With your leave, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a few announcements in regard to the business of the House. Orders of the Day Nos. II and III, as they appear on the Order Paper for today, will be taken first on Monday. The whole of the week, except for private members’ days, will be devoted to legislation, which will in due course be arranged in the order in which the House will deal with it. Then I want to inform hon. members that the Second Reading of the Part Appropriation Bill, for which a period of 12 hours is set aside, will be taken on 6th February. The Second Reading of the Additional Appropriation Bill will be taken on 2nd March. The Budget Speech will be delivered by the hon. the Minister of Finance on 22nd March, and the debate will commence on 3rd April. The Railway Budget will be introduced on 1st March and the debate will commence on 6th March. The House will adjourn on the evening of 23rd March for the recess and will resume on Monday, 3rd April.

After consultation with the Leader of the House, I move as an unopposed motion—

1. (1) That the Select Committee on a question of privilege, appointed by this House on 15th September, 1966, to act in conjunction with a committee of the Honourable the Senate as a Joint Committee, and to inquire into and report upon a complaint of a breach of privilege alleged to have been constituted under the Powers and Privileges of Parliament Act, 1963, by the publication in The Cape Times of 13th September, 1966, of an article headed: “Verwoerd: Blame put on English Press, Clergy, Opposition,” be re-appointed;
2. (2) that the Select Committee have power to take evidence and call for papers, and consist of five members, namely, the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education, the Deputy Minister of Finance, Messrs. M. L. Mitchell, S. J. M. Steyn and Dr. P. S. van der Merwe, of whom two shall form a quorum;
3. (3) that the Chairman of the Joint Committee, besides his vote as a member, have a casting vote in the case of an equality of votes; and
4. (4) that the Joint Committee have leave to consider the articles headed: “Challenge to Critics—my country right or wrong” and “Die moord grootliks die Pers se skuld” which appeared in the Eastern Province Herald of 14th September, 1966, and the Oosterlig of 15th September, 1966, respectively.

Agreed to.

I move—

That the Resolution be transmitted by message to the Honourable the Senate requesting it to re-appoint a Committee with similar powers.

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned last night, I was referring to the unfortunate speech made by the hon. member for Innesdal. I took exception to the slurs and the sneers cast by that hon. member on the attempt by the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to find a bipartisan approach above party political division to certain limited aspects of our political life concerning foreign policy. I think that we of the Opposition, who have had to endure considerable criticism and remarks about this bipartisan approach which we desire and which we understand the Prime Minister desires as well, are entitled to ask the hon. the Prime Minister whether the attitude of this front-bencher of the Nationalist Party, a not unimportant member of the Nationalist Party, was the attitude of the governing party? Does the hon. the Prime Minister support that attitude? Does the Prime Minister also look upon the bipartisan approach that we are seeking as something ridiculous and something to be condemned?

There is no such thing as a bipartisan approach. All that has happened is that I have told the hon. the Leader of the Opposition from time to time what the position was and we discussed that. That is all there is to it.

In other words, the Prime Minister feels that it is right and that that should continue.

Yes, I will inform the hon. the Leader of the Opposition from time to time, if and when necessary.

I am therefore entitled to assume that the attitude of the hon. member for Innesdal is not the attitude of the hon. the Prime Minister.

The hon. member spoke about something entirely different. It had nothing to do with this at all.

Mr. Speaker, this is very interesting as we must now assume that as regards the approaches by the Prime Minister to the Leader of the Opposition and vice versa (the only one about which we had public information was an approach by the Prime Minister to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to give him certain information), the intention is that the major political parties in this country should show a common front to the world in respect of certain aspects of our foreign policy. Because if that is the intention then I can only say that the attitude of the hon. member for Innesdal is unpatriotic, un-South African and totally unworthy. The attitude of the hon. member for Innesdal is not atypical. His was the worst we saw in the debate but throughout we have had attempts by members on the other side of the House to escape the responsibility which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and speakers in support of him have placed at the door of the Government. The Leader of the Opposition and those who supported him raised important issues, supported by authority and fact. They were reasoned speeches dealing with matters affecting the people of South Africa and dealing in particular with the problem of inflation. More particularly, with the problem of inflation as it affects our gold-mining industry, our farmers and those ordinary people of South Africa who have fixed incomes. No impartial spectator and no impartial listener to the debate of the past four days can say that the Government has treated those problems with the attention and the care and the responsibility they deserve.

I would refer you, Sir, to the reply which the hon. the Prime Minister attempted to give the Leader of the Opposition. It reflected the slap-happy attitude of the Government in the face of these problems. It reflected the attitude of the Government, namely that all is well with South Africa, that there are no real problems. If only the Opposition would keep quiet, the Government may bluff the people to believe that that is so. That was their attitude, an attitude of indifference to the people who suffer the consequences of Government incompetence and Government ineptitude. The hon. the Prime Minister, I think, should know that all South Africans who awaited this first major entry of his into the discussions of this Parliament must have been disappointed in his performance. He reminded us of something which Sheridan said years ago of a Member of his Parliament: “That the hon. member depended on his memory for his jokes and upon his imagination for his facts.” I will give the hon. the Prime Minister full credit for the fact that he was amusing. He raised laughter and we laughed as well at times. But, Mr. Speaker, when I was young my parents took me to Pagel’s Circus and we roared with laughter at the antics of the clowns, Tickey and Spuds, but it never occurred to us that Tickey or Spuds would be entrusted with the responsibilities of the Prime Minister of South Africa.

I think that the Prime Minister should bear that in mind. That was the type of reply we got in this debate. Now I ask you to look at the kind of argument produced in reply to our attacks. First of all, there were attempts at a counter-attack. The hon. member for Brakpan tried to distract attention by launching an attack upon the City Council of Johannesburg where the happy people of that city are governed in their intimate affairs by a United Party municipality. The hon. member’s charge was that the capital expenditure of the city of Johannesburg was lavish and to support that he referred to the motorways which have been built. I forgive the hon. member for Brakpan for being ignorant but why he should always find so much delight in his own ignorance baffles me. He should know that there is no municipality in South Africa that co-operates so gladly with the Government in any attempt to curtail expenditure. I should like to tell the House that in the year 1965-’66 at short notice the Johannesburg Town Council was asked to cut capital expenditure by R2 million and that they did. This year, 1966-’67, they proposed a capital expenditure of R50 million. At the request of the Government they immediately cut that by R8 million. Only R20 million of the original R50 million had to be obtained by loan funds but even then at the request of the Government they cut that remaining amount by a further R2½ million. They co-operated with the Government and helped in every possible way to reduce capital expenditure at this time. When the United Party City Council of Johannesburg were asked to cut expenditure in the national interest, they did not turn once to the Government and say: “Tell us how and where we must save this money.” They did not once put the onus upon other people. They accepted their own responsibility and they cut their expenditure which is more than we can say of this Government. That was the one kind of argument.

The other kind of argument used by the hon. the Prime Minister as well was that he expressed surprise that on this motion of no confidence, so well deserved by the Government, the United Party did not state its own policy. In the first place, Mr. Speaker, that is not expected of us. What is expected of us and what we are determined to do in this debate and other debates which will follow is to show up, to reveal and to expose the ineptitude and inefficiency and incompetence of the present Cabinet. But I want to say that in the very nature of our criticism the policy of the Opposition is stated and becomes apparent. The Leader of the Opposition made it perfectly clear that there should be a real reduction in State expenditure and that a United Party government would set about that. Secondly, he made it perfectly clear that it would be necessary to export some of the surplus capital in South Africa. He made it perfectly clear that it was vitally necessary to tackle our manpower problem with more imagination and more success and with more action than we are getting from the Government. I do not want to repeat the speech of my hon. Leader, but again and again in his criticism and in his suggestions he made the policy of the United Party perfectly clear. Sir, there are none so deaf as those who not wish to hear and none so blind as those who do not wish to see. The Prime Minister prefers to be both deaf and blind, because he and the Cabinet surrounding him do not have the ability to carry out the things that are necessary in the interests of South Africa.

Another argument which came from the hon. the Prime Minister was: Why talk about inflation? Why blame me for inflation? It is a world phenomenon. Of course it is a world phenomenon, Sir. But some countries are more successful than others in combating inflation. I should like to give you one example.

Net een?

Yes, I can give you more. I could mention France and Australia, but I want to make mention particularly of the United States of America, which is at present engaged upon what can only be described as a major war in Vietnam. In spite of that, their rate of increase in the cost structure is half of what it has been in South Africa over the past five years. I am a South African, Sir. I believe that we can be as efficient and as well-governed any day as the people of the United States of America. It is just unfortunate that we are stuck with a bad Government. That, however, can be changed.

The Prime Minister has another excuse. He threw up his hands in despair and said: But the gold price has been fixed for 30 years. He said that he was not responsible for that. Of course he was not responsible for that, but, Sir, that should be a greater spur to him to fight inflation, because South Africa is the greatest gold-producing country in the world, making an important contribution to the wherewithal with which the Western world has to face the continuing crisis of ideology. It should be a spur to a South African Government to combat inflation more efficiently than other countries. It should not be an excuse. It should not be an exhibition of pathetic incompetence, of lack of ability. It should be the spur for efficient action on the part of the Government, and that is lacking, Sir.

Then the Prime Minister produced a surprising argument. I expected better from him. He said that the United Party’s attitude was that we must combat inflation and we should know that the only way that you can combat inflation is by cutting wages, especially White wages.

I never said that. I asked you whether that was what you wanted.

Sir, the Prime Minister asks us whether that is what we wanted, suggesting that that is the solution.

No.

Oh yes, Sir. Why did he then ask us? Why was that line of argument developed so eloquently and so vehemently by for example the Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Water Affairs yesterday? Why did he and other speakers take their cue from the Prime Minister?

But you are talking nonsense.

No, Sir. I am not talking nonsense. We heard the Prime Minister. He challenged us with the fact that we were satisfied to accept that White wages would have to be reduced. He put rhetorical questions to us and was followed by other speakers on that side. They were taking refuge once again, as the Nationalist Party has always done, behind race prejudice. They were taking refuge behind the exploitation of race prejudice. We have a Government in South Africa which appeals to the people time after time with success and then when their sins are exposed they make the gibe: Why are we successful at elections? I am telling you why they are successful at elections. They are willing without regard to the true interests of South Africa unscrupulously to exploit race prejudice and to create and to fan the flames of race prejudice. [Interjections.] In this retreat behind the fears and the prejudices for which they are responsible they have the cheek to turn to us on this side of the House and say: You must define your attitude to separate development. Mr. Speaker, before we do that, should they not define separate development? There is much which concerns the separate existence and the separate living of the various races in South Africa which is part of the accepted and conventional life of South Africa, and which most of us accept. Most of us live that way without laws or compulsion. But, Sir, there is also very much in the so-called separate development policy of the Government which is petty, humiliating to other human beings, which does not further the interests of either race in any way except to salve the aggressiveness of some people in South Africa. I want to say here and now that if we have to accept that sort of thing then the answer of the United Party is a most emphatic “no thank you”.

I want to ask the Government what they are doing apart from the speeches by the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration, repudiated by the Secretary for Bantu Administration. Where is there any evidence of real action by the Government to bring about separate development in the fundamental aspects of South African life? I think that until we get an answer to that question, their question is a silly one. It is an escapist question. It is like a detective story. It is like a James Bond story in which people take refuge when they want to escape reality. Mr. Speaker, there is no separation in the fundamental things in South Africa. There is no separation and not even the beginning of separation in South Africa in something so fundamental as the common production by the various races of South Africa of the means by which we live and by which we enjoy life. There is no fundamental separation in the economy of South Africa. There is only growing integration. There is no separate development at all. [Interjection.] That hon. member says “nonsense”. I do not blame him. One can only be a Nationalist in South Africa to-day if you ignore facts, when you regard hard facts as nonsense.

With your permission, Sir, I should like to give the House some hard facts. I have looked at the table of employment opportunities in the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics. I find that an interesting development is taking place in South Africa while the Government applies a policy which they call “Separate Development”. In 1959-’60 1,737,000 people of all races were employed in South Africa. In 1964-’65, five years later, 1,998,000 were employed. Of these, in 1959-’60 the Whites numbered 409,000. In 1964-’65 they numbered 482,000. I do not want to give you too many figures, Sir, but that means that the Whites accounted for an increase in the number of employed people of 73,000 over those five years, out of a total increase of 361,000. While 73,000 Whites were newly employed in those five years in the common industrial activities of the races in South Africa and in the common economic activities of the people of South Africa, there were 288,000, almost 300,000, non-Whites.

What are you trying to prove?

I am showing, Sir, that there is no true fundamental separate development in South Africa. Mr. Speaker, in the manufacturing industry the figures are even more striking. Whites accounted for 69,000 out of an increase in people employed of 310,000. 69,000 Whites were newly employed in those industries in the five years up to 1964-’65, but there were 241,000 non-Whites. Look at the ratio, Sir. Somebody asked me about percentages. I should like to give them the figures. Look at the ratio of people employed in construction, for example. Five years ago 25 per cent of the people employed on construction in South Africa were Whites. Five years later only 20 per cent were Whites. Those are facts. Those are official statistics that come from the Government. In the manufacturing industry 33 per cent of the people who were employed in 1960 were Whites. In 1965 only 25 per cent. Where is the separate development? And, Sir, this tendency will continue.

It won’t.

Yes, this tendency will continue and I can give the House the assurance that the King Canute that has come from Vereeniging will never stop this tidal wave … [Interjections.]

On Monday we were privileged to receive a very significant document. I do not think that hon. members on that side have had the time to look at this document. They take their time about things. This document is a report on the Economic Development Programme for the Republic of South Africa, released by the Department of Planning. It is a report on what happened in South Africa last year. If hon. members will look at pages 7 and 8 they will see how brilliantly successful the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration is in turning the tide, in stopping the integration of Black labour in South Africa. I find that on page 7 there is a table, No. 1.3, which gives one most interesting information. I will not give my own comments on this table, but I will read the comments given by the experts of the Department of Planning. Paragraph 26 reads as follows—

This is how paragraph 27 reads—

Even expressed as a percentage it is a faster increase, not only if expressed in absolute numbers. Paragraph 29 reads as follows, and this is the important fact—

This economic development programme projected that during the next five years we would have an increase in our national product every year of about 5 or 5.5 per cent. For that purpose we would need another 500,000 non-White workers in South Africa. That was their projection. In the first year they are 84,000 out in their projection. In the first year their own anticipations are exceeded by 84,000. [Interjections.] Every time the hon. Deputy Minister speaks he exposes the futility of Government policy. [Interjections.] I think we should subsidize his speeches.

But, Sir, there are things being done. There are attempts now to stifle development in our urban areas. Or, let me put it differently— now there are attempts to encourage greater development on the borders of the reserves.

That is right.

The hon. member says that is right. They may be achieving some measure of success. But, of course, that is not separate development. That is not development in the Native areas, of the Native areas. That is development for the White people on the borders of the reserves, on the White side of the reserves, with the aid of Black labour from the reserves. That is integration. But, Sir, to judge by results it is not very effective integration. The hon. Leader of the Opposition is right when he says that one of the answers to the problem of inflation is greater productivity, but then the failure of this Government is the more colossal, it is absolutely staggering. This is what happened according to the experts of the Department of Planning, according to this official document. It says—

It is a marvellous achievement. The report continues—

There was thus an increase in the employment of non-Whites in secondary industry of 15.9 per cent in one year. And we have separate development! But the results are interesting, because in the same paragraph 28 the experts say—

We thus have a position that there was 11.1 per cent more White workers, 15.9 per cent more non-White workers, yet productivity increased by 8 per cent only. Again and again in this document they express concern at the decline in the productivity of the South African worker. It has not been possible to find a true correlation, but I believe that it is inescapable that part of this decline in productivity is the direct consequence of the artificial, ideological compulsions which this Government is bringing to bear upon the economic development of South Africa. And then the hon. members opposite have the cheek to say that we on this side have no policy!

Mr. Speaker, we have to increase the productivity of our people, and we have to abandon stupid policies that bring us no nearer to the achievement of any real purpose in the life of South Africa, like this border development for instance. We on this side say that we are in favour of decentralization of industry if based on the economic and social interests of people. But decentralization of industry purely for ideological reasons, for the achievement of the unachievable, is ridiculous and silly; it is incompetent and inept; it is against the interests of South Africa. And, where necessary, we have to change the pattern of labour. The Government itself—and it cannot deny it—sat by while the Government mining engineer some time ago permitted experiments to be conducted on the Witwatersrand in the gold mining industry. Afterwards the Government took fright and ran away. But those experiments are necessary. In every aspect of industrial and economic life of South Africa employers and employees are taking the bit between their own teeth and repudiating the Government’s policy. In the light of the figures which I have given it is clear that they are changing the pattern of labour in South Africa, and the same thing will have to come in an industry like the gold mining industry, provided that there are adequate guarantees that the standard of living of the White workers will not be affected. And that, Sir, is the responsibility of the Government. After the war, when it was necessary to give greater opportunities to non-White labour in the building industry, the Smuts Government gave guarantees, and would have honoured them if that had become necessary. I think that the time has come that this Government, who are entirely responsible for those very fears which are to-day haunting the minds of the mine-workers, should disabuse the mine-workers of those fears, by giving them adequate sureties and guarantees against what they fear will happen. But for this Government to believe, for this Government to continue to practise those things to which my Leader referred, of looking upon South Africa with its population of more than 16 million as consisting of only 3¾ million people who have to give all the services on the executive, administrative and skilled levels of life to that vaster community, is preposterous, ridiculous, short-sighted, incompetent, inept. They do not deserve to control South Africa while they do not change their ways.

I have spent several days listening to this debate and I have followed the Opposition’s criticism very closely, and I must say, one cannot but express one’s disappointment in the quality of the criticism produced in this debate. Considering the fact that this motion was phrased so widely that it purported to criticize the incompetence of the entire Cabinet, one expected rather more substantiated criticism than we have heard in the blustering so far. What I found disappointing was the poor type of criticism, accompanied by reproaches, which was levelled at the hon. the Prime Minister because he had supposedly not devoted adequate attention to the criticism of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Have the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and hon. members on the opposite side noticed how little attention their own Press devoted to the criticism of the Leader of the Opposition? Have they looked at that; have they studied it? [Interjections.] I am referring to the Press that supports the United Party, and at every election advices the voters to vote for the United Party. Hon. members of the Opposition expect the hon. the Prime Minister to pay attention to the speech made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, a speech which even his own Press did not consider worthy of proper publication. I think that in future we on this side and in this House should not expect our Prime Minister to respond to an attack such as that made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition unless it has more substance than his had. It is resented that the hon. the Prime Minister responded by asking why the United Party did not set out their own policy. The hon. member for Yeoville has now said that it is not their duty to get up in this House and state their policy. Does the hon. member know what that implies for them as a party? It implies that the United Party has finally written off the possibility of becoming the alternative government in this country, because a debate such as this offers the opposition party the opportunity not only to bring criticism against the Government but also, in accordance with the example set by the National Party when it was the opposition, to produce a positive policy which it can oppose to the policy of the Government. How else could one possibly hope ever to come into power if one did not follow that elementary course? Mr. Speaker, I trust sincerely that in future we shall not expect our Prime Minister to respond to criticism of that quality in every debate on a motion of no-confidence.

Hon. members of the Opposition have produced all kinds of sophisms. The hon. member for Yeoville made the accusation against the hon. the Prime Minister that he wanted to enforce reduced wages in order to achieve a solution. What arrant nonsense! Was it not under this Government that wages rose as they have in fact risen in the past 19 years? Is it not still the attitude of this Government that we ask the workers and their organizations to make their wage demands responsibly while at the same time telling them that we shall continue to regard their wage demands with the utmost sympathy? It has always been our attitude that the labourer is worthy of his hire. He must receive the wages he deserves, and if we ask him to make his demands for wages in a responsible fashion, it does not mean that he has to forgo those wages. On the contrary, the past has shown that under this régime the labourer received the wage increases for which he bargained from time to time.

Then my hon. friends produced another sophism about the increased number of Bantu employed in the White areas. What would the United Party have us do? Are we to negate the increase in the Bantu population? Should no Bantu be employed any longer? Are they to sit in their respective homelands and become a breeding ground for agitation and Communism because they are unemployed? How else are they to be kept in employment and provided with a decent standard of living? We are all eager to show the world abroad what South Africa is doing for its non-Whites. We are all proud of that. What we are doing for our non-Whites compares favourably with what African states are doing for their own people. How can we present a good image to the world abroad unless we offer those people opportunities for work? The hon. member quoted statistics to demonstrate how the number of Bantu in the White areas of South Africa has increased. Surely the hon. member should know that our border industries are also situred in White South Africa. Surely he should know that some of those tens of thousands of additional Bantu who have been employed have in fact been employed in those border industries. Surely the hon. member should take that into consideration. He should take into consideration that in the years ahead the number of Bantu employed in White South Africa will naturally increase even further because the border industry development is expanding and more Bantu will be employed. Surely it is ridiculous to regard that as prejudicial to White South Africa. No, what counts is this: While having this increased employment of Bantu labour, we also have full employment as far as the Whites in this country are concerned. What is important is the fact that the Whites feel secure in their work and that the attitude of the Government has resulted in the high degree of industrial peace that we are experiencing in this country; that is important. Mr. Speaker, to present that kind of image here is to present a distorted image. The hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration was hauled up for censure of his attitude as regards Bantu employment. Under the guidance of the Minister and his Deputy a new labour pattern is developing on the Witwatersrand specifically; I mention the Witwatersrand because my constituency is situated there. At present we have a ratio there of one White worker to only two Bantu workers; that is a unique achievement; we have never had that before. [Interjections.] I am now speaking of the average. That ratio is at present being maintained in my constituency. It is an achievement to be proud of. The policy and administration of the Government are aimed at maintaining that ratio. Mr. Speaker, surely that provides a safeguard for the White worker. It does offer the non-White worker employment, but it also has the advantage that it keeps our metropolitan cities White and that they are not inundated by this black mass. In the border areas we offer them opportunities for employment and development.

I should like to refer to another matter, one to which some hon. members of the Opposition referred obliquely, i.e. the mine-worker troubles. Yesterday the hon. member for Yeoville said by way of interjection that in the present situation the mine-workers had a grievance against the Government and not against the Chamber of Mines.

They say that—and the Broederbond.

That type of interjection and the other oblique references made here to the mine-worker troubles, made it quite clear to me that the attitude of the United Party is such that it is engaged in exactly the same as that in which the Sunday Times is engaged every Sunday. One of the most striking features of that newspaper and of some of the English-language newspapers is that any comment on unrest or strikes receives the utmost, the widest publicity in those newspapers. That has created the impression that the more irresponsible the source, the greater the publicity it receives. It is clear as daylight that the sole object of those parties is to embarrass the Government. That is why it is said time and again by that Press that they want a “showdown” with the Government. That they may prejudice their own friends, the mining interests, is apparently of minor importance. What counts is to embarrass the Government. I want to say here and now that the Opposition and that ally of theirs, the Sunday Times, will not succeed in their object of estranging the White mine-workers from the National Party, firstly because the White mine-workers know what this party and this Government mean to their protection and secondly because they know that the policy of the United Party rings the death-knell for the industrial colour-bar, and because they know that, it need not be feared that the Sunday Times and the Opposition will succeed in their object.

I should now like to set out the attitude of the Government with regard to this matter. The hon. member for Yeoville also referred to more extensive employment of Bantu labour and to the protection and security needed by the White mine-worker. The Government’s attitude with regard to mine-workers actually centres on three main issues. Firstly, as far as the present matter is concerned, it is our sincere wish that a satisfactory wage regulation for the mine-workers be put into operation as soon as possible; that is our first wish. Our second wish is that the colour bar for those mine-workers must be maintained. It must be maintained no matter what wage regulations are adopted; it must be part and parcel of those wage regulations, the protection of the White worker, for without that protection and without that sense of security he will not be a contented worker, and we shall not have labour peace in this country, and that is basic to the policy of the National Party.

Our third wish as far as the mine-workers are concerned is a strong and sound mine-workers’ trade union. It is our sincere wish because a strong trade union is absolutely essential for the bargaining procedure the mine-worker has to follow in order to obtain better wages and working conditions. It is the machine which must negotiate those for him, and it is therefore in his interest and in the interest of industry and of all of us that the means he requires to bargain for those better wages shall be strong and sound. With a view to that the Government, as you are aware, Mr. Speaker, caused two enquiries to be instituted in mine-worker affairs in the past year or two. The first inquiry related to the dissatisfaction which arose in connection with the colour bar. You are aware, Sir, that in consequence of the inquiry of that commission, and in view of its report, the status quo in the mining industry was restored. You are also aware of the second inquiry. It was instituted as a result of the domestic difficulties in the Mine-workers’ Union which gave rise to diverse strikes. We had the matter investigated. You are aware that it resulted in’ a general election for the Mine-workers’ Union. When that election was held it was my task, as spokesman for the Government in that field, to declare at once that we recognized that new Mine-workers’ Union Executive, and I want to repeat in this House to-day that the Government recognizes them. But furthermore, on the occasion when they visited me, the president and members of his executive, I offered them all possible help from departmental quarters to assist them through advice, and I wished them all success in their negotiations and expressed the hope that the negotiations they had to conduct for better working conditions would be finalized speedily. Now as the hon. House knows, there have since been strikes. Those strikes occurred to our deep regret, and it was equally regrettable that the Attorney-General deemed it necessary to institute prosecutions. I sincerely regret that workers have become involved in this fashion, and that workers are to suffer as a result of the actions of certain persons. The Government regrets that, because we genuinely desire the continuation of the goodwill we showed after the election of the new executive, and the continuation of the good-will towards the Mineworkers’ Union, which is an important instrument in the industrial life of our country. In that spirit I want to repeat to-day that we as a Government are most anxious that those wage negotiations should be finalized satisfactorily. It is in the interests of the mineworkers, of the mining industry and of the country. But the Government is also appreciative of the fact that the mine-workers have certain problems; we are not blind to their problems. We are fully aware of their problems. We have had commissions of inquiry from time to time and we are conversant with their problems. As a result the Government would gladly offer further assistance to the mineworkers in that connection. It is beyond doubt that the wage question is basic to much of the dissatisfaction among the mineworkers. Their dissatisfaction with the wage position gives rise to the fact that strikes are sometimes called over other matters. In view of that the Government is genuinely prepared, apart from the advice we have offered and given them from time to time, to offer the mineworkers other assistance as well, within the framework of our labour legislation.

With a view to such assistance, I want to state to-day that the Government is agreeable to the appointment of a mediating committee to assist the mine-workers in their negotiations for better wage conditions with the Chamber of Mines. In this regard I just want to refer to something else, and that is a plea which is made from time to time by certain well-meaning persons that we should appoint a commission of inquiry to inquire into the whole position of the mine-workers, their wages and working conditions. Bearing in mind that the achievement of a satisfactory wage agreement is actually the crux of the entire matter and of the problem, I want to suggest that it is my conviction that a commission of inquiry cannot produce a satisfactory solution in this regard. Appointing a commission of inquiry will be of no use. It will produce a report and make recommendations in regard to wages, etc., and then either the Mine-workers’ Union will not be amenable or the Chamber of Mines will not accept them, and then absolutely nothing will have been achieved; the only result will be further frustration.

No, what is needed in this regard is that a wage agreement shall be arrived at between the Mine-workers’ Union and the Chamber of Mines, an agreement which should actually rest on two pillars. The first is that the mine-worker must be given a satisfactory wage, and the second is that the position of the White mine-worker must be duly safeguarded in that agreement. Those are the two basic principles, and such an arrangement cannot be brought about by a commission of inquiry. It cannot bring about such a wage agreement. A commission cannot finalize those important negotiations; it will merely leave it up in the air and cause more dissatisfaction. For that reason, because we realize that, we should like to assist the Mine-workers’ Union if they so wish. If they wish us to assist them in that regard, to establish a mediating commission, the Government will consider it most favourably.

Who would be the members of the commission?

We can discuss that on some other occasion. It depends on whether they accept the principle. But you may rest assured that the committee will consist of people who know the industry and who are capable of approaching the problem sympathetically and knowledgeably, so that they will be able to act as an effective mediating committee between the Mine-workers’ Union and the Chamber of Mines. But I want to emphasize that the offer we are making, which we hope will meet with favourable consideration, can be put into effect only if it is requested by the Mine-workers’ Union. What would be the point of our appointing a mediating committee, even one constituted by the most capable men, if the workers declared that they did not want it and would not co-operate with such a committee? That is why I want to suggest now that it will rest with the Mine-workers’ Union, with the organized mine-workers, whether they will avail themselves of this offer; and I want to express the hope that the Mine-workers’ Union will consider this offer and decide on it with the utmost responsibility. This matter is of interest to all of us. It is in the interests of the mine-workers that there should be peace and quiet and order; it is in the interests of the country as a whole and it is therefore a matter which lends itself least of all to any exploitation by anybody. I therefore trust that we shall be safeguarded against that in this delicate and important matter. Because this important industry can prosper only if it can rely on a contented labour force, I really trust that all parties concerned will adopt the most positive approach to this proposal of a mediating committee. It is therefore my hope that this offer we are making, in view of the fact that we seek to assist the mine-workers within the framework of labour legislation, will receive their very serious consideration, and I trust that all other concerns will also approach this matter in an equally positive spirit.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the House is indebted to the hon. the Minister for the statement which he has just made in relation to the mining industry in South Africa and whilst he has told the House quite frankly that certain aspects of the activities within the Mineworkers’ Union have not yet cleared themselves up, I do not wish to proceed further to discuss what he has suggested but rather to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister to the fact that whilst he has given us time this afternoon and dealt with the Mineworkers’ Union, there is a large body of workers that fall under his purview as Minister of Labour who are far from satisfied with the purchasing power of the wages which they now receive. It is a known fact that any steps taken to review wages or to review industrial conciliation agreements or wage determinations take a fairly lengthy period of time to complete. An industrial conciliation agreement review might take as long as 2½ years. During that time while the employee remains under the conditions of that existing agreement there are fluctuations in the purchasing power of the money which he is earning.

At this stage I want to refer particularly to remarks made by the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs when he countered our criticism of the Government’s changed approach to the economic situation in South Africa by saying that changed conditions require a change of approach, for instance, that the “spend for prosperity” was quite justifiable at the time as justifiable as was later “save to counter inflation”. But where does the wage earner and the salary man stand during these fluctuations. While the Government can take steps to attempt to halt inflation or to curb the increasing cost of living, the salary man is left with a static income to cope with varying conditions and it is for the very reasons that the Minister of Economic Affairs used to justify the changed approach by the Government that we on this side of the House have advocated over and over again that until there is a settled economic pattern in this country, it is essential that the wage earner’s wages and the salaried man’s income should be tied to the cost of living index by a cost of living allowance. Until that is done this Government is not being just and fair and is not facing up to the problems of the man whose income is fixed by way of wage or a salary. That has been done before in this country. The cost of living allowance was introduced to meet fluctuations and difficult circumstances and when an even keel was achieved, there was a consolidation of the cost of living allowance or part of it into the basic salary of the State employee or private employee. My belief is that this Government has failed in not taking steps to assist those salaried persons and people with a fixed income to meet the problems which they have had to face.

It has been suggested also that the Government itself is quite blameless in so far as spiralling inflation is concerned. I should like to quote some figures which I think will indicate that a good deal of blame attaches to the Government in regard to non-productive capital expenditure in the last two years in particular. During the 12 months ending June, 1965, the fixed capital outlay by public authorities had increased by 19 per cent over the previous 12 months. In the period up to June, 1966, the fixed capital outlay by public authorities had increased by 27 per cent over the previous 12 months. The increase in current private investment for the period ending June, 1964, had been as much as 21 per cent. Then in the following 12 months as a result of restrictions and as a result of the review of the position as far as private industry and private enterprise was concerned, that increase was reduced from a 21 per cent to a 7 per cent increase.

Mr. Speaker, I stand here to-day to support the motion of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition for those reasons which I have indicated and for several other reasons with which I will deal briefly. It seems necessary having listened to this debate during the course of this week to make one thing perfectly clear as far as this side of the House is concerned. That is that when we criticize the way in which our country is being governed and the actions of this Government, we are not criticizing South Africa so that when we say that this Government is not ensuring or achieving the maximum momentum of expansion of industries, commerce and economic development in this country, we are not criticizing South Africa; we are criticizing this Government. We are a very fortunate country. We are a fortunate country in that we have almost unlimited potential for expansion but this Government is not using that potential because of what my hon. Leader termed a stop-go approach to industrial development in South Africa. That stop-go criticism has not come from this party only. That is a criticism which is levelled at this Government by as important a body as the Federated Chamber of Industries which has gone so far as to say, and I quote from an editorial with approval the statement of one of its delegates at a recent conference, that “Industry was often bewitched, bothered and bewildered because of conflicting statements made by various highly placed Government persons. It was therefore difficult to ascertain what the precise policy position was under present conditions. From discussions it appeared that even those in informed circles were somewhat vague in replying to pertinent questions.” Mr. Speaker, I will give one example. As recently as October of last year the Director of Imports and Exports made a statement which was published for world consumption in the SOUTH AFRICAN DIGEST that import control was the price to be paid for the current wave of prosperity. The Director said:

But what did the hon. the Minister of Finance in his opacity then as Minister of Economic Affairs say in a statement two months later. He said that what we needed to counter inflationary tendencies was a relaxation of import control and he in fact brought in the relaxations within two months. When the hon. the Leader of the Opposition talked about a stop-go policy as far as this Government was concerned, it was said that there was no foundation for making such a statement. What is worthy of greater condemnation in my view is the fact that this Government has denied to South Africa opportunities of development to such an extent that a Minister of Economic Affairs can stand in this House and say that an inflow of foreign capital is an embarrassment. The reason is that this Government has persistently refused to accept the advice of industrialists and I need quote only one and that is the advice given by Dr. Anton Rupert in 1961. Dr. Anton Rupert said that we must develop at least one of the Bantu homelands on a large scale. An area as big as Pondoland should for instance be able to provide for 11 million people if they went to work as productively as the people of the Netherlands. “I do not think we could achieve this by methods at present being used, without adding to it White industrial leadership. I do not believe that we will be able to attain it without bringing in White management and leadership.” Dr. Rupert continued and said: “It is a strange thing that we South African industrialists can build a factory on a partnership basis in Malaya but we cannot do it in the Transkei. There is no reason for fear. Confidence can and must create mutual confidence.”

Mr. Speaker, surely it is condemnation in itself of this Government when we have the large available labour forces which exist here in this country of ours, the large available forces which can be trained and adapted to an increased tempo of production and industry that we should have to say that the inflow of foreign capital is an embarrassment to us. Ours is a country which is blessed with the opportunity of expansion which no other country in the world enjoys at the present. I believe that that is the biggest condemnation which one can offer of the Government at the moment, in so far as the use of the opportunities in this country is concerned. They are being wasted and neglected because of an attempt to achieve an ideology, which the hon. member this afternoon has so clearly indicated is far from being achieved. In fact, we are going in the opposite direction.

May I in conclusion just deal briefly with a point which was raised by the hon. member for Klipriver. I am sorry that he is not here to-day. I was surprised that the hon. member should have raised by way of criticism of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition a suggestion that he should have brought forward and debated in this House the Rhodesian issue during this debate. What are the facts? My hon. Leader indicated at an early stage that we on this side of the House were of the opinion that Mr. Smith’s Rhodesian Government should have de facto recognition. The position at the present moment is that South Africa has an accredited representative to the Rhodesian Government and the Rhodesian Government has an accredited representative in South Africa. Both the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. the Prime Minister have indicated to the public that they are on common ground as far as the Rhodesian issue is concerned. There was agreement between them. I would have thought that the hon. member for Klip River would in the course of his speech have expressed the gratitude of the country to the two hon. gentlemen concerned for what they have been able to achieve in so far as this difficult problem of Rhodesia is concerned. I can only say that he has perhaps not been kept abreast of what has been taking place in regard to that particular problem. One understands of course the fact that the hon. member for Houghton should have raised this matter. Unfortunately she was overseas while these developments took place and perhaps in her case also one must accept that she was unaware of what was taking place as regards South Africa’s relations with Rhodesia.

I believe that the House is justified in reviewing what has been done by the Cabinet and what has not been done by the Cabinet in considering the motion of the Leader of the Opposition. I believe that if there is one group of people who have been and who are still suffering and who will continue to suffer because of the incompetence of this Government, it is the man who is bound to make do and keep a family on a fixed income as a wage earner or a salaried man. For those reasons I support the motion of the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Speaker, if I had known that this matter in connection with the report of the Van Wyk Commission would be discussed I would certainly have been present. I was not present when the matter was raised.

You were asked to be here.

I did not receive the message.

[Inaudible.]

No, I do not want to argue about it. I shall say it was my fault.

Did the Whip not tell you?

At what time did you ask him?

Early in the afternoon.

I knew nothing about it. That is all I am saying. I am only saying that I knew nothing about it. I am not placing the blame on the hon. member for Transkei, who has raised the matter. Neither do I blame him for raising it. I am going to deal with the matter now, and I think you expect me to reply to it as the responsible Minister of the Interior. The fact that this tragic event occurred in this House focused particular attention on one person. If that person had committed this same deed on some other person, in the street or in a slum area, nobody would have thought about him again. Apparently nobody took any interest in him before. Nobody would then have given him a great deal of publicity. It does not mean that because he was such an insignificant person these things which are bound up with the deed he committed did not have to be investigated and reviewed closely. I have here the speech of the hon. member for Transkei. The hon. member has brought the matter into this debate. The manner in which the hon. member raised and dealt with the matter here, represents nothing but an attempt to infuse some spirit into this unsuccessful no-confidence debate of theirs. In actual fact, to many people the findings of this Commission were reassuring and they were satisfied by them. But because nothing sensational came to light really, the report was also disappointing to others. I wonder whether the Opposition would not have liked something terribly sensational to have come to light. As a matter of fact, the report produced nothing but, for example, in the first instance, the following. There was no organized attempt and there was no link between Tsafendas and any other organizations before he committed this deed. Secondly, there was indeed negligence in some departments, not only in one department. Some officials made mistakes within the normal routine of human actions, but these were not deliberate. That was brought out very clearly. Then the Commissioner mentions a few of the departments, and one of them is the Department of the Interior. He mentions five officials of that Department. Not one of them was a highly placed or highly paid official or one carrying heavy responsibility. They were all officials in a lower salary group. The minimum qualification for employment for most of these officials is only standard seven. We should like to appoint only people with matriculation certificates in such posts, but they are simply unobtainable and consequently we have to use some of the other people. I take it that those people are necessary to-day to continue the work in all the services in the entire Public Service. Not only in the Public Service, but also in private enterprise employers are forced, as a result of over-employment, the greater demand for employees and the low unemployment position prevailing at present, to employ people whose training is such that they cannot, in fact, perform their duties in a very responsible manner.

Now I want to say briefly that I do not want to exonerate these people. Nobody can defend negligence or find fault with the findings of the Commission in respect of what it found had been going on in my Department. Nobody can say that those conditions did not exist. Nobody can find fault with those findings. It is a factual state of affairs. But to get the right perspective one also has to look at the background. More than 1,000 permanent officials are employed in this Department. That is apart from the temporary officials. They have approximately one million files in their possession. When Immigration and Customs and Excise was transferred to that Department in 1962, they brought 233,000 files with them. As I say, the Department already had about one million files at that time. The additional files had to be incorporated, tabulated and coordinated. It is an almost impossible task if one considers the relatively small staff, and, moreover, the files go back many years.

I should like to put right a few facts in connection with this matter, as well as in connection with the report of the Commission. The hon. member tried to create the impression—or rather, he made the accusation—that Ministers did not care or know anything about what happened in their various departments. He made a special point of conceding that I, as the new Minister of the Interior, had been in charge of this Department for only a short time, and that the worst misdemeanours had in fact occurred before my time. He consequently laid the blame on my predecessor.

As regards ministerial control of, interest in and responsibility for the various departments, there is to my knowledge not one single Minister who can be accused of ever having failed in his duty in that regard. Least of all can it be said of my predecessor. Both this House and the country know him, and I think it is uncalled for to label him in this House as one who did not know what was going on in his department, because the most terrible things are supposed to have happened there. I now want to show hon. members how my predecessor always gave his full attention to possible deficiencies within his own department and to the streamlining and reorganization of his department.

He was very incompetent then.

The hon. member simply does not know what is going on in Government departments; that is why he says that. My real objection to the Opposition has nothing to do with their criticism, but with the fact that their criticism is so useless and fruitless because it is not based on facts and knowledge.

What about the Judge’s criticism?

The Judge recommended, inter alia, that a work study investigation into the organization and methods of the Department of the Interior be instituted. The hon. member said that I had stated that such an organization and methods work study had been introduced three years ago and he held that up as proof of terrible inefficiency and negligence and dozens of other weaknesses and shortcomings in the Department, particularly in respect of the control of files, registration and so forth. But if the hon. member had known more about the functioning of the Public Service, he would surely have known that the Public Service Commission—which also falls under the Minister of the Interior—introduced these organization and methods study groups to bring about greater productivity, greater efficiency, better organization and better functioning in the Public Service and to check this constant and, as the Opposition alleges year after year, excessive enlargement of the Public Service. Every department gets the opportunity to train and instruct people in the department specifically for those purposes in order that they in turn may become the instructors and the heads to ensure the smooth working of the organization. That organization and methods study group, led by one of the Public Service officials, has been working in the Department of the Interior for the past three years. But it is not an investigation that is being instituted, as many members of the public think and as one may incorrectly infer from newspaper reports. It is a study group whose aim and task it is to ensure, through proper streamlining of the organization and the working methods, that the work is done properly and efficiently and that any possibility of inefficiency within a department is eliminated as far as possible. The study group is not only making a study of what is wrong, but it is also implementing certain things as it goes along. Many things are being implemented, not only in that departments, but also in other Government departments. They will have to continue with this work all the time in future in order to streamline the Public Service properly and to make and to keep it the most efficient service in the world.

Apart from the study group which is working in the Department and giving guidance and introducing new methods, my predecessor, to mention an example, wrote a letter to the Secretary for the Department on 14th May, 1965—when this group was already engaged on its work. He did so because certain matters had come to his notice as a result of complaints lodged by the public, and otherwise. There had been complaints of delays in replying to letters, that applications for visas, passports and the like were not being dealt with expeditiously and satisfactorily, and so forth. I shall now read to you what the then Minister of the Interior wrote (translation)—

Here is a specific suggestion made by him—

What followed upon that? What followed upon that was, inter alia, that “immediately after receiving Minister De Klerk’s instructions on 14th May, 1965, the Secretary for the Interior carried out his wishes. Complete and proper records have to be kept”. That was done and it is still the position at present. “Complete and proper records have to be kept, in the parliamentary office as well as at head office, of all postal articles received from the Minister, so that no delays can arise in replying thereto and there can be no reason for complaints about delays. It was then arranged that a census survey of all files in all the offices be made every Wednesday and submitted to the Records Section, and that has resulted in the tracing of files being greatly facilitated and expedited. It then also became possible to deal with correspondence more expeditiously.” I mention this merely as an example.

I now want to come back to Tsafendas. How did Tsafendas come to the notice of the Department? He again came specifically to the notice of the Department before he committed this deed. He could have been brought to the notice of the Department by means of a police report or a report from the Security Police. He could also have come to our notice as a result of the fact that my own Department obtains information on cases where we have doubt. The two files on Tsafendas were among the 233,000 files in the Department which had not yet been correlated; we have other files. Our local control officer here was requested to grant a reclassification to Tsafendas in the first instance. Tsafendas wanted to be reclassified as being a “Coloured” instead of a “White”. The control officer thereupon had the matter investigated and found that owing to Tsafendas’s connections, his attitude and his association with non-Whites he was an undesirable person, and as a result of that it was ascertained that he had been granted permanent residence. Because he had been granted permanent residence by the Department of Immigration, which does not fall under my Department and for which the Department of the Interior is not responsible, there was no alternative but to ask that he should remain here and be reclassified or that he should be deported. No submission was made to me in respect of Tsafendas to the effect that he should be deported for reasons of security. The deportation order was issued because he was considered not to be an asset to this country, and because of his actions. No criminal record was submitted to me at that stage. I decided to sign the deportation order because he would not be an asset to South Africa and also because he was not a citizen of this country. Contrary to what is stated in the report, those files were forwarded to me from Pretoria on 4th August. The files reached my secretary on 8th August and he forwarded them to my office that evening. The next day, the 9th. I saw the files, dealt with them and returned them to him; on 10th August he forwarded the files to the deputy secretary responsible for that section; he too was in Cape Town, and he forwarded them to head office that same day. Strangely enough it took those files four days to reach Cape Town from Pretoria by mail bag. The files reached Pretoria only on the 17th.

By mail?

It could have been by mail or by train; I do not know. That is something which can happen, of course. It is quite justified criticism that there was such a long delay, from the 17th until the 6th, without the order being executed. Hon. members should, however, remember that Tsafendas’s case was not regarded as an extremely urgent one which had to be dealt with speedily so that he could be deported immediately. It was a normal case, because we had nothing else against him.

A communist?

He was a communist in the days when the United Party was in power. The fact that he had leanings towards Communism was known even in the days when the United Party was still in power. He had been refused entry, but he had entered the country illegally. He was convicted here, but in spite of that he was detained here for several months under a permit for temporary residence because he had done active war service. There are many people in the country who have leanings towards Communism. If we have to adopt leanings towards Communism as our criterion for deportation, I wonder how many people, including members of the United Party, will have to be deported. It is very easy to say somebody has leanings towards Communism, but when is he a communist and when does he merely have leanings towards Communism? [Interjections.] That was a report which came from Portugal. But the deportation order was issued irrespective of that. A letter addressed to the police was signed on 1st September. They had various addresses of this person, and on the 2nd it was ascertained that the address in the letter addressed to the police was not the correct one, and the letter was then retyped. That was on the 2nd. The 3rd was a Saturday, the 4th a Sunday, the 5th a Monday, a holiday, and the 6th was the Tuesday on which the murder was committed. Hon. members will realize what a concurrence of circumstances there was. Immediately after the murder had been committed, the Secretary for the Department came to me and said that we should possibly have more information about the person than the information I had before me when I signed the deportation order. I immediately gave instructions that an investigation should be made and that all files should be examined to see what information the Department had about anybody who as much as smelt of Tsafendas. This they did.

Secondly, and this followed immediately, we issued a Press statement in this connection as soon as I knew that the Public Service Commission was going to have the investigation instituted. I made a statement to the Press on 20th September, before this Commission was appointed, that I had requested the Public Service Commission to have a very thorough investigation instituted into any matter in the Department which might in any way be related to negligence in the Department, and so forth. On the 21st the Public Service Commission appointed the person concerned, an exinspector of the Public Service Commission, Mr. De Vos Pienaar, the present deputy secretary for the Department of Customs and Excise and an extremely competent person who has experience of that type of work, because he was the Chief Inspector of the Public Service Commission for many years. He submitted a report to me, dated 1st October, 1966. I have the report here, but I have never laid eyes on the report. I did not want to see it either: I was not interested in it, not until a week before this Report of the Commission was submitted to the House. Instructions were issued, however, that this report should be made available to the Commission in its entirety so that the latter would have it as a guide; and I can give you the assurance that if you read these two reports you will see that all the factual findings of Mr. Pienaar have been summarized and incorporated in the report of the Commission. That was what we did immediately. If any further action has to be taken, it is, as the Secretary for the Department said in his statement yesterday, a matter for each Government Department itself to decide what steps should be taken, if any, against these people in connection with the charges of omission, negligence and irresponsibility made against them here. If any action is to be taken against such persons, it will be taken under the Public Service Act. But it is not for my Department to concern itself with the actions of other departments. I shall certainly give proper attention to my own Department.

Where does the idea come from, and why must it be suggested to the world, that the Ministers are not interested in their Departments, that they merely sit idle and do only what is absolutely necessary, but nothing more? If that were the case, do you think the Public Service in South Africa would be held in such high esteem by everyone in the country as it is? Because surely the Public Service Commission alone, and the integrity of the people alone, are not the only factors to be taken into account when one talks of what progress they have made in the Service. I want to quote one final passage from Mr. De Klerk’s letter to the Department. He says (translation)—

There are certain minor matters which they think cannot have any political significance, and they should realize that those are not matters they can sit and mull over. He goes on to say—

That is the language used, that is the spirit, that is also the sense of responsibility that is displayed.

May I ask a question? When that order was signed, did you or your Department know that Tsafendas was employed here in the House of Assembly?

No, he was just an ordinary person. We had no knowledge of that. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister stated that we had raised this matter of the Van Wyk Report in order to put life into this debate. I would say that if there was no other evidence of incompetence on the part of the Government than is shown in that report, it would fully justify this debate and our motion.

It is true that the present Minister of the Interior has only been in this Department for about six months, but I would say that since then his actions speak very loudly indeed of great incompetence. I should like to pause there for one moment before dealing with the wider aspects of the report.

In the first place, we know now that it is not due to his incompetence that he was not in the House when this matter was raised by the hon. member for Transkei, but the incompetence of someone whom we regarded as most efficient, namely the hon. the Chief Whip, because the latter was in fact told several hours before the hon. member for Transkei spoke that this matter was going to be raised. Indeed, we began to wonder who was running this Department, because in this morning’s newspaper, we had a statement from the Secretary for the Department that there may possibly be an inquiry into the findings of negligence. But we did not expect to receive that information from the Secretary for the Department; we expected to receive it from the man responsible, the Minister. We have drawn attention to this matter before, that statements of this kind should come from the Minister responsible. We are glad to know now from the Minister that there is to be a departmental inquiry so far as the Department of the Interior is concerned. That is something we did not know before. Sir, perhaps the most disturbing thing we have seen from this hon. Minister is his attitude to the importance of this Commission’s report. This is the report of a much respected Judge of our courts, and it has brought in the gravest findings of incompetence, as the hon. the Minister has himself said, “in some Departments”. So much is this so that newspapers throughout the country have given this the widest publicity, and the hon. the Minister had the nerve to suggest that if this had not occurred in relation to such an important man, we virtually would never have known of these matters and no publicity would have been given to it. This is a most serious state of affairs because all the indications are that if a similar inquiry had been made in regard to the death of some quite unknown person, the same state of affairs might have been revealed. There is nothing to suggest that this is a particular situation relating only to this one particular alien. So although this Minister has been in charge of this Department for only a short time, I suggest that he already has forfeited our confidence completely. So far as the report itself is concerned, and the negligence during the period when the hon. the Minister was in fact in charge of this Department, he attempted in this House to give us an explanation for it. In regard to the relevant period, this is the actual finding of the Commissioner. He says that under all these circumstances it is clear that the delay from 14th December, 1965, to 6th September, 1966, is indefensible. The Minister has attempted to defend himself, but we have the finding that it is quite indefensible.

This whole question of the incompetence of the Government, if it rested on the findings of this Judge alone, would be more than justified. But when this motion was moved we actually had a reaction of mirth from many Ministers opposite, even from the hon. the Prime Minister. There have been countless cases of this incompetence brought home and now in this report we find many more. We find in regard to five important actions of state that there has been serious incompetence in certain departments. First of all in November, 1963, in regard to the permit for temporary sojourn; in January, 1964, in regard to the permit for permanent residence; in June, 1964, in regard to the visa to go to Rhodesia and Mozambique and back; in March, 1965, in regard to the question of the re-entry at Durban and in 1966 in regard to the removal order. Mr. Speaker, in regard to all these matters it is most distressing and disturbing to find that there has been action falling far short of the standards which we have come to accept from our Public Service. Often this has clearly been due to bad procedures of earlier times under this Government.

Apart from the Departments of Immigration and Interior, which are affected by the points I touched upon previously, we have heard the hon. member for Transkei point to serious ineptitudes on the part of the Department of Police. I should like to add an additional one to these. It was accepted by the highest person in the Security Police that he and his Department had a responsibility for the security of the Prime Minister. Who should have known better of the possible dangers to the life of the Prime Minister than this very department? I say that they therefore surely owed a high duty to the hon. the late Prime Minister to take special steps for his protection and to warn any officials in this House of any special danger.

There are not any findings in this Report upon the point, but there certainly are suggestions to the effect that the Department of Labour also was at fault. It is not clear that the Department of Labour sent this man to Parliament but it is quite clear that as late as a month before he came here, he was in fact being sent to positions by the Department of Labour. We have had it here this afternoon from the hon. Minister himself who says that at the time he signed the order in August, 1966. he was not aware that this man was working here.

It is quite clear from the evidence set out in this Report and in the light of the answers we have had that there are several Ministers responsible for most serious neglect and most serious failures. There have been dreadful lapses that have had dire consequences and I suggest that in the circumstances it is only right that those responsible should see the seriousness of these lapses and the consequences, and tender their resignations. If there is any resentment at this, I can only say that anything less would be an indication that there is a falling of standards. There is no doubt that in a situation like this, where we in South Africa have come to expect and demand the highest standards of our Ministers, it is only right, whether it was they or those in their Departments who have let them down who were responsible, that they should attest to those standards by offering their resignations. In this connection one thinks of the previous and the present Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Immigration and, I regret to say, the then Minister of Police. Mr. Speaker, nothing less than that will show the seriousness of the revelations of this Report and will adequately indicate that the Government approaches these in the shocked way that the country does. If the Cabinet and members opposite are quite complacent, it is only a more shocking testimony to this fall in standards. In Japan people who let their country down would in the old days have committed hara-kiri. In the western world Ministers offer resignations, and we wait to see them come.

The Van Wyk Commission rendered a considerable service to South Africa. Its greatest service will only bear fruit if in fact the Cabinet wake up and see that their various departments give the work and service of which they are capable. I am not encouraged by the response to think that there will be a sufficient waking up and shaking up in this regard; but it is most necessary. Apart from that, this Commission has done valuable things. It has certainly killed many rumours and wild stories. It has killed the rumour and story that there was some master brain or organization behind this matter. The Commissioner has found that it was probably the act of Tsafendas and of no one else.

This Report touches upon the countless factors which may have played upon this madman’s mind but if there is one thing that the Commission has done, it certainly has given us a close look at Government departments and given us warnings that things cannot go on in them as they are at present. The hon. the Minister of the Interior virtually said that had it not been such an important man, there would have been no inquiry and that none of this would have come out. But it is most important and it is a service that we have been able to have this revealed because it gives us a chance to put our house in order again as it should be. People who have had to wait long periods of time to receive answers from Government departments will not be surprised by some of the findings in this Report and it is all too regrettable that this type of situation had to occur. I do not know whether this is due to staff shortage. In the Report there is evidence that there is a shortage of staff. There is evidence that the work has increased greatly since about 1961-’62 and that no staff increases have been made. There is evidence too that apparently the staff are not working overtime in these particular departments. It is very difficult to know exactly what the position is, and I suggest that this is a matter which requires the most urgent attention. It may well be that we are not paying the right salaries to attract the people we need in these most important and vital positions in the service of our country, namely our State Service. It may well be that we are paying not nearly enough to the top men so that they will have the skill to evolve the techniques and the organization and the methods which will make anything of this kind a thing of the past. We have got to get those men and we hope we have them.

We probably have in many cases but we have got to be sure that they will be there tomorrow as well as to-day. I suggest that here is a most serious onus upon the Government to look into this matter.

This Report reveals many things which are disturbing, the least of them perhaps is the individuals who neglected to do their duty. In this case, serious though it was, these can perhaps be errors and to err is human. But it is worrying that in so many cases and apparently with so few exceptions we have found these errors in this particular case. I referred to the temporary permit, the permanent residence, the visa to go out, the return and the deportation order. One might say almost all the activities that related to Tsafendas’ movements were attended by incompetence and neglect. This aspect certainly points to the need for greater efficiency and a drive for greater efficiency in all departments.

Mr. Speaker, there is a second aspect, namely that the methods revealed in this Report are such that one department is taking decisions when it does not have vital information which other departments have. It is as if the right hand of Government does not know what the left hand is doing. Even within one department itself we have the position that they do not know the full picture. We have the case where files upon a man are called for, and only some available in one particular department are brought forward. This has been shown in part to have been due to bad filing systems. This is a great responsibility for the Minister at the top, namely to see that his methods are right. It is in part due to inefficient operation of the filing systems. There was the omission to enter cross-references which led to files being overlooked, and all that type of thing. There was the failure to give instructions that there should be cross-referencing. The Commissioner states that there were at least three occasions when, had there been correct practices, they would have led to our being rid of this man. These three occasions are quite apart from the three occasions where there was error on the part of the individual officials, which I have mentioned. Even the Security Police had trouble in finding the file on this man, which was in their very own building at the time.

Mr. Speaker, the third aspect is the inordinate delay in relation to the removal order. Again, had that delay not been there, this man would have been out of the country. We find that from the 21st January, 1966, to the 1st July, 1966, nothing whatever was done in regard to this man’s removal, notwithstanding the fact that there had been a recommendation for his removal by the representative of the Department in Cape Town. No wonder, Sir, that the Commissioner says that this total delay to which I have previously referred, namely from the 14th December, 1965, to the 6th September, 1966, is quite indefensible.

Lastly there is the failure to call for the Police report, which the Commissioner says is most essential, and the disregard of the regulation requiring the birth certificate. Both of these matters, if attended to, would have prevented this sad occurrence.

It is clear that several departments are implicated, namely Interior, Immigration and Police. As regards Labour, it is not certain exactly what their position is. The Commissioner did not have time to go into every aspect. But the probability seems to be that this man was going to seek work at places indicated to him by the Labour Department. There is the statement in the report that it is likely—I think “probable”, the Commissioner says—that in this case Tsafendas thought of the possibility of getting a situation at the House of Assembly through other unemployed people at the Labour Department. But again, if the Labour Department had had the knowledge which other State Departments had, there would surely have been a note on the file of the Labour Department that this was a man that must be watched, indeed deported, and therefore there would have been no question that he could have been sent to previous jobs at the instigation of the Labour Department.

Mr. Speaker, I have indicated that there is no reason whatsoever to be complacent. There is nothing here to suggest that this is a sole exceptional case. To our horror it seems likely to be extremely prevalent. One knows that in fact staff move from one department to another, and so, if there is inefficiency at one place at one time, it can move. The methods of filing are probably similar in departments, and one wonders whether the practices are any better in different departments. I have mentioned how the public often have to wait for a long time before they receive replies to letters.

There was some scoffing in this House when it was mentioned that the Johannesburg City Council had employed an expert from outside to inquire into efficiency. I would say that one is a fool if one will not seek the advice of the best consultants. The country has done this in regard to its road systems and in many other things. I suggest that there may well be a case for it to be done here. In fact, we know that an investigation has been going on in the Department of the Interior for three years. It is being done by an officer of the Department. He may be a very good officer, but it does not add to one’s confidence to know that this matter has been dragging on for three years. It seems to have been occurring at a time of great inefficiency. It does not appear to have remedied the defects that are there.

There is one small mystery—it may be an important mystery—which I should like the hon. the Minister or another Minister to clear up. On page 11 of the Report of the Commission, in paragraph 69, there is this important disconnected statement:

This was the district surgeon who did the examination. He found that there was a serious form of schizophrenia. Less than a fortnight later this man was able to come into employment in this House. What I would like to ask the Government is, why did the man Tsafendas go to see the district surgeon on that day? It is not explained or probed into anywhere in the report. Who sent him? What department perhaps sent Tsafendas to see the district surgeon? If Social Welfare and Pensions sent that man, then I should like to know too what happened to that report of the district surgeon, acting as a Government official in this capacity, and why it was not acted upon and what was done in relation to it? What action was taken on this report? This is a serious finding that was made. It is one which may have required immediate incarceration. This seems to be an aspect of Government incompetence which is not touched upon in this report, probably because it was in some way thought not important to the main theme. But I can well believe that it can be most important to establish incompetence on the part of the Government. I should like very definitely to have a reply on that point. Because, after this finding, this man appeared to have carried on in the ordinary way. He carried on. He walked about. He sought employment. There is no sign of any action taken following that report. Indeed, he came seeking a job at this very House of Parliament, and in fact he was taken on 14 days later.

Mr. Speaker, one can move to a conclusion. I think that we can certainly as a country know that a job has been well done in this Report.

Not every point could be covered—clearly it would have taken too long. In fact, the hon. Commissioner brought in his Report very swiftly, and in many places he says that he was not going into other things.

There is one important thing that he says which, I think, we should also take to heart when we are increasing security and reacting powerfully to the advice of this Report. As the Commissioner says, “One should not in future see a potential assassin in every person.” It would be wrong for us to be driven to that other extreme and in any way lose the fine balance which was preserved by the country immediately after this dreadful deed.

With that statement of the Commission one can agree in full. But equally we must admit—and the Government, above all, must admit, and their supporters must cheer them on and, if they do not admit, jeer them on—that there are some very bad and worrying things contained in this Report. I was very glad to hear the hon. member for Innesdal admit this. If the hon. member admits it, then they truly are there.

We trust that the Government will at once start grappling with the recommendations contained in this report and the faults which it says were found. But better still, Mr. Speaker, let the Government admit that they are a government of old and tired men and let them make way for others younger keen and able to do the job.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot understand the hon. member for Pinelands at all. He is, like me, a member who is relatively young in years, and it is beyond my comprehension that he levelled the charge at the Government in his speech that this was a Government of old men who should make way for young men—apparently young men such as the hon. members occupying the front benches opposite.

What did the hon. member try to do in his speech? Throughout his speech he tried to create the impression that the Minister of the Interior and the Government did not take a serious view of the negligence in various Departments referred to in the Report of the Commission. That is what he tried to imply even after the Minister of the Interior had expressly said in this House that every disciplinary action would be taken when necessary.

The hon. the Minister said that the Report did not contain anything sensational.

What the Commissioner had found, according to his Report, was merely that type of negligence occurring in a Government Department from time to time, negligence on the part of various people. This is not only true as regards the Tsafendas case, but there are also other cases. There are always cases of negligence in the Public Service in respect of which the Department concerned takes action against the offenders. This is not only done once in a while but repeatedly. As regards the Public Service, the hon. member quite rightly pointed out that its activities had increased tremendously during the past number of years, while, in actual fact, a restriction had been placed on any extension of staff. He said that it was a pity that that was so, especially where he had learned that the people did not work overtime. The worst problem with which we are faced in the Public Service at the present time is the fact that a large number of inexperienced beginners, or otherwise pensioners, have to be employed in many instances, and that the senior staff, those responsible for supervision, have to work overtime on a tremendous scale virtually without exception, and that without additional remuneration.

The burden on the supervisory staff in the Public Service is simply becoming too heavy and it is becoming too heavy for the very reason that the Government has tried to save on its expenditure in that regard over the past number of years. If there is indeed a problem, that problem is to be found in the fact that supervision is not what is to be desired, and that is so because it is physically impossible for the senior staff to give the necessary attention to the activities of the individual officials in their Departments, something which is of course to be desired.

For that reason, Mr. Speaker, one has to accept that in a developing country such as ours there will from time to time be cases of negligence in the departments on the part of junior officials. This happens from day to day and one tries to combat it as far as one possibly can.

It is not true that the Government views this in a less serious light. Every time any form of carelessness or negligence is revealed, the official concerned is called to account by the Department and by the Minister. Mr. Speaker, the entire argument advanced by the hon. member was merely a smoke-screen to envelop the arguments of the hon. the Minister.

I actually rose in my seat to deal with the speech made by the hon. member for Peninsula the other day. The hon. member is a senior member of this House, both in years and period of service in this House. However, the hon. member made a speech here the other day which was not worthy of any backbencher making his debut in this House. I am now going to deal with the hon. member’s arguments one by one and to the best of my ability and I am going to point out to him that if he wants to make allegations in this House, allegations receiving a great deal of publicity in South Africa and abroad, he should first of all make sure that his facts are correct.

The hon. member began his speech by alleging that because of its proclamation of group areas and the re-settlement of people, the Government was offending communities and disrupting the lives of people who had been settled in certain places for many years, without affording them an opportunity of being heard. But that is not the case. In every single instance of the proclamation of a group area, proposals relating thereto are advertised prior to such an area being proclaimed and all interested parties are invited to make representations after such advertisements have appeared. In other words, every one who wants to make representations is afforded the opportunity to do so. What more does the hon. member want? Does the hon. member want that we should go to every Coloured, to every White, to every Indian and to every Bantu who may be affected personally and ask him for his individual opinion? Surely the hon. member knows that something like that is quite impossible. The truth of the matter is, Sir, that every one who is going to be affected by the proclamation of a group area has the opportunity to give evidence before that area is proclaimed a group area. To allege here that they are not heard, is not true.

I did not say that. I said that there was not sufficient consultation with the leaders of the Coloured people of the villages concerned and I challenge you to prove that there was.

The leaders of the Coloured communities of the places mentioned by him, and every other place, have had every opportunity to put their case when evidence was being heard. They have had every opportunity and in most instances they have also done so. I do not know whether that happened in those specific instances, but if it did not happen it means that those people have not made use of the right which they have. Then he cannot blame the Government for that.

Let us examine the instances to which the hon. member referred. He mentioned two villages, namely Sir Lowry’s Pass Village and Temperance. Both these places are small villages inhabited by a small number of persons, who under the circumstances would never have been able to have the elementary facilities in their residential areas, facilities which any community is entitled to have in its residential area. Those people are living in slum conditions. The hon. member wants to perpetuate those conditions.

That is not so.

He wants to deprive those people of the right to be absorbed into a community where they can obtain the facilities, the privileges and the benefits to which a community is entitled.

Take the case of Temperance. It is a small private township where the owner’s farm labourers lived originally. He subsequently let it to Coloureds. There one finds absolute slum conditions, conditions under which the Coloureds can never obtain ownership. We are now going to place them in a group area for Coloureds where they can obtain ownership, where they will have a bioscope hall in their vicinity, where they will have communal facilities, where they will have a church and a school, where they will eventually be able to take a hand in their own local authority, things which would never have been possible in Temperance. I do not think I need go any further into that.

I now come to other matters raised by him. He said that the Government was indulging in petty apartheid in the implementation of its policy and he mentioned certain instances. He mentioned the instance of the cricket teams which played at the Green Point Stadium not so long ago, namely Basil D’Oliveira’s cricket team and the invitation team of the Western Province. He alleged that in spite of the fact that there were hundreds of Whites and hundreds of young White boys who would have liked to attend such a match to watch Basil D’Oliveira, who is a good cricketer, this Government was so shortsighted and so petty that it only issued a permit for 30 persons to attend that match. I have here with me the letter of application; two applications were received in actual fact. In the first place the Western Province Cricket Union for Coloureds applied for permission to play at the Green Point Stadium and to admit Coloureds there. That permit was issued to them immediately. The organizer, Mr. Bansda, subsequently wrote a letter to the Department in which he stated the following—

In other words, they only asked for a permit for 30 invited Whites whom they wished to admit. They never asked for a permit to admit White spectators. If they had asked for such a permit I would have issued it because in Beaufort West, where they did not even play a cricket match, but only gave an exhibition, they asked for a permit to admit White spectators which I granted without another word. In this case I would have granted it without another word if they had asked for it. However, if an organization such as this tells me that it wishes to invite just 30 selected Whites to a function, I am not going to compel it to open its gates to Whites; it is that organization’s concern whom it wants at its function.

Is it not a fact that nearly 1,000 Whites were refused admission?

That is not my fault. It is the fault of that cricket organization, the Western Province Cricket Union, because on various other occasions that organization asked for permits to admit Whites to matches where Basil D’Oliveira was playing, and I granted those permits in every case. They did not have the slightest reason to think that I would have refused, because if there are separate facilities for such matches, permits are granted. It is completely unfair at this stage to want to blame the Government or to want to blame me.

Let us proceed; the hon. member referred to the case of the Eoan Group, about which he had written to me. I want to give a brief outline to this House of the history of the Eoan Group’s presentation of “Oklahoma” in the Alhambra Theatre. On 24th August my Department received a letter from the management of the Eoan Group in which it was, inter alia, stated—

Now, the following is what is important—

That was the original request.

This is their original letter—

On the grounds of this I issued a permit to them at their request allowing them to give a performance for Whites in the Alhambra Theatre and added that to my mind it would be unreasonable and unfair of them to have a performance for Whites only; that they should go out of their way to have performances for Coloureds as well. In pursuance thereof the Department again received a letter from them on 19th October, in which they requested a permit to use the Alhambra because the City Hall was the only other available hall and because it would be too expensive to present it there. In this letter they stated—

I thereupon instructed my officials to negotiate with the owner of the Luxurama and on 24th November I instructed them to write as follows—;

Nowhere in their letter did they ever use the argument that the Luxurama was not suitable and that it would be too expensive. It was only afterwards, after that hon. member had written to me, that the argument was advanced that it would be too expensive to use the Luxurama. But what has happened in the meantime? The hon. member addressed this House on Wednesday and in the Cape Argus of Wednesday evening the following advertisement appeared —

In other words, the entire production, “not reduced” as they had originally said—

That was Wednesday evening. I shall now quote from last night’s Argus—

You must remember, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. member said here that the Coloureds could not get to the Luxurama; that there was no transport for them to the Luxurama—

Consider what I have done. I refused to allow them to give one evening performance for Coloureds at the Alhambra, where 1,931 Coloureds could attend the performance, and I forced them—and that is what they did—to give a performance for four evenings in the Luxurama Theatre, where a total number of 5,400 seats are available to them. This is the injustice we are doing the Coloureds, according to that hon. member! Mr. Speaker, I just want to tell you this—I think that hon. member already knows it. I am not talking now of the Trust of the Eoan Group of which that hon. member’s son is a member, but what I am saying is that the management of the Eoan Group has dissociated itself from that hon. member’s conduct in regard to the Eoan Group. I think the hon. member is aware of it. I understand that the hon. member is engaged in important discussions; he is free to leave the Chamber now.

I now come to the hon. member for Durban (Point). The hon. member discussed housing here and accused the Government of having failed to provide housing for Whites, particularly in the lower income groups. He said that building costs were too high for the family man to acquire a dwelling and that the number of dwellings which were being provided were not even sufficient for immigrants entering the country, and on those grounds he tried to build up a strong case. Subsequently he also tried to prove his statements with a wealth of figures. Let me put it clearly that the State, through its National Housing Commission, which is responsible for the provision of housing for the lower income groups, or more accurately, which renders assistance in connection with the provision of housing for the lower income groups, is not responsible for the provision of housing for the entire population, White or non-White in South Africa. The State can never accept responsibility for that. The responsibility of the State does not go beyond assistance in respect of the provision of housing for the lower income groups. Recently I caused a demographic survey to be made which revealed that 64 per cent of the Whites fell within the category of those to whom assistance is rendered by the National Housing Commission. But of that 64 per cent it is not every one who appeals to the State for assistance in regard to housing. Many of those people see to their own accommodation or live in old existing dwellings which are already available. Experience has taught us that approximately 30 per cent of the population in the urban areas calls on the Department or on a local authority for assistance in regard to housing. I must emphasize again that it is not the State only which is responsible for housing.

The hon. member said that rates of interest and building costs were too high for the ordinary family man to acquire a dwelling. I have already said by way of interjection that building costs were decreasing; it has been my experience in the Department of Community Development as well as in the Department of Public Works that tenders have begun to reveal a downward trend in recent months. To bring about a downward trend in tender prices by means of building control, etc., is something we have been striving for in recent years.

In respect of houses as well?

Yes, in respect of houses as well. A downward trend is now beginning to reveal itself whereas there was an upward trend in the past. Because we are aware of the higher housing costs and because we are aware of the fact that people are finding it more difficult, in view of the higher rates of interest and higher building costs, to help themselves, we raised the qualifications figure in August of last year. Where the income of a family with two children used to be fixed at a maximum of R180 per month in order for such family to qualify, we have raised the maximum to R220 per month. And for a family with more than two children we have raised it from R250 to R300, but that the hon. member omitted to mention.

I said it was R300.

Yes, but the hon. member omitted to say that we took those very steps at that time in order to provide in those needs. The hon. member tried to prove that we were not doing enough for the lower income group and he maintained that over the past five years we had only built 12,000 dwellings for Whites, and 170,000 dwellings for non-Whites. What is he trying to achieve? It is the old story that this Government is doing everything for the non-Whites and is neglecting the Whites. But what he omitted to say was that the percentage of non-Whites falling within the income groups for which, by statute, the National Housing Commission should make provision, is far greater than the percentage of Whites, and for that reason it is inevitable that one has to make more provision for non-Whites. He also omitted to mention that it was we who had to clear the slum conditions we inherited from them. We had to clear Cato Manor and Windermere and Sophiatown and all the other places, and we had to accommodate thousands of those people before we could make provision for a small number of Whites in those places. That is the reason why those removals had to take place before one could make a start with White development there. But let us glance at the figures. He said that we had constructed 12,000 houses only over the past five years. He had the statement supplied by my Department at his disposal, but even so he could not even add up the number of years correctly. It is not five years but six. I said here last year, and so did my predecessor, that a shortage of housing had developed because the local authorities had neglected their duty and the State had to step in to spur them on. Just consider this figure of 12,000. In the four years between 1960-’61 to 1963-’64 the total built by the State and local authorities was 5,629, not with subsidies from the State as he maintained, but with full loans from the State. That is an average of 1,400 per year. But between 1964-’65 and 1965-’66, i.e., since the commencement of this Department activating programmes, its crash building programme, 6,972 or an average of 3,500 per year, were built. [Interjection.] The hon. member is looking at the wrong thing again. He is only looking at housing provided by local authorities. He is not looking at the second page. I mentioned both. The hon. member wants to imply that the rate at which we are building houses is 12,000 over a period of six years, but that is not true. The rate at which we are building is far more rapid at present, precisely because we spurred on the local authorities and told them that they must build straight away and if they did not do so we would take the land from them and do so ourselves. Just consider the planning for Whites only in Durban alone for the coming year, 1967-’68. There the local authority is going to build 488 units at R2¼ million and my Department is going to build 570 units at more than R4 million. Within one year we are going to make available 1,000 houses for Whites only in Durban alone. But he wants to create the impression that we have only built 12,000 houses in six years.

Is it true or not that you have built 12,000 houses in six years?

Of course it is true. The hon. member spoke of the first four years, namely 1960-’61 to 1963-’64. But those were the years when they, as prophets of doom, told the world that South Africa was heading for bankruptcy, and when our economic development was standing still. It was only after this Government had stimulated the economy and we started getting immigrants and development began to take place, that the housing emergency started, and for the past two years we have been building at a rate of 3,500 houses per year, which rate will be accelerated this year. The hon. member should not tell a truth which creates a distorted impression. If he uses facts of this nature he should use all the facts.

He also created the impression that my Department was building expensive houses. He said, “Just imagine, houses of R 16,000”. But my Department never built those houses. Those are the houses of Indians which have been expropriated because they are in White areas, large houses on large sites which have been converted. In the questions he put to me he was careful enough never to ask how many houses of a value of less than R6.000 had been built and made available. [Time expired.]

I trust the hon. the Minister will forgive me if I do not follow his trend of argument directly. There are one or two matters in connection with his speech I should like to deal with, but I shall do so in chronological order.

May I say that in a debate of this sort, concerning the incompetence and ineptitude of the Cabinet, one would have expected the Government to rush in, particularly the back and front benches, with example after example of the efficiency and competence of the Ministers concerned. Instead, apart from two members of the Cabinet and a few Deputies, we were treated to one attempt after the other to try and distract attention from the attacks made upon the Government, and attempts to drag in other matters. I think it is most significant that this opportunity was missed by the rank and file of the party opposite. Some of them, supported by their own Press, complained because I had not talked of other things. It was even suggested that in this debate I should have raised the question of Rhodesia and South West Africa. One hon. member suggested that I never mentioned the question of Rhodesia since March 30th. He must have been absent from the House when I discussed it during the last session and when I made certain suggestions to the hon. the Prime Minister in respect of which, I am glad to say, he has acted. Sir, why should we discuss South West Africa in the light of the events, when the Prime Minister and I independently have come to the same conclusion concerning the resolution taken at UN and in respect of our attitude towards the Committee of Thirteen? Then there were others who wanted declarations of policy. Sir, they will get declarations of policy on everything at the right and proper time which I shall dictate. I want to say that it was only the Ministers who really acknowledged how serious this situation in respect of inflation has become. Dealing with incompetence and ineptitude, I raised particularly the question of inflation and how it was combated in South Africa, and its effect on the gold mines, on the agricultural community and on the fixed income group. We have had, I am happy to say, a sense of responsibility from the Ministers concerned, although the hon. the Minister of Finance did not seem to want us to talk about inflation. They seemed very anxious to hear what remedies we might have to deal with the situation. What has been their reply to my criticism of their handling of the situation? First of all, we have been told that it is a world-wide phenomenon which South Africa has contained better than most other countries, but of course worse than others. The figures they referred to were only up to 1965. If we add the figures for 1966 I am sorry to say the picture is not nearly so good, and unless the position in other countries has changed a lot we stand fairly low down on the list. That is the reason for this matter having been raised in this debate. What interested me so much about their explanations that this was a world-wide phenomenon in respect of which South Africa was doing so well was the reference in their own economic development programme on page 143 where those responsible for drawing up the programme say—

Of course, in the next month it went up a further 1.2 per cent. If you take the period September, 1965, to September, 1966, it is a rise of 4.6 per cent per annum. If you take that figure and look at the comparative figures given here as to combating inflation, then South Africa is third from the bottom. It is quite clear that those responsible for writing this document are certainly not handing out any Oscars to the Minister of Finance and the Cabinet.

The second matter in connection with this question of inflation being a world-wide phenomenon is the suggestion that the experiences we are having are due to a large extent to the influence of prices in other countries upon South Africa. I accept that they have an influence, but it must be a limited influence because here again, in the economic development programme at page 155 we find it stated that in 1965, however, the prices of the latter group, i.e. the goods produced internally in South Africa, increased by almost twice as much as import prices, thus proving that the recent inflationary tendencies were mainly of local origin. That, to a large extent, seems to dispose of the argument of the Minister of Economic Affairs in regard to the influence of external forces upon the inflation here.

Then there was a second excuse offered to my criticisms, and that was to blame the inflow of foreign capital into South Africa particularly during the third quarter of 1966. What is interesting is that this matter was discussed in the House in August last year. I then drew attention to the fact that where you are imposing restrictions on credit for local companies you can expect their parent companies overseas to finance them and that will lead to an inflow of capital; and where you have a change of government in Britain you can expect a flight of capital from that country to South Africa. I asked whether that inflow had not been anticipated or should not have been anticipated, and I asked why, if it was harmful, it had not been limited. What happened? Here we are, four months later, and we are still given the same excuses. The real trouble is, as the hon. the Minister of Finance will I am sure testify, that they really do not know what type of capital is coming in, whether it is long-term or short-term or medium-term. They do not have the necessary statistics or the necessary information despite the fact that there have been pleas from this side of the House for over 18 or 20 years for better statistics in respect of matters of that kind.

The third excuse is that inflation is a delicate matter and that they did the right things at the right time. This is very interesting. First they froze interest rates for 16 months and one of the biggest factors in combating inflation was put out of action. Then they unfroze interest rates. It is very interesting to note the comment of even an organization like the South African Agricultural Union in respect of this matter. They deal with the steps taken by the Government to combat inflation and they say that “notwithstanding the measures taken under items 1 to 3 and as a direct result of the measures taken inter alia under items 4 and 5, one of which is freezing interest rates, the danger of inflation in our country has by no means receded and deflationary measures may still be expected to last for several months”. I wonder whether that was the right thing at the right time. The last Budget was stated by the hon. the Minister at the time to be an anti-inflationary Budget. When that Budget was passed, hon. members opposite knew about this inflow of capital from overseas. It was taking place at the time and we debated it in the course of those discussions. It was said to be an anti-inflationary Budget. How is it that we on this side of the House could warn that it was going to have inflationary effects? How is it that we could draw attention to the fact that this was an inflationary Budget and not an anti-inflationary Budget or a deflationary Budget? How is it that we found these comments in the Financial Times at that time:

How true that forecast was! How is it that that should come from the Financial Times? The hon. the Minister though warned proceeded in his headlong course towards further inflation in South Africa. There was another financial statement in another financial paper, the Financial Mail:

Well, events have proved the Opposition and those commentators correct and the Government wrong. How can they say to us that they did the right things at the right time when, knowing the difficulties, they proceeded to introduce a Budget with effects of that kind? Events have proved them wrong. The cost of living has risen, it has rocketed since that Budget and they themselves having realized that they have failed, had to take additional steps in December of last year. I do not think much of that argument.

Then there was another argument from hon. members opposite. They say they went to the experts and I cannot show anything that they did that they should not have done. I seem to remember the reports of the Governor of the Reserve Bank from time to time about the manner in which Government spending is nullifying the efforts to combat inflation in South Africa. I remember particularly the complaints by the Governor of the Reserve Bank on the way the Government was financing its spending —how it was restricting credit and how the restriction of credit in the private sector was building up large credits for the commercial banks which were being borrowed by the Government and used by it at short-term loans to finance its programme of expenditure. What the then Minister of Finance was at the time doing is that he had his hand in the till and he was taking out money and leaving I.O.U.’s behind. Sometime or other those bills had to be met. The meeting of those bills has had an inflationary effect upon the economy. What they were doing was financing long-term projects with short-term money. I wonder which experts advised them to do that? I wonder which economist in South Africa advised them to do that, namely to finance long-term projects with short-term money? The hon. the Prime Minister said that they consulted the experts and what did they do that they should not have done. Can anyone suggest that the Railway Budget of last year was disinflationary? I do not think that anyone can suggest that. We saw the effects on transport costs—on sugar, on cement, on petrol and agricultural commodities all over the country. We saw the snowballing effect and the ripple effect. We have had the excuse from the hon. the Minister when I raised this matter in the debate that he had to find the money to pay higher wages to the amount of R33 million, R13 million for extra costs, R10 million for good measure and for a surplus. He needed R56 million extra and he had R55 million in the Rates Equalization Fund. We suggested at the time that there was another way of financing it. The hon. the Minister went his way…

It would have been a very stupid way to finance it.

Mr. Speaker, I think in retrospect that it would have been a rather smart way of doing it and I believe that it would have had very much more beneficial effects on the economy. I also believe that most economists to-day would have preferred to have seen it done that way. They were consulting the experts and doing nothing that the experts told them not to do. I wonder what experts they consulted when they let the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs loose? Can anyone suggest that his actions in the Post Office have not had an inflationary effect, costing the public another R10 to R14 million, an increase of approximately 40 per cent in local call charges. I wonder whether the Prime Minister consulted experts in this regard and who they were. What a record, Mr. Speaker! And these are the people who have been telling us that they are handling inflation efficiently and competently here in South Africa. Let us look at the Barclays Bank Review which came out a few days ago:

They go on, Sir, to show what is happening in this period compared with the previous 12 months. The question arises whether their present steps will succeed. It is interesting that though those steps have been discussed by several speakers on this side of the House, there has been no detailed defence of them by members on the other side of the House. Certainly they are open to criticism but one is a little anxious about criticizing them for fear one commits one of the unforgivable sins of which the Minister of Finance talks when you are dealing with inflation and criticizing anything the Government is doing. The best the

Minister of Finance can say so far is that the battle as yet is not lost.

I have never said “as yet”.

Well, the battle is not lost. I accept the amendment. The battle against inflation is not lost. The Minister is not suggesting that it has been won?

No.

Sir, as an old referee, I can tell the hon. the Minister that he is behind on points. So far he is well behind on points. In fact, Sir, I believe he is in a worse position than Bobby Simpson and the Australians. His difficulty is that he is still without the necessary statistics which have been asked for for so long and which are asked for in almost every chapter and paragraph of this report of his own economic development programme to know exactly what is happening to be able to take the steps timeously to put the situation in order. Hon. members opposite in explaining their actions, say the steps they take must be balanced. I wonder what they mean by “balanced”. What is the balance that they hope to achieve? One eye on the electorate and one eye on the economy? Is that the balance they are hoping to find? Then, Sir, the hon. gentleman tries to frighten us with talk that if the steps were too drastic we might have had a recession. We might, Sir, but why should we have a recession when the Government has the power of spending in its own hands to rectify the position, as has been shown very largely over the last year or two? Is it necessary, if there is proper long term planning and proper handling of the situation? We are told that they have handled this matter so efficiently. If you look at the constant changes in policy you see how difficult they have made it for commerce and industry to plan ahead.

First you have freezing of interest rates and then unfreezing. You have a sort of see-saw in respect of import control, sometimes tightening and sometimes relaxing. The hon. the Prime Minister said he took advice. I wonder at just what stage he took the advice. It seemed to me, as far as we could see the situation, that up till 30th March the advice they were taking was from the electorate. They were thinking not of economics. They were thinking of votes. Then, once the kitty was empty, they started taking advice. But they had spent almost everything by then. Then after the general election they started to tighten the screws. Because they had been so slow in applying the classical methods to combat inflation they are now having to take extraordinary measures like freezing rents, limiting building, threatening price control and things of that sort. I only want to say that I hope that in the future there will be no more shilly-shallying in dealing with this matter. I do not think that this is a record of which any Government can be really proud and I do not think it is an example of efficiency or competence.

I told the hon. the Prime Minister during the last session of Parliament that what we wanted was evidence that he could control this situation by this session. So far he has failed in that test. I instanced what the effect of all this was going to be on the gold-mining industry. I am happy to say that the importance of that industry was generally conceded. It was also conceded by the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs that a peak had been reached and that production was likely to decline. Undoubtedly, Sir, the position is serious when you consider the hiatus which will have to be filled if it declines very materially. The hon. the Prime Minister, and I think the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, suggested that the only way to prolong the life of the mines if there was no increase in the price of gold was to reduce salaries and wages or to replace Europeans by non-Europeans. I am happy to say that the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs was more hopeful and more realistic. He speaks of increased productivity and he speaks of considered reorganization in the industry—”oordeelkundige reorganisasie”. He does not like ideas about subsidies or tax relief. I want to tell him that he may have to consider steps of that kind. I believe that the situation developing here is much more serious than is generally realized.

I told you that it was being considered by a committee.

The hon. gentleman says it is being considered. I was glad to know that. I believe that was so. But is it being considered with the necessary imagination and the necessary determination to see to it that something is done to ensure that that low-grade ore does not go waste in South Africa and that the life of our gold mines is prolonged adequately? I hope that we are not once more planning to do too little too late and sacrifice the future of South Africa because of lack of courage at the present time. I am still left with that doubt because so far there seems to be no constructive suggestions coming forward as to how this matter should be dealt with other than those which have come from this side of the House. In this regard, Sir, I have noted with interest the remarks of the Minister of Labour regarding his proposals to the Mineworkers’ Union. I do not want to become involved in that matter at all, save to say that it is essential first of all that peace is maintained in the industry and secondly that greater productivity is achieved in one way or another in the hope of reducing or maintaining costs at a reasonable level.

Sir, I also have instanced the unfair effect of this handling of inflation upon the agricultural industry. There was a reply from the hon. the Deputy Minister in which he set me certain questions which, with great respect, have nothing whatever to do with the matter. He wanted to know whether I was in favour of limiting the wages of mechanics working on agricultural implements or tractor operators or people of that kind. No, Sir, of course I am not. They must get a square deal just as the farmers must get a square deal and are not getting under this Government. He wanted to know whether I was prepared to see the price of ground fixed. Mr. Speaker, I am not prepared to see the price of ground fixed. I do not think it is necessary for steps of that kind to be taken to meet the troubles with which we are faced. What I am objecting to is the accusation made very clearly in the report of the South African Agricultural Union. I am going to deal with it under two heads. The first is set out in the report as follows:

That is my complaint. Mr. Speaker, that is the one the Deputy Minister never bothered to answer. The national economy expanded by no less than 31 per cent over the same period. And then they go on:

Mr. Speaker, that is what I am complaining about. Agriculture has not had its fair share. It has been hit by inflation harder than many other sectors and it has not been protected by this Government in respect of prices. Then, Sir, there is a second complaint which I have. They speak about the increase in the value of agricultural production in 1965, not its volume.

In other words, Mr. Speaker, the price increases have not kept pace with the depreciation in money values. That is why I say the farmers have not had a square deal from this Government. That is why I say that in the manner in which inflation has been combated by these hon. gentlemen the farmer has not had a square deal. I warned that one of the things to which attention was going to be directed was complaints by the Agricultural Union in respect of the technical services and the research available to them. Here is an article written as a result of an interview with Professor Tomlinson, head of the Transvaal Region, and Mr. S. P. van Wyk, assistant head of the Division of Agricultural Economics and Research. This is what these two gentlemen are reported as saying:

They go on to show that in the division of research only 63 per cent of the technical personnel have had more than two years’ service, and that less than 9 per cent have been there for longer than ten years. That is what I was complaining about, and that is what I was complaining about in respect of the treatment of the agricultural sector and the handling of inflation in South Africa, and the difficulties with which the farmer is being faced as a result of something for which this Government must take responsibility.

Then we spoke of the effect of inflationary tendencies upon the position of those with fixed income. We warned during the last session of Parliament and I warned again on Monday, that, while there had been great responsibility shown among trade union leaders in South Africa, the time was coming when they would no longer be able to control their own people. Bacause, Sir, the cost of living was rising so fast that many of these people have a sense of grievance, and they felt that they were being sacrificed. I do not know what the railway workers tell the hon. the Minister of Transport, but I know what they tell me, and I know how dissatisfied they are. I know what difficulties there are when people are moved from one place to another on transfer, either among the civil servants, or amongst the railway staff. I want to say that unless this Government can give some guarantee that they are going to be able to control the cost of living in a reasonable manner, or bring it down to some extent, they are heading for trouble with their own employees. I am afraid that they are going to be faced with demands for wage increases throughout the country. How much better off would these people not have been under the old United Party system of cost-of-living allowances, instead of having to wait for an election before there were increases in wages, increases which have been frittered away in almost 12 months as a result of the rise in living costs.

Then we had the situation in respect of the Departments of the Interior, Immigration and Police, as indicated in the report of the Van Wyk Commission. This matter has been dealt with—I think brilliantly—by the hon. member for Transkei. We have had a reply from the hon. the Minister of the Interior, but we have had no reply from the other Ministers concerned. The hon. the Minister of the Interior concedes that there has been negligence, negligence in no less than four instances by officials of his department. He does not try to excuse them, but he does try to play down the seriousness of the whole situation. The Minister of Community Development also tries to give an explanation and stresses how difficult it is to obtain efficient service in these departments. These four actions which are indicated by the Judge concerned as being negligence are undoubtedly serious cases. They have had tragic consequences, and for that reason the limelight has been fixed upon them, as the Minister said. What I want to know is how many other instances of similar neglect are taking place in these departments from day to day that we never hear about and which are never brought to the public notice. What I want to know is: Can we go on running departments with this low level of efficiency and have satisfactory government in South Africa? Our security measures have been undermined, through the negligence not of one official, not of two officials, but of four separate groups. Mr. Speaker, there is an old tradition, and that is that the Minister in charge of a department takes responsibility for the inefficiency of that department. The hon. the Minister of the Interior has tried to defend his predecessor by indicating what his attitude was to the department, and reading out a letter calling for more efficient service. For how long was he in charge of that portfolio? For how long has this state of affairs been going on? There are certain things here that are inexcusable. How do we know that they are not going on in respect of other people still at the present time?

Then we have a most extraordinary situation in respect of the decision of the Immigrants Selection Board. They seem to have treated an application for permanent residence almost as a formality. A police report is apparently not called for. They do not obtain a birth certificate. They do not receive answers to the questions which they raised. But yet they grant permanent residence. Is that going on regularly? Is that the sort of thing that this Board does? Is that the way it conducts its business? Is that what we must expect of it in the future? Can we be satisfied with that sort of thing?

We have the action of the security police who accept responsibility for the safety of the Prime Minister. I want to say that I am far from happy about the steps which they took and the half-baked manner in which the matter was handled.

You know that at that time they had no say in the House itself?

That has nothing to do with it, Mr. Speaker. The hon. the Prime Minister knows that the officer in charge called for a list of the personnel in the House in 1963. He screened them. He thought it was necessary to do so. He never applied for any additional names that came on to that list thereafter.

That is a different matter.

No, it is not a different matter. That is where I think the weakness lies, and I am pertinently drawing the attention of the Prime Minister to that. I think I have a right to say that, because here we find a situation in regard to which the explanations given me so far are, I must say, totally unacceptable. What is happening? Clearly we have examples now of lack of efficiency. Clearly we have examples of lack of proper methods in the divisions concerned. We have also an admission made by the Minister of Community Development that we have to deal in the civil service with many very inexperienced people. He says himself that it is physically impossible for the supervisors to supervise them adequately or efficiently. He admits it.

Then, Sir, we have a most extraordinary lack of co-ordination. We find that this man was examined by the district surgeon, and he apparently gave a report to the effect that he was a schizophrenic and was unsuitable for employment. When that happens, is that information not passed on to somebody? Is there no liaison between one department and another? Having decided that about a man, is he just let loose again?

These are things which I do not think have been adequately explained, and things which leave much unhappiness in the minds of people all over South Africa.

I want to say once again that it is an old tradition that the Minister takes the responsibility. We do not attack civil servants in this House; they cannot defend themselves here. We attack the responsible Ministers. I want to say to the Prime Minister: In the light of this evidence is he satisfied with the efficiency and the competence of the Ministers concerned in respect of this matter? One is left with the impression that if you had a few more independent tribunals examining things, a lot of other things might come to light. I wonder what would happen. I set myself the pleasant task this morning of wondering what an independent tribunal would find in respect of the Government’s action in freezing interest rates for 16 months; whether they would find that it really was in the interests of the economy or not. I wondered what they would find in respect of the failure of the Minister to heed the warnings of the Governor of the Reserve Bank that Government spending was nullifying their attempts to attack inflation in South Africa. I could not help wondering what an independent tribunal would say about the complaints made by the Governor of the Reserve Bank in several reports on the methods by which the Minister of Finance was financing Government expenditure at the time. I could not help wondering what an independent tribunal would say about allowing inflationary rises in the Post Office at a time when we are supposed to do everything to combat inflation in South Africa. I could not help wondering what an independent commission would say about the steps that have not been taken so far to extend the life of the gold mines and whether they would be satisfied with what has been done up to the present time. I could not help wondering what an independent tribunal would say on the appeal to the small man to make further sacrifices in curbing inflation in the light of what the Government has been doing.

Sir, it is quite clear that we are faced with a great deal of inefficiency in many Government departments, inefficiency for which the ministers concerned must take the responsibility. I wonder, Sir, now that we have heard so much of this business of Organization and Method Studies, whether it would not be wise at this time to appeal to the Government to make sure that the reports of the Organization and Method divisions, which I believe exist as a result of the pleas made by the hon. member for Constantia to the late Mr. Havenga when he was Minister of Finance, should not be Tabled in this House so that members can have sight of them and see what is going on. I believe that they certainly would assist to promote efficiency. I wonder, Sir, whether we should not consider the creation of an overall Organization and Method division to coordinate the work done by the separate divisions, if it does not exist already, and whether the report of that division should not be Tabled in Parliament. I wonder, thirdly, whether the Public Service Commission should not be asked to prepare a special report on all staff matters, including shortages and new staff taken on. If we are going to have an Organization and Method Division, may I appeal for the assurance that the methods which will apply will be the very latest methods and not the antiquated methods which seem to be applied in certain Departments at the present time. I believe that steps of that kind could do more to control expenditure and promote efficiency than a lot of the things that we have been talking about over the last three days.

Then, Sir, I would direct attention again to the desirability of increasing productivity in South Africa, the desirability of tackling our manpower shortage, and the vast importance of promoting an export market so that our industries can have the benefit of large-scale production. We have appealed for these things before, but nothing ever seems to happen. Ministers sit back in great comfort while prices go up and the cost of living goes up; wages have to go up and then prices go up again. The Cabinet gets bigger and bigger but there is no sign of increased efficiency or greater competence. Therefore I have no hesitation in moving that this House have lost confidence in this Government because of the inefficiency and ineptitude of its Cabinet.