Mr. Chairman, may I have the privilege of the half hour? The public awaits the Minister’s statement in this debate with great expectation. I appeal to the hon. the Minister to take the public into his confidence in replying to this debate. Information regarding the development of the Orange River project is not just Government caucus information. The Government has undertaken a gigantic scheme and the public expect to be kept in the news. In fact news regarding the Orange River project is world news and it is to our advantage to have as much publicity as possible. We therefore hope the hon. the Minister will do his best to give us as much information as possible and answer the questions which some of us would like to put to him. To stress the public interest and the reason why the hon. Minister should take more notice of the public demand, I want to read to the Committee a short paragraph from the Financial Mail of 1 May, 1964:

I want to draw the hon. Minister’s attention to this article. It contains no criticism. Everything said here is of a constructive nature. It is suggested here that an up-to-date statement on the Orange River project is overdue, and I think we in this House do feel that such a statement is necessary. We appreciated the short statement in the Cape Times this morning, but I think the hon. Minister will agree that that is very inadequate information at this stage of development. The hon. Minister should not allow the misgivings in this article from which I have quoted to be ignored. The Minister should state to what degree the economic implications have been thought out and what possible priorities may be implemented in carrying out the scheme. I think the question of priority is one that interests irrigators and practically everyone in the area which this great scheme is to serve. The public claim that a detailed statement on the present plan is overdue and that a more scientific approach is called for, so that the best possible use may be made of the scheme, at the same time not losing sight of the objectives of the scheme when it was initiated. In this regard I would like to read another little paragraph from the Financial Mail:

Now that it has been decided to raise the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam by an extra 60 ft. and the Van der Kloof Dam by 40 ft., I would like to ask the Minister whether this means that further demands for the generation of electrical power have been made or is the area to be brought under cultivation now to be extended? I notice that it was asserted at the conference in Bloemfontein that the over-all control of the Orange River project was forced out of the hands of the Department of Water Affairs to a Cabinet committee under the chairmanship of the hon. Minister Sauer and that it is assisted by the Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Mr. D. H. Steyn, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Council. It was felt that from that it was obvious that the setting up of an independent authority was contemplated to control the scheme, an authority comparable to that of the Tennessee Valley authority.

We regard this as only the beginning of the drive to harness our limited water and power resources. The Orange Scheme and the Pongola scheme are now under way and the next in turn will be the Tugela scheme. Now is a survey being made of the total potential resources in the Republic. Can the hon. Minister for instance give us an estimate of the population potentiality of the project? I would guess about 20,000,000 people. Mine is only a guess, the hon. Minister possibly can make an authoritative statement. The Government now has set itself on a course of conserving and developing our water resources. It is a kind of pilgrim’s progress, on which there is no return. If this Government tires of its responsibilities, there will be another government to carry on. Our limited water resources and power resources must be implemented to the maximum. Now I wonder if the hon. Minister is aware that at the end of this century South Africa will have an estimated population of 70,000,000, and if conditions are maintained as they are to-day, where everyone is employed, we must see to it that the future population is kept in work. The hon. Minister must also not lose sight of the fact that this is the major irrigation project in Southern Africa. A contract has now been given out, we understand for R2,000,000 for the development of roads, necessary in the immediate vicinity of the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam. We wonder whether the hon. Minister has a scheme for further road development in that particular area so that it can cope with the extra traffic that these works will demand, and even at this stage can make provision for tourist traffic. I take it the hon. Minister is already making provision for the establishment of villages which will house the population to carry out this scheme. Of course the hotels will follow and facilities for tourists will follow, and it seems that no time can be lost.

We are all proud of the conception of the Orange River project in that it incorporates the water and power resources of this great river which drains two-thirds of the area of our Republic. It is very gratifying to see that this water which has been running to waste now for over a century is going to be harnessed and brought into use. I want to ask the hon. Minister to give the House the latest information on how the work of the Orange River project has advanced, what stage has been reached in regard to the general planning with the consulting engineers. We read in this morning’s paper that the consulting engineers are working on the channel and on the dam. We would like to know how far the work of the consulting engineers has advanced, what responsibility they have regarding this scheme, because they are consultants outside the Department of Water Affairs. The whole country, and especially the population that will benefit from this scheme are hankering for news regarding every aspect of this great undertaking. The primary producer, the farmer, would like to know what extent of land every individual land-owner will be allowed to put under irrigation, and whether the rest of the irrigable and fertile soil will be taken over by the state. Can the hon. Minister give us the assurance that the irrigations projects on the Fish and Sundays and Bushman’s Rivers will extend right down to the sea? We would like to know if that is possible. On the lower reaches of these rivers there is every facility to promote concentrated land settlement schemes on a very large scale. I wonder if the hon. Minister has come to any decision as regards the establishment of land settlement schemes on the Fish and Sundays Rivers. As the hon. Minister knows the climate is moderate, it is a healthy area, transport facilities are available, the markets are available, there are university facilities available, and there is no doubt that every necessary facility for a concentrated population can be provided for and their needs and wants can be seen to and their children given every opportunity to develop as useful and well-educated citizens. I understand that much research must be undertaken and that there is a shortage of staff. Is the Minister using all the facilities that are available to him. For instance Rhodes University has a highly qualified team of experts who do social and economic surveys in that particular area. I have no doubt that this team already has scientific information which the Minister may need, and I have no doubt that the Minister would get the co-operation of the university in planning research in every aspect of the projected development. I only want to point out to the hon. the Minister that I know that there is a shortage of staff as regards research and that Rhodes University has experts there who can co-operate and assist in this particular work. They will be only too glad to assist him because it is up their street.

Questions regarding the type of production to be encouraged will also have to be decided. On the lower reaches for instance of the Fish and Sundays Rivers tropical fruit is being produced to-day. There are enormous prospects for cotton production, with labour readily available because it is right on the borders of the reserves. The sheep and cattle population of this particular area is considerable and of a very high standard and it could be quadrupled. There is no doubt that the future requirements as far as dairy products are concerned, could be satisfied by this particular development. I would like to know if the hon. Minister is going to give that particular area priority as regards supplying water from the Orange River. The great Orange River project is only one of the hon. Minister’s responsibilities. The country is undergoing an industrial revolution, and the question is what supplies of water are available to-day. I want to put a pertinent question to the hon. Minister, falling outside the range of the Orange River project: Is the hon. Minister satisfied that the demand for water as a result of the great industrial development can be satisfied? Is the demand almost in excess of the water available? Has the time not arrived that the hon. Minister now must stress the re-use of water? It has been estimated that at the present rate of development the Witwatersrand and Pretoria will experience a daily shortage of about 200,000,000 gallons of water by the end of the century. If this is only a half truth, then immediate steps should be taken in that area to promote the conservation of water, the prevention of wastage, the limitation of pollution and evaporation, and the promotion of the use of water over and over again in household sanitation and in certain industries. I have no doubt that water can be used over and over again in household sanitation if the Minister lays down a scheme. It should not be difficult. There are certain industries too which can re-use water rather than over-loading our effluents. Can the hon. Minister inform the House that in view of the increased demand for water as a result of the industrial revolution in this country, comprehensive planning is taking place for the future needs? Planning can only proceed by encouragement at the national level and the consequent harnessing of the co-operation of water-users. I don’t think we have that cooperation to-day. Water wastage is evident everywhere. To stress the seriousness of this question I should like to quote from page 211 of the official journal of the South African Federated Chamber of Industries. In the editorial it says—

What then? It is all very well to adopt the attitude that it is still 67 years away and why should we worry now. This is an unrealistic and fatalistic approach. This generation should plan for the future and make sure that those who take up when we leave off do not inherit a country which is seriously hampered as a result of a shortage of the most important of all commodities, water. I need say no more. But another very short paragraph says—

I need say no more, except that research is a national responsibility, and perhaps the hon. Minister will assure this House that adequate plans are made to promote the services of the National Institute for Water Research, which is a department of the C.S.I.R. I hope that the hon. Minister has given consideration also to a resolution carried at a conference that took place last year at Pretoria, drawing the attention of the Minister to the absence of any formal procedure for consultation of expert opinion. That is why I have said, Mr. Chairman, that the time has arrived that the Minister should consider the question of establishing an authority similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority, because where you have a scheme as gigantic as the Orange River-Sundays-Fish River development scheme, you should have a team of experts whose time is entirely devoted to the necessary research regarding this particular project. We know that the Minister is alive to this. The hon. Minister has already sent a commission round to collect information and to obtain what knowledge is necessary as regards these matters and how urgent it may be to undertake definite research. I can tell the hon. Minister that in the lower regions of the Fish and Sundays River we have soil to 65 ft. deep, and there is no question of difficulty as far as drainage is concerned, but if the hon. Minister intends to use a high-level furrow to bring much more land under irrigation in that particular area, then perhaps research would be necessary not only in regard to the control of brack, but many other aspects and problems that arise when you use irrigation in any particular area. I believe the hon. Minister is making progress to-day as regards the proper use of water and perhaps the hon. Minister can tell us whether he anticipates the introduction of more economic means for the irrigation of the land settlements, such as Vaalhartz. When I last visited Vaalhartz, the drainage water flowing down the Hartz, was almost equal in quantity to the water in the canal bringing water to that particular settlement, which goes to show that there is over-irrigation. We know it is a national failure in South Africa to over-irrigate. We know that it even happens in our gardens and that the plants get much more water than they should have. Hoses are available and labour is available and water is available and our plants get three times as much water as they should. I think we have to cultivate a sense of responsibility as regards our water supply, not only in view of our rapidly developing industry and our increasing population, but also on account of the future general needs of the country. That industrial development must be maintained and will be maintained if we have an assured water supply. The Minister has a responsibility in regard to the future development of the country. It depends on water. Water is what we require and I think this old man Orange River can give him a great deal of assistance in this regard.

I do not want to say that I resent the attitude adopted by the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) who in the past has done good work in connection with the Orange River scheme, but unfortunately he has not been in this House for some time and I think that his ideas and information are rather obsolete. Since he was here last important things have been tackled as far as the Orange River scheme is concerned. The hon. member spoke about the Tennessee Valley Authority. I wonder whether the United Party with their political delaying tactics in regard to their Tennessee Valley Authority which is to be appointed one day, realize that this Government had to act immediately and that it did act immediately? The Government appointed the Steyn committee which is at the head of a combination of departments, Provincial Administrations and various interested bodies. I want to tell the hon. member that the work which they have done in regard to the Orange River scheme is absolutely amazing. I want hon. members to go and see what has been done. The hon. member spoke of an amount of R2,000,000 for roads. That is true, but if we did not have that committee to negotiate with the Provincial Administrations and with the various departments, a start would not even have been made as far as those roads are concerned. It is true that about 80 miles of tarred roads have to be constructed but the survey work in this regard has already been completed as well as the negotiations between the Provincial Administrations and the Central Government. Therefore, things are already moving. We who live in the northern Cape will be very grateful if an amount of R2,000,000 is spent on roads. I just want to say that the northern Cape is growing; the northern Cape is alive; the trek of the people from the platteland to the cities is halted there. People in my town and constituency are very pleased at the development that is taking place there. This development offers a new future to many people. That is why I want to say on behalf of those people how grateful I am for the speedy action taken by the Government. After all, hon. members must realize that unless we have a co-ordinating body of this nature, we cannot make any progress. Camps have to be set up. No fewer than three camps have to be set up; the national roads have to receive attention and railway stations have to be enlarged. All these things are co-ordinated under that body. The consulting engineers are doing excellent work under the Department. We want to pay tribute to those people who are doing that outstanding work. Take a town like Venterstad. A camp has already been established there and it is flourishing. Money is circulating as never before. The whole of the north-eastern Cape is flourishing. Take, for example, a place like Steynsburg in which there were a number of empty houses last year. There is not one empty house in that town to-day. All that one can see is organization and more organization. That is why I want to pay tribute to the committee for the good work that it is doing. I also want to thank the Provincial Administration for the development of our schools there. When these special camps are set up, plans, of course, have to be made for more schools, and for recreational facilities. All these things must be planned. The small towns have already been planned. Wonderful work is being done in that regard. All the drilling has been completed. But that obsolete party opposite are applying delaying tactics, tactics which they used during the Budget debate when the hon. the Minister had to chide the hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson) for the way in which he spoke about the question of delay. Never before in the history of South Africa or of any other country has a project of this nature been tackled and never before has there been such swift progress in getting everything in order so as to put that project into operation. The departments, engineers and all concerned are co-operating very well with one another. The machinery is available and the preparatory work has been done. If only some hon. members could take the trouble, they would be able to see for themselves what has already been done. But they do not know the platteland. They stay in their own towns and they know nothing of what is going on around them. I am sure that under this Government which has tackled this wonderful scheme, the country will be able to put this most ambitious plan of supplying South Africa with water into operation. It will provide us with a fodder bank and it will supply us with electricity. We will have no fewer than ten power stations in the Eastern Province alone. Just think of the development that will take place there! It is only people who do not understand the position, who do not have the slightest idea of what is going on there who can make the fuss made by hon. members opposite. They are not interested in the farmers. I think that I am right in saying that they hate the farmers. The planning in connection with the Orange River is so ambitious that everything said by hon. members opposite pales into insignificance.

I want to put a few questions to the hon. the Minister. I want the hon. the Minister to give us a little more information in regard to his future planning. The miracle has already happened. We are very grateful in this regard but I hope that we can obtain a little more information from the hon. the Minister in connection with the work of the consulting engineers and the work of the Steyn committee. I hope that he will be able to give us further information in this regard. I want to thank the Government for again having had the sense to revise the third phase of the development plan and to make the wall of the dam 60 feet higher. This will make it the largest dam in the world. We are very pleased on this score because the power generated by the power station will be doubled in this way. Notwithstanding what is said by hon. members opposite, the Government will do its duty and the platteland will again be populated. There will be thousands more people in my constituency alone; there are thousands of people working there already. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to give us a little more information on that point. I also want to ask him to make a White Paper available to those hon. members who know nothing about the scheme to enable them also to learn something about the scheme. They are ridiculing the Orange River scheme to-day.

We ridicule you.

No, they do not ridicule me. I am only a man who has done my best, but this Government has done everything. What did they do when they were in power? Absolutely nothing. How much did they spend on irrigation? All they did was to put people in camps and to wage war. [Interjection.] They will not be able to shout me down. This Government has done everything for that scheme and I want to say how grateful we are in that regard. [Time limit.]

The interjections of the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) usually amuse us but when he makes a speech it is even more amusing because then we discover why he makes those interjections. The hon. member is not able to make a speech about a matter in regard to which this House needs information. I think that he should confine himself to interjecting. What did he say? The hon. member said that things were going so wonderfully as a result of the Orange River scheme that there were thousands of people who had been given employment in his constituency. He knows that that is not true.

It is true.

Where is the fantastic amount of work that has been made available for people in his constituency? If employment has been made available, it will have been in the constituency of the hon. member for Colesberg (Mr. M. J. de la R. Venter). They are building a dam and a tunnel there. Thousands of workers are not employed there as yet, although that will come. The thousands of people whom the hon. member has in mind are the thousands who trekked over the years when this Government did absolutely nothing to develop the Orange River scheme. They now boast that this is their scheme but what are the facts? In 1958 and in 1961 the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker), issued an election manifesto. What did he have to say in that manifesto? He said that as far as the Government was concerned, the Orange River scheme was dead up to 1958. The hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) made repeated attempts before 1958 to get the Government as far as to tackle the scheme, and the hon. member increased his efforts after 1958 in this regard.

He only had one scheme in mind—the Orange-Sundays-Fish River scheme.

It was the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs who told the people at Cradock in 1959 that they could forget about the old Conroy scheme and the idea of tunnels to bring water from the Orange River. But to-day this scheme is nothing less than the Nationalist way of applying the old Conroy scheme.

Why did Conroy not do it then?

But there is another matter that I want to bring to the notice of the hon. the Minister. I want to discuss with him the position of the farmers at Vaalharts. It is not necessary for me to explain what the Vaalharts scheme means to South Africa and to say that there are 1,200 farmers on that scheme to-day making a living there, people who are dependent mainly on the wheat, lucerne and groundnuts which they cultivate there. They cannot cultivate these products unless they have sufficient water to do so. Those people have been making a plea in this regard for some years now. I understand that prior to and during 1953 attempts were made to ensure that the water of the Vaal Dam, to which these people were entitled, was conserved to prevent their experiencing difficulty in regard to water supplies at some stage or other. What happened? In 1962-3 the water supplies were cut by 20 per cent and in that year they had one of their best rainy seasons. During that good rainy season the hon. the Minister decided to cut their water supplies by 25 per cent. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that those people have been placed in a most unfair position. I want to illustrate my point further by saying that since 1958 the water tax which those 1,200 farmers have to pay has been increased by at least 112 per cent while I know that in 1959 the hon. the Minister told the people at a meeting there that there was no question of an increase in the water tax. But shortly after the election in 1959, those taxes were raised. Bearing in mind the fact that since 1958 there has been an increase of 112 per cent in water tax and the fact that the water quota of these people has been cut by 25 per cent—and we know how the production costs of the farmers are increasing—hon. members opposite must not tell me that those people at Vaalharts can be satisfied at the treatment which has been meted out to them by this hon. Minister. I want to ask the hon. the Minister what he is going to do about these people in the future. Must they at any time expect their quotas to be cut even further when the water in the Vaal Dam is in short supply, or is the hon. the Minister going to try to enlarge the diversion weir at Warrenton? We know that every year thousands of acre feet of water from the Vaal River are wasted. What is the hon. the Minister going to do to supply those people with water? Those people have sent numbers of memoranda and made numbers of suggestions to the hon. the Minister, and he knows what their views are. They have suggested that plans be drawn up to dam up the water between the Vaal Dam and the diversion weir at Warrenton. [Time limit.]

They say that if a dog has a bad master who does not give him enough food, he runs about scrounging in other people’s backyards. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) is so concerned about Vaalharts not because he is worried about the farmers there but because he is worried about his own interests. If he did not have interests there, he would not say a single word about Vaalharts. As far as the increase in the water tax at Vaalharts is concerned, if the hon. member knew anything about the matter at all he would know that the farmers there generally accepted those increases because they are sensible people. They do not want to scrounge. They are aware of the fact that the costs in connection with distributing the water at Vaalharts are higher than the income in that regard. They did not want to humiliate themselves by accepting that water as charity. But there is not one single farmer who has not accepted the increase in the water tax. It is true that the supply of water was cut but this was not done because the hon. the Minister wanted to do it. It was done because of circumstances over which the hon. the Minister had no control. What is more, the farmers of Vaalharts also accepted this. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to have an investigation made in this regard. Because of the tremendous expansion below the dam, it is obvious that Vaal Dam—this was also announced before the hon. member thought about it—will not be able to meet all the demands for water there. This must eventually result in a shortage of water at Vaal Dam. Provision has already been made in this regard. The hon. member said that the diversion weir at Fourteen Streams should be raised but in saying this he was not telling the hon. the Minister anything new. If the hon. member knew anything about that area he would know that this is a matter which has been receiving attention now for some time. [Interjections.] Plans will have to be drawn up and plans are in fact being drawn up to supply Vaalharts with water. The hon. member for Albany spoke about over-irrigation at Vaalharts. I wonder whether the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) also spoke about over-irrigation? If he did, I want to invite him to tell the farmers at Vaalharts that they are over-irrigating and are wasting water.

I want to ask the hon. the Minister to consider this matter seriously. The Act provides to-day that nobody at Vaalharts can obtain water for more than one holding. There was a time when people who were not farmers and who could never become farmers were placed on holdings there. But most of those people have now left Vaalharts and the farmers who are there to-day are people who know the conditions there and can adapt themselves to those conditions. Those people have opportunities for expansion. I do not want to advocate anything which will make it possible for companies to buy up large plots of land at Vaalharts but I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he will not consider permitting a plot-owner to obtain water for two holdings. There are farmers at Vaalharts today who have proved that they are excellent farmers and who can cultivate more than one holding with ease. They also have sons to help them. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to give serious consideration to permitting a farmer at Vaalharts to have two holdings and to obtain water for both. I think that this will be a great improvement. The hon. member has told us that Vaalharts is treated so shabbily but does he know that the other day a holding was sold there for R1,000 per morgen? If conditions are as impossible as the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) would like us to believe, does he think that a man would be so stupid as to pay R1,000 per morgen for land there? Opportunities do exist there and the hon. the Minister is aware of the fact that proper provision must be made. The laws governing the water in the Vaal Dam were not made by the hon. the Minister but by the United Party Government. They are responsible for the fact that Johannesburg has the first call upon that water. I hope the hon. the Minister will see his way clear to do this.

I also want to ask the hon. the Minister to give serious attention to the question of storm water at Vaalharts. When there is a shortage of water and it is necessary to cut the water quota, I want to ask the hon. the Minister to allow farmers there to make use of storm water free of charge; to allow them to conserve that water in their dams so that they can use it at a later stage when there is a shortage of water. The farmers will appreciate this very much indeed.

I want to ask further that if an owner at Vaalharts has sufficient water for his holding—whether he can come out on his 25 inches or 30 inches of water depends upon the moisture in the soil—and if he can do with even less than his quota of water, he should be allowed to pass on the water he does not need to somebody else who needs more water for his land. There are sloping holdings there which need more water. This will be of very great assistance to the farmers there and I hope that the hon. the Minister will consider the matter. [Time limit.]

It gives me great pleasure to see the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) here to-day, physically able to participate in the debate. Our thoughts were with him when he was so seriously ill and we are all glad that he has recovered.

The hon. member, unlike the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher), spoke about important matters, and I should like to confine myself to what he said. But before doing so, I should just like to tell the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West), who is evidently seeking to promote his own interests or to make political capital out of the farmers at Vaalharts, that he should rather talk less nonsense and first see whether provision has not been made on the Estimates for the things for which he asks. He asked, inter alia, that we should raise the wall of Vaal Dam. If he looks at the Estimates, he will see that R330,000 has been set aside for that. Tenders have already been requested for the sluice-gates and the work will commence this year. That just shows how deeply interested he was in those people. I want to assure the hon. member that there is one thing one should not ask a settler to do, namely that he should be willing again to be treated in the way he was treated by the United Party Government.

The hon. member for Albany said that by now the country was entitled to have a progress report in regard to what was going on at the construction sites and the tunnel which all form part of the Orange River project. I think I can say in general that the progress made is satisfactory. It was perhaps delayed a little as the result of the decision taken in the meantime, which delayed the work of the consultants because they had to adopt it to the tender documents which had to go out before the construction could start, i.e., already in the first phase to build the two dams higher than was planned and originally announced. I do not wish to cover the whole field again in regard to how the consultants were appointed. The hon. member gave the impression that the Department had no control and that everything just rested with the consultants. The fact is that the State decided to appoint consortiums of consultant engineers, composed of South African and over-seas engineering firms, to assist the Department in the various spheres and under its supervision to make these investigations for us and to draw up the tenders. The tender documents had to be drawn up on a scientific basis, and also on an international basis, so that overseas tenderers might also be enabled to tender if they wished to. Over and above that, there was other work to which the consultants had to devote attention. At each of the dams which have to be built, construction camps are required. The construction camp at the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam at Ruigtevallei will be on the Free State bank of the Orange River. The terrain for that camp has already been purchased. The planning and layout of the construction camps for Whites, Coloureds and Bantu have been completed. A tender for the preparation of the terrain inside the camp areas and for the building of the access roads at a cost of approximately R2,000,000 has already been granted. Tenders for the provision of prefabricated housing will, it is expected, still be called for during this month, as also separate tenders for the distribution of electricity, the supply of water and sewerage.

At the Van der Kloof Dam the construction camp will be on the Cape side of the river. Approximately 1,400 morgen along both banks of the river in the vicinity of the dam site are at present being leased by the Department. Later, of course, it will be expropriated and purchased for the Department’s needs. Tender documents for camp housing, camp roads and the concomitant services will, it is expected, also be submitted to the Department for approval by the consultants before the end of June 1964.

Then there are the camps at the Orange-Fish River tunnel. There will be three camps, one at the inlet of the tunnel on the Orange River near Venterstad, one on the flats more or less in the middle of the tunnel, and one at the exit of the tunnel at Teubis station. The farms Rietfontein and Zeekoegat at the entrance to the tunnel have been appropriated for purposes of the construction camp, and since 5 March 1964 the property rights have vested in the State. The other two camp sites have not yet been purchased, but leases can be arranged temporarily. The planning of the three camps has been completed. Tender documents have been drawn up by the consultants and have been submitted to the Department, and it is hoped that tenders will be called for within the next three months. Tender documents for the distribution of electricity, the supply of water and sewerage are still being prepared. A departmental camp to house employees of the State has already been built at the entrance of the tunnel and is being expanded.

I now come to the camps at the pumping stations and the pipeline to Bloemfontein. Movable camps will be used in cases where employees cannot conveniently be housed in the nearest town. Camp sites will have to be leased for short periods only.

Mention has also been made here of railway stations and road links. In so far as the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam is concerned, the Donkerpoort Station will serve as the railway delivery point, and the Railway Administration is at present expanding the station facilities. A tarred road from Donkerpoort Station to the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam, with a branch to Norvalspont, is being built. An amount of R25,000 was to have been spent on this road during the financial year 1963-4. In so far as the Van der Kloof Dam is concerned, Kraankuil Station will be used as the main delivery point, and the Railway Administration has been asked to attend to the necessary expansion of the station facilities. On the Free State side a new road has been built from a point in the Free State on the Petrusville-Luckhoff main road to the Van der Kloof Dam site on the northern bank of the Orange River, and 75 per cent of that road has been completed.

On the Cape side the Provincial Administration of the Cape Province is busy rerouting and improving the road from Kraankuil Station to Petrusville, and 25 per cent of that work has been completed.

In regard to the Orange-Fish tunnel, it has been decided to use the railway stations at Norvalspont, Teubes and Steynsburg as delivery points for the tunnel, and the Railway Administration has been informed of the Department’s requirements. The Railways are at present making the necessary changes at Norvalspont Station. The Divisional Council of Venterstad is building seven miles of tarred road from a point on the Venterstad-Coles-berg main road to the entrance of the tunnel; 35 per cent of this work has been completed.

In regard to the pumping station and pipeline to Bloemfontein, no special railway facilities are required. The route of the pipeline follows the main railway line, and material will be off-loaded at existing stations.

I now come to the question of the supply of electricity for construction purposes at these four projects. In so far as the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam is concerned, the position is as follows: The Department expects to be able during the second half of June 1964 to call for tenders for the building of a power line from Springfontein to the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam. This line will connect up with the power line of the Southern Free State Electricity Supply Utility Company, which will bring power from Bloemfontein. It is expected that it will take nine to 12 months to build the line from Springfontein to the dam. Two ½-megawatt generators have been ordered by the Department for supplementary and interim local demand at the dam, and will be delivered by the end of July 1964.

Then I come to the Van der Kloof Dam. All electric power for the Van der Kloof Dam will be generated locally. For departmental purposes, and for the use of the construction camp, two ½-megawatt generators have been ordered by the Department, which will be delivered towards the end of July 1964. The main contractors will themselves be responsible for the generation of the power required for the construction of the dam.

Then I come to the Orange-Fish tunnel. Use will not be made of the power of the Southern Free State Utility Company because the costs are prohibitive. The Department has ordered six ½-megawatt generators at a cost of R162,000 to supply power for the construction camps.

Then I come to the pumping stations for the Bloemfontein pipeline: The two pumping stations will be situated at the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam and at Priors. The power line which is being built for the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam will supply power to the pumping station at the dam until such time as locally generated hydro-electric power is available. At Priors power will be taken from the line of the Southern Free State Utility Company.

Provision has already been made for hospital, educational and post office facilities at the various places where work is in progress. Land has been purchased through the Department of Lands for an amount of R3,897,000 in the basin of the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam. In regard to the Van der Kloof Dam, land has already been purchased at a cost of R117,000 for the layout of camp sites, etc. I may also say that these townships are not being developed just anywhere and without planning. We bear in mind to what extent they may usefully be used later, partially or as a whole, as tourist camps or towns. In so far as the tunnel is concerned, as I have already stated, land has not been expropriated yet, but the surveys will be made and the expropriations required there will be done by the Department of Lands on behalf of the Department of Water Affairs.

Then just a few words in regard to preliminary contracts and the amounts already disbursed. In so far as the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam is concerned, the position is as follows. A preliminary contract amounting to R244,000 for a supplementary investigation of foundation conditions by means of diamond drilling and shafts has practically been completed. In regard to the Van der Kloof Dam, the position is that a contract for supplementary investigations of foundation conditions amounting to R297,570 has been completed to the extent of about 90 per cent. Five lesser contracts in regard to the Orange-Fish tunnel have already been granted. A contract for the boring of 24,000 feet additional test-holes along the route of the tunnel at a cost of R92,000 has been completed to the extent of 90 per cent. A contract for the digging of 700 feet of test tunnels at the entrance of the tunnel amounting to R70,000 has been completed to the extent of 25 per cent. That is where the accident unfortunately took place. A contract for the excavation of 790 feet of test tunnels in the Plateau section amounting to R80,000 has been granted and is in its initial stage. A contract for an aerial survey of the tunnel route and the tunnel camp sites at a cost of R11,000 has been completed to the extent of 90 per cent. A contract for a contour survey of road routes in the tunnel area at a cost of R80,000 has been completed to the extent of 60 per cent. In other words, much progress has already been made with essential work such as testing which has to be done before tenders can be called for, and we hope to have the tender documents ready so that tenders may be called for in the course of this calendar year—not the financial year.

Mention has been made here of the fact that we established an Advisory Board for the development of the Orange River project, really on the basis of an autonomous body like the Tennessee Valley Authority Board. The hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) and other hon. members ought to know that, with the announcement of the appointment of the Orange River Project Cabinet Committee and its Advisory Board on 21 June 1963, we stated very clearly that we were not establishing an autonomous board, but an Advisory Board, and that the Government as such would assume full responsibility for the whole of the planning and development. This board is an Advisory Board, to advise whom? To advise a Cabinet Committee, and that Cabinet Committee is again responsible to the full Cabinet. The decisions taken by the Cabinet Committee, on the advice of the Advisory Board, are referred to the full Cabinet for approval or rejection. It is also quite clear that the Government itself will assume full responsibility and exercise control over the further development and wider planning of this project. Within the framework of this Cabinet Committee and its Advisory Board, all Departments and other bodies retain their functions and duties. In that way, for example, the Department of Water Affairs will remain fully responsible for the construction and control of the dams and canals; Escom for the generation and distribution of electricity, etc. Supposing, for example, a Coloured township has to be established there, or that hospital services have to be provided, the relevant State Departments will perform those functions and bear responsibility for them. The Advisory Board is assisted by its own secretariat, which is clothed with the necessary administrative and technical powers. Since this announcement the Cabinet Committee has held three meetings and the Advisory Board has held five meetings. One or two statements or reports have already been issued by the Chairman, the Minister of Lands. Recommendations in regard to the further and wider planning of the scheme emanated from the consultations of the board and were accepted by the Cabinet Committee. The chief one is in regard to the raising of the dam walls, in connection with which a White Paper will be tabled next week. That is a very important recommendation, and the Cabinet has decided to accept that recommendation by the Advisory Board and the Cabinet Committee. I shall go into its import in a minute. I first want to dispose of the point I am busy dealing with.

In regard to labour, the accepted Government policy is that in the construction of the Orange River project preference should be given to White and Coloured labour. Bantu labour should be used only to complement it. In order to give effect to this a Labour Regulation Committee has been appointed by the Advisory Board, on which the Departments of Labour, Coloured Affairs, Bantu Administration and Development and Water Affairs are represented, and which is responsible to the Minister of Water Affairs. This Committee will assist particular in the recruitment and employment of Coloureds. Attention was further given to the housing, conditions of employment and repatriation of employees. In contrast to the White and Coloured workers who will be housed on a family basis, the Bantu workers will be housed as single people, and temporarily. The siting and layout of the construction camps have been properly planned with a view to all these requirements.

Then I come to the question of tourism. It is generally accepted that the whole matter of tourism, recreation and nature conservation in the Orange River area should be approached positively because of the potential development it offers. A survey will be made in the near future to investigate all the needs, possibilities and implications in regard to this matter and to linking it up with the wider planning of the area. It is, for example, closely related to the provision of effective road connections. A tremendous amount of work has to be done, and now the hon. member for Albany asks me to tell him precisely what the population will be. He might as well ask me what the United Party will look like in 20 years’ time; I think I am better able to predict that accurately than to predict precisely how many people will be accommodated under the Orange River project in 20 years’ time and how many will be able to make a living there. The hon. member flatters me if he expects me to be able to reply to that question. But what I do want to say is that this is not a single scheme; it is a multiple scheme. It is a scheme which will not serve one part of the country only. It is a project which will have an influence—and I think a very definite influence—on the future development of the whole of the Republic of South Africa, because its influence will be felt even in the far north. As the result of the decision we have now taken—with which I shall deal in a moment—it will not only have an influence on our economy, but also a very real economic effect on the Western Cape and Cape Town. One cannot predict precisely what the effect of this project will be; proper investigations first have to be instituted and thorough planning first has to be done. In regard to the raising of the dam walls in the Orange River scheme, it may be stated that the wall of the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam will now be raised in the first phase already instead of in the fourth phase, as was originally envisaged. The wall of the Van der Kloof Dam will be raised to the height envisaged in the third phase, as proposed in the White Paper. That will mean that 3½ times as much electrical power will now be generated at those dams. The original plan was that in the first phase only 42.2 megawatt would be generated at the dams. Now, after having arrived at this decision, 144.9 megawatt will be generated. The estimated additional capacity of these two dams of course has much to do with the generation of hydro-electric power. In the case of the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam, it is being increased from 620,000 morgen feet to 2,282,000 morgen feet in the first phase. At the Van der Kloof Dam it is being increased from 610,000 morgen feet to 1,220,000 morgen feet. The additional expenditure of these two dams will be R21,700,000 in respect of the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam and R11,600,000 in respect of the Van der Kloof Dam. That is only in respect of the construction work handled by the Department of Water Affairs; it has nothing to do with the provision of hydro-electric power as such. The expenditure connected with the first phase is therefore estimated not at R85,000,000 but at approximately R118,300,000; R33,000,000 more.

Now I just want to give hon. members a brief survey of the economic aspect. The fact that we are now going to complete the first phase 14 years earlier, and will consequently have more power to use, will mean that between 1970 and 1984 we will have an income of R31,470,000 from the power generated at these dams. We have come to an agreement with Escom in regard to a formula according to which they will pay the Department of Water Affairs for the power they generate there, in so far as it will cost less than the power they can generate with thermal power stations. They will then pay the difference to the Department of Water Affairs. This money will be paid into the Exchequer and will be used for interest and amortization of the capital spent on the dams themselves. The interest and redemption over the 14 years is estimated at R25,720,000. In other words, there will be a credit balance of R7,720,000 in our favour. Perhaps I should just read to hon. members the report which Escom itself sent to me—

Everybody foresees that there will not be a reduction in transport costs in the country. It will not cost less, but more, to deliver coal to the southern areas, to the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, and if one wants to keep the cost of the electric power needed here within reasonable limits, there is only one way of doing it; then one must make the thermal power stations even larger so that the cost per unit can thereby be reduced. But it will still be appreciably dearer than it is to-day. One can only keep the cost reasonably stable if one has those large thermal power stations near the coal-fields and one then has those expensive transmission lines to distribute the power throughout the country. Hitherto it has appeared absolutely impossible even to consider the possibility of doing this. When this matter was, however, investigated from the angle of its possibly being fitted into the Orange River project, it was found that with the erection of thermal power stations in the middle, at the dams in the Orange River, cheap power which would really otherwise be lost, if it was not used, and which really cost no more than the original capital investment, could in future be supplied to Cape Town at a price which could compete with the price of the electricity supplied to the industries near the coal-fields. We are of the opinion that within the next six or eight years there will be a shortage of electric power in the south. That is what is estimated. It may also be that within that same period, depending on the development which may take place, provision will have to be made for extending and enlarging the thermal power stations at Port Elizabeth and East London and that whole complex there, and now the savings by building all those dams there will be of such great economic value that the Cabinet, apart from any other consideration, has decided to increase the height of the walls of those dams. Purely as a matter of principle, it will be a good investment to spend this additional money mainly for the increased generation of power. But now I want to tell the hon. member this: This increased generation of power which will take place in the first phase does not mean any lessening of the emphasis on the primary services, as originally indicated, which this development of the Orange River project is to render to the country. We laid great emphasis on the more than 365,000 morgen of new land which we said could be irrigated, but this generation of power will have no effect whatsoever on the agricultural development, because the water is used, and all that is provided for in the planning and the Estimates. The water required for agriculture runs through the hydro-electric power stations and generates power, and therefore we have made provision that in the beginning, now that the dam walls are being built so high, we will not need all this water for an appreciable time for industries, towns and agriculture, because all that development will be a slow process; it will take a long time, but provision is being made here for the generation of power which will reach a peak in the next phases and then it will be reduced to supply perhaps 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the requirements of agriculture and the towns and the industries which may be established in the vicinity. So provision has been made in our plans for that decrease in the amount of power generated because there will be greater consumption for other purposes which will result in such large streams of water no longer flowing through the hydro-electric power stations. May I just say that Escom foresees that it cannot just, if this power is generated, take power from the north and give it to Cape Town. Escom envisages that in the first phase an area of between 40 and 50 miles on both sides of the Orange River can be supplied with power, from the borders of Basutoland to Prieska, and then an area of from 30 to 40 miles on both sides of the railway line between Kimberley and Beaufort West, to the existing terminal of the Western Cape power undertaking near Beaufort West, and this proposed area, which will be supplied with power in the first stage of development, will possibly comprise the following towns and cities, namely Bethulie, Smithfield, Rouxville, Zastron, Aliwal North, Herschel, Lady Grey, Burgersdorp, Venterstad, Colesberg, Philippolis, Springfontein, Trompsburg, Jagersfontein, Fauresmith, Koffiefontein, Luckhoff, Petrusville, Philipstown, De Aar, Britstown, Richmond, Victoria West, Hope-town, Douglas, Griquatown and Prieska. I just want to tell hon. members whose towns are not included here—I see Oudtshoorn is not included here, and I wonder why—nor the town of the hon. member for Gardens; the two of us have not been mentioned yet; I hope we will get our turn later. I personally think that one can never over-estimate the value of these new decisions because it will make it possible to use those transmission lines, not only for the hydro-electric power developed, but also to supplement that power by the power generated near the coal-fields in the north, and to send it along the same lines so that there need be no hampering factors in future in this regard as far as the development of the southern areas of the Cape are concerned. I think I shall conclude with this report I have now given in regard to the development of the Orange River. I shall reply later to the representations made by other hon. members like the hon. member for Kimberley (North).

I think we should thank the hon. the Minister for the thorough exposition he has given us in connection with the Orange River scheme. Having said that I wish to tell the hon. the Minister that he did not reply to me. He drew a red herring across the floor of the House and asked whether I did not know that a considerable amount appeared on the Estimates to raise the wall at Warrenton?

I said I would reply to the other questions at a later stage.

I am reacting to the argument which the hon. the Minister used against me. I told the Minister that I understood the intention was to enlarge the dam. But that was not my argument; my argument was that the water in the Vaal River should be protected for the Vaalharts farmers. I then suggested what had been suggested by the Natural Resources Board as far back as 1953, namely, that a certain number of dams should be built between the Vaal Dam and the weir at Warrenton. I asked the Minister to reply to me on that point and that is the reply which the Vaalharts farmers want from the Minister. I shall tell the Minister what the Vaalharts farmers say—

That is the improvement is raising the wall at Warrenton—

That is what will assure those people of a decent water supply. During the course of my speech I told the Minister that the water quota of those farmers at Vaalharts was cut precisely at a time when there had been a good rainfall and when water was plentiful. The farmers feel that if that is the case what will happen in a time of real drought. Surely the hon. the Minister is not going to tell me that he is indifferent towards this problem. The Minister must say to us: I have not the time at the moment to attend to this but my Department is evolving a plan; the idea is to protect the water in the Vaal River even more in future. Mr. Chairman, we must remember one thing: We know the supply of water in the Orange River has a great bearing on the amount of water in the Vaal River; a considerable amount of water has to flow past to provide the people along the lower reaches of the Orange River with a good supply of water. As the Orange River scheme develops the pressure on the Vaal River, particularly on those people at Vaalharts, will be eased. There is undoubtedly a great amount of water in the Vaal River; there is no doubt about that; thousands and thousands of acre-feet of water still flow past Fourteen Streams annually. If a plan could be evolved to dam up more water, either by means of a barrage or by the construction of a big dam, it will be possible to make better use of the water of the Vaal River. That is what the people at Vaalharts ask. But the hon. the Minister says he does not really know what they are doing. I have indicated to the Minister that during the past few years the people at Vaalharts have been particularly hard hit. They have been particularly hard hit as a result of the increase in their water rates, as a result of frost and crop failures; their costs of productions are continually rising. We must remember that the farmers are not the only people who have to make a living there but that thousands of other people are dependant on them. There are business people in little towns like Hartswater and Taungs and those places who are dependant on the farming community. If those 1,200 farmers at Vaalharts have a hard time it immediately has its affect on the other people who have to make their living there.

I told the hon. the Minister that in recent times he not only raised the water rates of those people by 125 per cent but he cut their water quota by 20 per cent in the year 1962-3 and by 25 per cent in 1963-4.

When are you coming to a new point; you keep on harping on the old one.

Did the hon. the Minister not signify that he did not hear what I had said? I want to know whether he is going to restore that quota? Or is there a possibility that their water supply will be cut still further? The hon. the Minister has the power to increase the water rates still further. I want to know from him whether he intends to increase the water rates still further in the near future? Those people are entitled to replies to these questions.

Let me say immediately that I deprecate the fact that hon. members opposite say I am pleading for my own interests when I am stating the case of the 1,200 farmers at Vaalharts. I want to tell hon. members it is true that I have an interest there but that interest is to-day in the hands of a young Afrikaner lad whose political convictions are not even the same as mine. I am assisting and helping him. If the hon. member says I am pleading for my own interests then I am pleading not for the interests of the hundreds of United Party supporters at Vaalharts but also for the interests of the few Nationalists there. If we on this side of the House think that those people are being treated unfairly, irrespective of their political convictions, we shall not allow ourselves to be silenced by one hon. member on that side when we want to state their case in this House in spite of the reprehensible remarks which we get from that side that a member on this side is pleading his own cause. [Time limit.]

The hon. member who has just sat down cut a very poor figure. He still has to learn that humility will get him much further than the attitude he has adopted here. He said the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H Bekker) can no longer even make a speech. Let me say this to him: The name of the hon. member for Cradock is written in golden letters in the agricultural history of South Africa while the name of the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) will never even be mentioned. The hon. member complained about the water quota that has been reduced. He was repeatedly told that the Minister had said at the time that it was only temporarily. It is temporary until more water is available. He must not try to make this House believe that the hon. the Minister is cutting the water supply when water is available or that the Minister is introducing a quota system when it is not necessary to do so. The hon. the Minister is only doing it because there is not sufficient water and because he wants the available water to be equitably divided.

Mr. Chairman, thousands of people are dependant on the Vaal River for their living. The problem is not confined to Vaalharts as such but the problem stretches further north. At the moment we have the Witwatersrand complex with all its mines which are dependant on the Vaal River. After a thorough investigation the Department of Water Affairs decided not to allow any further irrigation, or development or dams to be built which would mean that more water would be taken from the Vaal River. Let me give an example. A power station is being built near Ermelo which will be one of the largest in the southeastern Transvaal and it was this Department of Water Affairs who, because of the protection it wanted to accord those people who were dependant on the Vaal River, said: We are not going to take water from the upper reaches of the Vaal River in order to supply you; we are going to supply you with water from the Jericho Dam and the Usutu River, a river which does not feed the Vaal River, but which flows east and then we shall pump the water back into the Vaal River. In other words, attempts are already being made to try to get as much water as possible east of the Vaal Dam to feed the Vaal River and not to take more water out of it.

In the report of the Secretary for Water Affairs—I wish to congratulate him on it—he talks about rivers which I want to bring to the notice of the Minister. They are the Buffels River and the Slang River. These rivers are known as rivers which rob the Vaal River. It is said that centuries ago these rivers flowed into the Vaal River and that they subsequently changed their course in an easterly and southeasterly direction and started to rob the Vaal River. The Buffels River has a catchment area of 2,266 square miles with a cusec of 9,500 at De Jagersdrif. Over the year it has an average cusec of 16 whereas the Vaal River has an average cusec of 25 at Standerton. I want to ask the Department of Water Affairs to conduct an investigation and to see whether it is not possible to build a dam either high up in the Buffels River or high up in the Slang River, a dam which will be situated between Volksrus and Wakkerstroom, a dam will canalize the water back to the Vaal River, the water can flow from the Sandspruit into the Klip River back to the Vaal River. In that way you can get water east of the Vaal Dam to feed the Vaal River. That will be a wonderful undertaking. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) said he was not pleading for personal interests, but I say immediately that I am pleading for the interests of my constituency because my constituency will benefit tremendously by this.

That brings me to another point I wish to raise. As hon. members know a dam is at the moment being constructed in the Pongolapoort, a dam which has to supply the Makatini Flats. The Department of Water Affairs has surveyed the area with a view to building a canal from the Assegaai River to the Pongola River. This canal will bring about two things. During the month of October the Pongola settlers experience a short period of drought. This canal will mean that this short period of drought will be overcome and that it will not be necessary for the Pongola settlers to suffer from a shortage of water for their sugar irrigation schemes. Secondly, it will be a further feeder artery to the Pongola Dam which has to develop those enormous Makatini Flats. This Assegaai River flows through a catchment area of practically 14,000 square miles. Its source is east of Wakkerstroom and the most suitable place to build a dam will be on the farms Doringhoek and Goedgeloof. That area has a rainfall of 12 inches. Mr. Chairman, we are busy with border industry development and we are looking for more electric power in that part of the world. We have some of the richest coal and iron ore areas from Dirkiesdorp to Piet Retief. Those areas have not yet been exploited because the necessary water has not yet been available. That has always been the problem. But if you construct this canal from the Assegaai River and in addition build a decent storage dam in the Assegaai River it will be accompanied by development in that whole complex which you will be developing at the same time. That is why I want to ask the Minister to investigate this matter. The rivers which run east are the Pongola, the Assegaai, the Usutu and the Ingwepezi. The Usutu can be harnessed for further development there at Camden and the Assegaai can be harnessed for the same sort of development and to feed the Pongola.

I want to mention something else. The construction of the Pongolapoort Dam has been partly delayed not as a result of the Orange River scheme—this Government is so enterprising that it has tackled two large schemes simultaneously and carrying them through—but because it was feared that we would have an over production of sugar and because it had not been finally decided what should be produced there. We know that a short while ago we received an order from France for more than 100,000 tons of sugar which we could not supply—we simply have not got the sugar. We also know that South Africa will have to import a few hundred tons of unrefined sugar this year, not only because of the tremendous increase in the consumption of sugar in South Africa but because we have received orders from new markets which we did not have in the past. For that reason I want to ask the Minister to expedite the construction of this dam, if possible, and to start with the construction of the canal so that the Makatini Flats can be developed sooner. Our friends along the Blijde River and at Malalaan and in the eastern Transvaal are diligently studying the production of sugar and embarking on sugar producing projects. [Time limit.]

I want to say a few words in connection with the Orange River scheme and the farmers affected by the building of the tunnel. When I visited Venterstad a few days ago various farmers came to see me and put their difficulties to me. They are experiencing a fair amount of difficulty in regard to the sinking of shafts and the water that is used. There are drilling machines on the farms of course and the farmers are quite prepared to provide those drilling machines with water. The difficulty is this that the Government expects the farmers to provide something like 2,000 gallons of water. The Government provides the machines and the farmers have to pump the water. The farmers now find that those machines do not pump 2,000 gallons but 4,000 gallons per hour. That means that they are pumping 96,0 gallons in 24 hours which is more than they can use. The farmers are very unhappy about this. The farmers are paid 50c per day when there is a drilling machine on their farms.

They also have another problem. The people operating the drilling machines cut the fences with the result that the stock wander backwards and forwards. When the farmer collects his stock he usually finds that quite a number are missing. The farmers do not object to their fences being cut so that the machines can go through provided they close up the gap. The farmers have even offered to place guards at those gaps until they are closed up but that has not worked either. The farmers therefore ask that stricter control be exercised where these holes are being sunk for the tunnel.

As I have already said they are paid 50c per day for 2,000 gallons of water. A considerable amount of water is being wasted. I do not think either the Secretary or the Minister knows about this that is why I thought I would bring it to their notice so that the matter could be investigated and so that there could be less wastage. The machine which does the pumping cannot be stopped; it has to operate for 24 hours per day and it pumps at the rate of round about 3,000 per hour.

The farmers have another complaint. We appreciate the fact that there have to be roads in the vicinity of the tunnel and that they have to be reasonably good because they are used by the lorries which convey the water. There are various types of veld—there is marsh veld and good brackish veld. The farmers ask that instead of building the roads through their marshes and their beautiful brackish veld they should be constructed along the hard surface. It will pay the Department to do so because during the rainy season such roads will serve their purposes better.

I want to mention the name of Mr. Jan van Wyk, the owner of the farm Seekoeigat, the farm where the tunnel will come to the surface. Mr. Jan van Wyk is in an extremely difficult position. I have gone into the matter and it appears that the Secretary of the Department sent a telegram to Mr. van Wyk in which he gave him permission to remain longer on the farm. We have ascertained that the telegram was sent from here but it was never delivered to Mr. van Wyk. The result was that Mr. van Wyk hurriedly took to the road with his stock. He had nowhere to go. Neighbours assisted him; the one took 100 sheep and the other one a further 100 and also some of his other stock. Mr. van Wyk’s difficulty now is that he cannot control his farming operations at all. He sought permission from the chief engineer to use that portion of the farm which was not being occupied by Water Affairs but permission was refused. In order to acquire the goodwill of the farmers there I want to ask the Minister to have the matter investigated. I am not saying the engineer acted unwisely. Nor do I want to mention his name; the Secretary knows who the engineer is there. The Department will be working on the tunnel in that area for a long time. We have just heard the figures and I want to congratulate the Minister on the progress that has been made. I was there a few days ago and I know what tremendous progress has been made; many houses have already been built. The difficulty is, however, that there is not a healthy spirit of co-operation between the farmers, under whose land the tunnel will run, and the officials of the Department. I want to ask the Minister to give instructions that where roads have to be built they should be built across high-lying land and not across the low-lying land of the farmers. [Time limit.]

I want to raise with the hon. the Minister certain matters regarding the boring services operated by his Department. It appears that on the Estimates there is a reduction of expenditure for this current year of some R200,000-odd for boring services. This is surprising considering that in certain parts of the country, particularly the Transvaal, we are facing extreme drought conditions in the north, north-western and the western areas. The hon. Minister recently paid a visit to those areas and is aware of the position. He knows that there are numbers of applications from the farmers for the use of Government boring machines. I want to raise with the hon. Minister the whole operation of the boring machine services, and I want to do so in the light of the information contained in the report of the Department of Water Affairs. There are some 276 boring machines operated by the Department, of three types: The pneumatic type of drill, the jumper-drill and the shot drill. The pneumatic drills have replaced recently, as I understand the position, the old wooden type of drill, jumper-drill, of which there is still a large number in operation, and of these 276 machines, the report says that they bore something like an average of 7½ holes a year of an average depth of approximately say about 200 feet per hole. Now the 276 machines were not in operation. Over 10 per cent were not operated throughout the year at all. Because according to the report only 252 machines bored the number of holes indicated. In other words, each boring machine of the Department, in spite of the new type of drills, which bore a hole in about 24 hours, bored an average only of 7½ holes in a year. Sir, when it is considered that the Department had on its books at the end of 1963, which did not include the worst drought conditions, and the applications that have since been submitted, no less than 2,444 outstanding applications by farmers for the use of Government boring machines, then it would appear that there is something wrong in the administration of the Department, causing considerable delays. There is another factor in regard to the matter that I think is even more serious, because the report gives the number of holes bored for farmers by Government boring machines in the past three years, and in the past three years there has been a steady decline. In 1961 the number was 3,007, in 1962 the number was 2,810 and last year, the number was only 2,026, a decline in three years, despite the large number of outstanding applications of nearly 1,000 holes per annum. Of course I do not want to make any deductions as to the effect that has at present on the farmers.

Your deductions so far were wrong.

If the hon. Minister says that, it may take me another ten minutes to tell the hon. the Minister what the farmers’ unions say. I know the hon. Minister takes up a completely unsympathetic attitude towards the drought-stricken farmers of the Transvaal.

What Government has done more in that regard?

I am raising this matter, because I am going to make a plea to the hon. Minister to review the basis on which subsidies are given at the present time. Some three years ago the hon. Minister introduced the system that where holes are bored for farmers by Government machines and a hole produces no water, the farmer still has to pay, and that is based on a sliding scale, and that sliding scale goes from 10 per cent if it is a shallow hole to a maximum of 75 per cent of the subsidy in the case of a deep hole. There was such an outcry against this that the position had to be reviewed. So the scale was altered. But the plain fact of the matter is that if a farmer has three holes bored, as the regulations permit, and two of those holes are dry and only one produces water, he still has to pay for the three holes. In other words, his boring costs on the one hole which may yield a minimum of say 100 gallons are loaded with the capital costs he has to meet in regard to the other two holes which were bored and rendered no water. I want to make a plea with the hon. Minister to-day that he should review those regulations and reinstitute the old basis on which subsidies were granted to farmers, namely a sliding scale based on the yield of the hole and the depth of the hole, because that was accepted by the farming community and there was no objection to that charge. The plain fact is that farmers to-day feel that they can get more satisfaction from private contractors than from a Government boring machine. There are other aspects in regard to this matter. We on these benches, and I in particular, have pointed out in the past that time and Government money has been wasted in respect of these boring systems, in that holes are selected for boring on farms without proper geophysical examination and recommendation by a geophysicist. As hon. members know in many cases the site for the boring of a hole is merely selected by the look or the eye of the boring inspector, or by the whim of the farmer, or by a little boy maybe waving two sticks and saying “there is water, or there are diamonds below the surface here”. But there has certainly been no scientific approach to the selecting of the site for the boring of water. If the Department had a permanent geophysicist attached to the Department, and a regulation was made that all applications for a boring machine must be accompanied by a certificate that the site has been selected by a geophysicist of the Department, after proper examination with proper instruments, then there would be no necessity to apply the regulation that where a farmer bores for water and there is no yield from that hole, he will still be debited with a percentage of the charges for that operation.

How many holes are selected by experts which yield no water?

The hon. member should take the trouble to read the report of the Department of Water Affairs. Then he will find that I am raising matters based entirely on the observations of the Department itself, and the Department itself points out that since they have embarked upon the boring of holes for farmers based on proper scientific investigation at the site, they have had far better yields and far better results than they have had in the past. I plead with the hon. Minister that he should consider making a permanent appointment in his Department of a geophysicist who can before the machine arrives at the farm make a proper scientific investigation of the site where the hole is going to be bored. If that is the regulation that no hole is being bored before a proper scientific investigation has been carried out, then it will not be necessary to apply the other regulation where holes are bored at the farmer’s whim or on the second sight of some boring inspector who thinks that a certain formation will yield water—then it will not be necessary to introduce legislation that requires a farmer to pay where there is no water. [Time limit.]

I want to ask the hon. the Minister what progress the Department has made with the survey work in connection with the Berg River scheme. Sir, one cannot help being very worried about the water position in this area. The Cape Town Municipality enjoys practically all the rights to the Wemmershoek Dam and that dam has deprived the Berg River of a great many of its tributaries. I want to say to-day that but for the generosity of the Cape Town Municipality and the insistence and assistance of the Department of Water Affairs the riparian owners would have suffered heavy losses during the last couple of dry years. The fact of the matter is that the riparian owners have incurred heavy costs on sprinkler irrigation systems. In view of the tempo of development if there were to be a large-scale shortage of water within the next two years—that water shortage will not only hit the riparian owners—it can only mean that there will be a large-scale shortage of water for industrial purposes. This area already has a backlog and it would be a very, very great pity if its development were to be further handicapped as a result of a shortage of water. The present Government and the present Minister of Water Affairs have definitely done much more for the protection and development of our water resources than anybody in the past and I do not think it will be easy at this stage, in view of the development of the two big schemes, namely the Orange River scheme and the Pongola scheme, to raise the necessary funds but the money is there and I think this area has a case. The development of the Berg River-Riviersonderend scheme need not clash with the development of any other scheme because this area has its own merits. This area of the Western Province through which the Berg River and the Riviersonderend run is situated near our biggest harbour and when those other areas start to produce this area can develop into an export area. There is already a shortage of liquor. There is a bigger demand overseas for our wines than we can meet. The K.W.V. have decided to increase the wine quotas. But I do not really know whether that will be of much assistance if we do not have the water. We need water to produce that wine. That is why I want to ask the hon. the Minister in all friendliness to start with the development of the Berg River scheme, particularly the first stages. It would be catastrophic to this area and hamper the development considerably if we did not have sufficient water available.

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) on that side of the House said a great amount of water still flowed past Fourteenstreams. I want to ask the hon. member whether he does not want any water to be available below the Vaalharts weir. I want to ask the hon. member whether he knows that there are irrigations schemes lower down the river. You have Vaallus and Bucklands before it runs into the Orange River at Maselsfontein. It is clear that the hon. member knows nothing about the North Western area. I think he would do well to remember the adage: Cobbler, stick to your last.

We have heard a great deal about three irrigation schemes, the Orange River scheme, the Vaalharts scheme and now also the Berg River scheme. I do not begrudge the farmers on those schemes anything. But I think there is another group of farmers who can lay claim to the Orange River namely the Kalahari farmers. I again wish to raise a matter which I have been pleading for practically every year of the 12 years I have been in this House. I immediately want to tell the Minister that if I am still here for the next 12 years I shall raise it every year until my request has been acceded to because I am fully convinced that it is the only solution to our water problems in the North West. My colleagues who also represent constituencies in that part of the world will support me when I once again plead for a pipeline to lead water to the Kalahari from the Orange River. You need not tell me, Sir, that it will be very costly; we know that. But when we think what has been spent on drilling in those areas since the National Party Government came into power, i.e., 16 year—I am only referring to my own constituency—you will find that it runs into hundreds of thousands of rand; you can practically say millions of rand. To some extent a great measure of success has been obtained but we also know from experience that in many cases boreholes are not permanent. You drill a borehole to-day and before long it runs dry. I know of numerous cases where they got 600, 700 and even 800 gallons per hour and within less than six months after the expense had been incurred, they were dry. I know of cases where during the time the borehole was sunk and the dam built the water had disappeared. We are grateful, very grateful, to the Minister and his Department for what they have already done to assist. I am the last person to complain about drilling because I think the Kuruman constituency is the one where there are the largest number of Government boring machines in the country but I nevertheless think that no great success has been achieved. We want a pipeline which will provide us with water. We know that within the foreseeable future there will probably be a shortage of meat in this country. That is not many years distant. If the Minister or a commission of inquiry were to go into the matter and a pipeline were constructed there would for many years hence not be a shortage of meat because we probably have the best grazing land in the Republic there where thousands and thousands of cattle could be reared thereby solving the meat problem. I want to make a serious appeal to the Minister to give attention to this matter. As I have already said I have been making this request for years and I shall continue to plead until we get it. In my humble opinion that will solve the problem in those parts of the country.

The importance of water cannot be sufficiently emphasized. In the short time at my disposal I just want to mention the fact that the hon. the Minister has made a concession to us in the southern Free State for which we are extremely grateful to him. I refer to the change that has been made in the plans to provide Bloemfontein and the vicinity with water from the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam instead of from the Van der Kloof Scheme. Superficially it is not a major change but when you realize that under the first scheme, the Kaffer River scheme which is practically a white elephant to-day, would have been excluded, whereas the continued existence of that scheme is practically guaranteed because of this change, you appreciate the importance of the change. The Kaffer River scheme would not have received any water from the Van der Kloof Dam but the scheme will now be provided with water conveyed by pipeline and we want to express our sincere gratitude to the Minister for this. What is more, the smallholdings around Bloemfontein—there are no fewer than 3,600 of them—are in danger. They are confronted with a serious water shortage; it is absolutely essential that they get additional water. They were faced with total ruin because the water gradually started to give in but because of this change they will now get enough water from Ruigtevlei. They will get water apart from the fact that Bloemfontein will also get an unlimited water supply because the pump installation will provide them with a maximum quantity of water of 132,000,000 gallons per day. Seeing that three big communities will now get water we cannot but be grateful for it. We also realize that because of that change future development can be on a particularly large scale. Bloemfontein has the largest railway centre in the country to-day. That means a tremendous amount to Bloemfontein but there is also great industrial development. However, that industrial development has always been faced with the threat of a water shortage. To-day they have the guarantee that there will not be a water shortage because unlimited water supplies will be laid on. Coupled with that is the question of power. In the meantime Bloemfontein has to provide the electric power required by those schemes, and I want to ask the Minister whether it is not possible, seeing that the power is to-day taken from Bloemfontein to the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam and the Van der Kloof Dam, to lead it back to Bloemfontein so that we can have the benefit of the cheap hydro-electric power thereby assisting the undertakings in that regard.

May I guide the hon. the Minister’s attention back to the south and link up with what the hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. van Staden) has said. I want to say immediately that I am not one of those who continually complain and say that the Government is neglecting the Western Province. I rather want to thank the Government for the smaller schemes which have recently been tackled in the Western Province. I do not associate myself with the remarks of people who recently wrote as follows in the Burger of the 17th April—

I repeat that I would much rather thank the Minister and his Department for what has already been done in the way of various smaller schemes in the Western Province. At the same time, however, I want to say that I think the time has arrived for one or two schemes to be undertaken on a national scale in the Western Province.

It so happens that there are two big rivers in the Western Cape which lend themselves perfectly to such national schemes, namely, the Berg River and the Bree River with their respective valleys. The Western Province, because it has no minerals, no coal, no other resources, is mainly dependant on agricultural development for its economic expansion. The intensive agricultural industries in the Western Province, namely, the wine and fruit industries have already over the past years exploited all the available water from our mountain streams. Those resources have been exploited to their maximum years ago but by resorting to pipe lines and sprinkler irrigation systems this potential has once again been doubled in the past decade. We have, however, now reached the stage where those resources cannot be exploited any further unless we get further water supplies. It was the attitude of previous Ministers of Water Affairs that there was no reason to have a big water scheme in the Western Province because there was already an overproduction of the products that were being produced here. Every year the K.W.V. has produced a surplus of liquor and until recently there was a surplus of canned fruit. Year after year the canning factories have had to carry supplies over which they could not dispose of. But this state of affairs has changed completely. During the export season which has just ended the Deciduous Fruit Board, although it exported 30,000 tons of fruit more than last year, received higher prices on the overseas market than ever before because that market could simply not meet the tremendous demand for our fruit, fruit which earns valuable foreign exchange for our country. The canners no longer carry supplies over from one season to the next. The total supplies of the season which has just ended have already been disposed of and no further supplies will be available to meet any further overseas orders. As the hon. member for Malmesbury has indicated, in the liquor field the K.W.V. have allocated quotas for an additional 500,000 leaguers. I want to emphasize, however, that it will simply be impossible to produce those additional supplies because water is the limiting factor. Surely it will be a great catastrophe—a tragedy—if this country had to import liquor because it could not produce enough, because we can produce it and we can save that foreign exchange if only we had the necessary water. I want to give you an example of what can be done, Sir. A certain young farmer in my constituency, in Rawsonville, bought a farm which produced 180 leaguers. By means of proper cultivation and a sprinkler irrigation system he pushed up the production the following year from 180 to 350 tons. The following year it went up to 450 tons, and the next year, i.e. the last season, it was 500 tons without one additional vine having been planted. He did so simply by means of better cultivation and because he had the necessary water. It can be done and that is the only way to overcome the serious threat of a liquor shortage in this country. [Time limit.]

There are a few matters which I wish to bring to the notice of the Minister. Firstly I wish to thank the Minister and his Department for the few drills they have sent to the drought-stricken area in my constituency to drill for water. We are particularly grateful for that assistance and I want to congratulate the Minister’s Department for the way in which they have handled the matter.

I now come to the important point and that is to support the plea made by the hon. member for Kuruman (Mr. du Plessis). I think the time has arrived for us to get away from that old-fashioned idea that you can only provide water in a country by means of boreholes. The position is simply that there are certain parts of our country where you cannot drill for water economically and if you do strike it it is salty or bitter or even poisonous. But we nevertheless continue to drill to see if we cannot ultimately find water which can be used. I want to ask the Minister and the House to think in a new direction; would it not be a better investment to provide that area with water by means of a pipe line? Kuruman can be provided from the Orange River but I think my constituency will have to be provided from the Vaal River. We already have that water at Vryburg. All we have to do is to lead it further to those parts which need it so urgently. If you provide it only for the purpose of watering your stock I do not think it will be such an unprofitable scheme. Millions of rand are spent annually by the State and by individuals looking for water but once a pipe line has been constructed it is there and it can be used. I can assure the Minister that he will derive an income from the sale of water—because you will have to sell it just like electricity—which will cover the costs over and over over the years. We do not expect the State alone to bear the cost of such development. The individual farmer cannot afford such expenditure but he can pay for what he gets. I hope our ideas will soon be sufficiently mature to think along those lines for a solution.

There is something else I should like to raise. The hon. member for Turffontein has also mentioned it and it is this that the farmers are particularly hit by the fact that whereas there was a total reduction in the case of a dry borehole in the past they must nevertheless pay for it under the present system. We know that according to the scale it is cheaper for a dry borehole and more expensive for the holes which yield water. We are not against that but there are large parts of the country which we do not wish to go out of production but where the farmers simply cannot afford to sink one dry borehole after the other and pay the costs. I want to assure the Minister that we are very grateful for his scheme but the one point I want to plead for is whether the Minister will not introduce an even more reasonable tariff where a borehole is dry.

If I have another minute spare I wish to plead for geophysicists to show where the water is. In those areas where it is so costly to drill for water the farmer has to drill without any technical assistance and that is also a system which has served its purpose and which should be changed. I hope the Minister will assist us in that regard.

In regard to the boring regulations which apply to-day and in regard to which we have had some remarks, particularly by the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant), I just want to say that my constituency is quite satisfied with the way the regulations are being applied. The average depth at which water is found in the Gordonia area is 436 feet. That is the deepest in the Republic. When the failures are as high as 60 per cent and those farmers are satisfied with the regulations I do not want to tell the Minister what to do as long as he does not do anything which will be unfavourable to my farmers. We appreciate what has been done from time to time. However, I want to say something in connection with the Orange River scheme, because the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) made so many representations.

I want to congratulate the hon. member on the fact that he will have so much water available from the Orange River. Where he became ecstatic when he told us what could happen once the water was there and what revolutionary industrial development would take place I want to tell him that he ought to be more grateful because of the entire lower Orange River area of 450 miles the North West will only get water for 9,000 morgen. In that entire desert area through which the Orange River flows the North West will only get water for 9,000 morgen out of a total scheme of 334,000 morgen. That is a very, very, insignificant portion and I want to tell the hon. member for Albany that he should be very grateful. Personally I cannot really join in the discussion on the water we shall get in the North West. I shall confine myself to what we are getting, water for 9,000 morgen. The farmer in the North West can do many things because he is a hardened person but, as has been pointed out to me, the 2,000 morgen in my constituency consists of barren granite rock where not even a hardened person can make a living. I greatly appreciate the capital that has been invested in irrigation schemes along the Orange River. I notice from the Estimates that R660,000 will be spent in that area. Nobody must think it is being incorrectly spent. In no irrigation area in the Republic do they irrigate more extensively than there and nowhere are more people concentrated on such a limited area than in the constituencies of Prieska and Gordonia. Plus minus 3,000 farmers are concentrated on 27,000 morgen; they, therefore, have an average of about 8½ morgen. I therefore appreciate every cent which is spent there to improve conditions for the farmers. I particularly wish to express my appreciation and gratitude for the compressor drill which has been sent to the Kalahari area and which is to-day used in the Kenhardt area in my constituency. It has brought a great measure of relief to that sorely tried area.

There is another small matter which my agricultural union has been raising ever since the days of Minister Sauer and that is the provision of water to the farmers in the Gordonia area by means of a pipe line. Sir, when you think of it that before the present regulations came into operation 71 private drills operated annually plus a further 9 Government drills and when you think of it that the failures were as high as 60 per cent and that the average depth of the dry holes was 446 feet you realize the terrific losses that were suffered over the years. When you take into account that as water is found holes dry up annually and that the desalting apparatus the Department has installed there has been a failure, it shows you that sooner or later we shall be faced with a water shortage problem which will hardly be capable of solution. There are 700,000 head of small stock—to be exact, 683,000—and I want to ask whether the Minister will not, for the sake of conserving the soil and good control over grazing, attend to this question of a pipe line before anything else.

I want to express my appreciation for the support that the hon. member for Vryburg has given to the plea I made to the Minister in regard to the subsidies and payments which are presently exacted from farmers in regard to boreholes. But there are other matters I wish to deal with, and the first arises out of a point made by the hon. member for Kuruman (Mr. du Plessis), who referred to the fact that bore holes were drilled with a yield of 700 to 800 gallons, and after a short time they dried up and then the man had to start drilling again. A very important point arises out of this. The position is that a farmer gets a machine and the hole is bored. He gets a yield of 600 gallons an hour. He fills in his papers and gets his subsidy and it is registered against his bond and he starts to pay. Then he goes back to the Department to seek a subsidy for the plant to get the water out of the hole. The Department draws up pumping specifications and the subsidy is again granted. What happens in every single case, especially when there is a drought and they want to extract the maximum capacity of the bore hole, is that they pump that hole to capacity and in a short time the hole dries up. But the Department’s recommendation is that only 75 per cent of the capacity of the hole should be pumped, because the tests made by the Department are on a nine-hour basis, and the yield of the hole is based on the test conducted over that period of time. Obviously, if you continue to pump a hole to the maximum capacity under continuing drought conditions, there will be a fall in the water table and inevitably the hole dries up. Now this is the point I wish to make. Has the time not arrived that before the subsidy is granted—in terms of the present regulations an inspection has to be carried out by an official of the Department to see that the proper machinery has been installed, but should not at the same time an examination be made of what the farmer is pumping out of the hole? That is important, because in a few months the hole is dried up, but no efforts are made to point out to farmers that even a hole with a capacity of say 700 gallons, if it is pumped only to three-quarters of its capacity, can still maintain, at a consumption rate of ten gallons a day for a full-grown animal, approximately 400 animals. In other words, pumping only 600 gallons of a maximum capacity of 750 gallons, a farmer can maintain 400 fully-grown animals under drought conditions. That is why this question of the availability of boring machines is so important to the farmers in the drought-stricken areas because it is recognized that if you give an animal adequate water you can still maintain that animal on a minimum feeding ration, provided the necessary phosphates, etc. are also supplied. That is the problem of the farmers in the cattle farming areas. They want more fresh water for their animals, and the easiest way for them to give their animals water is by using plastic pipes, on which the Department refuses to give any subsidy, or did until recently. It is only lately that subsidies have been approved for plastic piping. It took a long time to persuade the Department that plastic piping has a long life. With these cheaper facilities available, it will relieve the position considerably in the drought-stricken areas and I hope the Minister will give some consideration to this very important point of introducing into his regulations enforced minimum pumping according to the regulations laid down by his Department in order to avoid the bore holes drying up.

The other point I want to make is this. I pointed out that on the figures given in the report of the Department approximately 7½ holes are being bored a year by a machine. I find that of the 276 machines of the Department the gross figures given are 2,026 bore holes completed by Government machines and 724 under contract, and looking at the contract figures I find that approximately 85 per cent to 90 per cent goes to the Department of Bantu Administration. I did not take my average of 7½ based on the contractual as well as the Government machines. I took my average of 7½ boreholes a year at an average depth of 200 feet based on those done by the Government machines given as a total of 2,026 for 1963. I am sticking to the figure of 7½ for this reason, that if the average hole is approximately 200 feet, and the contract figure for this year is given as an average depth of 205 feet. But taking an average depth of 200 feet, it would appear that each of the machines of the Department bored a maximum of 1,500 feet in 365 days. If any private boring contractor had to operate on that basis, he would go bankrupt. I would suggest to the Minister that the whole procedure as well as the type of machine used should be completely overhauled. I see on the Estimates that there is an amount of R500,000 on the Loan Vote Account. Is this to enable the Minister to put into use the new type of pneumatic drill which works twice as fast as the old jumper or shot drills. It is obvious that if the Department made a bigger capital investment in regard to its equipment and used the new type of pneumatic drill, they could do much more work and perhaps catch up with the backlog of 2,884 applications by farmers for boring machines. I have put this case to the Minister constructively and I hope he will show some sympathy with the farmers in the reply that he gives.

Then I want to turn to one other matter. I wish to ask the Minister this as a matter of policy. In spite of all the big schemes that have been tackled, like the Orange River scheme, what is his policy in regard to the development of all the minor schemes dotted throughout the country? You will remember, Sir, that one of the reasons given by this Government as to why it came into power was the promise they made to the farmers that they would dam all the waters in the small rivers in South Africa. I want to ask how much has been done in that regard. I raise the question because I want to ask the Minister a question in regard to one particular scheme. I refer to the Koster River, and also in passing to the Lindley’s Poort Dam. After many years of pressure, the Government has at last acceded to the development of the Koster River scheme. I am surprised that the hon. member for Marico (Mr. Grobler), who has been persistently asked by his constituency and by the agricultural unions to raise this matter, shows so little interest in the matter that he does not even take the opportunity to draw the Minister’s attention to it. [Interjections.] My point is this. The original cost of this dam was some R400,000. The capital expenditure was later increased to R490,000. [Time limit.]

I want to associate myself with what was said by the hon. members for Paarl (Mr. W. C. Malan) and Malmesbury (Mr. van Staden) who brought the irrigation requirements of the Western Cape to the attention of the hon. the Minister. In discussing this matter, people will be surprised at the attention which must be given to the conserving of water for irrigation purposes in the Boland, because the area is known to have a reasonably high rainfall. But the fact is that while our rivers in the Boland flow strongly down to the sea in winter, we sometimes experience very dry summer months, usually when our fruit and grape crops have reached a critical stage. Although irrigation in the recognized sense in which it is applied in the interior is not necessary—all we need is an additional amount of water to help the fruit over that critical period—it is estimated that we in the Boland need an additional ten inches or so of water at the right time during the summer months and that this amount of water will be quite sufficient to enable us to produce fruit and grapes of the very best quality. Because this need has arisen in the Boland, farmers have started making use of the opportunity under soil conservation to build earth dams on their farms themselves. But as a result of the fluctuating rainfall—we have had a number of poor seasons over the last few years—some of these dams are empty and there is very little water in many others with the result that the water has become brackish and cannot be used. We have rivers which flow strongly in winter but which dry up in the summer. The hon. member for Paarl mentioned the Berg River and the Bree River. I want to mention the Eerste River. I take it that it gets its name from the fact that it was the first important river our forefathers discovered here. It is a river with a very short course of about 25 miles from its source in the Jonkershoek Mountains down to the sea but it carries an enormous amount of water which can be used. I say that because of the development awaiting our fruit and wine industry—it is anticipated that there will be an increased production of 500,000 leaguers of wine during the next five years and that an increase of 300,000 leaguers is essential in order to comply with the anticipated demand—we shall have to think of using the water which is at present available in our Boland rivers. The Boland is an area which has already been intensively developed but further development there is restricted by the lack of water for irrigation. People have already made provision for sprinkler irrigation and have built earth dams in which to conserve the water from the rivers. In this respect the Eerste River is one of the most important rivers receiving attention to-day. A distribution of the water in that river was made as early as in the time of Simon van der Stel, but most of that water is at present being used by the municipality. A few farmers along the lower reaches of the river who have their own irrigation board can, in theory, irrigate 700 morgen by means of water which they divert from the river by means of a concrete canal. But as things are at present, there is virtually no water available for irrigation during the summer. It is estimated that if a dam were built in the Jonkershoek Valley at the well-known Glen Connor area at a contour hight of 600 feet, all the land below it could be irrigated and that in the area of the Eerste River no less than 27,000 morgen could be placed under irrigation. This area is one of the most important wine-producing districts in our country. It is also one of the most important Turkish tobacco producing areas in the country because 75 per cent of the Turkish tobacco produced in South Africa is cultivated in this area in the district of Stellenbosch. Many tons of vegetables have also been cultivated in latter years for the canning factories. The expansion in this area will continue if the necessary water is made available. The wine industry too which also has to increase its production but which is restricted by a lack of reproductive material will also derive benefit from this. The farmer who has already trellased his vines will be able to wipe out this anticipated shortage in the wine industry within a year or two if he is provided with the water he requires. But there are other reasons why I am advocating this scheme to which the Department of Water Affairs has already given its attention and I want to express my gratitude for the sympathetic reception accorded us by the Secretary for Water Affairs and also by the hon. the Minister. The Secretary for Water Affairs paid a personal visit to the area. There are other reasons why additional water is required: The extension of the municipal area of Stellenbosch, the tremendous expansion of the university, the tremendous expansion of Government Departments there, the wine research institute that has been established there and numbers of other bodies as well—all these factors increase the consumption of water. Sir, it is not my task to tell the hon. the Minister which scheme should be given priority. I want to say here to-day that I have full confidence in the hon. the Minister and his Department as far as the drawing up of a priority list is concerned but I urgently want to bring the fact to his attention that we are dealing here with a scheme which merits high priority because if provision has not been made for the conservation of the water of the Eerste River by 1967 the municipality itself will in any case be compelled to make provision for additional water. I have pleasure in bringing this matter to the attention of the hon. the Minister.

I just want to tell the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant) that the Nationalist Government need not be ashamed of its achievements in the sphere of water conservation and water supplies. The task of supplying and conserving water has been proceeded with on an unprecedented scale under the National Party Government. We need therefore not be at all ashamed of our achievements in this sphere. Eventually all the worthwhile rivers will have storage facilities, but this takes time. This will take place over the course of the years and, indeed, on an unprecedented scale. It has always been the policy of successive Minister and of the Department as far as the conservation of water is concerned to make provision in the first place for the safeguarding of existing works. This is a very sound policy which has been followed in the past and we are all in agreement with it. It would not be a sensible policy to tackle new developments if there are already existing farming operations the continuation of which is endangered as a result of a lack of water. That is why we say that the policy followed in the past has always been a very sound one as indeed is the case in regard to the policy which will also be followed in the future—that of safeguarding existing developments and of ensuring continuity.

The adoption of the Orange River scheme, an extremely ambitious scheme, is also a step which is generally welcomed because it also brings with it a large measure of protection as far as farming systems already in-existence are concerned. We think here particularly of the Fish River area where people have already been uprooted in the past because of a lackof water. But the Orange River scheme also makes provision for future large-scale agricultural expansion. It also makes provision for industrial expansion. Completely new industrial complexes can be set up as a result of this scheme. This scheme has given a new stimulus to our national economy and we welcome it.

I want to ask the hon. the Minister also to give some attention to the Eastern Transvaal Lowveld. We in the eastern part of the Transvaal as well as the people in Natal and elsewhere are blessed with plentiful supplies of water which will make agriculture development and industrial development possible in the future. There may perhaps not have been such a great need for conservation as far as the Eastern Transvaal rivers were concerned in the past. I am speaking now in particular of the rivers in my own constituency, the Komati River, the Crocodile River and the Lomati, the Sabie and the Blyde Rivers. There is a constant and plentiful supply of water in these rivers. That water contains very little salt and is virtually silt-free. It is excellent for irrigation purposes as well as for industrial development. A tremendous amount of expansion has taken place along those rivers, particularly along the Crocodile River, as the hon. the Minister himself knows. This is one of the most intensively farmed parts of the country and farming there is largely dependent upon irrigation. In the past, as I have said, water conservation was perhaps not so vitally necessary but the time has now come when those rivers must also be given the necessary attention as far as the conservation of water is concerned. There is a superabundance of water in the summer months; much of the water flows down to the sea, but during the winter months the water level in the rivers drops. Because of the two-year drought that we have experienced, the level of the water in those rivers is now disturbingly low. We have now reached danger point and that is why I say that we shall have to provide the necessary conservation facilities there timeously. These conservation works are urgently required because this is a part of the country which has a large agricultural population and in which farming is profitable. We cannot allow those people to suffer losses as a result of a lack of water over a short period of the year.

Another question that I want to bring to the attention of the hon. the Minister is in connection with afforestation. We find that more trees have been planted in those mountains than in any other part of the country. Those are the areas which have a high rainfall and they form the most important sources of water for our Tivers. It is a fact, of course, that afforestation reduces the number of mountain streams. It is therefore necessary that this matter be given careful attention. It is also necessary for conservation works to be built on the tributaries of our large rivers so that when floods occur, the water can be diverted to ensure it does not run away too quickly. In this way we can ensure that we have permanent streams to feed the main rivers. I think that this question of afforestation and the conservation of our natural fountains and water sponges merits special attention. I feel that serious attention must be given to those regions which are the most important sources of our rivers in the Eastern Transvaal.

Before I reply to certain representations and statements made here by certain hon. members, I should like to bring to the notice of the House two matters which I regard as important. After discussions which took place between the Department of Agricultural Technical Services and the Department of Water Affairs, the following agreement of which I have already approved in principle and which is expected to come into operation as from 1 July of this year, was arrived at: Firstly, although the Department of Agricultural Technical Services has hitherto also subsidized smaller irrigation works (up to approximately 25 morgen feet) undertaken by farmers, this function will be performed in the future by the Department of Water Affairs; in other words, the latter Department will accept responsibility for all diversion works, storage dams, water distribution works, where irrigation is the main consideration. Secondly, advice to farmers about the actual use of irrigation water will remain the responsibility of the Department of Agricultural Technical Services. Thirdly, the Department of Agricultural Technical Services will also remain responsible for the subsidization of dams, reservoirs and water distribution works which are intended purely as watering places for livestock on farms. This also applies to the internal distribution of water from larger irrigation works to livestock camps for watering purposes only. In other words, once the Department of Water Affairs has brought water in, say, a pipe line to a certain point on a farm and the water has to be distributed from the point over the various grazing camps for watering purposes, the Department of Agricultural Technical Services will be responsible for the planning and subsidization. Fourthly, the planning of catchment areas will remain the responsibility of the Department of Agricultural Services, but in this regard there will be closest co-operation between the Department of Agricultural Technical Services and the Department of Water Affairs. The latter Department will also exercise control over potential water supplies which may be created as a result of the establishment of State soil conservation works by the Department of Agricultural Technical Services. Fifthly, there will also be close liaison between the two Departments in the future in respect of the utilization of bore hole water, respect of the combating of brack, drainage and other common problems.

Then I also want to announce that having regard to the serious emergency, particularly in the drought-stricken areas of the Northern Transvaal, the Government has decided—over and above the provision which has already been made in the Estimates for, amongst other things, the raising of the height of the Hartebeespoort dam wall at Brits (R350,000), for the raising of the height of the Rooikraal dam wall in Blood River at Groblersdal (R69,000), for the raising of the height of the Lindley’s Poort dam wall in the Elands River in the Marico district (R100,000)—to make available an additional R2,000,000 for smaller, urgent and necessary water works within that area. These works cannot perhaps be tackled immediately, because one cannot complete these works simply by pressing a button, but they will be tackled as soon as possible, and the eventual raising of the height of these dam walls will prove of very great assistance if similar conditions should possibly arise next year or in any subsequent year. Provision will be made for this sum of R2,000,000 in the Supplementary Estimates. The following works have been placed on the programme to be tackled as soon as possible: The wall of the Buffelspoort dam will be raised eight feet, at a cost of R250,000, to make provision for the storage of an additional 2,600 morgen feet.

The height of the Njelele dam wall will be raised by 20 feet, at a cost of R350,000, to make provision for the storage of an additional 11,500 morgen feet; the height of the Albasini dam wall will be raised by 5 feet, at a cost of R4,000, to make provision for the storage of an additional 1,450 morgen feet. Then it is proposed to build three buttress walls, each 20 feet high, in the Palala River at a cost of R300,000. The height of the Klip-kopjes dam wall in the White River, where the conditions are very bad, will be raised by ten feet to make provision for the storage of an additional 12,000 morgen feet, at a cost of R4,000. The height of the Klaserie dam wall at Klaserie (Hoedspruit) will be raised by 10 feet to provide an additional capacity of 1,050 morgen feet, at a cost of R300,000. As I have already said, it will probably not be possible to complete all these works within a year but we hope to complete as many as possible in the course of this year and the rest possibly next year. I just want to say that White Papers will be submitted in this connection. A start will also be made with the Vaal-Gamagara pumping scheme for the pumping of water from the Vaal River for industrial development to the area in which the Fincham mine is situated. The cost of this, if I remember correctly, will be R2,650,000. This, however, will only be the beginning, because we propose to investigate the possibility of leading water further into this area later on by means of pipelines as far as the Kuruman area and thus to provide water to farmers in that area for their livestock and for domestic purposes.

Is all this water to come out of the Vaal River?

Yes, I just want to say to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher), since he is here now, that it is a good thing that he has drawn attention to the increasing use and consumption of the water of the Vaal River and to the fact that sooner or later provision will have to be made for supplementing that water, because the water of the Vaal River will not last forever. We shall have to devise other plans; we shall have to give our attention to other catchment areas, perhaps in Natal, or perhaps to the question of supplementing this water from the Orange River. But I want to draw his attention to the fact that the building of the Orange River dams will mean that it will be possible eventually to draw an additional amount of water, equivalent to sufficient irrigation water for 27,000 morgen of land for further development, from the Vaal dam for use in the Transvaal. But we have already made a great deal of progress—we have practically reached the stage where we are able to draw up a White Paper—with our investigations into the building of a storage dam below the Vaal dam. Those investigations have been completed. As a matter of fact when I drew up my priority list, for the purpose of this year’s Estimates, in respect of dams which we propose to construct, this proposed dam was placed high on the priority list. Let me also add this: The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) made certain complaints here with regard to the Vaalharts settlement, which falls in the constituency of the hon. member for Kimberley (North) (Mr. H. T. van G. Bekker). Sir, I do not mind if members talk about the constituencies of other members; we are free to talk about any part of the country, but I do think a member goes too far when he tries to accept responsibility for the whole of the country. The hon. member complained about the water allocation which has now been reduced. He points out that the allocation was so much in 1961-2, so much in 1962-3 and that a quota has again been fixed for this year, and he wants to know whether quotas will continue to be fixed in the future. Sir, it is essential for us to take drought conditions and changed circumstances into account. The hon. member must not allow himself to be misled by rain which may have fallen in a particular area; he should rather allow himself to be guided by the statistics as to the amount of water which is available in the Vaal dam for utilization for various purposes, including irrigation, because I can give him the assurance that in 1961-2 the water level in the dam was higher than it was last year (1962-3) when the water in the dam was only 55 per cent of the full capacity of the dam—practically the lowest level it had ever reached. This year, in spite of all the rain which the hon. member talks about, there is still less water in the dam then ever before; I think it is 51 per cent. Well, at what stage should one begin to introduce rationing and impose limitations? Must one wait until the settlers have emptied the dam and then tell them that they are going to get no water at all? No, it is much better to lay down quotas. I just want to say that the normal allocation which was made in 1961-2 was 2,510,000 cusec hours, without any curtailment. In 1962-3 more water was given to them; they were allowed 2,605,000 cusec hours, and for 1963-4 the figure is 3,341,000 cusec hours. That is the amount of water that was actually used, and in actual fact therefore they were given more water than in the previous year. Well, one asks oneself how it was possible to do this. It was possible simply because certain arrangements were made timeously and because certain concessions were made in the limitations upon the settlers. Here we have indisputable proof that full use is not made of their quotas by a considerable percentage of the people on these settlements. We said that having regard to the drought conditions we would allow any person who did not use his full quota of water to make available the unused portion of his quota to another man who has used his full quota and who still needs more water. The effect of this was that not less water was used than the year before but actually more. Well, that is all I want to say in that regard. I think I have now dealt with most of the points raised by the hon. member, except this one: He says that the quota will have to be reduced still further. Well, I cannot say because if the circumstances are such that there is no water, then, of course, the quota will have to be further reduced; there will be no alternative.

The hon. member for Wakkerstroom (Mr. Martins) has urged, among other things, that we should get a move on with the construction of the Pongolapoort dam. I want to give him the assurance that the Pongolapoort dam project, as set out in the White Paper, makes provision for development over a period of about 16 years. It is not necessarily our intention, having regard to the difficulties and problems there, to delay the construction of the dam wall but in view of the extension of the canal system etc., and in view of our large capital commitments, the idea is, to stretch out the completion of the whole project over a slightly longer period rather than to complete it in a shorter period. There are good reasons why we have to do so. As hon. members know, this is a warm part of the country; it is an unknown part of the country and it is a new part of the country. We have to establish an experimental farm there; we have to do research and make experiments to find out what other products can be grown there apart from sugar. In part that is also the reply that I want to give to other hon. gentlemen who pleaded for other essential, urgent schemes. I have in mind particularly the Berg river scheme, the Eerste river scheme, and the rivers and water sources of the North-Eastern Transvaal. We admit the need; we admit that these schemes are essential; we also admit that these schemes, because of the changed circumstances and the developments which are taking place, may have a higher economic value. The fact that no announcement has been made with regard to certain works does not mean that we are delaying our investigations in respect of works which it will be possible to construct in the future. As far as the Berg River and the Eerste River are concerned I can only say that if my Department and the Government and I were unsympathetic we would certainly not have carried on deliberately, as we have been doing, with the investigations which have to be completed before we can proceed with the building of a dam. These schemes are both going to require considerable capital. There are quite a few works which have to be tackled in the Berg River, but the most important and the main thing is really to harness the waters of Riviersonderend—after having made provision for the requirements in that catchment area and perhaps for the requirements over a slightly wider area in the south-western districts or the areas lower down where we find every now and then that there is a shortage of good drinking water for cattle—and then to divert the surplus waters of Riviersonderend by means of a tunnel to the Berg River and to make it available to riparian owners. Well, we know precisely where we are going to build and we know what the capacity of these dams is going to be. Test drilling is still taking place on the proposed site of the one dam; there are other places where intensive surface surveys still have to be made. There is a considerable amount of essential work that still has to be done, and I do not want to hold out the prospect at this stage, having regard to all the data that we must still collect, not even to talk about the surface surveys which will take longer to complete, that it will be possible to complete our investigations before the end of this year. But in the meanwhile we are carrying on with the work that we are doing there. That also applies to the Eerste River where a dam site has been found at the spot which the hon. member mentioned and where the rock formation leaves a good deal to be desired, but we shall continue with our investigations to find a place or places where it will be possible to construct a dam. Hon. members will be surprised to learn—and this is also my reply to the representations that we must not only tackle larger schemes and forget the smaller ones—that exclusive of the Orange River scheme the amount which has already been approved for smaller water schemes in the course of construction, plus the new schemes which I mentioned a moment ago, for which provision is made in the Estimates and for which further provision will be made in the Supplementary Estimate, is no less than R97,600,000. These are works which have already been approved of. Apart from this R2,500,000, the rest has been approved of but the money has not yet been spent. Apart from the Pongolapoort dam these works are all minor works. Hon. members will realize now why it is not always physically possible for the State, bearing in mind and recognizing the need for larger schemes for the supply of water, to appropriate more money year after year. We are planning a further 38 schemes which do not fall under the aforementioned categories. In other words, the accusation cannot be made against us that we are not planning ahead. We are planning well ahead.

The hon. member for Turffontein raised the question of drilling operations. Let me give him the correct facts. The hon. member has suddenly become the United Party’s drilling expert. He says that we are making less provision for drilling services this year than we made last year, but apparently the hon. member cannot count because at page 165 of the Revenue Estimates he will see that the amount which was appropriated last year, for 1963-4, was R2,957,000; this year we are appropriating R3,120,000. It is true that this does not represent a very big increase, but why does he try to create the impression that the amount has been reduced by thousands when there is actually an increase?

I took the exact figures.

If the hon. member took the exact figures, then the statement which he made here was even more stupid, because surely he can see which is the bigger of the two amounts. The hon. member said that the amount had been decreased. He tries to create the impression amongst the farmers in the country that although, according to him, there is a great, serious need for drilling services, this unreasonable Government, its Minister and the Department come along and reduce the provision for drilling services. That is the impression that he created. The reasons for the diminished use of Government boring-machines were not mentioned by the hon. member. There are two reasons for it. The one reason is that by subsidizing privately owned boring-machines we have now created the same facilities and privileges for the farmers in respect of privately owned boring-machines as the facilities enjoyed by them in respect of Government boring-machines. The result is that there are fewer applications on the waiting list. As a matter of fact the latest figures at my disposal indicate that the number of applications for Government drilling services still on the waiting list is not 4,000 odd but a little more than 2,000.

That is precisely what I quoted from your report.

The hon. member alleges that our drills were in such bad condition, etc. The fact of the matter is that we have 20 pneumatic drills, each of which probably drills as fast as seven other drills. This has naturally increased and strengthened our capacity very considerably. The fact that we have these pneumatic drills has helped us enormously to make up the leeway. We have not enough geologists to see that one is available for every bore hole which has to be sunk and on which a subsidy is paid. We have not enough geologists, but we utilize to the full the services of those we have. It is, however, wrong to speak disparagingly of the boring machine operators in the service of the Department. Some of them, without scientific training, have acquired practically as much knowledge, through their experience in respect of locating water, as the geologist. In fact, we keep statistics and there is hardly any difference between their failures. Hon. members should not think that a geologist, due to his training, can necessarily see under the ground better than anybody else. Geologists and highly trained scientists also have failures in respect of finding water.

The hon. member first pleads for more water for the farmers and then says there should be stricter control. Now the Department of Water Affairs must make sure that those people do not pump more than a certain quantity of water before they get a subsidy! Does the hon. member know how large South Africa is? Where are we to find the staff? Surely it is an impossible task. I want to give an example of how unfair it is. I know of people who do not over-pump and who do not irrigate with water intended as drinking water for stock, people who pump at the normal rate, and before they know where they are the subterranean water is exhausted because it was not a permanent vein. Now could one have determined beforehand with any accuracy that such subterranean water was just dammed up there? I have had that experience myself. I watered 800 head of cattle for six months and the next year, after having had more rain than in the previous ten years, my foreman informed me that he could water only 400 head. Within a fortnight after that he could water only 100 head, and before the end of the year he could not even water ten, and to-day he cannot water a single animal. That happened, and it did not happen because of irrigation or of over-pumping. It is a nice ideal; I can see what the hon. member has in mind, but it is not practicable.

The hon. member for Vryburg (Mr. Labuschagne) asked whether we would not investigate providing water for the cattle by means of a pipeline instead of incurring the expense of boring for water and of paying subsidies. I can imagine that there are certain areas where it would be possible to do so within the economic ability of the farmers to pay for that water, but then I can also tell the hon. member this. Has he ever calculated how much it would cost to lead water to farmers in the distant areas of the country and to provide it at certain points on their farms? I say the hon. member would be surprised to know how much that would cost, although I do not say that no places exist where it is possible to do so. However, I think we should not set out from the standpoint that we should just abolish the boring services and concentrate on such a system.

Another matter raised was the tariffs for boring. The tariffs have not been raised, as the hon. member for Vryburg stated. I must say I am a little disappointed in the farmers, because when I made an improvement in the boring services, instead of thanks I received ingratitude. Do hon. members know what this change in the regulations cost the State? It cost the State an amount of R860,000 per annum more than it did before. Surely that R860,000 must have brought relief somewhere. Now the man who formerly paid nothing for a bore hole, while others had to pay, is so dissatisfied because he has to pay something. Is that fair? I do not want to go into that, except to mention this: I intend, and in fact I am busy, drawing up a Cabinet memorandum in order to try to effect an improvement, but one cannot make improvements without incurring more expenditure on the part of the State. I am going to think in this direction. I am going to submit the matter to the Cabinet and see what we can do. I cannot promise that we will grant relief. I am thinking of a change which may perhaps grant relief and which will amount to an additional contribution by the State of R100,000 or R200,000. But I want to warn hon. members now already. Do they know what will happen? It will be said that it should be made retrospective to 1961-2. [Interjection.] Yes, that is so. I have experienced that right throughout the Republic. Where people in the proclaimed boring areas north of a certain line had the privilege of paying nothing for a dry borehole, they now make representations to me to make every change retrospective to the day when we made the first change. The hon. member may believe that or not. I warn that it will happen again. One might as well say that if income-tax is reduced, or if a higher pension is granted, it should be made retrospective. The principle is wrong.

The farmers’ organizations do not ask for it.

I can assure the hon. member that it is not just a single farmer or a single farmers’ organization which has asked for it. I am not so irresponsible as to say that the whole area made such representations to me when they did not.

Why do you not agree to the representations of the farmers’ organizations?

Should I rather agree to your representations?

Order! The hon. member for Turffontein can speak after the hon. the Minister has finished.

The hon. member for Turffontein was one of those who did not have the interests of the farmers at heart yesterday. To-day he regrets it and now he is trying to remedy the matter in this way.

The hon. member for Colesberg (Mr. M. J. de la Rey Venter) submitted to me certain complaints by the farmers in his constituency. Certain things unfortunately took place in the case of one or two farmers which caused a little unpleasantness and friction. For the rest, the co-operation is reasonably good. The other points mentioned by the other member will be investigated. But it would be unfair to lay all the wrong things done at the door of the Department or at the door of the local engineer. I know what difficulty a farmer has when there is State activity on his land. But my request to the farmers there is please not to try to create enmity between themselves and the engineer of the Department. I have learnt from experience that it is not necessary to submit and to abandon one’s rights; but go and talk to those people and treat them as your equals and you will get the best co-operation from them. I have already instructed my resident engineer there to treat the farmers with the greatest courtesy and sympathy, and that he should not only listen to their complaints but try to the best of his ability to remove the causes of their complaints. Certain demands are made which cannot be acceded to. These other points I shall also have investigated.

The hon. member for Kimberley (North) (Mr. H. T. van G. Bekker) spoke about a man having two plots, and the storm water. This problem of storm water is not simply a small one. For certain sound reasons we have said: No, it cannot be used.

In regard to the two plots on the same settlement, I think the hon. member would have had a case if he could prove that those plots were too small economically. But I listened to him telling us about plots being sold at R1,000 per morgen. Those plots are 30 morgen in extent. Now the hon. member asks me, at a settlement where it has been proved, according to him, that the plots are economic and large enough, to allow a man to have two plots with the same privileges. I do not think we can do that on settlements where it has been proved that the plots are economically large enough. I am sorry, but I cannot accept that principle.

Vote put and agreed to.

House Resumed:

Progress reported.