The business of the House for next week will be as follows. We shall start on Monday with the Part Appropriation Bill after we shall have disposed of the Committee Stages of a few minor Bills. For the Part Appropriation Bill twelve hours are allowed plus one hour for the Minister’s reply which means that we shall finish the Second Reading on Thursday. We shall then have a few hours left in which we shall be able to continue with other legislation. The Third Reading stage of the Part Appropriation Bill will commence on Friday and will continue until the next Monday. The House will not sit on Wednesday evening, but as from the next Wednesday it will sit on Wednesday evenings.

When the debate was adjourned, I was explaining why this side of the House was of the opinion that a person who is a communist should not be entitled to practise. I pointed out that a person who does not respect the norms of the society in which he practises was not entitled to practise. Therefore, although he may be an honest and a very competent person, it is undesirable, on account of his philosophy of life, to allow him to practise as a representative of the legal profession. We should not lose sight of the fact that in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act any person is given the right, before his name is placed on the list, to object to it and is then afforded an opportunity to prove why his name should not be placed on the list. The concept “Communism” is defined in the Act as the doctrine of Marxian socialism as expounded by Lenin or Trotsky, but the definition goes further and I should like to read it to show in what a serious light the danger of Communism should be regarded. Paragraph (b) reads—

We can therefore never allow any person who is set on disregarding the laws of the country or on overthrowing the Government by the use of force, to be entitled to practise.

Mr. Speaker, I have now spoken about the listed person, but where we come to the case where the person concerned has already committed an offence against the law, then naturally the position is much worse, because such a person has already been found guilty of a serious offence by the court. In that case, therefore, the position is much worse and it is obvious that such a person should not be entitled to practise. But we must remember that if that person’s ideology, his view, were to take root in our country—in which so many different races with so many different degrees of civilization are living—it would cause indescribable misery not only to a few individuals, but to millions of people. Unfortunately, however, I have to return to a point which I raised yesterday, and in my opinion it is really the crux of this entire debate, namely the Opposition’s request that such a person should be taken to court. I think that is what this whole debate is about. The Opposition will say that, seeing that I am so sure and we on this side are so sure that Communism is such a danger, a court will surely also decide that a communist may not practise. Then they ask why we do not take them to court, because according to several members on that side of the House they also say that they are against it that a communist should be allowed to practise. But they say, and that is also stated in their amendment, that such a person should be taken to court, and unfortunately I have to furnish a few more details about this point.

If, according to their amendment, the Attorney-General goes to court to apply for the removal of the person’s name from the roll, the onus rests on the Attorney-General to prove that that person is a communist before the court will remove his name from the roll.

No, that he is not the type of person who should be allowed to remain on the roll.

The hon. member said that he was against it that a communist should be allowed to practise. In other words, he agrees, and the hon. member for Green Point also said that he agrees, with the Bar Council of America, which has decided that a communist is unfit to practise.

That is not the only reason.

No, that is not the only reason, but I am only dealing with the reasons which we want to include in the Act. The onus of proving that that person is a communist will rest on the Attorney-General. Now I want to ask the hon. the Opposition whether they think it is possible to prove in a court that a person is a communist, because we have to do with an ideology here. How can a man’s line of thought be proved in a court, except in the case where it can be proved that he is a member of a communist party. In that case, of course, there is the necessary evidence, but there are so many thousands of persons who have resigned as members. As a result such a person’s name is not on the list of members and consequently his membership cannot be proved. His guilt can be proved in two ways only. In the first case there is the position that the person has already been listed by the liquidator, but the superior court cannot base its judgment on the finding of an inferior court. The result is that the superior court cannot take into account the finding of the liquidator in arriving at its decision. That is clear. The court must make its own finding; therefore all the evidence itself must be led in the court. When the case came up before the liquidator, on what information did the State base its case? In the first place, the State made use of spies. If such a spy’s identity is revealed in court, the State loses his further services, but in order to place the person concerned on the list, it was not necessary to reveal the spy’s identity. In addition, when the case came up before the liquidator, use was made of the person’s colleagues who gave him away. That person who has given him away is afraid to appear in a public court, because he will have his other fellow-communists to contend with and he is afraid that they will take revenge. Then the hon. member for Pinelands interupted me and asked me why there had been other cases in connection with Communism in which persons were found guilty in certain instances. What was the position there? In those cases the State also made use of these two methods. In the first case the State made use of the spy, and by so doing revealed his identity and consequently lost his services. But it was worth losing his services, because the ringleaders could then be brought to book. The leaders of the communists were brought to book and sent to gaol for years. But it is not worth revealing such a spy’s identity in order to disqualify a person from practising. That is the difference.

What is the difference as far as the witnesses are concerned? When a man is tried in public, we make use of his accomplices if we can, persons who committed the crime along with him. How does one get evidence from such persons? You get their evidence by virtually bribing them, by indemnifying them against imprisonment for many years. That is the only way in which you can get such a person to give evidence in public. It is worth the risk for the person to give evidence because he is indemnified against prosecution. He has committed a crime and could also have been sentenced. This does not apply in the case of the fellow-communist who has supplied the liquidator with information against his colleagues. One cannot use him because one cannot reward him. One is not concerned with a crime in that case. One is only concerned with a person who has to come and give evidence that someone is a communist. Consequently one cannot give that person any reward for his evidence in public, because he is not liable to imprisonment. Why would he then give information in public against his comrade, who is also a communist? Therefore it simply is the position that in practice it is quite impossible to carry out that proposal put forward by the Opposition. In other words, if such a proposal were accepted, the action we are allowed to take would be watered down to such an extent that it would be quite useless.

The Opposition will recall that in all the debates on the principal Act—most of us were probably not here, but I was here when various amendments were subsequently made —they always declared that they too were against communism, but they are always making suggestions to water down action to such an extent that it would be hopeless to act.

It is not hopeless.

The hon. member says by way of interjection that it is not hopeless. I have just shown that it is impossible in practice.

I shall prove what I said.

Sir. all that the hon. member can prove is that that proposal can work in the case of crimes. With that I agree. As regards the last part, namely the crimes, the Attorney-General can go to court and have the person disqualified in that way. That is so. But, to tell the truth, in that case it is not even necessary to have this in the Act, because the Law Society ought to act in the case of such offences. I am, however, speaking about the first part now, in connection with listed communists.

This Act was passed in 1950. That is a good many years ago. It is 17 years ago. Several amendments were made subsequently. I shall accept that in this period of 17 years hundreds of persons were listed. I remember that whenever the Opposition raised objections to the effect that a court should decide upon the matter, the hon. the Minister of Justice pointed out how impracticable it was to go to court, as have also done now. The hon. the Minister invited the Opposition, if they heard of any person who had been invalidly listed, to mention that person’s name here in Parliament. The matter could then be investigated. It is now 17 years since that was said, and in those 17 years the Opposition has not mentioned one person’s name who has been invalidly listed.

How can one

know?

One hears about it from his friends. Why should he not come and say so? One must remember that the listed person is not in gaol. He is at liberty. Nor has he been forbidden to come into contact with his fellowmen, with attorneys, advocates, and so forth.

It is only after a trial that one will know.

They would have come to a member of the Opposition, their representative, and complained. If the Opposition had done its duty and if they had been the watch-dogs which they pretend to be, surely it would have been mentioned here in the House.

How do we know whether he is guilty?

Surely the man will tell you what the circumstances are and that he is completely innocent. It would be a member’s duty, if a person makes a statement under oath, to mention the name here and to ask that the matter be investigated. But that has never been done. Not in one case out of hundreds. The result is that we may safety accept that those persons are in fact communists. That is why we are now introducing this legislation, because we can in fact classify them as communists. I think I have said enough in connection with the court and in connection with the Opposition’s approach. I just want to say that we are very grateful for the way in which the Departments of Justice and Police have repulsed communism in this country, but the threat is still there. Whenever we see that there is any loophole, it is our duty to close it.

Mr. Speaker, I have many objections to this Bill and they go well beyond the objections which have so far been voiced by the official Opposition. To a great extent, in fact almost entirely, the objections of the official Opposition have centred around clause 2 of the Bill. I too, of course, object to that clause, which is the clause that is going to disqualify lawyers and advocates who have been listed or convicted under the Suppression of Communism Act. My objections, however, go much further than this. I also object strongly to clause 1 of this Bill. I have objections to clause 3, which places a further onus of proof of innocence on the accused and I dislike the additional powers taken under clause 4. In other words, since this is a four-clause Bill to all intents and purposes, I object to this Bill in its entirety.

In toto.

Yes. in toto, as the hon. the Minister has interjected. I shall give my specific objections in a moment, but first there are one or two objections in principle which I wish to voice against this Bill.

The first and most important objection is in regard to the retrospective nature of this Bill. I object most strongly to legislation being introduced which makes people subject to penalty for actions which were perfectly legal when they performed those actions and now in retrospect, when a new Act is placed on the Statute Book, they are in jeopardy because of something which they did in the past.

In America such an Act would be unconstitutional and would not be allowed on the floor of Congress, nor would it be allowed to appear on the Statute Book. So I have the greatest objection to Bills of this nature. I object, too, on account of the fact that this is another one of those Bills extending the vast powers already held by the Minister of Justice under the Suppression of Communism Act. Since the original Act was passed, way back in 1950, we have had no less than seven amending Bills dealing with more than 80 amendments. Every time a new amending Bill came before the House and every time amendments to the original Act were passed, further powers were granted to the Minister, powers which enabled him to act, in many cases without the supervision of the courts of law.

The Bill we are dealing with is another Bill of this nature and, consequently, I object to it in toto. The trouble is that when we put measures like this on the Statute Book, nobody realizes how far and how widely they are going to be used. Whereas originally they might have been confined in their application only to people who were in fact members of the Communist Party and actively engaged in Communism as such, over the years one finds that those powers have been used in ever-widening circles until people who do not have the remotest connection with Communism can, simply by the whim of the Minister acting— and this is the point I shall stress—on the advice of the Special Branch, be made to suffer all the penalties of real communists. There are people to-day in South Africa who have been banned or are being restricted, people who have had to leave South Africa on exit permits but who have never had the slightest connection with Communism. Their only sin has been that they have objected strongly to the racial policy of this Government. Yet the Anti-Communist Act was used against those persons to restrict their activities in fields which had nothing to do with Communism but merely were aimed at the racial policies of the Government. As I have said, unfortunately one finds that the Minister has to act by virtue of these wide powers in terms of recommendations which are made to him by the Special Branch.

There is nothing in this Bill about those people.

Yes. there is. It is on the instructions of the Special Branch that people get listed. I think it is no exaggeration to say that as far as this section of the Department of Justice is concerned, it is the Special Branch who run it. Nobody else has any say. The Special Branch hands down its recommendations and the Minister acts upon them.

Now, as I have said, this Bill has four clauses and although I object also to the last two, I particularly object to the first two. I should also like to say something about clause 1, a clause which has so far largely been neglected. To my mind, this clause is just as important as the clause dealing with the disqualification of lawyers and advocates. As the clause reads, it extends powers which the hon. the Minister already has under section 5ter of the principal Act and enables him, by notice in the Gazette, to prohibit all persons whose names appear on any list in the custody of the officer referred to in section 8 of the Act, that is the liquidator, or any person who has been served with a restriction or prohibition notice under the Suppression of Communism Act, or any, person who was at any time—here again the retrospective nature of this provision—an office-bearer or officer or a member of any organization which has been declared to be an unlawful organization, from becoming office-bearers of certain other organizations, also published in the Gazette or—and these are the extending provisions—making or receiving any contribution of any kind to the direct or indirect benefit, or participating in any way in any activity, of any particular organization, or any organization of a nature or class specified in the notice, without the special permission of the Minister. As I have already pointed out, nobody has thus far examined this clause in any detail but I wish to do so now. Already we have had such a notice gazetted. Such a notice was gazetted some years ago but nobody took a great deal of notice of it. It was gazetted in 1962. Thereby the then Minister of Justice, in terms of the powers he then had, prohibited all persons whose names appeared on any list in the custody of the liquidator, or who were office-bearers or members of any organization which was banned or declared an unlawful organization, or in respect of whom any prohibition had been issued under the Suppression of Communism Act, from becoming office-bearers of certain organizations which were then listed. There were 36 of these organizations, including the Civil Rights League, an organization which, to my mind, is certainly not a communist organization, and the Students’ Liberal Association. In the second part of that notice —and this to me is the overbearing part of it— they were prohibited from becoming officebearers or members of any organization which in any manner was affiliated to a subsidiary of any of the listed organizations, or which was calculated to promote any of the aims of these organizations. This is very wide indeed. Furthermore—and this is the most important of all—they may not become members or take part in any activity of any organization which in any manner propagates, defends, attacks, criticizes or discusses any form of State or any principle or policy of the Government or the State, or which in any manner undermines the authority of the Government or the State.

This prohibition can extend, in fact, to anybody who was at any time a member of an organization which was perfectly legal when he belonged to it… Let me take one such specific organization, namely the Defence and Aid. This was a perfectly legal organization which had operated for several years quite legally. Yet every person who was a member of this organization in the past may not now take part in any way in any organization which even discusses Government policy. But what has this got to do with Communism per se? What has this to do with the dangerous people referred to by the hon. member for Heilbron yesterday? What has this to do even with the people the Minister specified? The hon. the Minister was not even aware that listed people were included. But this goes much further than listed people. I say that clause 1, as it will now read in its amended form, is so widely worded that anybody who was a member of, let us say, Defence and Aid, a perfect legal activity at the time, can now be prohibited under severe penalties—up to three years’ imprisonment—of taking part in any activity of any organization which discusses or criticizes State policy. Is this a measure aimed at Communism, or is it aimed at intimidating people the Minister is advised to take action against by the Special Branch? Interestingly enough, although the notice was gazetted way back in 1962, it was only recently, I think in December last year, acted upon. Then the Commissioner of Police drew this notice to the attention of a selected group of people—a small group, five or six of them. He also assured the country in a Press statement that the incident concerned only specific individuals in Port Elizabeth and that no nation-wide operation was being contemplated against people in that position. Well, that is all very assuring, no doubt, but the law is on the Statute Book, and there is nothing to prevent it being used at any time. It is a very dangerous and far-reaching provision. So I should like to ask the Minister just how far he intends using this provision and whether the already gazetted notice—I think it was notice 2130…

Order! I think the hon. member is departing too far from the provisions of the Bill now under consideration.

May I, with respect, Sir, point out to you that clause 1 of this Bill refers to this gazetted notice. It refers to a notice which must be gazetted. My point is that such a notice has already been gazetted. This clause extends the Minister’s powers in respect of the gazetting of that notice. What is worrying me is whether the existing notice which has already been gazetted, in retrospect now can be considered to contain the additional clauses which are going to be passed by this House? Is there going to be a regazetting, does the existing notice hold, or what is going to be the position? People are anxious and want to know what their position will be. I repeat, I object very strongly to clause 1 because I think it goes far beyond anything contemplated when the original Act was passed. I believe it is aimed against people—amongst whom are the most respectable citizens of this country…

Who are they?

People, for instance, who supported the Defence and Aid when it was still a legal organization. Its aims were to provide for the defence of people charged with certain crimes. For anybody who understands anything about normal democratic practices, this is a normal function. The provision of defence for an accused is a normal function. Nobody is guilty until he has been charged in a court of law and found to be guilty. Therefore anybody who is accused is entitled to defence. The State itself provides defence for people accused of murder, or of crimes carrying capital punishment. The State takes upon itself to provide defence for people accused of the most far-reaching crimes. And I say that people who are accused, are entitled to defence. Indeed, we have had other instances in South Africa in the past—the hon. member may be too young to know that—of organizations having been banned during the war for which a defence fund was set up to provide defence for those people who suffered under that ban. At that time nobody thought there was anything wrong in providing defence for those people. [Interjections.] Here, too, we have people who often are not given the opportunity, because when one is banned or listed under the Suppression of Communism Act one has no opportunity of defence. The Defence and Aid undertook to provide defence for people who were accused and who were to be charged in the courts of law. Very many of our respectable citizens were members of that organization, or contributed to that organization, but now are in jeopardy by virtue of the retrospective nature of clause 1 of this Bill. I do not know whether hon. members in this House sufficiently realize the implications of this very far-reaching clause of this Bill.

Naturally, I also object to clause 2. I do not think there is any necessity for the Minister to take powers to disqualify legal men. I believe this can be left with safety in the hands of the responsible profession itself and/or to the courts of law. I agree with the Opposition as far as this is concerned. I might say that the previous Minister of Justice also had something to say about this profession when he moved the Second Reading of the Attorneys, Notaries and Conveyancers Amendment Bill in 1965. On that occasion he said—

I think this comment, which was made as recently as 1965, could surely equally well apply in 1967. So I object very strongly to clause 2. It is not only the disqualifying aspect which worries me, but the intimidating aspect. Unless one has followed closely, as I have done, the operations of the Special Branch under the powers of the Suppression of Communism Act, it is difficult for people to realize how wide that orbit is stretched and the numbers of people who have been banned and restricted in terms of that Act. Nobody knows the real figures; they are hard to get. A consolidated list was issued a couple of years ago. Since then other people were put on the list and some were taken off and it is almost impossible to know who is banned and who is listed.

I furnished you with the information to-day.

I have not got it yet. I do not know how many people there are, but there must be several hundreds, 800 or 900.

Less.

I am glad to hear that, but anyway, several hundred have been banned and restricted. The law is applied to ever-widening circles. People are becoming intimidated in this country and the legal profession is not, I regret to say, insulated against this intimidation. The result has been that it is increasingly difficult to find legal men who will take cases and who will defend people charged with so-called crimes against the State.

I do not know of a single case where they could not find counsel to defend them.

It is very difficult and I must say that with the banning recently, the putting under house arrest of one of the most active people in Defence and Aid, Miss Heyman, it will become even more difficult to find lawyers to take those cases. I believe that a Bill such as this, which gives the Minister powers to disqualify people, will make it more and more difficult to find anybody who is prepared to undertake the defence of people accused of “political crimes”. [Interjections.] I am glad to hear the hon. member is prepared to do it, but he must be careful or he will find the beady eye of the Special Branch fixed on him one of these days. Every time I raise anything like this in the House I am always accused of being a subversive agent. Clause 2, as I say, goes very far indeed. It goes beyond listed communists as such, because on the list referred to in clause 2 there can be anybody who was at any time an active supporter—not even a member, but an active supporter—of a banned organization. There were many legal men who in fact contributed to Defence and Aid because they took the view that an accused person was entitled to a defence. Now those people could be listed. I admit that they have one protection, that the listing must be on the instigation of the Minister, and they must be given an opportunity to explain why their names should not be on the list. But if in fact they committed that “offence”, and they have been an active supporter of Defence and Aid by giving it a contribution, there is no excuse for them and they can be listed. Retrospectively these people will have committed a crime which was not a crime at the time they gave that donation, and their whole future livelihood can be jeopardized as the result of this clause. So clause 2 goes much further than people who have been convicted under the Suppression of Communism Act and it goes much further than people who have been listed as Communists, because the list referred to is the list in the custody of the officer and that list in turn can contain the names of people who were at any time active supporters of a banned organization such as Defence and Aid. Therefore I object strongly to clause 2.

Clause 3 is another one of the growing number of provisions which place an undue onus of proof on the accused. Yesterday the hon. member for Heilbron had a lot to say about the onus of proof and about this being part and parcel of British law and South African law. I am not concerned with that. I only know that this is wrong in principle, to place the onus of proof on the accused, and we have far too many Acts on our Statute Book which go far beyond those in Britain. The only example the hon. member could quote was the Official Secrets Act. Otherwise the burden of proof is not on the accused but on the State to prove guilt, and the burden of proving innocence is not on the accused. In this particular instance it goes very far indeed because a person can be accused of communicating with a listed or restricted person. It is very difficult indeed to keep track of all these restrictions, as I have already said. How an individual will keep track of it I do not know. It was difficult enough for me to get information about it. I am told that it is too difficult to assemble the statistics and that a consolidated list was supplied and that it will be very difficult to supply other consolidated lists. So how anyone can prove that he did not know that a person was on the restricted list is beyond me. I think this is a very unjust provision indeed.

Clause 4 lists a large number of offences under the Suppression of Communism Act, which could not only lead to normal penalties under this Act but also to deportation if the person is not a South African-born citizen. I must admit that offences which are listed are serious offences, but some are petty offences. I do not know why the Minister has included in the list of offences which can result in instant deportation such a petty offence, for instance, as a person carrying or displaying or being in possession of anything whatsoever indicating that he was in any way ever associated with an unlawful organization. For instance, if someone did at one time subscribe to Defence and Aid and has anything in his possession showing that he ever made a donation to Defence and Aid, or that he ever received any literature from a banned organization, he can immediately be deported, if he is not a citizen born in this country. [Interjection.] If he is an alien and does such a terrible thing as to give a contribution to Defence and Aid, which at the time was a legal organization, and if a receipt is found in his possession from that fund, such an alien can be deported instantly. What, may I ask, is the justification for this? Can the hon. member for Heilbron really justify the inclusion of these petty offences carrying such very stringent penalties? I do not believe he can, and therefore, because I believe this whole Bill is adding to an Act which in any case is far too wide and is used in ever-widening circles, and because it affects people who often have no opportunity to defend themselves, and against whom no production of proof of guilt is necessary and no charges need be laid and no sentence need be pronounced by any court, and because the penalties are extremely high, I am going to move that this Bill be read “this day six months”, the most stringent amendment I can move. I am not only concerned with clause 2, which is a bad clause. The other ones are equally bad, if not worse. I believe this is a miserable little Bill, in the tradition of other miserable little pieces of legislation affecting the freedom of people who may well have acted in good faith at the time they supported certain organizations. I therefore move—

We on this side are really beginning to wish the hon. member for Houghton would grow up. She is becoming an old lady, but in politics she is still a child. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Houghton said something here which I cannot allow to pass. She said that we were using the laws for combating Communism to get innocent people out of the country, people who are merely opposed to the race policy of South Africa.

A shocking allegation.

But absolutely true.

That is why I say the hon. member is still a child in politics. That is an absolutely irresponsible statement to make in this House. The only explanation I can find for that is that it appears to me as though the hon. member is quite blind and totally unbalanced as regards current problems in our country. The hon. member has an eye for one thing only, and that is colour. Apparently she is under the impression that she has a tremendous reputation overseas and that everything she says is broadcast over there as the truth. It is really time the hon. member realized that she is causing infinite harm to the country by making that kind of statement in the House of Assembly.

It is not what I say; it is your laws.

That is not true. And on top of that she almost insulted the legal profession as well. She said this law was there purely to intimidate people. To intimidate them against what? Not to participate in communistic activities? I want to express the hope that it will in fact persuade people to abandon any communistic activities because of the possibility that they will not be allowed to practise the legal profession. I have never met a person who was in any way intimidated by any of the laws. [Interjection.] Furthermore, I think it is disgraceful of the hon. member for Houghton to say that if an advocate were appointed to defend a person charged under the Suppression of Communism Act he would draw the eye of the Security Police upon himself. I want to give her the assurance that as far as advocates are concerned, they are quite prepared to defend people charged under the Suppression of Communism Act, but the hon. member for Houghton will quite probably dissuade them from employing advocates who have no association with any liberalistic influences.

But allow me, Sir, to refer briefly to yesterday’s debate. I should like the hon. Member for Transkei to tell me the following. Yesterday he virtually reproached us that this Act had not been placed on the Statute Book earlier. He said: That Bill of yours has been pending since 1965, and every time it is postponed. In fact, I was under the impression that the hon. member felt that we had been too slow about it. Then I heard to my surprise that the hon. member for Transkei would like us to do away with the entire Act. [Interjections.]

On a point of order, is that hon. member allowed to say that the hon. member is now distorting for the second time?

I withdraw that.

The hon. member for Transkei asked us: “Seeing that you have postponed it so many times, why is it necessary to place it on the Statute Book now?” I may just tell him that it is necessary because Communism is the worst anti-social cancer in all the Western countries in the world, and the history of Communism in South Africa in the past 15 years should have convinced hon. members on the opposite side that this Act is not merely necessary but essential. I am surprised that now, after everything that has happened in South Africa, hon. members are still opposing this kind of law. I should like to know what the attitude of the Opposition is, because it has not been stated clearly. Some of them say that it is only clause 2 they do not support, but that they support all the other clauses. Is that the official policy of the United Party?

I did not say that. I dealt with that one clause only.

That is the reply I wanted, because it appears to me—and I make the accusation—that the United Party is actually opposed in principle to all the clauses of this Bill. It is typical of the United Party to adopt that attitude. They blow hot and then they blow cold, because they are unfortunate in having liberalists as well as somewhat more conservative people in their ranks, and they must try to present an image to the outside that will satisfy both factions. [Interjections.] That is their attitude to the principles of this Bill. To the people outside this House the United Party want to pretend that they are opposed to Communism; that is why they say: “We are against Communism”, but in the same breath they say: “We are only opposed to clause 2, but we shall nevertheless vote against the entire Bill.” Let us just consider some of the objections.

They feel the same as the hon. member for Houghton, but their tactics differ.

The hon. member for Transkei tells us that we should rather leave any action in terms of clause 2 of the Bill to the professions. Mr. Speaker, never before have I heard such a stupid suggestion.

That is not what we said.

That was one of the things said by the hon. member for Transkei. He said that the professions themselves could make an application, unless my notes are wrong and unless the hon. member now wants to deny that.

You did not understand my argument. Read my amendment.

I shall come to the amendment. At one stage the hon. member for Transkei said that the professions themselves could apply to have the names of advocates struck from the roll because they promote Communism. Am I right or wrong? He said it would be better for the professions themselves to do that.

But not the professions alone.

Who else?

Read the amendment.

Yes, the Attorney-General should also be able to do it, but the professions should also do it. Why should the professions smell out the communists in their ranks? Surely that is the task of the State, and that is what this Bill proposes. Why did not the professions do that in the past? I am not blaming them; I am not saying the professions have to do that, but the hon. member says that it would be better for the professions themselves to do it.

Against whom should they have taken action?

Here I have a list of names of advocates and attorneys. Take Nelson Mandela. Did the order of attorneys ever apply to have him banned as an attorney? Take Nokwe, an advocate who is now in Britain and who is a recognized communist. Was any application made for his banning because he was a communist? Take Joseph Slovo, one of the most rabid communists. South Africa has ever known. He was a practising advocate when he left the country. Was there ever any application for his banning? Does the hon. member expect the profession to apply? What about Harold Wolpe? What about Roley Arenstein in Durban? Surely the hon. member comes from Durban.

That just shows your ignorance. You do not even know where I come from.

We know where you are going.

I will admit that I did not know that. The hon. member is the member for Transkei, but I was under the impression that he lived somewhere in Durban. Mr. Speaker, here is a list of 15 names, and the professions did absolutely nothing about those people. How could the professions be expected to take action? Surely it is the duty of the State to act, and the State will act.

I now come to the amendment of the hon. member for Transkei. He wants the courts to have a discretion, but he did not tell us exactly how that discretion was to be exercised, and in what way the case was to be brought before the court. I looked at this amendment, and it appears to me as though it is once again the Rule of Law principle which is slipping out, the Rule of Law principle of which we hear so much and of which many people know so little. The hon. member for Houghton, in particular, is always concerned with the rule of law.

I wish you would concern yourselves with the rule of law.

But there is a very important rule in law which the hon. member for Houghton has never mentioned here, and she must tell us which rule she considers the most important. Which does she consider the most important, the Rule of Law or the security of the State? The security of the State is the highest law; it is also a legal principle from our Roman-Dutch law. The security of the State is the highest law, and the interests of the individual must bow to the security of the State. Would the hon. member for Houghton agree with me that the security of the State is the highest law, and not the Rule of Law as such—not the fact that individuals should appear before a court? Now the hon. member is silent. I do not understand that. I want to put this question to the hon. member for Transkei as well. Yesterday he told us about the war years. I am not one of those people who are touchy about events in the war years. Those things happen, and those among us who were on the other side and who opposed the Smuts Government are not complaining of what happened to us. But I want to ask the hon. member whether he will agree with me that during the war years many people were put behind barbed wire without any trial in a court—quite correctly— and what principle did the United Party apply in those years? The security of the State is the highest law, and I am not complaining of what happened. I ask the hon. member for Transkei to tell me now what happened between 1942 and 1967 to make him change his opinion so that he now wants to give the discretion to the courts when the security of the State is at stake?

The machinery of the courts is not at all times adapted to the task of pinning down this communistic serpent. In the modern world there is a struggle in all countries of one ideology against another, and in that struggle it is not possible to drive that serpent from the tissue of national life merely by using the machinery of the courts. It is an ideology which opposes us. The hon. member may laugh, but it is a fact. Communists are not people who act in public; they are not easily caught. It is not easy to obtain proof against them. They are organized groups, but apparently the hon. member for Transkei does not know that. Does he know nothing of the bloody history in South Africa in the past 15/16 years? Does he not realize that this country was saved by this Suppression of Communism Act, which was placed on the Statute Book in 1950? This country was saved because we gradually broke Communism in South Africa by means of that Act, and we are still doing that.

But the communists are still there.

Communism may still be there, but by means of this Act, by means of the self-same provisions to which the hon. member for Transkei wants to object, we have broken the back of Communism. The hon. member need only recall what happened in Paarl and at Rivonia. He need only recall what happened everywhere in the country where bombs were exploded and violence committed. Under which laws were we to track down those people? But the hon. member gets up here and says that the legal profession should not be touched; there communists should be allowed to flourish.

That is not what I said.

Surely that is what the hon. member implied. The hon. member realizes what is going on in this country, and yet he brings such senseless opposition against this clause. Mr. Speaker, the administration of justice in South Africa is one of the cornerstones of our republican democracy. We have our State President, our executive authority, our legislative authority and our administration of justice, and as I see and understand the administration of justice, it is there to interpret and duly apply the laws made by the legislative authority. The administration of justice brings balance to a country. The administration of justice must regulate the relationship between State and subject; it has to regulate the relationship between one subject and another, and that has to be done equitably. Justinian said: The maxims of the law are: To live honestly, to hurt no one and to render to each his due. That is the task of the administration of justice. In practice we find that there are many advocates and attorneys who support the communistic ideology. The legal practitioner, as was said here yesterday, is just as much part of the administration of justice as the officials and the judges; that is axiomatic; and the question is: What is the attitude of the legal practitioner with communistic tendencies? To define that, I just want to quote from the book “Justice in Russia”, by Harold J. Berman. On page 21 the learned writer states—

Pashukanis is a Soviet jurisprudence writer—

Then this writer continues—

That is what happened in Germany.

That may have happened in Germany, but I want to prevent it from happening in South Africa, and the hon. member for Transkei will not help me. Mr. Speaker, this is what David Caute says in “Communism and the French Left”—

That is the attitude of the communist in the administration of justice. Let me remind hon. members on the opposite side, who seem to have forgotten it, of what an attorney wrote in South Africa. This document was seized and used at the Rivonia trial. It is in Nelson Mandela’s handwriting, and he wrote as follows—

[Interjection.] Yes, I thought the hon. member would say that. The difference is that it is loyalty to the Communist Party, a party which disseminates an alien ideology in our country. I read further—

The people of South Africa, led by the S.A. Communist Party, will destroy capitalist society and build in its place socialism.

Does the hon. member agree with that? I read further—

That communistic philosophy was in fact practised in the legal world in South Africa. There were people like Harold Wolpe who did that. There were also people like Joe Slovo, like Abram Fischer, a man who was honoured by his profession, who passed us every day in his toga and with his charming face. In court he advocated law and justice and used the corner-stone of a modern democracy, Sir. And to what end did he use it? He used it to cover up his communistic innermost soul. He used it as a cloak around him while he was undermining us. In this measure we are now asking that that kind of thing should no longer happen. I want to say this to hon. members on that side. Abram Fischer’s actions and the Rivonia trial did incalculable harm to the legal profession. That is the point, and that is why I want to ask hon. members on the opposite side to support this Bill in its entirety. The public outside are entitled to know that we as legal practitioners are in actual fact also administrating our country and our people, and are running our organization as it should be run. They should know that we as advocates and attorneys are in fact doing our duty. It is therefore absolutely essential that we correct the image, and we can correct it only by banning the communistically inclined advocates from our profession. Therefore, Sir, I support this measure.

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the hon. member for Prinsh of who has just sat down becomes more and more extreme in his views every time he speaks in this House. I have the impression that if he is not careful he will be classed in the same category as the hon. member for Innesdal. The attitude that the hon. member for Prinshof adopts is of no concern to me, except when he chooses to misrepresent what we on this side of the House have said. And this is what he did right through his speech.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the word “misrepresent”.

Mr. Speaker, I did not say that he deliberately misrepresented or knowingly misrepresented. I said that he mispresented.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the word “misrepresent”.

I withdraw the word, Sir. To give the House some idea of the irresponsibility of the hon. member for Prinshof, let me deal firstly with the statement that he made in regard to people like Mandela, Slovo, Wolpe, and Abram Fischer. The hon. member said that these persons were a disgrace to the profession, that they were unfit to practise. That is what the hon. member said, not so?

Yes.

If that is so, why did not the hon. member himself, for he is a member of the Side-Bar, call upon his Law Society to have these people removed from the roll on the ground that they were unfitted to practise in those areas? [Interjections.] Did the hon. member do anything at all? I ask the hon. member for Prinshof.

No, because I do not think that it is the Law Society’s job.

Is it not the Law Society’s job to have removed from the roll persons who are unfit to practise in that profession? What nonsense the hon. member for Prinshof speaks. Of course it is the job of the Law Society to have removed from the roll people who are unfitted to practise in that profession.

The hon. member for Prinshof is a lawyer, not a detective.

But not only is it the prerogative of the Law Society to do so, it is also the duty of every single member of that profession to call upon the Law Society to have them removed, if that is what he feels. We have heard from the hon. member for Prinshof to-day that he did nothing in respect of these persons, and yet he comes to this House and says that the Law Society should have removed them from office. This is the sort of irresponsible attitude of the hon. member for Prinshof. It is quite obvious that this sort of speech is merely for propaganda purposes for the benefit of the newspaper reporters up above.

The hon. the Minister and the other hon. members who spoke have emphasized continually that it is for them a matter of principle that a communist should not be permitted to practise in our courts. The hon. member for Odendaalsrus gave several reasons why this is so. We, of course, entirely agree with this, as has been said by speaker after speaker on this side, from the hon. member for Trankei onwards. But this, of course, is not the point of difference between us, and that is why it seems to us so pointless for these hon. members to continue to emphasize this point when we entirely agree. We entirely agree with the hon. member for Prinshof, strangely enough, when he describes the Communist ideology as one which we cannot allow to survive in this country. This is just about the only thing about which I do agree with the hon. member for Prinshof. The point of difference between the Government and this side of the House lies in the attitude of the Government as to who is or who is not a communist, and who should have the right to decide this question. These are the two points of difference between us, and we are indebted to the hon. member for Omaruru who tried to deal on its merits with this point of difference. He is the only hon. member on that side of the House who has tried to do so. Others have tried to throw a smoke-screen up in this House to obscure the debate and to suggest that we are trying to protect communists. For that reason I want to deal with the arguments of the hon. member for Omaruru and to show why we think that his explanation is incorrect, although obviously sincerely given to us.

In regard, first of all, to the persons convicted of the serious offences referred to in the section, our amendment makes it clear that we accept that those should be grounds upon which a court should be entitled to remove a man from practice or to disbar him from entering the profession. But, Sir, as we have said, the reason for the conviction in some cases may be technical, there may be genuine reformation, and that is why we believe that even if there has been a conviction it should be left to the Court to decide whether or not that person should or should not be admitted to practise or continue to practise. Not one single hon. member on that side of the House has suggested that our courts are unfitted for this particular task, and there can be no question that our Judges are perfectly competent to decide whether a man who has been convicted of such offences should or should not be permitted to continue to practise. That deals with those convicted of the offences.

As we have pointed out, the clause goes much further than that; it also includes persons who are on the list. It is perfectly clear that, despite what the hon. member for Heilbron has said, listed persons can include persons who are not communists. The former Minister of Justice, the present Prime Minister, readily conceded that in this House, so that I find it strange that some hon. members throughout this debate have tried to suggest that nobody can be on the list if he is not a communist. The hon. member for Houghton pointed out that listed persons can include, for example, persons who contributed to the Defence and Aid Fund. It could well be that the Liquidator could refuse to remove from the list such a person, a person who may have no connection with the Communist Party, no communist leanings, no support for the communist philosophy. It could happen. The Liquidator is a human being, he can make mistakes, just as in the same way as Judges can make mistakes. That is why it is so important that the court should have some say in such matters.

If the case which the hon. members made was that the Judges could not be relied upon to act properly in such matters…

That was never the case.

Of course it was never the case.

The Judges apply the law and we make the law.

The hon. member for Heilbron has not understood what I have just said. I said, for his benefit, if the case made by Government members was that the judges could not be relied upon properly, to carry out the task which we suggest they should carry out then this would be an entirely different matter, and we could deal with it also on its merits. But obviously it has not been suggested, because in fact the Government members know that they can be relied upon.

Next I want to deal with the argument of the hon. member for Omaruru who suggested that to bring matters of this sort before a court of law would either defeat the object or would make it impossible to prove. He was the only one who, as I have said before, dealt with this matter on its merits and tried to put forward a reasoned argument, an argument I shall now endeavour to meet. The hon. member’s entire approach was directed at this type of hearing as if it was a criminal case which had to be proved…

No.

Oh yes, Mr. Speaker. Although the hon. member did not say it in so many words, he nevertheless implied that the issue would have to be decided beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore he suggested that it would be almost impossible to prove who was a communist and who was not, or who was a communist sympathizer and who was not. But this is not the case. This is a civil application to decide whether or not a man is a fit and proper person to be admitted to practise or, if already admitted, to continue to practise. This is the issue—“fit and proper”. And in order to decide whether a man is a fit and proper person to practise it is not necessary for a judge to decide beyond reasonable doubt that he is a communist, or a saboteur, or anything like that. If there is evidence before him which suggests that this is the type of person he is, and the judge is satisfied with such evidence, he can accept it and decide in his discretion that this is not a fit and proper person. The judge has a discretion and no court of law will upset that discretion, the decision taken, unless it can be proved that he had acted mala fide. If there is evidence showing that a person has communist tendencies …

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of explanation. The hon. member misunderstood me. I said the onus was on the Attorney-General.

It is quite right that the onus is on the Attorney-General to show why he considers that this man is not a fit and proper person. But as I have pointed out to the hon. member for Omaruru, that onus does not have to be discharged beyond a reasonable doubt…

On a balance of probabilities.

Yes, on a balance of probabilities. The issue which the judge has to decide is not whether this man is a communist or whether he is a saboteur—in other words, the onus of proving on a balance of probabilities is not one or other of these, but simply whether this man is a fit and proper person to practise. And if a judge has evidence which he accepts as being reliable, evidence showing that this man has a tendency towards Communism, or subversion, or towards that type of ideology, it is sufficient upon which a judge can properly exercise his discretion.

Oh, no!

Oh yes, this is sufficient evidence upon which he can…

The person concerned is to be deprived of a privilege and that must be proved.

That is where the hon. member is wrong in his approach. If he was right in his approach and if it was so difficult as he made it out to be, to have these things dealt with by a court of law, then we may be persuaded to review our attitude. However, we are satisfied that this is not a task which cannot be carried out relatively easily.

Another point the hon. member for Omaruru made and with which I should like to deal is that these would be public hearings and that evidence could, therefore, be made public, evidence which it may be in the interest of the State to divulge. But under the common law the court has the power to order a particular hearing to take place in camera or to order that a particular witness shall be heard in camera if the evidence which he is about to give could prejudice the interests and safety of the State.

And disclose such evidence to the accused practitioner.

What is wrong with that? It is evidence about himself?

And he can tell his friends!

Mr. Speaker, this argument must be seen in its proper perspective. There have been numerous trials— such as the Abram Fischer trial, the Rivonia trial and others—of a political nature before our courts. In these trials some people were acquitted but many were convicted. But the evidence led there has not created any danger to the safety of the State. I think the hon. member for Omaruru is exaggerating the position when he suggests seriously that this is a reason why the court should not be given the power to intervene in such matters.

In the little time that is left to me I should like to revert to an argument used by the hon. member for Odendaalsrus. That hon. member seems to suggest that there was in the Suppression of Communism Act a section entitling a listed person to apply to court to be removed from that list. In this connection the hon. member referred to and quoted Section 8bis. Well, there is no doubt that the proviso to this section does suggest that a person on the list can apply to court. However, if the section is read in its entirety it becomes perfectly clear that it does not give a right of appeal to a court of law. It does not. Let me point out that under the common law there is always the right to apply to a court of law if an individual, such as the liquidator, has acted mala fide. That is a right under the common law. However, to prove mala fides in such cases is virtually impossible and I am sure this will be conceded even by the hon. member for Prinshof.

Read the case of Gool vs. The Minister of Justice.

The hon. member for Odendaalsrus referred to Section 8bis and it is with this section that I am now dealing. In the case of mala fides there is a common law right. Section 8bis does not give any greater rights. On the contrary. It limits this common law right because it provides that the application must be made within a certain period of time. Therefore, the point I wish to emphasize is that there is no legal right of appeal against a decision of the liquidator as to who is or who is not a person who should be on the list—that is to say a communist. There is no right of appeal.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 30 (2) and debate adjourned until Monday.

The House proceeded to the consideration of private members’ business.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

I think that we here in South Africa are in a more fortunate position to-day than was the case a few months or even a few weeks ago. At that time large parts of our country were still being subjected to the worst strangle-hold known to us, drought. With the exception of certain parts in the interior of the Cape, where the drought has been prevailing for quite a number of years, there are indications to-day that we have most probably come to the end of a prolonged disaster. It would be only natural therefore if most of us were overjoyed at the new development. I hope however, that we will not allow our joyful feelings to run away with us to such an extent that we will overlook the urgency of the steps which are being advocted in this motion. I hope therefore that we shall not be blinded by the rosy prospects which are at present prevailing in large parts of our country as a result of the rains.

I have taken the trouble to go through the newspaper reports since 1958, and let me tell you that there was not a single year in which we were completely free from drought. Not a single year. Practically every year therefore we have been faced with drought conditions, whether localized or country-wide. I am convinced that if we went further back than 1958 we would find the same disturbing state of affairs. That is why it would only be reasonable to assume that this will be the case in the future as well. I do not know whether it will again assume such serious proportions, but that we will have to prepare ourselves for more droughts is virtually certain. That is why this motion is such an urgent one. There are so many people who have been so hard hit by the drought that they will find it very difficult to recover, and the prospects are that they will barely have been rehabilitated when they will once more be overtaken by calamity. I do not have the figures at my disposal, but I will not be surprised to learn that the rate of depopulation of the rural areas during the past two or three years has been the highest in our entire history. What effect this has already had and will still have on the economy of the rural areas can scarcely be defined. During the past year or two we have seen how, time and again, commerce and industry have asked that steps be taken to help the farmers.

Commerce and industry have done this because they were aware of the difficult circumstances in which these people had found themselves. The drought entailed a loss to our country of millions of rands’ worth of foreign currency. It was also the primary cause of our having to spend millions in order to supplement deficits in the production of agricultural products in our country. During the past few years, for example, we have not been able to export maize. Our wool clip has suffered considerable damage—not only was the weight less, but the quality of the wool was lower. Our wheat harvests were poorer, and consequently we had to import larger quantities of wheat. I do not even want to talk about the quantities of dairy products which we have had to import during the past few years. It ought to be clear to all of us that South Africa has, directly and indirectly, suffered millions of rands’ worth of damage as a result of the great drought which we experienced. It is also certain that, as a result of the drought, the contribution of the agricultural sector to the national income in relation to other sectors will decrease even more. Droughts are quite unproductive. Not only do farm labourers and expensive machinery such as trucks and tractors have to be put to daily use to supply millions of head of cattle with fodder, but all other farming activity comes to a standstill when a drought is prevailing. Nobody can doubt that indirectly the drought has also led to great expenditure. Such a state of affairs has necessarily entailed steps on the part of the State, It has also entailed greater steps on the part of the farming organizations, in order to help one another as never before. Everybody is grateful for that, but in spite of State aid as well as mutual aid amongst farmers, it was often either too late or insufficient.

I do not want to minimize the aid which was rendered by the State. The farmers are tremendously grateful for that aid which took the form of rebates, subsidies and loans. It was either the one thing or the other. Either the drought was so prevailing and protracted that whatever help could be given was inadequate because the veld and the animals were exhausted too soon, or because additional fodder was not given in time. Never before have our supplies of fodder in the country been so deplenished as they have during this drought. Our supplies were entirely inadequate for such conditions, with the result that fodder was almost unpurchaseable for the average farmer.

I am referring particularly to lucerne. There was a tremendous shortage of lucerne and it became too expensive for the average farmer. I want to express the heartfelt wish that we in this country will be given a chance to recuperate before such a disaster strikes us again. In my opinion our plans are at present still too confused to be able to deal with such a situation should it reoccur. I am not blaming anybody for that. I have already said it can be that the drought was either too prolonged, so that in spite of any aid which was given one was not able to deal with the situation, or otherwise the aid given was not enough. However, the great question now is whether South Africa is going to be prepared to learn from this experience. There are of course certain people who believe that additional shifts of population from the agricultural sector is a natural phenomenon. They will therefore be satisfied with emergency measures which are established on a temporary basis only. The people who regard a flow from the agricultural sector to another sector as a natural phenomenon will be satisfied with that, but unfortunately I am not one of those who accepts that it is a natural flow and that it is something one can do nothing about.

The rate at which people are leaving the rural areas is alarming. That is why our planning should be adjusted to a stable, prosperous and satisfied agricultural community. One of the ways of achieving this is to safeguard them as far as possible from the consequences of droughts. Unfortunately I cannot to-day discuss one of the causes of droughts, the shortage of water, because there is another motion on the Order Paper. That is why I want to confine myself to the ways in which a satisfied and prosperous agricultural community may be ensured. That may be done by safeguarding them as far as possible from the consequences of droughts. It is wrong to say that no losses will be suffered in droughts. If there is a drought one must expect losses of one kind or another to occur. Even if the farmer has at his disposal all the capital and means of withdrawing all his stock from their natural grazing and feeding them artificially, with pill rations for example, he still suffers tremendous damage because his land will yield no interest. I believe that the biggest mistake which is being made, however, is to keep animals on the veld, particularly in large camps, and then in addition feed them artificially there. There are a number of considerations which must be borne in mind.

In the first place we shall have to try to let the animals manage as long as possible on natural grazing without incurring large-scale losses. In other words, the onus will rest on the farmer himself to become conservation-conscious so that he, by following the correct practice, will be able to resist the drought as long as possible without assistance. The farmer himself will have to make that sacrifice. But, in the second place, I believe that over and above central fodder storage places, every stock farm should have extra supplies of hay and maize in silo for at least a year in advance, even in the Karoo. I hope to indicate how this may be done, even in the Karoo. The other consideration is that as soon as the grazing becomes exhausted the animals must be removed and must receive artificial rations for the rest of the drought and for at least— and here I am not quite certain whether this is correct—a number of months after rains have fallen. If they are still being fed then it will not be necessary to return them to the veld. I shall tell you why. With this drought it was our experience that the moment it rained the people returned their animals to the veld, and what happened? Tribulosis and quick-sickness broke out and tremendous damage was done. I do not blame them for doing that. They were forced to do so as a result of the fact that the drought was so prolonged. When the rains come the farmer is only too glad that he will not have to spend any more money on fodder and returns the stock to the veld immediately.

The ideal state of affairs would be for each stock farmer to be organized in such a way that withdrawn stock can be fed on his own land in kraals or in small camps. When this feeding takes place there is at least no further exhaustion of his land. If we agree that feeding in the veld should not take place during droughts then I believe that the following things should be done. In the first place, the farmer must be assisted to build up his own fodder bank. Barns for storage purposes should be subsidized. I am also certain that where kraals have to be built for the feeding of animals, where water has to be laid on and feeding troughs built, that should also be subsidized. It is a tremendously expensive undertaking for a farmer to organize his affairs in such a way that he is able to feed 3,000 sheep or 5,000 head of cattle under those conditions. I think that it will require tremendous capital liabilities from most farmers in order to safeguard themselves from the next drought and at the same time tackle such an undertaking themselves. We know that the erection of barns for the storage of lucerne and fodder is not being subsidized, and I believe that the State should pay attention to this matter and see whether it is not possible to do so. Furthermore the planting of lucerne or other fodder on every stock-farmer’s land, if it is possible to do so, should be encouraged so that he can build up his own supplies in the event of such a contingency, and I believe that this should also be subsidized. They must be helped to plant grazing from which hay can be made. If a farmer has no irrigation land he should be given a 50 per cent subsidy in order to purchase lucerne from elsewhere. It should be done so as to enable him to build up enough fodder for one year and in that case additional State aid will only be necessary after a year of drought.

I have more or less indicated all the things I consider can be done before a drought. I do not want to discuss what can be done during a drought because we know what emergency measures the Minister introduced and it is not necessary to discuss them any further. I shall deal with the other points in regard to the different financial aid schemes later on. But the point I want to make is this. We have suffered such tremendous damage over the past four years that I think the stock farmer in particular, as well as the State, will have to make a choice. Either we are prepared to suffer these losses every year, or we are prepared to say once and for all that we are going to spend enough money now to help the farmer to manage to the best of his ability so that we do not suffer these direct losses which we have suffered over the past few years.

The hon. the Minister might say that this is the ideal state of affairs, but I cannot understand at all how South Africa, the national economy as a whole as well as the tax-payer, can stand by and watch while we suffer greater and greater losses each year because we do not have enough agricultural products to export, thus entailing our having to spend more money on the importation of agricultural products, whereas it is possible for us here to make provision to safeguard ourselves from the consequences of such droughts. I should like us to give some attention to that point to-day. I think South Africa is capable of making that sacrifice and that the tax-payer is also prepared to do so. If it is possible for us to spend more money in order to minimize the consequences of droughts, I think that the country will be prepared to make those sacrifices.

But what happens after the drought? Then there is the question of the rehabilitation of the land and of the farmer himself. Although the rehabilitation of the land is an important question, the rehabilitation of the farmer is in my opinion of greater value. Many of them are broken in body and spirit and it will also be necessary to build up their physical and spiritual resources. One of the easiest ways of building them up spiritually is by giving them as little to worry about as possible. Particularly after this drought I am more than ever of the opinion that a national emergency committee should be established, and if it is necessary to consolidate the burden of debt which a farmer owes the State or to place a moratorium on that burden of debt, then such a permanent emergency committee should be able to do so. Farmers who have already left the land as a result of the drought will have to be brought back, if they choose to do so, at the earliest possible opportunity, when we are able to give them State-owned land again.

The Government has already admitted the principle that the removal of stock in terms of its veld reclamation programme in drought disaster areas is a very good principle. We on this side admit that it is an exceptionally good principle, but in regard to this matter I should just like to ask the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services, who introduced this scheme, to consider these few thoughts on the matter. There are certain flaws in that scheme. In the first instance it will only be applied in a disaster area. I wonder whether it should not be made to apply much further afield. In the second place I want to tell the hon. the Minister that I think that the R8 per head of cattle or R8 per six small-stock units is totally inadequate under these circumstances. There are few farmers who have gone in for this scheme, they can see no advantage in it. If those amounts were increased I think more people would be prepared to go in for that scheme.

Over and above the question of land therefore, I think that the most important rehabilitation work which can be done is the rehabilitation of the farmer himself. The hon. the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing and the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services must do everything in their power, not only to free those people and leave them free, but also to win them back to our agricultural industry, for we simply cannot lose them, nor do I believe that the country can afford to lose them. I believe that now is the right time to build buffers against the next drought which South Africa will again have to face. It is in this spirit that I am moving this motion here to-day, not in order to make political capital from a serious state of affairs which has arisen but in order to make an honest appeal to the hon. the Minister for steps to be taken now. If we on this side of the House can give the Government any support in this respect then we shall do so with the greatest of pleasure because we know that it is very definitely the gravest domestic question with which South Africa is faced at the present moment.

Before replying to a number of ideas expressed by the hon. member for Newton Park I should like to move as an amendment—

1. (a) retain their stud stock;
2. (b) continue, in spite of poor harvest, to produce cash crops;
3. (c) give their grazing an opportunity to re cover; and
4. (d) obtain credit at a lower rate of interest”.

The hon. member for Newton Park introduced his motion in a very calm way, but I am disappointed by the fact that he did not really say anything constructive. He spoke about the serious effect which the prolonged drought had had on our economy; that is general knowledge, but he also said that the drought was of such long duration that nobody could do anything about it even though they had wanted to. He made a study of the duration of the drought and he quoted from a number of newspaper clippings to prove his statements. He suggested that there should be a removal of stock from the grazing lands, but he did not tell us whether coercive measures by means of legislation should be applied or whether it should take place by means of instruction. Yet, instruction is always available to the farmer and very good instruction is being supplied. He put forward an idealistic suggestion in connection with a permanent 50 per cent subsidy on lucerne, a suggestion which is of course totally impracticable.

Why?

The hon. member also spoke about the rehabilitation of the farmer. He said that it was essential, as a result of the droughts experienced, that attempts at rehabilitation would have to be made and that farmers who had had to leave the rural areas would have to brought back, but he did not say a single word about the rehabilitation measures which alread exist. He also lost sight of the fact that the Marais Commission is at this moment instituting an inquiry into the entire agricultural industry. We cannot anticipate that Commission’s report at this stage, can we? All these things which the hon. member mentioned here will surely be covered by that thorough inquiry, because the Commission is investigating the entire agricultural industry in all its facets, and it would be entirely uncalled for at this stage to tackle new rehabilitation measures apart from those which have been in force for years.

Actually the hon. member’s motion emphasized three points. In the first place it emphasized that the present steps being taken to avoid losses are inadequate; he also said that the assistance which had been rendered, although the people were grateful for it, had come too late and had been insufficient. In the second place he asked for steps to be taken to rehabilitate the farmer; he did not have much to say about that. In the third place he asked for the rehabilitation and reclamation of our soil.

I just want to go into a few of these arguments briefly. The hon. member stated that the assistance was inadequate, that it had come too late and that there had not been enough of it. If that had been the case, then surely the results would have been reflected in the present conditions; then it would surely have been reflected in the number of livestock in the country at this stage after the drought. It is unfortunately so that we do not at this stage know precisely how many cattle and sheep we have but we do have a general idea of what the numbers are to-day. In July of last year the number of cattle, as far as the White farmers only were concerned, totalled 8,279,000, and there had been a very small decrease—I think it was less than 2 per cent— in comparison with the position a few years ago, and that despite the fact that the number of cattle slaughtered during 1964-’65 had increased by 5.7 per cent. Let us consider the number of sheep. In spite of the serious drought, our total number of sheep has not decreased, it has increased. In July, 1964, our total number of sheep was 37.5 million and in July, 1966, it was 39.8 million, more than 2 million more, and that in spite of what was perhaps the most serious drought in this country in living memory.

The hon. member spoke about the poor wool yields, but is the hon. member not aware of the fact that the 1965-’66 wool season produced a record yield of 328 million pounds? The fact that our total number of cattle and sheep has either remained constant or increased is undeniable proof that stock losses as a result of the drought have been restricted to an absolute minimum in comparison with stock losses in previous droughts. It also proves that in the past few decades or more a very much greater degree of efficiency has been introduced on our farms; that our farms and farming operations are very much better planned. It also proves that our marketing methods are better, but for me it is also proof of the very excellent effectiveness of the emergency assistance which the Government rendered in order to combat these serious drought conditions. The hon. member for Newton Park said that this was not the right time to discuss the State aid schemes, but he said that that aid had come too late and that it had been insufficient, and because he has made that accusation I am compelled to discuss that question of State aid. I want to prove that that State aid was not only adequate and effective but that it was directly responsible for making it possible for our agricultural industry to keep functioning on a very sound economic basis. Mr. Speaker, what are the steps taken by the Government? Let me indicate briefly what they were. In the first place we had the Railway rebates on the transportation of cattle and fodder. Those rebates were not less than 75 per cent. Railway rebates are an old principle; they have been applied in the past but various adjustments were made in connection with this emergency aid. A year or so ago rebates were also introduced on the private transportation of cattle and cattle fodder. In addition new loan schemes were introduced to help the drought-stricken farmers. Loan schemes were for example introduced for the purchasing of cattle fodder and cattle licks. Loan schemes were introduced in respect of fuel for the farmer’s own vehicles to be used for the transportation of cattle or cattle fodder. Loans were made available to compensate private contractors for the transportation of cattle or cattle fodder. Loans were made available for the hiring of grazing for sheep and cattle, for cattle licks, etc. But the Government went much further, further than ever before. Loans were made available for the rations of farm labourers in certain districts where it became necessary. Loans, up to a certain maximum, were made available for farmers themselves to cover the maintenance costs of the family itself. Those were new steps. Those steps were not only very welcome, they were also very effective and they helped to keep the people in the rural areas and on the farms. If the hon. member wanted to criticize this assistance, and if he wanted to label it as being too little or having come too late, then I would have expected him to have said what other steps should have been taken, steps which would not have affected the autonomy and the independence of the farmer, nor hurt his sense of honour. The steps which were taken were effective and did not harm this essential principle in any way.

Many more emergency schemes were established and many old schemes were expanded. During this drought, production loans were made constantly applicable and they will in future continue to be constantly applicable. Those production loans were increased to a maximum of R4,000 per unit, because the drought, as it increased in intensity, had to affect a greater number of people. A subsidy scheme for the purchase of fodder was established, a scheme which contributed a very great deal not only to the preservation of the farmer on his farm but also to the preservation of the cattle on his farm. This subsidy scheme of 50 per cent was of very great assistance— even more so than any other scheme in my opinion—in keeping the people on their farms and helping them to retain their self-respect. Considerable amounts were made available to organized agriculture for the organization of fodder schemes which would enable people to help themselves. In regard to emergency schemes tremendously large amounts have been made available and spent during the past three years alone. In this way almost R10 million was made available to drought-stricken farmers during 1965-’66 alone.

What has been the result of all this assistance? Numerous farmers who would otherwise not have been able to remain on their farms, owing to the long duration and seriousness of the drought, were able to continue with their farming activities in the normal way. They were able to continue with their agricultural activities. As I have already said, the direct result of this emergency aid was that stock losses on the farms in the drought-stricken areas were restricted to an absolute minimum.

I should now like to learn from Opposition speakers in what respect this emergency assistance was insufficient and in what respect and when did it come too late? What I heard from the hon. member for Newton Park was a mere generalization and allegation, but no proof whatsoever was adduced in support of his allegations.

I come now to the next point of the hon. member’s motion, namely that of rehabilitation attempts. We have just had magnificent rains, and I think the hon. member must have prepared the wording of his motion as well as his speech before we had these magnificent rains in the northern provinces. I am afraid that the criticism from hon. members on the opposite side is going to be doused, as in the case of many of the other things which they have attempted. The hon. member is now asking for rehabilitation measures. What does the hon. member want now? General rains have just fallen in large areas of the drought-stricken parts of our country. However, rain has not yet fallen in all the drought-stricken areas. Does the hon. member want these emergency measures or rehabilitation measures to be announced immediately?

Most certainly, yes.

That hon. member wants it now. The Marais Commission which is investigating those conditions, no longer counts as far as those hon. members are concerned. They also requested a Commission, but now hon. members on that side want the Commission to be ignored. Apparently that investigation must now be a mere smokescreen for the farmers. I now want to ask the hon. member for East London (City) who, as he states, is interested in agriculture, whether he has submitted a memorandum to the commission of inquiry.

Have you?

No, I have not, but I am quite satisfied with the inquiry as it is taking place at present. I am quite satisfied with the way in which organized agriculture will give evidence before that Commission. I am also prepared to accept the report of the Commission. I refuse to anticipate the Commission and to ignore them.

In the meantime there are very important rehabilitation measures which are being introduced. What did the Land Bank do? What does it envisage for the rehabilitation of our farmers; let us glance at a statement made by the Land Bank in its latest report. I am quoting from paragraph 2—

That is the policy of the Land Bank Board. What is more, the Land Bank has already during the past number of years made tremendously large amounts available, not only in the form of loans for the purchasing of land and not only for the redemption of loans.

It has also made large amounts available for hypothetic loans, for the purchase of stock, for equipment, and for improvement to farms, etc. I have a wealth of figures here to prove all these things, but unfortunately there is no time to quote them all.

In conclusion I want to say a few words in regard to rehabilitation measures which were introduced by the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure, an Act which was passed by this Parliament last year, and which is specifically intended to rehabilitate people in the rural areas. The way in which this Department is setting about its task, although it has not yet had a chance to endure the test of time, is furnishing clear promise that it is going to take very effective action. The amount which it has made available is enormous, and will, more than anything else, contribute towards the rehabilitation of our farmers.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this motion put before the House by the hon. member for Newton Park. I think that we must commend him for moving this motion at this very critical period in the history of the agricultural industry in South Africa. Very often as one listens to speeches of hon. members on the other side of the House, one gets the impression that all is well in the field of agriculture in this country. I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. member for Winburg. His speech took the normal pattern in that he indicated that this Government in his opinion has done all that is possible to help the farmer in South Africa. I got the impression that the brightest industry and the brightest undertaking in which one could take part in South Africa, if I am to judge by the speech of the hon. member, is agriculture. I am surprised also when I hear these speeches by the hon. member. Then I think back to some of the Nationalist Party congresses of previous years and I think of the uproar that took place at those congresses and the degree of dissatisfaction which was expressed at those congresses. It was not surprising that, as a result of all the intervention on the part of the farmers, we ultimately had our late Prime Minister intervening and deciding that the complaints of these farmers were in fact valid. He seemed to create the impression that his Government had not done everything for the farmers that it should have done. In the light of what was said there he took the decision to appoint a commission to investigate these matters. We of the United Party can only say that we endorse in the strongest terms the action taken by the late Prime Minister. If ever there was a crying need for proper investigation, it is for an investigation of this kind.

We have only to read the terms of reference of this Commission to get an indication of how serious the matter appeared to the late Prime Minister. The terms of reference say that this Commission “must investigate and try to determine in which respect, in which branches and in which regions the present agricultural system falls short and why, and must make recommendations for the elimination of these shortcomings”. Obviously there are shortcomings and we on this side of the House endorse this as we know of these shortcomings.

From which newspaper does that extract come?

It is an English newspaper. Mr. Speaker, the article continues:

These are matters on which we on the Opposition side of the House have been hammering year after year. The Government has apparently ignored our recommendations and that is why we find to-day that the farming community has lost confidence in agriculture as a way of life. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, I am not saying things which are incorrect. Being a farmer and moving amongst the farming community, I hear these references day after day: “What is our future? How are we going to get rehabilitated? How are we going to make a living?” and so on. I make bold to say that at the present time the greatest responsibility that this Government has is to take the steps that are necessary to restore confidence in the farming industry. I make bold to say that they have only got to listen to the Opposition and they will know what steps to take. They have heard of the responsible steps they ought to take. But if they do not take them, we shall in the very near future find ourselves in the position where we have not got sufficient food to feed the population in this country. The point is that many of the countries from which we in the past have imported foodstuffs are finding that their supplies are drying up. It has been said by the hon. Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing that there is no need to give a great deal of attention to putting our dairy industry onto a sound foundation because we can import these products far more cheaply from other countries. I make bold to say that the time is not far distant when those products will not be forthcoming from other countries. We must take these steps now and as energetically as we can to see that not only the dairy industry but also every other aspect of agriculture is put on a sound foundation.

When did the hon. the Minister say that?

Mr. Speaker, I am not prepared to answer that question, but I do want to say that after a speech which I made in this House the hon. the Minister in reply to a point I raised in connection with the dairy industry indicated that dairy products were more cheaply available from overseas and therefore the importation of these products seemed a better proposition. The

matter which I should like to raise with the hon. the Minister is that of trying to establish a basis whereby the farmer is guaranteed a stable price, a stable income for agriculture for at least five years ahead.

Do you mean a stable income or a stable price?

A stable income. The hon. the Minister mentions the question of price. We are more interested in the question of a stable income because we know to what extent the purchasing power of the rand is going down. We know to what extent under this Government labour costs are going up and to what extent production costs are going up. What we therefore want and what the farmer wants is a stable income for the foreseeable future.

Does

that apply to next year’s maize crop as well?

If the Government is able to do that and I believe that if they take the advice of the Opposition they will be able to achieve that result, then there will again be confidence restored in the agricultural sector of our community. What is happening to-day? The young people who should be our future farmers have lost faith in agriculture and they are streaming to the towns by the hundred. They are the people whom we in the agricultural sphere can ill afford to lose. In my own district alone I know of dozens who because they have no further faith in the policy of this Government, have no further faith in the future of agriculture and are leaving the land. I believe that the Government must take steps as soon as possible to reverse this process.

Another great problem with which we are faced in the sphere of agriculture is the question of distribution costs. I believe that the time has come that the Government must take urgent steps; I will even go so far as to recommend that they must appoint a commission to get on with the job and investigate the great problem of the distribution of agricultural products. I was told only a few days ago of a case in Ermelo where a farmer producing milk was getting 25c per gallon. That very same milk was being bought in Johannesburg at the cost of 64c per gallon. Surely occurrences of that nature cannot be tolerated and allowed to continue. In what way is this Government trying to assist the farmer in respect of housing for his non-European labourers? What assistance do they get? What happens in the Cape Province, Sir? We provide bigger and better houses for our non-European employees and then the divisional council comes along and puts an extra tax on these houses. There is no assistance given to the farmer, unlike his friend in the city, to allow these houses to be built on the same basis of credit and assistance. The farmer has to paddle the canoe himself.

In the field of education, we need a better qualified labour force to deal with the more technical side of farming. Farming has become a more technical undertaking. We need better qualified labourers. What steps is this Government taking to assist the farmer to get a better qualified labour force? I think that there is a wide field open. There is much to be done in regard to this particular matter.

Another important aspect of the matter is to keep our production costs lower. What is this Government doing to provide cheaper electrification for the rural communities? Very little has been done. Just think what a great role cheap electricity could play to keep the cost of production down. There is another matter I should like to raise, namely the question of soil conservation. I think the Government has taken a very wise step. I see now that in terms of the Soil Conservation Act they have introduced a system whereby farmers can become part-time assistant extension officers or employed personnel. They are paid R11 per day and their travelling expenses are paid. The trouble has been that soil conservation cannot be implemented sufficiently well to bring this matter under control, because there has been a shortage of personnel. Now the Government has made what I call a very good move, but as usual, Sir, this whole system, as splendid as it is, like all other aspects of the administration of the Soil Conservation Act, is being bogged down by red tape. Hundreds of forms have to be filled in and it takes a very long time before a man can be appointed. [Interjection.] The hon. the Minister laughs but these are things which deserve his fullest attention, because if they do not receive his attention, soil erosion will continue to play havoc in this country. What we want is more action on the part of this Government and far less talk and, I would say, a little less laughter. What we want is liaison between the officials of the Department and the farmers, and that is not taking place. I wonder if the hon. the Minister realizes to what a small extent the officials in the Departments of Agriculture are making effective contact with the farmers in this country. They should be out on the farms discussing the farmers’ problems with them, advising them and helping them. What is actually happening is that they stay in their offices and do clerical work.

What are the farmers doing to make contact?

I believe that these people can make a great contribution if they could get out, help the farmers, and encourage experimentation by the farmers. There are many farmers in this country who are thoroughly capable of making a valuable contribution by means of the experiments which they are undertaking. The Government is making no use whatsoever of the experiments those farmers are making. Very often the efforts which they do undertake are absolutely stifled by the inaction of this Government. Those people can serve a useful purpose and I appeal to the Government to make better use of the experiments which those farmers are making on their own initiative.

I hope. Sir, that the motion which has been moved here by the hon. member for Newton Park will be given due consideration by the Government and that the steps he has recommended will be taken into account fully.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just sat down, I want to…

Congratulate.

I want to test the hon. member to see whether he really believes what he said. I want to put him to the test. He said that what he advocated was not that the farmers should receive a stable price, but a stable income. Is he prepared to have us stabilize the income of the maize farmers from this year’s crop on the basis of last year’s income? [Interjections.] I am just asking him the question. Is he prepared that we should stabilize the income of the farmers in the maize industry on the basis of last year’s income, plus 10 per cent, if he wants that?

What about the preceding years?

I am not speaking of the stability of prices. I am speaking of the statement made by the hon. member, and that related to the stability of income. He spoke on behalf of the Opposition, and now the hon. the Leader of the Opposition can answer me. Is it the policy of the United Party that the farmer should have stability of income? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition can answer this question if he likes. Is that his policy? [interjections.] I shall accept only “yes” or “no”. The hon. the Leader need only say “yes” or “no”. I want to tell the hon. member that he is propagating things in which he himself does not believe. That is the trouble with the United Party. They ask questions and they make statements in this House in which they themselves do not believe. Again I ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition —I see he is shaking his head. Is he prepared to say whether the agricultural industry should be stabilized in relation to income or in relation to prices? [Interjections.] Surely he can simply answer “yes” or “no”.

I am not as crafty as you are.

The Leader of the Opposition has not even the courage to say what that hon. member said, because he does not believe in that, and the hon. member does not believe in that either. The hon. member is propagating something in which he does not believe.

The hon. member made the further statement that at the congress the late Prime Minister had to promise the appointment of a commission of inquiry into agriculture. He made much ado of the fact that the commission of inquiry was appointed to prove how poor the position of agriculture was. That request came from various quarters, perhaps from the Opposition in the first instance, and from the agricultural unions and others. The commission was appointed. Now the agricultural departments have to beg the farmers’ organizations and the United Party to submit memorandums to the commission. We have to extend the period allowed for the submission of memorandums by three months, because no memorandums were submitted to the commission. If the inquiry was so terribly essential, I should think the first people to submit a memorandum would at least be the United Party. They are the ones who have been making accusations all these years. Here they have the opportunity of submitting such memorandums to the commission, whether as individuals or as a party or as a farming group in their party or through the agricultural unions. Why have they not done that? Why did we have to allow three months’ grace to get some memorandums submitted to the commission?

To-day, for a change, the hon. member for Newton Park showed a fairly objective grasp of the position of agriculture in our country. In the past I frequently asked him: When you introduce this kind of motion, try to make somewhat less political gain from the situation and try to contribute something positive to the agricultural industry, then you would be doing something. But the propaganda mongering of the United Party has never gained them anything. It has merely made them lose more and more all the time. It is time they made a contribution in the interests of the industry and not of their party. I agree with the hon. member that we are all grateful that such good rains have fallen in large parts of the country. It is a relief. The rain is most important, and its lack is one of the reasons why many farmers had such a hard time. In his motion the hon. member referred once again to the lack of planning in agriculture. This is not the first time we have heard that. We have been hearing that story for some years. I just want to refresh the hon. members’ memories.

Do you remember, Sir, how the same hon. members got up two years ago and said that for lack of planning all the dairy herds were being slaughtered, and that as a result of thatthere was a shortage of butter? The hon. member for East London (City) spoke of all the auctions where dairy herds were being sold, and he said that was the result of the Government’s policy. Fortunately the people did not believe the United Party, otherwise everybody would have thought we were heading for the greatest catastrophe as regards dairy production. I told hon. members that the steps to be taken in drought conditions should be such that they did not undermine the entire structure of agriculture. If one takes ill-conceived steps and conditions improve afterwards, one may undermine the entire structure of agriculture to such an extent that it will never recover. In the past hon. members said that there was not enough planning and that there was no incentive to make people keep their dairy herds. They brought the charge against the Government and myself that we were to blame for the fact that there was not enough butter and cheese in the country. I just want to ask: And now? On 14th January, 1966, a year ago, the weekly cheese production in South Africa was 577,000 lbs. In many parts of the country we have not even had enough rain yet. In many dairy districts it is still dry. In January, 1967. the cheese production was 963,0 lbs., or 80 per cent higher. Where did the cows come from? If there are no cows, I must say the extension work done by the hon. the Minister for Agricultural Technical Services must be wonderful, to increase the production of the cows so tremendously. But let us consider other figures. Take butter. On 14th January, last year, the weekly butter production was 1.7 million lbs. What is it now? It is 2.5 million lbs., an increase of 760,000 lbs. of butter in the corresponding week.

In one year.

No, for the corresponding week. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has become so confused by the statements made by his members that he no longer knows the difference between a year and a week. It was in the corresponding week. The figures will increase even more after those dry regions have also had rain. But my point is that the United Party made the accusation that the dairy industry was not receiving adequate assistance, and that the Government did not encourage it, and that the cows were all being slaughtered, and here we have the position that within a week, compared with last year, our cheese production increased by 80 per cent and our dairy production by almost 40 per cent. Let the hon. member take out his auction pamphlets again and show us what became of the cows that were all sold. Where have the cows come from now?

The other accusation made against us was that the Government did not make adequate credit available to agriculture to enable the farmer to produce. That is what the hon. member said last year. Unless new circumstances arise, we are going to harvest at least 80 million bags of maize this year. Now I ask you, if there was no credit for agriculture, where did the farmers get the money to sow such a crop? I do not want to bore you with figures, but do you know what it means? If the maize crop is true to its promise, it may mean that the income of the maize farmer will exceed that of last year by R90 million—the gross income. But the hon. members said the farmers could not get credit from the State to produce, and that the State failed to plan. No, I think the hon. members on the opposite side should not act like a weathervane when they criticize, and that is what they have been doing for the past years. When it was dry, they were like a weathervane. They reminded me of that little couple who indicate the weather. Aunt Sannie van Niekerk always emerged as the wife who predicted storm clouds, and now the hon. member for Walmer appears as the husband who indicates fair weather. No, it is the way in which the Government handled this matter and enabled the farmer, under these most difficult circumstances, not only to increase his production once better times had come and to retain his stock, but also enabled the crop farmer, by means of credit advanced by the Agricultural Credit Board and by the Land Bank and guaranteed by the State, to produce once times improved. Obviously, if it does not rain, it goes without saying that one cannot harvest those crops, but the Government did everything in its ability to enable the farmers to keep producing once times improved, and nobody will deny that.

In his speech the hon. member said once again that markets should be sought for the possible surpluses that might arise, and the Government should provide the markets. I agree with him.

I did not say that in this debate.

It does not matter in which debate you said it. It so happens that the hon. member is always speaking. That merely goes to show what a difficult industry agriculture is in South Africa, under the climatic conditions that obtain here. Whereas, last year 15 million to 20 million lbs. of butter had to be imported, the position may easily arise that before the end of the year there may be a surplus of 20 million pounds if production is maintained on the same scale as at present, and then that butter would have to be exported, and it has no market abroad because nobody wants it. If that happens, some plan will have to be devised. One cannot seek a market for a product which is not there, and that is what I have always wanted hon. members on the opposite side to admit. One can seek a market for a product only if one has that product to export.

We have no overseas market for butter.

Now the hon. member has shown some sense, and has realized that we do not have a market there, and I suppose the hon. member also realizes that with the best intentions in the world we cannot get a market there.

Why not?

Yes, one can get a market there at a price of 7c or 8c a pound. One can get a market, but one has to get a price for the product.

Hon. members of the Opposition came up with a grand gesture to-day and said: “We want to thank the Government for the mite of assistance given to the farmers, but the assistance which is given is usually too little and too late.” I think I have now given enough examples to show that where it rained the assistance was timeous and not too little to yield the required production in the cases I mentioned.

Apart from the first point raised in his motion, the hon. member made some proposals as to what should be done in future in the event of further droughts. The hon. member devised some fine-sounding suggestions, but unfortunately those suggestions are not practicable. I do not want to argue politics with the hon. member; I am hoping that for once in a while we can debate this matter like grown-up people across the floor of the House. The hon. member suggested that farmers should be enabled to store a year’s supply of fodder on their farms, and that such storing should be subsidized. That is a very fine idea: I agree with the hon. member, but how would the hon. member apply that in practice? Once a farmer has stored a year’s fodder on his farm, how is he going to ensure in practice that that farmer will keep the fodder until it is dry again, in order to use it then? What guarantee can the hon. member offer that the farmer will not use that opportunity to keep more stock on his farm and to have the farm over-grazed even further? [Interjections.] No. I just want to show the hon. member how impracticable his suggestion is. The hon. member knows the farmers, and I know them too. Is he trying to tell me…

They are not crooks.

No, I am not saying they are crooks. If one gives a farmer the opportunity, by means of a subsidy, to store a year’s supply of fodder on his farm, and the grazing on his farm is good, will the hon. member tell me that he is not going to keep more stock on that farm once he knows that he can use the fodder in the event of a drought?

But he has to carry out his conservation works…

Now the hon. member wants to run away from his own proposal.

Why are you arguing about my motion? Let the Department consider it.

Surely I am the Minister; I can also consider it. What does the hon. member think I am doing here?

But I want to go further in connection with that statement made by the hon. member. I am not saying it is all that impossible to put it into practice, if one does what I mentioned at a meeting some weeks ago, and what the hon. member criticized in this House. I said that once this drought had passed and drought relief had to be granted again, we should grant the relief more on an achievement basis, in correspondence with the achievement of the farmer himself. The hon. member got up here and tried to poke fun at that. I now want to ask him, what is wrong with that? If one gives the farmer a subsidy on soil conservation works and a subsidy, as the hon. member advocated here, to erect buildings and to store fodder, and if one gives him a subsidy on the transportation costs of that fodder, and he failed to carry out his soil conservation works or overstocked his farm, would the hon. member still say that he should receive assistance?

Did you hear what the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services said?

I am now dealing with the hon. member; I have nothing to do with the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services. I am asking the hon. member a simple question. We are debating this matter as grown-ups; let the hon. member answer my question. If the State has subsidized a man and given him loans to do soil conservation work…

How are you going to judge his achievement?

The hon. member must listen. Let us presume the State gave a man subsidies and loans to carry out soil conservation works, and that the State gave him a loan to erect a shed for storing fodder, and that the State gave him a subsidy on the transportation of that fodder, and that there has now been a year of drought and that fodder is exhausted; now the man comes along and asks for a subsidy on fodder, but in the meanwhile he has not looked after those soil conservation works he carried out, he has over-stocked his farm, etc. Would the hon. member still plead that he should get assistance unconditionally, without an achievement test? That is a simple question; I do not want to quarrel with the hon. member. The hon. member need simply reply “yes” or “no”.

How can a man get a subsidy on his soil conservation works unless he carries out those works?

But let us go further. The hon. member is only concerned with agricultural problems here in Parliament, apart from his own agricultural problems. But I am not concerned with them only here in Parliament; I am concerned with the implementation of the policy, and I want to make this statement: When State assistance is given, as happened during this drought, particularly in the form of subsidies, then the farmer who made least provision gets the subsidy first, and the one who made best provision is the last one to get the subsidy. The farmer who did most over-stocking gets into trouble first; the farmer who made no provision for fodder is first to qualify for fodder; the farmer who restricted the stock numbers on his farm and who made provision for fodder is the last person to receive a subsidy. In the hon. member’s opinion, is it right that that should be so? What I said was that in future the farmer who over-grazed his land and who failed to make the necessary provision where he had the chance to do so, would be judged according to his achievement. In this regard I just want to mention one example. A certain district in our country applies for a fodder subsidy; it is dry, not as terribly dry as in many other parts, but it is dry, and the farmers in the district are having a hard time. I said I should like to see what the position was in that district and what the position had been in recent times. I then caused an analysis to be made of that district. The analysis was made in respect of the eight-year period from 1958 to 1966. For five of those eight years that district was on the drought list of districts qualifying for transport rebates, etc. In 1963, when we had a fairly good maize crop, one of the largest we had ever had, that district produced 820,000 bags of maize. Last year, when it applied for a subsidy on fodder, it produced 940,000 bags, i.e. 120,000 bags more. In 1960, during this eight-year period in which the district experienced five years of drought, its stock numbers totalled 66,000, and last year when it applied its stock numbers totalled 84,000. In 1960 its sheep numbers totalled 240,000 and last year, when it applied, the figure was 420,000.

What about the Soil Conservation Act?

That is precisely why I mentioned an achievement test, but the hon. member was opposed to it. Let me ask the hon. member this question: Can a Minister use the tax-payers’ money to subsidize people who over-exploit their district in such a way? Is that what the hon. member propagates? That is why I said that in future such a district or such a farmer would qualify for a subsidy on fodder only if he has rendered proof that in the preceding years he kept his stock numbers within limits, that he carried out his soil conservation within limits and that he provided for fodder within limits. But the other day, during the debate on the motion of no confidence, the hon. member got up here and asked: “What does the Minister mean by that?”

That is all I asked.

No, that is not all the hon. member asked. He tried to present it in a ridiculous light in this House.

No, I did not.

Of course you did. I repeat, Sir, that if it is possible to exert such control over agriculture in South Africa, through a government or through a department, that each individual farmer’s activities can be investigated, it may be possible to consider the hon. member’s suggestions. But such control is absolutely impracticable and impossible.

Is the achievement test practicable?

Of course it is practicable. It will not be possible to exert hundred per cent control over every possible detail, but it is practicable. The assistance the Government gives the agricultural industry in South Africa from time to time is the most economic assistance possible, not only from the point of view of the State and of the tax-payer, but also from the point of view of the farmer. The most economic assistance that can be rendered is that which is rendered under the present system. There is so much talk of fodder banks. Surely we have fodder banks. Listening to all that talk of fodder banks, one would think we had nothing like a fodder bank at all. We always have 7 or 8 million bags of maize at hand in South Africa for any contingency.

But last year it was imported.

We imported to prevent the supply in hand from being depleted. That merely shows how we build up the maize fodder bank. Surely it does not matter in what way the reserves are accumulated—they are there.

Allow me to say something about our roughage. When roughage has to be stored for long periods and transported for long distances, it is the most expensive fodder one can get. For that reason the policy followed by the Government and by the Department has almost always—and that despite the fact that we had an extraordinary drought which of course aggravated matters even further—had the result that there was roughage available somewhere in South Africa. That has always been the case, except for the past few years, and more specifically the past year. It very seldom happened that roughage was not available some

where. It is much cheaper for the buyer and also for the concern that has to finance him —whether the tax-payer or the State or someone else—to have fodder transported at that stage at cheap railway rates. That is why we subsidize the railage by 75 per cent, in order to make it possible to transport that fodder. But if we were to do what the hon. member suggested, namely that every farmer must always, under all circumstances be subsidized by the Government to enable him to store a year’s supply of fodder, and that the State should subsidize him in respect of railage, etc., problems may arise. Can the hon. member not understand that the fodder may perhaps be stored for as long as eight years before the farmer will need it? What does the hon. member think it will cost if one considers the building in which the fodder is stored, the insurance premiums payable on it, if the fodder has to lie there for seven or eight years?

As I said, Sir, these proposals are impracticable. Practical proposals must be made, proposals that one can apply in practice, that will work. But the hon. member’s proposal will simply not work in practice. I do not want to criticize the hon. member for making these proposals. He is not the first to think about such things. Many people have thought about those things. But such proposals are simply not practicable and economic in their application, neither for the consumer nor for the farmer.

What else would you suggest as a solution? Do you think the present position is ideal?

I maintain, Mr. Speaker, that the farmer’s primary duty, if he is able to do so, is to grow fodder on his farm. If he cannot manage that himself, he should store fodder for himself in the good years, that is when such fodder is available to him. The hon. member knows that the latest drought is not a normal drought, and it then goes without saying that extraordinary steps have to be taken, which has in fact been done, to subsidize fodder. But in normal times and under normal circumstances one cannot take extraordinary steps. We must bear in mind that agriculture in South Africa is practised in a country which experiences periodic droughts. In many cases the latest drought has been a disastrous drought. If a person starts farming in a region visited by periodic droughts, he knows that he has to provide for the inevitable droughts. He must provide for them. If the drought continues for too long, then he can expect the State to help him. But under reasonable, normal circumstances the tax-payer cannot be expected to carry the burden of this kind of assistance to agriculture. One cannot expect that, nor will the tax-payer tolerate anything of that kind.

Oddly enough, it is tolerated in other countries, for example in Western Germany.

Order!

The hon. member said there must be planning for the next drought. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I should like to associate myself with what the hon. member for Newton Park said, and I also want to express the appreciation of this side of the House to the Government for the assistance rendered and still being rendered by the Government during the severe drought we have experienced and are still experiencing in large parts of the country. I am sorry that the hon. the Minister spoke so disparagingly about the appreciation expressed by this side in that he said that we wanted to qualify our appreciation by wanting to suggest that the assistance was nevertheless too little and too late. [Interjections.] I have not yet heard an hon. member opposite say that the assistance was in fact sufficient and timely. I should like to hear the argument of an hon. member opposite who maintains that the Government’s assistance during the drought was both timely and sufficient. However, I shall deal with that aspect later.

Mr. Speaker, I now want to say a few words about certain statements made here by the hon. member for Winburg when he spoke about the Marais Commission and the proposals it would apparently make in respect of agriculture and its rehabilitation. Now I want to ask the hon. member the following relevant question: “Does he want the rehabilitation of the farmer to wait until such time as the report of the Marais Commission has appeared?”

New measures must wait but existing measures must be continued.

The hon. member says that existing measures must be continued. However, a new formula for more effective rehabilitation must not be devised before the report of the Marais Commission has appeared. And that hon. member does not know when that will be. I want to proceed, Sir, because I shall in any case not get the reply. The hon. the Minister as well as the hon. member for Winburg made the accusation that this Party as such had not yet given evidence before the Commission in connection with its proposals in respect of agriculture. I thought every proposal we made anywhere we spoke, in this House too… [Interjections.] If hon. members opposite think that hon. members on this side are not members of agricultural organizations and corporations and that they do not give evidence through the medium of those organizations and corporations, I want to give hon. members opposite the assurance that there are in fact many such members on this side.

But I mentioned them all. I said neither the party, nor its caucus, nor its agricultural organizations had given evidence.

Mr. Speaker, the United Party has no more of an agricultural organization than the Nationalist Party. [Interjections.] A short while ago the hon. the Minister requested the hon. member for Newton Park to give him a chance to speak because the hon. member could speak again subsequently. I now want to address the same request to the Minister, namely to give me a chance because he too may speak again. His Vote will still be discussed—at present we are only dealing with legislation. The hon. member for Winburg proceeded and said that statistics proved that there had been an increase of 2 million in our sheep population over a certain period in spite of the severe drought and that the statistics in connection with our cattle population were not available as yet. Did he advance that as an argument to indicate that no losses were suffered during the drought?

No, I was referring to the effectiveness of the emergency assistance.

There are no statistics to show that if the emergency assistance had been more effective the increase would perhaps have been 4 million. If I compare the increase of livestock in this country to that in other countries, the hon. member for Winburg has to agree with me that there was a time when we had 43 million sheep in this country. He mentioned a present figure of 37 or 38 million. Is that such a wonderful achievement?

What about Australian sheep?

I wonder whether the hon. member knows anything about Australia to ask the question so readily. Their sheep increased from 60 million to 123 million, [interjections.] They have indeed suffered tremendous losses over the past number of years as the result of a drought. The hon. member for Winburg proceeded and referred to the methods employed by the Government to alleviate drought conditions. He mentioned a whole series, such as loans for the purchase of fodder, loans for renting grazing, etc. He then made the accusation that this side of the House made no positive contribution with regard to additional methods to be employed for rendering assistance during the critical conditions of drought.

[Inaudible.]

I am now speaking about the hon. member for Winburg. The hon. the Minister should listen for a change instead of making so many interjections. For how many years have we not been speaking of a fodder bank, something to which the Minister referred so disparagingly only a few minutes ago, as being one of the methods of combating drought conditions? A short while ago, however, the hon. the Minister mentioned the large quantities of mealie concentrates stored by us as being one such method. He also mentioned roughage, railage and storage costs. Roughage as such went out of fashion many years ago and the hon. the Minister knows it. Surely he knows that at present we mix and compress pellets and that these pellets take up less space. [Interjections.] Hon. members opposite may all make a noise at the same time; it will not put me off my stroke. The fact remains that we in this country have been searching for fodder amongst the mealie stalks and that it has been necessary for the Transvaal Agricultural Union to have such stalks cut along the roads because conditions regarding roughage were so critical. There was a time when the hon. the Minister interjected that I was speaking nonsense when I spoke of the heaps of chaff going to waste on the fields of the Western Province. Had all that chaff been compressed with lucerne and mealie-meal into pellet form, we would have been able to save large numbers of the stock which perished during the drought. But that is not all, we went further than that.

I want to come to the methods by which we would possibly have been able to be more successful in combating drought conditions and preventing stock from perishing, because that after all, is the first point of the motion moved here, namely whether there were methods which could have been employed to better advantage or more effectively in preventing stock losses from ever assuming such major proportions. We made repeated recommendations to the hon. the Minister that it was possible to design a scheme in terms of which it would be possible to finance a person who had grazing but no money and to lay down that when he sold his stock he would do so through the agency of a controller or a corporation or agents appointed for that purpose, because of the necessity to save large numbers of stock which were not saved during recent times. The fact remains that if a person had provided fodder for his stock until such time as he was no longer able to do so, he no longer had money, and his animals became scraggy, he no longer had a market for his stock either. If, however, he had had a market, that market would have been of such a nature that he would never have been able to rehabilitate himself, because he would practically have had to give away all his stock for nothing. The fact remains that buyers are financed, not in one country only but in many, to enable them to buy stock in districts where farmers are finding it difficult to keep their stock. What can the State lose by financing people to buy stock, people who have water and fencing, if these operations are conducted through proper marketing agencies and the first income is used for repaying the Government?

But we are doing so.

Yes, I shall come to that shortly. The hon. the Minister should not be in such a hurry and anticipate me. I shall come to that. What did the hon. the Minister do in his reply? First he attacked the hon. member for Walmer—because he tried to make a small political issue of the matter— because the hon. member said that we wanted a stable income for the farmer. Can the hon. the Minister be so naïve as to think that the hon. member did not mean that that should be calculated over a period of years and in addition take into account an increase in accordance with production costs?

I asked him a straightforward question. I asked him whether he meant stable prices or a stable income and his reply was a stable income.

Mr. Speaker, simply anyone will know that what the hon. member meant was “calculated over a period of years” to which should be added the increase in production costs. That indeed constitutes a stable income. [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister wants to speak more loudly and rapidly than I in this connection. I just want to make the statement that speakers on this side obviously meant an income calculated over a period of years and in which the increase in production costs and the decrease in the value of money had been taken into account. That, after all, constitutes a dividend on his investment. The hon. member could not have meant anything else. Was it necessary for the hon. the Minister to dwell on that point for so long and to ask whether he should take the mealie-farmer’s income for last year as a basis and whether that was the stable income of which the hon. member spoke? That was a farcical question.

The hon. the Minister too referred to the untimely proposals made by us at this stage in connection with rehabilitation. I shall deal with that in more detail shortly. First I want to say a few words in connection with the question of dairy produce. It is a privileged position to be in to be able to make use of one’s Department’s statistics for ascertaining what the production of butter and cheese was over any particular week while grazing was new and every milch-cow was producing at her best. The hon. the Minister knows as well as any other farmer in this House that when it comes to the month of August he will have to sing a different song. He mentioned a week in January when the entire dairy farming area…

I compared that to the corresponding week one year ago.

Yes, after the entire dairy-farming area has had abundant rains and while the pasturage was new and at its optimum. This is the week and the production which the hon. the Minister took as an example. The Minister knows as well as we do that when it comes to August and September he will have to sing a different song. Then these wonderful optimum conditions are something of the past and then it is a case of cows yielding perhaps 30 lbs. of milk per month instead of 300. As regards dairy production, the Minister referred to optimum conditions in an optimum period of production. Does the hon. the Minister want to tell me that no dairy herds have been sold and destroyed? There used to be so many dairy herds that we could afford to have them slaughtered and the Minister wanted to ridicule us for having said that conditions in the dairy industry caused dairy herds to be sold. [Interjections.] There can be no argument about that.

I have already referred to fodder banks. In the same spirit as that in which the hon. the Minister approached this matter a short while ago, I too want to say, “Let us look across the floor of this House to see whether we can find methods for improving this situation if it is not satisfactory enough”. It is not possible for me, nor will it be for the Minister, to say that everything has been done which can be done in connection with the drought and in connection with the rehabilitation of the farmers who have nearly been ruined.

I asked the hon. member to make practical suggestions.

If he will only give me a chance I shall try to do so. I have already mentioned what our views are and have been for a long period as regards measures to be taken in respect of drought conditions. As far as the rehabilitation of agriculture is concerned. I should now like to refer to the sheep-farming area of Dordrecht and the area along the mountain range as far as the higher-rainfall areas and up to the West Coast as far as Springbok. There are regions which have not had a single drop of rain up to now, for example Victoria West, and from the coastal region in a northerly direction up to Prieska, an area which measures 300 miles by 250 miles. Our hearts go out to them because they still find themselves in this predicament in the month of February. For those people a great deal will still have to be done as a result of prevailing drought conditions. I want to deal, however, with the large part which has had splendid rains, something about which we are all very grateful. How can we rehabilitate these people? I should like to divide these people into two categories. I want to speak of the crop farmer and of the stock farmer.

As regards the crop farmer, quite a number of methods have been employed for his rehabilitation. Facilities regarding his loans for seed and for fertilizers have been created for him by the corporations and by other bodies. Credit facilities have been created for him by means of credit loans and if he is able to pay 30 per cent of the amount in cash he can obtain the balance on credit from the corporation at a rate of interest as low as 5 per cent. The rate of interest is 5 per cent which in turn is financed by the banks. This is an arrangement by the banks for the corporations. I want to suggest, Sir, that agriculture finds itself in a reasonable position to try and rehabilitate itself. 66 per cent of a person’s expenditure in this connection becomes a loan at 5 per cent, even though he has to pay the rest. If he is able to pay the rest, or if he can obtain the rest from loan funds at 8 per cent or 9 per cent such person can try and rehabilitate himself. However, I want to deal with the person who may not even be able to do that, who may not even have the facilities at the commercial banks to do so. He has to go to the Land Bank and we know about the procedure of consolidation, etc. In this way he then has to try and find assistance. If he is not able to get assistance there, he has to go to the Department of Agricultural Credit. I wonder whether we realize how long, in view of valuations and other related matters, that takes a person in the agricultural industry who needs to be rehabilitated? This is something which must take place fairly rapidly.

I want to go further and speak about the stock farmer. This man falls into an entirely different category. There is no agricultural corporation to which he can go and say, “I have now come to the end of my resources with stock loans which I have had to take up and stock which I have had to purchase. I have lost half of my stock. I have to rehabilitate myself and I have to buy stock. Where do I find the funds to do so?” In another debate the hon. the Deputy-Minister of Agriculture said, “You know nothing about agriculture. You are a stranger in Jerusalem. The facilities do exist”. Mr. Speaker, the fact remains that a farmer’s position must be fairly critical if he wants to become a successful applicant at the Department of Agricultural Credit. We need not argue about that. We want to rehabilitate these people. Is the best person to rehabilitate not that person who has not yet reached the stage where it is necessary for him to go to the Department of Agricultural Credit but who still is the best asset to this country as a farmer? Is he not the person we should like to rehabilitate the most because he is our most likely candidate to remain on the land as a farmer? Is there any assistance for him, or does he simply have to pay that 8½ per cent if he is still solvent? Why should he be placed in a different position to another person if he is perhaps a better farmer? In nine out of ten cases he will be a better farmer. That is why he has succeeded to remain in that position. But then drought conditions were experienced, and it was because he had to use 25,000 bales of fodder and 1,000 bags of mealies that he has landed in this position where he is in need of assistance. This is the man for whom I am pleading. This is the man I want the Minister to take into consideration. We cannot lag behind and say that we have no scheme for people who have had rains on their farms, who want to rehabilitate themselves and who purchase or want to purchase stock. We cannot say that such a person has to pay what he can for such stock and has to finance that as best he can. We cannot say that if he is unable to finance such purchases he can go to the Department of Agricultural Credit. No, Sir, we do not want him to descend that far down the ladder before we assist him. We must assist him before such time…

I understand that my time is getting short. I now come to one of the most important points as regards the rehabilitation of the agricultural industry, and that is the rehabilitation of our soil. I want to reverse the order. The most important thing of all is the soil itself. We are only here temporarily. We pass on but our soil remains and must continue producing for mankind.

The hon. member stated it the other way round a short while ago.

Yes, even if I did, this is how I state it now, namely that the soil is the most important thing of all. We now have the position that the person who still has funds at his disposal will tend to overburden his soil in an attempt to rehabilitate himself. The person who is not assisted cannot restock his farm in the balanced way in which that ought to be done. Sir, I am aware of the Department’s attempts to let portions of farms lie fallow so that they may subsequently be used as grazing on a basis of rotation. The fact remains that the rehabilitation of the grazing and the fertility of the soil are the most important items with which any state and any government is concerned. We are pleading for this and that is the reason why this motion has been framed in this manner, namely to advocate the rehabilitation of the farmer and of the soil. That is why I cannot understand how anybody can speak against this motion. These are the important factors in the agricultural industry. I should like to see the Minister get up some day and say without indulging in politics, “Let us see what methods we can employ on a long-term basis to combat drought conditions and to rehabilitate farmers who have virtually been ruined by droughts”. We are still waiting for that day.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Newton Park as well as the hon: member for Walmer and to a certain extent also the hon. member for East London (City) raised quite a number of matters regarding subsidies. They expressed views as to how the State should give even more assistance. The hon. member for Newton Park said that money was being made available for subsidies of up to 50 per cent for the purchasing of lucerne. He spoke about money to keep the farmer on the farm in times of drought. But he did not say how one was going to keep him on the farm with money during times of drought when dams and watering places were empty. It would be useless to give the person money in circumstances such as those which prevailed in the country during the past two years, when lucerne was unobtainable. The hon. member for Walmer asked for subsidies on electricity and on farm labour: Heaven knows how many more subsidies they are going to ask for. I am concerned about this question of subsidies, because we are more and more inclined to ask for subsidies. The pride and the prestige of being a farmer is gradually disappearing. Eventually the position may arise that a man is no longer the lord and master of his holding or farm. That sense of pride will disappear.

The hon. member for East London (City) spoke about adequate assistance and assistance which should be given in good time. I just want to tell you, Sir, what has been done in this country by the Department of Agricultural Credit during the past nine months. I am not mentioning old figures. I am speaking of the period from 1st April to 31st December. During this period the Agricultural Credit Board rendered great assistance to category 3 farmers, that is to say, farmers who could no longer obtain assistance from their own commercial banks, agricultural co-operative societies or the Land Bank. We must remember that these are farmers who were on the verge of collapse, farmers who were almost insolvent. Over a period of nine months these farmers obtained long-term loans for 25 years at 5 per cent interest to the amount of R3,054,000, as well as production loans to the amount of R2,444,000 to sow the maize crop of almost 90 million bags, while another R10 million was made available to agricultural cooperative societies for the purpose of financing farmers. [Interjections.]

That was done within a period of nine months, and that is the amount that was paid to those farmers about whom the hon. member for East London (City) is so concerned. That amount was paid to 3,768 farmers. I am not talking about the amount that was approved; a considerably larger amount was approved. The hon. member referred disparagingly to the rations totalling R37,000 paid during that same period of nine months, but in addition thereto loans amounting to R4,469,000 at 5 per cent interest and repayable over a period of five years were granted in respect of stock feed. Over a period of nine months a total amount of R10.5 million was granted in the form of loans to assist needy farmers. But the hon. member asks whether it was given in good time and whether it was enough. Can you believe it, Sir! What more does he want? I am not even mentioning the financial assistance given by the Land Bank to farmers who do not fall in category 3 nor all the other rebates and subsidies on artificial fertilizers, for example. Let us think realistically. Mention was made here of increasing agricultural prices. I agree that the prices of agricultural products should be brought into line with the increase in production costs. We all accept that, but we must remember that we are living in a country which has a wonderful ability to recover. Sir, if you visit the areas where trees have died as a result of the drought, you will be surprised to see what those areas look like after the rains. It is a pity though that the rains were not country-wide. But those people rehabilitate themselves because the country is able to recover so rapidly. But what will happen if one increases the price of meat to an unrealistically high level, as the hon. member for East London (City) asked should be done when he held up a piece of meat here? Fish, roasting chickens and quite a number of other products, such as pork, which can recover rapidly, will become readily available as substitutes for that meat, and then we will be creating artificial shortages and surpluses. We must view the matter in its entirety. The hon. the Minister said that we should reason like adults and should not try to derive political gain from the matter.

A member representing an urban constituency will gain nothing by spreading this kind of story. This side of the House speaks on behalf of those who gain their livelihood from the land in the rural areas, and I think hon. members opposite are skating on thin ice.

I just want to ask the hon. member for Newton Park, what would happen if we increased agricultural prices out of all proportion? He was concerned about the stock position to-day. The stock-farming areas would then be converted into agricultural areas. Maize would be produced in areas where it should not be produced, and we would be encouraging over-cropping. That is what would happen if the prices were too high. [Interjections.] The hon. member for East London (City) said so many things a few moments ago which I simply cannot understand. During the no-confidence debate the hon. member for Newton Park said that 80 per cent of the farmers in the country had an income of less than R3,000 per year. Why make such a statement and leave it hanging in the air? Surely he knows that the farmer with an income of R3,000 has already paid his living expenses. He has already paid for his groceries and has paid his current expenses.

Read my Hansard.

While mention has been made here of the chaotic circumstances in which the farmers find themselves, let me just give the figures for the years 1946 to 1965. In less than 20 years, with the number of farmers reduced by one-third, 75 per cent more food was produced, and that while agriculture was supposed to be in such a pitiful state. The monetary value of our agriculture was R262 million in 1946, while it was R980 million in 1965. Now they will say that the value of money has decreased. Very well, over that same period of 20 years the number of tractors increased from 20,000 to more than 130,000. Is agriculture faring so badly?

Speaking of prices, I want to stress once again that unrealistic prices is the surest way of causing the rural areas to be depopulated.

We agree, but nobody asks for that.

The hon. member has mentioned overseas prices. He poses as an expert on conditions in Australia, but when we speak of overseas prices, we should always view the entire matter in the right perspective. We cannot compare this country, with its own peculiar circumstances, with other countries. I shall read you only one sentence from an article entitled: “The Wage Hour Law and Agriculture”—

Those are the wages paid in the country to which some of the hon. members referred and where they said the farmers were getting so much for a pound of meat. I say one should first make very sure of one’s facts before one says things like that. Let me just mention one more point. While conditions in our country are being criticized so much, do you know, Sir, that as far as I have been able to ascertain South Africa is the only country in the world where a farmer need not pay income tax provided he keeps his wits about him? Are the hon. members aware of that? [Interjections.] The farmer who makes profits can plough those profits back in the form of camps, fences, soil conservation works and dams. He can do all those things in order to carry out your suggestion without Government assistance. South Africa is the only country in the world where that can be done, but it is nevertheless being alleged that our agriculture is in a pitiful state. There are very few people who pay so much in indirect taxation as the farmer. He pays indirect tax on fuel, tyres, implements and so forth. The farmer contributes his share. I am speaking only of direct income tax.

I now want to deal briefly with the final part of the motion introduced by the hon. member for Newton Park, viz. the restoration of grazing and the reclamation of land. We are living in a country where years of drought follow upon years of rain as the winter follows the summer, and we should plan our agricultural pattern accordingly. We should not always run to the State for assistance. Cannot hon. members on the Opposition side use what little influence they still have in the rural areas to help us to propagate the idea that we as farmers should search our own hearts instead of constantly trying to belittle the Government in a negative manner in this type of debate? Mr. Speaker, more than a thousand years ago Solomon said in his wisdom: “He that gathered in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is…

A member of the United Party.

… a son that causeth shame”. I almost said “like the hon. the member for East London (City)”. Are we going to put aside pastoral areas this summer for the difficult winter seasons that lie ahead? South Africa is divided into 70 climatic regions, of which 16 regions suffered from drought 20 times in 60 years; in other words, one drought every third year. Let us be prepared to see to it ourselves that fodder is stored up, as was suggested by the hon. the Minister, and let us prepare ourselves for the difficulties that lie ahead. We get R8 a head for the withdrawal of stock. The hon. member for Newton Park said that R8 was too little and that the State did not take into consideration the breeding quality of the cattle. I say that I cannot make R8 a head out of my cattle farming and here I get it from the State. If the hon. member says that that is too little, how much should it be then? Why does he not suggest how much it should be?

I want to conclude by expressing this thought: the preservation of our soil is the function not only of the State or of the farmer; it is the function of the city dweller as well; it is also the function of the non-Europeans of the country. Every inhabitant of this Republic should have the preservation of the soil at heart and should show his love of the land. During the recent drought the ordinary man on the Witwatersrand realized what the value of water was, and I am grateful to be able to say that where we have societies for the protection of animals, interest is also being aroused in things such as the National Veld Trust to mobilize those people and to make them interested in the preservation and the protection of the soil with its trees and its shrubs. The result will be that we shall make true patriots out of people.

We have listened this afternoon to an awful lot of things that this Government had done for the farmer in the country. We have heard the hon. member for Winburg; we have heard the hon. the Minister and other speakers, but the fact remains that the farmers in the country are still not happy. Has the hon. the Minister asked himself why they are unhappy? Has he asked himself what is wrong with this sick industry in South Africa, because, let us face it, this is a sick industry. This is the industry which is being sacrificed for every other consideration. The Minister likes to boast that we have the cheapest agricultural produce in the world. We have that, and we are proud of it, but at what expense to the industry itself? I want to repeat to the hon. the Minister the question put to him by the hon. member for Walmer when he asked why, if the farming industry was not sick, as it is to-day, if the farmers were satisfied, the late Dr. Verwoerd took it upon himself to appoint a commission to inquire into the position of this industry in our land? Sir, that question has not been answered. Nobody will answer it.

They would not dare.

Why did he do it? Was this a vote of no confidence in his own Ministers of Agriculture? I think so. That is all that we can assume. Sir, we still await an answer to this question put by the hon. member for Walmer: Why did the late Dr. Verwoerd do this himself if there was no need for any probe into the position of this industry?

Sir, I come to the hon. member for Standerton. I think I must remind this House that this is the hon. member who during the last session told us that we would have to use the cemeteries in South Africa, that we would have to narrow the islands between the roads, to provide sufficient land to feed our people. [Interjections.] Yes, I notice that he has been promoted. I hope that this is going to be a promotion for the benefit of the country.

Don’t you think he deserves it?

Sir, he mentioned earlier that perhaps we were suggesting that mealies should be planted in uneconomic areas. I want to remind the hon. member of the action which was taken a few years ago by this Government in the issue of additional quotas for sugar in Natal. The hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs, in his wisdom, allowed appeals by all but one farmer for additional quotas and for new quotas, in areas where that hon. Minister had been told that it was not economic to grow sugar, in areas where he had been told that the risk not only of drought but of frost and other climatic conditions were against the establishment and the economic growing of sugar cane. That hon. Minister in his wisdom decided to issue these permits and what is the position to-day? We have Mr. Barnes, chairman of the S.A. Canegrowers Association, saying in a report to the Sunday Tribune of 29th January of this year—

The individual grower’s position has become desperate. I don’t know whether he can take much more.

He went on to say—

This brings me to the next point that I want to raise. During this address to the annual congress of the S.A. Agricultural Union, the chairman, Mr. De la Harpe de Villiers mentioned what he called two man-made disasters for agriculture; one was the increase in the interest rate and the other was the increase in rail tariffs. Sir, he called those man-made disasters. I feel that he was just being polite at that time and that they should rather have been called “Government-made disasters”. I want to add some further disasters to the two mentioned by him. The first one I want to add is the Government’s policy of protecting secondary industries in South Africa at the expense of the farmer.

What has that to do with the motion?

I want to quote the President of the Klip River Dairy Farmers’ Association who said—

He called for an investigation—

Why should the dairy farmer, for example, be forced to use inferior tools?

What about protection for the dairy farmer?

This is another example of the sacrifice of the farmer on the altars of prosperity and expansion in South Africa. The latest report of the Economic Review has admitted that prices of locally produced products have increased twice as much as imported goods. We find to-day that the farmer is being asked to use chaff-cutter blades, harrow discs, plough shares and irrigation equipment manufactured locally which in many instances are inferior to the imported product and cost very much more. Mr. Summers went on—

I am the last one—and hon. members on this side are the last people—to derogate from the efforts of this Government to make South Africa independent of overseas supplies. But is not our primary aim to feed our people? Must we not stabilize our own farming industry? What is the good of having munitions, of having oil, of having everything else that we might need, if we have no food? Because, then, Sir, we cannot exist.

This brings us to the next point, namely the failure of the Government to fix an economic price for agricultural products. We have heard talk this afternoon of stabilizing income and not stabilizing prices so much. The Minister put a direct question to the hon. member for Walmer. Now, I want to give the Minister the answer of Professor Du Plessis, the consultant economist of the S.A.A.U. He says, according to a report before me—

Professor Du Plessis’ answer to the direct question of the hon. the Minister is this—

Not based on last year’s income, or last year’s price, or the income of any one particular year. This must be done by negotiation, by consideration of figures over a period, and not based on one year only… He continues:

The Minister gave us comparative production figures for one week in January, 1966, and one week in January, 1967.

I can give the comparative figures for a month too, if you want them.

I asked the Minister for those figures at the time when he was speaking, but he would not give them to us. I should like to have those figures. [Interjections.] We can have the figures for August last year, but I do not think they will compare with those for January this year. However, Sir, the point that I am trying to get at here is that we had a drought period prior to 1960. In 1961-’62 production figures of dairy products in South Africa reached a peak, they reached the highest figure that they have ever attained. And what was the outcome? This Government reduced the producer’s price of that product.

What else could I have done?

I ask the Minister, what was the effect of that reduction in price? The effect was a reduction in production. The comparative production figures of butter show that in 1963 South Africa produced, in round figures, 97 million lbs. In 1964 the figure was 87 million lbs. In 1965 we produced 81 million lbs. We have not been able to receive exact figures for 1966 but it was estimated at 80 million lbs. Therefore there was a reduction in production over four years of 17 million lbs. of butter.

Remember those figures, because I will quote them back to you in six months’ time.

These are the Minister’s figures. As far as cheese is concerned, the comparative figures are as follows: From 1963 to 1966 they dropped from 34 million lbs. to 30 million lbs. Why was there this drop, Sir? Because the farmer lost confidence in the industry. Farmers went into more remunerative branches of agriculture.

For what reason did you criticize the Minister of Economic Affairs for changing the quota? What is your reason? [Interjections.]

During the same period, that is from 1963 to 1966 the production of cheese in this country dropped from 34 million lbs. to an estimated 30 million lbs., a drop of 4 million lbs. But what happened to consumption in that same period? Consumption of butter went up from 100 million to an estimated 108 million lbs. per annum. The consumption of cheese went up from 35¾ million lbs. to an estimated 36½ million lbs. So while the consumption of butter in this country rose by 8 million lbs. production went down by 17 million lbs., in other words, there was a difference of 25 million lbs. This hon. Minister told us during the last session that there is plenty of cheap butter, cheap dairy products available in other parts of the world. The inference that we drew from his statement was that it was cheaper to import butter, that it was in fact more profitable to import butter and other dairy products than to subsidize—not necessarily to subsidize but to assist our dairy farmers to get on to their feet, to assist our dairy farmers to find their level. Has the Minister taken cognizance of the warnings that have been issued by the W.H.O., by the U.N. Food Organization, by every similar organization throughout the world? The warnings given are that throughout the world the demand for food is increasing. With the enlightening of former backward countries the demand for all these products has increased. But production is not increasing, and the time is coming when this Government will not be able to get the cheap dairy products that it has been able to obtain so far.

What is the answer here? We have asked that this Government should introduce practical measures for the rehabilitation of farmers. Not only the rehabilitation, but also the re-establishment and the consolidation of our farmers. We have asked that this Government assist the farmer to be more productive per unit. During the last session I personally pleaded here in support of an application made by the Natal and East Griqualand Fresh Milk producers’ Union to the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services to allow organized agriculture to establish their own research centres and to assist them to do so because it has been found that notwithstanding the good work done by this Minister’s Department, somewhere there is a breakdown between the Department and the farmer.

Debate having continued for 2½ hours, motion and amendment lapsed in terms of Standing Order No. 32.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to move the motion standing in my name, namely—

I am very well aware of the fact that this matter is not being discussed in this House for the first time. The topic of public health and the endeavour to achieve greater and better co-ordination among the services rendered by the Central Government, the provincial administrations and local authorities, has been discussed in this House before. But it is also a fact that this has been a topic for discussion over a period of many years and also around many other conference tables. Ever since olden times conferences have been held on this matter, and commissions of inquiry have been appointed on many occasions. I do not want to go too far back, but I want to start with the year 1886 when, for instance, a commission was appointed at the Cape to inquire into venereal diseases; a similar commission was appointed in the Transvaal in 1906. In 1911 an inquiry was instituted into the health of Bantu mine-workers; in 1925 to 1926 a special inquiry was instituted into the incidence of plague; in 1930 to 1931 an inquiry was instituted into malaria. The Gluckmann Commission of 1942 to 1944, to which reference will be made again later, and the Havenga Commission of 1949 ate two further commissions which were appointed. In 1959 a commission of inquiry was appointed into ionizing radiation. In 1960 a commission was appointed to inquire into the high cost of medical services and medicines. There have also been commissions on health conditions in Ban’u homelands, an inquiry into chiropractic, commissions on dental services, on fluoridation, an inquiry into nursing, an inquiry into safe-guarding man against poisons, and so one can probably add many others to this list. Then there was the Borckenhagen Commission and the Schumann Commission which dealt with financial relations amongst the Central Government, the provincial administrations and local authorities; and then the discussions held by provincial administrations and local authorities themselves on many aspects of health services.

Nor do I believe that this will be the last time that this topic, namely achieving better co-ordination between the health services, and other aspects of health will be brought to the attention of this House. If there had been an easier recipe for achieving greater co-ordination, we would already have finished talking about this matter. But since we are unable to find an easy or simply obvious recipe for realizing our ultimate ideal, we shall neither be able to settle this matter by discussion today, nor find the wonder formula for achieving that which we are aspiring to. But it is my conviction, Mr. Speaker, and this is also a conviction which is endorsed by others, that under the present system of providing medical and health services, we are not conforming to the highest medical requirements, and that we are not providing the most efficient and the most economic health service. We are not serving health, and our public health in particular, as well as it is possible to do so. To-day I am touching upon this matter again because I should like to serve health and because my aim is the maximum we can render to public health in South Africa. That is the point at issue and that alone! It is also for that reason that I thought it fit to raise this matter in the House again.

Should I sound critical and refer to certain aspects of the rendering of services by several administrations, then I shall only do so in this spirit and in this attitude of mind, namely that it is aimed at serving health. If I refer critically to certain aspects of the rendering of Services, I shall not do so with the intention of being derogatory. Nor is it at all my intention to speak disparagingly of the services rendered by the various authorities. On the contrary, it is with the greatest appreciation that I take cognizance of the work they have done, and I shall also mention the work they have done. Even with the defective liaison which exists, with the little co-ordination I observe and the inevitable overlapping which must occur, we have made a great deal of progress and we are appreciative of that.

I also Want to say that it is impossible for me to touch upon every aspect of this matter, and I am leaving it to some of my colleagues to refer to certain aspects—one of them will refer to local authorities in particular and the other, a physician who practised medicine, will refer to the particular problems experienced by’ the medical practitioner in this regard. At the end of a discussion such as this one in this House, one usually expects the Minister to reply and to state the Government’s point of view in respect of such a matter. I know that the Minister will give us a reply to-day and that he will elucidate some of the aspects of the matter we will have touched upon, but I am also thoroughly aware of the fact that there are reports of commissions of inquiry which are still being considered. There are various State Departments which are busy on these reports. In addition there are further negotiations which have to be conducted with the provincial administrations, and many of these matters have not nearly reached finality. At this early stage it would also be unfair and unreasonable of me—and I realize this—to expect the hon. the Minister to give us the necessary replies in respect of everything which will have been touched upon. Nor shall I charge him with that because, as is customary, he will not be able to furnish us with information in that regard, since other bodies and persons will have to be approached about these matters first.

In the motion there is mention of three bodies which are rendering service: the Central Government, the provincial administrations and local authorities. The fact that these three bodies are engaged in providing health services in the country, is not a mere coincidence. The entire framework under which we operate, the entire set-up, namely that there is no unitary authority, is for several reasons very easy to explain. It is bound up with our history, our entire process of political development, the nature of our geography: a large country with a sparse population, except for certain major concentrations of people. It is therefore necessary to pay some attention to the historic process, to note how we came to have the set-up we have at present. Before the Union of South Africa came into being, each colony had its own health laws. The responsibility of dealing with the outbreak of infectious diseases and other matters relating to health rested with the colonial governments. By means of legislation local authorities were established and they were also vested with powers in respect of sanitation and health services within their areas of jurisdiction. Health matters which were not of a purely local nature—such as the construction of hospitals, health regulations at seaports and other incidental matters—remained the responsibility of the colonial governments.

With the merging of the four provinces into a single political unit by the South Africa Act of 1909, only passing mention was mde in that Act of the health of the inhabitants of South Africa. The colonial governments which had been converted into provincial administrations, were permitted to retain some of their functions, such as the control over local governments, the construction and maintenance of hospitals as well as education—with the exception of higher education, of course—and strangely enough, in the latter case it was the traditional interpretation that this also involved medical inspection of schools and school hygiene. Public health is not mentioned in the South Africa Act, but by virtue of such colonial legislation as was not repealed by the South Africa Act, local authorities could still proceed with these services within their areas of jurisdiction. The prevention of the outbreak of infectious diseases was deemed to be the task and function of the Central Government. Since the Act had not given any emphatic and clear definition as to public health, and since there was doubt as well as confusion as to the extent of the services each of the service-rendering bodies had to provide, overlapping resulted; friction even resulted and occasionally there was evidence of certain aspects of our health service being neglected. This was still the position at the time of the outbreak of the influenza epidemic in 1918. This particular event proved to be a rude awakening to the authorities and pointed a finger at the particular inadequacy of the legal machinery which existed for controlling public health. The result was the convocation of the National Health Conference in Bloemfontein in 1918. The Conference had to try to eliminate defective legislation and to place the control over and the administration of health services in South Africa on a sound basis. The three service-rendering bodies—medical and welfare organizations, mining concerns, and so forth—were represented at this big conference.

The Public Health Act. Act No. 36 of 1919, resulted from the work of this conference. The establishment of the Department of Health or Public Health, as it was previously called in section 2 of that Act, also resulted from the work of that conference. Over the years it has been necessary to amend this Act, as necessitated by changing circumstances or as experience in regard to many matters was gained in the course of years.

But the machinery which was established by that Act, is in the main still the machinery which takes care of public health in South Africa at present. Mr. Speaker, I am going to quote you an extract from Medical and Health Legislation in the Union of South Africa by Cluver: “The original Public Health Act of 1919 thus placed varying degrees of responsibility on three different authorities, namely the Central Government, the Provincial Administrations and local authorities, and this situation still obtains to-day. The basic principle of local responsibility for the control of infectious diseases and environmental sanitation has not been altered.” But since those far-off days of 1919, the enlightened public opinion, the opinions of professional people and even that of the lay-man, has insisted on the country’s health services being re-orientated on a more realistic basis. Next we come to a further significant development in 1942, namely the appointment of the National Health Service Commission. For the first time an attempt was made here at viewing public health, and the needs in that regard, in its entirety. Accordingly this Commission recommended that personal health services and non-personal health services should be separated, and in this process it appeared as though they wanted to eliminate the provincial administrations. Their recommendations were not accepted, and the conclusion at which one arrives, the summary of what one can in fact call the result of their attempts, is that the responsibilities of the three service-rendering bodies—the Central Government, the provincial administrations and the local authorities—were merely confirmed. Arrangements in regard to outpatients, district nursing services and the subsidies payable by the State, were in fact defined more closely.

In 1949 we had the Havenga Commission. The Commission recommended as a long-term policy that the Central Government and/or the provinces should gradually accept full financial and executive responsibility for personal health services, with certain provisos and agreements in respect of the subsidies the State would grant the provinces and local authorities. In the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, too, the service levels which had been undertaking the rendering of health and medical services in South Africa since 1910, were retained without any changes.

Now I just want to mention to you the various spheres in which these three service-rendering bodies act. I mention the Central Government first. Apart from its general functions, namely to advise, to inspect and to assist and, in the case of local authorities, even to coerce, it has the following functions: (a) the maintenance of institutions for lepers; (b) the construction and maintenance of sanatoriums for tuberculosis patients; (c) the construction and maintenance of hospitals for venereal diseases as well as hospitals for the mentally ill; (d) the maintenance of port health services; (e) the construction and maintenance of laboratoriums not only for exercising control over public health, but also in regard to the control over therapeutic substances, X-ray and other units which have to be maintained; (f) district surgeon services, whether full-time or part-time, and (g) inspections in terms of the Food, Drugs and Disinfectants Act. Then there are certain laws of which one may mention a few just in order to illustrate further what the task of the Central Government is in respect of health. I mention to you the Medical, Dental and Pharmacy Act, the Dental Mechanicians Act, the Post Mortem Examinations and Removal of Human Tissues Act, and the Nursing Act; there are many more still, but by mentioning these names, a clear indication is given of the matters with which they deal.

Then, Mr. Speaker, I come to the provinces. Their functions are the construction, control and administration of hospitals—excluding those for which the State is responsible at present; subsequently, also as a result of several factors, a greater measure of responsibility which they accepted for out-patients and district nursing services. In view of the fact that it is not possible for the provincial administrations to defray all these services out of their own funds, arrangements were made for financial support to be given by the State in the form of subsidies. Another function of the provincial administration is the control over local authorities, especially where it concerns health services, of course. The functions of local authorities are as follows: (a) the provision of hospitals and institutions for isolating persons suffering from infectious diseases, and in this case the Minister may also require a local authority to provide such a service; (b) the rendering of the usual services: providing unpolluted water, milk and dairy products; (c) the provision of sanitary services—i.e. the non-personal health services, and (d) the provision of housing as well as meeting certain other requirements in regard to the Housing Acts. In this respect, too, certain financial relations obtain between the local authority and the State. For instance, in many cases the State also provides part of the salary of approved health officers, and the scale which is applicable in general and in most cases, is a scale of 87½ per cent of such salaries.

I also realize that a Central Health Services and Hospitals Co-ordinating Council, established in terms of Act No. 51 of 1946, does exist. Representatives of both the Central Government and the provinces serve on that Council. The aim and object of this body is to achieve the effective correlation and co-ordination of hospital and other personal health services in our country, and to bring about better collaboration in this regard between the Central Government and the provincial administrations, for the general benefit of the community. It is not my intention to talk with contempt about the work done by this body. They have been doing great work over many years and one is grateful for what they have done. But I also believe that they are engaged in an almost super-human and impossible task, namely that of trying to correlate and co-ordinate health services when there are five authorities, each with its own sphere and each following its own policy.

Now that I have given you these particulars, it will be fair to ask whether this service arrangement on three levels—five levels, really —is the best method for achieving our goal, namely retaining and restoring good health and preventing ill-health. Is that the most advantageous method as viewed from the service angle as well as the economic angle? The best reply I give to such a question, is to quote from the Snyman Report, 1962, on page 29—

I think that this is an almost conclusive reply to the question I have just asked. However, let me now mention specific examples to prove that what has just been said about a divided system and how such a system cannot possibly result in our population being provided with the best, is the true state of affairs. In the case of the Central Government, health services are provided by the Department of Health, but in addition to the main services provided by that Department, services are defrayed and sometimes also provided by nine other State Departments. I am taking the Estimates for 1960-’61 as an example, and I mention the following Departments with the amounts involved: Prisons, R250,000; Justice, R1,366,000; Public Service Commission, R224,000; Mining, R870,000; Defence, R420,000; Social Welfare, R480,000—a total of R3,939,000 in respect of all these State Departments. The total Estimates for the Department of Health amounted to R26,532,000 for the same period. If we take this amount spent by the Department of Health, the expenditure of other State Departments I have mentioned as well as the provincial administrations’ expenditure in respect of health, the expenditure for that year amounts to approximately R97.5 million, and for the total population it works out at per capita expenditure of R6.50. I must add that local authorities have not been included. If I say R6.50 per capita for the total population, then it is interesting to note that for the same year the per capita expenditure amounted to R4.53 in the Cape Province and R2.49 in the Free State. Unfortunately I was unable to obtain the figures for the Transvaal and Natal. So much for the State.

Now we come to the provincial administrations. “There is a striking difference between the expenditure from own provincial revenue sources in respect of the range of medical services, the size and composition of their population as well as their sources of income. In 1960 the provincial expenditure on hospital and health services took up the following share of the provincial income from own sources…" Expenditure on hospitals and health services in 1960, amounted to the following percentages of their income. In the Transvaal it was 56 per cent; in the Cape Province, 57 per cent; in Natal, 72 per cent, and in the Free State, 40 per cent. The expenditure, expressed as a percentage of the total income, including Government subsidies, was as follows: Transvaal, 27.67 per cent; Cape Province, 25.78 per cent: Natal, 37 per cent, and the Free State, 14.8 per cent. If one listens to these figures, it almost sounds as though we are not speaking of one and the same country, but of various countries in which there are such diverging differences.

As far as the building of hospitals is concerned, each of these service levels proceeds on its own and provides its own hospitals. Not nearly enough use is being made of building research, planned sizes of hospitals and the standardizing of building materials or basic equipment. We must bear in mind that the capital funds required for the construction of hospitals are being made available by the Central Government, i.e. from Estimates approved by this Parliament. But subsequent to that the Central Government has no further say in this matter and the province may do with that money as it pleases. I know about a case—I am not going to mention the provinces—where a particularly luxurious nurses’ home was built for Bantu nurses. In the case of another province—one may almost call this a waste of money—part of these capital funds were used to finance additions to a certain large hospital. Experts were of the opinion that that hospital should never have been built on that particular spot, because its maintenance costs on that particular site were three or four times higher than the average; nevertheless, R.4 million was spent on major additions to the buildings and these additions did not effect any increase worth mentioning in the number of available beds. This merely goes to show that funds voted by the Central Government come into the hands of the provinces, and that the provinces do with that money as they deem fit. We do not always condemn the way in which they act, but the Central Government has no further control over those funds.

Moreover, each of these service levels acts independently and individually as far as purchases are concerned. In this regard I am thinking of instruments and medicaments in particular, and as far as running costs are concerned, these two items are particularly important. If there had been a common system of purchase, the cost as regards these two items in particular could have been reduced a great deal. In view of the fact that every authority has its own system of purchase, there is quite a variety of the same locally manufactured equipment, and in spite of the efforts of the Bureau of Standards, for instance, to help local industries manufacturing steel tube equipment for hospitals to standardize, the requirements of the various authorities are quite different. For instance, at the moment five different standardized bedside cabinets are available to hospitals, and it has become known that one of the provinces did not decide on one of these five cabinets, but on a modified form of these five types. Add to this the overlapping as regards staff. I shall mention to you the chief officials in particular: chief regional health officers with their staff—not distributed on a provincial basis; four provincial directors of hospital services with their staff; the chief medical officers of health boards in the Transvaal and Natal; the chief medical officer of the divisional councils in the Cape Province, each with its own staff and his own pattern, and the medical officers of larger cities and some towns with their staff as well as their own framework in which they provide the public with medical services. Among these major groups there is no compulsory liaison, no common control and no integration of services.

Agreements do in fact exist among them, voluntary agreements relating to provision of staff and conditions of employment, but even if such voluntary agreements do exist, it is also known that continuous competition occurs as regards the recruitment of staff. A good example is that of clerks. Although agreed salary scales do exist, the Natal authorities require a Standard 8 certificate only, while the State and the Transvaal require matriculation as a qualification for the same type of post. One notices different requirements everywhere, especially in those categories of officers and staff of which our country has a particular shortage. And so one can continue. There is the matter of the prestige of each of the provincial administrations. It is probably a fine thing to aim at something of that nature, but it may also facilitate uneconomic rendering of services in the sphere of health, because whatever one of them has, the others would also like to have; not one of them would like to compare unfavourably with the others. This results in the duplication of highly specialized divisions with certain specialized equipment; the capital invested in such divisions is extremely high, but then there is also the duplication of highly specialized technical staff, which entails higher costs. You also know, Mr. Speaker, that some of the provinces experimented with free hospitalization schemes for a few years; the Transvaal had one from 1948 to 1958, the Cape Province had one which started in 1950 and lasted a few years, but Natal and the Free State had no such services. In the various spheres with which my colleagues will deal, there are other anomalies which they will probably point out. Having referred to these matters, one asks oneself: What is the solution? One feels that, after so many years of discussion and commissions, one cannot assume to oneself the right to say that one has found the miraculous solution, nor is it my intention to assume to myself that right. However, the fact of the matter is that we must find a solution. We must find a solution in order to realize the ideal we have set ourselves, namely the best health service for the population. If the solution is not to be found in the course taken by the present bodies which are to co-ordinate and correlate with one another, then, as far as I myself am concerned, the Central Government should simply exercise its authority and take that right into its own hands by way of enforcing authority, if need be. It is possible to continue and to refer to statements made in the Snyman Report so as to show how this fragmentation of services is viewed by many people and how they expect something else. Mr. Speaker, owing to political development a line was drawn from 1909 right through to the Public Health Act of 1919. The pattern of that Act was continued and we are still saddled with that pattern. I believe that we must break away from that pattern at some time or other, because if we do not break away, we shall never achieve the ideal we are trying to realize, namely to obtain the best for our people. I believe that our people deserve nothing but the best, and we must try to give them the best.

I want to compliment the hon. member for Germiston for bringing this very important matter to the notice of the House. The hon. member has given us a fairly clear history of what has taken place during the past 40 to 50 years. He has emphasized how many commissions of enquiry have already sat to deal with this very difficult matter. But what is surprising is that after we have had available to us the findings of the various commissions which have investigated this matter, we are in an even worse position to-day than we were when the first commission sat. Something must be wrong somewhere. The fact that the hon. member for Germiston has had the courage to bring this matter to the notice of the House and virtually to condemn the administration of his own Government is something to be admired. For that reason alone we on this side of the House will not move an amendment. We would rather support what the hon. member said and perhaps elucidate the matter a little further. Sir, after listening to the hon. member for Germiston I would say that the machinery which is available to-day is not bad machinery, but it is obvious to me and I think to all members here that the persons manning the machines are at fault. We must find out where the fault lies. There is some sort of liaison between the Central Government, the provinces and local government. Some sort of liaison is obviously present but it is poor liaison. There is no real connection between the provinces; there is no standardization. Not only is there poor liaison between the various levels of government and each province but there is also very poor liaison, as far as health matters are concerned, between the Department of Health and other State Departments, particularly the Department of Education, Arts and Science and the Department of Social Welfare. If we can devise some sort of stimulus, not a change of machinery, but a stimulus to see that the machinery that we have at the moment works well and in harmony with each branch of the service, then I think we will have solved the problem. To-day health has virtually become a luxury, and for a person who is ill it becomes almost an impossibility to exist. If we do not devise some scheme or other to alleviate the position of those who suffer illness and the consequences of illness, one will always be able to point a finger at the Department of Health in this country and the head of the Department and to say that those people particularly are inefficient and that they are not carrying out their duty to the public properly. I think that the hon. member for Germiston was a fair critic, and I think if he had had more time he would have elaborated even further, but let me carry on from where he left off. Let us first discuss the question of the availability of bed-space for the ill. That is basically the important stage at which to start. The State has 3,352 beds available for tuberculosis; and for mental diseases 20,244 beds; for other diseases such as leprosy, etc., 2,120. The provincial administrations together with the isolation hospitals have approximately 29,000 beds available. The private hospitals and the mission hospitals have almost got the same number; they have nearly 26,000 beds available. Sir, what is important about those figures is that the private hospitals and the mission hospitals are well-staffed; they have sufficient nurses, but the provincial hospitals and the State hospitals are under-staffed. That is something which should never have happened because it is the provincial and the State hospitals which are the sources of supply; they are the teaching hospitals; they are the hospitals which have been supplying the material, in the main, for the private hospitals, and whereas the private hospitals are flourishing and are always full and there is a demand for accommodation because of the nursing services that are available, what do we find in the provincial hospitals? We find, especially in the Transvaal, that wards are empty, not because there are not patients for those wards, but because there are not sufficient nurses to look after the patients who should be in those wards. So I say then that basically we must start and make sure that we devise a plan whereby we can retain the nursing staff that we teach. The nursing profession should be made attractive, more attractive than it is now, not only as far as salaries are concerned but also as far as facilities and other perks are concerned. We must say to the ladies who come to our provincial hospitals that we are going to teach them and train them, and that it is expected of them to stay with the hospitals for so many years after they have qualified. If we can start and get that part of the machine operating, then we have something to go by and something on which we can build.

The next difficulty we find is the fact that we have not got enough doctors in the country. I have repeatedly said this. In 1958 when I first came to this House I warned the then Minister—and I said to him that something had to be done; otherwise we were going to be in serious trouble. The present Ambassador in London sat on the Government benches then, and he felt that we did have sufficient doctors but that they were maldistributed. I pointed out that not only was the distribution bad at the time—and it is still bad to-day; that was not the fault so much of the State as of the individual, but there was an overall shortage as well. To-day there is a shortfall of over 2,000 medical practitioners in the country. We find that even if we had sufficient nurses for all the beds that would be available in the various hospitals, we probably would still find difficulty, because we would not have enough doctors to look after the patients that came into the wards. I thereupon said to the Minister of Education, Arts and Science that he must start to devise ways and means of getting more students to enter the universities. There has indeed been a slight increase. But, Sir, one cannot possibly admit students to a university and teach them to become doctors unless a whole, new schedule has been worked out. In the first year there has to be sufficient space to accommodate the students. In the second year there must be sufficient material for the students to work on. After that there must be sufficient beds for them to do their clinical work. The Minister of Education, Arts and Science said to me then that the bottleneck was in the hospitals because there was not sufficient room in hospitals to take in the students when they reached their clinical year. I investigated the matter and found that the universities complain that the subsidies which the Government gave them were insufficient for them to build, so that they could accommodate more students, and the major block was therefore there.

The two oldest hospitals in the country today are producing virtually the fewest doctors. It is quite strange that the figures last year for admission to Witwatersrand University and Cape Town University—I shall exclude Natal University because no White medical students train there—were as follows. The University of Cape Town admitted 140 first-year students while Witwatersrand University admitted 118. Pretoria University, which is one of the newer universities to train doctors, admitted 495. Stellenbosch, which is still newer, admitted 172 students. I want to make it quite clear that I am not saying that it is wrong for Stellenbosch to have such high numbers, and I am pleased that Pretoria University is able to accommodate those people. But I should like to see the Witwatersrand University, where they have all the facilities to train doctors, coming nearer to that mark. That is the shocking part of the whole basis of our health services today, namely that at the Witwatersrand, where we should never turn students away from the hospital gates, the students are limited to a selected few. Fortunately the selections are good. But, Sir, who is to tell me that the boy who does not obtain a first-class Matric pass will not make a good doctor? As far as I am concerned a boy or a girl who obtains a second-class pass, or who just passes and gets a plain Matric exemption pass, very often turns out to be a first-rate student. But they are excluded to-day, and what disturbs me is that many of these children come from poorer homes and they cannot afford to go to another town for their advanced studies. As a result they are forced to enter some other profession, or drop out of university life entirely. Others go into business and other spheres of employment.

Order! Can the hon. member tell me what this has to do with the motion now before the House? The motion asks for co-ordination between different health services.

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to tell you how this debate ought to be conducted, but I should like to say, Sir, that without knowing what the basic faults are, it is no use discussing liaison and co-ordination of the services. We first have to find out why there is a failure in this regard, and we can only do that by going into the basis of the failure. Then we will knit it all altogether.

Order! The hon. member must not make that his main point. The main point of the motion is co-ordination.

This point is very important, but if you think that I should go on to something else, I shall gladly do so.

So we see, then, that there is a fault basically in the provision of sufficient medical staff and sufficient nursing staff in our health services. Once that happens, one finds competition amongst the provinces and one finds that if one does not take the advice of the hon. member for Germiston, then one province will start to pay—if it is not already doing so—higher salaries than the other provinces. I have a cutting here which bears out my contention that there is a serious threat that salaries in the Cape Province will go up so that they will be more than those paid in the Transvaal. The hon. the Minister must correct me if I am wrong, I have the cutting here, but I do not want to waste time by reading from it. Because of the shortage, there is also competition between the private hospital and the provincial hospital. The private hospitals pay more in order to attract nurses from provincial hospitals. Unless the Minister can devise ways and means of balancing salaries at a reasonable level, then he will find a drift away from the provincial hospitals. Liaison between one province and another will fail and liaison between private enterprise and provincial enterprise again will clash. These are very important problems. The Minister has never been able to face up to them. But the time has come now for him to look into the matter. As I say, it is not the machinery that is bad, but it is those who work the machinery who are at fault. We have to see to these things. I want to say then that the position as regards provincial hospitals for ordinary illnesses is a complicated matter but we have further complications. The hon. the Minister’s position as regards getting staff both medical and nursing for his mental hospitals has become a great headache to him. It is fortunate that because of modern treatment there is not such a demand to-day as there was a little while ago for the beds that are available for mental diseases. We have said to him over and over again that he must make better provision in the provincial hospitals to treat the mentally disordered and we do not necessarily mean that they must be housed in the hospital. The out-patients departments of these provincial hospitals must be expanded and extended. That can only be done if there is sufficient personnel to treat these people. The hon. the Minister knows that there are 300,000 mentally disordered people at some stage or other in South Africa. Those are the figures of the Commissioner of Mental Hygiene. Not all of them are given treatment, not all of them have to be given treatment but they are at some stage of mental disturbance. It may be an emotional upset which lasts longer than it should. It may be mild schizophrenia or it may be a very badly demented case. But the treatment of the mentally disordered has become an important part of our lives. These people can no longer be separated from the ordinary type of illness, so that we want to see more liaison between the Central Government and the provinces in the treatment of mentally disordered persons. There is difficulty in obtaining sufficient nursing staff for mental hospitals. Nurses do not like to get themselves tied to a mental hospital. It does not attract them. There is very often almost a stigma attached to the girl who works in a mental hospital—people say she is a mental nurse—as if it were a grade below an ordinary nurse. I think that the people who do the work in mental hospitals are to be admired. I want to say to the hon. the Minister that I think that,, that is one branch of the nursing service that should receive special attention. If necessary they should receive a higher salary than other nursing personnel because their work is a difficult branch of nursing. These girls who work in mental hospitals do not even wear the same epaulettes. They used to wear a blue epaulette to signify that they are working there and I hope that that sort of distinction will disappear.

I want to say to the hon. the Minister that, if he wants proper liaison and if he advocates that, he must do something as far as the Transvaal is concerned. They are making a hash of every department that they run. They have got a concrete skeleton standing on Hospital Hill that has been there since 1962 and nothing has been done about it. The most disgusting sort of comment is being made about it. I find that the information officer of the Provincial Council says that it was started prematurely and that the only reason why it was started in 1962 was to give impetus to a fading building trade. Is that why you start a hospital—to give stimulus to the building trade? Since then it stands there without a brick having been added to this concrete structure which is a disgrace not only to the town but to the administration of the Transvaal. At the South Rand hospital we have wards that are being left empty because they cannot get sufficient nurses there. In our day we had free hospitalization; to-day the reverse is almost taking place. The patients are paying and the nurses are going there on a voluntary basis to help keep the hospital going. That is what is happening. We have a voluntary band of nurses and it is just as well we have them. We must admire those ladies who go there to assist. That is what is happening. There is a hospital at Auckland Park which has been completed and is now standing functionless. It is not a teaching hospital; it is not a healing hospital. We have the walls and we have the floor space and no staff. Those are the sort of things which show that liaison has been breaking down. The machinery is not being used and it is time that the Minister took some sort of action. If he does not want to do it, I would say to him: Let him appoint a central co-ordinating board which will see that this machinery does work properly. It will not take the work out of the hands of the provinces but it will oil that machinery and it will get it going properly.

Mr. Speaker, to tell the truth I felt quite satisfied with the hon. member for Rosettenville at the outset. It is true that he did discuss the large amount of work which had already been done by the commissions in attempting to effect better co-ordination on the three levels of health services. He concluded with the words, “we are in a worse position than before”. Perhaps he is entitled to that opinion. He also raised problems in regard to which I am in agreement with him. Naturally they are problems which do exist to-day. They are also problems for which no one is really to blame, but I would like to bring him back to something which we know to be a State administrative matter. I do not think it was necessary, even though it was only for five minutes, to introduce a degree of bitterness in his speech when discussing a matter of administration and while the entire motive behind this motion was for everyone just to make a contribution. That is why I should like, just for a moment, to remind him of what we are really dealing with. In the book Public Administration Dimock and Koenig state that—

That is co-ordination and that is what we are discussing. Co-ordination is one of the fundamental principles of good organization. It is not a static process. It is a universal and a dynamic principle. It has no bearing on politics, that kind of politics which the hon. member introduced towards the end of his speech. Health care knows no political dividing line. As one colleague to another I want to tell that hon. member that it is not divisible along those lines. Neither do I think that that was the view held by the successive health departments which we have had in this country over the years. That is how this motion must be viewed. In order to throw light on certain problems which have arisen in our health services and which are being experienced, the view taken must be a consistent one when these ideas are raised in order to make a contribution. That is so because the matter of health in a country like South Africa is a Herculean task in the first place because of its heterogeneous population where the nature of our services in respect of Bantu, Coloureds, Indians and Whites differ so tremendously. Since our State structure functions on three levels, which is not my fault or his, and since we have to deal with tradition and with experience of participation in and the handling of a service on various levels, there are certain existing rights and existing organizations which we must always bear in mind. Now someone may perhaps ask why we are discussing the problem. We have heard the historic background. We have heard about the former Colonial Government and how their powers were delegated, but we know that initially, after the coming into existence of the Union, there was a lack of clarity in regard to what public health actually meant. It led to confusion in the views on what public health was, and even to a confusion in regard to what the functions on the three different levels, namely that of the Central Government, the Provincial Administrations and the local authorities should be. In those days there was no strongly organized medical profession, as is the case to-day, which could help with the drafting of the Act of 1919. This Act nevertheless clarified the functions and position of the central health authority considerably. In that Act of 1919 the principle of decentralization was acknowledged. It forms the basis of our organization to-day. Co-ordination is just one of the number of principles of good organization. But that is where the root problem began. This root problem—I do not want to repeat the entire story again—has become aggravated after 45 years. That is why, after 45 years, we read in the Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the High Costs of Medicine and Medical Services (R.P. 59/1962), on page 29—

The problems we are experiencing to-day are not therefore the legacy of the Department of Health. It penetrates to all levels. We have today our Central Government Which, through the Department of Health, is responsible for the main service. Our purpose to-day is to offer constructive criticism, to make some contribution. I just want to mention that we have nine other Departments which offer health services. in collaboration with the Department of Health. We have six kinds of hospitals, provincial, local and central hospitals amonest others. We have out-patient services and District Surgeonaes. We have problems of coordination in regard to instruments and drugs and all those aspects of medical services. The division is carried through, just as in the case of the hospitals of which there are six categories through all the levels and to the patients as well. Each control group has its own planning. Its own planning and administration is usually different from that of others. That leads to problems at points of contact. Where one has co-ordination in the various units which have to work together as a whole for the best results, one finds friction at the points of contact if people still have different policies. We are seeking uniformity. It leads to duplication, the duplication of services, in respect of which I shall still have something to say. It also leads to the injudicious utilization of manpower. People may be used at various levels at various places, and one man may have done one type of work, but he may not have done another type, etc. It leads to a lack of standards in training and in those kind of standards which the hon. member mentioned and in regard to which I agree with him. That is why opinions have been voiced to this Commission by people, people who have had experience as employees, we could almost say, or as suppliers of medical services. They have given certain evidence on their own view of this particularly grave problem of divided control and lack of co-ordination. On page 196 of the Snyman Commission (R.P. 59/1962), the Nursing Association states the following—

The Cape Hospitals Department gave the following evidence—

They conclude with these words which I find very revealing because in my two decades of medical practice I have often been saddled with this problem. They stated—

Sir, I just want to illustrate this for the House. If a district surgeon is called out to-day to a patient lying sick in the veld and the patient is in Provincial Council territory, then the patient will be loaded into a motor car and transported to the nearest provincial hospital. While he is being transported he is the patient of the State Department of Health. The moment he is taken out of the motor car, he is not only the responsibility of another surgeon, he is also then the patient of the Provincial Administration. If he has a contagious disease and they have to isolate him but there is no contagious disease hospital available, the Divisional Council must pay for those services. Then he is really a patient of the Divisional Council. The real difficulty occurs if he should die. It is not as easy here as it would perhaps be in Venice, where they have a large river. We have to give our people a decent burial. If the patient dies and the corpse was found in a Divisional Council area, and he was indigent, they must bury him. It is their duty. But suppose they could not establish the cause of death. If that should happen he would then become, temporarily, the patient of the Department of Justice.

You mean the corpse

No, a corpse still remains a patient in a certain sense. But let us not be flippant. Let us now bring this matter to its logical conclusion. For a time the patient is the responsibility of the Department of Justice while an autopsy is being held. Then the Divisional Council must take over and bury him. But if he is found in a district where there is no local authority, the magistrate is the agent responsible for his burial and he may claim the money from the Provincial Administration. It was actually their patient all along. This all goes to show how one can in reality be sent from pillar to post. We as individuals and even a person when he is no longer there, in respect of the handling of the remains, are entitled to our self-respect. [Interjections.] My hon. friends must not address me directly now. I am busy addressing them.

Good co-ordination with the minimum of friction will eliminate many of these problems. But just consider how many points of contact there are. There is also the very irksome system of subsidies from one board or one body in regard to another. There is the irksome control measures and the differences which arise between officials. I shall mention another example or two. There are the duplicated services. It has happened that divisional councils and the municipalities of medium sized towns have both of them kept an ambulance in operation as a result of the obligation imposed upon them by provincial ordinances to do so. They then compete to see who reaches the patient first. Now I ask you, is that necessary? It is an unhealthy form of duplication. I feel that ambulance services are an integral part of the provincial departments’ duties in regard to general hospital services. Let me put it clearly. That is my considered opinion. In order to illustrate this matter a little further, I should like to say that as far as immunization, i.e. the inoculation against diseases is concerned, I want in the first place to express my thanks and appreciation for the particularly excellent service, a unique service in fact, which the Department of Health rendered in causing the number of cases of poliomyelitis which amounted to 2,240 in 1957 in this country, to be reduced to 101 in 1962. This was excellent service, but even here it was found that after 1962 there was no absolute certainty as to whether it had been the district surgeon who was to have inoculated all the people, or whether it was the officials of the local authorities. We find therefore that in 1963 these numbers had again risen to more than 300 and on investigation it was found that many of these people had not received the oral inoculation.

These few practical points from my own experience demonstrate adequately I think the problems which are being experienced by those who have to render these services. I may as well omit to mention a large number of other examples which I know about, but the faulty co-ordination is emphasized throughout in the evidence of persons appearing before commissions, and some of them even submitted specific representations in regard to how this problem could be solved. That is why we also received, in the evidence of the Orange Free State Hospitals Department this request for a centrally co-ordinated department or body, and from Natal, believe it or not. Sir, we received the following statement—

Yes they are not referring to the Central Government, but to the Provinces. So it went on. The State is beginning to accept to an ever-increasing extent that the individual must be dealt with as an entity and not just restored to health and then abandoned. Co-ordination pre-supposes a balance between division and unity. Specialization in our modern technological world must be encouraged. One constantly feels that one must integrate into that global unit in order to render one’s service. Medical development to-day has led to many of our concepts on treatment being thrown overboard. I mention in the first instance just the question of communicable diseases If one takes a communicable disease such as leprosy, for example, one finds that the patient was isolated completely in the past, pushed to one side, and no one came near him. To-day medical science has developed to such an extent that one can take the leprosy patient and treat him and cure him completely in a hospital inside a city. Surely we all remember Robben Island, where the leprosy patients were kept, and that people were very afraid to go there. In that respect we have made a very good change by using Robben Island to-day for people who suffer from ideological ills. It was a very good change. The present methods of combating contagious diseases are also a matter in regard to which medical science has developed a great deal. To-day it is not necessary to have ambulance services for contagious diseases, and I think the time is rapidly approaching when we will no longer have isolation hospitals. We will be able soon to nurse all kinds of cases in general hospitals.

The three levels of government are there and we cannot remove them now. We know that friction and problems will decrease if those levels were not present, but they are present and I just want to express my appreciation for the Health Commission and for the co-ordinated health services and hospital board which the hon. member requested, and which his Government established as far back as 1944 and which did nothing. It was nevertheless a fine attempt. I want to thank the hon. the Minister for the many other attempts which he has made, as well as that Conference on Health Instruction which was held in 1962 and where discussions with all the persons and bodies took place so that there could be better co-operation. There is much to say thank you for, including the co-operation within the Department with other legal bodies such as the S.A. Bureau of Standards, the Joint Matriculation Board, the Nursing Council and the C.S.I.R. My final vote of thanks is for the fact that an Act has been introduced to control the sale of drugs. This Drugs Control Act is also an attempt to obtain better co-ordination, because there was an entirely chaotic state of affairs, in the way in which even general practitioners were exploited by sending them certain types of drugs. I foresee that the sound attempts which have been made to obtain better co-ordination will soon be given new impetus and make new progress because we are also awaiting the findings of other commissions such as the Borckenhagen Commission. which will specify and make recommendations on the financial relations, and this must necessary lead to a better and a juster division of functions. I am inclined to agree with one of the bodies which gave evidence before the Snyman Commission. That Department was absolutely convinced that if there was one authority controlling all the health services in the country, it would be a very good thing. That is an opinion which, to my way of thinking, deserves serious attention.

The House, as the hon. member for Rosettenville said, is indebted to the hon. member for Germiston for having introduced this motion this afternoon. I do hope that although the two hon. members on the Government side who have spoken have carefully avoided the question, we will have a clear indication from the hon. the Minister that this motion is not a forerunner to a move to centralize the control of health services in the hands of the Central Government and to deprive the provinces of their responsibilities in the handling of health services. I trust that the hon. the Minister will be kind enough to give us an answer when he participates in this debate this afternoon.

Sir. I enter this debate not as a medical practitioner, nor do I suggest that there is a ready answer to the problems which face any attempt at co-ordination. But what concerns me is whether or not machinery at present exists whereby many of the difficulties which do exist and the problems to which reference has been made this afternoon, could well be resolved. There have been several attempts, as has been mentioned, to assess the position regarding health services and the control of health services. The latest of those, of course, was the Schumann Commission, which was appointed on 8th April, 1960. It was the first commission which had elastic terms of reference. May I remind you, Sir, of the terms of reference of that commission. It was directed—

That specific instruction was given to that particular commission, and so far as I am aware the commission has reported, and had that report been released for the information of hon. members, we would not be debating this matter in vacuo but we would have concrete proposals and we would have information about the evidence and the opinions of those who are directly concerned with the administration of health services. When I asked the hon. the Minister last year whether he could make this available, he indicated to me, quite correctly, that this was a commission appointed by the hon. the Minister of Finance and that the matter was in the hands of that hon. Minister. It seems at the moment that no success has been achieved in prevailing upon the hon. the Minister of Finance to make this very important report available to members of this House. Sir, nearly seven years have elapsed since the commission was appointed. The report of the Gluckman Commission was in the hands of the Government and was published within 18 months of the appointment of the commission, and it was a very comprehensive report. It seems to me that there is no reason why, in a matter of this urgency, we should have to await further the report of the Schumann Commission. Sir, the hon. member for Germiston offered the fact that this report had not been published as a possible reason why the hon. the Minister may not be able to reply to this discussion at length this afternoon. I do hope that that will not be the case. Sir, we have heard here this afternoon the history of the divided responsibilities and how they have grown in the medical services. Here again there are many interesting reasons for this division which now exists. But the fact that there is a division of responsibility does not in itself mean that co-ordination is impossible. Surely there are four facets of health and it is quite impossible for the control and the direction of all four facets to be vested in the hands of one person or one department. Sir, if one takes the question of health and the promotion of health one is immediately involved with nutrition, with education, with mental health—all matters which arise long before illness occurs in the accepted form, but they are part of the health services of the country. One comes to the second aspect and that is the prevention of ill-health. In that particular field one has the periodic school inspections by medical inspectors and dentists attending to the general health of school-going children. There is maternal and child health guidance; there is the T.B. screening which should be done and is being done throughout the country; there are the processes of vaccination and inoculation, which one realizes are essential. It is co-ordination that is required and not necessarily in all cases a change in the controlling authority. Then when one comes, thirdly, to the cure and alleviation of disease and injury, one has the hospitalization, clinics, dispensaries, after-care facilities. Here again a wide field must be covered and it is the question of co-ordination which is paramount and not the direct control. Finally one comes to the fourth aspect and that is the rehabilitation, the occupational therapy, vocational therapy, invalidity and disablement-grants and the vexed problem of the re-employment of those who physically are not completely active. Sir, I think it is without doubt a fact which cannot be disputed that in this country we have medical and technical knowledge of the highest order. I think as South Africans we are all proud of the achievements of South Africans in the fields of medicine and surgery. We have enthusiasm and we have the human material. We have human material of the highest quality to provide health services. One has cause for criticism when one finds that there is a break-down in those services when those facilities are available. I believe that the machinery does exist. I believe that under Act No. 51 of 1946, in terms of which we have the National Health Council and the Central Health Services and Hospitals Co-ordinating Council, the machinery does exist. The question is whether that machinery is being effectively used. I have had little experience on the Co-ordinating Council and I have the utmost faith that that machinery is capable of dealing with these problems, but there is a breakdown beyond the actual meetings of the Co-ordinating Council. First of all, reference was made here this afternoon by one of the hon. members to the costs of building. The hon. the Minister will know that the council several years ago referred the question of building and building costs and types of buildings to the C.S.I.R. for research and report. The provinces have asked for it, and there is no reason to blame the provinces if they are not building to correct specifications when those specifications have not been made available to the provinces.

Let us consider the question of staff raised by the hon. member for Rosettenville. He raised the aspect of competition for the services of trained personnel, be they nursing or medical personnel. The machinery is there to prevent that under this Co-ordinating Council if it functions properly because there is an agreement that the salaries or the wages or remuneration to be offered will be agreed between the provinces and the departments of Health and provided the contracting parties, the members of that Council, abide by the decisions which are arrived at, there should be no difficulty; there is no competition. But when one comes to the basic provision of the staff—for instance the provision of an adequate number of doctors—we suddenly find that in the Government itself there are four Government Departments which are concerned with the question of the co-ordination of the training of medical personnel for the provision of health services. Sir, when I referred to this matter last year and suggested to the hon. the Minister that I thought that co-ordination was necessary, as suggested here to-day by the hon. member for Germiston, the hon. Minister was annoyed with me. May I refer him to Hansard. The Minister spoke on 20th September, 1966, and said (Hansard Col. 2512)—

—the Minister was referring to me—

I then interjected—“Do you not co-ordinate the health services?” The Minister replied—

The Minister of Health was prepared to say to me last year, when he replied to me, that it was quite in order to have the Minister of Education responsible for the training of White doctors, the Minister of Coloured Affairs responsible for the training of Coloured doctors, the Minister of Bantu Affairs to look after Bantu doctors, and the Minister of Indian Affairs to train the Indian doctors.

Surely, Sir, that is not co-ordination. I do hope that the hon. the Minister will forgive me for raising this matter again, but I cannot understand how, with the necessity for complying with the policy of the Government there can be such an absence of correlation and co-ordination as regards that aspect of medical services. The Minister of Bantu Education has very excellent plans to provide health services to replace to a great extent the health services which are now in the hands of the Cape Province and missions in the Transkei. But the Minister cannot execute those plans until there is a co-ordinated plan to provide the medical personnel necessary to run those hospitals and to staff them.

The hon. member for Rosettenville mentioned the shortage of nurses. That again is a problem which can be overcome by co-ordinated action, and I believe that to a great extent this problem has been overcome in the Cape Province by the adequate opportunities which are given to the Coloured community to enter the nursing profession. I believe that to-day there are very few, if any, vacant nursing posts in the Cape Province. These Coloured nurses are readily making use of their opportunities. At the recent graduation at the Somerset Hospital, for instance, there was a pass list of 114 nurses, of which 61 were general nurses and 53 midwives. Out of 76 honour passes amongst all races in the whole of the Republic five honour passes were attained by Coloured nurses of the Somerset Hospital.

Let me turn to another matter now We have to-day received the report of the Department of Social Welfare. What do we find? We find that the Social Welfare Department is subsidizing the South African National Council for Alcoholism to the extent of some R12,500 per year. It also maintains institutions or retreats which are subsidized. According to the report it also spends on and is active in the field of education and information services. But at the same time the province is busy with psychiatric treatment of and hospitalization for alcoholics on an entirely different approach, namely not that of providing retreats but of providing curative treatment. These matters can be co-ordinated, and I want to say that I believe that the machinery does exist.

I should like to make an appeal to the Minister. I know that the demands which will be made because of the necessity of more direct and personal contact with the Council will be heavy. But I believe that if a concerted effort is made, and if there is determination to make the machinery work which does at present exist, such as the National Health Council and the Co-ordinating Council, we will be able to iron out very many of the problems which have been referred to this afternoon. I am sure they can be ironed out. I am sure the ability is there to iron them out.

I want to conclude by referring to two other matters. Firstly, there is the frustration and delay caused as regards the building of provincial hospitals. The position at the moment clearly illustrates not the existence of co-ordination but in fact a complete breakdown of co-ordination. Before one brick can be placed upon another to change the accommodation at a hospital other than a single race hospital, the plans must first of all be passed by the provincial administration who drew them up. they must then go through to the Coloured Affairs Department for approval, then to the Bantu Affairs Department for approval, and then they go to the Community Development Department for approval before the province can start with the building operations. I hope that machinery will be established to obviate the long delays involved in passing the plans from one department to another. Certain rules and regulations should be observed in the planning of buildings.

The last aspect which, I believe, requires urgent attention is the co-ordination of clinic services and the demand for out-patient services at hospitals. We have clinics where district surgeons have certain responsibilities and district nursing is provided. But there seems to be a growing tendency, particularly amongst our poorer classes, for people to swarm into our hospitals for treatment and attention. I have here figures for certain local hospitals. At the Groote Schuur Hospital there are some 45,000 out-patient attendances per month. People who come to the hospital by means of public transport are attended to and then they return to their homes all over the Peninsula. At the smaller hospitals such as the Red Cross Children’s Hospital and the Somerset Hospital they have 700 to 800 out-patient cases every day. It is thus clear that the demands made on the staff at those hospitals are enormous. It would therefore seem that some measure of co-ordination between clinics, district nursing services and the hospital organization itself is necessary to ensure that more home attention is available for these people so that they do not come crowding and streaming into our hospitals. I believe this pattern is common throughout the country and it leads to enormous difficulties, for instance the provision of sanitary arrangements and so forth, at the places where they are treated.

For these reasons, Sir, we welcome the opportunity which has been given for us to discuss this matter this afternoon, and I am sure the hon. the Minister will find in the machinery, which he now has, the facilities to co-ordinate these services so that they might be satisfactory in all fields of operation.

Mr. Speaker, I am aware that this House is in a hurry to adjourn and therefore I have only a short time at my disposal in which to deal with this difficult but nevertheless interesting problem. This is not only a difficult and interesting problem but unfortunately also a very delicate problem.

In the first place I want to thank all hon. members who participated in this debate for the fine spirit in which they viewed and expounded this entire problem and everything related thereto, and in particular the hon. member who moved the motion and the hon. member for Gordonia for their really excellent expositions.

I think the discussions we have had here have illustrated one thing and that is that there has been grave concern for many years, not only in this House but throughout the country, about the consequences of this divided control amongst the various bodies, particularly amongst the provincial administrations, the Central Government and the local authorities. This concern goes back a long way. For many years now this problem has been giving various governments food for thought. Even in 1944 when the Smuts Government was in power there were proposals by the Gluckman Commission, which made an inquiry into this divided control and its evils.

They tried to find solutions to the problem. Subsequently there was the Havenga Committee and in recent years—in 1956—we had the Borckenhagen Commission, which has not yet concluded its business. All these things illustrate the fact that we in South Africa feel unhappy about this divided control. We are a small nation with a small White population and with limited means at our disposal and we are concerned about the fact that our services for this small nation have been fragmented to an extent hardly ever encountered in other countries in the world. We all have to admit that up to the present time we have had very few results, that very few results have flowed from a great deal of consideration and from all the attempts at co-ordination. We have to take cognizance of the real reason therefor. What is the reason why we cannot succeed? The hon. member who has just sat down stated the real reason admirably. It is the human reason. The reason is to be found in the fact that when a person serves on a body or has certain influence or power, it is extremely difficult to get him to surrender any of that power or authority. Everyone clings to the power he has. Even if it is not in the eventual interests of the common good or the country as a whole to do so, one is inclined, as a human being, to cling to that power. That I think is the basic problem. For that reason this is a delicate problem because one would so much like to accommodate all bodies which have something to do with these services; this is what makes this problem so delicate. Nevertheless, I think there is one conviction we all share and that is that this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue much longer.

Unfortunately public health services were regarded as minor services at the time of Union. No consideration was given to them. In our Union Constitution, the Constitution of our first South African State, health services were not even mentioned. These services were virtually regarded as being charity. The slaughter amongst the population which was caused by the 1918 epidemic of Spanish flu made us realize for the first time that it was essential to introduce health services in South Africa. In the haste to introduce these services use was made of existing machinery, namely of the city councils and the provincial councils, and whatever remained was handled by the State. This is the unfortunate beginning, namely that health services were divided amongst various authorities as a matter of urgency. That divided authority has continued to exist up to the present time. To-day we have the position that this authority is divided chiefly amongst three bodies, but as the hon. member said, it is in fact divided amongst even more than three bodies. We still find the strange position that the local authorities are responsible for contagious diseases but that the Central Government is also responsible for contageous diseases to a large extent. In that one finds an inconsistency. One finds a similar inconsistency in the fact that the provincial administrations are responsible for certain general hospitals whereas the Central Government is also responsible for hospitals. These hospitals also have sections for general medicine. Each one of the large, special hospitals controlled by the Central Government, for tuberculosis or for the mentally ill, etc., also has a small section which virtually is a small general hospital. In this way we find duplication. Now. we must admit that when a service has been fragmented, it is a problem and an enormous task to fit those fragments together, as one would a jig-saw puzzle, to form a whole which is correct in all respects. There is one requirement for all co-ordination and that is authority. The hon. member who sat down a short while ago pointed out to us the co-ordination of health services in hospitals and mentioned the Co-ordinating Council. This Council has been in existence for years but at present it virtually has one task only, and that is to try and co-ordinate salaries. Even in this respect though, it is defective because it is dependent on voluntary co-operation. There is no authority. The Central Government does not have the authority to tell the provinces that they have to accept this, that or the other. One has to get them to agree with one and if one cannot get them to agree then one has four provinces against one Central Government which means that the provinces always determine what is to happen. That, unfortunately, is the position. If there is one factor in connection with co-ordination of which we may not lose sight, it is the factor of authority. Authority must be vested somewhere and it must be possible for such authority to enforce co-ordination. If there is any overlapping it must be possible for that authority to eliminate it, because it is essential to do so. If we are to have a good service, there must be no overlapping. It is essential that the one should not compete with the other. It is essential that the one should not derogate from the other.

It is essential that the one should not take away the staff of the other.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot deny that what I have just said are things which do happen constantly and to an annoying extent. Overlapping is annoying; it is extravagant. Constant conflicts do occur. Co-operation cannot be achieved. Numerous charges have been levelled against us. I do not want to go into specific cases; it is neither pleasant nor right to do so. Nevertheless, I want to point out that often, when attempts have been made for the Central Government to co-operate with other bodies, it has simply been impossible to effect that. In other words, health services have to suffer and they suffer as a result of a fragmentation which can only be eliminated if the basic principle, namely that of a central authority, is put into practice.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, Mr. Speaker, I am aware that there are bodies and persons who are always afraid that they will be pushed aside and that they will have to disappear. I am nevertheless convinced about one thing and that is that when the essential goodwill has been created, when there is a willingness to co-operate and to integrate and when there is a central authority, it will not be necessary for any of those bodies to surrender any of its authority. Then it will be possible for all of them to co-operate but what will be absolutely, inexorably essential is the central authority.

After receiving the report of the Schumann Commission the Government is engaged, as this House knows, in carefully considering the entire matter. It will not only be necessary to consider the matter, it will also be necessary to negotiate in a spirit of goodwill with the relative bodies and persons who render parts of the health services. Therefore, because of the very fact that this matter is under consideration by the Government at the moment, I know that this House will not expect me to say a great deal more to-day apart from saying that I am convinced that we shall not be able to get any co-operation unless we have one central authority which can enforce such co-ordination.

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to take up the time of this House any longer. I just want to assure this House of my appreciation for the views which have been expressed here. I am sure that what has been said here, will assist in bringing about a more rapid solution of the problems.

Mr. Speaker, seeing that we have been able to discuss this matter in such a peaceful atmosphere, and trusting that something good will be born of it, I should like to withdraw my motion.