them to own property than it is for the Whites to own property in our own areas. The regulations provide for mortgage bonds to be registered and that makes it easier and cheaper for them to acquire property than for us here. That is precisely what we encourage but we do so in the right way. Sir, my difficulty with hon. members opposite is this. They advocate a sort of political dialectics—a hotch-potch of everything together—and that is not possible.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition wishes to grant the Bantu the right to own property in Cape Town and he also wishes to give them the right to own property somewhere else, namely, in the Bantu homelands. We work according to a scheme and surely hon. members of the Opposition know that by now; our scheme is one of separate development and within the framework of that policy of separate development unlimited possibilities are opened up to the Bantu—more so than under previous governments—to become landowners, not only to build up a middle class but to build up a proper Bantu nation consisting of all classes, as many classes as they want to have.

The hon. member for Transkeian Territories also referred to citizenship rights; he had a great deal to say about that. I shall return in a minute to the question of rights of citizenship, particularly with reference to Section 10 of the Urban Areas Act; I hope I shall make it in my race against the clock. As far as the question of citizenship is concerned I recommend to the hon. member for Transkeian Territories to read Section 7 of the Transkei Constitution once again. He will then see what the principle of citizenship is as defined there; where citizenship is created for them in their own areas and where a defined citizenship is created for them in the Republic, in other words, in respect of certain general matters in the Republic. The hon. member should not have said what he did say this afternoon because he was wrong.

Are they not citizens?

They are citizens as provided for in the Transkei Constitution Act and not in the sense the hon. member wants to manufacture citizenship for them for the sake of cheap propaganda.

What about those who do not come from the Transkei?

What about the Zulus?

The hon. member for Durban (North) thought he had a very strong point when he said “Look how many Bantu are in industry here.” What about it? They are all here on our basis, not on United Party basis, thank heaven. Had the Bantu been here in industry on the political basis of the United Party how many would there not have been and to what an extent would they not have embedded their roots in the homeland of the Whites. Years ago when the Tomlinson report was discussed here we already said we expected the number of Bantu in the White areas to increase further. But their numbers are increasing in terms of our policy and in terms of our legal provisions and in terms of our control measures. We do not hesitate to say that very clearly to the Bantu; and in a moment I shall again state it very clearly. As hon. members opposite ought to know the Bantu are welcome in our area to perform justifiable labour and if their numbers increase in the process let them increase because then it happens under Government policy and according to our legislation. What is wrong with that? No, that argument of the hon. member is simply no argument. It is tantamount to saying the sun is shining outside that is why it is light. Surely it is something obvious.

The hon. member and numerous other Opposition members referred to this Bill as the second leg. The hon. member should not think we require only two legs, two laws, to carry out our policy of separate development. There are numerous laws in terms of which that policy is carried out and the hon. member knows it. Let me again remind hon. members of what I said during my very first speech in this debate. We started to prepare legislation which gave rise to last year’s Bill and to this one as far back as the beginning of 1960 or rather in 1959, long before the Transkei Com stitution was even under consideration. It is wrong, therefore, to say this Bill is the outcome of the Transkei Constitution Act, it is not the outcome of that. But the hon. member must not think I am saying this Bill is unrelated to our other Acts, including the Transkei Constitution Act; of course it is related to it but the hon. member is wrong when he says it is the outcome of that. This Bill is related to all our Acts and hon. members made a big mistake during all these discussions when they tried to create the impression that everything connected with Bantu administration was only contained in this Bill. Numerous other provisions are contained in numerous other Acts, including many positive and many things beneficial to the Bantu and hon. members of the Opposition lost sight of all that.

It is part of the octopus.

The hon. member asked which Bantu body had approved of this Bill. My reply to that is this: Many aspects, important aspects of this Bill have been approved by Bantu bodies and by individual Bantu. I have already given a few examples of that. I want to ask the hon. member which Bantu bodies—he must not run to find Bantu bodies and incite them to do so —have rejected this Bill over the period of 4½ years which it took to prepare it? Not a single one. No, the hon. member for Durban (North) advanced a childish argument.

What about the advisory boards?

I again ask the hon. member—I am very pleased to see that he has improved to such an extent that he is again in our midst—which Bantu body has rejected this Bill?

What about the advisory boards?

Last year I gave examples of those advisory boards which have approved of the provisions of the Bill.

Mr. Speaker I have a very short time at my disposal. I should like to fulfil a promise I made in the Committee Stage when I said I would reconsider certain points raised by the hon. members for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) and South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) in view of certain doubts they had. I undertook to go into the matter and that, if necessary, I would move amendments in the Other Place. I very briefly want to say to those two hon. members that I went very carefully into the matter; I had ample time to do so. There is no justification to change the clauses concerned in any way. The hon. member for Zululand referred to the definition of “labour tenants” and he wanted to know where it was provided that the labour tenant must perform certain duties on the farm for a certain period in return, as it were, for his right to live there. I just want to tell the hon. member that Section 48 (1) (v) of the Native Trust and Land Act, Chapter IV, provides for regulations to be made in regard to those aspects; inter alia, it is provided that labour tenants should not, in those circumstances, give their labour for longer than four months per year. It is not necessary therefore to make any change.

The hon. member for South Coast spoke about the definition of prescribed areas. I also went into that very thoroughly. Actually I have already replied to that question in the long reply I gave to the Second Reading debate. I referred to the various areas you could have under existing legislation—urban areas, proclaimed areas for this purpose, prescribed areas for that purpose, proclaimed areas for a third purpose etc. All those things taken together are in essence precisely what we are lumping together in one clause in this Bill. In that case too, therefore, it is unnecessary to revise the position and the Bill can be left as it is.

I now want to deal with the question of the so-called citizenship rights of the Bantu. In the earlier stages of this Bill the hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to the so-called Section 10 rights, that is to say Section 10 of the Urban Areas Act. Hon. members of the Opposition have to-day again referred to the Bantu’s “rights of citizenship”. I want to state the position very clearly in this House. I think it is also necessary to state it clearly outside because the same misconception obviously exists outside this House. Let me say clearly that the concessions contained in Section 10 cannot in any way be regarded as rights of citizenship, in the ordinary or present meaning of that term, and I shall clearly indicate why they cannot be regarded as rights of citizenship. Firstly, provision is made in Section 10 (1) (a), (b), (c) and (d) of the Urban Areas Act for certain categories to be exempt from influx control. Section 10 (1), with its sub-sections, contains statutory exemptions from limitations. Hon. members must view the position in this light: Every Bantu must obtain permission to enter and to live in an urban area or a proclaimed area; he must obtain permission at the Bureau to work there or he must obtain permission to enter from the local authority official concerned. That is fundamentally necessary in each case. But Section 10 (1) provides that the following categories are exempt from the necessity of obtaining that permission: Firstly, exemption is granted in that Act to all Bantu in the whole of South Africa, Bantu of all sexes and all ages, to be in an urban area for 72 hours. That is an important provision which hon. members of the Opposition lose sight of. That exemption is granted to all Bantu in South Africa. That is an exemption; not a right of citizenship. Does a person only have a right of citizenship for 72 hours? It is ridiculous to represent the matter in that light. Then there is a second category; in that case exemption is granted to be in an urban area for a longer period than 72 hours. The first group comprise those Bantu who have been in that urban area since birth, not because they were born there. The second group comprise those Bantu who have been continuously employed by a certain employer in the urban area for a period of 10 years and who have not been found guilty of certain contraventions. The third group comprise those Bantu who have lived in an urban area for 15 years and who have not been found guilty of certain contraventions; that too is an exemption. The following group which is exempt comprise all the dependents, such as the wife and the children, of the groups I have just mentioned. Exemption is also granted under Section 10 (1) (b) to all Bantu who wish to visit an urban area provided they have obtained the approval of the municipal officials to do so. Lastly, exemption is granted to Bantu who wish to come to an urban area to look for work if they have obtained the necessary approval. These exemptions which are granted are not rights of citizenship; they are exemptions from limitations, in other words, exemptions from the limitations which were known as the pass laws prior to 1952. I wish to remind hon. members that this provision which was incorporated in the Urban Areas Act in 1952 is correlated with another Act which was also placed on the Statute Book in 1952, namely, the Reference Book Act. When the reference book system with all its benefits was introduced it was possible to introduce this provision in the Urban Areas Act in terms of which exemptions could be properly documented. I want to give a second important reason why these exemptions cannot be regarded as rights of citizenship. These concessions, these exemptions, are only granted in what we shall henceforth call prescribed areas, the urban areas generally speaking. These so-called birthrights and the ten year and 15 year rights to which hon. members refer do not exist on the farms; they do not exist in the Bantu homelands; they do not exist in the scheduled areas or in the released areas. What kind of a citizenship right of the Bantu is it which he does not even enjoy on the farm and in his homeland and in the released areas? What a stupid argument to call it a right of citizenship! It is a misrepresentation to call these exemptions or concessions rights of citizenship; they are simply arrangements for them to remain there. If hon. members would only look at the negative way in which Section 10 (1) is worded they would realize that no reference is made there to rights of citizenship; no reference is made to any rights as it were; the wording is not positive; hon. members must understand that well. Dominating all this is the one aspect of our policy namely that the Bantu’s presence in the urban areas is justified by the labour he does; that is the most important and the best exemption the Bantu can ever obtain.

I want to conclude by making this appeal to hon. members opposite and particularly to the Bantu: I want to tell them that if they continue to advance this irresponsible argument that what is contained in Section 10 constitutes rights of citizenship, the advisers to the Bantu and the liberals who spread those stories will force us to revise the provisions of Section 10 so that they will not lend themselves to misrepresentations of this nature. I want to say that to the Opposition and I want them to understand that perfectly well.

Question put: That the word “now” stand part of the motion,

Upon which the House divided:

Tellers: J. J. Fouché and P. S. van der Merwe.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and N. G. Eaton.

I move the amendments as printed in my name on the Order Paper—

1. (f) by the addition to the said definition of the following further proviso:

In the first part of the amendment provision is made for the one concession I already held out in respect of buildings which were already under control, viz. a minimum of 8 per cent on the valuation.

In so far as the second part of the amendment is concerned, I have already pointed out in my statement that there must be some limitation applied to those people who do not keep their buildings in order. The object of this amendment is simply to give effect to that.

Sir, the fact that the hon. the Minister has found it necessary to introduce this amendment, and 14 other amendments in a Bill of 7 clauses, makes one realize that this Bill should have been referred to a Select Committee.

Order! The hon. member must confine himself to the clause.

Sir, we are now dealing with clause 1, in which the Minister is introducing a proviso to the effect that if repairs and maintenance are not carried out, the rent board may disallow “any amount” that a lessor is entitled to get in terms of the principal Act. What we would like to know is whether the words in this proviso mean that the lessor will not get anything at all for depreciation, maintenance and repairs if the rent board feels that he is not maintaining the building in a proper condition.

I would also like to refer to the definition of “garage” in clause 1. I wish to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that in terms of the principal Act “garage” is not defined at all. We cannot understand how a rent can be fixed for a garage if the word “garage” is not defined in the principal Act. No authority is given in the enabling section for this definition. Sir, the importance of the concession which the Minister has now made in allowing a return of 8 per cent on the value of the building, is substantially diminished by the fact that he has not taken the logical step of clearly defining what is meant by the “value” of a building. The Minister should have defined “value” of a building as determined by a rent board, instead of permitting a maximum of 8 per cent on an indefinite value of the building. The value of this concession is materially diminished unless the rent board has a definite basis on which to assess the value of the building. If a rent board can now furthermore in terms of the New Amendment, disallow the full 20 per cent which could formerly be allowed in respect of depreciation, repairs and maintenance then any amelioration in this panic legislation, which we advised the Minister to send to a Select Committee ….

Order! The hon. member must confine himself to the clause.

I feel that if that suggestion had been accepted, these deficiencies in clause 1 would certainly not have existed, and we would have had a more satisfactory piece of legislation. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he is satisfied that he has enabling legislation actually to determine the rental of a “garage”, whereas in terms of the principal Act ‘controlled premises’ means a dwelling or business premises. Business premises have fallen away so ‘controlled premises’ have merely become “a dwelling”. How is the Minister going to control a “garage” if he has not got authority in the form of a definition to do so? I think these are aspects which make one realize that the Minister should reconsider this particular clause, and bring some amendment to clarify the position and stop the confusion that exists in the public’s mind as to what exactly this clause—and many other clauses of the Bill— really mean.

I think the hon. the Minister owes this House an explanation as to why he has moved an amendment to this clause, particularly the first portion of the amendment. We should like to know from the hon. the Minister what affect this 8 per cent will have on rents. Will it increase the rents? Will it place a number of tenants in difficulty? Will it not result in a spate of applications to the Rent Board the moment this Bill becomes law? We do not quite know what the motive of the Minister was in moving this amendment. The Minister did make a statement the other day in which he said he was going to meet a certain situation which had arisen in order to avoid any cessation in the continued process of the building of dwellings which was so necessary in the Republic to-day. We commend the principle that nothing should be done to interfere with the constant flow of building.

We are dealing with Clause 1.

That is right. But we want to know why the Minister has found it necessary to amend the Clause in the manner he has.

I said there was a motive as éxpressed in the statement the Minister made the other day but we would like to know what the advantages are of this amendment. Whom is it to assist? Because this obviously does refer to buildings which are already controlled. I assume the Minister will accept that because the other reference was to buildings which at the moment do not fall under the provisions of the Rents Act. The Minister should therefore be much clearer than merely saying he moves the amendment standing in his name. He should give us details as to why he has moved the amendment, what he is going to achieve with the amendment and what his purpose is in moving it. How will it affect both tenants and landlords? The Minister must also tell us why he has moved this amendment when it concerns only dwellings which are presently covered by the Rents Act.

With regard to the second portion of the amendment to Clause 1 it seems that if a lessor should fail to maintain or repair a dwelling, etc., the Rent Board can decide not to make any allowances for money to be added to the rent so as to enable the landlord to incur certain expenditure. We should like to know from the hon. the Minister what procedure does he envisage will follow from this type of amendment. The hon. the Minister talked about imposing penalties and things of that nature, but we would like to know what this clause implies.

The hon. member for Springs (Mr. Taurog) surprises me. I do not know what happened to him during the recess, because he was highly satisfied when the recess began. He knows that every possible opportunity was given for the necessary representations and suggestions to be made. He knows that every suggestion was considered. The hon. member was one of the persons whose suggestions were very thoroughly considered. He expressed himself as very satisfied. Now the hon. member pretends that there is an unconciliatory attitude on my part. In the second place, the hon. member asks what the meaning of this is. But the hon. member was present at the discussions which resulted in this announcement. Now he says he does not know about it. How am I to understand him now? Surely one does not speak in this House merely for the sake of talking. The hon. member was present when I interviewed a deputation. On that occasion this suggestion was discussed from all angles. This deputation, of which the hon. member was a member, agreed that if I embody these suggestions in the Bill there will be complete satisfaction. Now the hon. member asks me to explain where these things come from. His memory is short. They are the result of a deputation, of which the hon. member was a member, which asked for these things, and I agreed.

Now the hon. member says there is no definition of a garage in the principal Act and therefore he does not know how we will determine the rental for a garage. But surely there is a substantive clause in the amending Bill which expressly refers to a motor garage on the premises. What more does the hon. member want? Let us in heaven’s name now get to those matters in the Bill which are important. The fact is that the original complaint was that people were not being allowed to derive a reasonable income from their investments. When I said that I would allow a reasonable income in respect of new premises …

Yes, new premises.

That is the difference.

… the complaint was: “What about those people who are already subject to rent control?” That I also covered in the announcement I made here. That statement read as follows—

interalia, from that hon. member—

The hon. member knows that the day we had the discqssions we spoke inter alia about people who deliberately neglect their buildings. Therefore the hon. member knows about that, too. The hon. member also knows that the deputation which saw me stated that if I embodied these proposals of mine in the Bill they would be satisfied and would continue to invest in buildings and to build flats on a large scale. Nor did I receive any more complaints from them. In fact, one big investor in Cape Town issued a statement in which he said that they felt satisfied that I was also protecting their interests. But now the hon. member asks what my object is with this limiting measure. But we discussed that as well. There are people in South Africa, and in fact all over the world, who think they are just there to make money without giving anything in return. So now they want the Rent Board to treat them in the same way as they treat the man who looks after his buildings. In any case, it is only in respect of the first-mentioned people that we have inserted this provision. That is what I also stated in my announcement. More than that I cannot say. The hon. member is fully au fait with the motivation of these amendments and he knows that the investors are satisfied that this is really a second concession and that it is intended to protect to a large extent both the tenant and the investor.

I do not know whether the hon. the Minister has missed the point or whether he just feels like letting off a little steam. He has not answered the hon. member for Springs at all. What he did was to answer a question which was not asked. The hon. member for Springs wanted some details in regard to the application of the proposals the hon. the Minister has made. There are two proposals involved. Firstly there is the fixed percentage for the allocation in respect of buildings, and secondly, the penalty clause to be applied where maintenance is not undertaken. These are two new proposals, both of which require explanation. There is. in the first place, the case of buildings which are controlled but in respect of which the return is not now 8 per cent but, perhaps, only 4 or 5 per cent. Does the new proposal mean that every controlled building will be reviewed and the rental charged automatically increased to 8 per cent? This is a question to which the hon. the Minister has not replied. These are matters on which we from this side are seeking information: Is it automatic? Or will the owner have to apply? Will there have to be a revaluation? What will be the procedure, e.g. will this be an automatic increase?

The hon. member for Florida then asked what the effect of the proposal will be on rent. Will there be an automatic rise? We are entitled to ask for this information. But instead of the Minister answering these questions, he launched an attack on the hon. member for Springs. There is another question which this hon. member asked but which the Minister avoided answering. He also wanted clarification of the penalty clause. There are, in this connection, two points of view and we are entitled to ask for clarity. Does the wording of the clause as it stands mean, as some maintain, a discretion to allow anything between 0 and 2 per cent for renovations and repairs or does it, as others think, mean that there will be no discretion at all and that there may be granted either nothing or the full amount? It is thus a question of interpretation. There are those who feel that the wording makes it obligatory to grant, because of the use of the word “any”— either nothing or the full amount in respect of renovations, repairs and depreciation. These are questions which we are entitled to ask.

Consequently I should like to ask the Minister please not to turn this matter into a dog fight. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who are vitally interested in this matter because it affects their livelihood through the rent they will have to pay. Therefore I again ask the hon. the Minister to deal with our queries: Will there be an automatic increase to 8 per cent in cases where it is not 8 per cent at the moment; what will the effect of the increase be in the light of the information he has at his disposal and which we do not have; and what is the legal interpretation of the scope allowed in allocating depreciation allowances?

The hon. the Minister said that my memory had failed me since the recess, but I am afraid the boot is on the other foot. When I saw him with the particular deputation to which he referred we did not discuss these aspects of Clause 1 at all. What we discussed was the question of new buildings, and the confidence that the investing public and builders should have in this new Bill.

Order! The hon. member cannot discuss that now.

The Minister read out a statement which really refers to Clause 7, and not to Clause 1 which we are discussing now. We only want clarity on the matter, and it is not a question of what I said or what the Minister said. Clause 1 refers to existing buildings and the percentage of return on them, and the deputation did not discuss this aspect at all.

I do not know whether I can make much of a contribution to this debate because I think these amendments will become clear to anybody who takes the trouble to read them carefully. What is contemplated here, as I see the position, is what was really asked for on various occasions during the second reading, where the request was put forward that since 6 per cent on the value of the land was pegged by the deletion of the words “not exceeding”, the 8 per cent permitted on the value of the building should also be pegged by the deletion of the words “not exceeding.” That is what the Minister is bringing about in the first place by means of the amendment which he has proposed here.

The second amendment which the Minister proposes to this clause is that the amount for which provision is made in (g) need not be taken into account at all in determining the rent. At the moment sub-paragraph (g) provides that an amount not exceeding 2 per cent may be allowed for repairs; in other words, in considering the rent the rent board is obliged to allow a certain percentage for repairs, and that percentage may be anything from .001 per cent to 2 per cent. What the Minister is now saying in his amendment is that where no repairs are done, that provision will not operate at all, and the rent board will then be in a position to say that it refuses to allow any percentage at all for repairs. I think that answers the problem raised by the hon. member for Point (Mr. Raw). As I read the clause the position will be that where a rent board, in considering the rent to be fixed, finds the repairs are not being done, it may refuse to allow any percentage at all in respect of repairs.

Or it may allow 1 per cent.

Yes. It says “not exceeding 2 per cent.” In other words, that discretion which is provided for in the existing legislation remains undisturbed; the rent board still has the discretion to allow an amount not exceeding 2 per cent. This amendment means that the rent board will not be obliged to make any allowance at all for repairs whereas formerly it was obliged to alloy at least a certain amount. That is how I understand the position.

In the English text the words “any amount” are used. That means any amount and not portion of the amount. Can there be a partial reduction?

That wording is necessary because at the moment the Act says that the board must allow an amount not exceeding 2 per cent; the amendment now provides that it will also have the power to make no allowance at all in respect of repairs. [Interjections.] The discretion which is left in the hands of the rent board in terms of (g) is retained by the rent board, but a further power is now being given to it in this amendment which provides that it will have the right to make no allowance at all for repairs because no repairs are in fact carried out. That is the effect of this amendment. If hon. members cannot understand that then I cannot take the matter much further except to say that the hon. member for Springs also wants to know what is going to happen to rents in the future; he says that there is no protection for the tenant. In the first place I just want to draw attention to the fact that the discretionary power to determine the value of the building still remains in the hands of the rent board, and the rent board can adjust the rent according to the value of the building as determined by the board. But over and above that there is also the following proviso to the definition of “reasonable rent”: “Provided that in determining such rent the rent board shall have due regard to rents charged in the vicinity for premises of a similar class, nature or situation.” In other words, if the rent board feels that this amount of 8 per cent is unreasonable it still has two further opportunities to meet the tenant; it can do so in determining the value of the building. If the building is being neglected, the rent board places a lower value on the building, and the rent must therefore be reduced; secondly, it also has the discretionary power to take into account rentals charged in the vicinity. I cannot see any difficulties therefore. I think the interests of both the tenant and the lessor are properly protected.

The hon. the Minister cannot avoid his obligations to this House in explaining the purpose of his amendment by merely referring to what has happened outside this House. I certainly am not aware of what the discussions were between him and the people who interviewed him. I cannot therefore say whether it is his memory which is at fault or that of the hon. member for Springs, but I am inclined to think that it must be the Minister’s memory which is at fault, because he associates this amendment with the building of new projects, whereas it is obviously meant to apply to existing buildings, and therefore it has little or nothing to do with new projects which are dealt with later in this Bill. I do not know in whose mind the confusion is, but certainly the Minister has brought confusion into this Bill by means of this amendment. The question he has not yet answered is whether these amendments are not going to be an invitation for applications to rent boards. It seems to me quite obvious that the effect of the amendments will be that a large number of applications will be made to rent boards to review the rents, and of course it will be to increase rents.

Why not?

I am just asking a question and I want the answer. I take it from the Minister’s interjection that it will invite a considerable number of applications for the revision of rent in regard to existing buildings.