Mr. Speaker, before the debate was adjourned yesterday, the House learned from the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) that in principle the Opposition supported this Bill. It was noted with pleasure that the hon. member had high praise for this Bill and here and there he also put forward certain positive proposals. It is a great compliment to the hon. the Minister that the first Bill introduced by him in his capacity as Minister of Education, Arts and Science had such a favourable reception from the Opposition. I should like to associate myself with what the hon. member for Hillbrow said yesterday when he congratulated the hon. the Minister. We on this side of the House also want to extend our very hearty congratulations to the Minister on his appointment as Minister of Education, Arts and Science and express the hope that he will have a very pleasant and fruitful period of service in this Department. We know that the hon. the Minister’s first love was education. He was connected with education for years, as assistant and as principal, and we know too that he has the interests of education very much at heart, whatever aspect of education it may be, whether it be secondary or associated branches of education or whether it be higher or university education. We should also like to convey our congratulations to the Minister on this well-considered Bill which is a forward step in the field of archives, a positive step which places our archives in the Republic on a very high level and from which our national archives will derive great benefit.

In addition to these congratulations I should also like to express thanks to the Minister on behalf of all interested parties, on behalf of former research workers, present research workers and would-be research workers. Mr. Speaker, it is very often said that research workers are eccentric persons who waste their time, as people see it, by delving into the archives and paging through old, stale documents. May I be permitted to say that they are people who perform a service involving great sacrifice, people whose services cannot be compensated for by means of money. This legislation facilitates the task of the research worker enormously. There will be a sorting-out process and it will be done by highly specialized people, by experts trained in this particular field. The collection of documents by experts will take place on a more stringent basis, and only valuable documents will be placed in the national archives. In the past research workers have had to go through sets and sets, files and files full of documents in order to get material if they were doing research for a thesis. This meant wasting valuable time, but psychologically it also had a demoralizing effect on the research worker because he could not make any headway with his research. In research work it is the duty of the research worker to determine whether a document is authentic or genuine. It stands to reason that in the past such a research worker could not always take it for granted that such a document was genuine because these documents were not collected by experts. Although the responsibility will still rest on the research worker to determine the authenticity of a document beyond any doubt, we are convinced that in the future this aspect will not cause research workers much concern.

I should like to refer to Clause 4 of this Bill, which replaces Section 3 of Act No. 22 of 1953. This section deals with the establishment and the functions of the Archives Commission. The hon. member for Hillbrow asked the Minister yesterday to furnish the names of the Archives Commission. I take it that the Minister will do so when he replies, but there are more than seven members, the number to which he referred. All I wish to say in this connection is that those persons are highly capable individuals. I have personal knowledge of quite a few of them and we know that they are people who know their work.

The functions of the Commission, inter alia, are to grant or to refuse approval, as it sees fit, for the publication of any archives, accessions or original sources, or any thesis or other work which is based on a study of any archives, accessions or original sources. The publication of certain portions of the public archives has already been authorized by Section 3 of Act 22 of 1953 and this has already proved of great benefit to research workers. Certain old documents were published, which greatly facilitated the difficult task of deciphering by research workers. Photostatic copies were also made of many important documents, which also facilitated the work of research workers, and in addition to that, protected the relevant documents, which had to be handled very frequently. Furthermore, fine scientific works in history, particularly thesis were published in the Archives Year Book. Those opportunities were not available to research workers previously. Formerly the publication of such a thesis could only take place if the research worker himself paid for it, or if he tried to get hold of a publisher. But we know that publishers were very loath to publish a scientific work on history because it involved them in financial loss. But the publication of theses in the Archives Year Book meant that research workers made greater efforts, that they put in exhaustive study, because they knew that they would receive compensation for their work through the medium of that publication. The selection of publications was entrusted to a committee, which is subordinate to the Archives Commission. I must say that the standard of the work in the Archives Year Book is remarkably high, a fact which repudiates the statement made by the hon. member yesterday and to which I shall refer in a moment. I should like to ask that sufficient funds would always be made available for the publication of those highly scientific and objective historical works.

May I be permitted to refer here in passing to an observation made by the hon. member for Hillbrow in the debate yesterday. Perhaps it was just a casual remark on his part, but I cannot allow it to pass unnoticed. The hon. member referred to research workers in archives who do research with the idea of making political capital out of it.

I said some of them.

I had hoped that politics would be kept out of this debate but I should like to say to the hon. member that he should go and read those treatises in the Archives Year Book and then he will see how scientifically and objectively the work was done. We know that the hon. member is also very interested in this. We also know that he was a history teacher, and I was very sorry to hear this from the hon. member. He also is a person who did research in the archives

As a teacher he was better than he is as a Member of Parliament.

The accusation has very often been made by hon. members on the other side of the House that when history is taught, politics are dragged into it. As a matter of fact, we heard that partly from the hon. member himself yesterday.

That is quite wrong.

Cannot hon. members get away from the habit of regarding politics and history as synonomous, as the hon. member did yesterday, even though it was just in passing? Why cannot the facts of history be considered purely on their merits and objectively?

But I want to go further. Towards the end of his speech yesterday the hon. member for Hillbrow advocated that documents and articles which are kept in custody in the offices of political parties, should also be brought to the archives in due course. I fully agree with the hon. member that a study should be made of political parties which have come into being, but the hon. member has not told us up to what year that storage should take place. If we are to go as far as 1962 I am not so sure that we will have room in the archives for all the policies of certain parties. That is the very point which the Minister made, that there is so little storage place and that we should make efficient use of it. I agree that when anything has become history, whether it be the history of the establishment of political parties or not, it belongs to history and that when research is done it should be done objectively. That is one of the things which we must support.

I want to refer to what the hon. member for Hillbrow said yesterday when he referred to the fact that the Archives Act of 1922 served as the basis of our archives throughout all these years until 1953. If I understood him correctly he talked about “failure to adapt the Act to changed circumstances.” There too I agree with the hon. member, but that is not due entirely, as he put it, to the fact that there was a war or that insufficient funds were made available for the archives. It must also be attributed to unsympathetic Ministers who simply took no interest in the archives. As hon. members may know, the archives used to fall under the Minister of the Interior and in my opinion it was a neglected branch of that Department; it was practically the Cinderella of the Department of the Interior. I know only too well how the Chief Archivist at that time pleaded time and again for more funds, for expansion, and for a bigger staff, but his requests always fell on deaf ears. It was only from 1948 when the archives were placed under the Minister of Education, Arts and Science, where they properly belong, that far-reaching improvements took place, and that also happened with the passing of Act No. 22 of 1953, which replaced the Act of 1922. I can say that for 31 years the archives hibernated before the spring sun started to shine on the archives and I hope that funds will be made available so that further progress can be made in this field.

It is essential that the archives of the Republic should be placed on the highest possible level. A nation that does not honour its past has no claim really to survival. If a nation is culture-conscious, its interest in the past will automatically be great; it will attempt to keep intact all those things which bind it to the past. By means of documents the past is kept intact and authentic. In the archives we preserve an extremely important cultural heritage. I want to put it more strongly and say that is where the spiritual heritage of a nation is preserved. The standard and the level of a nation’s archives determine the cultural level of that nation to a large extent. This Bill in connection with the preservation and care, control and handling of our archives in the Republic. definitely gives a very high status to our archives, and for that too we want to express our thanks to the Minister. The Minister’s great ideal and motive in this Bill is to provide the opportunity for the better selection and care of documents. The selection of documents is a highly specialized job. Formerly documents were selected and filed by people who did not have training, who did not have the background, who did not have the necessary knowledge. They did their best during their specific period but certain worthless documents found their way into the archives. On the other hand, a few documents that were valuable were lost perhaps. As a result of the fact that these untrained persons did the sorting-out work, these worthless documents took up valuable storage space, and as I have already indicated, it also made the work of the research worker more difficult. I should like to mention this classic case. An archives official had to go and do sorting-out work at the archives at Windhoek, and he had to go through 60 files, each approximately three to four inches thick, and when he had gone through those files, he found that they were applications and permits for people who wished to visit the Etosha Pan—about two to three thousand of those permits.

The experts who are going to do this sorting-out will definitely be persons who have had prior training as Archivists, and who will do the scientific selection of documents. I do not want to enlarge upon the storage system which, generally speaking, was very expensive in the past. I do not want to elaborate on the question of various Government Department documents which simply streamed in before they had undergone a sorting-out process. The hon. the Minister has already dealt with that. In the past every Department coped with the task of documentation in its own way. There was no uniformity, and now that the supervision and custody and care have been entrusted to one Minister we believe that there will be uniformity; that valuable labour will be saved and that waste of time will also be eliminated. I should like to refer to Section 5 which refers to documents that will be sent to interim depots or interim places of custody where they will be subjected to a further process of thorough sorting-out by people who are acquainted with the so-called discretionary limit in selecting documents, and who know the importance of a document, who know what use can be made of a document and who know when to have photostatic copies made of a document which is important. These methods which we are applying here are methods which have been applied with great success in many countries of the world and which we believe will be to our benefit here and to the benefit of our archives.

In conclusion I should like to associate myself with an idea put forward by the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) and that is the idea of a travelling official or a travelling Archivist whose duty it will be to trace valuable documents which are in the hands of church or other bodies and documents which may be in the hands of private individuals. We know that private persons are reluctant to relinquish those documents. During my last holiday I met a man who has a very valuable diary compiled by his grandfather, a diary dating back to 1871, but that person refuses to relinquish it. We know that as long as that diary is in his possession it will be safe, but I doubt whether his children and grandchildren will be interested in it, and I agree with the hon. member therefore that it will probably be worthwhile and that perhaps money should also be made available to send out persons to collect such diaries. We heard from the hon. member himself that he too has such valuable documents and we hope that he will not be too attached to his strictly confidential documents but that they will also be sent to the archives in due course. I should like to make an appeal to the Minister to urge the Minister of Finance to provide sufficient funds for the archives and our public record system as such. There is a great deal of work that can still be done in this direction. As far as our archives are concerned we are only on the threshold of progress. This Bill brings about an appreciable improvement in our archives and places them on a very high level, but the oil for that machinery is finance and we believe that in due course that will also be made available.

When the Act of 1953 was passed by this House, it was considered at the time that a new charter had been laid down for the archives or our country. I think the passing of that Act by this House helped greatly to destroy the conception that the archives of our country were a sort of glorified burial chamber for the dead hand of the past, rather than the conception which I am very glad to note seems to be growing on the Government benches that the archives are a living record of what we do to-day and a living record of the history of our nation and something which enables us to pass on the benefit of our mistakes to the generations to come.

I think very few members realize that even with the constitutional development which has taken place in our country and the procedure that was followed, for example, at the swearing in of the President and the protocol which was laid down, was established by officials of the Government who did considerable research in the archives, and that great ceremony which took place in Pretoria was in fact based on what had previously taken place in the history of the development of our country. Without the archives that knowledge would not have been available. I am glad to note that in respect of a matter of this nature, as in other matters, the Government takes note of the suggestions and ideas that come from the Opposition in constructive matters of this nature for the benefit of our country. I am very glad to see, although it has taken seven years, that at long last it has seeped through to the Government that certain improvements can be brought about in the administration of this Act as far as the archives are concerned. If the Minister looks at the old Hansard record of amendments that were moved at the time that discussion took place, he will see that quite a few of the suggestions which were made in that debate have in fact been embodied in the Bill now before the House. By and large one can say that this Bill is a redraft of the Act of 1953, but there are certain administrative provisions which I think represent an improvement. It is an improvement that the control of our archives, instead of being placed under the responsibility of several ministers, is being placed in the hands of one Minister. I think it is also an improvement that the status of the Chief Archivist has been raised to that of a Director with a specific responsibility within the Department of Interior. It would appear on a study of the Bill before us that the tried principle that applied before 1922, where the archives were a direct responsibility of the Department of Interior, is being re-introduced in this Bill. It is now becoming very largely a departmental responsibility under the control of the Minister, and I think from the point of view of the archives on a national basis that is a very big improvement. That, in essence, is what this Bill seeks to do. But there are certain aspects about which I should like to have some elucidation from the Minister and about which I do not feel very happy. For example, here we have the appointment of a Commission, on lines similar to the provisions of the old Act, but the Act of 1953 did not specify the number of Commissioners who would sit on the Archives Commission. There are presently no less than 19 members of the Archives Commission. The Minister now seeks to restrict the Commission to seven members.

Not less than seven members.

I would like to know from the hon. the Minister why this arbitrary figure of seven is being introduced into the Bill. In 1953 I pleaded for representation to be given to particular interests such as the newspapers and the universities, etc., and the Minister said to me at that time, “why restrict me; if I find it necessary in the interests of the subject to make appointments to represent varying interests, then let me do so; let me have a free hand.” I should like to know from the Minister why this Bill now provides that there should not be less than seven members on this Commission when the Commission at present consist of no less than 19 members. Furthermore, is it healthy that the appointment of Commissioners to the Archives Commission should be determined by a regulation? The Bill says “as may be prescribed”. “Prescribed” means that the appointment is determined by a regulation. For example, there is no statement as to the length of time that any Commissioner will serve on the Archives Commission.

Three years.

No, it is not fixed at all. It is fixed by a regulation and the regulation is made by the Minister. The Minister may arbitrarily fix it at five, six or seven years.

What is wrong with that?

I do not see anything fundamentally wrong with it, but the principle is that in the majority of cases where we establish a legislative commission, the term of office of the commissioners has always been fixed by this House for a particular period, and I should like to know from the Minister why this practice is now being followed of saying that the period of service of any commissioner on the Archives Commission shall be as prescribed by the Minister; in other words, that the Minister himself will have the sole discretion as to what the period of service is to be.

Then there is another matter I should like to raise. According to the latest available report of the Archives Commission, it would appear that they held only one meeting in a year. The latest available report is for the year 1960 and it would appear from this report that only one meeting of the Archives Commission was held in that particular year. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he is intending, under the rights of prescription that he is taking under this Bill, to determine that the Archives Commission shall meet at regular intervals or operate through the various sub-committees which it is entitled to appoint.

We have a meeting once every year in January.

I do not think that is sufficient. If the hon. member for Karas (Mr. von Moltke) who also happens to be a member of the Archives Commission now tells us that the Commission only met once a year, then I can only say that I consider that most unsatisfactory. The Commission is charged with very heavy responsibilities in connection with the disposal of the records of this country. Surely a Commission such as this cannot hold one meeting only to consider the disposal of vast quantities of records. Let me point out that the issue of disposal is becoming a very important issue as our country advances.

We have sub-committees for that.

Whether there are subcommittees or not, it is necessary that the Commission, in order to be able to fulfil these most important functions, should meet at least once a quarter, and I would ask the Minister to give some consideration of that suggestion. In support of my contention, let me say this: I wonder if the hon. member for Karas knows that there are presently in Natal no less than 20 years of archives awaiting disposal and consideration. If that can be disposed of at one meeting of a Commission, then the Commission must be a very capable body. Then there is another aspect of this Bill. As I read the Bill—and the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—only one report of the Archives Commission will now be tabled in this House. Up to now the House has had a report tabled here from the Chief Archivist separately and a report tabled by the Archives Commission itself. Let me tell the hon. the Minister that I take very great interest in those reports. I read them every year. Whereas you get interesting information as to what is happening in the archives from the report of the Chief Archivist, let me say with due respect that you do not get the same information from the report which is tabled in this House from the Archives Commission. You get a long tabulated list of contributions received by the archives, but as far as actual facts are concerned, unless there is a crisis, a matter to which I will refer to in a monent, you get very little information at all from that report. If you want to know what is really happening within the archives then one has to refer to the report of the Chief Archivist which the Minister tables in this House. I should like to ask the Minister what his intention is in respect of this report, seeing that we are going to get a report in terms of this Bill. Will it be a report compiled jointly by the Director of Archives and by the Archives Commission, or will it be a report only from the Commission, or a report only from the Director? The Bill does not make it clear and I should like to have some elucidation from the Minister on this point. Then it would appear to me that an anomaly exists in the Bill at present. It would appear that the Commission’s powers have been somewhat curtailed. For example, under the old Act the Commission of its own accord, could authorize the destruction of records and documents held by any particular Government Department. In terms of the Bill before the House, the Commission can now apparently only authorize that destruction on the recommendation of the Director of Archives. It is true that the Commission, in terms of the Bill before the House, also has the power to refuse to approve of the destruction of any particular item, but it seems to me anomalous that whereas the Director performs his functions, not as he did formerly under the Archives Commission but now under the Minister and under Ministerial authority, it is certainly not clear who will now in fact give the order for the destruction of any Government record. It is not clear in the Bill at all. On the one hand the Director operates under the direct authority of the Minister, and the Archives Commission is a separate body which has precisely the same authority. If the Director, under the authority of the Minister, comes to the Commission and says. “I wish to have this year’s records destroyed” and the Commission refuses. then you have a position arising where the Commission may find itself in conflict with the Minister in respect of the destruction of any particular set of records. Sir. I have taken the trouble to investigate this matter closely, and while it may be a question of drafting. it would appear to be a very anomalous position. I do not think it was put in the Bill intentionally. but I personally feel that the authority for the destruction of records should lie in the first instance with the Commission—and I hone that in this respect the hon. member for Karas will support me.

Then there is another matter which I have pleaded on a former occasion and that is this very ticklish question as to when documents should become available to the public. I am aware of the fact that there are conflicting points of view on this matter, but I feel that in a young country like South Africa there is far more study given by universities and educational authorities to contemporary history, and in a developing country such as ours it seems to be quite unreasonable to restrict the period to 50 years, because the study is of contemporary history, of what took place 10, 15 or 20 years ago, and if the Minister looks at the applications which come to him for exemption, because he is the only person authorized to grant an exemption, he will find that there are increasing numbers of applications for exemption from the 50-year period by students doing research into contemporary South African history. Before the Act of 1953 was passed, the period before archives could become available to the country was only 37 years. It was the Act of 1953 which extended the period to 50 years. Sir, there are plenty of safeguards in the Bill and in the existing Act to protect the rights of individuals who are living, or to protect families who may be concerned in any particular research, where it is either against the interest of an individual or against the public interests that matters should be brought to light or be made available for research. I submit to the Minister that a wider measure of latitude should be granted in respect of this 50-year period. Sir, look at the figures available from the Director’s report. In the year 1960 there were 5.458 persons who made use of the archives, and of the 5,458 persons, 3,341 were researchers consulting no less than 11,607 volumes of documents and 2,445 reference books. Over two-thirds of the persons making use of the archives are researchers, and if one refers to the latest report of the Chief Archivist, where the numbers of students writing doctors’ theses etc., are given, one finds that they form the vast bulk of the people who use the archives. As I read the Bill, the period will now be 48 years instead of 50 years, and I feel that the Minister should give consideration to the question of wording this section more loosely so that applications for exemption from the 50-year period can be more easily granted, without personal exemption from the Minister himself on the recommendation of the Director. I would go so far as to say that at the discretion of the Chief Archivist or the Director of Archives applications for exemption from the 50-year period should be granted, provided, of course, the other provisions remain in the Bill to protect the public interests and to protect private interests which may be concerned in the event of any such theses prepared by students becoming public. You see, Sir, before the passing of the 1953 Act this matter was governed by prescription, and I would like to read out to the Minister the position that prevailed before,—

In this Bill we are laying down a 5-year period, and when I listened to the Minister introducing the Bill, I rather gathered the impression that this was being introduced for the convenience of administration, not for the purpose of facilitating the necessary research which is in the interest of our country. Sir, to come with the argument that there may be a portion of a file which makes it administratively difficult to make this available to a particular member of the public, is to my mind an unreasonable argument to justify the introduction of a 5-year period when documents can be made available for research for any other purpose. I would like the hon. the Minister to give some consideration to that aspect again so that we can revert to the former procedure under which these documents became available year by year. Then may I just put this question in passing to the Minister: To what extent has progress been made with the micro-filming of the records of our archives? I understand that the policy was laid down that a vast number of these old archives dealing with the historical development of our country were going to be microfilmed, and I should like to know from the Minister how far that has proceeded.

Then I come to one very serious aspect of the archives, an aspect which, I would go so far as to say, has now reached the stage of becoming a public scandal. When we look at the report of the Archives Commission— and I hope the hon. members for Karas and Pretoria (East) will support me in this—we find a very serious position arising in respect of the preservation of the archives.

You are right.

When the 1953 Bill was passed in this House, I referred at that time to the report of the Director for the year 1952 where he indicated that as far as storage space for archives was concerned, there was available space for a further period of 5 years. That period of 5 years has long since elapsed, and I would like to draw the attention of the House to the observations made by the Archives Commission in the first instance in respect of this question of the storage of our archives, and I quote from the latest report—

What is the position in the Cape?—

That is a categorical statement made by the Archives Commission.

In what year?

1960.

It is different now.

I will come to that in a moment. The position in Natal is even worse.—

Sir, you can imagine what happens to documents, documents of historical importance, if they have to lie under damp conditions in a cellar where after every shower of rain the cellar is full of water. That is hardly what one could call preservation. One finds this situation reflected in every report, even the report of the Director himself, and I am going to read the Chief Archivist’s report to the Minister because I am going to point out to the Minister that he was Minister of Public Works when his former colleague said that the provision of decent buildings for archives was fifteenth on the Government’s priority list of building projects. Let me point out to the Minister what the Chief Archivist says—

The Minister says that in this Bill he has made provision for an intermediate depot, but what is an intermediate depot? Is it going to be a building constructed on the latest lines for storing archives, with controlled temperature, for preserving documents, or is it going to be some building or store which the Government is going to hire temporarily to store these records? Sir, I have before me the statement made on 5 August 1953, by the then Minister of Education, in which he said this—

It is clear, Sir, that we can introduce measures of this nature, better administrative procedures can be laid down, but unless the facilities exist for the maintenance and storage of these records, it is of no avail whatsoever. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister if he cannot now use his influence with the Government to give some priority to the erection of adequate archives in our main capital, in Pretoria, where these documents can adequately be lodged for posterity. Because they have got to stay there many, many years, and a building of that nature is not a temporary structure, but has to be a building that is to be adequately designed to maintain these records for many, many years.

There are two other small matters to which I would like to refer. In his report the Chief Archivist points out the tremendous shortage of personnel and staff in his department, and I would like to ask the hon. the Minister what steps have been taken to bring this establishment up to date. Many of these posts are filled by temporary appointments of retired magistrates and others, but as was pointed out by the hon. member for Pretoria (East), men who enter this vocation enter a highly trained and specialized vocation. What steps have been taken to bring this important establishment up to date? Then there is the other point which was touched upon by the hon. members for Pretoria (East) and Hillbrow and that is the question of a fee that will be charged for researches. I hope the hon. the Minister is going to leave the Act as it is. I think the provision that existed in the 1953 Act covers the position very satisfactorily. It says—

I submit to the hon. the Minister that if on every occasion when a researcher turns up to do a job of research, whether it be a student or not, a fee has got to be paid, you are going to have an impossible position. I would ask the hon. the Minister very seriously to leave the position as it is now.

Finally, I would like to join the hon. member for Pretoria (East) in his plea in regard to the Archives Year Book. Perhaps the hon. member for Karas can tell us more about the matter, but when you read in the report of the Archives Commission that in a very important matter of this nature they have to go as a deputation to the Treasury, to the Government Printer, in order to get more than 250 volumes printed of the Archives Year Book, then I wonder what we are coming to. The report is most emphatic about it and you can see that the commissioners were somewhat incensed, and I would like to ask the Minister to see to it that is avoided. If the Government Printer has to print 250 volumes, the state might as well print 500 volumes, because there are many people who are interested in the subject, and there are many people beyond our own borders who are interested in the Archives Year Book. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he can ensure that in future the recommendations of the Director and the Archives Commission in respect of the number of volumes to be printed will be adhered to. The importance of this Archives Year Book is perhaps very much greater than most hon. members realize.

I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the hon. members for Turffontein and Hillbrow for their objective contributions to this debate. I have been sitting in this House for many years as the first and only representative of the Archives Commission who is a member of this House simultaneously and I have on numerous occasions pleaded for the things that those hon. gentlemen spoke about yesterday and to-day—I have been successful in respect of some and in respect of other arguments that I have advanced I have had sympathetic replies from the Minister concerned. Listening to the debate so far I have not heard one hon. member getting down to the root of the trouble and I want to say at the outset that the root of the trouble as far as our archives are concerned, is that it is the Cinderella of all our departments of government. It is a disgrace that we a civilized nation should have to admit that, but the facts bear it out. Both hon. gentlemen who spoke from the other side of the House and the one who spoke from this side of the House emphasized certain aspects of the matter but let us study this Bill a little closer. Let us see what the law provides. I am pleased that the Opposition supports the second reading of this Bill and if they would try together with us to get a perfect Act I merely want to tell them that even that will be of no value if we do not have the money to put the provisions of such an Act into operation. I shall draw attention to a few aspects of this matter. Clause 3 reads—

I wonder whether hon. members of this House know what sort of control that is. The hon. member for Turffontein referred to that a minute ago when he spoke about Pietermaritzburg but he could have said the same about Cape Town or Bloemfontein where we have had to keep some of our most valuable and most historical documents on balconies in the wind and sun. That was the control that our Director of Archives had to exercise. The position has improved slightly. I can assure the hon. member for Turffontein that the position in regard to the availability of shelves has improved slightly. But there is another Clause that has to be read in conjunction with this one because the Bill provides for the following. The Act of 1953 made it compulsory for the Chief Archivist to receive all documents from government offices when they were 30 years old. It was simply impossible for the Chief Archivist to carry out the provisions of that Act because he did not have sufficient shelves and a great number of those documents were absolutely valueless. We checked and found that over a period of 30 years there were certain court records of which only two were referred to. In 30 years! And we have to provide space for them. But now I go on to read Clause 3 in conjunction with Clause 5 as far as intermediate depots are concerned, as well as Clause 6 which says that the Minister may grant permission “that such archives or any portion thereof be retained in the office in question.” The 1953 Act provided that the Chief Archivist at that time, now the Director of Archives, was obliged to receive the documents in his Archives when they were 30 years old. He could not do so and he cannot do so to-day. We have now tried to find a way out of the difficulty but it is a very dangerous way out. I want to bring this to the notice of the Minister. All our provincial archives are fire proof. Until recently they were not but they are fire proof to-day and if the Director of Archives has the right, because he has the necessary shelves in fire proof Archives, to decide that certain documents, and there may be very valuable documents amongst them, may be retained in another government office, I want to know from the hon. the Minister whether he can assure the House that office will be fire proof. He cannot do so, I am afraid I will not be here when the Committee Stage is taken, otherwise I would have discussed the individual clauses then. But I think it is a disgrace that we at the southern tip of Africa who tell the world that we have carried the torch of civilization from this southern tip of Africa to the north, and that we regard ourselves as a civilized nation, that we are really doing less for our archives than a young republic such as Indonesia is doing. Do you know, Sir, that Indonesia has employed archivists. from overseas to study all sources of information in Holland that may have a bearing on the history of Indonesia? Do you know that for the last 30 years Canada has been doing that as far as her history is concerned? Do you know that the United States of America have been doing that for many years, not only in respect of the history of the English-speaking section of her population but in respect of all the national groups that comprise the population of the United States of America? And what have we done? What I am going to say is criticism not only of the present Government, but of every government that we have had since 1910. Do you know what we are doing, Sir? After 1948 when the National Party government came into power we voted a paltry sum of £8,000 to send archivists temporarily overseas to do research work into all sources pertaining to the history of South Africa from 1895 to 1902. Everyone of those persons returned and reported to the Minister that there was a host of documents available to us, documents that were most valuable as far as our history was concerned, but the money had petered out. I feel ashamed about that to-day. I have witnesses on both sides of the House as. to that. I repeatedly got up in this House and pleaded with the Government to provide sufficient funds so that research could be conducted into those sources in Europe. I received sympathetic replies, but not a penny. Do you know what I did then, Sir? I wrote a personal letter to Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, my former colleague, and told him what the position was, particularly in respect of documents that we needed in South West Africa, Some of which are to-day in possession of the communists in East Germany, and he sent me £2,500 for that purpose. And during all the years that our Government have been in power they have given £8,000. I want to support the hon. the Minister, but I want to plead with him that he who is a former teacher, and he who has the interests of the traditions and culture of his people at heart, should make some plan to get past the Minister of Finance. In the past every Minister of Finance, irrespective of which government was in power, has treated our archives as the Cinderella. I want to ask the Minister, seeing that he has the support of both sides of the House, to have the courage to say to the Minister of Finance: South Africa deserves something better; South Africa expects something better from its Government.

It is pleasant to get away briefly from the subject to which we have been listening continuously in recent days, namely the policy in respect of the Transkei, and now to discuss another important Bill.

I should like to point to another aspect of our archives which is perhaps being neglected and which, as far as I know, has not been mentioned in the speeches made here. I want to do so with reference to the provision in Clause 4 of the Bill for the establishment of an Archives Commission and the definition of the functions and duties of that Commission in the succeeding clauses in obtaining documents, sifting them and then making provision for their preservation, as provided, inter alia, in Clause 5. With reference to that I should like to know from the Minister whether that comprises also the establishment of film archives as a sub-division of the State Archives. It seems to me that in this regard there is a lack. As far as I can ascertain, there has not been such a section in our archives hitherto. At the moment all films are handed over to the State Film Services. There is evidently an arrangement between the State Archives and the Film Service to preserve films and negatives, etc. in their strongrooms. But the question that exercises one is in how far this service ensures that as many historically valuable films can be traced and preserved. Secondly, the question is how far the storage facilities comply with the necessary requirements to prevent damage. You know, Sir, that films, negatives and sound tracks are more vulnerable than the ordinary documents preserved in the archives. They need particular care. They need specific temperatures in the storage places and a specific humidity content. If I am correct, about 50 per cent humidity and a maximum of 85°F. are required for a place in which films are preserved. They are highly inflammable articles and they can easily stretch, shrink, crack or fold and in that way be rendered useless for future use and reproduction. Much valuable research material which may become available in future in the sphere of the film may in that way be lost or rendered useless. That also happened as the result of a lack of specific and co-ordinate tracing and control of existing films which have already been made by organizations, private individuals or other departments. As the result of ineffective casing and storage they can be lost. I am a layman in this sphere, but I feel concerned about this aspect of our archives. I am convinced that such a film archive should fall under the State Archives and that it should be part of the functions of the Archives Commission for which provision is made in the Bill. Now it seems to me that in its present form the Bill does not specifically provide for this. I know that the Archives’ most important part is to collect and to preserve State documents and to make micro copies of old documents in order to preserve them for research in future. Our archives have made wonderful progress in this respect and offer a rich field to the research worker. In the sphere of visual archives, much has also been done and our archives contain a rich diversity of photographs of historical personalities and places, of old buildings which have cultural value, old streets, old parts of towns and cities and other scenes which are reproduced and preserved for the research worker of the future. But when we come to the still picture and the moving film, the sound-track or the recordings of speeches on important historical occasions by eminent figures of the past, we find a complete lack and, as far as the State Archives are concerned, no facilities exist in that respect. I assume that over and above the State film service, the State Information Service and perhaps the archives of the Department of Education, much has also been done through the private initiative of individuals and organizations, and even by political parties, to make recordings of historical events and that they also try to preserve those films and recordings. But the question remains as to whether we can be satisfied with that. One fears that valuable and irreplaceable research material in that connection may be lost through ineffective methods of preservation which will render those films and recordings useless in the long run. An important fact is that at the moment no deliberate and planned film recordings are made specially to be preserved in the archives, and I think the hon. the Minister should devote attention to that. The State Archives in Cape Town at the moment, for example, have no recordings of the inauguration of the State President of the Republic on 31 May last year. It has no recordings at all of the opening of the First Parliament of the Republic. Evidently it does not have available a single recording of an event which was of particular historical interest in the constitutional development of our country, or of other historical events which are milestones along the road of our national development. The Archives simply do not have the apparatus, staff or the room to undertake this sort of thing. There is no section of the Archives which deals with it. I know that the State Information Film Service did in fact make recordings of those events, but the question is whether it should not be handed over to the State Archives for safekeeping and reproduction. One thinks even of the appointment of an historian who, with the assistance of expert personnel under the supervision and with the co-operation of the Director, the Chief Archivist, or the Archives Commission, could make recordings, particularly sound recordings, for the State Archives, and that such a person should be appointed to do this important work, even though he alone should be appointed for a start. I think the Minister ought to devote attention to this. Where recordings are made haphazardly by other people, it seems to me that this is not done carefully enough.

We live in an age of speed in which everything is done at a fast tempo and the written word and the document are ousted by films and sound recordings, and if my plea to-day has any value I shall be gratefull if I have only succeeded in bringing the establishment of such a film service to the notice of the Minister. The need systematically to obtain and to preserve research material in the modern sphere of films must be clear to all. There is much material which was made by persons and organizations in the past, but which is now being preserved in an inefficient way. Perhaps it can still be obtained and preserved. The State Archives is the suitable institution for it and the time is more than ripe for it.

Before I resume my seat I want to mention one last aspect which evidently has not received enough attention either, and that is the lack of a literary division for obtaining and preserving original manuscripts, personal letters and documents of prominent literary men of the past, prose writers and poets who ought of have a place in the archives, and much of which gets lost. I am informed that, for example, a letter written by the late Adv. Langenhoven to his first love was found and that it is regarded as a particularly valuable document. Because such personal documents written in the original handwriting of such literary men gives the re search worker a glimpse into the soul and the essence of the personal lives of these great figures. That can be an interesting field for research. Now it is true that there is no such section in the archives and I have been in formed by interested persons that there is scope for it. All that is required is the necessary space and an instruction to the people concerned to trace such personal documents of famous writers and great literary figures. In fact, there do exist such personal documents of politicians, but in regard to literary figures there is a great gap which should be filled.

I should like to express my thanks and appreciation to hon. members who have participated in this debate, and in particular to the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp), and the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) for their congratulations and the welcome they even extended to me as Minister of Education, Arts and Science. I appreciate it and I believe that it was expressed in all sincerity from both sides because these members are ex-colleagues of mine, and ex-teachers always stand together, even though sometimes there are political differences. When they come on to that terrain there is something which flows freely in their veins and which brings out the best in them, so that they forget even their political differences. I really never expected the hon. member for Hillbrow to be in a position to address such nice words to me, but to some extent it must have presented an opportunity to him to do so, because hitherto he has not shown much love for me. Therefore I appreciate it all the more, and I hope that I will have the energy and receive the necessary guidance to devote my undivided attention to this very important task.

The hon. member for Hillbrow put quite a few questions to me. The hon. member for Turffontein expatiated on it a little, and I intend replying to both of them at the same time The first question was who the present members of the Archives Commission are. Because they are such eminent people, such important research workers, people with such a wonderful past and who have performed such splendid services, I think it is as well, for record purposes, that the hon. member put the question so that the reply can be recorded in Hansard. The reply is—

Then the. hon. member asked how the chairman is appointed. The chairman is elected by the members of the Commission for a period of three years. They themselves are appointed for three years, and at the first meeting at the commencement of their period of office they elect a chairman from their ranks. Now I want to tell the hon. member for Turffontein that the term of office is laid down in the regulations. The position was the same in terms of the 1953 Act. At that time the hon. member evidently did not object to it. This is a matter which can usually be left to their discretion. There are sometimes people on such a Council in regard to whom one actually feels that later they are not so useful any more. There are boards where the Government would like to abolish the term of office completely, because perhaps one should appoint a person from year to year, whilst a younger person can be appointed for three years and a still younger one for five years. One should ensure that the people serving on such a Commission can really still render services. I really want to ask that this matter should be left as it is; the regulation remains unchanged and we can make no amendment here.

The question was also asked by the hon. member for Hillbrow: How often does the Commission meet? It is once a year, in January. The hon. member for Turffontein suggested that they should meet four times a year. There will of course be no objection to that. It can even be monthly. But if these people themselves feel that they can dispose of the work entrusted to them in one meeting, why should they hold more meetings? Dr. Ross once said that the majority of meetings are opened with a prayer and they conclude with a prayer and in between nothing at all takes place. The question is whether one should hold a meeting just for the sake of holding it? I want to say this to satisfy the hon. member for Turffontein, that if the Archives Commission were to ask me for permission to meet four times a year, or even six times, that request would be granted. But if they meet once in January, they do not sit for two hours only, but sit until they have completed all the work.

And generally that does not take more than a day.

Yes, but that is the task of the Archives Commission. If they have enough work to do, then as far as I am concerned they can meet six times a year, and not only four times, as the hon. member suggested. I am now extending an invitation to the Archives Commission to tell me whether it is the regulations which obstruct them; then I would be willing to amend the regulations so that the Commission can meet as often as it considers necessary.

Then the hon. member pleaded for a itinerant archivist, as he described it, and he also had the support of the hon. member for Pretoria (East) in that regard. In principle nobody would be opposed to it, but let us see what the position is in practice. The hon. members who spoke here are people who know the archives; they have worked there and do not speak only theoretically. The collection of all documents in the archives must be done very judiciously.

That is precisely the reason for our request.

There is the danger that one may collect a lot of rubbish whilst discarding absolute gems. In this respect the Bill makes precise provision for the compulsory preservation of documents from State Departments, Provincial Administrations and local authorities. That is provided in Clause 5. But Clause 7 of the Bill gives the Director the discretion to accept as gifts other documents of individuals, of clerks, of political parties, of semi-official institutions, etc., which are not included in the first category, to ask for them if he so decides, and to collect them if in his opinion they are of sufficient historical value.

He does not have the time to do that.

Just wait a minute. Let me conclude my argument. Secondly, the Commission does not consist of at least seven members, but of 19, and this Commission can still be enlarged. If hon. members look at the names of the members of the Commission, they will see that the Commission is representative of all the Provinces. [Interjections.] I therefore say that we have the members of the Commission. They are hand-picked men. They are people who are interested in the matter, and not merely people to fill a vacancy. These are the people who in their own areas and in the Provinces do this work for us. We would like to see it even being extended and that they should form sub-committees in the various Provinces. If we now have a travelling archivist, where will he begin, where will he go and how will he know what his course should be. Then we should also remember something else. We should not again try to shift all the onus on to the State. There are already many church societies which have archives of their own in beautiful buildings. I have seen for myself the way in which various churches do it. Even in the days when I was still party secretary, the Nationalist Party had their own archives and the documents are excellently taken care of. I do not know what happened in regard to the other party, but I hope they all have archives.

We have very good archives.

We also have a personal responsibility. Now I want to say that at the moment—and I hope it will satisfy the hon. member if I put the matter this way—I do not think the time is ripe for it. I have been lauded here a little to-day, but I was also held responsible for the wrongdoings of my predecessors. I am quite willing to be blamed but I am not going to defend them. I will agree with the hon. members that there are many problems and shortcomings in our archives which are not right. Nor can I justify it. It is perhaps better to talk less about it and to remedy it. I think we should devote our attention to these things when it becomes necessary to do so. I want to suggest to the hon. member for Hillbrow that we consider this a little later, and not now. What have I done—this is in reply to the hon. member for Turffontein—in connection with the great shortage of staff complained about in that report? Since the issue of that report, 30 new posts were created by the Public Service Commission. But the difficulty is to find suitable persons to fill these posts. One just cannot find them. It is no use creating posts and filling them with pensioners of various types. It is certainly one of the sins of omission of our fathers that there was no gradual training given in these matters, and that the archivists were not trained, because there is now a sort of vacuum. This has to be remedied and it cannot be done suddenly. That is also the reply to the hon. member for Hillbrow; the problem is to find suitable persons.

Let us take the examples given by the hon. member for Turffontein in regard to what Indonesia is doing. We also felt that we should garner more from our countries of origin. We had Dr. Wipkema in The Hague. It is perhaps interesting for the House to hear that he was there for five or six years to trace in The Hague the connection between South African history and the Dutch people, and particularly by means of microfilms he soon made it possible for any research worker in the Republic who wanted to study any bit of history connected with Holland to do so here by means of microfilms. He can study the microfilms in this country without having to go to The Hague. That is a wonderful improvement. That is progress. Recently, before I took over as Minister of Education, Miss Davis of the staff of the Chief Archivist, or the Director as he is called now, was sent to London. She worked in the Archives for years. We advertised outside the Archives’ staff, and I personally scrutinized the applications. She herself did not apply. But after I, as Minister, had received a report about her, I offered her the post and asked whether she would do the work. Her love for the work, to which she is eminently suited, is so great that in fact, financially, in terms of the Public Service regulations, she stands to lose by it. She will be busy there for ten or 15 years, if she can stand the pace, studying the connection between our South African history and that of the British Isles in the same way as Dr. Wipkema did in regard to Holland. In this way we must make progress. But it is no use creating posts and envisaging ideals unless we have the right people to do the work. All hon. members who know anything about the archives will know that one must first find a suitable person to do the work. But it is no use first having the work and then saying it must be done in the official way.

I should now like to say a few words in regard to the archives buildings. The hon. member for Hillbrow touched on it and it was discussed further by the hon. members for Turffontein and Karas (Mr. von Moltke). I can only agree with them. The position in Cape Town is perhaps the most difficult. In the Union Building space has been cleared particularly to make room for the archives. It was considered moving the Archives building, but the Director strenuously objected and he won his point. I think that the site, in the first place, but in the second place the building itself, is the best. In Pretoria we now have that extra space. Our two difficulties are the P.W.D. and the Treasury. We are continually urging on those two Departments. I just want to tell hon. members this, and I address myself particularly to the hon. member for Karas to whose pleas I have paid attention—that this is not really the right place to discuss this matter whilst we are dealing with a Bill. I ask them to raise these matters again under my Vote when the Estimates are discussed. Then all my colleagues can be here and they can listen to the pleas and I can continue making my requests. That is how it ought to be done.

But the buildings were attacked rather unfairly by the hon. member for Karas. He intimated that they were deplorable. I think the hon. member for Turffontein was precipitate in thinking that we would have temporary archives which would just be prefabricated structures and which would constitute inferior and cheap buildings. Of course they must be fire-proof; of course the temperature must be regulated, and of course they must be of the best. But hon. members should bear in mind that this concerns the preservation and care of documents, and the difficulty we have at the moment is that we cannot intervene; and that is what this Bill deals with, that everybody in every department has his own items which he preserves. We cannot prevent that. Valuable space is being occupied. Sometimes there is just a shelf available for storing things, and it is not the most economical space. But with these intermediate depots where one can put to proper use every square foot for the preservation and care and documentation of data, and see to it that they are fire-proof—for that buildings will have to be erected. They will not merely be tin shanties. Good buildings will be required. Then I just want to give the assurance that whatever we could possibly do with funds available was done. That does not mean that the money available was sufficient to enable us to do everything that should have been done, and I feel the same about it as hon. members do.

The last request of the hon. member for Hillbrow was that I should provide in Clause 12 for negligence, and not only for deliberate damage. I want to tell the hon. member that “deliberate damage” includes “malice”. Whatever is done maliciously is punishable. That is provided for in the Bill, and the hon. member said that as far as he was concerned the penalty could be increased from R200 to R500. I am glad of it. But I want to draw the hon. member’s attention to the fact that Government Notice No. 1276 of 5 September, 1958, published in terms of the 1953 Act, which in terms of Clause 14 (2) of this Bill remains in force, makes full provision, in Part III, particularly in paragraphs 10 to 17, for the careful handling of archives documents and the prevention of negligence. In actual fact, if one is deliberately negligent, it is tantamount to deliberate malice. I think that with this explanation the hon. member will be satisfied to leave the matter there.

Hon, members also raised a few other points to which I want to reply. The hon, member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto), as well as the hon. member for Turffontein, spoke about the publication of the Archives Yearbook. Here we are again limited by the Treasury. All I can say is that I have no other experience of it except what I am told by my Department, namely that the publication is limited because the demand is limited. To-day it is limited to 250 copies. I am not aware that there is a greater demand for this publication, but if there is I will go into it and see to it that more copies are published, but I am informed that 250 copies are published of each issue. I know the Archives Yearbook. I like it; I think it is useful work, and if the demand increases, more copies should be published. I will go into it and see what the position is.

The hon. member for Turffontein also asked whether the report of the Director also covers the activities of the Archives Commission. In former years the Chief Archivist in any case also wrote the report of the Archives Commission. I think that the report we will now receive will in fact be the joint report of the Director and of the Archives Commission. The hon. member for Turffontein expressed concern regarding the fact that our Archives will now be sealed for 50 years. I am not really an expert in this sphere. The object is of course to protect people in public life. Here we follow the example of the older countries. We are a young country. In Britain, e.g., it is more than 50 years. I am not quite sure what the period is, but I think it is made inaccessible for more than 50 years. I know for a fact in Holland the archives in connection with events which happened up to 1812 have not yet been made available. In other words, those countries are even more conservative than we are. I mention as examples particularly Britain and Holland. We must be very careful not to act unwisely here. In this respect I am guided particularly by the Chief Archivist of our country who has already visited countries all over the world. He knows what the possibilities and the procedure are, and for how long it should be inaccessible.

I did not ask for the period to be shortened, but that access to documents under the control of the Director should be facilitated.

Yes, but the hon. member did raise that point. In terms of the 1922 Act, the archives were made available from 1885, and for every successive year thereafter. In other words, it is 37 years. We now make it 48 to 50 years. Still, the plea was that it should be relaxed to some extent. Let me say this, the Minister has always been reasonable in this regard. I have never yet seen or heard that when a researcher really needed it for a good purpose he was not allowed to do so within the discretion of the Minister. I have never yet heard of complaints in such cases. I think we should safeguard that discretionary power. I have already discussed the buildings. I hope I have now replied to all the hon. member’s questions.

The hon. member for Marico (Mr. Grobler) asked that there should also be other archives apart from written documents. He referred to films, speeches, historical events, and the hon. member eventually referred to a love-letter written by Langenhoven. I grant him all that. No such document ought to be neglected. I agree with the sentiments expressed by the hon member that we should rather do these things through the State Archives, but then I do not know where we will land. One can really mention a long list of things ad infinitum, with out knowing whether in a few years’ time those items will be of historical value. How does one know when a man makes an historical speech? Perhaps I am now making the most historical speech made about the archives of our country, and my speech will not be preserved. Just take that as an example. But I want to tell the hon. member this: The manuscripts of our literary men, e.g., are to-day being put into our African museums. There they are collated and preserved, as in Johannesburg and in other libraries. We have our places for preserving microphones …

Is that being done systematically?

Yes, it is done systematically. Precautions are taken against fire, the correct temperature is maintained and suitable buildings are used. Therefore I want to reassure the hon. member in this regard. Many other things in the line of recordings of speeches are cared for by the S.A.B.C. The S.A.B.C. has recordings of many events, and we shall simply have to decentralize this. We cannot keep all these things in the archives buildings. One respect in which I want to support the hon. member—I think he issued a timeous warning —is when he said that we should not deal lightly with these things; that we should rather preserve them, not knowing what is Africana and what will be needed again to-morrow or later.

Once again, I want to thank the House for its reception of this Bill. I think it is a splendid example to the world to show that sometimes, when we feel it is in the national interest, we can co-operate to put sound legislation on the Statute Book. Not only do I want to express my thanks to the House for supporting the principle, but I want to assure hon. members that in continuing this work we will always be on the qui vive because we are dealing with treasures here and we cannot allow them to be consumed by moths or destroyed by rust.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

Mr. Speaker, the Bill now before us for the third reading differs in certain very substantial respects from the Bill presented to the House at the second reading. It introduces very far-reaching administrative changes in national housing activities right throughout the Republic. To some extent the Bill before us now standardizes the procedure and control of certain features of national housing as between the Commission, the newly-formed Department of Housing, the Provincial and the local authorities, and the Bill certainly endeavours to provide greater flexibility in the provision of housing and to eliminate certain difficulties which experience over the years has shown to create delays in the carrying out of the national housing programme. Even now at its third reading the Bill before us, despite its provisions for consultation, contains certain features which we still believe both overlap and encroach on the existing constitutional responsibilities of both Provincial and local authorities as regards the provision of housing. At the same time the hon. the Minister, in the course of the Committee Stage, has at our request introduced several amendments into the Bill which was introduced at the second reading, amendments which have gone a good way to meet some of the objections we had to certain of the proposals of the Bill in its original form. The Minister himself in the Committee Stage was very reasonable in dealing with these matters and we will therefore support the third reading of the Bill. We will watch with interest the working of the Bill in its present form to see that the high hopes held by the Minister in this new procedure will be realized and we will not hesitate to come back to the House if we find that there are still snags which we feel should be cleared away.

Or behalf of my colleague, the Minister of Housing, I want to thank the Opposition for supporting the third reading of this Bill.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move—

The object of this Bill is to make provision in the University of Cape Town Act, 1959 (Act No. 38 of 1959) for the creation of the post of deputy principal. That is Clause 1. This was decided by the Council of the University, and Clause 2 determines his conditions of service and duties. Now such a vice-principal, in terms of the Act, becomes a member of the Senate but not of the Council, and the Council’s request in this regard is now also being acceded to by inserting a new paragraph in Clause 2 in order to make this possible. Such a vice-principal similarly will become a member of the Executive of the University in terms of Clause 3 (a), and a member of the Senate in terms of Clause 4, and of the Convocation in terms of Clause 5.

Certain consequential amendments are also made in the Act, in Clauses 3 (b), (c) and (d). I might add that the principle of this Bill has already been embodied in similar legislation when provision was made for a vice-principal for the University of the Witwatersrand with similar duties. The Registrar of the University has raised the question of amendments—and it might be of interest to the House to know it—of this Act with the Secretary of the House of Assembly, who informed him that according to a decision of the Committee on Standing Orders it had been provided that amending legislation of this nature, not only for this university but for all universities, proposed by an institution that had originally been accorded legal personality by an Act of Parliament and was in receipt of financial aid from the State, could be treated as a public measure. I therefore undertook, under those circumstances, to pilot this Bill through Parliament, and I now move its second reading.

This side of the House has no objection to this Bill, particularly after having listened to the hon. the Minister. It leaves the appointment of a Deputy Rector in the hands of the Council of the University, which is correct, because it does not derogate from any of the rights of the University. I therefore can have no objection to it. I also understand that the University itself asked for it and that such a post has already been created. For those reasons, this side of the House will support the Bill.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

This Bill constitutes a minor amendment what we intend making to the University of Pretoria (Private) Act. When the text was drafted of the measure which Parliament passed under the Universities Bill in 1955 a provision that was previously incorporated in all the different university Acts was included. As a result of that all the previous provisions were repealed. One of the provisions that was repealed, was that contained in sub-section (1) of Section 13 of the University of Pretoria (Private) Act. But the whole of Section 13 was inadvertently repealed. Section 13 (2) also disappeared. The last mentioned sub-section contains disciplinary provisions, provisions which are essential and I have been requested by the University to re-introduce this provision by way of a public measure. That is all that we are doing in this Bill.

Also as far as this Bill is concerned, this side of the House has no objection to the University of Pretoria now being enabled to apply disciplinary measures to its students, but the question which comes to mind is how the University dealt with its students in the meantime.

They were good students.

No, I know that certain things happened recently with which the University authorities were not very satisfied. Perhaps the Council then discovered what the position was and that the old disciplinary measures had also been repealed at the time. I just ask this question out of curiosity and I do not want the Minister to reply to it. I want to conclude by saying that we have no objection to the right being given to any university to discipline its students.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

Mr. Speaker, the work went so speedily this afternoon that I have every hope that we will be able to finish dealing with this Bill before 6.30 p.m. It is such a brief Bill that a long discussion is not justified, because the briefer the Bill the briefer the discussion need toe.

It is a particularly great privilege to me to have the opportunity to introduce this Bill because I had five years’ experience as a member of the Executive Committee in the Transvaal, and as one who had to work together with two Government members and two Opposition members, and later with three Government members and one Opposition member, for five years. When I say it is a privilege to introduce the Bill, I should not be misunderstood, because from the very nature of the matter, apart from the political differences, the co-operation, from the personal point of view, was always very hearty. We were good friends; we were never enemies, but the political differences were always present. I do not want to be misunderstood as saying that things went badly and therefore I want to make changes, but because one has had so much experience of it one can also appreciate the merits and demerits of the system. I hope that in this debate we will be able to rise above party-political gain in the matter, and that we will regard it only from the purely practical point of view.

If I have read the political barometer in the country correctly, I must say that there is comparative unanimity in regard to the matter, because in the newspapers supporting both parties which I have read I did not find the strict condemnation we generally find when a measure like this is introduced. Even newspapers of the opposite side approve of it, although I did not read all of them. I have before me an extract from the Pretoria News of 23 January. The reporters of the Pretoria News are of course in Pretoria where they have been able to watch the system working, and I immediately want to regard them as authorities, and I think they gave really objective views here, because they immediately start off by saying—

That is gratifying. They welcome it from the commencement and say—

It refers only to the Transvaal.

Yes, and they are always right, and you receive your greatest support in the Transvaal. They continue to say—

I shall say much more about this in a moment, because I think this dual loyalty is the crux of the matter—

I shall again refer to this in a moment. As I say, it is gratifying that a paper like the Pretoria News should adopt this standpoint, because one immediately felt that they were people who sat there every day and shared the experience I had for the five years I was there, together with the reporters of the Vaderland and the Transvaler. They know what goes on in the country and particularly in the Provincial Council of the Transvaal. Therefore I want to show the House that I want to keep this matter out of the political arena as far as possible, and I want to indicate what our constitutional lawyers have to say on the subject. Let us look at the constitution of the Executive Committee, and I want to do so particularly with reference to the opinions of experts. The first expert I want to mention is Prof. Verloren van Themaat, who, in his book “Constitutional Law ”, says the following about the provincial system—

What Prof. Verloren van Themaat said here was also said by the Star in a leading article on 23 January. It said it also welcomed this change tout hoped that my idea was not simply to get rid of two United Party members of the Executive Committee in the Cape Province and one in the Transvaal, but that I should go a step further; that I should do, not exactly what Prof. van Themaat says, but I should go a step further and give Cabinet status to the members of the Executive Committee—in other words, make them responsible to the Provincial Council. I shall deal with this argument later. Prof. van Themaat further said—

And that is the important point—

And let me assure the House of the truth of this. It has been my experience also; even after five years one sometimes did not know whether one could or could not do this or that: should this matter be decided by the Administrator and the Executive Committee, or may one act on one’s own; is one responsible to any particular person? It is a strange system and one must become accustomed to it. There is nothing similar to it in any other democratic state. Then Prof, van Themaat says—

A pious hope, to which effect was never given. He also says—

And that has been the case ever since 1910. That is the factual position. In the book by Prof. Hahlo and Ellison Kahn, The Union of South Africa, they express the following opinion. They say—

We, know that Switzerland has always been regarded as the most democratic country in the world, whilst the old Orange Free State Republic is still regarded as the model state. Now we believe, and in their book the authors say they believe, that—

I have just quoted from these two books to emphasize what well-known constitutional lawyers have stated, and to show that the intention of our forbears was that politics should not really play a role in the Provincial Councils, but that in fact it has played its role right from the beginning. It would be a clever person who could manage to keep politics out of any sphere in life, let alone the Provincial Councils. Sometimes it is even difficult to keep politics out of a church council, let alone a Provincial Council.

These two authors, Hahlo and Ellison Kahn, refer in the following words to the history of suggestions which were made to amend this system, and it is important to devote attention to this. They say—

I mention these things merely to show that people became hot under the collar. Neither the hon. members over there, nor anyone else, can afford to become hot under the collar now, but people who could afford to do so wrote a book and condemned the whole system. But hon. members will remember that six years after Union there was the well-known Jagger Commission, and the authors say in their book—

It is unnecessary for us to go into that, but I challenge anyone to deny it. When we adopted the constitution for the Republic, we were unanimous in the Select Committee that the provincial system should not be tampered with. The Jagger Commission in 1916 already advocated it, and thereafter it was advocated again, and we would be wasting our breath to advocate it once more. Is there anyone here who will have the courage to do so? We have the system and we are landed with it whether we like it or not, and that is not relevant either, but we have to make the best of this system, and that is the point I wish to make. Then the authors go on to say—

That was also advocated by Prof. Gey van Pittius in his book “Die Stelsel van Provinsiale Rade in Suid-Afrika”—

That is a suggestion contained in the book written by Kennedy and Schlosberg. Then Hahlo and Kahn say—

In other words, the attempts, made simply failed. Now I want to say immediately, and I know I will receive the support of both sides of the House in what I want to say, that in the Republic of South Africa there cannot be the least idea of acceding to any system which will lead to the possible development of federalism in the presently existing Republic of South Africa. This Government—and also the United Party if they should perhaps one day by accident come into power—will never be able to afford it. On 31 May 1960 we celebrated the tercentenary of Union, and as the result of our becoming a Union we adopted the motto: “Unity is Strength”. We applied that motto to such an extent that it was the basis of all the success we achieved, and when drafting the constitution of the Republic of South Africa we immediately took the old South Africa Act as the basis—the experience we have had of what unity means—and if any ideas are to be exchanged here, I want to say clearly that arguments may perhaps be advanced to the effect that here we have something which indicates that the Government is moving towards a one-party Government, and that successive steps may be taken, and that this may either be approved or rejected as an argument, but then I want to say very clearly that we stand here as a White race and in this portion of our country we must stand united and remain as united as we still are. If there is anything which is detrimental to us, it is that people should still be imbued with the idea that they come from the Transvaal, from the Cape Province, from the Free State or from Natal. Those people should forget that and say. “We are South Africans and part of the Republic of South Africa”

It is impossible for the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell) to do so.

I want to say that very clearly, and I do so particularly with reference to what the Star said in its leading article. It quite agreed with the first portion, but the Star of 23 said—

But now he goes on and he says—

And I believe that I do not think we can allow it. I do not think we can allow that state of affairs to develop—not that they will become too big for their boots, but that is the natural development we will immediately find; with responsibility to the Provincial Council then the next step in the development will be that the Administrator, as the representative of the Government in the Province, will immediately lose his function, and the next step will have to be that this Executive Committee, all the Provincial Council and the Executive Committee together, elect the Administrator. Then it is a completely federal state, where the representative of the Central Government is the Administrator, and the hold which the Administrator and the Central Government have, in obviating that it does not turn into federalism, is that the Administrator has the deciding vote in regard to finances.

We have had experience of this. In the Free State we had a strong United party man who was the Administrator under a U.P. Government, and if the people want us to do something wrong, he simply blocked them on the financial side. But he must do so on instruction from his Central Government, otherwise one has no reason for saying that there is still unity and that we can still form part of the Union or of the Republic, as we are how. Therefore I say that however logical it may sound, there are other reasons for it, and I am not picking out anyone now, and I hope the the U.P. will not use it as an argument that we want to deprive United Party supporters of a job in the Republic of South Africa, because if they use that as an argument they have signed their own death warrant and they have admitted that they see no chance of ever ruling again in this country or ever having members of the Executive Committee in the Transvaal and the Cape Province. I just want to warn them not to argue on those lines. We cannot allow the Provinces in any way themselves to elect an Administrator.

What then is our real difficulty, and why do we want to do this? Here I can talk from personal experience, and there are other hon. members who, from their personal experience, will be able to support me. I again want to refer to the extract from the leading article of the Pretoria News. The men who I pitied most in the mixed Executive Committee on which I served were the two members of the Opposition. I pitied them most because they were bound by their dual loyalty. There is such a thing as party loyalty; a man is a member of his caucus, and in the caucus he must give his party his best advice, under our party system. He must put all his knowledge at their disposal; he must render them his best assistance, for the sake of the party, but he also sits as a member of the Executive Committee where he shares the secrets of, for example, a budget. At one moment he sits there, and a budget has to be framed, and he actively assists in doing so. Let me say to the honour of the people with whom I work, that they actively co-operated to the best of their ability. They never in the least sabotaged any matter. But into what an unenviable position that man is put when he knows the secrets of the budget. The budget is framed by the Administrator and the Executive Committee, and immediately thereafter that man must attend a party caucus meeting, where his party discusses the best way of attacking the Government in the Provincial Council. The result is—and they made no secret of it—that they openly attacked us in the Provincial Council. But when we co-operated behind the scenes, they assisted us in drafting plans; they could do nothing else. But that is an invidious position in which to be.

I now come to the second consequence. The activities of the Executive Committee consistently increase. The position is no longer what it was at the time of Union in 1910. In the Transvaal it is a full-time post. These people are subject to the same conditions as chambers of the Cabinet; they may not do anything else except what a member of the Cabinet is allowed to do. But now there are three members of the Government party and one member of the United Party, a very dear friend of mine, but from the very nature of the matter he is allotted minor duties whilst the other three members must do double and perhaps three or four times the amount of work done by that member. He receives the same remuneration. There are certain duties which cannot be entrusted to him. I see a possibility, if I were to compose a Cabinet including hon. members of the Opposition as members of that Cabinet, to allow them to perform certain duties, but I will not allow them to do just any work. That is simply the party system; let us be honest about it. In the Cape there are two United Party members on the Executive Committee. In view of the increase in the work, we have already asked ourselves the question, as the result of this system, whether we are not forcing the Administrators of the Cape Province to work themselves to death? We are reminded of Mr. Olivier and Dr. du Plessis and Mr. Myburgh and we are also thinking of Mr. Malan, who has had trouble now. These people eventually were simply faced by a situation where they just had to have assistance. This House should not make the mistake of thinking that the man who has to do the work together with the Administrator should be given Cabinet status. In the final reckoning it is the Administrator who is the person responsible under this provincial system, but if he can get four men belonging to the same political party, or having the same convictions, even though it is in Natal where we have a Nationalist Administrator, and four people who share the same convictions, there will be no conflict. In our Executive Committee, where I sat in a mixed committee, the Administrator was often placed in the unenviable position of having to give his deciding vote whilst he was expected not to side with any party. If he does not agree with the United Party now and again, he is accused of being an out-and-out Nationalist; if he agreees with the United Party he is reproached by the Nationalists as not being a proper party adherent. These people are placed in an invidious position. There are unnecessary quarrels; secret caucus meetings are held in order to attain certain objects. It is immoral and it is wrong. Therefore it is my privilege today, as one who has had experience of it, to say; Give the whole of the Executive Committee to the governing party; let the governing party govern the Province through its Executive Committee, and let the Opposition take advantage of the mistakes of the governing party in order to elect the four Executive Committee members for the next five years. Why expect this dual loyalty from people? Why place this unnecessary burden on the shoulders of the Administrator of choosing between what is right and what is wrong and between his party’s interests and other interests?

I would like to say at once that I am astonished at a good deal of what the hon. the Minister has said, more particularly his closing words. He has condemned the system which exists at the present time, under which there is proportional representation in the election of members of Executive Committees. He has condemned it completely, but I cannot take that condemnation seriously, because if the hon. the Minister is correct, then he as a responsible Minister has been utterly wrong in not raising this matter previously.

Before dealing with some of the points made by the Minister I wish to take one preliminary point and it is this: the hon. Minister like myself, was a member of a Select Committee which sat over long periods less than a year ago in order to settle for reference to this House the terms of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, and I think the hon. the Minister will agree that those of us who represented the Opposition on that occasion, made it perfectly clear that we were there to look at this matter from a national point of view and to seek to provide South Africa with the best Constitution which was possible, and as a result of that I think all members who had the privilege of being members of that Select Committee, felt that they were doing a useful job of work, and I say without any qualification that as the result of approaching the matter in that spirit we produced a very much better Constitution than we could have done if we had approached the question from a party political view point. We were able to reach a measure of agreement which, bearing in mind the fact that we had disagreed with the establishment of the Republic was remarkable, and apart from that the personal relationship of the members working on that Committee was in line with the spirit in which the job was tackled. Sir, it must have been the intention of the Government at that time to bring about this change. If it was not the intention of the Government then I cannot take the Minister’s argument here this afternoon seriously, because if in fact the whole system on which we have been working since Union was an ineffective and undesirable one, then I cannot reconcile the attitude of the hon. the Minister and of his colleagues on that occasion—at least those of them who held these views— with what has been said here this afternoon by the hon. the Minister. It must be remembered that the provisions in relation to provincial councils have operated under various Governments since 1910, and here for the first time a Bill is being introduced in this House to change this. The Minister said that he hoped that this matter would be discussed on a non-political basis. Sir, I say to the hon. the Minister that I echo the hope that I expressed at that time that it would be a very good thing if we could always approach constitutional changes on a non-political basis. Sir, the Government’s approach to this matter has not been the one approach which could result in a matter of this sort being considered on a non-political basis, and that is to invite the co-operation of the Opposition before a change of this sort is decided upon and before a final decision is taken and put before this House, as it has been put before this House, to be accepted and put through by the vote of hon. members on the Government side irrespective of the views of those of us who sit in these benches opposite. I say that if the Government is in earnest in wanting co-operation on a matter of this sort, then the Minister’s duty is perfectly clear. He should withdraw this Bill and seek through negotiation to see if we can find a basis which is acceptable to everybody. I say that the right thing to do is to examine the various bases which do exist, but if the Minister is in earnest in suggesting that this matter should be dealt with on a non-political basis, then I say that he has started the wrong way, and I repeat that what he should do is to withdraw this Bill and to start all over again on a completely new basis so that there can be discussion in regard to what is a fundamental change and with a view to seeing whether agreement can be reached as to what is the right and desirable change in the interest of South Africa.

Just name one alternative.

I will deal with the alternatives just now. I am dealing with another aspect of the matter but I will come back to this question. I want to mention various alternatives which do exist. But my first protest is that before the ink is dry on the signature of the Constitution of the Republic, the Minister comes along with this Bill. Sir, it must be remembered that the public was told that the Constitution of the Republic would be the South Africa Act with the minimum amendments. Here we have a very important amendment being introduced, and I hope that the Minister in his reply will be very straightforward with us and tell us if this Government is considering any other amendments to this Constitution.

I would like before dealing with some of the points made by the Minister to deal with certain aspects of the matter as I see it. I have already dealt with the first. It must be remembered that the present Constitution is designed to give the minority in the provincial councils, provided they have sufficient strength there, some say in the Executive Committee, which under the system of provincial councils, plays a tremendously important part in the running of the province. I know that on occasion there have been suggestions that there should be a change, including such suggestion in provincial councils, but broadly speaking this system could not have worked as badly as the hon. the Minister suggests when no Government has suggested a change during the period of over half a century that it has been in operation in this country. The hon. the Minister has quoted from various works. I think this is the first occasion on which I have heard the so-called English-language Press being quoted with complete agreement on the other side. This is the first occasion on which I have heard that a good reason for the changing of the Constitution is because the change is supported by two papers, for which I have a very high respect, namely the Pretoria News and the Star. I only wish that the Government would take some little notice of what is said by those two important papers and what has been said by them over the past ten years or more. This is the first occasion as far as I can remember on which they have been quoted with approval from the Government’s side on a fundamental question of this sort.

When they run down South Africa, we do not agree with them.

No, I am not talking about running down South Africa. The hon. member must not try to draw a red-herring across the trail. The hon. the Minister said that this as a basic change which is long overdue. The Minister must have known that when he was on that Select Committee, and I for one would have appreciated it if he had then said, “we are not proposing to make any change here now, but we would like you to think about it because we are proposing to come forward with legislation to change this system next year”. The Minister has quoted various legal authorities. It may be that there are better systems, but it is a fact—and the Minister cannot get away from it—that no Government in over half a century has made any attempt to make a change. The Minister has referred with approval to the Jagger Commission of 1916. The Government of that day rejected the report of the Jagger Commission and nothing further was done after that Commission had reported. It is only now, over 40 years later, that its recommendations have again been the subject of debate in this House. The hon. the Minister suggests that there is a dual loyalty on the part of United Party members serving on Executive Committees. I am astonished at the Minister’s remarks. He said that when you are in the majority you cannot entrust anything except matters of minor importance to those who come from the minority party. But, after all, the subjects which are dealt with by Provincial Councils broadly fall under four heads—roads, hospitals, schools and local authorities, and surely those are matters in which we should be far freer from politics than unfortunately we have been during these years. But I can see no good reason why a competent person—and the Minister agrees that those who happen to belong to the party of which I am also a member are competent persons, and I believe they have made a very important contribution, even in their minority positions on the Provincial Councils—and I believe they are all perfectly competent to deal with these subjects which are the daily bread, so to speak, of the Provincial Councils. I say that it is a condemnation of the Minister’s party when he tells us that the approach of that party has been to try to give the minor and unimportant tasks to those who represent the other side. I suggest that is not the right spirit. Sir, the hon. member for Standerton (Dr. Coertze) was also a member of that Select Committee and I hope he is going to support me in what I have to say here, because I am sure he must agree with the arguments that I have advanced. He has asked me to mention other possibilities. What I do say is that if a Government wishes to make a change in this matter, the wrong way to do it is to do it in a way in which this matter is being dealt with at the present time, because there are various alternatives which can be considered. One suggestion was mentioned by the hon. the Minister, and that is that in effect that you should have the system of a Cabinet, namely joint responsibility, and that the Provincial Council itself should appoint the Administrator. The hon. the Minister rejects that. But if you really want to examine this question on a non-political basis, you should examine all the possibilities and see what is the best in the interests of this country. What we have here to-day, although we are asked to deal with it on a non-political basis, is a fait accompli in the part of the Bill from which the Minister has made it perfectly clear the Government is not prepared to depart in any important detail. I say that is the wrong way of dealing with the matter. If you are going to allow the Provincial Council to elect on a majority basis, as is proposed, which in practice means that all the members will be elected by one party as a general rule, unless they are equally balanced—the normal thing is that they will all be drawn from one party —then surely consideration should be given to the inclusion in the Bill of measures which will allow the Provincial Council, if the majority happens to swing and goes over into the hands of the Opposition, to remove those executive members from office by reason of the fact that they no longer belong to the party that is in control in the Provincial Council. Surely that must follow logically from what the hon. the Minister himself has said. He said that it is correct that the members of the Executive Committee should all represent the majority party in the Council, and yet the Minister knows that it could easily happen, and it could very easily have happened in the past when the parties in the Provincial Council were very closely balanced in numbers, that one by-election could have resulted in a change from one side to the other. There is the famous case of the Provincial Council of the Transvaal where a then Labour member of the Provincial Council, who had apparently intended to work with one of the parties, when he arrived at the Provincial Council sat on the cross-benches and when asked why he was not sitting with those with whom he proposed to work together in the Provincial Council, replied, “I am the Provincial Council”. He happened to hold the balance of power. What I say to the Minister is this, and I say it in all seriousness, that once he says that the majority party should elect all the Executive Committee members, it seems to me that he cannot escape the conclusion that it is right, if there should be a change in the control of the Provincial Council during its lifetime, that the Provincial Council should have the right to change the members of the Executive Committee, if it sees fit to do so. There is the further question—and I do not say that I would necessarily support it—on this basis that the Government wishes to work on, the basis of “winner take all”, whether it would not be desirable, as you are giving the Provincial Council the power to appoint only members of one party, that they should have the opportunity of making a change if they wish to do so, because it may be that even that party may lose confidence in its members of the Provincial Executive, and under the law as it will stand, as proposed to be amended by the Minister, nothing could be done by that Provincial Council to bring about a change. These, Sir, I suggest in all seriousness are matters which might very well have been considered if the Government had approached this matter on the non-party basis for which the hon. the Minister pleads.

Then, there is the question of the Administrator, and I ask the hon. the Minister in all seriousness whether one should dismiss so lightly as the hon. the Minister has done the fact that the Administrator is there as a Government representative, the fact that the Administrator cannot be changed. The party system is being introduced wholly into the Provincial Executive, but the hon. the Minister says that the Central Government authority remains. Sir, should we not examine whether that is a desirable position? If one takes the case in point as it is to-day, the case of the Province of Natal, does the hon. the Minister. in view of the case he himself stated, not consider that it is right that the Provincial Council of Natal, if the hon. the Minister is right in his argument, should have the right to govern itself by also having a say in who should be the Administrator of that province? These are items which I suggest should be properly considered if this matter is to be approached on a non-party basis.

I think I have covered most of the points I wanted to cover There are a number of other speakers on this side of the House who wish to deal with this matter, but I hope that I have shown that this matter is not as simple as the hon. the Minister says, that the case has not been so completely made out, and is not so fully accepted in this country as the hon. the Minister suggests. The hon. the Minister himself suggested that it would be most unfortunate if it were suggested that the object of this Bill is to remove from two provincial councils three honourable gentlemen who happen not to be members of the hon. the Minister’s party. Well, Sir, I must say those three honourable gentlemen will not be removed automatically, because this Bill will take effect when the next provincial council elections have taken place. Certainly they will not be re-appointed if this Bill goes through unless there is a change, which of course is the fervent hope of a large majority of people in this country. Hon. Ministers opposite laugh, but I look forward to the day and I won’t laugh at them when I tell them how wrong they were in laughing at that suggestion being made. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, I am not in the slightest disturbed by what the hon. members opposite say. They should realize that it is not so very long ago that they were sitting on these benches and we were sitting on those benches and made the same mistake that this Government is making at the present time in believing that it is there for ever.

But I want to come to one final point. I have dealt with the various possibilities and leave it to other hon. members on this side to deal with others, but there is one assurance I hope the hon. the Minister will give me in the most categorical terms and that is that if this Bill is passed into law, if the hon. the Minister is not prepared to accept the suggestion that I have made, this is to be the last of the changes that this Parliament in relation to the provincial councils will bring about. Because there has been a suggestion, and I hope the hon. the Minister will be able to lay this ghost, that this Bill is the first of two Bills which will be introduced and that the second Bill is a Bill which changes the date on which provincial elections are going to be held and decides upon the anticipation of the date of provincial council elections. I hope that the hon. the Minister on that point will not beat about the bush but will be prepared to be perfectly straightforward with this House and tell us whether it is or whether it is not the intention of the Government to do this, whether this matter has or has not been considered by the Government. I hope that he will be able to give us an answer which will settle the question and if the suggestion which I have heard more than once is incorrect, I hope that ghost can be laid. I hope that this is the last amendment at this early stage to the Constitution accepted last year. I regret that the matter has been dealt with in the way it has been dealt with, and I would say to the hon. the Minister that he personally was wrong on the Select Committee in not indicating that he at any rate was considering an amendment of this type. Because we ourselves believed that we were accepting a constitution which would be left undisturbed for some time to come. I would like to draw attention to the fact that this system has not always been so simple. We know there have been splits in the Executive which have led to a great deal of cross-voting. But I want to give the House an example of the efficient working of this provincial executive system, namely the occasion when the late Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr was Administrator of the Transvaal and the other members consisted of two members of the South African Party and two of the Nationalist Party.

So I hope the Government might have second thoughts about this matter. I do not wish to deal with it any more but I want to move for the reasons I have given—

I second.

I think of all members in this House I am in the best position to speak with authority on this subject because I sat on an Executive Committee as one of the Opposition members for five years, and I think I can speak with authority on what the position is, how smoothly such a system works and on what the position is of the minority group on an Executive Committee and what the position is of the Administrator when he sits there with two members of the governing party and two members of the Opposition. But before I come to that I just want to say that if the speech of the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker) has proved anything, it is that he has no serious objection to this Bill Actually he has no objection to the contents of this Bill at all. He merely raised a few minor points. He asked why the Minister had not consulted them and he also asked what would happen in future if during the life of a provincial council the majority in that Council changed. As far as the second point is concerned, I want to say that a majority in the provincial council can make it practically impossible for the Executive Committee to govern. That is probably a point to which the hon. the Minister will give his attention. In connection with the point raised that the Minister should have consulted the Opposition, I take it that what the hon. member wanted was a Select Committee or something of that nature. What alternative is there: Your minority group either has representation on the Executive Committee or it has not. Had the Minister decided to appoint a Select Committee, I think that Select Committee would have sat for only five minutes because the one side would have said that the minority group should have representation and the other side would have said that it should not have representation. After that they would have voted and that would have been the end of it. What consultation could there have been? There is simply no alternative. It is either one or the other. That is why the hon. member must forgive me when I say that actually he has no major objection to the Bill.

As the Minister has said this system of representation of the minority group on the Executive Committee, this system of proportional representation on the Executive Committee, was of course, introduced by the fathers of Union in the blissful hope that provincial councils which have been charged with certain specific duties concerning matters in respect of which, at the time of Union, there were really no political differences of opinion, would stand outside politics and would not be elected on a party political basis. That was why they introduced the system of proportional representation, so that all groups who had members in the Provincial Council and received sufficient support, would be represented on the Executive Committee. Originally the idea was that provincial councils would stand outside politics. But then two things happened. the first thing that happened was that ever since the first provincial council was elected they were inside politics and the political parties decided that they would take part in provincial council elections as political parties. Right from the start, therefore, provincial councils have been elected on a party political basis, just as the House of Assembly is elected. It was obvious that would happen, because the provincial councils play a part in the electoral colleges when it comes to the election of Senators, the members of the Other Place, where the Government and the Opposition want as many members as possible. The entire Constitution therefore made it impossible for provincial councils to be elected on a basis other than on a party political basis. Provincial councils have therefore never been outside politics, they could not be outside politics and there is no hope that they will ever be outside politics in future.

There is something else that has made that system obsolete, Mr. Speaker, and that is the change that has come about in the activities of the Executive Committee over the years. Originally, and that was shortly before I became a member of the Executive Committee, the position was that the Executive Committee had an agenda. That agenda together with all the memoranda were submitted to all the members of the Executive Committee. They then met for a week, or ten days, and if they had a great deal of work, for 14 days. The Administrator and the four members of the Executive Committee sat there and they dealt with every item on the agenda and jointly decided on them. That system gradually changed. The work became too much and it was divided. The Administrator attended to a certain section of the work and each member of the Executive Committee attended to another section of the work. When I became a member of the Executive Committee in the Transvaal it had not developed into a Cabinet but it was gradually following the methods of a Cabinet in doing its work, because by sitting jointly the Executive Committee simply did not have the time to dispose of all the work. What happened then? One member, say, the Administrator, gets Finance and Education; another member of the Executive Committee gets Hospitalization; another member gets Roads; another member gets Local Authorities etc. Those people only concentrate on the matter that has been entrusted to them. Decisions are no longer taken jointly. It is not as though five men sit together and decide on a matter. One person is responsible for a certain section of the work. You have a number of memoranda before you and you sit in your office, you study them and you approve of certain things beforehand. You approve of a host of things beforehand and you only submit to the Executive Committee those matters on which you are doubtful. You are placed in the impossible position where you have to approve of things in respect of which your party has a definite policy. They are placed before you and you have to make decisions. You do not carry the responsibility. As a representative of the minority group you do not impose heavier taxation. You are the person who is going to criticize the governing party in the Provincial Council if taxation is increased. But in reality you are placed in the position where you can raise the expenditure of the province. In days gone by the parties did not have definite policies in respect of a host of matters that come under the provincial councils. I think I am right when I say that the parties had policies in respect of education, but when it came to health services and roads, for example, the parties dealt with those to a great extent on a non-political basis, likewise local authorities. But in the meantime a position has developed in South Africa where the parties, both the National Party and the United Party, have formulated policies in respect of practically every question dealt with by the provincial council. As far as education is concerned their policies are to a great extent directly opposed to one another—the one party believes in its own policy and the other one believes in a totally different policy. The same applies in the case of hospitalization. There was a time when the United Party believed in completely free medical services and hospitalization, something in which the National Party did not believe. As far as the subject “local authorities” is concerned, the National Party has a very definite policy and the United Party has a definite policy. As a result of the terrific scope of the work of the provincial councils to-day you have the position where you have to place members of the Opposition in charge of a department in respect of which your party has a definite policy.

Let me relate my experiences to you, Sirl When I was a member of the Executive Committee in the Transvaal I was charged with Local Authorities and the Extra-Urban Medical Board. Both the United Party and the National Party had definite ideas on those subjects. Memoranda are submitted to me and I make certain recommendations. I know they are contrary to my party’s policy. What can I do? If I want to I can let the file lie on my table for six months and hold the matter back so that it does not go through at all and the Executive Committee will not notice it within a year’s time. Or I can try to influence the Department. I work with those officials not with the other members of the Executive Committee. I can send for the officials and tell them that I am not satisfied with the memoranda and I can try to persuade them to make a recommendation that is in conformity with the policy of my party. Personally I did what the Minister had said, and in respect of the most insignificant matter on which I had the slightest doubt, I simply closed the file and referred it to the Executive Committee. With the result that I had no work to do most of the time, because I referred every matter, no matter how minor on which I had the slightest doubt and with which I thought I could bring the governing party into discredit, to the Executive Committee because I would have regarded it as the acme of dishonesty to have abused the position where I was co-responsible for advocating the standpoint of my party. Your position simply became untenable. The result was, and the hon. the Minister knows it because he was there as well as Dr. Wassenaar and Senator Woolf, that I did not go to my office for a third of the time that the present hon. Minister and Dr. Wassenaar went to theirs because I referred every matter on which I had doubts to the Executive Committee and they accepted responsibility. But you do not always find such an honest person like myself, Sir. You may get a scoundrel there. I am not implying that hon. members opposite are scoundrels although I have my doubts about some of them. You may get somebody there who wrecks your entire administration. He can disrupt the entire administration and he can place the governing party in a very difficult position. And that happened. I shall mention a case to you Sir, in a moment, not a case where it was done deliberately, but a case where somebody differed completely from Government policy in respect of a certain matter, and that will show you to what extent a governing party can be embarrassed. So if you are an honest person like myself, the system may still work, but Heaven help you if you have a scoundrel there.

I now want to show you in what an impossible position the Administrator is placed. Take the case of Dr. Nicol who was Administrator at the time when I was a member of the Executive Committee. He was somebody who definitely tried to be as impartial as possible. He was one of the most honest people I have ever known and he had to sit there. On his one side he had such a stubborn person as Dr. Wassenaar who is almost as stubborn as the present Minister, and on his other side he had myself, a very gentle person, and next to me Dr. Woolf, not such a gentle person. We now have to appoint hospital boards. You have to make an important appointment. The governing party have their ideas and the United Party, the Opposition, have their ideas. We start to argue and we argue for hours and I look at the poor Dr. Nicol and feel deeply sorry for him because he has to decide. He has to decide every time. If he decides in one direction we say he is not impartial and if he decides in another direction the others say he is not impartial. It is not surprising, therefore Sir, that on many occasions after we had argued for about half an hour, I noticed Dr. Nicol bowing his head, closing his eyes and asking for guidance. I have seen him many a day praying as to what he should do. The trouble was that nine out of ten times where he had prayed he unfortunately voted against us, with the result that I subsequently developed an inferiority complex and thought that not only Dr. Nicol but Providence as well was against us. You place that person in an absolutely invidious position. You make it impossible for him to discharge his duties properly.

Let me mention a case to illustrate the impossible position in which the minority group is placed. Take the Language Ordinance on which the parties differed so radically. There are two members of the United Party on the Executive Committee and we have to assist in the drafting of the Language Ordinance, clause by clause. But you know that as sure as you are sitting there, in the chamber your party will force you to oppose that clause that you are now drafting! It is simply an impossible position, with the result that as far as the Language Ordinance was concerned— the drafting of which took weeks and weeks— I eventually said that I would not take part in a debate in the Executive Committee the one moment and the next moment in the same debate in the Provincial Council chamber and I simply refused to participate any further in the discussions. Your position is simply untenable. But you find the most impossible position when it comes to the Budget. The whole Executive Committee prepares the Budget. You sit there with all the data from the departments, you have all the information that the officials concerned have submitted to you and you prepare the best possible Budget, a Budget that requires, the lowest possible taxation and that provides for the best possible services. The Budget has now been drafted. I walk out, go up the stairs to the caucus room of the United Party and there I have to prove to the country that it is the worst Budget that has ever been prepared. But there is another difficulty. When you become a member of the Executive Committee you have to take an oath of secrecy and you never know what you can reveal to your caucus and what you cannot reveal. We were often faced with a humiliating and unpleasant task. They ask you in the caucus what the position is in respect of a certain matter and they want to know why this is like this and why that is like that in the Budget. You do not know what you may reveal because you are under oath of secrecy, and you often find yourself in the humiliating position of having to go to the Executive Committee and asking them whether you can reveal certain information to you caucus. I have to ask a member of the governing party, the party that will be jeopardized if I reveal certain information to my caucus, for permission to break my oath of secrecy. He feels that it will be unsporting on his part to withhold his permission but on the other hand he feels that it will not be the right thing to do. With the result that you place the governing party and the opposition party in an untenable position, and you have these conflicts where your loyalty to your party continually lands you in difficulty. Your oath of secrecy and your loyalty to your party clash with your loyalty to the Executive Committee because you form part of the Government and no matter to which party you belong you must govern as well as possible.

I now want to give as an example one of the members of the Executive Committee who was in charge of hospitalization during the time that I was there, namely, the present Senator Woolf, a brilliant fellow who probably knows more about hospitalization than most people in this country. But he believed inexorably in free hospitalization and free medical services. He accepted the Gluckman report in toto and believed that we should have the position in this country that they had in England and consequently during the time that he was in charge of hospitalization he worked in that direction, with the result that when we woke up, or when the governing party woke up, they found that hospitalization was costing them thousands and tens of thousands of pounds more than they had intended to spend on it. It was an unpleasant task to make other arrangements and to place somebody else in charge of hospitalization. If ever there was proof of how badly this system works, then that case proves it because there you had somebody in charge who had to carry out one policy but he believed in a policy totally different from the one in which the governing party believed. Eventually there was only one choice left to them and that was to give the least important work to the minority group on the Executive Committee, matters that could not give rise to any trouble. Let them deal with pounds and outspans because that cannot give rise to any trouble. That was what happened. Now the poor member of the Executive Committee is placed in a humiliating position. He knows that he does not do one-tenth of the work that the others are doing yet he receives the same remuneration and enjoys the same privileges and his position becomes untenable.

From practical experience, therefore, I want to say that the system, as it operates to-day, was originally well-intentioned. But it carried the germ of its own death within it because the provincial councils were dragged into politics through having to elect senators and it carried the germ of death within it because the parties themselves decided not to keep the provincial councils outside politics and it carried the germ of death within it, because the parties had definite policies concerning those matters in respect of which they had to draft ordinances and when it became apparent that it was impossible to leave one-half or one-third of the executive power of your province in the hands of the Opposition. It does not work effectively and that is why I am surprised that the Opposition is opposing this measure; their reasons for doing so are very minor. When you have sat there for five years, as I have, Sir, you realize that it is an unhealthy state of affairs, that the system cannot and will not work, and the sooner we change it the better.

I am sorry that the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) was not very happy in the minority in the Executive Committee. One perhaps can understand his plight, because the hon. Minister’s whole argument was based upon “how very sorry he felt when he was on that same Executive Committee, for the members who were in the minority”.

The hon. member for Vereeniging has fallen into precisely the same error so far as his approach to this Bill is concerned, as did the hon. the Minister. Both of them spoke about the failure of the provincial system, and indeed there is an awful lot to be said for that argument, an awful lot to be said for the argument that the provincial system has not achieved all that one hoped it would achieve, all that the fathers of our Constitution hoped it would achieve.

Nobody argued that the system was wrong.

When the hon. Minister spoke about this system he quoted from the Star and when he quoted from the Pretoria News, he said that the Pretoria News welcomed this long over due change in the provincial system. My submission is that this is not a change in the provincial system at all, as I shall indicate. It is a fiddling with part of the Constitution without dealing with exactly what the hon. the Minister is complaining about, namely the provincial system.

In view of the lateness of the hour, I move—

I second.

Agreed to; debate adjourned until 14 February.