When the House adjourned last night I was saying that I was surprised, while listening to the speeches of hon. members of the United Party, because every single speech made attacked the Bill we are considering to-day. Hardly any hon. member had anything good to say for this Bill. The most they would say was that they hoped this would deal with some aspects of this skolly problem. That is the only good thing they had to say about the Bill. It is significant that the hon. member for Peninsula, the Coloured Representative who is also supporting this Bill, as did the United Party, who, as I say, spoke strongly against practically every clause in the Bill, also mentioned that this Bill went far beyond the objectives which had originally been stated. Even members on the Government side who have spoken on the Bill seemed to be under a complete misapprehension as to its meaning and certainly as to its far-reaching nature. For instance, the hon. member for Boksburg, who spoke yesterday, quoted a letter which he had received from a Coloured man, Mr. September, who wrote in favour of this Bill, but he also dealt only with the aspect of solving the skolly problem. The hon. the Minister himself, when he introduced the Second Reading, read out a quotation from the Council for Coloured Education supporting this Bill. He read a paragraph which stated that legislation should be introduced “to conquer this skolly menace by the institution of labour camps for all Coloureds who are not in paid employment”. In other words, even this Council which the Minister quoted as being in favour of the Bill (a) considered it as dealing with the skolly menace and (b) were careful to say that it should apply only to those persons not in paid employment. So as far as I can see, absolutely no good reason has been made out for supporting this Bill, except in so far as people hope that it will deal with the skolly menace. The interesting thing, of course, is that this is exactly what the hon. the Minister denied. When he introduced the Bill he denied that this was a Bill to deal only with skollies. In fact, he vehemently expressed the opinion that this Bill should not be called the Skolly Bill. He said that would immediately cast a blight on the whole proceedings, and he made it clear that as far as he was concerned he considered this to be a Bill for the uplift of the Coloured people. That is the attitude he adopted. I quite agree with the hon. the Minister when he says that this is not a Bill to deal with the skolly menace, because it deals with thousands upon thousands of Coloured youths between the ages of 18 and 24 who by no stretch of the imagination can be considered to be skollies. It deals with Coloured boys, whether they are respectable boys or delinquents, whether they are at school or not at school, and whether they are in employment or. not. So I agree with the Minister when he says that this is not a Bill to deal with the skolly menace. That is why I cannot understand hon. members on this side of the House supporting this Bill. Somebody mentioned the principle of the Bill. I am not sure what the principle is. The long title of this Bill is certainly no guide to it. We have had titles in this House, on many occasions, which have had nothing to do with the contents of the Bill, such as for instance the Extension of Higher Education Bill, which closed the open universities. Nobody supported that Bill because it was “to extend education” and, Sir, the title of the Bill has nothing to do with it. Until we know from the hon. the Minister whether he is prepared to accept material amendments at the Committee Stage both in regard to the numbers of people to whom this is to apply, the groups of people to whom it is to apply and how it is to be applied, I cannot see how anybody can support the Second Reading of this Bill. It is not for me to teach the official Opposition parliamentary procedure, but since we are voting on the Bill as it is before us now, with all its objectionable aspects, surely the right thing for the Opposition to do would have been to vote against the Second Reading of this Bill and then, if they succeeded in persuading the hon. the Minister to accept material amendments to the Bill and to remove the various objectionable clauses from the Bill, they would have been entitled to support the Bill at the Third Reading. That is how I have always understood parliamentary procedure and I believe that is how any member who has any experience in this House understands parliamentary procedure. We are now voting on this Bill as it has been presented to the House at the Second Reading and unless material amendments are accepted at the Committee Stage and the Opposition has previous knowledge that this is to be so—and I do not know how they could have had previous knowledge unless there has been more of this getting together business that I know nothing about—their obvious course of action was to vote against the Bill at the Second Reading, to try to get their amendments accepted and then to reconsider their attitude at the Third Reading of the Bill. That, is of course, precisely what I intend to do. Because I disagree entirely with the hon. the Minister when he says that this Bill is designed to uplift the Coloured people. I have had a long, hard look at the Bill and I see nothing in it that is designed to uplift the Coloured people as a whole. I see it as a hopeless confession of abysmal failure to understand and tackle any of the root causes of Coloured delinquency and of unemployment among young Coloured people. Sir, as to the so-called solution proposed to this problem, I have the strongest objection to the far-reaching nature of the Bill that we are considering, and I must also say in all honesty that I have the gravest suspicion as to the actual motives behind this Bill, and therefore for all these reasons I shall vote against the Second Reading of this Bill. I wish to move the following amendment at this stage—

I want to deal firstly with the contention, with which I agree, which has been put forward by other members, that this Bill fails to tackle the root causes of unemployment and delinquency amongst the Coloured youths. Sir, other members have referred to the lack of education for Coloured youths and to the lack of training. I do not wish to be repetitious so I am not going to repeat all those arguments with which I am in full agreement. I only want to emphasize one or two aspects of this particular side of the problem. I want to remind members of a few salient facts which in fact I brought to the notice of this House a few weeks ago. I want to remind the House that almost half of the Coloured children who go to school do not get beyond Std. I. They drop out barely literate and certainly in no condition to enter the labour market. Only 4.4 per cent of Coloured pupils enrolled in the Cape Province in 1966 were enrolled in Stds. VII to X, and I wish to point out that for most apprenticeships, Std. VII is the educational standard that has to be achieved. Only 32 per cent of Coloured schoolchildren were over 12 years of age and only 7.6 per cent of Coloured children going to school are over 15 years of age. That is to say, 92.4 per cent of the Coloured children in the Cape leave school before they are 15 years of age. They are already set in ways of idleness and delinquency by the time they have reached the age at which this Minister is prepared to take them under his benevolent wing, i.e. the age of 18 years; they have had years and years of idleness; they have had very little parental control and they have had no training, and this is the fundamental problem. For these people, this Bill does not offer any solution whatsoever. It does not touch this vast number of Coloured youths who leave school before they are 15 years old. Sir, Prof. Cilliers of Stellenbosch University had a lot to say about this subject when he addressed a symposium last year on the utilization of Coloured labour. He said—

Generally alleviation of this condition can only be obtained when it has become possible to institute compulsory schooling for the Coloured population on a broad basis.

Sir. there is no sign of this in this Bill. There is no sign even that pari passu with this far-reaching measure to control the lives of all these people, the hon. the Minister is even contemplating the question of extending the areas of compulsory schooling for Coloured children. There is no sign, for instance, that he is going to raise Coloured teachers’ salaries so as to prevent the emigration of the many Coloured teachers who feel that they have no hope for their future in this country. In so far as the hon. the Minister tackles this problem of delinquency amongst Coloured youths at all, he tackles the results and he does not pay any attention to the causes of the problem.

My second objection to this Bill, of course, is that it is based on mass compulsion on a most far-reaching scale. Sir, I would emphasize again that all Coloured males between the ages of 18 and 24 have to register as recruits and that failure to do so is an offence which is punishable by heavy penalties, either a fine up to R200 or imprisonment up to six months. What is more, the certificates of recruitment must be produced on demand by any registering officer who can be anybody delegated by the hon. the Minister. Failure to produce on demand is an offence which is also subject to severe penalties. Sir. the point which the hon. the Minister should not underrate is the dismay of the entire Coloured population at the thought that a modified pass system is now going to be applied to Coloured youths, because that is what it is. It is not a pass law, of course, as we understand it in the case of the African and which, of course, completely hinders his freedom of movement and his ability to sell his labour in the market, but this does have the same effect on the Coloured youth who cannot produce his registration certificate or his exemption certificate or whatever it is to be called, on demand to anybody to whom the hon. the Minister delegates his authority. This is a modified pass system, and as I say the Minister should not underestimate the dismay that has been caused amongst Coloured people at the extension of this modified pass system to the Coloured people. Sir, so far all I can see is that the hon. the Minister has achieved the registration of every Coloured male youth between the ages of 18 and 24 years; he has not created a single job for them but he has created eight new crimes for which they can go to gaol. In dealing with the cost of this Bill the hon. the Minister mentioned that it was going to cost something like R1½ million to set up these training camps and something like R380.000 per annum to administer. He said that that expenditure would be off-set by the fact that so many Coloured youths were falling into crime and had to go to gaol and that the cost of keeping them in gaol was very high. But the Minister is creating new crimes which are going to land Coloured youths in gaol who otherwise might never have seen the inside of a gaol. I wish to point that out to him, and in passing I want to point out that a far better investment for the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs would be to spend the estimated R2,000,000 per annum that it would cost this country, to introduce compulsory schooling for all Coloured children, to introduce school feeding schemes which would help to keep Coloured children at school for longer periods and to increase the pay of Coloured teachers which would provide the necessary additional teachers in order to implement a scheme of compulsory education.

Now, Sir, I want to turn for a moment to the selection of recruits. The Bill lays down that the Minister shall from time to time determine the number of recruits to be selected for training but it gives no indication of the factors which the hon. the Minister has to take into consideration when he does that. I presume that this will include the facilities available for training, i.e. the number of camps to be set up, the accommodation provided for these young men, employment opportunities and labour requirements, and I have the strongest suspicion that it is the latter, the labour requirements, which will be the determining factor in the Minister’s decision as to how many recruits he is going to call up. I want to mention again that to my mind the worst feature of this Bill is that a recruit can be called up for any kind of employment even though he is a full-time student, or an apprentice or a person already in full-time employment. The hon. member for Johannesburg (North) was quite wrong last night when he said that so many people would rush off and get themselves employed just to escape this Bill. Getting employment will not help them to escape the Bill. It will not help them at all. Whether they are in a full-time job or at a university or at school there is nothing at all in this Bill that will necessarily exempt those people from recruitment and being put into training camps. Everybody here accepts the assurances of the hon. the Minister; the hon. member for Peninsula made a stirring speech about how he was accepting the assurances of the Minister of Coloured Affairs. Why should everybody accept his assurances? There is nothing of that kind in the Bill. Unless the Minister is prepared in the Committee Stage materially to amend the Bill, I have no faith in assurances. I noticed that yesterday and the day before and last week nobody on this side was prepared to accept the assurances of the hon. the Minister of Education. Arts and Science with regard to the education of White children. Oh no. where White children are concerned, they want the provisions laid down in the Bill; where Coloured children are concerned. they are prepared to accept the assurances given to them by the hon. the Minister. [Interjections.] That is exactly the point. There is nothing in this Bill at all which per se exempts Coloured youths in employment and Coloured youths at school from being called up and recruited for any kind of work that the hon. the Minister wishes to put them into, and hon. members of the Opposition know that perfectly well. If they do not know it then they have not read the Bill and then they should not be debating here.

Why so aggressive?

I am fighting the Opposition on this score as hard as I am fighting the Government for the simple reason that hon. members of the Opposition are all in the same camp; they are all in the hon. the Minister’s training camp, and every time the United Party supports a Bill proposed by this Government and with which I profoundly disagree, I shall fight the Opposition just as hard as I fight the Government; make no mistake about that.

Sir, I might say that the type of training which is offered is also open to strong criticism as far as I am concerned. There is absolutely nothing in this Bill to tell us what kind of work these people are to be trained for and indeed it seems to me that most of these people many of whom have left school in Std. I—because over half of them leave in Std. I—and many more before they have reached the age of 15 will only be capable of being trained to be “disciplined labourers”, the phrase that has been used in connection with other pieces of legislation passed in this House. The hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration has given us some hint about the disciplined labour for which these people are to be trained. As you know, Sir, he is reducing the number of Africans who may be employed as contract labourers. He goes further, but that is another matter, but certainly as far as contract labourers are concerned he is barring the additional employment of Africans, in the Cape at any rate, as vehicle drivers, room sweepers and cleaners, gardeners, newspaper sellers, icecream sellers, stable boys and grooms, delivery men, milkmen and so on. These are the sort of jobs out of which the Africans are going to be chased. And. of course, there is a considerable shortage of unskilled farm labour and there too, Africans are no longer allowed to be recruited in those areas in increased numbers. And there is the strongest suspicion that it is in these categories of labour that these young coloured men are going to be put. I do not only go by the Press statement of the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration which he has denied. The hon. the Deputy Minister said that he was scandalously misouoted by, I think, The Cape Times. But. he cannot deny Hansard. After all, he can deny what he said to the Press because they have no come-back. But he cannot deny what he said in this House. And here Hansard has it. In a debate earlier this session I raised this whole question of the hon. the Minister endorsing Africans out of the Western Cape and I mentioned to him that there was a considerable shortage of labour in the Cape and particularly in those fields out of which African workers were being endorsed. And I asked at that stage—Hansard Column 892 of 8th February, 1967—whether the Deputy Minister had taken into consideration the availability of non-Bantu labour for these jobs. And what did he say? He said yes he had. I then asked whether he knew what the figures were for unemployment among Coloured people in the Western Cape, and whether he had the slightest idea of how impossible it was for employers to fill vacancies in the categories that he has determined should now be forbidden areas. To this the reply of the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education was: “Did you read about the new legislation in The Cape Times this morning? And what was that new legislation? It is the very Bill that we are considering to-day in this House. And I said that I had read that Bill with horror because I knew exactly what it meant. It meant that the whole idea behind this Bill was to see to it that Coloured youths were taken out of those training camps and put into the categories of labour where there was now going to be a shortage since Africans were being thrown out. And the hon. the Minister for Coloured Affairs carried on much the same way. He denied that this was the specific purpose of this Bill and said this: The primary object is to discipline and train these coloured youths. And then the hon. the Minister went on to say this: “It is logical that those trained in such a way will become available among other things for any work now being done by Bantu.”

What is wrong with that?

Of course this is the object of this Bill. The hon. member wants to know what is wrong with that. I am trying to tell you what is wrong with it. I do not agree with compulsory labour. This would make it a forced labour system. That is what I think is wrong with it.

That is nonsense.

Of course this makes it a forced labour system. It is as close as a hairbreadth anyway to a forced labour system.

You are wrong again.

If the hon. member will get up and tell me why I am wrong, I might have a little respect for his interjection. What I say is that with the background of Ministerial statements and back-bench pronouncements such as the one I have just listened to the connection between this Bill and the African removal scheme from the Cape is absolutely inescapable. The conclusion is inescapable. The Bill is not aimed at the uplift of the Coloured people. That, Sir, is just a sweetmeat to soften the Opposition. It is aimed at the provision of Coloured manual labour to replace Black manual labour. How the hon. the Minister can say that it does not mean compulsory labour is quite beyond me. Let me emphasize again. Every single Coloured youth between the ages of 18 and 24, whether in employment or not in employment, whether he has lawful means of support, whether he is at school or at an institution is, as the Bill is before this House now at Second Reading, liable to register as a recruit. Once he has been selected he becomes a cadet. And then even when he has served one year in a training centre, he is liable to be called up again at any time, for one year or an additional year.

And that is forced labour?

Yes, this is forced labour as far as I am concerned, because it directs people into avenues of employment which they do not voluntarily take. That is why it is forced labour and they are at the Minister’s beck and call for six solid years. At any time, between the ages of 18 and 24, if hon. members would look at clause 16, and even after a young man has served his so-called term of training, he is still liable to be a cadet until he is 24 years of age. And, he would still be liable to be directed into any form of labour to which the hon. the Minister wishes to direct him. Now, how anybody could compare this with army training is beyond me. Where is the resemblance? Army training has honour and glory attached to it. When a young man has served his nine months or a year in the Army apart from the two weeks that he has to go to camp, for a series of years, he is free. He can choose to be employed where he wants to be employed. There is no similarity at all. Furthermore there is no similarity with the S.S.B. I think it was the hon. member for Malmesbury who said that this was similar to the S.S.B. that saved the poor-whites of this country. My goodness, Sir, if we were still waiting for the S.S.B. to save the poor-white problem of this country, we would still, I can assure you, be employing about 2,000 youths a year. That is all the S.S.B. managed at the time. That is all. And joining the S.S.B. was voluntary unless a youth was committed by a court as an alternative to go to gaol. But not even every young man who was unemployed had to be recruited for the S.S.B. And to join the Battalion, a young man had to have a minimum qualification of Std. VI. There is nothing in this Bill about minimum schooling to see that the Coloured youths will at least have eight years of schooling. The S.S.B. did not solve the poor-white problem. Not even the hon. member for Malmesbury can be so stupid as to think that. What solved the poor-white problem was industrialization, the drawing in of all our youths from rural areas and elsewhere into employment in industry, secondary industry. For heaven’s sake! I do not wish to go into that. The thing I want to point out is that there is no relationship between army training for white youths and the S.S.B. which we had in previous years, and this Bill which we are considering before the House. And now I wish to sum up my objections. The Bill deals with effects and not causes, and it does nothing, as far as I can see, to uplift those coloured people who badly are in need of it, and that is the vast bulk of young Coloured people who leave school before they are 15 years of age and have fallen into ways of idleness. There is no sign as I have said of an extension of compulsory areas of schooling for Coloureds. It is not even pari passu tackling the root problem on a long-term basis together with some sort of short-term emergency basis. I might point out that there are Children’s Acts in this country. There are probation officers and there are industrial schools. All these methods of corrective treatment are available for Coloured as well as White youths.

We need more probation officers as well as more schools for the short term. We want more probation officers, more proper industrial schools if we want to tackle the youths below the age of 19 who have fallen foul of the law. And over the age of 19 the ordinary laws of the land, I would say, are quite good enough, or should be, to tackle problems of crime. Why does the hon. the Minister not do something about better policing in the Coloured areas, about Bonteheuwel, for instance, with its miserable lack of police, and so on? I do not mind if criminals go to gaol; and that is where the hon. The Deputy Minister does not understand my philosophy at all. I have no objection to people going to gaol if they are criminals after they have been tried in a court of law and found guilty and convicted. I have no objection to that at all. That is the normal system of punishment for crime and I am obviously all in favour of it. But I object to people being scooped up from the streets, from the schools and from their jobs at the Minister’s behest and sent to jobs that they do not want to do. That is what I am objecting to in this Bill. There is plenty that we can do to put down this skolly menace if we wish to. I have voiced my main objections as far as the production of these certificates is concerned, the non-production of which will be an offence involving heavy penalties and the fact that this is an extension of a modified pass system to the Coloureds. My final contention is that this is typical of a Bill dealing with people who have been deprived of political rights. [Time limit.]

The hon. member for Houghton has, as usual, looked at this Bill through her traditionally liberalistic spectacles and the image she sees through those spectacles is so distorted that few people can agree with her that what she sees can be the true picture. The hon. member and her party boast that they are the friends of the Coloureds. The hon. member tried this morning to put up the defence that they wanted to protect the interests of the Coloureds. I wish to contend that a person and a party who oppose to such an extent and see so many evils in this positive, constructive legislation, which is aimed at trying to rectify a chronic disease in the social life of the Coloureds, are in fact and quite definitely no friend of the Coloureds. Apparently it suits the hon. member and her party very well that that element of lack of discipline amongst the Coloured community should continue to exist so that they may exploit it, because they know that as soon as that community also becomes an orderly and disciplined one they will not be able to get anywhere with their slogans and political wiles. The hon. member was up in arms here about the education system of the Coloureds and could find nothing good in it, but surely that is not the case. Surely the hon. member knows that this party has done a very great deal for the Coloureds in the field of education during the past few years. The hon. member has probably paid a visit to the Coloured University here in the Western Cape? The hon. member has probably paid visits to all the Coloured schools throughout the country, schools which need not in any way play second fiddle to White schools and White facilities? It is a pity that this kind of thing is always seized upon by the hon. member and other members in order to break down what this Government is gradually building up. But, one cannot shut one’s eyes to reality. There are at the moment between 80,000 and 90,000 young Coloured men who are largely unaffected by this measure. Now the hon. member is saying that “whether they are respectable or delinquents”, they are all being affected by this measure, whether they are at school or not. The hon. member probably did not read the Bill very carefully. Clause 14 provides quite clearly—

That is permissive, it is not compulsory. It says “may” not “shall”.

… if the board is satisfied that—

But, Mr. Speaker, this board which is to be appointed will surely not consist of fanatics or people without any sense of responsibility. Where they will at the moment have a choice of between 80,000 and 90,000 people, from which a 1,000 per year will have to be selected, will this board now go and select from this number of people 1,000 recruits who are attending school or are in full-time employ? Surely that is not so? Surely they will go and look for people who will be in need of this training and this disciplined life. When this hon. member is distrustful towards the attitude of the party with whom she so readily sides when it comes to voting, I can quite understand her distrust. Personally I still do not know at this stage precisely where the hon. members of the Opposition stand with regard to this Bill. Apparently they are divided into two groups. The one group would like to support this legislation, whereas the other group apparently does not want to accept it. That is why their standpoint is such an uncertain one. In the Evening Post of 18th February, we read the following—

It is clear, therefore, that there is a serious division in the ranks of the Opposition in regard to this Bill. At the same time it is encouraging to see that there are people who are not prepared to allow themselves to be taken in tow by the Progressive Party or by the Black Sash—because the Black Sash has also issued circulars which more or less adhere to the standpoint of the hon. member for Houghton. However, it is also a pity that the official Opposition should adopt such an irresolute and undecided attitude in regard to such a cardinally important Bill with the result that nobody knows precisely where they stand. “He who hesitates is lost”, as the saying goes. That this is true of the Opposition has been proved once again by the setbacks they have suffered in the Johannesburg City Council.

Order! That is irrelevant.

But the vacillating attitude of the Opposition is also reflected in their own Press. So we may read in The Cape Argus of 22nd February—

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

I should like to point out how pressing the need for this legislation is. Anybody who has the interests and the survival of the Coloured population at heart, will welcome this Bill—it is, in fact, being welcomed by eminent Coloured leaders throughout the country. The saying, “The devil finds work for idle hands”, is a true one. The result is the development of a skolly and hooligan element amongst the Coloureds. A few years ago I had to appoint a number of cleaners for the school with which I was associated. The work did not require much exertion. With the help of a Coloured leader I interviewed approximately 20 young Coloured men. Before any one of them could be appointed it was necessary for them to furnish a testimonial stating that they had worked for one employer for at least three consecutive months. Most of those whom I interviewed had had a schooling, some even up to Std. VI. In the most cases a period of six to eight years had elapsed since they had been at school and yet they were, without exception, unable to prove to me that they had worked for three consecutive months for one employer. The immediate impression I got was that these people were undisciplined and work-shy. In any case I ultimately appointed four of them—two of them worked for only four days and then disappeared; the remaining two stayed a bit longer before they too disappeared. It is clear that these people are work-shy and undisciplined. It is also clear that it is necessary for them to be taught discipline over a long period of time. In order to support the need for this. I want to quote from a letter which appeared in the Everting Post, Port Elizabeth, of 18th February—

Surely it is quite clear from this that there is an element which cannot be cured by school training. That is why it is essential for this legislation to be passed so that this element can be properly disciplined and regulated.

I am by no means trying to maintain that the vast majority of Coloured youths display this degree of lack of discipline. Amongst many of them one finds a high degree of idealism, discipline and dedication, and I have respect for that. A while ago I had the privilege of addressing a number of high-school pupils attending Coloured schools. What struck me was the dedication, the rapt attention with which those pupils listened to me—as if they wanted to absorb every word. It gave me reason to return to my own school and tell my own pupils that it had been a unique experience for me to talk to those Coloured children. We cannot, however, close our eyes to the existence of an undisciplined element.

What precisely does this legislation provide? It provides that all Coloured boys between the ages of 18 and 24 must register. That will be compulsory. It is essential for it to be compulsory, otherwise all kinds of ways and means would be found of evading this measure. Is it not compulsory for all 16-year-old White boys to have themselves registered? Why is it being said that we are doing an injustice to the Coloured boy by compelling him to register? No, Mr. Speaker, I foresee that these training centres which are going to be established for Coloured youths will have to be expanded considerably within a few years. I am saying that because 1,000 Coloured boys amount to only about 5 per cent of the approximate 20,000 who reach the age of 18 years each year. I should like to see that, just as the White boy has the privilege of receiving military training, so the Coloured boy will also have the advantage of receiving training as a cadet. The hon. the Minister of Defence indicated here last year how grateful the parents of children receiving military training were. One parent even went so far as to write, “I sent you a sissy; you returned to me a man.” If we want to be a friend to the Coloureds, why should we begrudge them this disciplined life? It is of course not the Government’s policy to provide Coloureds with military training because we are not even able to give all our White boys military training. Military training was to a large extent a cure for the ducktail element amongst our White youth. Such training brings physical fitness, punctuality, keenness, alert-mindedness, enterprise, and it builds self-confidence. I foresee that these training centres will create these qualities in the Coloured youths. This measure will afford the Coloured youth the opportunity of developing these characteristics. Why should we then be so shortsighted as to deny them that opportunity? This Bill is nothing more than the equal of similar legislation which the Whites have had for some time now. There has been a reprehensible attempt by some newspapers to view this legislation as the establishment of labour camps. That view must be rejected. There is no “forced labour” here. They will undergo a period of training of one year and will then return as respected members of their separate communities. It is obvious that they will then be able to help supply the labour deficiency, particularly in view of the fact that practically all of them are now loafers. Surely that is logical. That is why I cannot see what justification there exists for the criticism levelled by the hon. member for Houghton. I believe that after these people have received their training, after they have been disciplined and regulated, they will be in demand amongst employers, whereas that is not the case at present. In reality the objective of this legislation is the training of half-adult juveniles, juveniles who, owing to a variety of causes, are already maladjusted at the age of 18 years. Initially these cadets will undergo a three-monthly clearance course in a youth centre. During these three months the course will concentrate mainly on basic principles, such as discipline, the obeying of orders, a healthy routine and way of life, hygienic habits and discipline in an ordered community. During these three months experts will diagnose the physical and mental abilities of these youths and then recommend them for a variety of differentiated training institutions. Some may be transferred to vocational schools—of which there are already quite a number in existence, inter alia in Port Elizabeth, Durban, Kimberley and Johannesburg. In these vocational schools the Coloureds will then be able to undergo, as apprentices, a useful course of apprenticeship and will be able to qualify as useful citizens when they come out. Some of them may even return to the ordinary high schools if they have the intellectual capacity. Some may be placed in constructive work. Juveniles who are placed out after three months nevertheless remain under the care and supervision of school principals or employers for the remaining nine months. They remain answerable to the youth training centre where they underwent their course. I foresee that the vast majority of the cadets will be transferred after the three-monthly course to youth camps where they will be kept busy with constructive physical labour for the following nine months in a way which will be of great benefit to them and for the country as a whole. In reality it will be possible to lay great emphasis on a general form of land service. For the country juveniles a youth camp on the banks of the Orange River, for example, where the development points of the Orange River Scheme are being established, could be very useful. In the evenings constructive programmes could be arranged and lectures could be held so as to facilitate the adaptation of the cadet to a working community. Here the cadets will receive daily wages and will be fitted with their uniforms, as well as with working clothes. I can foresee that these young men will return to their homes as neat, disciplined young men after a year’s training and that they will in reality be very worthwhile citizens there and will inculcate this disciplined life which they learnt in the camps into their homes and their communities, and will in this way be of great benefit to the Coloured community as such.

I do not want to dwell for long on what the hon. member for Algoa had to say, except merely to warn him that he should not take too much notice of the so-called difference of opinion in the United Party and the hesitation he has been reading about in the newspapers. That will not get him very far. He ought to know by this time what the purpose of those articles and opinions in the Press is in regard to this legislation.

But I should like to return now to the hon. member for Houghton. She made a long speech and it would appear to me that she is against this legislation. She also tried to teach us a lesson here, in regard to how we should discuss legislation and what procedure we should follow. We are very grateful for the tips, but I can give her the assurance that we shall conduct this debate and oppose and discuss this legislation as we see fit. We shall not allow her or even the Government to prescribe to us how we should tackle this matter.

As far as the hon. member for Houghton is concerned, I want to agree with her that this legislation does not go to the root of the difficulty prevailing to-day in the Coloured community. We also criticize the Government for deficiencies in the education and welfare work, etc., but I want to say to the hon. member for Houghton that if her party were to come into power and were to implement all their ideas which they have in regard to the Coloured community, we would in ten years’ time still have skollies and loafers. That is the problem which the Minister is now trying to deal with. The hon. member says that she is going to oppose both the Government and ourselves on this legislation. I do not think the Government is very afraid of her, but we are used to her opposing us. That is nothing new. As far as I can remember, the hon. member never raised her voice when we were discussing in this House legislation to have all the young white men registered for military service, but now that registration of Coloureds has to take place she has many objections to it. I just want to ask her this. If compulsory military service were to be introduced for the Coloureds, would she oppose it?

No, I am in favour of that.

She is in favour of military service, but not in favour of the upliftment of these people who are not undergoing military training. The hon. member made this speech for her Press and for the publicity, and she could not care a rap about the consequences as long as she gets the publicity which she is so fond of. The hon. member tells us that most of the Coloureds support her views. I want to ask her this. Would she, after dark on any night of the week, walk down the streets of Bonteheuwel alone or in the company of a few of them? Those Coloureds who supposedly support her in her views, would they allow their wives and daughters to walk about unaccompanied at night? But the hon. member for Houghton wants to let this state of affairs continue.

We on this side of the House have made it very clear that we think there are many deficiencies in the legislation, but that we agree with it in principle. In the Committee Stage we will attempt to move the necessary amendments where we think the legislation can be improved, and we hope that the Minister will help us to make of it a better piece of legislation than it is at present.

I should just like to tell the House that this attempt of the Minister is not the first attempt which has been made to uplift people in South Africa. You will remember the days of the Special Service Battalion. The results of that are known to us all. But what is not so well known to us is that another institution was also established. In 1935 the Pioneer Battalion was established, which had the same aims as the legislation now before us. In the Special Service Battalion the minimum qualification which the young men had to have was Std. VI, but that was during the depression years and there were many young men who did not even have Std. VI. who could not be taken up into the Special Service Battalion and who became a problem. The then Minister of Defence, Mr. Pirow, then established the Pioneer Battalion in order to try and rehabilitate those young men. That Pioneer Battalion, as I have said, was for the underprivileged, the young men who had found themselves in difficulties, who could not adapt themselves and who were a social problem. Many of them came willingly. Others were sent there by welfare organizations, by church bodies, and even by magistrates. Some of them found themselves in difficulties and the magistrates told them that they should enlist with that battalion and issued them with a warning. I was attached to that unit for almost two years and I can testify from experience to the good work which was done there. Many of the young men who arrived there presented a poor show. Most of them were scurvy, with long hair, and some of them arrived without any shoes.

May I ask a question?

I did not worry the hon. member, and my time is limited. Within the first two or three weeks after those young men had arrived there we had begun to realize their difficulties. There was at that time a group of people in Monument Avenue in Bloemfontein who called themselves the “Sherry Gang”. A few of those people were admitted, and I can give you the assurance, Sir, that one visit to Monument Avenue was enough.

The object of that unit was the rehabilitation of those unfortunate people. At that time we did not try to train them for a specific purpose. I want to level this criticism here. If the hon. the Minister thinks that he will be able to teach people a trade in one year’s time, he will find that he cannot do so. However, there are other more important things which he will be able to do. We had them under military discipline, of course, and I can assure you, Sir, that we did not play around with them; we stood no nonsense from them. You know, Sir, that when one has a unit like that under military discipline one finds it possible to instil discipline in him in many ways.

The work we did was more in the nature of rehabilitation. It was work on the parade ground, athletics, boxing, wrestling, physical training and many lectures—not lectures by clever people like psychologists, but by ordinary people such as you and I who laid down the law to them in a homely way. That they could understand, and it did them the world of good. We spent a lot of time teaching those people to sing. You know, if one can get a person to sing, he is already a person with a better disposition and one who has a better outlook on life. I have felt so often that if we could only teach the hon. member for Somerset East to sing, he would be a far better man! We did not try and make soldiers of those people; what we did succeed in doing in six months’ time—it was only a six months’ course—was to restore to those young men who arrived there in such a poor condition their self-respect and their pride in themselves. They went away with a new outlook on life. They developed a sense of responsibility, and in many cases we also succeeded in building them up physically.

There was, however, a small proportion who did not benefit very much. One will always find a few who fail to make the grade, but the vast majority of them left much better people than they were when they had arrived there. Although we did not try to teach them a trade or anything special like that, we did not have difficulty in posting them with employers. The employers came to us and stood waiting to get those young men on the completion of their course. They entered all walks of life, such as farming, the Railways, everywhere, and very few of them failed us.

I should like to hear from the Minister in his reply in what way these people are going to be dealt with. It appears to me—and here I agree with the hon. member for Houghton—that it should be a military unit. I do not know whether there may perhaps be a stigma—such as that of a reform school—attached to that unit. If it were to be a purely military unit, it would have my wholehearted support. You know, Sir, when one has a person under military discipline there are a hundred and one ways of persuading and convincing him to do things which he would not like to do, and nobody is hurt in the process, not even that person himself. I see that there are certain penal provisions in the legislation. In military discipline there is not one drastic provision such as the one the Minister is proposing, i.e. to deprive a man of one meal per day. We do not do so in the military life, and yet we succeed in doing all these things in a very proper way.

Tell us how.

It is no problem at all to place such people under military discipline. I definitely think that this is a step in the right direction and I am convinced that these young people who will have the privilege—I am calling it a privilege because not all of them will be able to be admitted—of serving in this unit for six months will be grateful for that and will never be sorry that they had the chance of doing so. I am sorry that there is no similar institution for many of our White boys. I readily concede that as far as White boys are concerned it is not as great a problem as it is in the case of Coloured boys. Fewer White boys would end up in gaols and at welfare organizations if similar training facilities existed for them. I say again that it is a pity that it is not possible to establish similar units for White boys.

Mr. Speaker, there are certain aspects of this Bill with which we do not agree. We shall propose amendments in the Committee Stage. We shall try and rectify those aspects and we want to express the hope at this stage that the Minister will accept our amendments, and if he does so we will have a better measure than the one we now have before us.

I should not like to interfere at this stage in the private war which is being waged here between the hon. member for Houghton and the United Party Opposition. However, I do share one emotion with her—and let me hasten to add at once that that is the only emotion I do share with her—and that is one of amazement at the attitude which the official Opposition is adopting towards this Bill.

Do you not want us to support you? You just want to play politics.

What I found particularly remarkable therefore—and I want to express my thanks to the hon. member for North Rand, who has just resumed his seat, for having done so—was the fact that he could venture to make a positive and constructive contribution to this debate. We concede that he has the right to have certain misgivings about this Bill, but in contrast to certain colleagues of his he did try to be positive as well as constructive. It so happens that in the course of this debate so far, various speakers on the Opposition side attacked one principle after the other in this Bill until we now eventually find that there is in reality not one principle remaining in this Bill which the Opposition as such supports collectively and unanimously. Of course, the Opposition finds itself on the horns of a particular dilemma. Even before the Bill came up for discussion, its English-language Press prescribed to it what attitude it should adopt, but because it feels that it also has the interests of the Coloureds at heart it had to be ambivalent in this regard, it has had to try and pacify its own Press and, to a certain extent, the Coloureds as well. The United Party’s policy-maker, Stanley Uys of the Sunday Times, had the following to say about this Bill—

Mr. Speaker, what a disgraceful allegation to make after the Minister in his Second Reading speech stated very clearly that these camps for the training of cadets could not be regarded as forced labour camps. What this newspaper had to say also found echo in certain speeches made by hon. members of the Opposition. But I shall proceed; this newspaper, in its edition of 26th February, alleges further—

And that in spite of the fact that the hon. the Minister in his Second Reading speech made it very clear that police raids were not going to form part of the implementation of this measure. It is these kinds of allegations with which some members of the Opposition allow themselves to be taken in tow. I hope that the people outside and the Coloured community in particular will take note of this misrepresentation and these misplaced allegations which have been made by some Opposition members. Particularly interesting is the following remark—

Since when is it a disgrace to come into contact with our police? Each year tens of thousands of White boys of the age of 16 have to register at police stations as citizens of this country. Quite suddenly now when this provision is also being made applicable to the Coloured yourths, it is a disgrace; quite suddenly now the position could arise that the police may infect those poor juveniles with some or other contagious evil. What a nonsensical allegation, an allegation which is purely aimed at placing this Bill and its good, idealistic objectives under suspicion as far as the Coloured population is concerned. Mr. Speaker. let us face the fact squarely that this entire Bill is merely aimed at benefiting the Coloured population; but according to the hon. the Opposition that idea may not be allowed to take root either amongst the Coloureds or amongst the Whites outside this House.

Much has been made in this debate already of the fact that the state of affairs which this measure is trying to combat is attributable to the fact that compulsory education has not yet been introduced for the Coloureds. It is very interesting to note that the United Party had, as far back as 1946, when it was still in power in the Cape Provincial Administration, placed an Ordinance on the Statute Book which gave it the right to introduce compulsory Coloured education in certain school board districts in the Cape. That Party was in power in the Cane Provincial Administration right up to 1954 but nothing came of that compulsory school attendance.

You are talking nonsense.

The attitude is being adopted here that because there is a symptom which is attributable to a pathological condition, the so-called lack of education amongst our Coloureds, we may not treat that svmptom: that canker in the national life of the Coloureds may not be removed because there is no compulsory school attendance for them. Is the fact that there is no compulsory school attendance for the Coloureds not the only cause of the abuses amongst and decadence of the Coloured youth? We have stated repeatedly on this side of the House that compulsory school attendance would probably be the ideal state of affairs but that there are many practical reasons which make it impossible at this stage; but because that is so should we now simply close our eyes to the consequences thereof, simply allow the status quo to continue and do nothing to combat it? It is interesting to note what was said in the Report of the Chairman of the Education Council for Coloureds in regard to the question of Coloured education. He was referring here to the reasons for the poor results in the Senior Certificate Examination in 1964. He gave other reasons as well, but I just want to read out a few specific reasons to this House—

Try raising their salaries.

I shall continue—

I want to maintain that that lies at the heart of the entire problem. We still have the lack of responsibility, of purpose and of a will to learn. Mr. Speaker, the facilities exist; in each town where Coloureds are living, there are also Coloured schools. Is it our task to grasp each Coloured child by the neck and march them off to school?

It is done in the case of White children.

We must get away from the idea that the Whites and the Whites alone, that the Government and the Government alone, must be held responsible for the upliftment of the Coloured community. I hasten to say at once that I have great appreciation for the scores and scores of Coloureds in our country towns and in our cities who realize this defect in their own people and who are making purposeful attempts to create a national consciousness amongst their people and to raise them up out of the misery and difficulties in which they find themselves. We appreciate that, but there are still far too many people who leave this task of upliftment and education on the doorstep of the Government and on the doorstep of the Whites only. It must also be realized elsewhere that these things must be done.

Mr. Speaker, for that reason I extend my cordial welcome to this measure. Here the Government is once again displaying its awareness of its calling as the guardian of the Coloured people and is exercising in a very positive way its function of establishing separate development, with the emphasis on development. We have a situation in the rural areas which I have intimate knowledge of, it is particularly rife in the rural areas of the Cape, where we are saddled with a certain number of Coloureds who are totally workshy. We have reached the stage, particularly in the Eastern Cape, where White employers and particularly our farmers on the farms have begun to develop a certain resistence to the employment of Coloured labourers and give preference to Bantu labourers. There is a very sound reason for this. They found that the Coloured, owing to various circumstances—I have mentioned them already and I do not want to make an issue of it—are work-shy. When they have made a little money they are quite satisfied to live on it until there is no more left. Because there is no influx control in respect of Coloureds the position is very difficult. You must understand me very well, Sir. I am not pleading now for influx control of the Coloureds. I am just mentioning the fact that it does not exist in the locations in the White areas. We find that the Coloureds are making their way in ever-increasing numbers to the locations situated around the towns and are seeking to make a living there without working. Then the Coloured youth fall into immoral ways and take up dagga-smoking and other misdemeanours. It is for those kind of people that this legislation is being introduced in the first instance.

We would nevertheless be making a major error if we regarded this measure as being introduced only—as the hon. member for Houghton expressed it—in order to deal with the skolly type. I have already mentioned that the responsibility for the upliftment of the Coloureds’ social standards is something which the Coloureds themselves also have to undertake. That is why I am particularly pleased that this legislation is being made applicable to every Coloured juvenile who has reached the age of 16 years. Every such juvenile, once he has received education and training, and has had the privilege of undergoing parental discipline and training has an obligation to be of assistance to his weaker brethren and raise them up to his standard. I take it that use will be made of youth leaders in these centres, just as is the case in the army.

Where must those youth leaders come from? Where must we find those young men who have to help guide their weaker brethren if they are not admitted to the centres? Seen from that point of view I appreciate the fact that every Coloured who has reached the age of 16 years will be afforded the opportunity of being admitted to those camps. Those camps afford the ideal opportunity of creating amongst those Coloured youths an awareness of their responsibility towards their developing nation. It affords them the opportunity of boradening their cultural outlook and their cultural background. I believe that the people in question will avail themselves of this opportunity to the full. Just as in the case of the Coloureds, we Whites also entrust our future to our youth. We would very much like our youth to be activated in the cultural sphere. I advocate the same for the Coloured youth. We must avail ourselves of that opportunity. I know that they will only be in those centres for a very short period of time. But even if we just plant a little seed we may still succeed in developing cultured people. It is a well-known fact that the Colourrds have a particular liking for music, for the stage and for the arts. I think we must afford them the opportunity of letting that love which they have developed in those camps so that it may come into its own there, even if it is only the seed which is sown there. Those Coloured youths will leave those camps with a love for what they have been taught there, and it will work like a leavening agent amongst the rest of their community.

I hope that the Coloured community will avail itself of this opportunity to the full, that attention will be given to the way in which the Coloureds spend their free time, and that an appreciation of specific norms will be developed in them. I hope we shall avail ourselves of this opportunity to make of those Coloured boys full-fledged citizens of their community.

Tn conclusion I should like to raise a plea to the effect that we should in those camps for the Coloured boys design a uniform which will be both imaginative and colourful. The Coloureds are fond of that: they like dressing well. I feel that if we give them a neat, attractive, and colourful uniform we will develop in them a pride, in the first place in the centre and in the second place in their own person. By doing so we also develop in them a measure of self-respect and a love for what is their own. I hope that this plea will not fall on deaf ears.

Mr. Speaker, I think that the points I wish to make in my speech will reply to the points that the hon. member for Cradock has made. I live in Cape Town, and although the hon. member also lives in the Cape Province, he is probably not aware of the extent of the problems which we have to put up with here. At the present time we in the Cape are faced with an immdediate problem. I listened to the hon. member for Houghton and her objections which she put forward. She is, of course, entitled to object to this particular measure if she does not like it. I noticed when the hon. member for Cradock was speaking he now and again used the word “camps” and then he went back to “centres”. The last thing that we want to do is to allow these centres to be known as labour camps.

In my oninion the introduction of this measure is really a reflection on our guardianship over the Coloured people of this country. I think that this is something which we White people have to accept. We have heard the former Minister of Coloured Affairs telling us about the socio-economic upliftment of the Coloured people. Now, the whole basis and the very core of that upliftment is, naturally, education. We have failed to keep pace in providing that education for them.

I now want to come back to the hon. member for Cradock. I want to tell him that in 1945 when the U.P. was in power in the Cape Provincial Council it introduced an ordinance applying compulsory education to the Coloureds, and it was applied to six areas. In 1948 a change of government took place, and the then Administrator set up an educational commission which reported in 1956. Nothing was done. If the hon. member for Cradock had been in the Provincial Council and had seen, heard and studied what went on there over the years, he would have known how the Council fought over the years for more money for Coloured education. The Provincial Council in the Cape, which controls most of the Coloured education, fought over the years, as I say, to obtain more moeny for Coloured education. They operated on a very limited budget. Continuous representations were made by the Provincial Council by way of motions and resolutions, and with the whole-hearted support of the the Administrator the Government set up various commissions. We have had the Borckenhagen commission and the Schumann commission. The Borckenhagen commission has not reported yet. The Schumann commission has only made one report and that dealt with Coloured education in relation to its transfer to the Central Government. We have not seen the proposals regarding the financial relations between the provinces and the Central Government and we do not know what is happening. Then we had motions from the Government side of the provincial council asking for the take-over of Coloured education by the Central Government. To-day the Central Government controls Coloured education. I think there can be no argument about it, if one looks at the Estimates of Expenditure over the years one realizes that considerable sums of money have been spent on Coloured education since the take-over. On the Additional Estimates here we see that there is a crash programme as regards the building of schools.

I feel, Mr. Speaker, that this Bill is really a stop-gap. I hope, too, that it will only be a stop-gap. This is a crash programme to take over where we have failed. It is designed to take control of and discipline a certain section of our Coloured population, the “won’t-works”. I do not like calling them skollies because the major portion of the Coloured population are well-respected persons, persons of standing, who do everything in their power to uplift their own people. They have their scouts, their church lads brigades, they do everything possible to raise their people above the level of the circumstances in which they have to live. So they are not all bad, Sir. But if one speaks to the Coloured people who live in the large townships one finds without exception that they want something done about these lay-abouts. I have been asked by these people, “Why do you not put them into a camp? Do something with them—clear them out”. Well, one is reluctant to put anybody in a camp. We have had that experience all over the world. But if we look back, if we had given them better education and, with better education, better living conditions, we would not have been faced with our present-day problems. They live under some of the most terrible conditions, even though slums are being cleared up. But, Mr. Speaker, what we really do—and I know that a former Minister of Coloured Affairs was annoyed with me for saying it—is to move them to a new slum. I know that the Government is probably doing its best, but that is in fact the position. One has only to see the conditions under which our Coloureds live. If one goes to a general hospital one finds that the vast majority of out-patients are Coloured people or Bantu. At the Children’s Hospital here in the Cape I think that about 80 per cent of the occupants of that hospital are Coloured children. One can see what is really happening. I say, that we have failed these people, although we have had plenty of time in which to act. When I say that “we” have failed, I mean the white people of this country. We then have to resort to measures such as this one now before the House.

Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration has given this Bill a bad name. He referred to these centres as “labour camps”. The hon. member for Houghton has linked them to the possible removal of the Bantu from the Western Cape. Nevertheless, as was said by hon. members from this side of the House, we must give this measure a chance to prove itself. Even the hon. member for Malmesbury allied these centres with labour camps. It is now up to the hon. the Minister and his department to remove the slur that has been cast on these centres.

I now want to talk about the registration of these Coloured youths between the ages of 18 and 24. The Bill provides for the estimating of ages. I think that we all know there are very few Coloured people who can produce their birth certificate or who really know what their exact age is. I can see great difficulty there, and I foresee Coloured men being stopped in the streets and being asked for their registration certificates, to which they might answer that they are only 17 or already 25 years.

The percentage is very low.

But that is the position. As far as registration is concerned an ordinary policeman can be a registering officer. I presume for the sake of convenience it is necessary to have police stations as registration depots. However, this Bill is very closely connected with the hon. the Minister’s other department, the Department of Labour. Therefore one wonders whether the Department of Labour should not have controlled this registration, instead of having it done at police stations.

Then you are going to have labour camps.

Not necessarily. Apparently that hon. member does not know that every young person in the country, no matter to which race he belongs, is by law required to register with the Department of Labour for employment. Then there is the question of the documents these Coloured youths will have to carry. We have come to a stage where all of us have to carry certain documents but I was wondering whether it would not be possible to streamline these documents and to connect them somehow with labour registration certificates so that it would not be necessary for them to carry an unemployment card and an identity card in addition to a registration card for these centres. As I said, all of us have to carry certain documents but this is no reason why these could not be streamlined. I suggest to the Minister that he gives this some thought.

Then we have the selection board to be set up under this Bill, a board consisting of three people. As this measure mainly affects the Coloured population I think the Minister should give consideration to appointing at least one Coloured person to that board. There are, after all, responsible people amongst the Coloureds. I think there should be a Coloured person on that selection board in view of the fact that it is the Coloured youth that is being dealt with. If the Minister does this, it will allay a lot of suspicion as far as selection is concerned. The Minister told us that at the beginning it might be possible only to train about 1,000 youths in these centres. From that one must assume that this is more in the nature of a pilot scheme. I think the Minister is going to find that he will have to do a considerable amount of research work in order to get this whole scheme to work satisfactorily. There is, for instance, the question of training methods and of what these youths are going to do. Therefore I think it is wise to go first for a pilot scheme instead of going into it holus-bolus. As far as selection and intake are concerned it is interesting to note what the experiences were in the Cape Coloured Corps. In this connection Commandant Bredenkamp said that since the corps was established in April, 1963, there have been more than 2,000 inquiries, of whom only 414 were eventually accepted. So far 17 squadrons have received their basic training at the camp. Therefore, out of 2,000 applicants only 414 qualified. Admittedly the standards for the Cape Corps are higher than the standards expected for these training centres. However. I wonder whether the Minister has already decided on a standard of selection for these training camps. In the Cape Corps you will not find people who have served terms of imprisonment. I think the position is that out of 998 applications to join the Cape Corps, 112 were found to be medically unfit, 54 had criminal records, 68 were turned down by the selection board for other reasons, 98 did not have the necessary educational qualifications, 18 were under 18 years of age or above 35, 105 withdrew their applications whilst 22 were waiting for reference documents. Naturally the method of selection for these training centres will have to be undertaken on a different basis. There shall probably have to be different training centres—a training centre for one type of recruit and another centre for another type of recruit. I submit that it will be wrong to recruit these boys and put them in the same camp with hardened criminals. I think it will be wrong to mix the two up. This is an indication of the type of research the Minister will have to do. Perhaps he could learn from the experience gained from the recruitment of members for the Cape Corps during the last war. There everyone who passed the health test was taken on, no matter whether he had a criminal record. The training in the Cape Corps—and I had a lot to do with it—was of such a nature that some very fine types were turned out. Many of those recruits came from the gutters of Cape Town but I do know that quite a number of them are to-day holding responsible positions in the Coloured community. When they originally joined up they were just nothing. But the Cape Corps made men of them. I should like to commend to the Minister that those recruits for these training centres who do not qualify medically should not just be discarded, but should be directed for treatment. When their physical condition precludes them from being taken into these training centres they should not be discarded but should be directed to a centre for treatment. Some of them may be found to have tuberculosis whilst others may stand in need of treatment for other diseases. My point is that they should not just be discarded. After all, it is our responsibility. A lot of them have to live under poor living conditions. So it won’t be surprising if many of these recruits will be found to be medically unfit.

He should then hand them over to Albert.

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to move—

On 26th March, 1964, I moved a similar motion here, namely—

In the course of the ensuing debate I pointed out the different systems of weights and measures which we have in South Africa and I mentioned their advantages and disadvantages. Consequently it will not be necessary for me to cover the same grounds on this occasion. Since that time there have been various investigations into this matter and in consequence of those investigations the Government decided to accept the metric system of weights and measures in principle. Here I should like to refer to what the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs said in this regard in this House last year in pursuance of an argument advanced by the hon. member for Kensington. Incidentally, the hon. member for Kensington is an even greater champion of this system than I am. That also gives me reason to believe that to-day’s discussion will not be of a contentious nature. According to Col. 2307 of the 1966 Hansard the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs said—

We are anxious to learn whether discussions have been held with commerce and industry. We realize that such a change-over will involve problems for industry. It is the only facet of our economic structure for which this change-over will involve problems, problems which will exist for a number of years before being solved. For that reason we shall be very pleased if the hon. the Minister can tell us whether discussions have already been held with industry.

Now I come to the question of how soon we have to and will be able to change over. There are several factors which can either delay or expedite the change-over. For that reason I should first like to discuss those factors in brief. We have a report by the South African Bureau of Standards on the metric system of weights and measures. The investigation was conducted under the chairmanship of professor T. H. Louw. That report appeared as long ago as 24th April, 1965. That committee conducted a very wide investigation. The committee did an outstanding job of work. We, as a House, owe it a debt of gratitude for that task which it performed for South Africa. The Bureau of Standards proved once more that it does pioneer work in South Africa. According to the report of that committee there are 93 countries in the world, with a joint population of 2,519,150,000, in which the metric system is already in use. As against that there are 50 countries, with a joint population of 527,496,000, where that is not the case. Calculated as a percentage, that means that 82.7 per cent of the population of the world already use the metric system at present as against 17.3 per cent which do not. Since that time, however, Japan and India have also changed over to the metric system. In addition to that we learned in the course of this week that Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda were also going to change over to the metric system. Furthermore, it is also the intention of Australia and New Zealand to depart from the £.s.d. system. Also in the case of the United Kingdom we find that a Parliamentary commission has recommended the change-over to a system of decimal coinage. That shows you that the whole world trend is towards this one centralized system, the metric system, which is controlled internationally and which is uniform, and that the entire world is moving in that direction. If we look at our own international trade, we find that there has been a phenomenal growth in our foreign trade with the metric countries. In 1956 our exports to the metric countries were only 32.2 per cent, whereas they were 42.9 per cent in 1963. They increased by more than 10 per cent over a period of seven years, and at present they are even higher, but unfortunately I cannot give you the percentages. In 1956 our imports from the metric countries were 31.9 per cent and in 1963 they were 42.2 per cent, also more than a 10 per cent increase. However, it is very interesting to take cognizance of the value of our exports to those metric countries. Our exports to the metric countries amounted to R236 million in 1956, whereas they amounted to R355 million in 1963, an increase of R119 million during those seven years. The value of our imports from the metric countries amounted to R315 million in 1956, as against R506 million in 1963. Therefore you can see what a tremendous increase there has been.

If, on the other hand, we take the nonmetric countries—and the following are the figures according to the report of the Bureau of Standards—we find that exports to the nonmetric countries, such as the United Kingdom, the United States. Canada, Australia, etc., decreased from R497 million in 1956 to R472 million in 1962. Thus we find that our trade is showing a decrease on the non-metric side whereas it is showing an increase on the metric side. However, our imports from the non-metric countries increased from R673 million to R694 million during that period. This committee conducted a very wide investigation for us. On the basis of the 2,330 questionnaires which it sent out, I want to give you the percentages of the different sectors that are in favour of this change-over. I shall take the respondents to the questionnaire from the various ramifications. Of the members of the Federated Chamber of Industries 67.3 per cent were in favour of the metric system. In respect of the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of S.A. that figure was 65.8 per cent, in respect of the Association of Chambers of Commerce it was 57 per cent, in respect of the Afrikaanse Han-delsinstituut it was 67.8 per cent, in respect of agricultural bodies it was 69.2 per cent, in respect of the building industry it was 69.5 per cent, and in respect of the professional bodies it was 68.9 per cent. You can see that an average of nearly 70 per cent of all these various ramifications are in favour of, ask for and want this system, and want it really desperately. The following percentages of these various sectors said they saw no major difficulty in the change-over. In the case of industry the figure was 77 per cent, in the case of commerce 83 per cent, in the case of agriculture—the people who might have complained—91 per cent said that there would be no problem; in the case of the building industry the figure was 77 per cent and in the case of the professional bodies the figure was 80 per cent. These figures prove that those various sectors of our economy and of society are all in favour of the change-over, and we have nothing to fear as regards the introduction of this system, as a matter of fact, as regards its early introduction.

There is one factor which can delay this entire matter, and that is the cost of this change-over. That, from the nature of the case, is the important thing, of course, and we cannot proceed with the matter if the cost is too high or if it is not economic for South Africa to do so. However, Sir, these people made a very thorough study of the cost. This committee gave us an estimate of the cost and I want to quote from page 22 of the report—

The estimated cost of conversion is as follows: The cost of converting 2,800 weighbridges would have been R 1,560,000 in 1965; the cost of converting 24,019 platform scales would have been R3,603,000; 10,751 counter platform scales, R570,000; 50,836 counter scales (including weights), R1,220,000; 35,317 self indicating scales, R2,684,000; 19 grain elevator scales, R8,000; 21 belt weighers, R9,000; 34,500 petrol pumps, R1,167,000; 6,670 length and area instruments (trade), R734.000; 47,787 capacity measures, R335,000; 10,500 oil metres, R242,000; 2,200 oil tanker metres, R97,000; 2,200 oil depot metres, R97,000, and to replace all the road signs in South Africa would have amounted to a total figure of R500,000, and the conversion of pressure gauges would have amounted to R100,000. These figures give one a cost of conversion, as estimated in 1965, of R 12,926,000 and to that we have to add administrative costs of R700,000 which gives one a total estimated cost of R13,626,000 if the conversion had been started in 1965. The committee went further than that and ascertained that if we kept postponing the matter and were only to start the conversion in 1966, it would cost R 14,688,000; if the conversion were to be started in 1967, it would cost R 15,834,000, and if it were only to start in 1968, it would cost R17,070,000. That proves that the matter is very urgent and at a later stage I shall say something more about this aspect of costs.

This committee of the South African Bureau of Standards, under the chairmanship of Professor Louw, very clearly set out to us the sequence in which action was to be taken. I think that in this case I should once more quote from the report of the committee in order to do the committee justice. Here I want to refer to page 19—

1. 1. That the sale of Controllable Goods by foot-pound-gallon units be changed to sale by metric units within three years, with compensation payable to those compelled thereby to convert or replace their instruments of weighing or measuring.
2. 2. That Functional Goods be gradually and increasingly specified and sold in terms of metric units.
3. 3. That a Controlling Body with statutory powers be set up to control the change.

Then the Committee continued by informing us as follows—

1. (a) Announcement by the Government of intention to regard the metric system as the primary system of trade and of a date by which all transactions in Controllable Goods must be carried out in the new system.
2. (b) The passing of legislation authorizing the setting up of a Metric System Board on lines similar to the Decimal Coinage Act (Act No 61 of 1959), except that the constitution of the Board should be wider than that of the Decimalization Board.
3. (c) The introduction of wide educational and intensive publicity campaigns.
4. (d) The issue of instructions to Commodity Control Boards and to Government Departments that all Controllable Goods under their jurisdiction are to be bought and sold by the new system within the period allowed under (a) above and requesting them to submit within a stipulated time (nine months is suggested) to the metric system board a suggested timetable applicable to their respective commodities.
5. (e) The issue of instructions to Government Departments and associated organizations (e.g. Post Office, Railways, Customs and Excise, SABS, SASOL, ISCOR, ESCOM. etc.,) that their transactions in functional goods should take place in metric units and that public services (e.g. Post Office, Railways, Customs and Excise) should draw up new tariffs with a view to introductions within three years.

That is what this committee suggests and it is practical and possible for us to implement their suggestions. I do not want to go into this report in any greater detail. The report makes it quite clear to us that this committee unanimously and strongly recommended the change-over. The Government decided in favour of it. Now, in conclusion I should like to state why I think the Government should take action very soon.

The principal motive is the cost factor, as I said before. We see that for every year for which this matter is postponed, it will cost the country about R1 million extra. This is not money which we can recover in some way or other. That R1 million per annum is a real waste of money which results from the fact that we are postponing the change-over and are not going ahead with it immediately. In introducing the decimal system of coinage things went very smoothly, and because there was no delay in taking action there were large savings on the estimated costs. In the final report of the decimal coinage commission, dated 21st September, 1963, which was submitted to this House, we find that the total cost of the commission was R13,207,743 as against the original estimate of R 18,342,000. On that account, if we are able to take action soon, we shall most probably be able to effect a saving on the committee’s estimate of R14 million of R15 million. I want to refer to something which happened on 27th February last week. Professor E. H. Louw addressed a meeting in Port Elizabeth which our newspapers featured prominently; it was front page news and it was prominently featured on the radio that people felt that they wanted this change-over. I want to tell the Minister that as children await the return of their parents from the village with sweets, the public of South Africa awaits the Government to bring it this system of weights and measures because that will be sweet.

However, there is another important aspect, and that is standardization. We know with what an impossible situation we are faced in this country at present. There are so many things of the same type which never fit. Take for example what happened to me last month. Just to succeed in finding a valve for a water tap, I had to take three valves home before one fitted, as the different threads of the various makes do not fit into one another. In grocery shops one finds dozens of makes of canned products, and one gets fish in tins of 12, 13, 14, 15 and 15² ounces, with different prices. The public does not know what it is buying, what the weight of the article is, and how prices compare with one another. There is a difference in quality. If we are able to standardize, the consumer will know that he is buying 15 ounces at such a price and that the price of the other make is so much; it will be possible to decide what is the best buy, and standardization will reduce the cost of living and the public will receive value for its money. The time of effecting this change-over, when all weights and measures will be changed, will be the proper time for establishing a uniform standard for various things. I just want to mention one example to you as far as medicine is concerned. When a doctor prescribes medicine and wants one to take so many grammes he simply writes on the prescription “so many Gr.” where as “grains” are indicated by “gr.”. If a person only takes so many grains of a certain type of medicine it will do him no harm, but if he takes the same quantity in grammes he will be in serious trouble. One person’s small letter looks like another person’s capital letter, and that leads to confusion. This type of confusion can be eliminated through standardization.

The third point I should like to mention is the combating of inflation. Hon. members may find it strange when I say that we shall be able to combat inflation by introducing the metric system, because the popular view is that we must reduce the amount of money in circulation in order to combat inflation. The best solution to the problem of inflation is productivity. We can combat inflation if every man, every woman, every worker in every factory and in every office in this country of ours, can be more productive. We shall, if we introduce the metric system, save labour as a result of easy conversion. We shall save labour as regards export products in that we will indicate the correct measure and the correct weight according to the metric system. It would effect a tremendous saving if it were no longer necessary to convert weights and measures. The labour which is being wasted in this way may then be employed productively in other directions. There are many clerks who spend many hours simply on the conversion of weights and measures. Just think how much we shall be able to save in that regard only. We shall possibly have to spend R13 or R14 million over a matter of ten years, but we shall be able to save much more than that within a single year as a result of greater productivity. Therefore the introduction of the metric system is an indirect method of combating inflation and I want to make a plea to the hon. the Minister to introduce this system as soon as possible.

Then I want to raise another matter which carries a great deal of weight as far as I am concerned, and that is the struggle to take the lead in the world. We at the southernmost point of Africa are, and must remain, the leading country in Africa; we must also give the lead as far as the rest of the world is concerned. I mentioned before that three states in Africa—Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda—had already changed over to the metric system. If they have been able to do so, this advanced country of ours can most certainly do so much more readily. We have the technicians, we have the manpower, we have the knowledge, we have the experience of the decimal system of coinage which we introduced, and we know how smoothly that went. We can and we must take the lead. In this regard I also want to refer to the speech made by the hon. the Prime Minister at Parow where he said that at this juncture it was our primary task to lead South Africa to where it may hold its own in the international sphere. For taking the lead in this struggle and for making the influence of South Africa felt in the international sphere, there is to my mind no better instrument than the metric system. We must remember that 82 per cent of the world’s population use the metric system; that our export trade to countries abroad is increasing tremendously and that England is at present trying to be admitted to the European Common Market and one of the obstacles in its way is the fact that it does not have the metric system. A British Parliamentary Committee already recommended the introduction of the metric system, and if England changes over to the metric system and becomes a member of the European Common Market, then I join Professor Louw in saying that South Africa will, to a certain extent, be doomed and that we shall have a struggle to make up the leeway. We simply cannot afford to be caught on the wrong foot; we must be quick off the mark. Even the 17.3 per cent of the world’s population in countries where they do not have the metric system, are not opposed to the metric system; they too want to change over. The metric system is one which is recognized, used and applied throughout the world. With this system, which I advocate, we shall be able to promote South Africa’s export trade. At present we are trying in various ways to promote and to propagate South Africa’s good name abroad. Here I am not advocating a system by means of which we want to propagate a certain ideology abroad. What we want to propagate abroad is not the view of a political party; what we want to do is to promote South Africa’s export trade. We know that money is power and that money talks. We are living in a world in which dire famine is being experienced in certain areas at present. We shall export food to those countries. We know that the shortest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Let us therefore send small messengers from South Africa in the form of canned fruits, fish and groceries, weighed and measured according to the metric system, to appear on the tables of every family throughout the world. We shall then speak to those people in a language which they understand and which we all have in common. Let them use South African soap, packed according to our weights and measures, in their bathrooms. If a person wants to enjoy a drink after work, let him be able to order South African wines and sherries in measures which he understands. If he wants to buy cigarettes, let him be able to buy South African manufactured cigarettes weighed and measured according to the metric system. Therefore I want to plead with the hon. the Minister to introduce this system as soon as possible so that we may send these messengers throughout the world, into their stores, into their trains, on to their roads, into their houses, into all spheres. Let us make South Africa known in all spheres, and I think that this instrument, the metric system, is the method by which we shall be able to do so.

I think if we compare this private member’s motion with many we have had in this House, we recognize that this is a motion on which we can all cooperate. The hon. mover of the motion has not thanked the Government; he has not come along with praises; he does not wish to express his appreciation. He wishes to use a spur; he wants the Government to move a bit faster than they have been moving.

I was also very much impressed by this report of the Bureau of Standards. I was surprised at some of the facts they disclosed in their statistics, especially in regard to engineering, because one of the great difficulties has always been that engineering has not fallen into line. One realizes their difficulties when it comes to measurements for machinery, etc. Most of them have adopted the British and American systems and it is difficult to change, although they are changing, but the fact that they support this movement really made me feel we have moved a step forward. Civil engineering and mechanical engineering are not quite as important as electrical engineering. Electrical engineers have always had the metric system. All their units are based on the metric system, and for that reason they have made more rapid progress than civil and mechanical engineering.

The hon. member also made a comparison with coinage. One cannot take that comparison very far because in the case of coinage the essential difference is that one has to have a D-day; one has to decide that on a certain day the country will go over to a new coinage system. The metric system, however, can be introduced gradually. It can be introduced in one trade or in one department of a trade and not in the other. The other point which the hon. member mentioned was that it would help us to fight inflation. I would not go too far there either, because the Bureau warns us that there might be inflation as a result of the introduction. The Bureau does not suggest it would cause serious inflation but it would be a factor and one should guard against that. Then finally the hon. member referred to what England was doing and he said that the United Kingdom had decided to go over to the metric system. I would not place too much reliance on that because we have had experience of them right throughout history. Hon. members will know that we discussed this when we introduced the decimal system of coinage. The history of the metric system and decimal coinage is most interesting. The United States of America was the first country to deal with this question of decimalization. In 1787 they broke away from the old British coinage system, but they were not an industrialized community; they did not think about any metric system; there was no such thing as a metric system then. Every country had its own system. The United States of those days was the old dominion—chiefly a rural community. But then in the following decade, after the French Revolution in about 1789, the French decided they would not only decimalize their coinage but that they would introduce a metric system of weights and measures. They gave us the metre, a metre which they thought was accurate and which we have discovered since was not accurate, but that does not matter because the standards of measurements are kept in Paris as the British standards are kept in London and as our standards are kept in the Mint. The next country to tackle the whole question of coinage and the metric system was Britain because the United Kingdom was the most industrialized country in Europe. They said they were going to decimalize their coinage and introduce the metric system, and in 1864 they made the use of the metric system optional. Over a 100 years ago therefore the metric system was made optional; and then in 1871 a Bill was introduced in the House of Commons. The Second Reading of that Bill was lost by five votes. Had it gone the other way they would have been on their way to using the metric system. But the other countries in Europe had been watching Britain and were prepared to follow her. They did so. Britain was considering this metric system and had made up her mind not to be discouraged by this vote on the Second Reading of the Bill in the House of Commons. They said they would get on with it and at that time they introduced compulsory education on a system of grants. I do not know whether hon. members will remember that at school they always had a school ruler, a “liniaal”; on that school ruler you will see ruled on one side inches, quarters and eighths and sometimes tenths and on the other side, centimetres and millimetres. The reason for this was that if a school taught the metric system they got an extra grant. This is going back about 100 years. Children were therefore taught at school what the metric system was although it was never used in their ordinary lives. We shall have to think of something rather like that when we come to a later stage of the introduction of the metric system. Well, so much for the system there. We were dependent upon the United Kingdom at that time. We were also a rural community, but as we developed ourselves the Government during World War II took a great step forward. The Becklake Committee, the anti-waste committee, was asked by Mr. Hofmeyr to make a recommendation on the metric system of weights and measures and decimal coinage, and that committee did some very valuable work. Subsequently we had a report from the Bureau, and they recommended that we could proceed with coinage first and then after that consider the metric system of weights and measures. Well, we are now considering the metric system of weights and measures and I feel the question now is how we can help. The authorities have been trying to accustom people in South Africa to the new system. Very valuable work has been done by the meteorological department. They give us a daily report of rainfall and temperature. Temperature is one of the most difficult conversions—from centigrades to Fahrenheit. The ordinary person still thinks in terms of Fahrenheit, not in terms of centigrade. But they have not instructed the public. There have not been newspaper articles explaining what they want to do. They are men of science and, being men of science, they assume the ordinary person has had an elementary scientific education. Well, I am afraid the ordinary person has not had this education. You see, Sir, these men of science realize that if you attended a university you never used the British system. I never saw the British system at university; I never saw a Fahrenheit thermometer. It is only the doctors who have those in the hospitals, because they are still old-fashioned. The doctor still heals his patient with his hand-writing. He uses the apothecaries’ measures. I remember quoting it here on one occasion during the decimal coinage debate. The usual thing is 20 grains equal one scruple, three scruples equal one drachm, eight drachms equal one ounce. But it is not the drachm and the ounce that I knew as a boy—it is something quite different. Then an hon. Minister on the other side when he heard this, asked, “How many scruples in a member of Parliament?”. I think that to-day there are no scruples in any member of Parliament about this introduction of the metric system. It is only a question of how it is going to be done.

I think the meteorological department, in giving its daily report, could have instructed the farmer. It could have said that it is not difficult to relate it to the present system, that it was going to ge given in centimetres and that it must just be remembered that there are 2² centimetres in an inch. They would get used to it very quickly. It is not exactly 21, of course, but 2.54. That is near enough. Bearing in mind that there are 2² centimetres in an inch, they can work out their rainfall, which would be given in centimetres. But to begin with, the present figures in inches could also be furnished in brackets, as I suggested to the Minister of Finance in regard to decimal coinage, when he said he wanted prices to be quoted in rands only and not in pounds. Of course, I agree with him; we all agree with him. I suggested he should insist on rands and that there could be in brackets, if the persons concerned so wished it, the equivalent amount in pounds. I have no objection to that. In the same way that could have been done in the beginning in respect of the metric system. They could have given the rainfall figures in centimetres and the conversion behind that. The public should have been educated by means of newspaper articles and broadcasts over the S.A.B.C. Sir, they teach much worse things over the S.A.B.C.! They could have taught people how to convert.

Now we come to the difficult question, namely temperature. Temperature is a difficult conversion, but they could have taught the public that as well. After all, centigrade has a freezing point of nil degrees and a boiling point of 100 degrees, but when one comes to Fahrenheit with a freezing point of 32 and a boiling point of 212 degrees, one can see that it is not easy to convert. But there is one point at which they are both the same, and that is at minus 40 degrees. There they are both the same. I think the meteorological department could have given them the old method of changing over. They do not have to convert 21 degrees and 27 degrees, for instance. If a man knows what 20 degrees centigrade is in Fahrenheit, he can convert anything roughly. He wants only a rough conversion. The old system I have always recommended is this. Let us take for instance 20 degrees centigrade. Add 40 to that, which gives one 60, divided by five gives one 12, multiply by nine, which gives one 108, take away 40, leaving 68. That is the old method; it is the easy, simple system. Having done one, a person need not do any more. Because 20 degrees centigrade gives one 68 degrees Fahrenheit. The next one to be taken is 25. One should not trouble about those in between. This morning’s newspaper gave the temperature for to-day at D. F. Malan airport as between 24 and 26 degrees. If one takes 25, one has just about got it right. If one has 68 then all one has to do is to add nine for every five naturally, because nine and five is the relationship between Fahrenheit and centigrade. That will be 77. So the temperature to-day is going to be about 77 degrees. Now one may well ask. “What about 30 degrees?” Well, add another nine, which gives one 86. That gives one all one requires for conversions, and I am sure they could have taught that in the Landbouweekblad quite simply. That would have given them the temperature conversion.

When one has that, one might well ask what other temperatures should a man have. What should a man know? Well, one we all know is the temperature of the human blood, to know whether a man is ill or not. What is the temperature of the blood in centigrade? That is the system used in France/Germany, and all other countries except our countries. It is 37 degrees. A degree of centigrade is rather bigger (the relation being nine to five), than a degree of Fahrenheit. So that all they have to remember is 37 and three degrees more to 40: 37-38-39-40. If a man has a temperature of 37 he is normal. If it is 38 he is running a temperature. We are sometimes in doubt whether a man is running a temperature if he is 99. But under the metric system one is in no doubt. If a man is 38 degrees then he is running a fair temperature. If he is 39 then he is running a very high temperature. And what is the position if he is 40? Remember our convertion? When a man has a temperature of 40, it is a dangerously high temperature, as we would say, about 104. And if he is 41, well, then a doctor is not needed at all! That is the position regarding the metric system. One can convert in the same way as I converted to 20. It is just as easy, it is the usual thing. Add 40, divide by five, multiply by nine, take away 40—it is the old, old way.

The question I want to ask is, what else can we do to help? Well, we have had several Bills on education recently. As is usual in South Africa, whatever one wishes to do, whether it be life-saving, thrift, or anything else, people will tell us that the schools should teach it, the schools should do it. They are supposedly the hand-maidens of every movement in the country. Now this time I am serious. The schools have always over the last 100 years taught something of the metric system, but there has been no life in it. They have taught it because the children have had to learn it. They know the relationship. Of course, Sir, the metric system has this great appeal, that when one deals with a unit of length it is very easy to obtain a unit of capacity, it is easy to obtain a unit of weight. One can relate the one to the other, something that cannot be done under the other systems The C.G.S. system, the metric system, is easy as regards the relationship between the units. I think that in our schools it is not a question of giving more work. Here we discussed on a Bill recently with the hon. the Minister of Education the fact that we are now working on the syllabi of these schools. Every standard had a special syllabus for every year’s work, and so on. I think they should give emphasis to teaching the metric system. They should make it a live thing. They should have the measures. It is not going to be difficult if they really take it seriously.

Let us take the kilogram. It is 2.2 lbs. roughly. If one halves a kilogram then one has something just a little heavier than our pound, what the French call a “livre”. They use it, it is half a kilogram. We could do that. I am glad the hon. Minister of Transport is here. I understand that in England they now quote kilos only in weight for the aircraft. They have introduced that and they do not quote lbs. We quote both, of course. Our luggage weight maximum is 40 lbs. I am not going to press this too far, because the Minister might say he is going to introduce what they have internally overseas. He knows what it is. It is 15 kilos internally and 20 externally. I am not going to press that. I think he might as a generous gesture say that in future with the new metric system the maximum will not be 40 lbs. but 20 kilos.

Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned I was discussing the manner in which the mover of this motion and the rest of us can assist in the changeover. The most important aspect is one which he mentioned, namely, that it would be a gradual process unlike the introduction of decimal coinage in which one requires a D-day for making the changeover. On the following day the old system will have disappeared. We introduced decimal coinage gradually in South Africa. We considered the public. The Australians did not do that. They said that on the day following the introduction of decimal coinage, the Australian pound was not to be mentioned, but only the Australian dollar. We have succeeded in getting the public with us and I would therefore say that it should be a gradual process. I was referring to the manner in which we could assist in the changeover. When I say gradual, I mean over a period of approximately ten years before everybody and everything is converted. I mentioned that in the changeover we could have propaganda through the Press, the S.A.B.C., etc., and especially in the schools because in five or ten years the children who are now in the schools will be the citizens. They will be able to assist at home, in our stores and in fact throughout the country.

I mentioned one or two matters but the most important is that in the various syllabuses and courses of instruction at our schools we should give special emphasis to the metric system. We need not introduce anything new because provision already exists for teaching the metric system. There should be special emphasis given to it. Then whenever a sports field is planned for a school, its dimensions should be calculated in the metric system. We are doing that now in the case of swimming pools. I was very sorry to hear one of our Deputy Ministers complaining recently that an Olympic swimming pool had been built at Soweto. That is because it must be built according to these new metric measurements. International swimming pools are built that way. Even our football fields should be built according to the metric system. Now hon. members will ask: “What about a cricket pitch.” There my courage fails me. A cricket pitch must be 22 yds. long; it must be a chain; otherwise a tradition of centuries will be lost. I think it would be sacrilege to attempt to give the length of a cricket pitch in metres. We can give the dimensions of a football field in metres because the French play rugby. But I doubt whether the Australians would play against us again if we spoke about the length of a cricket pitch in terms of metres.

For the rest I think we should introduce this system as rapidly as possible. Mr. Speaker, I can give you the assurance that we shall all combine in this undertaking if we can only have as pleasant an experience as we had in the case of the Decimal Coinage Commission. The hon. the Minister will remember that was indeed a pleasant experience. We had cooperation not only from both sides of the House but from representatives of all sections of the community. We have great pleasure in responding to the spirit of the motion introduced by the hon. member for Sunnyside.

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to the most interesting speech by the hon. member for Kensington, and in particular the interesting facts he revealed about the history of the metric system. I never realized that the hon. member for Kensington could be so interesting on history. Years ago he taught me mathematics, and I now see that he also knows a considerable deal about history. Since I came to this House I have had little occasion to agree with the hon. member. I am pleased to be able to say now that I agree fully and wholeheartedly with what he has presented to us. It is also a pleasure to support the motion of the hon. member for Sunnyside. We all know that many difficulties will arise with regard to the conversion. The hon. member mentioned that it would entail very high costs. He said that if it were commenced with in 1967 it would cost the State approximately R16 million There is also the fact that the public as well as the various concerns involved will have to suffer some inconvenience. But there are also some rays of light, which have already been mentioned, namely that virtually all the concerns, the various Departments and leading figures who will be involved in this conversion, have promised their support and have in many cases stated that if the conversion were to take place, it should be done as soon as possible. In this regard I just want to refer to what was recently said by the Secretary for Defence. He said that in view of the fact that the Republic of South Africa would be compelled to change to the metric system of weights and measures if Britain, and later possibly also the U.S.A., changed to it, it would be advantageous if we here in South Africa could introduce it as soon as possible.

I said that there was the ray of light that various concerns would support it. The hon. member for Kensington referred to education. I think that is a concern on which the State could lean very heavily in the event of such a conversion. We know by experience that the schools and other educational institutions played an outstanding and most important part in the conversion to our present currency system. In this regard the lead was taken by teachers in arithmetic, mathematics, mechanics, bookkeeping, accounting and related subjects, and they were the ones who prepared pupils for the far-reaching change which would come. From the schools it spread to the parental homes.

It is my personal opinion that the conversion to the metric system in respect of weights, measures of capacity and of lengths should be much easier. Once again the schools may play a special part with regard to the conversion process. When the country changed over to the present currency system education had no specific basis to go by. It was known that the monetary unit in the United States of America was the dollar. It was known that the franc was used in France, the guilder in Holland and the mark in Germany, but as far as the Republic was concerned a new monetary unit had to be devised. There was consequently no monetary unit on which the teacher who had to instruct his pupils could base his thinking. But as far as the conversion to the metric system in respect of weights and measures is concerned, there is such a basis. It will be much easier, for as we know and as the hon. member for Kensington pointed out, the metric system has been taught in our schools for many years. I remember that even in the early twenties when I was in primary school, I learned about the metre, the decimetre, the centimetre and the millimetre on the one hand, and the decametre, the hectometre and the kilometre on the other. Thus we also learned about grams up to the kilogram as measures of weight, and also about the litre as a measure of capacity. At the moment the metric system is in many cases still taught as a parallel to the existing imperial or British system. Although the emphasis is still placed on the British system because it is currently used, the other system is also taught. If the Government decided on conversion to the metric system as far as weights and measures are concerned, the syllabuses and subjects I have just mentioned will have to be amended accordingly. I think the syllabuses should be designed in such a way—I am just suggesting this—that the system may be taught to pupils at school two years and even longer before it is finally taken into use.

In speaking of schools, I do not mean only the white schools. I also mean the non-white schools, i.e. the Coloured schools, Indian schools and the Bantu schools. Obviously the text-books cannot be changed immediately. That would be very expensive. But we know how resourceful teachers are, and particularly those who teach the subjects I mentioned a moment ago. We know that these teachers will bridge the interim period most advantageously by means of examples they themselves may draw up, duplicate and furnish to the pupils. The same thing happened during the change-over to our present currency system. There were no text-books available, and the teachers had to draw on their ingenuity and devise sums and calculations for the children. When “D”-day arrived, there were thousands and tens of thousands of children, and through them their parents, who had been prepared to meet it. By its nature instruction in the metric system of weights and measures is much easier, because it does not involve pounds and ounces or their ridiculous fractions, nor does it involve measures of capacity like pints, bottles and gallons. The same applies to measures of lengths, where there are equally difficult systems. Those of us who have been in teaching, know that a table is not a very attractive subject for a child to learn. The metric system will not involve difficult methods of calculating, because all calculations will be done in terms of litres, grams and metres, which will enable the children to calculate in tens and multiples of ten.

We also hope that the international standards and names will be retained, because there would be no sense in changing them. With regard to our present currency system and the conversion to it, it was essential that we should get a monetary unit which would identify the country. We had to get a national monetary unit. Hon. members of the Opposition must please not be alarmed if I use the word “national”! A national currency system was also essential with regard to the determination of an exchange rate. It was essential that we should have a currency system which would be peculiar to the country. But as far as the existing metric system of weights and measures is concerned, it is no longer linked to a specific country. It has achieved international status. At schools, and particularly at schools on a technical level, it will be essential to continue teaching both systems for a considerable length of time. It will also be essential to do calculations continually which relate to the conversion of one system to the other. That may perhaps be done for three or four years. After that it will be necessary to teach only one, namely the metric system.

We are faced by a cardinal question with regard to this possible change to metric weights and measures: How will the non-Whites, and particularly the Bantu population, adapt themselves to it? We cannot get away from the fact that the Bantu adapted themselves remarkably well and remarkably quickly to the decimal coinage system. That was attributed to the fact that the Bantu is by nature inclined to count and calculate in multiples of five, but particularly in tens. In order to do so he uses his fingers, of course, and if necessary also his toes. The Bantu finds it very hard to understand fractions and even to think in terms of fractions.

I was told, for example, that the Bantu languages have no equivalents for halves, quarters and eighths, not to mention smaller fractions. As for using measures and weights, it is true that the Bantu prefers to think in terms of capacity and in terms of quantity, rather than in terms of weight. If one transacts business with a Bantu or gives him something, he thinks in terms of the jam tins he has to fill or in terms of the bucket in which his maize or his flour will be given to him, or the measure of capacity in which his salt or sugar will be given to him. He is not so much concerned about the correctness of the weight. The misgivings the Bantu may have entertained, namely that the conversion to the decimal currency unit would result in their exploitation, have been disproved completely. We can now accept that the coinage system was grasped well and quickly by the Bantu. I must say that in certain circles the Bantu used the terms rand and cent more regularly than our own people did. As Whites we are often inclined to cling desperately to the old currency system. The Bantu at petrol stations, for example, switched over immediately to the currency unit we are using at present. Just as the Bantu saw that they were not going to be exploited as a result of the conversion to another currency system, I believe they will also realize that no exploitation threatens them in conversion to a metric system of weights and measures. It is true, of course, that educational publicity and campaigns will have to be organized to inform not only children but also adult Bantu, and that visual demonstrations will have to be held to enable them to understand the change. Authorities are of the opinion that in the long run the Bantu will also benefit by the conversion to the metric system with regard to weights and measures.

There is another question one has to ask oneself. This is also a logical question. How will the conversion influence our manpower position? In some quarters it is considered that the present manpower shortage, particularly as regards skilled workers, will hamper the efficient and effective conversion of our existing system to the metric system and that the conversion should be shelved as a result of that. Yet authorities on the other side are of the opinion that skilled manpower is actually wasted in and by the use of the present system. The experts are of the opinion that the present system even eliminates the effective use of modern computing aids, and that more errors are made as a result of that. They also contend that the present system demands a much longer period of training for the staff who have to apply it. I just want to say that in view of that the present shortage of manpower actually makes it essential to make the very best use of our available manpower. It is understandable, of course, that the present personnel will receive their training in the new system, and it is also necessary that industry shall have regard to the problems involved in such training. The rapid growth of the Republic’s industry will aggravate the problems, and I believe that it is therefore essential that we should change to the new system as soon as possible.

In conclusion I just want to refer to the important inquiry which was carried out in England in 1962, and which has also been referred to here in connection with the possible conversion to the metric system in that country. That inquiry was instituted by the British Standards Institution and industry was consulted on a broad spectrum. I just want to read from page 119 of the report, which was referred to several times to-day. It is a report submitted to the Minister of Economic Affairs on the metric system of weights and measures by the South African Bureau of Standards. It reads—

That is exactly what will also happen here if we delay any longer. I think the time is ripe. The hon. member for Sunnyside referred to a speech made very recently by Professor Louw, who was chairman of the Metric System Committee. He said (translation)—

I should like to conclude by associating myself with the two hon. members who spoke before me, in urging that the conversion should take place as soon as possible.

On several occasions this Session it has been my lot to follow the hon. member for Koedoespoort in debate. Usually we have been at pains to state our fundamental differences, but to-day it seems that we can pool our suggestions in dealing with a very important but not contentious subject, and offer our suggestions to the mover of this very important motion. The hon. member for Koedoespoort has dealt with the subject and has given us the benefit of his experience in education to suggest methods whereby the change-over should be dealt with in the educational sphere. I propose to deal with suggestions on a basis which is nearer my own profession in life, in regard to medicines, their dispensing and manufacture and distribution. Before doing so, I want to associate myself with the remarks made by the hon. member for Sunnyside when he complimented the compilers of this report on the very excellent and comprehensive work they had done. The hon. member for Sunnyside also referred very briefly in passing to the question of medicine. He cited the difficulty which could arise when the two systems, the Imperial and the metric system, were used and the two signs, the gramme sign and the grain sign could be confused. He pointed out that there could be an obvious danger. But I want to assure the hon. member for Sunnyside that our profession is so meticulous in its approach to its work that I have never known of a case where that particular problem has produced fatal results.

As the hon. member for Kensington has said, we have no objection to the principle of a metric system of weights and measures, but I believe the advice he gave, which is borne out by the Federated Chambers of Industry, is that South Africa should not take the lead in this matter but should follow on the basis of the progress made both in the United Kingdom and the United States. I think one of the main reasons is that South Africa and the U.S.A, and the U.K. are great trading partners, and so I believe that any transition should be gradual and more or less in conformity with the progress made in those two countries. The report of the Bureau of Standards has indicated that in so far as actual weights and measures are concerned, there should be no delay in this transition process and also that within three years there should be marked progress, and within ten years it should be possible to place legislation on the Statute Book which would make it illegal to use the old terms. I think that is logical and a fair approach to the problem. The hon. member for Sunnyside referred to the cost. I was interested, when I broke down the figures, to see that the estimated cost in regard to the conversion of scales and weights amounted to R10.5 million, just for the scales, and it would involve the conversion of over 100,000 scales, and the discarding of over 406,000 weights. I assume, as the report assumes, that if there is any change-over on that basis, the compensation would be paid by the State. The case of our coinage was mentioned, where compensation was paid by the State. Obviously in such a change-over there are advantages and disadvantages. I believe that we have to be objective and face some of the problems which will confront us. As I see it, a major problem will be the question of labelling, because during the transition period it would be obviously necessary to indicate the dual weights and measures on the labels of the various products, for the protection of the public. That, as I see it, could involve the manufacturers in some expense which would to a certain extent increase production costs. Then there is the question of the disposal of stocks, but I do not believe that any great difficulty would arise there as long as a suitable interim period is allowed. As far as packaging machines are concerned, there would be certain difficulties. There would be certain difficulties in regard to moulds, but I am given to understand that as far as glass containers are concerned moulds do not enjoy a particularly long life, so that there will not be any great difficulty in that direction.

I was interested to read the Commission’s optimistic view which it adopted to the estimated increase in the cost of living as the result of the change-over. The commission put the figure down at less than .25 per cent, but in the thorough way in which the report dealt with these matters, substantiation was given in the form of sample figures which were taken out in Pretoria. I think that .25 per cent is an underestimate. I think that there would be non-compensatable factors in container manufacture and in other aspects which would increase the basic cost and which would ultimately result in a consumer cost on a higher basis than the estimated .25 per cent.

The report also dealt with the question of rounding off, and while I realize that that could be reduced to fairly simple methods, I think that there is room for abuse when it comes to rounding off. It would be very difficult if a manufacturer chose to be unscrupulous in his rounding-off process in order to take a little extra profit for himself. I maintain that it would be virtually impossible to deal with the many cases which would occur during the transition period when hundreds of preparations would be marketed and would be marketed in the new form under the metric system. However, I believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages on the long-term basis. One of the disadvantages of which I feel we would be very well rid, is that at the moment we are dealing with avoirdupois, troy and apothecary weights, all of which are legal in South Africa. Just to complicate the issue we do have in certain instances the use of metric gramme weights as it is now, but when the change-over is complete, we will have the elimination of the avoirdupois, the apothecary and the troy weights.

Sir, then there is the question of education. The hon. member for Koedoespoort referred to this matter. Here again I believe that the change-over to the metric system will result in a simplification because I believe that our forebears used the only accounting system available at that time and that was their toes and fingers, in multiples of fives and ten. I believe that that was the forerunner of the decimal system and that a decimal system will make for ease in the teaching of all students in this country. I believe I am right in saying that it would help considerably in the education of the Bantu. I know that Professor Eiselen at one stage indicated that the Bantu experienced considerable difficulty with arithmetic and that they found it a difficult subject to master. I believe that this change-over will make arithmetic easier for all students. I do not think that we should be misled into believing that the change-over would be completely smooth and without difficulty. I know that the hon. member for Kensington chose a happy example when he said that a kilo was equal to 2.2 lb. but some of the other equivalents are not quite as easy as that. I notice that in Commercial Opinion some months back the opinion was expressed in an article that the Bureau of Standards Report was indulging in a little wishful thinking in believing that the change-over would be smooth. Commercial Opinion quoted examples which I think are quite significant. They point out that one ounce equals 28.3495 grammes, that one yard equals 91.44 centimetres and that one pint equals 0.568245 litres, so that there would be difficulty in those equivalents until we have a complete usage of the metric system.

Sir, I have said that I wanted to refer to the question of medicines and their distribution. I believe that possibly in this particular field South Africa is following the pattern of the United Kingdom and the United States where there has been a gradual but definite change-over to the metric system. Sir, it is interesting to see in the current edition of the United States Pharmacopoeia published in 1965 that the Revision Committee had continued to eliminate the use of the apothecary system of weights which has always been the traditional system used in the past and that all weights and measures are now being expressed in the metric system. The only reference to apothecary weights now is at the back of the book where there is a table of quivalents for the convenience of people who wish to transpose the metric to the apothecary for reasons of convenience. It has always been a case that in identification tests, assays and the manufacture of pharmaceutical preparations, the metric system has been used to a very large extent. Then, Sir, we have the same position applying in Great Britain. In 1953-’58 there was what was known as the British Pharmacopoeia Commission. This commission as far back as that expressed the view that arrangements should be made so that the Imperial system could be abandoned by 1963, and they hoped that the transition would be complete by 1968. It is interesting too to see that in Martindale’s Extra Pharmacopoeia the opinion is also expressed that the Imperial system will gradually become redundant and be discontinued. It is interesting too to notice that this subject was first intended to be brought into the House of Commons in London by means of a private member’s motion, indicating that the metric system would gradually replace the Imperial system, but I believe that the Weights and Measures Bill of 1963 put the position beyond doubt when it stated in effect that the apothecary system would become illegal for purposes of trade. Sir, we have an example of the practical effect of that. We find that after July, 1965, manufacturers and wholesalers who made medicines and pharmaceutical preparations were instructed to clear all their stocks labelled on the Imperial basis and that the retail distribution points were given until the 1st January, 1966, to effect the disposal of stocks marked under the Imperial system. A period of grace was given. As far as I know the transition went off without a hitch, but we would have to become used to changes in this respect as we follow suit. When we buy a bottle of aspirin tablets and we read on it “aspirin tablets acetyl salicylic acid 5 grains”, that is not likely to apply very much longer. We will see instead: “aspirin tablets acetyl salicylic acid 300 mgm.” I believe that the time is not far off when that position will apply in this country; it will merely be a continuation of a policy being adopted overseas. In South Africa we have a publication which is of great value to the medical and pharmaceutical profession and the hospitals, known as MIMS, a monthly index of medical specialities. The preface says: “Weights and measures are shown in metric units as far as possible.” Sir, there is nothing particularly new about that, because as far as I can remember injections have always been referred to as milligrammes per cubic centimetre. Sir, already we have in South Africa some pharmaceutical houses which have adopted this practice. Whereas they used to pack a cough mixture normally prescribed by a medical man in a 4-ounce bottle, to-day the capacity is either 120 or 125 cc., so the practice is gradually extending in South Africa.

Do doctors still write out their prescriptions in the old apothecary’s measure or do they now use the metric measure?

That is an interesting question. I should say that 87 per cent of the prescriptions written to-day do not really need compounding. It is merely an ethical preparation with the directions “One three times a day”.

But can you read them?

Oh yes, we can read them all right.

Of the remainder one finds that where a preparation has to be dispensed or compounded in the true sense of the word, the quantities are usually given in the apothecary’s system and that it is the exception rather than the rule to see a prescription written in the metric system, but the training at the colleges over the last 30 years and more has been such that students are made to accustom themselves to making up medicines in both the metric and the apothecary standard of weights, and there again there will be no difficulty. There might be a difficulty as far as the householder is concerned, but I do not think that it is one to worry about. It has been established that most people when they take medicine use common household teaspoons or tablespoons. We know that they vary, but it has been established that where one teaspoonful was regarded as now, a teaspoonful could still be regarded as the equivalent of five millimetres, which would be equivalent to a medicinal teaspoon.

The difficulty with tablespoons is that they vary and one might have a tablespoon with a capacity of 15 or 20 millimetres. But there again I think that could be overcome by means of formulation whereby the dose could be reduced to say one teaspoonful or a two tea-spoonful dose. They have had this problem in New Zealand; they have overcome it. Way back in 1963 the Social Security Act in New Zealand has already jumped this hurdle. They asked doctors to prescribe exclusively in the metric system. That in fact has taken place in New Zealand. They have overcome the difficulty of the household teaspoon and tablespoon by producing—I suppose in bulk—a cheap plastic measure which places the issue beyond doubt and gives an accurate measurement for those people who have to take medicine in liquid form.

There would be some general problems, none of which I think would be insurmountable. There is the question of containers. As far as pills, tablets, suppositories, pessaries and powders are concerned there will be no difficulties. That should be quite easy. As far as ointments are concerned, there might be some difficulty, but I believe that to-day many prepacked ointments in tubes are packed on the basis of the metric weight system, for instance in packings of five grammes, fifteen grammes, thirty grammes, and even larger quantities. So there again there might be an adjustment in a small number of cases. When it comes to glass containers, there would be some difficulty. But, as I have said, the moulds are not everlasting, so the change-over could take place in good time.

So far as liquid medicines are concerned, there could be a change in tradition. I think that most people are accustomed to the ordinary six-ounce or eight-ounce bottle of medicine. A six-ounce bottle represents 180 cubic centimetres and an eight-ounce bottle represents 240 cubic centimetres. Neither of these latter two quantities would be convenient to dispense under the metric system. But there again I believe that with the co-operation of the medical profession quantities could be ordered in multiples of 100 cc. and that difficulty, too, would be overcome. Therefore, Sir, I believe that as far as that aspect of it is concerned South Africa has worked, and will continue to a greater extent to work with the metric system to the gradual elimination of the Imperial system. I believe that it will be a good thing when we come to the stage where there will be just one system, namely the metric system, in those particular spheres.

It is interesting to think that France adopted the metric system in 1840 and Germany in 1871, and yet Britain and America are still toying with the idea, one could almost say. I believe that in South Africa the problem will be primarily for the industrialists, for the engineering trade, and for people who have to deal with hardware, where there will be the difficulty of a multiplicity of fittings and measurements, which will take time to solve and overcome. But I do believe that with patience, caution and goodwill this is a problem which will be overcome and a matter which in the end will be to the advantage of our Republic.

Mr. Speaker, we have had an interesting discussion so far of the metric system, but I bring the House back to the motion which asks for this system “as soon as possible”. Does it mean as soon as possible now, or is it within five years, or is it to-morrow? The hon. member for Berea has just referred to the question of aspirins. I see that the hon. the Minister is here to-day. Well, I think that one of the first persons to require an aspirin should this motion become law will be the Minister himself. I say this because, while we recognize that the metric system has many advantages, we nevertheless find ourselves in difficulty on this side of the House. Mr. Speaker, when this Government spends money excessively we are the first to criticize it. I have here before me an excellent report of the Council of the South African Bureau of Standards. This report was tabled in May, 1965. On page 23 we see that had we converted in 1965 it would have cost us R13,626,000. If the matter was delayed until 1966 it would cost R14,688,000, while the cost in 1967 would be R 15,834,000. In 1968 it would cost R17 million. The Minister himself has to deal with the question of priority, and he has to argue the matter with the Treasury. If the Minister does accept the motion of the hon. member for Sunnyside and say that he accepts “as soon as possible” to mean this year, he has to adjust matters with the Treasury to give this matter priority above all others. That is our difficulty. I think that all sides of the House agree with the advantages of the metric system. But there are difficulties, as the hon. member for Berea has pointed out. Both in the U.S.A, and Great Britain the metric system does not apply. Difficulties arise because of that fact. Can one imagine the whole of the Ford organization and the whole of the General Motors organization changing over to the metric system just to suit South Africa? In future every model of car would be out of date if the metric system were introduced at once. Obviously that would not happen as far as this country is concerned. The Minister of Economic Affairs is concerned that the content of local goods used in the manufacture of cars in this country be increased. As the hon. the Minister well knows, while we have a high percentage of local content in our cars, the tools, the jigs, and all the manufacturing accessories used for manufacturing this local content are manufactured overseas. Various dies come from overseas. The dies for the latest models come from the U.S.A., either from Ford or from General Motors, and those have to be introduced into the factory for manufacturing local content. So that for a very long time to come we can see that, despite any resolution of this House and despite all the good wishes of the hon. member for Sunnyside who has introduced this motion, the possibility of introducing the metric system as soon as possible will be delayed for some considerable period. That, of course, does not apply as far as continental cars are concerned. As the hon. member knows, the metric system is used in the case of their cars with all their engineering standards being fixed in terms of the metric system.

I now come to another phase, and I propose to deal principally with the difficulties encountered by the packaging industry. There, too, we have problems. We are rapidly changing over in this country to a system of mass production. We are encouraged by the Government, and the whole formula of our taxation encourages us, to introduce more modern manufacturing methods, to cut out manual labour as much as possible. If we cut out hand labour, as we have done in many of our factories by the introduction of machine and mass production methods, we will find that many of the machines which are purchased either from Britain or America do not fit in with the metric system. The change-over has not been taken account of in the recommendations made in this report. The recommendations made in the report have as a prelude the estimated cost of conversion. On page 23, to which I have already referred, the estimated cost of conversion shows amounts in respect of weighbridges, platform scales, counter platform scales, belt weighers, and so on. But in none of the items referred to on page 23 is there any estimate as regards the change-over of factory machinery and the adjustments in factory machinery which will have to be made That, of course, requires manpower. The Minister will know from his experience in visiting factories in various parts of the country that when it comes to adjustment of fast-moving automatic packaging machinery, one requires the highly-qualified technical man on the plant who will be concerned not only with the adjustment of the plant but also with the necessary tuning so that the plant can run efficiently after the adjustment has taken place. The change-over to the metric system would involve not only manpower but it would involve highly-qualified manpower to effect the change-over to the metric system. In some cases it would involve the importation of new parts from overseas. In some cases new parts would have to be specially manufactured by the original manufacturers. Because in many cases it is not practical to scrap the machinery. In many cases this machinery has been brought into the country over the last 10 years. The economic life of those machines has not expired. They probably have another five or ten years of life. All those factors must be taken into consideration. While it is all very well for the commission to have compiled its report—and I do not criticize the report in that regard because an excellent job has been done and the Minister’s department and the officials concerned with that report are to be commended for the work they have done—I think that they will be the first to acknowledge that in the technical field as far as industrial output is concerned much ground still remains to be covered. There was neither the time nor the opportunity to go into that in detail because they were concerned with general principles. Therefore the whole purpose of this discussion to-day is not to criticize the Government or the Minister or the mover of the motion but rather to point out some of the problems with which the Minister concerned will be faced.

In the food packaging industry, we will not only find it necessary to make this adjustment to machinery but we will have to make a further adjustment which I think the hon. the Minister will agree is more difficult, namely to get the housewife to adjust herself to the new Weights and measures. It will be the Minister’s headache and not mine to get the housewife to accommodate herself to the new measures and to be satisfied beyond any doubt whatever that she is not paying more for the goods she is buying. If there is any suggestion of an increase in the cost of living, then the Minister will have to deal with the housewives and not me. I want to come to the building industry. To-day we have a national shortage of houses. In addition to this we have hundreds of houses in this country in respect of which people will in due course be requiring alterations and modifications. Wherever bricks have been used for houses, standard bricks have been used, namely 9″ × 4½″ × 3″. Therefore for some considerable time in the future all brick manufacturers will have to continue supplying bricks of those dimensions and not the metric measurements because unless the metric measurements are adjusted to conform to the measurements 9″ × 4½″ × 3″, those bricks cannot be used for alterations or additions or they will detract from the aesthetic appearance of the house if different sized bricks are used. That is particularly true in the case of Government buildings. Most of our schools have face-brickwork for an obvious reason. Most of our public works designers and architects have been boys at school. Mr. Speaker, although I am quite sure that you never marked school walls, there are some boys who mark school walls. It has been found easier to build school buildings with the lower portion in face-brickwork because it saves upkeep. The minute you plaster and paint those walls, you will find a little boy with crayons who will mark them. Therefore in many of our schools we find that the lower portion of classrooms are in face-brickwork. So that for many years to come we will have to continue with bricks of the standard size. This is a problem which will have to be faced and taken into account when we talk about changing to the metric system.

I have already dealt with the question of screws. It does not only affect the motoring industry but any part of South Africa where machines are used. To change over to the metric system overnight will involve the keeping of stocks of screws in the other dimensions for as long as those machines are still in operation. Another problem is the beverage industry as regards both hard and soft liquor, the mineral water industry, the milk industry, the milk distribution industry and the beer industry which will all be affected if we change over to the metric system. It would be interesting to find out what the life of a milk bottle is. Is it one, two or ten journeys? It depends on where you live. I doubt whether in District Six the life of a milk bottle is very long. The life of a milk bottle in some parts of a city may be as long as six months. The amounts tied up in bottles for the milk and mineral water industries run into many hundreds of thousands of rands. Until all those stocks are exhausted, you will have to have two machines running, namely the machine which fills the bottle according to the old imperial measure and the machine which fills it according to the metric system. The question then arises whether the manpower or the machine power is available in the country to tackle that changeover. These are technical matters which require very careful consideration. The adjustment required to change a machine from the imperial system to the metric system involves making the adjustments and test running the machines. Thereafter the machine runs automatically. In many of our companies in the beverage industry the hours of operation are limited to an average production. One frequently finds that in peak periods of a season these machines run at ultimate capacity. For example in the mineral water industry at Christmas time or over the Easter period the factories start probably at least a month or two beforehand to build up a stock to carry them over the peak period. I think that anybody who knows our coastal towns in Natal will tell you that there is a direct correlation between hot sunny weather and production. After a rainy week then production in a factory goes down and the consumption of stocks goes down, but a succession of four sunny week-ends in December and January can make a tremendous difference to the sales of a mineral factory. All these are matters which must be taken into account. The mineral water industry could not meet a changeover to the metric system overnight.

This report also mentions the question of pipes and all the various standards of pipes throughout South Africa, the pipes for our buildings, sewerage, conduit pipes for our electricity industry, none of which have their specifications based on the metric system. These are therefore factors which must be taken into account because when you are adding pipes to existing pipes you cannot alter the dimension because you alter the pressure in those pipes which can create fractures of the joints. Once you have put in for instance a one-inch pipe which does have to stand any pressure at all you cannot add to that a pipe with a greater diameter, no matter how slight, because an undue pressure can fracture the joint and create further complications. The whole of the underground system which is a highly technical, complex and important system in our big cities requires consideration when we change over to the metric system. None of these factors are considered in this report. I am not criticizing the report for that but I think that it is only fair when we are discussing a matter of this kind to bring those matters to the attention of the Minister.

In recent years we have not only had the question of changing over to the metric system as far as industrial pipes are concerned. To-day we have a new factor, namely the introduction of plastics. We have in this country to-day a fast developing plastic industry. The plastic industry has been developing a whole series of pipes for various industrial purposes. A changeover to the metric system will not only involve a change in the size of the pipes but a change in the original dies from which those pipes are extruded. The machines which extrude these pipes have dies which are very expensive. In the majority of cases the machines which extrude these pipes are made overseas. It will then be necessary to have dies made overseas and imported. In these days when the Minister of Finance is concerned about the conservation of foreign exchange, I wonder what he is going to say to the Minister of Economic Affairs should he decide after this discussion to-day to say that he intends to introduce the metric system at once and asks for the provision of foreign exchange. Then we come to the building industry and the question of all the building fittings, namely doors, windows, switches and particularly the internal fittings which will have to be changed to the metric system. It will be necessary for many years to come to stock or to store replacement parts so that if any alterations to these buildings are required, the fittings in the old measurements can be supplied.

For all these reasons, while I commend the mover of this motion on having encouraged this discussion and moved this motion, I think that he has not yet adequately defined “as soon as possible”. If he means “immediately”, I have a certain sympathy for his views. I think it has to come eventually. I do feel that as long as the United States of America and Great Britain are tied to the old system, if any changes are to take place, we have to calculate to what extent we can carry the dual system. That is our problem, not the problem of changing over to the metric system. For that reason I think that the discussion has been worth while. I think that it has given an opportunity for all points of view to be expressed. I am quite sure that it has added to the Minister’s headaches, because in the last instance he has to take the responsibility and he has to obtain the necessary funds from the Treasury.

Mr. Speaker, it does one’s heart good to know that there is such a measure of unanimity in this House in regard to this important principle, namely the introduction of the metric system of weights and measures. It seldom is the case that there is unanimity in this House on a private motion. The hon. member for Kensington remarked that the mover of this motion did not, as is customary, convey his thanks and appreciation. But there is also another respect in which this debate is different. Although the Minister who replies is normally only able to thank Government members for their contributions, this is an occasion on which I am also able to thank members of the Opposition for their contributions. Therefore I want to thank the hon. members for Sunnyside and Koedoespoort, who spoke on the Government side, as well as the hon. members for Kensington, Berea and Pinetown for their respective contributions. In saying that I am glad that we are unanimous as regards this principle, namely that this system should be introduced in South Africa, I am also thoroughly awake to the problems which will be involved. We realize that introducing the decimal system as well as the metric system in a country is a momentous matter. We have experience of the problems the decimal coinage system entailed in South Africa, but we surmounted them. However, I can assure you that we have no illusions as to the fact that it is much easier to introduce the decimal coinage system than it will be to introduce the metric system of weights and measures. There is a big difference as far as that is concerned.

We also realize that it entails major implications and complications for the consumers, for those who have to put it into practice. We realize that it will take time to change over. We realize that it will cost money to adapt this system. We also realize fully that we are faced with the problem here, just as in other countries, that the consumer has to adapt himself to it. We have here a large non-White population which may perhaps find it more difficult than others. The experience we have gained in the case of the decimal coinage system, is nevertheless encouraging to us, because that was the very system about which we had misgivings, namely that that section of our population would not accept the new system very easily; but they did accept it very quickly and easily. We realize therefore that this system has quite a number of implications. It was for that very reason that we also followed this practice of making inquiries, just as we did in the case of the decimal coinage system. In the case of the decimal coinage system there was the inquiry which the so-called Becklake Report dealt with in 1948. This was referred to a committee of the Bureau of Standards. There was a select committee which was converted into a commission of inquiry consisting of members from both sides of the House. In my opinion that commission of this House contributed most to this system being accepted eventually. There were problems. It had to be decided what the unit would be and out of how many decimals that unit was to consist. Subsequent to that legislation was launched, and we differed on that. I think the hon. member for Kensington was the only one who agreed when this Act was passed. At that time the Opposition differed from us fundamentally, and they felt that owing to the capital it would require and owing to the manpower position, it was not the proper time for doing so. Today we therefore have the position that, even though there may have been differences as regards the decimal coinage system, fundamentally we do not differ to any great extent at this stage.

After the report of the Decimal Coinage Commission had appeared and after it had been decided in 1959 to introduce a decimal coinage system in 1961, it was felt that we could move in the direction of a metric system as something which follows logically upon the introduction of a decimal coinage system. That is why in 1963 the then Minister of Economic Affairs also issued instructions to the Bureau of Standards to investigate this aspect. Subsequently it was referred to a committee whose report, which was referred to a great deal today, has already been published and Tabled. I think that it is fitting on this occasion to convey to the Bureau of Standards our thanks for the important contribution they rendered as regards both the metric system and the decimal coinage system. When this report was published, there were several problems. In the first place, the reaction had to be tested of commerce and industry and those sectors which would specifically have been involved in that matter. Testing was also necessary for the purpose of finding out how the Opposition felt about this. The Government also had to take a stand in regard to this matter. That is why there has been a lapse of time since this report was published in 1965. This afforded everybody an opportunity of responding to those recommendations. Last year in September the Minister of Economic Affairs announced in this House that the Government had decided to accept the principle of the metric system and to make further inquiries into the actual implementation thereof. At that time he intimated that here were certain problems about which he wanted to consult industry further. The Government therefore indicated the way and in addition allowed scope for reaction. Fortunately, as far as the Opposition was concerned, there was basically no difference as regards this principle. I think that to-day’s debate also emphasizes the fact that as regards the desirability of introducing this system, there is basically no difference between us at present.

As regards the industrial sector, the reaction of both SEIFSA and the Federated Chamber of Industries was that they would have liked to investigate this matter further, since it entailed certain problems for them. After further negotiations had taken place, both the Chamber of Industries and SEIFSA informed the Minister in November, 1966, that they had no objections to it, but that they would support the introduction of this system. They also urged that, if this system were to be introduced, it had to be introduced as soon as possible. Therefore they agree with the views expressed here today by both the Government and the Opposition. They also emphasized that the principle of compensation for the introducers thereof, should be accepted. We know that the principle of compensation is not new. It was applied when the decimal system was introduced. Therefore there is no difference as far as that is concerned, but they requested further that a body should be established which would be representative of industry, commerce and other allied interests and which would be responsible to the Minister and be able to serve him with advice as regards the practical implications of the change-over. This was also carried into effect, and in December the Minister instructed the Standards Council in conjunction with his committee on the Metric System of Measures and Weights to inquire into essential machinery needed for coping with the first steps of the change-over. That was the first aspect this Council had to investigate. In addition they had to inquire into what the financial implications of this envisaged machinery would be, and, thirdly, what the terms of reference of this proposed Metric System Board would be. You will recall that after the Decimal Coinage Act had been passed, a Decimalization Board was established, and that it assisted in the change-over to the decimal coinage system. They performed a very important and essential function and they performed it very thoroughly, and the change-over was effected very smoothly and required even less compensation than was anticipated originally. Therefore it is necessary that such a body should also be established now, a body which can assist in the change-over to a metric system. Accordingly the Standards Council considered this request on 13th February this year, and the matter was referred to the same Committee, whose report is already available to us, which has to consider and report to the Government on these three aspects: the constitution of such a board, its terms of reference and its financial implications. As soon as this report is available, the Government will be in a position to judge whether such a metric board should be appointed, what its terms of reference are to be and how it is to operate.

In the course of this debate a great deal of attention was directed to problems which may arise. Therefore I think that this debate has served a very good purpose in that it has afforded hon. members the opportunity of indicating some of those problems. All of these are the problems to which this contemplated Metric System Board will have to pay attention. We realize fully that in order to effect this adaptation as smoothly as possible there will have to be the closest co-operation with commerce and industry and all these bodies which were referred to to-day. Its success can only depend on that.

Reference was made here to certain questions which may arise, i.e. when this metric system has to be introduced. It was pointed out that the longer the Government delayed the introduction thereof, the more the cost involved and the greater the disruption would be. On the other hand, it was pointed out that there could be a cost saving and that it would lead to higher productivity. Then there is the important question as to whether we should make manpower available for this purpose, or whether we have the capital which is to be made available for that purpose. These are questions which will have to be considered by the Government once it has received this report, because it will be important to give an indication as to the time at which this change-over will have to commence. In this respect, unlike the change-over to the decimal coinage system, we cannot have one date only for a complete change-over. This report pointed out that it might take ten to twelve years or even longer, and that it had to be adapted gradually, and that it also had to take place systematically so that there might not be any uncertainty as to what that programme had to be. A great deal of preparatory work will therefore have to be done initially by this contemplated Metric System Board that has been established, and I am convinced that the suggestions which were made to-day about the practical problems which will arise in this regard, will also be of very great value to this contemplated Metric System Board. Therefore, since the Government has already announced that it supports this principle, and since these differences and problems as regards industry did exist basically and uncertainty did prevail amongst them, and since there are indications that this step has the support of the Opposition and that the proposed step also has the whole-hearted support of the Afrikaans Handelsinstituut, the Chambers of Commerce and the Chambers of Industry, the way has been paved for us to make a concerted attempt at putting this system into operation. I think that this debate will to a large extent be instrumental in making those bodies, which will be faced with problems in implementing this system, realize that we have made a great deal of progress towards changing over to the metric system, and that it may at the same time also be an indication to them that they should start thinking of what their specific problems with the change-over will be, so that they may be submitted to the Board mentioned by me at the appropriate time.

I owe the hon. the Minister a great debt of gratitude for this information he has given us. I also want to tell the hon. member for Kensington that I thank that side of the House for their support and the fine contributions they made. I think that this matter has now been discussed very thoroughly—in the past we often heard Decimal Dan, and now I am looking forward to hearing Decimal Dan’s twin sisters, Hannah and Sannah—and that is why I want to withdraw my motion.

With leave, motion withdrawn.

I should like to move the motion standing in my name—

I hope that in the course of the afternoon I shall enjoy the same remarkable experience as the hon. member for Sunnyside, and that the same support from that side of the House will be forthcoming for this motion. We do not often have such peaceful afternoons, and I would hate that peace to be disturbed.

I must necessarily use many statistics to demonstrate the profit margins, and I make no apology for that because it forms part of the argument I want to advance this afternoon to present my case; not so much that the producers should receive more for their produce—actually I do not want to make a plea for the producer this afternoon. I want to deal with the consumer and the profit margin and the cost of living involved if products become too expensive. I do not have the time this afternoon to discuss the products controlled in in terms of the Marketing Act, which fixes both the producers’ price and the consumers’ price. Nor do I have the time to deal with the products which have a reserve price, or a minimum price, and afterwards an open market. I do not even have time to talk about the dairy industry, which I should have liked to discuss.

I want to begin with the meat product, in respect of which the minimum prices of certain grades are fixed, but not of all grades. I want to begin with the Cape Town abattoirs, and I take as few grades as possible to simplify the matter as much as possible. In saying that I begin with the Cape Town abattoirs, I want to emphasize that the prices on the Newtown market and on the Cape Town market and on the other controlled markets differ very little, with the exception of Durban, where there is some difference. I want to say that the day before yesterday the price of prime beef grade 1 here in the Cape was 18½c a pound, and the price of prime beef grade B was 18¼c and of prime beef grade C 17¾c. Grade 1 beef sold at the abattoirs at 17½c, grade 2 at 17c a pound, and grade 3 beef at 16c a pound. If one compares the prices for the week ending 18th February—so that nobody can tell me that I took the prices on the Cape market the day before yesterday but that the prices for the rest of the year were not the same—one finds that the prices for the week ending 18th February on the Cape market were virtually indentical with the prices I now want to quote. The prices on the Newtown market differ so little that it is not worth mentioning.

I should now like to give the House the consumers’ prices. Yesterday the consumers’ prices here in Cape Town were as follows: rump steak, 50 cents to 60 cents; Beef steak, 50 cents; sirloin, 52 cents, and mince, 29 cents, and the cheapest cuts of the carcass, such as rib or brisket, which we describe as “boys’ meat”, were 23 cents. The price of grade A prime beef on the wholesale market was 18½ cents a pound, and the cheapest piece of virtually the lowest grade beef carcass, which would sell at 16 cents a pound, is now 23 cents a pound. Sir, I have deliberately given the prices of the ordinary cuts for purposes of comparison, rather than the prices of choice cuts such as fillet, or other choice cuts of which the prices are even much higher. Fillet is sold for as much as 70 to 80 cents a pound, but because it forms a much smaller part of the beef carcass I did not refer to it. This afternoon I just want to demonstrate the large gap between the producers’ price and the consumers’ price, and then I want to try to analyse the reason why there is such a large gap and to see whether I cannot suggest some means of reducing this price gap.

On the same dates mutton prices were as follows here in Cape Town: Lamb, grade I, 23½ cents; lamb, grade II, 20 cents; mutton, grade I, 20 cents; grade II, 18½ cents and grade III, 15 cents. For these the consumer had to pay the following prices: 50 cents to 55 cents for leg of lamb, and 35 cents to 48 cents for barbicue cutlets or “chops”, and nowadays a mutton carcass is cut up in such a way that by far the major portion, with the exception of the leg of mutton, is cut up into chops. Everything except loin and neck is sold as chops. Nowadays they even cut chops from the shoulder.

When dealing with fruit and vegetables, I take only Cape Town as an example, for the sake of convenience, simply because the prices in Johannesburg and Durban differ very little from those in Cape Town. I have the statistics here in respect of all the controlled centres and I may read them to hon. members, but there is virtually no difference.

To enable us to see the picture in its correct perspective, could you also give us the prices on that same day or during the same week for half a sheep and a whole sheep?

There are so few people who buy a whole or half a carcass that I did not check the prices, but I can get them. I am now dealing with the large majority of the consumers, not the few people who have the facilities and the funds to buy a whole or half a carcass.

I want to come back to fruit and vegetables. On the Municipal market in Cape Town potatoes, grade I, sold at 70 cents per 37½ pounds pocket. The retail price was 5 cents to 6 cents a pound, which comes to 187 cents for the pocket which cost 70 cents. Onions, grade I, sold at 70 cents to 80 cents per 28 pounds pocket on the municipal market, and the retail price as 7 cents a pound, which comes to 186 cents a pocket. Pumpkin sold at 20 cents to 40 cents per 120 pounds pocket, or at 5 cents a pound, and the retail price was 300 cents to 400 cents a pocket. I mention potatoes, onions and pumpkin first, because these are products which are not so perishable that one could argue that it is necessary to demand such a high profit margin with a view to the perishable nature of the products. I want to continue. Green peas were sold at 62 cents per 22½ pounds pocket, and the retail price was 6 cents a pocket, which comes to 135 cents a pocket. Yesterday the price of beans on the municipal market of Cape Town was 100 cents to 120 cents per 22½ pounds pocket, and the retail price was 15 cents a pound, which comes to 337 cents a pocket. The price of carrots per dozen bunches was 50 cents to 60 cents, and the retail price was 6 cents a bunch. The wholesale price for beetroot was the same and the retail price was 8 cents a pound. As for fruit, one finds that large oranges are now sold at 120 cents a pocket, and that the consumer has to pay 4 cents a piece for large oranges. The price of medium oranges ranges from 80 cents to 100 cents a pocket, and the retail price is 3 cents each. Apples, grade I, are sold on the wholesale market at 200 cents to 250 cents a box, depending on the variety, and the consumer pays 5 cents a piece, which comes to 400 cents per bushel box. A 10 pounds box of grapes is sold on the municipal market at 25 cents to 40 cents, and the retail price is 7 cents to 9 cents a pound.

I think the prices I have mentioned above prove that the producer does not make a fortune from his products, but that the consumer pays through his nose. In my view the consumer has to pay unreasonable prices for the fruit and the vegetables he has to buy to feed his family and to keep them in good health. I appreciate the perishable nature of these products and the problems involved in handling such products. If we analyse the reason why the consumers’ price is always double and treble the producers’ price, we come to the conclusion that over-trading is most certainly one of the causes. In this regard I have also done some research. The statistics I obtained in this connection are almost shocking. I knew that there was over-trading in many of these industries, but I never knew that there was over-trading to such an extent. Here are the latest statistics in this connection, which I obtained from the municipal licensing section of Cape Town. The white population of the Cape Town Municipal area totals 198,480; the Coloured population 319,440; the Bantu population 88,930, and the Asiatics 500; a total of 607,350. Sir, here in Cape Town we have 420 licensed retail butchers; 2,010 greengrocers and 1,300 hawkers. There are 2,010 greengrocers. [Interjection.] I referred to wholesale and retail butchers. There are 1,300 venders and hawkers. If one person in a family of five or if one person in five buys the supplies needed by a family, it means that every greengrocer can cater for only 35 customers. That is all that will buy from him out of the population of all colour and race groups in the Cape. A butcher can cater for 300 customers. Surely this is irrefutable proof of the fact that the industry is hopelessly over-traded. I am not saying that the vendor does not render a service. Nor do I want to say that the retail greengrocer does not render a service. Nor do I want to say this afternoon what has been said so frequently, namely that the housewife is too lazy to walk to the municipal market and that she consequently has to pay these prices.

That is a dangerous thing to say.

I said I was not going to say it. I may say that if the housewife were to take the risk of going to the municipal markets, not so much in Cape Town, where the position is somewhat better, but in Newtown and other municipal markets, she would have the utmost difficulty to buy on the retail market. The reason for that is that the wholesalers buy the wares in large quantities, and as a result the housewife finds it difficult to get anything. The fact of the matter is that some of the people render services in the trade merely by taking the products around to the front doors of the consumers. Do you know, Sir, that the licensed hawkers trading in the more well-to-do parts of Cape Town add a further cent to the selling price just because they bring the fruit and vegetables to the housewife’s front door? They do that even though they trade only by means of a cart and two horses, and do not have licence fees to pay in respect of permanent premises, or lights, rent and other costs in connection with premises. The prices I have quoted should therefore be increased by a cent if I were to use the hawkers’ prices as examples in respect of the distribution of products. Here we have an interesting figure. We find that Durban, with a population of 55,000 more than the population of the municipal area of Cape Town—Durban’s population is 664,000—has only 256 licensed butchers. Therefore Durban has 164 butchers fewer than Cape Town, which has a smaller population. We know that the Meat Board issues the licenses. I do not know what policy they follow in determining to whom licenses should be issued. I find it abominable that Durban, with its larger population, can get along with 164 fewer butchers than Cape Town. It goes without saying that if they are to make a profit on their turnover, after paying their costs, they will necessarily charge more for meat in Cape Town than in Durban, for example. If everyone has to make a living, everyone’s profit margin will have to be so much larger if the distribution and the industry are over-traded.

I want to repeat, Sir, that I am not pleading for higher prices for the farmer. I am pleading that the consumer should not have to pay such a high price, and that the profit margin should be reduced. Not only will this mean a lower cost of living, but it will also mean increased consumption of the farmer’s produce, which is so frequently over-produced. This will be possible if his produce is brought to the consumer in such a way that the profit margin will be reduced.

It should also be done in a way which will bring about a larger market and which will enable a larger cross-section of the population to buy, a section of the population which frequently cannot afford buying the products at the abovementioned prices. If it is felt that I have been unreasonable in the quotations I have made, I want to tell hon. members that over a period of three or four days I visited the humblest and best butchers and dealers and simply wrote down their prices. The figures I have furnished here represent a fair cross-section. Some of the dealers charge prices which are much higher than the ones I quoted. But those are not the ones I wanted to use. What I wanted to do in this motion was to demonstrate that the products to which I have just referred, namely meat, vegetables and fruit, carry a profit margin which allows the consumers’ buying price to be twice or three times as high as the producers’ selling price. I repeat, Sir, that I am not pleading for a higher price for the producer. I am pleading that a commission should be appointed and a report produced. I am certain that even the hon. the Minister will welcome it if a method can be devised whereby marketing can be better and more economic. I think the time has come for this to be enquired into.

I want to go further. I am not convinced that the municipalities of our cities are the proper or best concerns to market the producers’ products on his behalf. There are other countries where it is done differently. There are other countries where it is done cooperatively. In some countries utility corporations are established to render this kind of service. The municipality provides a service which nobody else provides. As yet we have no other organization which can provide this service. In my view, however, it remains a question whether this is the best method of marketing the farmers’ products, whether the body doing it at present is in fact the best one.

They perform this service because in the past no one else performed it or expressed his willingness to perform this function. The fact of the matter is that the city council fixes the commission and the levy on the building made available to the producer for marketing his product. Those buildings have to pay for themselves over a period of years, although the commission basis remains the same. I am not sure whether or not it then accrues to the general revenue of the council. Nor do I know whether it is ploughed back for the benefit of the producer. But the fact remains that the producer himself will in the final instance have to pay for the buildings and premises provided for marketing his products. The commission may also inquire into this matter and make an analysis in order to determine whether there is not a more effective and better way of marketing the producers’ products. I just want to mention that in Australia a great deal of progress has been made as far as this kind of inquiry is concerned. In many of the major centres in that country it is no longer the municipalities who provide the marketing premises, etc., where the farmers’ products are marketed. We also know that the system in the Nordic countries, in Denmark and Holland, is completely different from the local one.

When opening the Cape Agricultural Show some days ago the hon. the Minister of Defence said something which in my view contains a great deal of truth. He said that food shortages and poor distribution systems in respect of food have given rise to more than one revolution in the history of the world. We see that wherever food is in short supply, the population is discontented. I think we should give attention to weaknesses in the distribution system. I want to state that in respect of the products I have mentioned, the distribution system is extremely poor and can do with a great deal of improvement. I think it is within the ambit and ability of a commission to analyse all the problems mentioned, and to produce recommendations aimed at the elimination of such points of friction.

I am aware of the commission appointed on the marketing of agricultural products. I want to make the statement that that commission is not the right one to deal with the aspect of agriculture which I have mentioned, within the ambit of its terms of reference and within the ambit of its functions and the investigation to be carried out by it. It cannot make recommendations to suggest a solution to this problem and to reduce the profit margin. I have no hesitation in moving this motion and in asking for the appointment of such a commission.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for East London (City) has made some interesting points, but one fact is as plain as a pikestaff. That is that although the hon. member did a great deal of homework, it was not of the right quality or kind. A moment ago, just before he concluded, he said that he wondered whether the municipal markets were the proper organizations for marketing farmers’ products. He is now calling for a commission of inquiry to investigate this matter, inter alia. Could he be unaware of the Slater Commission, which has just completed its inquiry into this matter? Thus I could continue to demonstrate that the hon. member has really not done his homework properly. He talked about a commission of inquiry to investigate these matters. Here in my hand I have a long list of reports available to this House. These are commissions which inquire specifically into the matter for which he pleaded this afternoon. In the course of my speech I shall deal with these reports. It is just one of those things that the distributor, or the so-called middleman, is such a convenient scapegoat for all the evils of high prices and large differences in profit margins. This phenomenon did not originate yesterday or the day before. Even the philosopher Plato referred to it in the fourth century before Christ in his well-known philosophical work The Republic. In that he wrote, amongst other things—

Plato’s philosophy of 23 centuries ago is still quite valid to-day. But it is equally true that man is negative by nature and usually tries to blame someone else. It is therefore a truly human attribute which the hon. member for East London (City) revealed this afternoon, namely to try to blame the next man for everything instead of searching his own heart or looking for the blame in the people for whom he made a plea this afternoon. No wonder the Great Teacher said 20 centuries ago: “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”. That also epitomizes the great difference between the statesmen on the one hand and the opposition, or the man with the opposition mentality, on the other hand. The latter finds faults and problems in society, and waxes very eloquent about them. The statesman, on the other hand, always has at least some ideas on how to solve that problem.

Many economists, many governments and many commissions have devoted attention to the problem of reducing the gap between producers’ prices and consumers’ prices. The fact of the matter is, of course, that as a nation becomes industrialized and urbanized, the channel or the distribution chain becomes longer and longer, and consequently the gap between the producers’ price on the one hand and the consumers’ price on the other becomes wider and wider. In the old days we had the first step, of course, when the town dweller bought his fruit, vegetables, butter and eggs and even his slaughter stock from his farming neighbour. Then there was no gap. The second step was when the town butcher went out into the district to buy some slaughter stock. He then slaughtered only enough for that particular day and saw to it that all the town dwellers got their meat. There was no waste as a result of meat going bad. The transport costs were very low, because the butchers did not travel very far. I am also thinking of the farmer who took eggs and butter with him when he went to town and sold them either directly to the public or to the shops. The profit margin was very small, because there were few overheads and no complaints. There was also the fruit vendor who went to the farms to buy some fruit and vegetables and then sold them to the town dwellers. Then again there was a very small gap between the producers’ prices on the one hand and the consumers’ prices on the other. Here, Mr. Speaker, you will permit me to tell something from my childhood days, because I recall that little scene with nostalgia. The old Malay vendor came to our farm every morning on his one-horse cart and loaded watermelons and sweet melons, a few boxes of hanepoot grapes and some boxes of other fruit, and within half an hour he left with that fresh fruit. Then one could hear him travel up and down the streets of Paarl, “Die waatlemoene! Die watermelons! Hier, die lekker waatlemoene! So rooi as bloed, so suikersoet! Hier, die lekker waatlemoene!” It is like the fish bugle of the fish vendor. In that way he called out the housewives, and long before midday all the women in town had bought their fresh fruit at a very reasonable price. That is how the old vendor supplied the housewives, who in those days of course did not have outside jobs so frequently, of fruit in season.

This contains a very important principle. If one wants to keep the consumers’ prices low, one has to see to it that fruit and vegetables are sold in season and not out of season. This old vendor, Alec, also made it his job to educate the housewives. If a housewife dared ask for watermelon during the orange season he would tell her very quickly: “But my dear madam, don’t be difficult and don’t be troublesome. Surely this is not watermelon time. This is orange time!” The housewives of those days had old Alec to educate them to buy in season. It is a pity the East London housewives do not have old Alec. All they have is Jan Moolman. I am afraid they do not get the necessary education, with the result that they buy injudiciously, and that is why the prices are so high.

Do you want to justify the margin?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member’s motion calls for a commission of inquiry. That is the easy and convenient solution, of course. If you yourself do not have a solution to a problem, you simply call for a commission of inquiry. If you cannot run with the ball yourself, you simply pass it on. No matter who catches the ball or whether he can play it. You simply pass the ball. But will the hon. member for East London (City) give evidence before such a commission, and evidence of a positive nature, evidence to offer a solution to this problem which he emphasized so eloquently this afternoon? In my hand, as I have said, I have a bunch of commission reports relating to these matters. Here I have the report of the Distribution Costs Commission on the system of distribution prevailing in the Union, with particular reference to essential foodstuffs and the principles of State-controlled marketing. I really thought the hon. member would have studied that, because it is a commission report of a United Party Government under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Stratford. It is a remarkably interesting report on the question of the distribution costs of fresh products and commodities. Then there is a further report by the Marketing Act Commission of 1947, which is also most informative. Here in my hand I have the latest report of the South African Agricultural Union on these matters. Then there is the report of the commission of inquiry into abattoirs and related facilities, which deals with the distribution costs of meat, amongst other things. Then there is the report on marketing agents, and also the report to which I referred a moment ago, the Slater report, which has not yet been tabled but which further investigates the question of municipal markets.

What are the dates of those reports?

They range from 1947 to 1965. Here in my hand I also have the latest report of the National Marketing Council on the boards of control in terms of the Marketing Act, for the period 1950 to 1964. All these were available to the hon. member. If he had studied them he would perhaps have had the solution to the problems he outlined this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, the crucial problem always centres on the alternatives of State control versus private enterprise with free competition. Since the Marketing Act was passed in 1937 our well-known agricultural products have come under State control one by one. At present there are no fewer than 18 such control schemes in operation. They control about 91 per cent of our total agricultural production. There are wide differences between these various systems, of course, but I fear I shall not have the time to elaborate on that. The interesting phenomenon which I want to emphasize is that at present the trend is once again away from total control. I take the example of the Deciduous Fruit Board. With regard to export there is of course the single channel pool scheme, and all deciduous fruit, except melons, are controlled by this single channel pool scheme. As for the domestic market, there has been a great change since 1939, when the scheme was established. Let us consider the example of grapes. At first there was a fixed-price policy, with the board as the only dealer in the 19 major municipal areas of the Union. It was only by 1952 that control was abolished in the production area of the Western Cape. That immediately meant a minor tendency away from total control. Then fixed producers’ prices were abolished and a pool system was also established in terms of which the yields on the pool accrued to the farmers. By approximately 1963 there was a further departure from this total control in that distributors registered with the Deciduous Fruit Board were allowed to sell directly to the trade in the large municipal areas. You will therefore perceive that there is a trend away from total control. In passing I want to recommend to the hon. member for East London (City) that he make a thorough study of this system of the Deciduous Fruit Board, because in my view it is one of the finest schemes under the Marketing Act, and he may learn a great deal from it. The recommendation of the National Marketing Council, as stated in its latest report, which I have here, also shows a tendency in that direction. Thus it states in paragraph 47: “But even in the case of maize,” which is pre-eminently a product for rigid, complete control, “the Council is of the opinion that a greater measure of flexibility is desirable.” Let us see what the Marketing Council has to say about meat in paragraph 131—

Surely we have been experiencing that for many years in the case of bottle stores. If one wishes to restrict the number of distributors by means of licensing or any other method, one attaches to that licence a value for which the buyer of the licence then has to pay, which must necessarily increase the price of the product to the consumer. Less than 9 per cent of the agricultural products which do not come under one of the 18 control schemes is vegetables and certain kinds of fruit, for example avocados, papaws, mangos, guavas and apples, to which the hon. member referred. The Stratford Commission is very explicit on price fixation. In paragraph 85, for example, they say—

Now I do not know how the hon. member for East London (City) would reduce or restrict the gap between producers’ and consumers’ prices. With regard to vegetables, more particularly, the Stratford Commission states very explicitly in paragraph 87 that it would never dare to attempt the fixation of prices in respect of vegetables. We have had all these commissions of inquiry and their reports have been published. On the part of the producer, on the part of the distributor and on the part of the State a vast deal has been done to meet the consumer in an attempt to reduce the gap between the producers’ price and the consumers’ price.

I think the hon. member for East London (City) should now turn to the consumer for a change and try to educate him in order that he may do something for his part to reduce that wide margin, that large gap. In the little time I have left I shall make a few suggestions which the hon. member may use in his constituency. The first I have already mentioned, namely to buy in season and not out of season. Secondly, the housewives may join forces to buy on the market. The hon. member said that the housewife had no hope of buying there because the wholesalers bought large quantities with the result that the housewife did not stand a chance. Under the system which has prevailed on the Cape Town market for many years, the out-of-hand sales, and which has now also been extended to Johannesburg and Pretoria and other markets, the housewife can indeed buy her requirements on the market with the greatest of ease. But Cape Town has gone even further. The Cape Town Municipality has established retail markets in the various suburbs, but the housewives do not make adequate use of them. Thus, for example, there is the retail market at Plumstead, and to say that it is visited by 200 buyers would be putting it too high. The market is brought virtually to the housewife’s front door, and yet she does not use it. Finally there is the system of private orders. Here in my hand I have a list of private distributors who can carry out private orders, which I obtained from the Deciduous Fruit Board. Anybody who is interested in this list can get it and can select the distributor with whom he may place his orders, and then he would eliminate that “scape-goat”, the middleman. In these ways the consumer for his part can begin to do something to reduce this wide gap. I want to repeat that so many reports have been published that there is really no need to appoint another commission to consolidate all the work of the other commissions. I see no reason whatsoever for another commission as requested by the hon. member for East London (City).

The hon. member for Paarl started off by being a philosopher, but before he got very far he changed his role to one of a trouble-seeker. I see no reason at all to have turned this debate into an attack on the hon. member for East London (City). I had not intended to deal with the motion before the House in that spirit, but seeing that the hon. member has deliberately gone out of his way to attack both the hon. member and the motion he introduced, I think it is perhaps wise to spend a little time on the speech of the hon. member for Paarl.

The hon. member for Paarl started off by saying that there had been a mass of reports, and he named five of them which he had in his hand. If, instead of reading those reports, the hon. member had read the motion, he would have seen that this motion specifically refers to items not under the control of marketing boards.

Read the motion.

In introducing the motion, the hon. member made it clear that he was dealing with products not under the control of marketing boards. [Interjections.] He made it quite clear in his opening remarks that he was referring to the words “and more particularly those not controlled by marketing schemes”, and his whole speech was designed to deal with those not controlled by marketing schemes. The trouble with the hon. member for Paarl is that he had already prepared his speech, and having got his notes in front of him he was unable to make any other speech but the one he had already prepared.

But the other field in which the hon. member for Paarl is seeking trouble is by his attack on the housewives. The implication of his speech was to put the blame on the housewives of South Africa for the high distribution costs. He ended up by saying that we have had all the investigations we want and it is time that the housewives got down and solved this problem, and this is what they must do, and that is what they must do. I will deal with those points in due course, but I think it was most unwise of the hon. member to attack the housewives in this manner, because if there is one group of the population of South Africa which is suffering to-day, it is the housewives who have to stretch their budgets to cover the continually rising costs of the foodstuffs which are essential for their families. She is the last person to be attacked; she is the victim of price inflation, and not the cause of it. What I want to know is this. That hon. member quoted the report of one commission after the other, but I specifically asked him the date of those reports, and he admitted that the first was in 1947. It was the report of a commission appointed by the United Party Government. He must not blame us for raising this matter. He must blame his own Government for having sat there for 18 years with all these reports before them and doing nothing about it. It is no good having reports; what we want is solutions. Therefore it is a pity that that hon. member should have taken the line he has taken. I want to admit immediately that this is no easy problem; it is not a simple problem which can be solved by a simple formula. It is a problem which has defied successive governments. So I say without any shame, or without trying to make any political capital out of it, that it is not only this Government that has failed, but that all governments in South Africa have failed to find the final solution to the marketing particularly of perishable products, which must be sold within a fixed time or otherwise they go bad and must be destroyed.

But that does not solve the problem of the housewife who is usually, in 99 per cent of cases, a person with a fixed income from which she must first of all meet fixed expenditure. She has to meet her rent, which is a fixed expenditure. The breadwinner has to meet his transport expenses to get to work, and there are educational and medical expenses. Most of the expenses of a household are fixed expenses which go on month after month. There are really only three variable expenses in a household budget. One is food, one is clothing, and one is entertainment and pleasure. As costs go up and up and rents go higher and higher, and transport costs increase, the housewife, trying to come out on a fixed income, or the pensioner, or the lower income groups with a very low income with which to meet that expenditure, must turn to those three items to try to effect savings. The tragedy is that we are reaching the stage where far too many families in facing that problem have come to the point where they have already cut out their recreation and their entertainment. They have reduced their clothing expenditure to a minimum and they have had to turn to food as the item on which they have to cut. They start usually by buying food of slightly poorer quality; then they turn to reducing the variety of food, and in reducing the variety they usually turn away from the more expensive foods to the cheaper foods, which means that they usually turn away from proteins to starches.

Everybody knows that proteins are essential to the health of the human being, but they are the things which come from the most expensive items in the budget. I have here a cross-section sample of the requirements of an ordinary household, and if you look at the expensive items you find that they are eggs, bacon, butter, cheese and meat. These items cost from two to ten times as much as items like mealie meal, bread, the starches, the cheaper foods, in terms of price for weight. In pruning their budget therefore it is in the more expensive items that the cut is made, and that means that the cut is made in the protein containing foodstuffs. This essentially reacts upon the health of the family. Sir, I am not scoring a debating point—it is a fact—when I say that in South Africa as we stand here this afternoon there is starvation amongst our people. There are people who are in hospital because of starvation.

I do not agree.

The hon. the Deputy Minister says that he does not believe it. If he would go to the King Edward Hospital in Durban and see the children with kwashiorkor it would make him feel sick.

You have it all over the world; you find it in America.

Of course, there is starvation in other parts of the world but are we to justify starvation in South Africa on the ground that you find it in other countries?

Look at me and look at you.

Sir, that is the tragedy. The hon. the Deputy Minister and I do not suffer from starvation because we can afford to buy the necessary food.

You are too fat and the others are too thin.

Sir, when you discuss this important matter here you get a lot of rude remarks from people who do not give a tinker’s dam for the welfare of the ordinary person who does not get a parliamentary salary and who has no other income on which to live. When you try to deal with the problem of the ordinary man you get personal insults thrown at you.

What about the mobile markets?

I am coming to the markets. I am dealing with the problem of rising costs which affect the health of our people. I say again that there are people in South Africa suffering from starvation and from a lack of the essential proteins which are to be found in the more expensive foods, and while that is going on one reads about foodstuffs being destroyed, about fruit being fed to the pigs and cattle, about health-giving and life-giving foodstuffs being destroyed because their sale would bring down the prices of those products.

Have we not always had this diet problem in South Africa?

No, it has not always been a problem; it is a developing problem. As meat and animal products have become more and more expensive, the consumption of those products has dropped. Starches have always been the staple diet of a large section of our people, but their diet has always been supplemented by animal foods, by milk, butter and meat. The Bantu no longer keep their little herd of cattle or goats which could provide them with milk and meat, once they move into the cities, as they used to do when they were on the farms and in the reserves. As South Africa’s population has become urbanized, the rural peasant type who could supplement his starch diet with proteins is no longer able to do so. We have not always had the present pattern; it is a pattern which has developed as a result of urbanization.

In spite of this, however, year after year, when there is a glut or a surplus of some commodity, we read of the destruction of foodstuffs. Surely we in this country can find some solution to this problem so that food is not thrown away while people are starving; that people are paying high prices for food while the producer is barely able to make a living on the prices paid to him. The price gap between the producer and the consumer is one which has concerned the producer particularly over the years. Many attempts have been made to find a solution to this problem. Let me look for a moment at the various ways in which a product goes from the farmer to the consumer. There are ten methods. The first four methods are direct sales, the methods referred to by the hon. member for Paarl, firstly, sales by the farmer direct to the consumer, a method which is still followed in some country towns and in some of our cities. The farmer himself takes his own product and goes and sells it direct to the consumer. He loads up his lorry, finds a parking spot somewhere outside the city and sells to the passing traffic, or he may even go from door to door selling his own product.

The next step is the farm stall, where the farmer sells his own product from his own stall, on the farm, usually alongside a main road. The third is the market stall where the farmer can hire a stall and market his own product. The fourth is the auction where his product is put up for sale. But each of these steps, as it gets further and further away from the method of direct sale by the producer to the consumer, becomes more expensive to the consumer. The cheapest method is direct sale by the farmer to the consumer, and then as you get further away from direct sales, as you move to the stalls, where rent has to be paid and where other costs come into the picture, and then finally to the auction, where you have your market fees and your agents’ fees and your transport and other costs, so the gap between the producer’s price and the consumer’s price broadens; and then you move beyond that to the indirect sale, the sale at stall level, where somebody buys the product on the market, a middle-man, and sells it at a stall on the same market. Then again it moves from there to the hawker who takes the product from the market to the consumer, again a slightly more expensive process; and then thirdly we get the shops and the tearooms, the third form of indirect sale, with the price then reaching its peak.

I am not dealing here with the third form of sale, the preserved form, the canning of a product, the freezing of a product or the dehydration of a product. With those three you have ten different ways in which products are sold and each of those methods costs more and more as it gets further away from the producer.

Sir, I think it was the hon. member for Bethlehem who spoke of the mobile markets in Pretoria. I happen to have been one of a group of farmers who once decided that we would try to beat this problem of the gap between producer and consumer and we established a co-operative business to sell our own products direct, as a hawker would do, to the consumer. Sir, we had all the answers. We were going to show that this tremendous gap between producer and consumer was not necessary. I think it lasted for two years.

It was a long time.

It lasted two years. Yes, it was a long time, because we subsidized it very well. We found in practice that we as producers could not build up an organization which would sell to the consumer, satisfy the consumer’s over-all needs, and do it cheaper than the ordinary Indian hawker who used to buy the produce and sell it at a price 300 per cent above his purchase price.

What about the Government’s mobile markets?

The Government’s mobile markets were also unsuccessful.

Why?

Because you were dealing with a perishable product and a product in regard to which a broad need must be covered. The housewife does not only want beans or what is seasonal at that moment. Whatever the hon. member for Paarl may say, we cannot tell a family that they can only have what is seasonal. They want that extra delicacy which may be out of season or which may come from another area. And, Sir, they are entitled to want it.

So I say that there is no easy way. But there are solutions, there are ways in which this problem can be tackled. One of them is refrigeration. Refrigeration is one of the fundamental answers to the sale of fresh produce.

And what about the expenses connected with that?

The expense involved certainly won’t be 300 per cent of the price of the product. There is admittedly a higher basic cost.

You still have to distribute the products.

The distribution can be done evenly. The prices can be levelled out when the fresh produce is stored. We will not have the peaks and the valleys due to the producer having to accept the price he is offered to-day because to-morrow his product will be bad. As long as the producer is forced to sell at whatever price he is offered, for so long will we have rings coming together, cornering a particular item, offering low prices for it with no competition. The buyers form a buyers’ ring and the producer is forced to accept their price because he cannot wait for the next day or the day thereafter by reason of the fact that his goods will go bad. But if the producer knows that he can put that product into cold storage then it is not obligatory for him to accept the rock-bottom price forced on him. That is one aspect of the problem. It is not the final answer. I concede that it is an expensive factor, but nevertheless it is one that can contribute towards solving this problem. The other problem is that of the rings, the buyers’ rings cornering an item. The third problem is the one which the hon. member for Paarl so glibly passed over, namely that of the housewive personally buying at a normal market. I know that in theory the housewives can buy goods in single boxes. In theory they can do it. But who can do it? Firstly, the housewife with a motor-car who can get to the market. She can then, as the hon. member suggests, form a group and buy for three or four families. Secondly, the housewife who can afford to buy in semi-bulk quantities which, nonetheless, to the producer is a small quantity, although to the consumer it is often, relatively speaking, a big quantity. I think of the purchase of a bag of potatoes, a box of tomatoes, which is the minimum quantity which can be bought, but which, for two people living in a flat, is to much.

We are waiting for your solution.

The hon. member says that he is waiting for my solution. I said there is no easy solution. But I said there are factors which can contribute towards solutions. I said at the beginning of my speech that this Government has been sitting for 18 years with commission after commission reporting and making suggestions, yet it has not found a solution. [Interjections.] No, it is not wrong. The hon. member for Paarl says that: “here are all the reports.” But we have not got the solution. Mr. Speaker, we are years and years behind the U.S. when it comes to refrigeration.

Compare the producers’ prices with the consumers’ prices in the U.S.A. What is the difference between those two prices?

Their prices in relation to income …

No, what is the producer’s price in relation to the consumer’s price?

Now, we cannot compare that, Mr. Speaker.

That is the motion.

In relation to levels of income in America prices are not so different from ours.

Your whole point refers to the relationship of the produce price.

I am dealing, and the motion deals with the gap between the consumer and the producer. That is the problem.

What is the gap in America?

The gap in America is no bigger than it is in South Africa. Refrigeration contributes to reducing the gap. I am not one of those who claim that the middleman is making all the profit. We do not find an awful lot of hawkers driving around in cadillacs. That privilege is confined to the Cabinet Ministers, to Deputy Ministers, Commisioner-Generals, etc. But the hawker does not normally drive around in a cadillac. He is not a millionaire. So the middleman is not making a fortune, although there are some who have. But I think that some of the causes can be found in the points raised by the hon. member for East London (City). He mentioned the multiplicity of distribution points here in Cape Town, for instance. It works out that for every hawker there are 35 potential customers. Every time there is an increase in the number of distribution points, there is an extra one who has to make a profit, who has to cover his overheads.

I repeat, Sir, that there is no simple solution. But there are numerous items which, although it might not eliminate the problem, will at least contribute towards easing it. We ask that the Government, if it does not want to appoint a commission now, do something about it. If it has not got the answer, let it continue investigating. Even if it requires 20 or as many as 100 commissions, then, for heaven’s sake, let us have them, until eventually one of those commissions finds an answer. Because five commissions have not found an answer, it does not mean that we should stop investigating. Or is the Government prepared to say that it has tried, it cannot do any more, simply shrugs its shoulders and give up? We must go on trying, seeking solutions. We will not find them in this House, but we can go on looking for them, until we and public opinion force the Government to do something towards reducing the margin between consumer and producer, before we have a greater number of our families reducing their food to the danger level.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just sat down referred to the report to which the hon. member for Paarl also referred, namely the report of the Distribution Costs Commission. He said that that report was presented in 1947, and that the then Government did not have the opportunity of implementing it. I shall now read an extract from the report—

The hon. member asked why the recommendations of the Commission could not be implemented. The recommendations were that in certain cases certain things should not be implemented. A commission was appointed in 1943. There were not only five commissions. If one reads the following extract, one is reminded of the hon. member for Durban (Point). Just listen, Sir. If one reads this one thinks of the hon. member for Durban (Point). The extract reads as follows—

Do you not think that this is descriptive of the hon. member for Durban (Point)? It was not at all my intention to attack people in this vein, because this motion is praiseworthy in the sense that we all want “relief to the consumer”—as this motion reads—and that we also want to allow the primary producer a reasonable return. However, not one of the previous speakers offered any practical solution. It is such a relative question to ask what constitutes a reasonable price. The intentions of the hon. member for East London (City) were probably very good. I thought that he would give us something positive to-day and would say, “Look, this is a positive suggestion and now you can solve the problem.” To one person 50 cents for a pocket of potatoes constitutes a very reasonable price. To another person R1 per pocket constitutes an unrealistic and unreasonable price, because it does not afford him a living. These things depend on the distance from the market, on the place where the potatoes are produced and on the fact whether that is a frost-free area with a low yield. I can mention whole series of cases to you in which there is this marked difference. I should like the hon. member for Durban (Point) to remember that in spite of all the control exercised by his Government in the past, or views which it held in this regard, there was a tremendous shortage of potatoes on the market for a period of four weeks in 1943. The price of potatoes soared and what did the then Government do? It fixed a maximum price of £1 5s. Od. for a pocket of potatoes of 150 lbs., but fixed no minimum price. After a period of six weeks the price fell to half-a-crown per pocket and at that time, in 1943, farmers were forced from production. That was the practical way in which that Government dealt with agriculture. [Interjection.] Yes, a war was in progress. In regard to the commissions I want to say that of the numerous reports of the commissions, there is one in particular which is informative. The hon. member for Benoni went on an overseas mission in connection with one of these commissions. They sent experts throughout the world to investigate marketing in the different countries and to return with recommendations. It was then said, “If you apply those recommendations in practice, you come up against many problems”.

I repeat that we should all like that margin to be narrower but it should be borne in mind that at present we cannot tell a producer, “You may send your products to such and such a place and you may not send your products to such and such a place”. Everyone is free to send his products to wherever he likes. You must remember that the Cape market is entirely dependent on products from the Transvaal at times, whereas the Transvaal is dependent on products from the Cape. How is one going to control such a variety of things? The hon. member spoke of control. It seems to me that the hon. member for Durban (Point) specializes in agriculture. To me he would look very nice as the chairman of the pumpkin board. There are seven or eight varieties of pumpkin. We must bear in mind the quantity which is available. Do you know, just to mention one small example, that the Johannesburg market is the largest distributor of water melons in the southern hemisphere on a summer’s day? If it is overcast the next day and rains, the price of those beautiful watermelons drops by 40 per cent, because who eats watermelons on a rainy day? Solve this problem for me. How can you? Then it is said that the producer receives very little and that there is a surplus and wastage. The present position in South Africa is—and I admit that and I give the hon. member for Durban (Point) full marks on that score—that one finds a small retail distributor of fruit on every street corner. There are too many of them. In order to make a living he must make a large profit. He does not specialize. He also has a variety of other things. Are you prepared to say, “Decrease their numbers. Take away the livelihood of those people”. At times I am inclined to say that we should investigate or consider that, but just go into that matter. What is his percentage of wastage? It is 20 to 30 per cent. The hon. member spoke of Indians who got rich. Do you know I can give you the names of hawkers who work for 18 hours per day and have not become rich.

I said they did not get rich. They are not driving Cadillacs.

I misunderstood the hon. member, but I ask whether they are not rendering an essential service. Before asking whether it is possible to eliminate these people, we must consider who the people are who buy from them. Can we expect housewives to go to the market, for example in the case of Johannesburg which has one million residents? [Interjection.] No, if every suburb has its own market with its own railway line it will be possible for those people to go to such markets. In view of the fact that we are at present aiming at one thing, namely the reduction of the number of Bantu in the White areas, with the result that the housewife does her own work and takes a job, I want to ask you whether you have ever thought that a tremendous change is taking place in the eating habits of our nation and that we should not be blinded by the problem of distribution.

There are other solutions. During the past three years the consumption of tinned food in our country has increased by between 10 and 12 per cent annually. During the past season, which ended last week, 20,000 tons of green mealies were tinned in one pound tins in this country. Four years ago 9,000 tons were tinned. The eating habits of our people are changing. Instant foods, foods which can be prepared quickly and vegetables which have already been peeled, are being used to an increasing extent in our country. I admit that irregularities sometimes do occur on our municipal markets, but fortunately some places are eliminating them. In this regard I should like to mention the Cape Town market in particular. The markets of small villages are disappearing. In the Eastern Transvaal one hardly finds a village which has a market. There is a concentration of buyers on the large Johannesburg market. Twice a week lorries go to fetch the supplies for that week. Things are fortunately also changing on markets where auctions are held. On the Cape Town market more sales are effected through negotiation and auctions have decreased by more than 40 per cent. The producer is faced with the difficulty that he may lose his bargaining position—one person is selling by private contract, the other sends his products to the market and at present there is a considerable number of wholesale distributors who enter into contracts with farmers. That has a major disadvantage. The small man is going to disappear. That is the present trend. Let us examine overseas conditions. In America there are wholesalers who go in for special packaging and quality and specialize in entering into contracts. They are cornering the market. There are chain stores in America who enter into these contracts with the result that the municipal market is bleeding to death. At present there is a commission of inquiry in Washington—and I think the hon. member for Durban (Point) will be very pleased about that—which is investigating this matter in order to ascertain whether the market cannot be restored to its rightful place, because the small man is complaining that he cannot make a living. Those wholesale distributors themselves provide the storage and refrigeration to which the hon. member referred.

It has been found that the refrigeration of an essentially cheap product, such as beetroot and carrots for example, more than quadruples the original price of that product. The refrigeration of a cheap food or a staple food for the market is something which is extremely expensive. On the basis of a random test which was conducted in England—just to prove to you that the entire world is looking for a practical solution in this regard—it was found that 261 producers sold their products through agents and by means of negotiation. In conducting that test every one in that area was questioned at the same time. 167 sold to wholesalers, 144 sold directly to retailers, 56 sold directly to processors and canners, 54 sold directly to co-operative societies, 43 had their own organizations as producers/wholesalers, and 44 sold as producers/retailers. In England it is apparently a “free for all”. There is no uniform system. The best system I can mention to you, is the system of Holland. There the producer sends his product—that is often done on a co-operative basis—to one central point. I am not saying to the municipal markets. In our country that may perhaps be the proper thing to do, because we have the machinery to do so. But then the farmer is retaining his bargaining power. Everyone sends his product to that point where they are sold by means of negotiation, or, if necessary, by auction.

Mr. Speaker, it is Friday afternoon and I think we must not sit much longer. I just want to point out in a few words the direction in which I think we ought to move. I want to suggest that we may possibly consider a system of licensing small distributors in order to ensure as far as possible that there will not be too many of them and to exercise a reasonable measure of control, but also to see to it that quality will not be impaired. In the second place I want to suggest that the co-operative idea has been implemented in other countries. Co-operative marketing entails problems, because the co-operative society must compete with private initiative. A wage earner must compete with a person who is making profits for his own pocket. This problem always exists. Then the question still remains: “Who has to establish the co-operative society? Should the producer or the consumer do so?” I say the consumer should do so, because consumers outnumber producers. Producers are often asked: What are you doing about this matter—the matter mentioned by the hon. member for East London (City)—i.e. an increase of 200 per cent in price? I reply: But what are you doing about it? Buy on a co-operative basis. Solve your own problems. As far as it is possible to effect that in practice, there ought to be a marketing system under which marketing is effected through a central channel, under which sales are effected by means of negotiation so that speculation may be eliminated and re-sales may be prevented. Especially in the case of potatoes it may happen that a person negotiates on a farm and buys potatoes at 50 cents per pocket. He then takes the potatoes to the municipal market and sells at 70 cents per pocket. In this way one person is competing with another. Then there is the question of more effective distribution among non-Whites, a market which is waiting to be exploited. The purchasing power of the Bantu population is increasing constantly. We must give attention to that. Better distribution and selling methods must be introduced in locations.

In conclusion I just want to mention this. Our population must be educated to make use of the fresh fruit which we have in this country. Mr. Speaker, I think that you yourself have noticed what I am speaking about. We have our meals in the House of Assembly. On the tables we find beautiful baskets of fruit. But what are they? They are merely arrangements. Once we have eaten all the rich foods which cause heart trouble—also the hon. member for Durban (Point) who heartily enjoys those rich foods—the stewards offer us fruit. At that stage we no longer have any room for fruit. That beautiful, sun-ripened fruit of the Cape remain untouched. Do we, as a people who have the opportunity to make use of that fruit, actually do so? The hon. member for East London (City) also emphasized this matter in his motion, because in his motion he asked for a reasonable livelihood for the producer. Do we propagate the use of that fruit? Do you not find it ironical that a little less than half a pint of Coca Cola costs more than a full pint of creamy, fresh milk? To me it is inconceivable that we are moving in that direction. I now come to fruit juices. A bar is the place where one gets alcoholic beverages. In a bar one can also get tomato juice but just ask for guava or pineapple juice. It is simply impossible to obtain them. The intentions of the hon. member for East London (City) in moving this motion were good in that we also have to think of propagating our own products.

Mr. Speaker, what we are concerned about to-day are the excess profit margins consumers have to pay for so many of our products. We are not pleading for better prices for the producer. We are not asking that the producer should get better prices. What we are suggesting here this afternoon is that the consumer should have to pay less. If the consumers can pay less, naturally they will buy more and they will consume more. In that way the producer will enjoy the benefit of lower prices for the consumer. We have heard matters discussed this afternoon about perishable produce and other produce which is not so perishable, such as potatoes and onions, pumpkins, etc. One can understand that when an article is perishable it should cost more. But when one has to pay to-day in the region of 10 cents a lb. for potatoes, and 8 cents per lb. of onions, it is very difficult to understand. What I want to discuss this afternoon, relating to this motion of the hon. member for East London (City), is chiefly the question of meat. We know that meat is one of our primary foods. Everybody has to have meat, but not everybody can afford to have as much as they would like to have. Today meat is a very expensive commodity. I know that there are very great problems in this regard, but I should like to make a suggestion, not that it is my job to provide solutions, as the hon. member for Standerton would like me to do. He led me to believe that he appreciated the difficulties, but he wanted us to give him the solution. In other words, I must come here and give this Government the solution to the problem. If I were the Government, I would find the solution, but what I want to do this afternoon is to point out a few difficulties and give a few reasons as to why I believe that meat is being wasted. We are not being as careful as we should be in relation to the supply of meat to our big cities. It is all very well when one thinks of the producer—as was mentioned here—who can take his produce to the market. In the case of a city like Cape Town, very few producers can bring their meat to the market. The meat supplied to cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg—and they are the principal cities—has to be transported over long distances. We know that. There is no other way out. Stock has to be transported by the Railways and it naturally takes a long time before the stock being marketed reaches its destination; sometimes it never arrives. I want to prove that this afternoon. What is worrying me is the time taken from when the animal leaves the farm to the time it reaches the abattoirs. It is simply shocking. I frequently visit the abattoirs wherever I go. When I was last in Kimberley I visited the abattoirs there. I am interested in the subject, and in many cases I have to visit abattoirs to check up on behalf of producers who send stock to those abattoirs. I want to mention the remark made by the hon. member for Paarl, who is not here now, who showed us a whole pile of reports which he had collected. I do not know whether he has read them, but I would suggest to him that he goes to the abattoirs in our large cities, to see what is going on there, and then come back and read those reports. We are only asking for a commission to be appointed to investigate the difficulties we know about.

Tell us what those difficulties are.

I will tell you about them, but unfortunately my time is limited. Here I have a memorandum drawn up in December, 1966, by 13 livestock auctioneers in one of our principal cities. It deals with the treatment of stock at the slaughter markets. This memorandum only deals with one market. If the Minister is interested, I can hand it to him so that he can see for himself what is going on, but he has probably received dozens already. The memorandum shows concern about the treatment, the wastage and the uncalled for deaths relating to stock. The complaints reflected in this memorandum are briefly these. Firstly, they are concerned about the thieving going on at the abattoirs. They say—

And then they give the reasons. One is that despite the regulations at the abattoirs, many people gain access who should not be there; bad boundary fences around the sale pens, and too few night watchmen to keep guard. Sir, do you know that the other day one of the lucky farmers who was able to deliver his oxen at the abattoirs, at the sale pens, one evening late he himself took in 20 super prime animals. He locked them up himself in one of the pens, where they waited to be sold and slaughtered early next morning. Before sunrise next day he was there to check up on his oxen. There were still 20, but four of his best oxen were gone and four scrub cattle had been put in to make up the number. What would have happened if Jack Wainwright from Molteno had sent the consignment to the market by rail? I would have received a bad report, and I would have queried it, and asked how it could possibly be that out of 20 prime oxen, four were hardly accepted by the abattoirs. They would probably have reported back that the four had measles, or something like that. This is what is happening. There is thieving going on. It is done cleverly, but it is happening all over, and not only in relation to cattle but to pigs and sheep as well. This is very serious. Apart from stock disappearing completely, there is substitution of inferior quality animals in many cases. In edition bad conditions at some abattoirs result in the animals losing condition while waiting to be slaughtered. This memorandum says so. They say—

Sir, I have seen in many cases that not only is there no water in those drinking throughs, but there is not even a plug to keep the water there. It is small wonder that when we send stock to the markets the animals lose condition and weight. In this way it is costing the consumer thousands of rands every day in cities like Cape Town, because the condition of the stock deteriorates. Who is to blame? [Interjections.] I hear the hon. member for Vryheid suggesting it is the Mayor’s fault. Well, the abattoirs fall under his jurisdiction, but many mayors tell me, when I complain about the conditions at the abattoirs and the stock-pens, that municipalities are not paid enough; the rent being too low. The point is that someone is to blame and it is for that reason that we want a commission to investigate the problem. I quite agree that the pens belong to the municipalities and that they are being leased to and paid for by the livestock auctioneers. The agents hire the kraals. We see that at one very large abattoir which daily handles from 16,000 to 20,000 sheep and from 3,500 to 4,000 head of cattle and some 1,500 pigs and other animals, there are only four Coloured men, according to this memorandum, to care for all this stock. The complaint I have had is that they cannot get more men to supervise, and we see that in this memorandum as well. It would be a shocking thing to organized agriculture and to the meat marketing in general if the S.P.C.A. came and poked their noses in. I would not be surprised if we woke up one morning and found them interfering. It would be a reflection on all of us, who are so concerned about this matter, and to those of us who are interested in organized agriculture, let alone the Department and the Minister concerned. I have another case here about stock disappearing. This farmer happens to live near Richmond, who sent a consignment of slaughter sheep to the market, a long way from Richmond. He received a report that some 41 of the consignment of sheep had died on reaching their destination and he naturally asked for a report. This is the report he received. This letter was written as recently as the 21st February of this year. It says—

The letter goes on to say that this particular consignment of slaughter sheep arrived at the sale pens at 7 a.m. on the 30th January and that that morning there were already 25,145 sheep on the market and in trucks, waiting to be slaughtered, and at noon that number had grown to 33,000 sheep. When one takes into consideration that this abbattoir can take a maximum of only 15,000 sheep per day and that there were already 33,000 sheep waiting, it is quite clear that a large number of the sheep had to wait over, as was the case with this particular consignment. They had to wait over and were off-loaded on the 1st February. Sir, I want to quote from this letter explaining to the farmer what happened—

They were slaughtered eventually on the 6th February, seven days later. The other day I happened to check up and investigate on behalf of a farmer from Molteno who had sent his stock to a similar place—it was not the same market. Ten days after they had left the siding in Molteno I saw those same sheep still standing in the sale pens. I made inquiries and asked whether these were Mr. Viljoen’s sheep and I was told that they were. It made me sad to see them; they looked as thin as planks. I asked, when were the sheep to be slaughtered, and I was told not until Monday. Sir, reference has been made here to cold storage and deep freezers; now surely we should devise ways and means of slaughtering those sheep before the weekend. It is impossible to carry on like this and allow thousands of sheep to stand over the weekend until the Monday. Let me go further. It is stated in this letter, which explains the losses to the farmer—

These sheep were not in a poor condition; not by any means—

Sir, I see my time is limited, so I will have to curtail my speech. I must mention too, as far as this particular sale is concerned, that on the Monday, the 30th January, 1967, 5,572 sheep were slaughtered, on the Tuesday, the 31st January, 6,562; on the Wednesday, 4,279; on the Thursday, 5,480 and on the Friday 5,848, making a total of 27,741 for the week, and then they go on to say—

That is to say, until the Monday morning. In an attempt to set the farmer’s mind at ease they went on to say—

Sir, this is the problem. The Minister knows that this is happening, hence the reason why we are asking for another commission to be appointed as soon as possible if only to investigate this serious question of meat which everybody wants and must have. We can do without so many of the other commodities but meat is our most popular diet. I see no reason why we should neglect this very serious matter.

This question of the marketing of vegetables and other perishable products will probably be discussed as much in future as it has been discussed in the past. We all admit that it is a very difficult problem. Even the hon. member for Durban (Point) admits it. The hon. member for East London (City) has asked for a commission of inquiry to be appointed to investigate the difference between the price which the producer receives for his produce and the price which the consumer must pay for produce, particularly perishable products which are not controlled under the Marketing Act. I am afraid that the hon. member for East London (North) misunderstands completely the motion of the hon. member for East London (City), because the hon. member for East London (City) did not plead for the appointment of a commission to investigate the difference between the producer prices and the prices which the consumer has to pay; he pleaded for the appointment of a commission of inquiry into abattoirs and abattoir facilities, the handling of animals at abattoirs, the supplying of animals to abattoirs, etc. A commission of inquiry such as the one he has just pleaded for, recently submitted a report. I announced in Parliament last year that legislation would be introduced as a result of the report of the Abattoirs Commission. That legislation will be introduced during the present Session in order to give effect to the recommendations of the commission. That commission investigated all the facilities at the markets, as well as abattoir facilities, and made certain recommendations. Quite a number of those recommendations, as I have already announced, have been accepted by the Government, precisely so as to make provision for those things which the hon. member for East London (North) has now been advocating here.

He is a Rip Van Winkle.

The legislation will also make provision for the appointment of a three-man commission. Such a commission has already been provisionally appointed, but that commission will receive its legal powers and status when the legislation is finally passed. That commission will even have powers, in cases where local authorities do not want to create slaughtering facilities for farmers in the controlled areas, or in the areas where abattoirs should be provided, to establish and control abattoirs itself. I made that announcement here last year—the hon. member is aware of it. I cannot appoint another commission to investigate the same matter. After all it would look a little ridiculous. Apparently the hon. member misunderstood the motion completely. The hon. member for East London (City) asked that a commission be appointed to investigate marketing as well as the difference in prices. The hon. member for Paarl pointed out that there had been many such commissions in the past which had investigated these very matters. The hon. member for Durban (Point) asked what had become of the reports of those commissions. He stated that steps had never been taken as a result of those commissions, that the Government had done nothing about those reports.

I say that the problem remains unsolved.

But of course, Mr. Speaker. It is quite possible that the problem which the hon. member sees remains unsolved. But to say that nothing has been done in connection with those commissions’ reports, is surely quite incorrect. The Government has, on recommendation of those commissions, taken many steps. It has introduced legislation for the very purpose of having control over municipal markets. A Market Advisory Council has been appointed especially to advise the Minister and his Department. Special steps have been taken to protect the producer selling products on that market against the agent so that he does not lose the money he receives for his produce there. Special steps have been taken to improve the transport facilities of the Railways from the producing areas. Many other steps have been taken to introduce codes on the market, codes not only in respect of the handling of the producer’s produce but codes in connection with the sale of that produce. That is why it is not correct to say that nothing has been done about the reports of those commissions. If the hon. member were to say that there is still a gap between the producer price and the consumer price of those products, then he would be correct.

An unnatural gap.

The hon. member says there is an unnatural gap. However, it is doubtful whether there is in fact such an unnatural gap. I want to mention an example to the hon. member.

The hon. member for East London (North) raised a plea to the effect—and I agree with him—that the facilities at the abattoirs should be such that if the stock arrive there in good condition it should be possible to handle that stock under good conditions there and slaughter it in a proper and hygienic way. He also suggested that the distribution should take place very efficiently. I agree with the hon. member. But those services which he is asking for we do not get for nothing. It costs money. If it costs money somebody has to pay for it.

If somebody pays for it, then there is a difference between the consumer price and the producer price. The costs have to be recovered between those two prices. Surely that is clear. Therefore, when hon. members ask for better facilities, when they ask for better abattoirs or the erection of new abattoirs, then they must realize that the establishment of those facilities entail costs, costs which somebody has to bear. The greater the costs, the greater is the gap between the producer price and the consumer price. Surely that is obvious.

It is easy to criticize the Government in these two spheres. On the one hand there are complaints that the Government is doing nothing, that better facilities should be created. On the other hand it is being said that the facilities which we create should be cheaper—that it should cost the consumer less. But that is surely impossible. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that the costs in connection with the erection of a new abattoir in comparison with costs of the existing abattoir are so tremendously high that the slaughtering fees would immediately increase by almost 100 per cent, merely to enable the recovery of interest and the discharge of costs.

There are also savings.

Of course there are also savings. But I am talking now about the general increase of costs, of the price which has to be paid for each animal which is slaughtered just in order to cover the interest and discharge the costs of the new building.

The producer must pay that.

The farmers pay it. But it does not matter who pays it. It means that the more interim fees there are, the greater is the difference between the farmer’s selling price and the consumer’s buying price. That is the point I want to make. It does not matter who has to pay. I am dealing now with the difference between those two prices. That is after all what this motion is concerned with.

Often we speak about these things as if they were easy matters. All kinds of solutions are suggested. Hon. members have said that there is an over-utilization of facilities, of distribution points, and that there are too many people distributing fruit and vegetables. That may be so. There may indeed be overtrading. But if there is over-trading there is also a demand for the services of those people. Must we now do away with free trade? When those same hon. members on the opposite side discuss agricultural matters and they mention the number of farmers in South Africa, they say that the producer’s price must be pushed up so that each farmer in agriculture can remain there. They say that the farmer must not give up agriculture. If that is their point of view, why is there one criterion for the farmer while there is another criterion for the butcher and the people who have to distribute the products? Surely the criterion should be the same, if that is the criterion?

Let us consider the difficulty of overtrading. What can we do to counter overtrading in an industry? It is only possible to try and rationalize that industry by having steps taken by the State. In other words, permits can be issued restricting the number of people in the industry. By that means people can be kept out of or excluded from the industry. However. we must also remember—and this argument was also raised here this afternoon—that when we have large consortiums, large groups of people acting as buyers on the market, they form syndicates. When they form syndicates they force down the producer’s price on that market. It is logical. The hon. member says so himself. Even with a co-operative he could not compete with them. If that is the case, to what extent must one rationalize such an industry? Must it be rationalized in such a way that that small group of people who would in time to come participate in this industry, whether it is the meat trade or the distribution of fresh vegetables and fruit, form a small majority or a small group?

Why must we consider the extremes?

I am asking to what extent we must bar those people? If a start is made with restriction and registration there must be a basis or criterion in terms of which steps can be taken. Surely that is clear. Once the principle has been applied there must be a criterion which determines how far one can go. How are we going to determine how far we can go? The only logical way of determining how far one can go is to take note of the demand for those people’s services. If there is a demand for those kind of services, then it means that the consumer is prepared to pay for that service. But let us take the argument as far as it can go.

If we could eliminate all the people in the meat trade in Cape Town and establish just one large distribution centre, say, for example, a chain-store with shops at all the various points in Cape Town which distributed meat only, then I would admit, and so would everybody else, that that would probably be the cheapest way in which that distribution could take place. But the question we have to ask ourselves is whether it is desirable to do so. Is it desirable for our economic structure? Is it desirable for the producer? Is it desirable for the producer that there will later on be only one, two or three, or a small number, of large distributors of this product which they have to buy from the producer? Because, Sir, if that was the case, they could determine the producer price because they would not have any competition. When one discusses these things one must at least have an idea of where and to what extent one wants to control these things. It is so easy to say that business people are always increasing their prices. It is being said that the difference between the producer price and the consumer price is always being increased in order to enable those people to make a living.

I took the trouble of having the price index figures determined, particularly in regard to meat and how prices between the auction price paid to the producer and the price for certain first grade cuts increased and varied since 1960. Now, taking August, 1960 as a basis, with the price of first grade rump and brisket meat on the basis of a 100, and the auction price of beef on the market set at a 100, we find that the prices displayed a very interesting phenomenon. Compared with the position in August, 1960 the price of rump and beef steak in the Cape in January, 1961, was 86.3 and the price of brisket was 87.9. But, contrasted with this, the producer’s price was 113.6. In other words, there was a very large increase in the producer price and there was a real decrease in the distribution price. That was the position in January, 1961. But I shall now mention a few other dates. In January, 1964—the prices vary according to circumstances—the index price of those cuts to which I have just referred, was 88.4 and 90.3. On the other hand the producer’s price was 103.6. In other words, it was just above the floor price.

Let us glance at what happened in January, 1965. In that year the index price in respect of those two cuts increased to 115.2 and 123.8 respectively. But the index figure of the auction price increased to 180.5. I am mentioning these figures to indicate that even though there was such a tremendously great increase in the producer price, the selling price did not increase proportionately at that stage. The reason for that is the following. The butcher cannot adjust his price each day to the auction price on the market. He must try and determine for himself a price which will remain valid throughout the year and which will result in a reasonable profit fluctuation, whereas on the market one finds tremendous differences in the auctioneering prices over short periods of time. But if one really goes into the matter thoroughly one finds that in January, 1966, the index figure for those two cuts was 115 and 120, whereas the producer price was 150. If one makes this comparison it is clear—those are figures which have been checked—that over the past few years since 1960 the index figure in respect of producer prices has increased more than the index figure of the selling prices at the butcher shops. Hon. members may tell me that there are many occasions when this is not so.

There are times when the price differences are much greater. But I am talking now about the average prices over the whole period. That is the problem which one is faced with in regard to these things. Let us consider for a moment the index figure in respect of vegetables. Hon. members are all aware that we experienced a drought last year. There were tremendous increases. But I have taken the trouble to compare the index figures of our vegetable prices. During the years from 1957 to 1960, with the index figure set at 100, there was in 1965-’66 an increase in tubers—in other words, potatoes and similar vegetables—of 30 per cent. In respect of vegetables—with the exception of tubers—there was an increase of 15 per cent. In other words, there was a 30 per cent increase over that period for tubers and a 15 per cent increase in respect of vegetables which do not fall under that group. But the consumers prices for those same two products, jointly, increased by only 15 per cent.

In other words, the consumers’ prices actually increased less than the average of the two figures over that period. Having made these analogies, certain questions arise. Where there is a difference—and we all admit that there are big differences—a means must be sought to reduce that difference. One cannot merely say that the obvious reason is that the middle man is making a tremendously large amount of money. It is not as easy as all that because if one analyses the figures it nevertheless appears that the balance between the two differences remains reasonably constant, i.e. the increase in the producer price and the increase in the consumer price. In addition the question of distribution must be taken into account. To my mind the hon. member for Paarl put this matter very cleverly when he spoke about the vendor who had, in former years, delivered fresh fruit and vegetables to the houses in Paarl on his own advertisement. But one must remember that as one’s cities grow larger and as one’s population is concentrated into larger complexes, this distribution becomes more expensive. The further away from the city one’s produce is produced, and the more it is necessary to undertake distribution within the city itself, the higher the costs are. I now want to mention to you an example of a product which is controlled. I want to mention the example of a product such as fresh milk. The price of fresh milk to the producer and the consumer is controlled and the margins between those two prices are investigated each year by all the distributors. The average is calculated in order to determine the profit margins for the distributor of milk. Do you know that to deliver a pint of milk to a home costs just as much as the producer gets for that pint of milk. I am talking now of delivery per bottle. In other words, we have here a product the costs of which is definitely controlled, not as is the case with vegetables where one has free marketing. Even with that product which is less perishable because one has a method of handling it, which prevents it from going bad as quickly as is the case with vegetables and fruit which lie for days in shop windows, one finds the position that the costs of delivering that product per pint are as great as the price which the producer gets for that product.

These people do very important work, and there are also certain risks attached to it. I do not think our farmers always realize what an important function these people fulfil in getting the farmer’s product to the consumer. It is not realized what an important function they are performing. They all have their problems. They have to buy on the market. Many of them have to buy on the auction market. Many of them even have to buy from a wholesale dealer on the auction mart. This has already happened. They must transport their products to the place where they display them. That place where they are displaying their products costs money. They must pay rental. They must have somebody who delivers the product for them. You must also remember that he does not buy one bag of potatoes and does not then proceed to sell that bag of potatoes to the consumer. Neither does he buy a bag or a box of cabbages and proceed to sell that bag or box of cabbages to the consumer. He buys it in small quantities. Many of those products have in the meantime deteriorated in quality as a result of handling. There has been a deterioration in grade. But it is not always merely a deterioration in grade. Often that product goes bad and that means that that loss has to be recovered. If we were to put the loss in handling at 10 per cent it would already make a tremendous difference to the ultimate price, calculated only on a loss basis. We are fully aware of all these things. In addition to that, study projects are from time to time undertaken by my Department in regard to these matters. I have just finished dividing up the research section of my Department into two sections: A section for agricultural production and economy and a section for marketing research. By this means we are hoping to be able to concentrate more specifically on the problem of costs and distribution.

I just want to mention to the hon. House another few projects on which my Department has been engaged in the past few years. A report has already been published in regard to the cost structure of the marketing of fresh produce. We have also undertaken a source study in order to determine the most important marketing areas of vegetables and fruit. We also have in progress a series of reconnaissance studies of information services in regard to crop prospects. There was also an inquiry into the structure of the apple industry. In addition an operational study amongst the retailers of fruit and vegetables in Pretoria, as well as one in regard to the cultivation and marketing of fresh green beans in the Low-veld, an investigation into the production and marketing of factory tomatoes and tomato paste, an investigation into the agents’ commission of marketing agents, etc. We intend introducing another two projects shortly. An investigation into the purchasing habits of consumers in Pretoria in respect of fresh vegetables and fruit, and an inquiry into the purchasing habits of consumers of meat in Bloemfontein. You will see, therefore, that the Department is continually busy undertaking studies. An hon. member mentioned the vast market potential of the Bantu. But an interdepartmental committee has been appointed precisely for this purpose of trying to find a method of establishing a market for our surpluses in the Bantu areas. Surpluses create a difficult problem; it is not easy to find a solution to that problem. Nevertheless markets have in fact been found in times of surplus for some of those products. As far as the cost structure is concerned, therefore, I can only say that the Department has already taken every reasonable step to obtain information in this regard.

In Pretoria we once tried to make a study with the help of 13 housewives. We arranged for these 13 housewives to buy their vegetables and fruit on the market over a period of 13 weeks, each one of them for one week or four weeks in the year. We wanted to find out how much cheaper they could get their products. They persevered for a few weeks. An analysis of the prices disclosed that they were able to get their fresh vegetables and fruit 30 per cent cheaper on the market than at the corner shop, or from the vegetable pedlar. Unfortunately the housewives could not persevere any further with that study because they were not prepared for those cheaper prices, to bear the burden of purchasing their own requirements. If we take into consideration the costs which the vendors have to incur in order to purchase the vegetables on the market and transport them to their shops and divide those vegetables up there into smaller quantities and then sell them to the public, one wonders whether the 30 per cent less they paid for their products on the market is really such an exorbitant profit. I think that if one takes all the factors into consideration one must come to the conclusion that it definitely does not mean that they make an exorbitant profit.

I agree with the hon. member for Standerton when he said that the agriculture in South Africa is to a large extent capable of organizing itself in order to market its products cooperatively. If there is such a high cost structure, is it not time that our consumers gave more attention to the purchasing of their requirements on a co-operative basis? If they are really so concerned about the high cost structure, does a solution for their problem not lie in that direction? But this has not been our experience in the past. To my mind the hon. member for Durban (Point) testified to this very well. Often in the past the producer has tried to get his produce to the consumer himself for the same price which the consumer paid at the corner shop. But what became of that producer? The hon. member for Durban (Point) himself admitted that he could not compete. There he sits now, although, under the circumstances, he does not look too badly off! In the field of co-operative societies we have organized our farmers so that they could deliver their products directly to the consumer. The Government has even gone so far as to make monetary contributions in order to finance them. But notwithstanding all that they could not make the grade against competitive prices. Take meat, for example. The co-operative meat trade began with the small butcher, but most of them could not make a living, and that in spite of the fact that they bought and sold at the same price. This thing is therefore no easy matter. It is of course easy to say that the middle man is making unnecessary profits. But the matter is not as easy as all that. We are all concerned about price gaps. But I am afraid that if we were to create all these facilities for which the hon. member for East London (City) asked, facilities at abattoirs, and if municipal markets were to be organized in the way we would all like to see—beautiful new buildings with every possible facility included—then I am afraid we would not be reducing the costs. The costs would be more inclined to increase.