I have to inform the House that it has been brought to the notice of Mr. President and myself that the silver model of the Imperial Institute, which is on display in the Parliamentary Library, is the only replica of the Institute in existence. The model was originally presented to Queen Alexandra by the City of London and formed part of the United Kingdom exhibit at the Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg in 1936. It was presented to the Union Parliament in 1937. Since then the Institute has been demolished and rebuilt as the Commonwealth Institute. Members will appreciate the great historic value the present Commonwealth Institute must in these circumstances attach to a model of the original Imperial Institute, and Mr. President and I, after consultation with our respective Committees on Internal Arrangements, have decided that the model be presented to that Institute as. a gesture of friendship and of goodwill on the part of our Parliament.

I move—

Mr. Speaker, the discussion on this motion could very easily degenerate into a bitter party political quarrel and into mutual recriminations. It could very easily degenerate to the point where hon. members on the other side say that the bad reputation which South Africa has to-day is attributable entirely to the policy of this party and to the deeds of this Government. It would be just as easy to build up a case against them and to say that the bad reputation which South Africa has abroad to-day is due to their misrepresentations and to their continual blackening of South Africa. It would be a pity, however, if it developed into that kind of debate because the object of this motion is to invite an objective discussion on the question as to how all South Africans, to whichever party or language group they belong, or to whichever colour group they may belong, can be induced to throw in their weight behind the Minister of Information and his Department so that they can give the best possible services to South Africa in the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves. I think, Mr. Speaker, that I am right in saying that this Minister of Information has perhaps the most difficult task of all the Ministers, and I think I am right in saying that the task of the Minister of Information of South Africa is perhaps more difficult than that of any Minister of Information in the whole world. I think that fact imposes a duty on all South Africans to help to defend the good name of South Africa and not to place obstacles in the Minister’s way but rather to remove those obstacles.

It is, of course, the duty of the Opposition to criticize the Minister, and it would be entirely unrealistic to expect the Opposition to shed crocodile tears if a Minister or his Department is not successful. After all, it is their duty to try to get into power, and in their case it is a very difficult task. One must therefore expect them to welcome it when Ministers make a mess of their Departments. But because this particular Department has to do with human relationships and because the success of this Department depends to such a very great extent on what is done by all South Africans, to whichever political party they may belong, I think it is their duty as far as this Department is concerned not to try to score political points against this side of the House or against the National Party. Because, Mr.. Speaker, when other Departments are a failure, the National Party is the victim but if the Department of Information is a failure, then South Africa is the victim. The political struggle in our country is a fairly bitter one, but nevertheless we have succeeded to a great extent to keep certain matters outside the party political arena. I have in mind matters such as Defence, to a large extent External Affairs, and other matters which have been kept outside the political sphere because those things have to do with the security of this country. I want to make an appeal to the Opposition to treat the Department of Information in the same way, because that Department has as much to do with the security of South Africa as the Department of Defence. Naturally, one does not expect the Opposition not to criticize the Minister of Information and his Department. But I do not think it is asking too much of them to say that in this case this criticism should be designed to help and not to destroy or to obstruct. Nobody would be so irresponsible in time of war as to criticize his Army and his Defence Force in such a way that it is going to help his country’s enemies. I think in all reasonableness we can expect that in this cold war in which we find ourselves for the survival of the White man, the Opposition, if they want to criticize, will not criticize in such a way that their criticism will help the enemies of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to-day to build up a case against the Opposition and to say that they and the English-language Press are largely responsible for South Africa’s bad reputation abroad. I shall be obliged to deal to a large extent with the role that they play in this connection, but I do not want to do so in a spirit of disparagement. The spirit in which I want to do so is to see what we can do on both sides, both language groups, to alleviate to some extent this difficult position in which South Africa finds herself. If we can succeed in inducing the Opposition and the mighty English-language Press to throw in their weight behind the Minister of Information then I think that not only can we win this cold war easily but that we can win it very convincingly.

Well, Mr. Speaker, in the first portion of my motion I congratulate the Government on the establishment of the Department of Information. I think all sides of the House would wish to endorse those congratulations. In our modern world which is becoming smaller and smaller and in which the interests of states are becoming more and more interlinked, a Department of Information is absolutely essential. With all the means of propaganda and publicity in this modern world, advertisement in some shape or form has become an inseparable part of our lives internally and externally. Just look at South Africa; there is hardly a city council of any importance which has not got its own information service. There is practically no reasonably large business which has not got its liaison officer, and so far we in South Africa have been in this position that certain large firms have been spending more on advertisements to sell their soap than South Africa has been spending on advertisements to sell our case abroad. I do not think it is necessary therefore to make out a case for the proposition that South Africa must have a Department of Information. But I want to link up my congratulations in this connection with the staff appointed by the Government to launch this Department. I think that in appointing Mr. Wennie du Plessis as Secretary of this Department, the Government made an excellent choice. I think Mr. du Plessis as an authority on Africa, with his years of experience as Ambassador in America and Canada—and I think he was also our permanent representative at UNO for some time—is probably the most suitable person that the Government could find for that work. Mr. du Plessis is assisted by Mr. Piet Meiring, and, Mr. Speaker, I think we can make use of this opportunity to congratulate Mr. Meiring and his Division of Information, as it has been known hitherto, on the brilliant work that they have done under very difficult circumstances.

What are the Minister’s qualifications?

Because, Mr. Speaker, I want to say this here to-day that with little money and under very difficult circumstances Mr. Piet Meiring and his staff have done this work as well as anybody else could have done it. Then there is Mr. Chris Prinsloo with his years of experience in the Department of Information and the Department of Bantu Administration. I think no better appointment could have been made. And then I want to comply with the request of the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) and heartily congratulate the Prime Minister and the Government on their choice of the Minister of Information. Mr. Speaker, I have known him a long time and I have worked in very close association with him. What makes him the right person for this job is the fact, in the first place, that he has business sense, that he has a deep knowledge of human nature, together with the fact that he is such a balanced person. This is not a job for a muddle-head like the hon. member for Orange Grove, for example. It is a job for a balanced person, for a rational person. But the best qualification that the Minister of Information has for his job is his absolutely unimpeachable patriotism.

Hear, hear!

In this connection, before I come to what I regard as the duty of the Department of Information, I just want to say that we have entrusted an enormous task to these people and it would be a pity if they were restricted in their activities through shortage of funds. I would appeal to the hon. the Minister of Finance therefore to be as sympathetic as possible when dealing with the requirements and the requests of this Department.

Mr. Speaker, as I see it, the Department of Information has two great tasks. In the first place, it has an internal task and in the second place an external task. This internal task is to do everything they can to place the relationships between White and non-White in South Africa on as harmonious a footing as possible. Their external task is to put over the best and the most sympathetic image of South Africa to the outside world. It is difficult for me to say which of these two tasks is going to be the most important. But I want to say that if they are able to accomplish their first task with success, namely to help to place the relationships between White and non-White on a better and more favourable footing, then their second task will be much easier. As far as their first task is concerned, the relationships between the White and non-White, I am going to confine myself mainly or almost exclusively to the relationship between the Whites and the Bantu, not because I regard the other relationships as being of lesser importance but because my time is short and because the same principles and factors which determine the relationships between the Whites and the Bantu also apply to other non-White relationships. As I see it, there are three important things that the Department of Information has to do in connection with this internal task. The first is to convince the Bantu that the White man of South Africa is his friend and not his enemy, his protector and not his oppressor. Its second task is to convince the Bantu that the traditional policy of South Africa is just as much in the interests of the Bantu as it is in the interests of the Whites. And, Mr. Speaker, when I talk about the traditional policy of South Africa, I refer to the traditional policy of separation which underlies both the policy of the National Party and that of the United Party. We have to convince the Bantu that the policy of separation means that he will be able to develop in an orderly fashion to full-fledged economic and political status without interfering with the White man’s economic and political status. I think we can settle the ultimate difference between ourselves and the United Party amongst us Whites without dragging in the Bantu. The third task of the Department of Information will be to convince the Bantu that there is no salvation for him in substituting a Bantu Government for the White Government, as so fervently desired by Luthuli and other agitators in South Africa. We have to convince the Bantu that such a thing would lead not only to the downfall of the White man but to the greatest misery for the Bantu himself. And, Mr. Speaker, it need not be difficult for us, enormous though this task may seem, to convince the Bantu of that, because all the facts are on our side. It should not be difficult for us to convince the Bantu that the White man is not his enemy. It ought to be easy for us to prove to him that the position of the Bantu amongst the Whites in this country is much more favourable than the position of the Bantu in any other part of the world; to prove to him that in this country he has a higher income, better medical services, better education, etc., and to prove to him that no State, no Government, no group of people, that does these things can be his enemy but that they are in fact his friends. It ought to be easy to convince the Bantu that there is no salvation to be found for him in overthrowing the White Government, as desired by Luthuli and others; we need only refer him to the Congo. It should not be difficult to convince the Bantu that he will be able to attain full-fledge political and economic status, particularly after the Prime Minister’s announcement of the Transkeian plan.

Why then does this task appear to us to be so enormous and sometimes almost impossible? It is not because the facts do not support us; it is not because we have not got the right case with which we can convince the Bantu but, Mr. Speaker, the difficulty is this. The reason why we apparently cannot succeed is because there is an overwhelming number of channels of information reaching the Bantu which are in the hands of persons who are absolutely hostile to this idea of separation and who are apparently not anxious to bring about harmony between White and Black in South Africa. What determines the way of thinking of the Bantu? I have done a little research into this matter and I find that the things which determine the Bantu’s way of thinking, in order of importance, are the following; the Press, the spoken word, the radio, the church, the schools, the universities and the cinema. For the purpose of this debate I am going to confine myself to the role of the Press and the radio. Mr. Speaker, in this connection the English-language Press and the Bantu Press play an overwhelming role. The vast majority of newspapers and magazines which determine the way of thinking of the Bantu are, as I have said, in the hands of persons who do not believe in the idea of separation and this constitutes the vast bulk of the propaganda that reaches the Bantu. I just want to give the House two figures so as to give hon. members some idea of the overwhelming nature of the propaganda that is hostile to the idea of separation and that reaches the Bantu as against the amount of propaganda that is favourably disposed to the idea of separation. Over a period of a month 4,200,000 newspapers and magazines which present the White man as an oppressor, which are hostile to the idea of separation and which give sympathetic publicity to those who wish to overthrow the Government of the Whites come into the hands of the Bantu. On the other hand, 261,000 documents—a few Bantu newspapers and all the publications of the Information Division of the Department of Bantu Administration—which are favourably disposed towards the idea of separation come into the hands of the Bantu over a period of a month. In other words, over a month we have 4,000,000 more documents which are hostile to the idea of separation than documents which are favourably disposed to the idea of separation, and the overwhelming factor in this whole situation is the English-language Press.

It is because of this that a tremendous responsibility rests on those who are responsible for this. Because of the fact that the English-language Press is such a mighty factor in determining the way of thinking of the Bantu, an enormous responsibility rests on the English-language newspapers and it will depend on them whether the Bantu regards the White man as a friend or as an oppressor. It will depend on them whether the Bantu wants to overthrow the White Government or whether he wants to develop together with us towards full status. I must say that the role which the English-language Press has played in this matter hitherto, to say the least of it, is very disturbing. The truth of the matter is that they have always unfairly presented the idea of separation, and particularly the policy of this Government, to the Bantu as a policy of oppression; I say that they have unfairly and unreasonably held it out as a policy of oppression under which the Bantu cannot expect salvation. Let me mention two examples. Take the question of influx control and the question of reference books. We all know, to whichever party we may belong, that it is absolutely essential for the effective maintenance of order in South Africa, that it is absolutely essential for the salvation of the White man, but that it is equally essential for the salvation of the Black man; we know that without this reference book system, without influx control, the Bantu will find himself in the greatest misery. And, Mr. Speaker, the English-language Press knows that, the Opposition knows it and everybody knows it. Why then present this system of influx control and reference books which can be interpreted so cruelly if one wants to do so, to the world and to the Bantu as an instrument to oppress him instead of what it is, an instrument for his salvation. The other example that I want to mention is this. We recall the debate which took place in this House some years ago on the removal of Sophia-town and the establishment of Meadowlands. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that step was held out as the most gross oppression of and the greatest cruelty towards the Bantu; that it was presented as a measure of oppression to such an extent that everybody expected that there would be bloodshed when these people were moved, and that on the day they were moved, British and numerous foreign correspondents—there were more than 200 of them—went there to see to what extent there would be bloodshed. Well, there was no bloodshed. All that happened was that Meadow-lands was established, a town which to-day is a model town and the best Bantu residential area in the whole of Africa and perhaps in the whole world. Mr. Speaker, what is the motive of these people, what is their philosophy and what is their object in presenting these things to the Bantu in this way? The English-language Press in South Africa has unfortunately manipulated itself into this position that it has become the mouthpiece of every agitator in South Africa, the mouthpiece of every agitator who seeks to overthrow the White Government. It has become the mouthpiece of Mandela, Subokwe, Luthuli, Michael Scott, Huddlestone, Alan Paton and all those people. And, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that if the English-language Press carries on in this fashion, they will make the task of the Minister and the Department of Information very difficult, if not impossible. The Press has now drawn up a code for itself. One article in that code reads as follows—

If this brings us to the eve of the day when this is in fact going to be done by the English-language Press with its enormous influence amongst the Bantu, then I visualize a very rosy future for South Africa, a very rosy future for the survival of the White man and harmonious relationships between White and Bantu.

Mr. Speaker, we have now arrived at the point where we should ask ourselves, or where the English-language Press should ask itself, whether the time has not come when it should reconsider the role played by it in this cold war in which South Africa finds herself engaged. Because, Mr. Speaker, it is no longer a question of ousting from power one political party or putting another political party into power. It has now become a question of the survival of the White man in South Africa. Enormous forces are being ranged against South Africa both internally and externally, and it is perfectly clear what they demand for South Africa; they want one thing only—that is what faces us and that is the crux of the matter—they want a system of “one man one vote” in South Africa. If there is any doubt in this regard, let me read out to the House what Nkomo, the nationalistic Black leader of Rhodesia, said—

We must realize and the English-language Press must realize precisely what the nature is of this cold war that is going on in South Africa and they must realize that we have reached a stage where South Africa’s most deadly enemy—and when I say “South Africa”, I refer not only to the White man but to all races—is the person who pleads for “one man one vote”. The English-language Press must realize that whether it be UNO or whether it be Luthuli, those people are South Africa’s enemies, that they are just as much South Africa’s enemies as people who want to attack South Africa by force of arms. Because we must realize that if this system of “one man one vote” is forced upon us, it will cause just as much destruction in South Africa as would be caused if we became involved in a hot war and if we lost that war. Is the English-language Press fighting those people? No, it gives them the most sympathetic publicity at all times. Look at the sympathetic publicity that it gave Luthuli’s book, which makes one of the most venomous and most unfair attacks on the position of the White man, which makes the most unjustified attack on the position of the White man in South Africa. But in the Cape Times, the Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail the book is praised as an outstanding work, and the most sympathetic publicity is given to it. I want to make an appeal to-day to the English-language Press; I want to make an appeal to owners of the English-language Press to side openly with South Africa in this cold war. I want them openly to declare as our enemies all those who plead for “one man one vote” in South Africa. I want them to throw in their weight openly behind the Minister of Information and the Department of Information. Nobody is asking them not to criticize; we only ask them to give the Bantu a fair image of the White man and to give the outside, world a fair image of South Africa.

I have dealt at length with the English-language Press, but I have done so because of their enormous influence. The English-language Press is the most powerful factor in this struggle to maintain harmonious relationships between White and non-White and to restore our good name abroad. I am inclined to say that they constitute 80 per cent of this factor. The means which the Minister has at his disposal, apart from that mighty channel for propaganda, are very meagre indeed. What means has the Minister at his disposal? In the first place, he has the Bantu Information Service with its publications and its Information Officers. But because of lack of funds and lack of staff it is very small, and all I can do here is to plead for a considerable expansion of that service. In this connection I also want to break a lance for those who have had the courage to establish Bantu newspapers and who are favourably disposed to the idea of separation. I have in mind the Dagbreekpers with its Bona, and a new organization which is trying to establish a Bantu daily. I think they deserve the support of all well-disposed people and of all Whites in South Africa. Then I want to express this opinion: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the time has not come when all the Afrikaans newspapers or publishers should get together to see what role they can play in establishing newspapers and magazines for the Bantu; because I think this is an enormous task, and we can no longer leave the shaping of Bantu opinion to the mercy of those people who are hostile to the idea of separation and to the mercy of those people who apparently would not mind if the White Government came to a fall. I feel therefore that the Afrikaans Press could play a very important role in this connection. But, Mr. Speaker, it would require a great deal of courage and ingenuity and it would cost a great deal of money. I do not think, however, that they lack either the funds, the courage or the ingenuity.

The other important weapon which the Minister has at his disposal, or which he will have in the future, is the radio. I understand that there will be a full-time Bantu radio service in the near future, and it is anticipated that shortly thereafter there will be four full-time Bantu radio services. I want to make an appeal to the Minister to use this powerful weapon, in co-operation with the S.A.B.C., as much as we can and as much as is necessary so as to make the Bantu realize that the policy we are following here is in his interests just as much as it is in the interests of the White man. I know there will be another row and that they will say the Minister misuses the radio to make propaganda, but he need not worry about that. In time of war the radio is used to support the war effort, and in this cold war the radio must be used to support South Africa, and morally there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it would be criminal negligence if the Minister did not do so, because in this cold war it is absolutely essential for us to get the Bantu on our side and to use all possible means to achieve that end. Because if we succeed in getting the Bantu on our side and get him also to tell the world to leave us alone, so that we can solve our own problems, half the battle will have been won.

I want to conclude my remarks in regard to this portion of the task the Minister of Information has in this country. It is a task which he cannot perform alone. It is a task which all South Africans must perform. It is a task which it is imperative for us to perform if we want the White man to survive in South Africa. I appeal to all bodies and sections to support the Minister.

The second task of the Minister of Information is to give the world the most sympathetic picture of South Africa. Now, it seems to me that before we can succeed in giving them the most sympathetic picture we must clearly understand what our problem actually is, and in the first place we must face the fact that South Africa to-day is a hated country and that we are almost without any friends at all. We must ascertain why that is so, as without knowing that it will be very difficult for us to tackle this task. The Opposition is always so quick to say that it is the policy of this Government which has landed South Africa in this position. Mr. Speaker, that is the most superficial analysis of the matter and is quite ridiculous. Irrespective of whatever Government were in power to-day. whether it be the United Party or even the Progressive Party, our position would be precisely the same. Because these people are not opposed to our policy of apartheid. They are opposed to all forms of racial discrimination, also against the discrimination which that party will apply if they come into power. They will be satisfied with one government only, and that is the government of Luthuli. History has shown that. The first attacks on South Africa were not made under this Government, but under General Smuts, one of the founders of UN, and who in those days was beloved by the whole Western world. It was at UN that India first launched its attacks on General Smuts and forced through resolutions despite his pleas.

But let us look at Rhodesia. They say it is our policy which has landed us in this difficult position, but Rhodesia is following precisely the opposite policy. They do not have apartheid, but a policy of partnership. They do not discriminate on the ground of colour. They try to eliminate all forms of discrimination. Has that stopped the Afro-Asian nations from passing a resolution at UN against Rhodesia with an overwhelming majority? We should not be so superficial as to say that it is the policy of the Government which is responsible for the South African position. All the facts are against it. The hard fact of the matter is that not only is the rest of the world against all forms of discrimination, but as far as the Afro-Asian countries are concerned their trouble is that they actually do not want the White man to be in any part of Africa. Therefore it seems to me to be an impossible task and one which we should not even attempt, and we should not waste even one cent in trying to convince the Afro-Asian countries, with laudable exceptions, and the leftists in America, Europe and England that our policy is right and in creating a better picture of South Africa in their minds, because we simply will not succeed. All those people are opposed to the presence of the White man in Africa. But in America, England and Europe there is a tremendous reservoir of goodwill towards South Africa and towards the White man here, and there are many people who want to see the position of the White man maintained here. We should not only try to retain their goodwill, but we should try to expand that reservoir. And I do not think that task will be so difficult, because increasingly more people in America, Europe and England are becoming increasingly disillusioned with affairs as they are developing in Africa and at UN.

But there is a serious duty resting on the Government, on the Opposition, on the Press and on all of us to do nothing which might poison that reservoir of goodwill towards South Africa. The Government has a bounden duty in that regard. Of course the Government cannot allow those people to tell it how to govern the country, but from time to time incidents occur which certainly do not facilitate the work of the Minister of Information. All of us, the Government, and all bodies and individuals have a duty as far as possible to prevent and eliminate such incidents. There are people in South Africa who will simply have to realize that more serious issues are at stake than their own personal feelings. But on the other hand it is not necessary to exaggerate every incident out of all proportion either, and it is not necessary to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. In passing I would just like to mention to those newspapers which recently so grossly exaggerated certain incidents, that they did not utter a word of protest when a number of Coloured agitators walked from café to café in Cape Town some time ago in trying to cause incidents. But that does still not relieve us of the duty of trying to prevent such incidents taking place.

In painting this picture of South Africa abroad, a tremendous responsibility rests upon the Government, but an even greater responsibility rests upon the Opposition and the English Press, for the simple reason that this is one sphere in which they have more influence than the Government. Everything that is said by the Prime Minister and by the Minister of Information is regarded as disputable right from the start and is regarded as prejudiced and as the defence of an indefensible policy. But the Leader of the Opposition has a much more influential and a louder voice than the Government in the outside world, and particularly in Britain. I am afraid that the Opposition hitherto has played a very unpatriotic role in this regard. One does not blame the Opposition for criticizing and sharply censuring the Government, but what I do blame them for is that they always attach the most extreme and most malicious interpretations to every piece of legislation and every deed of omission or commission of the Government. Not only that, but I want to make the statement, and prove it, that matters are misinterpreted in a way which can only be done by an enemy of South Africa.

I want to mention a few examples. I want to mention the so-called “church clause”— a misnomer. Everybody in this country knows that this church clause was no more than a measure to regulate religious practices in an orderly and peaceful manner, without the risk of demonstrations being held and unpleasant incidents taking place. We all know for how long that Act has been on the Statute Book already, and not a single person has been wronged by it yet. We all know that it was merely an internal arrangement, but how did the Opposition represent it to the world? They misrepresented it as an interference with the church and religious freedom. And they know that there is no country in the world where there is more religious freedom than in South Africa. But they grasp at such an innocuous little thing in order to tell the world that it is interference with religious freedom, something which is abhorred right throughout the world.

Take the reaction of the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. S. J. M. Steyn) to the Transkei plan. Nobody blames him for not agreeing with it and for condemning it in no uncertain terms and saying that it cannot work and that it contains within it a great danger to South Africa. But what is his reaction? He says it is a deliberate bluff and a fraud in order to maintain White domination in South Africa. Can anything condemn us more in the eyes of the world than that?

That is not what he said.

Those are the exact words he used in a newspaper article, that it is a deliberate bluff and a fraud to maintain White domination. If such an influential member of the United Party says it, that is the picture the world must get of South Africa, not that this Transkeian policy is a foolish but sincere attempt to solve the problem, but a deliberate fraud to keep the White man the master and the Bantu in a state of subordination. It is not the truth, and I say only an enemy of South Africa could attach such an interpretation to it.

The other day we listened to a speech by the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell). I just want to quote a few extracts from that speech. It is a pity the hon. member is not here now, because I think he himself will be ashamed to-day of what he said. I just want to quote this—

Of course he knows that is not true. Of course he knows he is just as free as any other White man in South Africa or anywhere else in the world. Why must he tell the world democracy is disappearing? Then he says, further—

Nothing can make us more contemptible in the eyes of the world than to say that we believe that the White man is inherently and in every other respect the superior of the Black man. There is, in fact, nobody in South Africa who believes that. Why paint this picture to the world? He also says—

We are trying our utmost to regulate this matter as well as possible so that we can get away from discrimination, but he has to tell the world that the only basis of contact we allow between White and non-White is as master and servant. Surely that is not the correct picture of South Africa or of what the Government is doing. It is a distorted picture. Therefore, I say that this is a picture which only an enemy of South Africa could paint for the outside world. He says—

That is not true, but now we come to the grossest one of all—

Mr. Speaker, can one paint a worse picture of South Africa abroad than to say that we are treating the Bantu as Hitler treated the Jews, particularly now that the Eichmann trial is in progress? Is that not the inevitable impression which is created abroad, that we are not only oppressing the Bantu, but are also exterminating them, as was said at UN, that we are exterminating the Bantu in South West Africa? I ask the hon. member for Turffontein, who interjected a moment ago: What is the object of creating this picture of South Africa abroad? How do they think the Minister of Information can succeed in painting a more favourable picture if their frontbenchers say the Government is treating the Black people in the same way that Hitler treated the Jews? Thousands of people fought and sacrificed their lives because Hitler treated the Jews in that way. Is that the idea they want to create against South Africa in the mind of the world? Therefore, I say that the role they have played hitherto is at the very least a very unpatriotic role, and I want to make an appeal to the Opposition to stop doing this and to throw in their weight with the new Department of Information.

When I come to the English Press I can only say that the role played by them overseas in this connection is simply shocking. I immediately want to give a few examples. I want to quote from the Burger with reference to the announcement about the Transkei—

I do not mind if he thinks it is nonsense and that it will not work, but does he also think it is deliberate fraud on the part of the Government in order to oppress the Bantu? Is that the picture he wants the world to have? If he wants to paint a better picture of South Africa abroad, is that the sort of article he will write? But I want to quote from a leading article in the Cape Times published some days ago—

I am not going to react to it. I am going to give the reaction of the Burger to it, because it was stated so brilliantly—

I say those people do not try to give a correct picture of South Africa; they try to give the worst possible picture, and they distort everything in order to give that picture. I just want to read what Stanley Uys said—

Is he still in this House?

I have the greatest contempt for the man, but unfortunately he has great influence through the mighty Press he serves and the wide contacts he has overseas—

Note “its political opponents”—

Mr. Speaker, can there be greater treason than this? I want the hon. member for Turffontein to tell me whether he agrees with this passage that political opponents of this Government are banned, as he said, “and there they must lie and rot”. Of course he knows it is not true. Of course he knows that this treatment is meted out to communists, people who want to disrupt the good order in the country, people who in any other country would be subjected to similar punishment.

I want to read what appeared in the Sunday Times last Sunday about the banning of Adv. Slovo. This is what they say—

They do not say that he was banned because he is a communist. The picture is painted that Mr. Slovo was banned because he appeared for the defence in a few cases “involving political offences and loss of civil rights”. Therefore, if someone wants to prevent “loss of civil rights”, the Government bans him. So I can continue to give examples. There is the notorious case of the “miner aged 13”, where the world was told that this young Bantu of 13 worked underground for £4 a month, whereas the facts are that he is 18, has never worked underground and does not earn only £4 a month. I must, however, mention one other matter which appeared in the Sunday Times last Sunday or the week before. There is a certain Mr. Staal, who worked in the planetarium. Now the Sunday Times says, under large headlines: “Planetarium boss lashes out at South Africa”, and then they say Mr. Staal is the head of the planetarium; he is a very influential and highly educated man, and then they go on to use the most hateful language against the Afrikaner and against South Africa in order that the world should believe this story, and if they believe it I do not blame them for wanting to boycott us and refusing to trade with us or to sell weapons to us. If that is the picture they have of South Africa they must necessarily want to destroy us. Here Mr. Staal is described as a very influential man, but who is this Mr. Staal? Another newspaper investigated the matter and he is not the “boss” of the planetarium, but only worked there for a few months. Dr. Bleksley was compelled to say that they would be obliged to dismiss him if he did not stop being so obnoxious, and everybody knows that Dr. Bleksley is not a supporter of this Government. And Mr. Staal is not an astronomer with 20 years’ experience. Investigations were made in London. He has only 18 months’ experience. The Sunday Times could just as well have taken a man off the street, because there are thousands of people who will talk about South Africa in that way, but just because this man vilified South Africa they present him as a very learned man, merely in order to give greater weight to his untruths.

Then there is the well-known case of the young Bantu who told the story that, from the age of 12, he was for ten years a prisoner on a farm and was made to work like a slave, but then it was discovered that he was a fugitive from justice and that there was not a word of truth in his story, but the Star published it in big headlines and it was sent overseas. I ask in all seriousness how the Minister of Information can succeed in painting a better picture of South Africa when people who have more influence overseas than he has do such things? And I make no secret of the fact that the Star and the owners and editors of the English newspapers have much greater influence overseas than even the Minister and his Department or the Prime Minister and the whole of his Government. The news the outside world gets from us it gets through the English Press and, as the Press Commission said, the English language and the English Press is the window through which the outside world surveys us. That is the case 90 per cent of the time. If they paint these false pictures of South Africa, what chance has the Minister of Information? Mr. Speaker, one reaches a point where criticism stops and treason starts, and the English Press too often exceeds that point. Nobody objects if they want to change the Government in South Africa. Nobody will object if they want to change drivers, but what we object to is that they are prepared to send the car over the precipice in order to get rid of the driver. Then it is no longer criticism; then it is enmity towards South Africa, and treason.

Before I sit down it is my duty to pay tribute—the picture is not quite so black—to those thousands and tens of thousands of English-speaking people who go out of their way to defend South Africa’s good name abroad. I want to refer to men like Sir Francis de Guingand and Lord Fraser, influential people, who certainly do not agree with this Government, but who go out of their way to paint the correct picture of South Africa. I want to pay tribute to the S.A. Foundation, which spends thousands of pounds of their own money, not because they agree with the Government—I think 90 per cent of them oppose the Government—but they do this patriotic work and they do their best to paint the most favourable picture of our country overseas. I pay tribute to those people, and if the Opposition and the English Press can be imbued with the spirit of the S.A. Foundation, I say that within a year there will be quite a different picture of South Africa overseas, and I have not the least doubt that we will receive more sympathetic treatment from the world and at UNO. This Minister and his Department have a tremendous task to perform, and it is one which they cannot perform alone. They need the assistance of the Government, of the Opposition, of the English Press, of the Afrikaans Press, of English as well as Afrikaansspeaking people, of Nationalists and United Party supporters, of Whites and of non-Whites. It is not asking too much that, in this position in which South Africa finds itself, the whole of the White population should try in the first place to gain the goodwill of the non-Whites, and secondly to throw in their weight behind the Minister and his Department in order to display the best possible picture of South Africa in these difficult times. It is not only desirable and our duty to do so; it is the only thing which must happen if we want to save South Africa, and we will save her.

I second and I wish to congratulate the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) on his good fortune in getting the opportunity to-day of introducing this motion, but I want to congratulate him even more on the subject which he has chosen for his motion. If there is one burning question in South Africa to-day, it is the question of the injury which South Africa is suffering as a result of incomplete and distorted information. We have reached the stage where it is the bounden duty of the Government to exert itself to the utmost in an attempt to remedy this position, and we will require the support of every South African in that attempt. That is why it is as well that we discuss this matter. I also want to congratulate the hon. member for Vereeniging on the way he has presented his case. For me to congratulate such an experienced and talented speaker as the hon. member for Vereeniging on his speech, is perhaps like Shakespeare who said “to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet”. I want to congratulate him on the brilliant way in which he has presented his case.

At the outset I want to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. member for Vereeniging in connection with the staff that has been recruited for this Department, from the Minister down to all the other persons he has mentioned. It cannot be otherwise but that the ability, experience and devotion to duty of these people must bring about a change for the better in the situation, and I want to associate myself heartily with him where he wished them success in their task.

In establishing a Department of Information the Government is creating a method by which it can govern more positively but the object is more particularly to create a method by which South Africa’s case can be stated correctly overseas. This step which the Government has taken, is a sign, an indication to the people of South Africa of the serious light in which the Government regards this matter. Many of the big nations of the world —America, Britain, Germany—do not have Departments of Information. They have extensive information services, but they have no departments of information, and the mere fact that we in South Africa as a smaller nation have found it necessary to establish a Department of Information, must indicate to everybody in this country in what a serious light the Government regards this matter. That is why it was a good thing that in the second part of his motion the mover made an appeal to all South Afrcians to be serious about this matter. We are dealing here with a national question in the fullest sense of the word, and we are entitled to appeal to every citizen of South Africa to give an account of the patriotic demands which South African citizenship places on him. That is why I feel called upon to touch upon the factors which have determined our attitude towards publicity in the past and the factors that have given rise to the present state of affairs. I do not think I am wrong when I say that until quite recently South Africa has been somewhat indifferent to the views and opinions of other nations with the result that we have not done a great deal to introduce ourselves overseas. This partial indifference on our part has often been attributed to an inclination towards isolationism, as though we were deliberately trying to isolate ourselves or as though isolation was our definite aim. That, of course, is a misconception. Had we shown signs of wanting to isolate ourselves or if we have—which I agree may be the position—that should perhaps be attributed to some extent to a long history of endeavours to get away from colonial government and the way in which we and our motives have been misunderstood in that process. I believe that to some extent we may have developed an acquired indifference as a result of the way in which our case has been treated abroad. But I believe there were other factors which weighed much more and which exercised a greater influence on this attitude of ours. We should much rather look for the reasons for any sign of indifference towards the opinion of other nations and towards developments abroad, in the peculiar way in which we have become established in this distant part of the world as a nation. Two-thirds of our country is surrounded by miles and miles of sea water separating us from those nations who are our kindred spirits, whereas physically we are on the doorstep of people from whom we are thousands of miles removed spiritually. This geographic—you can call it national— loneliness caused an Afrikaans poet, Van Wyk Louw, with poetic appreciation of South Africa, to call out: “wys en droewe land, alleen onder die groot suidersterre” (wide and sad country, alone under the big southern stars). This loneliness—call it isolation if you want to—is not simply a national characteristic of our nation, much less is it an attitude which we adopt deliberately, or a conscious desire. It is the result of our acceptance of this piece of Africa as our fatherland and in the past our strength has often been in that separateness. But there may be times, and I believe the present is such a time, when it is indeed also our weakness. Relatively speaking, the British in their geographical separateness, have displayed the same characteristics as far as those beyond their borders are concerned, at times to their own great detriment. When you read the debates which took place in the House of Commons in 1938, Sir, you will realize how concerned all political parties in Britain were about the position which obtained then. Till late in the first half of this century the Americans had still been known for their isolationist tendencies. As recently as 1947, 15 years ago, the House of Representatives wanted to delete the entire item for the foreign information programme of their State Department from their budget. They did not want to have anything to do with such a programme and it was with great difficulty that the item was not deleted. I maintain that this tendency towards indifference, towards the opinions of other nations and towards developments in other countries, is in normal circumstances, an inevitable characteristic of a nation which is as isolated as we are.

There is another factor which has contributed towards this attitude on our part, this partial indifference. One factor is the isolated position in which we found ourselves within the Commonwealth; throughout our membership of the Commonwealth our entire world was more or less limited to the older members of the Commonwealth. We concentrated mainly, practically exclusively on those older members of the Commonwealth as far as trade and communications were concerned. Our entire world was limited and in addition to that, even in that position where we had those associations with those older Commonwealth nations, no conscious attempt was made, not even in those countries, to give them an honest and clear picture of South Africa. Together with that we should also remember that in the past our contact with Africa and Asia was mainly via Britain and Europe, something which caused great disruption in our communication with those countries when the process of doing away with colonialism started after the last world war. All these factors have developed within us what you may call an indifferent attitude towards the opinions of and developments in countries abroad with the result that we made no serious attempts to introduce ourselves.

But the result of this indifference was that there was an open field for propaganda against South Africa, an open field for misrepresentation and fantastic distortions. People in general knew so little about South Africa that nothing that was said about South Africa in countries abroad was really doubted with any authority. Only the year before last there were a few Americans and a Canadian in Cape Town who often used to tell me that one of their biggest surprises when they arrived here was to find that the non-Whites did indeed wear clothes and did not only wear a chain round their necks with a number on their chest. There was a time when we would have smiled at anything like that, when we would have treated that as a joke which one person has played on another by misinforming him to that extent, but that time is past. The entire nation should realize that time is past. It is no longer possible to attribute the misconceptions which exist abroad about South Africa to innocent fun. All the misrepresentations which is spread and which exists overseas about South Africa form a neat pattern of malice to which there are all sorts of contributions. We must not underestimate the results that flow from this propaganda against South Africa, this misrepresentation of the situation. People get conditioned. They get conditioned to accept certain slogans, and once they have accepted them, the next stage is not very far removed where even the informed people and people of standing accept those slogans and propaganda and offer them as prevailing opinion. In this respect I want to mention Mr. Mennen Williams as an example, somebody who holds a high position in the American State Department, who came here and said “Africa for the Africans”, and in doing that coined a propaganda slogan which he offered as policy. I do not even want to say anything about that gentleman. I can mention the London Times as another example. Only the other day the London Times referred to the Whites of South Africa as “a little pocket of White men”, as though that statement reflected the true position, as though the White people of South Africa constituted a loose bundle which could be picked up and removed. When the stage is reached where an authoritative newspaper like the Times says anything like that without being taken to task by the people of that country, that a person like Mr. Mennen Williams says the things which he has said, we should realize how far the position has already developed. There are many examples to indicate the scale on which these things are taking place, but I do not want to weary the House with them. I just want to give you one example, Sir, but before doing so I want to say this: I do not believe that the British people hate the White people of South Africa. As a matter of fact there is a great measure of goodwill between the two White nations, as has been abundantly proved during the past year. But this is what a responsible and level-headed person said a year or so ago. I want to read from the Pretoria News of 1 July 1960—

That is very clear language, Sir. This is not the sort of thing one likes to quote, but it is necessary that these things are repeated here so that we will realize what the situation is in the world with which we have to contend, that is the situation which we have to analyse, that is the apparition that we have to fight. And when we do so—and when I say “we” I am talking about we on this side, of the Opposition, of every citizen in this country, of every association in this country, of every newspaper in this country—when we try to analyse this situation and to handle it, we must do so with a view to the situation which prevails in South Africa to-day, to the world political situation. I do not want to expound at length on that but I want to describe it briefly, and in order to do so I turn to what the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. S. J. M. Steyn), who is not here unfortunately, wrote the other day, because by referring to his attitude to the matter, I want to show that we look at this question in the same light and that we will have to act together against this threat. This is what the hon. member for Yeoville wrote in the Cape Argus on 22 February of last year. He said this—

The hon. member for Yeoville says that the Afro-Asian bloc, backed by the communist bloc, is determined to destroy the White man’s political power in South Africa and they want to do so by trying to prevent the Western nations from coming to the assistance of South Africa. That is the one side of the matter. The other side is that, with the assistance of the British Press, the very situation is being created where the Western nations find it impossible to support South Africa. This statement by the hon. member for Yeoville and that of the hon. the Minister of Lands, reflect the essence of the problem which confronts our information service to-day; those are the things which determine the scope and the urgency of the task confronting our information service to-day. We have the Department of Information; we have the S.A. Foundation; we have many people who act individually, but the broad basis of any country’s information system is its Press. The broad basis of the information system of the world are the International Press agencies, and let me say this at once: I want to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. member for Vereeniging: without the positive co-operation of the largest section of the Press in South Africa, any contribution by the Department of Information, any contribution by the S.A. Foundation, any contribution by any citizen of this country, will remain half a contribution.

What are you insinuating? Can you state it clearer?

It is not necessary for me to state it clearer to the hon. member. I can spend my time more beneficially than to teach him this morning.

I have referred to the statements of the hon. the Minister of Lands when he spoke about the stream of poison which had its origin in Britain. I have referred to the years when we had to communicate with the world via Britain. The sources which feed the British newspapers with news about South Africa are the newspapermen of the English-language Press in South Africa and the South African Press Association. Those are the two sources which are mainly responsible for the dissemination of news from South Africa in Britain. from where Reuter disseminates it further. I want to read a short extract from the first volume of the Press Commission Report. It says the following about Sapa and the dissemination of news to Reuter—

It says the following as far as the sending of news to other Press agencies is concerned—

That Report contains many more facts which lead one to an irresistible conclusion and that is that the world outside is dependent for its information about South Africa mainly on those connected with the English-language Press in South Africa. I believe that this situation places a responsibility on the English-language newspaper in South Africa and on Sapa which is as big a responsibility as any that can be placed on anybody—the responsibility of developing a feeling of goodwill and understanding amongst the people of the world towards the inhabitants of this country; the responsibility of acting in such a way in dangerous times that you will bring the greatest possible measure of safety and advantage to your country. Where that is the source of information about South Africa, and in the light of what the Minister of Lands has said, in the light of what the Press Commission says in its Report, the question is not only how little or how much the English-language newspapermen have done in South Africa to combat this situation in the world, but how much they themselves have contributed to this feeling of ill-will. That is a question, as the hon. member for Vereeniging has said, which is always lightly disposed of by putting the blame for the bad publicity we have overseas, on the shoulders of the Government and Government policy. But you cannot dispose of it in that way. We know that the Government cannot satisfy world opinion as reflected at UNO and ensure that there is security and order and prosperity in South Africa at the same time. It can only do one of those two things, and any Government in South Africa will be in the same position. It will have to decide whether it will satisfy UNO or whether it wants to have security and order and prosperity in South Africa. I say that we cannot do both and we have finally, and always, chosen to ensure security and order and prosperity in South Africa. That is why we will always be criticized and that is why we will always have a certain measure of bad publicity overseas. That is unavoidable: but what we cannot get away from is the fact that there is a stream of poison against South Africa from South Africa on the pretence that the Government is to blame. That is the matter about which the English-language Press and Sapa should worry in South Africa. When I talk about the English-language Press I mean literally the whole Press: those in control, those who manage, and the editorial staff of each one of those newspapers. Individual newspapermen who are also guilty of this sort of thing cannot get away from their responsibility and their liability towards the rest of South Africa, but what is more important is the liability of the directors of the newspaper companies concerned. According to the Report of the Press Commission there is a mere handful of them. Most of them are deeply concerned with the mining industry in South Africa. According to Mr. Morris Broughton, a former editor of the Cape Argus, there are less than ten people who determine the policy of the Press. I want to read to you, Sir, what he says in his book “Press—Politics in South Africa”. He says they are able to give specific instructions to those newspapers. He said the following on page 23—

On page 83 he says further—

Where we have to accept that the position is, that a mere handful of people control the English language Press, people who have great influence with Sapa via the English language Press, you ask yourself this question, Sir: Why are they not prepared, for the sake of South Africa’s needs at a time such as the present, to do that which every right-minded person expects them to do. They were prepared in 1938 when, in their view, Mr. McCausland the editor of the Cape Argus, was not fair towards Britain, to get Mr. McCausland to resign as editor. Those same people, or their successors, are not prepared to-day, when justice is not being done to South Africa, to take similar steps. And it is not necessary to take similar steps, far less drastic measures will serve the purpose. How is it possible that this small group of people can succeed in ignoring national demands as consistently as they are doing; how is it possible that they can thwart the expectations of 90 per cent of the White population of South Africa? Morris Broughton says in that book of his that the Press has become what it did not want to become, namely a dividing factor. The position is that South Africa has a population which consists of two language groups, English being the language in which South Africa is depicted abroad, English being the language in which an honest picture has to be painted of South Africa overseas, but the most powerful method by which that can be done, the English language Press, refuses to do so. If ever there has been a way in which and if ever there has been an opportunity to promote good relations between the two language groups, it will be to place those who speak the English language in South Africa in the service of the entire nation; and to place the English language Press in the service of the Afrikaans-speaking section of this nation. If the English language Press and the directors of those companies co-operated in this cold war against South Africa and conveyed the genuine voice and true picture of South Africa to the world outside, the power and influence of this Department of Information will immediately be doubled. We are asking —and I believe we are entitled to do so— those people who control the English language Press in South Africa to think about the role they are playing and to think about the role which they can play in South Africa in the interests of national unity and in the interests of this country of ours. That is the first essential if we wish to increase the effectiveness of the Department of Information.

But we can also employ other methods, and I want to leave the question of the Press at that. I want to ask the Minister, in respect of a report which appeared in Dagbreek where the idea was expressed that members of Parliament should be used to state South Africa’s case overseas, whether he is perhaps prepared to entertain that idea. I think it is highly necessary that we think about such methods, perhaps not in the form suggested in that report. We must take it that with our withdrawal from the Commonwealth and with the severence of our ties with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, an important link with the people overseas has been lost to us and I think it is a very good idea that we in South Africa should make use of members of Parliament who are informed as to the politics of the country—on the Opposition side and on this side—people who are devoted to the cause of South Africa, and to place them in the employ of the Department in that way. I admit that there will have to be strict screening, but I think that is one of the respects in which we can beneficially use the services of people who can be used for this task.

I want to say something else in respect of which I am not sure whether the Minister will be prepared to tell us what his views are, and that is that I think we should integrate the Language Service Bureau which falls under the Department of Education to-day, with this Department of Information. Language is the basis of practically all communications. Most propaganda takes place by way of the manipulation of language, and a language division is indispensable to the Department of Information as one of its mainstays. But in addition to that we should keep count of the fact that the Department of Information should concentrate on countries abroad in many languages. This country of ours is a bilingual country, but we shall have to make use of many more languages in our Department of Information and I do believe that it is necessary, in the light of what I have already said in connection with our attitude towards those countries, that we considered encouraging the use of more languages when it comes to communicating with the world outside. We can promote that when a bureau such as the Language Service Bureau is integrated with the Department of Information. Perhaps it will be advantageous if a publication like “Panorama” were made available in more languages. I think we should even toy with the idea of having English and Afrikaans books by South African authors translated into other languages although they are not published by the Department of Information. In that way we can draw attention to the South African picture.

However, Mr. Speaker, it is not really my task to make suggestions to people who are far more capable than I am to handle this matter. I have given you these two suggestions, Sir, but I am sure that the entire Department is geared to making use of every opportunity that offers.

In conclusion I just want to say that we should regard this as a national matter. Let us regard the establishment of a Department of Information as an opportunity of handling the whole problem as a national problem. Last year when President Kennedy addressed the Press of America he used the following words—

If it applies in the case of the greatest and the mightiest in the West that he feels himself so more gravely threatened by this cold war than by any other war in the past, that he calls upon every citizen to change his outlook and to change his mission, how much more is it not necessary that we should not only make the same appeal in South Africa for a change of outlook and a change of mission as far as this matter is concerned, but that we answer that plea. That, I believe, is the spirit in which we should approach the problem which confronts the Information Service.

The motion presented to the House by the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) is in two parts. The hon. member in his motion asks this House to congratulate the Government on the establishment of a Ministry of Information, and then he goes on to say that he wishes this House to call upon all good South Africans to defend the good name of their country at all times.

I have listened most carefully to the speech of the hon. member for Vereeniging and that of his seconder, and I failed to find in anything that these two honourable gentlemen have said this morning any single word or argument for the present establishment of a Ministry of Information as opposed to the old system that existed where we had an information service operating under the control of an existing Department of State. Not one single argument has been presented this morning as a reason for that change. But what have we had? We heard the hon. member for Vereeniging attempting to give us a picture of how he envisages the functions of the Ministry of Information. He says it falls into two spheres, that aspect which deals with the internal aspect in enlightening the public of South Africa, whether White or non-White, in regard to the Government’s policy, and the second aspect is the external aspect, how to overcome the present volume of criticism overseas of our country. And what were the points made by the hon. member? I just want to summarize them. These are the points he made in justification of this change for the establishment of a Minister of Information to conduct our affairs internally. He says: The English Press is largely responsible for the misunderstandings that exist between White and non-White, therefore we must have a Ministry of Information to see if it can do anything about it; the English Press is the mouth-piece of every agitator, and therefore we must have a Ministry of Information to see if they can do anything about it; the English Press is the chief undermining influence for the White man’s position in South Africa; the English Press gives sympathetic treatment to Luthuli and any book that Luthuli might write. And then he concludes his argument for the justification for this Ministry of Information in regard to the internal aspect of our country’s propaganda that we are in a cold war, verging on military activities. The inference of all the arguments was that through a Ministry of Information there must be some measure of control on existing media that enlighten the public in order to ensure that what the public consume or what they get satisfies one authority in the country, namely the viewpoint or the policy or the authority of the Government, irrespective of what anybody else may think.

On the foreign aspect, this is the basis of the hon. gentleman’s argument; he comes with a very naïve argument. He says, it does not matter what policy is followed, the attacks will continue; therefore irrespective of what we may think, we must support the Minister and we must support Government policy in order to defend South Africa.

I never said that.

The whole inference of the hon. gentleman’s observations was that if you dare raise your voice against the point of view of the Government you are acting in an unpatriotic and traitor-like attitude.

He said exactly the opposite.

Why then did he accuse the Opposition and attempted to give examples to show that the Opposition has an unpatriotic standpoint most times and has to carry a large measure of responsibility for what has happened.

I challenge you to

analyse the examples I gave and to defend them.

In support of this contention that the attitude of the Opposition over a long period of time has been an unpatriotic attitude, that it acted almost in a traitorous manner towards the vital interests of our country, the hon. gentleman attempted to take one or two isolated examples of public utterances made by gentlemen on this side of the House in respect of what they sincerely think about the non-White policy of our country, and he said that was a traitorous attitude.

Do you think they were really serious? Then you are making it still worse for them.

I am only analysing the arguments of the hon. gentleman when justifying the Ministry of Information.

Then he comes with a third argument in respect of the activities of the Minister of Information vis-à-vis the outside world, and he says: The rest of the world rejects us, with the exception of the United Kingdom, the United States and Western Europe.

He never said that.

The hon. gentleman said that it is no use worrying about the Afro-Asiatic states and about the communist countries. There are only three main areas that we must concentrate on, the United Kingdom, the United States and certain parts of Western Europe.

Why don’t you go to Russia?

I want to ask the hon. member for Vereeniging whatever policy may be presented by the Minister of Information, is it likely to be accepted on the evidence of the past ten years, when we know that these very areas, the United States, the United Kingdom and Western Europe, are seeking the support of the Afro-Asiatic countries and of the East against communist aggression?

You are a real hands-upper.

That sums up the main points made by the hon. member in coming with this motion, but I repeat there was not one single argument, not one single reason for the establishment of this Ministry of Information, and in the main the speech of the seconder of the motion was an enlargement, a further attack on the English Press. Now in view of the fact, and anticipation of again being accused because of what I am going to say in respect of this motion as a member of the Opposition of adopting an unpatriotic attitude in discussing this Ministry of Information, I want to preface everything I say by saying that I have the full support of the Minister of Information in respect of the attitude that I am going to adopt. You see, Mr. Speaker, on previous occasions, since I have sat in this House, the hon. the Minister has given arguments as to why we are entitled to adopt the attitude we adopt in respect of any matters that come before this House as we consider it to be in the public interest and in the interests of our country. Let me quote his words, and the hon. the Minister knows them well. But I want to preface it all, in anticipation of what the hon. the Minister may say in reply to this debate, by quoting his own words—

On no less than three occasions the hon. the Minister of Information has quoted those words in justification of the criticism that he at one time levelled against the policies of this Government, and those words were words quoted by the late Dr. Malan when he was accused during the war years of sabotaging the interests of our country. And to-day, as we have heard from the hon. member for Vereeniging and his seconder, we are told that we are acting in an unpatriotic fashion when we criticize the actions of this Government, even in respect of the establishment of a Ministry of Information.

May I deal with the first aspect that the hon. member dealt with, the internal aspect in regard to the establishment of this Ministry of Information? Some eight days after the appointment of the hon. the Minister of Information he made a statement to the Press, and in that statement he said this:

The operative word in this case was the word “primarily”. Sir, in the Government Gazette of 1 December 1961, we had the first indication of what was expected of this Minister in fulfilling his functions as the Minister of Information. There we read of all the operations that the hon. gentleman would have to carry out in presiding over this Ministry. This notice gave clear, unequivocal confirmation to the Minister’s statement that one of his chief functions, if not the major function, would be directed to the population, White and non-White of the Republic, and also that there was a clear intention to absorb within the orbit of the Department of Information all channels of information in regard to Government activities. The words of the Minister made it quite clear—

May I ask what is the true story that the hon. the Minister is going to tell that is not told at the present time? That is the issue. What is the true story of which the people of South Africa presently are ignorant and which the Minister feel that they must know? What untrue story is presently being told to the people of South Africa, which the Minister says it is his duty to correct? The implication of this statement is that the only true story about our country is the one the Minister will tell the people through the medium of his Department. Therefore in our free parliamentary democracy everything else the public hears or reads through the vast range of media presently available to the public of South Africa, will be suspect. Mr. Speaker, in our country with a free and unfettered Press, with free access to the Departments of State, even up to ministerial level, with free debates in this House where every aspect of policy comes under public scrutiny, I say emphatcially that we in this House are completely opposed to such activities by the Department of Information, charged with propagating Government policy and presenting it as the only true story of our country, as is implied in the Minister’s statement. With this interpretation of the Minister’s functions as he has given them to us, what in fact will a Ministry of Information have to do internally? I say that it is a Ministry of propaganda and not a Ministry of Information And what is the difference between “information ”and “propaganda”? I have tried to look up a definition in that regard: “Information” is described as “the act or the process of communicating knowledge to enlighten”, and “propaganda” is described as “a plan for the propagation of a doctrine or a system of principles”. We have to-day in our country a democratic society and all the means of communicating knowledge, which brings every action, every statement of the Government under the public spotlights, and makes whatever attitude or statements the Government takes or makes universally known, whether internally or abroad. If any confirmation is wanted of that fact, a reference to the Press Commission Report will indicate that quite clearly. In every country of the West, Sir, which has a parliamentary democracy, a Ministry of Information has ceased to exist. Where they were established, they were established in times of national emergency, such as during the last war. In the United Kingdom they abolished their Ministry of Information and their major activities in regard to information work is conducted through individual departments, through responsible officers working under the control of the Departments concerned. In the United State there is an abhorrence of a Ministry of Information.

They have the biggest information service in the world.

Of course they have one of the biggest information services in the world, but it operates under a Department of State, the Foreign Affairs Department of the United States Government, and it falls under the control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as our Information Department formerly did.

Can you compare the Government of the United States with our set-up?

I compare the functions. They are the same. Let me quote for the information of the hon. Minister from “Public Relations in American Democracy” by J. R. Pimlock, who studied this issue under special grant of the United States Government. I recommend the book to the hon. the Minister for study; he will find it of great interest. It states there very clearly—

And this traditional approach of a state information service in the United States goes back to 1787 when Thomas Jefferson, the then President, said—

It is a pity that is not the position in this country. That is exactly the difference. The mass media have failed completely in this country.

The hon. member for Vereeniging has been to the United States, and he knows that if he wants to see the gutter-type of reporting in the Press and most unbridled criticism of the government of the day, he will find it in the United States, and when you relate that and compare that to the responsible attitude adopted by the Press of South Africa, in particular the English Press in regard to these matters, then in fact there is no comparison whatsoever. But one is driven to the inevitable conclusion that the step taken by the Government when it established this Ministry of Information had as its main objective the propagation of Government policies, and that means purely and simply Nationalist Party policies. In other words, you may say it is a plan for the propagation of a political doctrine which the Government recognizes that the bulk of the mass media reaching the public in our country refuse to accept and to support. It is a plan, if we accept the Minister’s statement that he made at the time of his appointment, which will mean, in simple words, expenditure of the taxpayer’s money for the purpose of propagating Nationalist Party Policies. The question then arises, if that is so, how is the Minister going to make the Ministry of Information work, how is he going to carry out his functions if this tremendous opposition exists, which both the hon. members who have spoken this morning referred to, the tremendous opposition that exists to the Minister’s activities? How then is he going to make the Ministry of Information work? In Government Notice No. 1142 of 1 December, it is set out clearly that one of the functions of the hon. the Minister will be to co-ordinate all state publicity services. In other words, Mr. Speaker, every function of information, irrespective of any Department of State at the present time, will fall under the direct control and aegis of the Minister of Information. He has admitted it in public statements. Therefore it is clear that all Government pronouncements, ministerial statements will be channelled through this Minister. He will dress them up, he will colour them, he will present them, he will revise them before they are issued to the public. And the inevitable result of this attitude where all information and Government publicity is channelled through a Ministry of Information, will be that no free access to officialdom, or independent inquiry, will be possible by the free media in our country, which at present keep the public informed. All sources of Government information inevitably will then be closed to the rest of the public, unless issued through the Minister of Information. Because in the Minister’s own words, when he gave an interview to a representative of the London Times he said in describing the functions of his Ministry—

In other words, if one accepts the arguments of the hon. member for Vereeniging this morning that the English Press is distorting everything in our country, and the Minister has the power to channel all Government sources of information through his Department, then he is going to do so, because in his view he wants to see that it is not distorted, and then the hon. member for Vereeniging and his seconder will be satisfied.

Your whole speech is a distortion.

Let us take this a little bit further.

On a point of order, may an hon. member say that the hon. member’s speech is a distortion?

What did the hon. member say?

I said that his whole speech is a distortion.

The hon. member must withdraw that.

I withdraw those words.

Having taken this step of channelling everything through the Minister’s Department …

I never used the word “channel”, The word is “co-ordination”, not “channelling”. You used the word “channelling”. Is that not a distortion?

The hon. the Minister in his usual way is attempting again to try and cover up the statement that he has already issued to the Press. If he is going to co-ordinate, if he is going to the Department of Labour and the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Pensions saying: Look, if you issue a statement, it has to be co-ordinated through my Department, I have got to put it together, then what is he doing? He is channelling it before it is ever issued to the Press. But once we have got that reaction, there is a further inevitable result that the Minister must take the next step. Because even though he may control the dissemination of information, even though he may control the dissemination of news in respect of Government policy, even though he may control announcements made publicly in regard to actions that the Government contemplated, such as he did in respect of the recent Transkeian proposals, of which the Minister had foreknowledge before even this House was informed (and we know this from his own statement to the London Press), then, if he can’t get his way, if this English Press, this media refuses to accept his statements as authoritative and continues to distort, in the Minister’s opinion, then what is the next step so that the Minister can fulfil his functions as Minister of Information? It does not mean to say that because the Minister is going to co-ordinate all forms of publicity that the English Press is of necessity going to play ball with the hon. the Minister. We have had the threat again this morning, the intimidation reflected in the speech of the hon. member for Vereeniging, and particularly that of his seconder when I asked him across the floor of the House what he meant. He would not answer that, but if anything was clear, it was clear that this was an appeal to the hon. the Minister to act in this regard. Does it not mean that we know in advance the views that were formerly held by this hon. Minister and his Cabinet colleagues, particularly the Minister of Foreign Affairs when it comes to attacks on the English Press which are described as traitors.

You say that the English Press were described as traitors?

I say that the hon. member for Vereeniging described the Opposition and the Press as traitors.

Individually?

The hon. member, without singling out one particular newspaper said that the whole English Press could be lumped together for the purposes of his argument.

I quoted specific examples which I considered as treacherous.

We know that the hon. Minister and his colleagues expressed those views of the English Press and they were endorsed by the hon. member for Vereeniging and his seconder. Therefore to emphasize what the hon. the Minister of Information really thinks, I am going to quote his words—

The hon. the Minister made that statement and we know that those views are well-shared on the Treasury benches, particularly by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It therefore follows that if the free Press does not carry out what the Minister considers is their special duty of presenting Government policy in as favourable a light as possible, and all statements now emanating from the Minister’s control office, are not accepted as authoritative, then the hon. Minister will have to consider further steps.

He only wants to get at the truth.

To get the truth, what he considers is the truth, if the Press does not agree with the views of the Government or the authoritative sources of the Minister, if in the opinion of the Minister it distorts, then the Minister, in order that truth as he wants it, is presented, must take further steps to achieve his end. When the Minister takes that step he will say that he is doing it in the national interest, he is doing it to save South Africa. Because of the cold war and in order to protect South Africa’s interests, he must take these additional steps, as the hon. member for Vereeniging said this morning when he referred to the book published by the local English language Press in regard to Luthuli. The Minister will have to recommend further steps to his colleagues in the Cabinet. There can be one of two. He can either recommend further intimidation of the English language Press of South Africa …

What do you mean by “further” intimidation?

Yes, “further” intimidation. Because what statement has the hon. the Minister already made after having been in office for only two months? What statements have we had from other members in this House, from the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister amongst others. Do those statements not amount to sheer intimidation? But if he wants to take further steps he will really have to intimidate. And if that fails, Mr. Speaker, what remains is the inevitable step—control of the Press. Let me remind you, Sir, that in our time there have been governments of other countries who have claimed what this Government claims— distortion of their policy, misrepresentation of their policy, slanting of their policy, unfair criticism of their policy on the home front and abroad by their political enemies. Those Governments then took exactly the steps that this Government has taken in establishing a Ministry of Information. And in every single case that step inevitably led to control of the Press, the results of which are well known to everyone of us in this House.

You are making a dangerous speech.

It is not dangerous, Sir, it is the truth. It is no good the Chief Whip of the Nationalist Party trying to contend that what happened in other countries cannot happen here as far as the establishment of a Ministry of Information is concerned. Mr. Speaker, if you doubt what I have just said, if you doubt my conclusion that this will inevitably lead to the control of the Press, let me remind you what motivates the thinking of the present Minister of Information. Because he once said in this House and I quote—

That is the basic thinking on the part of the hon. the Minister in respect of the newspapers of our country. He considers the newspapers “Agents provocateur”—to provoke rebellion. Does the Minister deny that he used these words? The hon. the Minister remains silent because he knows that is his attitude towards the newspapers; he does not deny it.

Mr. Speaker, the free Press of our country can never be accused of not representing this Government’s views as enunciated by Ministers, word for word. I challenge any Government member to say that the free Press of South Africa has not given publicity to the statements of Ministers of this country.

They distorted it.

I can give many examples where this Government and political figures in this Government have received more publicity in the Press of our country than any other political figure in the history of the country. It is these very statements of policy, reported in extenso and verbatim, by the free Press of our country that the world has looked at. The administrative acts of this Government, truthfully and factually reported in the free Press of our country, are the things that the world has looked at and upon which our country has been judged, criticized, and condemned. Not the free Press has been responsible, but the statements of policy and the administrative acts of this Government have been responsible for that.

May I ask you a question?

No, please my time is limited. Sir, it is the Government’s policy and actions which are responsible. Do not let us run away from the issue. It is these statements of policy and actions that have brought our country into the position in which it is.

That brings me to the external aspect which the hon. member for Vereeniging has dealt with. When we come to the external aspect of the workings of this Ministry, the question arises whether the task of presenting a factual picture of our country abroad can best be presented by a separate Ministry of Information or by an actual division of an existing department, as has been the position before. It is quite obvious that on the question of foreign relations, the conduct of our foreign affairs is the function of a specialist division. It is the conduct of a specialist division staffed by men trained in the art of displomatic negotiation. They are our country’s ambassadors and our country’s representatives who talk for South Africa in the other countries of the world. It is not the information attache. The information attache, Sir, is merely there to supplement the work of our public representatives. The information attache does not work under his own brief; he is not a law unto himself when he is stationed in Paris or London or wherever it may be. He works under the direct aegis and control of the ambassador or the other representative. This principle is accepted by every other Western country. It is accepted by the United States and it is accepted by the United Kingdom. That is the reason why our information service, after the war, was placed under the control of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Now we have the incredible position that policy directives to our information attaches overseas will flow from a separate Minister, the present incumbent of the Depatrment of Information. I put it to you, Sir, that the position can well arise that this Minister may determine techniques and methods of operation which our country’s representatives, or the Department of Foreign Affairs, the ambassador on the spot, may consider as quite unsuitable, according to his wide experience, for the area concerned. It is quite possible, therefore, Mr. Speaker, that we shall have a conflict of interests between the Minister of Information and the Minister of Foregin Affairs. Just as you had a conflict of interest between a Goebbels and a Ribbentrop when they were both fighting for the favour of their leader.

We on this side of the House are of the opinion that if the Information Service is to operate with success, and if it is to represent a true and accurate picture of our country, it can best do so when it is not a separate Ministry, but when it is an information service supplementary to the Department of Foreign Affairs. One cannot contend this without also asking the question whether it is possible that this Ministry of Information can do a better job than the present State Information Service has done up to the present. We have certain evidence of the actions of the existing State Information Office. We have, for example, the statement made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs almost two years ago to the day, when he said in this House—

That is what the Minister of Foreign Affairs said in this House on 2 February 1960. But precisely one month later, the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs laid on the Table of the House the report of the State Information Office. And I want to quote from that report. The State Information Officer said this—

This statement by the State Information Officer that the position was actually getting worse, was endorsed by the present Minister of Information whose opinion of the Minister of Foreign Affairs’ activities in the past, is not very high.

Do you agree with that point of view?

Certainly. You see, Sir, the Minister of Information once said about the Minister of Foreign Affairs: “He makes the same old speeches we hear so often from him in an attempt to boost his own courage. On every occasion he comes to this House he repeats the same old propaganda stuff.” Obviously when the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs says on 2 February 1960 that the position is improving and he is contradicted by officials of his own Department one month later, there seems justification for the statement made by the Minister of Information that when the Minister of Foreign Affairs speaks in this House he takes the same old line, he comes here and he repeats the same old propaganda stuff. Let me answer the question put by the State Information Officer why the onslaughts are increasing in virulence against our country. Why did the Minister of Foreign Affairs say two years ago that we stood completely alone in this world? Let me answer the question by referring the Minister of Information to a handbook which I highly commend to him. It is a handbook compiled by a renowned public relations expert, by the name of Lesly. He says this; he talks about good relations with the Government—

And here comes the kernel—

Obviously the reason why South Africa is in this position is because the product that has been sold by this Government internally and externally has been a bad product. It has been rejected and damned and slandered outside. That is why. Because the product is bad we sit as outcasts in the whole of the Western world. That is why, in the language of the Burger, we are named the polecats of the world.

I think it is appropriate that I move the following amendment at this stage—

The plain fact of the matter, Sir, is that our country is involved at the present time in a cold war with the rest of the world, and the hon. member for Vereeniging has admitted it.

Mr. Speaker, when business was suspended, I had concurred with the views expressed by the mover of the motion, the hon. member for Vereeniging, that our country was involved in a cold war with the rest of the world, a cold war which affected very drastically the vital interests of our country and also placed our country in great danger as far as our own security was concerned. The reason for this cold war is not the fact that there is distorting in the world Press of events in our country. I would be the first to admit that there are distorted reports and I am the first to condemn such distorted reporting of events that take place in our country. But the fact remains that we would delude ourselves if we should think that these distorted reports were the root causes of all our troubles. The fact remains that it is the racial policy first propounded by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of this Government, at the forums of the world, that is the cause of this cold war. That policy was propounded by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1949 at the United Nations. There the Government took the first step of enunciating to the world a policy of apartheid. There was criticism before, Sir. I admit it; I was there, but there was never any talk of apartheid. The result has been that the word “apartheid” is known throughout the civilized world, and in the East, amongst the lowest of the low, as a word representing the worst that possibly can exist in a policy of racial oppression. It is also not only that, but it is the defence year by year before the forum of the world of this racial policy, that has been the root cause of all the troubles that we face in this year 1962. Continual restrictons are placed upon the population of this country; there is diminution of the non-White’s rights; there is deprivation of political rights; the removal of representatives of those people even from this honourable House; administrative actions which in their harshness have been condemned not only in our own country, but by other nations of the world. The arrest of 20 per cent of our entire White, Coloured and Bantu population of our country, year after year, is a thing that is not understood overseas; arrests which have resulted from the application of the harsh apartheid legislations. The fact of the race classification of the people with the accompanying stories of human misery and degradation; appear in the Press of the world year after year. Matters relating to the bitter political struggle in our own country, where those struggles have revolved around the rights, not only political rights but fundamental human rights, no matter the colour of the skin, have all led up to the position in which we find ourselves to-day.

In order to give logic to it all, in order to wipe out the past of the last 12 years, we have had the further step taken by the hon. the Prime Minister, the step of fragmenting our country in order that he may apply in those fragmented portions, the deceny which we on this side of the House have been struggling for for years, to have applied within the borders or our own country as a whole. That is the reason for the fragmentation of this country, the announcement of this so-called independent Bantustans, of which the Minister of Information had prior knowledge, more so than any other person in this country. The image of apartheid throughout the world represents the very essence of race oppression. No advertising campaign, nothing that this Minister can do, will erase the image that this Government has created during the past 12 or 13 years. To spend a mere 10,000 or 20,000 rand by buying advertising space in the major newspapers of New York, London and other capitals in Europe will not erase the image that millions of people have of our country. The very fact that the Government had to buy space in publications abroad to try to get the idea across that this was a new outlook, is an open admission of the suspicion with which the Government’s acts are viewed overseas. A simple issue of a marriage, a legal marriages between an Indian and a Dutch girl, commands more space in overseas publications than this Minister could possibly buy with the entire budget of the Ministry of Information. If he had spent the entire budget which he has at his disposal as Minister of Information, he could not have bought the space which this simple little issue acquired in the newspapers of the world.

Why do you sink so low?

It is not a question of sinking low, Sir. Here I have the evidence of the State Information Officer. Let me tell the House what he says about it. This is a private circular forwarded to selected persons in this country by the State Information Officer. What does he say about this simple little issue of a legal marriage between an Indian and a Dutch girl? This is what he says—

That, Sir, is the nature of a private report circulated by the State Information Office, even written with derision, and in whose hands does a circular of this nature fall? That is only in respect of one country. What about all the capitals in Europe and the millions of words that have been written about this case in the United States? Can the Minister cure it? It is a pertinent question to ask: What steps will the Minister take to break this kind of story? This is an absolute true story; this is not a distortion; it is not progaganda; it is a factual human story reported by the newspapers of the world. It is a human story, Sir, that flowed from one thing only and that is the policy of this Government and the administrative acts taken by this Government.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs has been described on many occasions in the overseas Press of the world, notably by such newspapers as the New York Times, as an apologist for apartheid. And the operation of the State Information Office, because of the racial policies of this Government, has been an absolute, complete and dismal failure. This is admitted by the Director of the Information Office. He asks in his latest report when can be done about the position. He admits that on a scientific survey there is more adverse reporting about South Africa than ever existed in regard to Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy. The State Information Officer states that himself in his report. I do not want to quote it at length; it is there for any member to read. With the failure of the State Information Office under the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister has now hit upon the idea of establishing a Ministry of Information to give a new look to the information activities of this Government.

As a concession he has placed it under a separate Minister who has described himself as and English-speaking South African and who, let me also say, the London Times has described as a blind apologist for apartheid. In other words, we have arrived at the position with the establishment of this Ministry that the Government has substituted one apologist for apartheid for another. We can ask therefore whether this Minister is likely to prove any more acceptable overseas or to have any more influence than the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and let me say right away I do not think so. Why should the Press overseas have any more belief in the sincerity of this Minister when he himself is largely responsible for the views that the Press overseas hold to-day of the Government’s actions and policies. He has been responsible, like any other member on this side of the House, for drawing attention to the crimes committed by the Government against human decencies in our country. He himself has accused the Minister of Foreign Affairs of digging in the garbage tin. He, the Minister of Information, has accused the Minister of Foreign Affairs of failing at his job. The Minister of information has accused the Minister of Foreign Affairs as being one who has completely lost his head in representing South Africa at UN. He was so convinced that on one occasion he said this—

So what does it help the hon. member for Vereeniging to say to-day that the Opposition has acted in an unpatriotic manner in dealing with the issues raised by the Government, when this same Minister for over ten years criticized the actions and the policies of this Government? Can it now be expected that after such strong opinions expressed by the Minister of Information over so long a period of time he will be able to form opinion overseas, except for publishing the propaganda of the Ministry of Information? It is obvious that his sincerity will be even less acceptable in the light of his past actions and utterances of the policies of this Government than that of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was the head of the State Information Office.

You are worse than Cassandra.

I may have spoken in this debate with some feelings of bitterness and with some hard criticism, but I think it is justified because the mover of the motion calls upon us in this House to make an appeal to South Africans to defend the good name of their country. The mere fact that a member on the Government benches has to make an appeal of this nature to this House that we should call upon South Africans to defend the good name of the country is nothing less than offering an insult to the people of South Africa. [Interjections.] I accept that all South Africans will defend the good name of their country.

What!

The fact that I use my democratic right to criticize the appointment of this Minister of Information as not in the true interests of my country does not make me unpatriotic. I think it is an insult to make this appeal to the people of South Africa, particularly after the manner in which this Government by its policies has dragged the good name of this country through the gutters of the world, because that is what has happened for as long as this Government has been in power. We should realize as a White race, and as White South Africans, that the prestige and the security of our country to-day are at stake. It is at stake on the scales of world opinion and the scales will remain weighted against our country, irrespective of what the Minister of Information may do as long as the image is retained beyond the borders of our country that we are a people who apply the race policies of this Government. The cure for the ill is to get rid of this Government and its race policies.

I second the amendment. Mr. Speaker, the debate this morning has taken place in the shadow of the most virulent attacks on the English Press that I have ever seen. It was unfortunate, deplorable and unjust. Both the hon. members for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) and Innesdale (Mr. J. A. Marais) made the mistake of making a blanket accusation against a figment of their imagination, the so-called English Press, which they regard as one single body. They were hitting the innocent and the guilty alike. They used buckshot where they should have used arrows, and they used mud where they should have used darts. The strange, unnatural relationship which the Government is seeking with the English Press was never better exemplified than to-day. On the one hand the English Press was vilified for everything that was evil. On the other hand, the hon. member for Vereeniging made an abject appeal to the English Press to help the Government because the English Press was so much more powerful and is so much more believed than the Government itself. I wonder how the minds of the hon. members work when they call the English Press “lying and unreliable”. Why should the public overseas then believe that Press if it supports the Government?

The very speech of the hon. member for Vereeniging, I believe, will do us a great deal of harm abroad. He is attacking newspapers of the English Press, which has not succumbed, as has happened in many other countries, to sensationalism, like the gutter Press, and which has, with one or two exceptions, maintained a very clear balance in regard to news representation and comment, and which with great justice is regarded as one of the best presses in the world. A very serious accusation was made here by the hon. member for Vereeniging, who accused the English Press of crossing the border between criticism and treason. In other words, he accused the English Press, or sections of it, of having been guilty of treason. That is indeed a very weighty accusation. If that accusation is honest, all the hon. member for Vereeniging has to do is to repeat his allegation, and name the particular paper he had in mind, in public, on a public platform, where he is not protected by the privileges of this House, thereby giving him the chance to substantiate his claim and giving the Press, the accused, the opportunity to take him to court and proving his allegations unjust. If he refuses to do so, I can only say that the attack of the hon. member for Vereeniging was as stupid, as shallow, as puerile and as drivelling an act of folly as anything I have ever seen, and which he has neither the wit to defend nor the courage to substantiate.

Let me say that there are no more loyal and patriotic people, I believe, than people on this side of the House and their supporters. We stand back for no one in our love for our country and everything that it represents. We believe that our country should be great, that it should be free and united, and that it should be under enlightened White leadership. Ours is the only party which is not prepared to hand our country over to Black domination, whether in separate states or a single state. Our patriotism dare not be questioned by hon. members opposite. Let me say this, that few things would indeed give me greater joy than to know that this new Ministry of Information will succeed in winning friends for our country in the rest of the world, in painting a better picture of South Africa—not of the Nationalist Party or the Government—and of the country we love. If the Minister of Information succeeds in that, I can only wish him all the strength. But no greater harm can be done than by hon. members opposite doubting and casting aspersions on the patriotism of us on this side.

The Minister of Information was at one time a member on this side of the House. He then represented a much better party and a much more distinguished constituency than he does to-day, and he will remember very well how he felt about attacks such as those on the patriotism of our party. Indeed, I have here a quotation of the Minister of Information when he was sitting on this side and referred to this very fact, when he attacked the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He will find it in Hansard of 24 January 1952. The Minister said this—

What the Minister said then we still say to-day. We ask ourselves whether this new Ministry of Information will succeed. What is going to happen to it depends, I think, on three factors. It depends on the product it has to sell, the method of selling, and on who sells it. Let us look at each of these in turn and judge the future of this Ministry against that background.

Unfortunately the product could be better. It could be a thousand times better than it is to-day. The product can be divided into two separate parts, one good, but the other very much less so. If the product that the Minister of Information has to sell was the Republic of South Africa, I say it is the finest thing in the world. But if the product is to be the present Government and its policy, I fear very much for the future of this Ministry. They are so bad that even the Nationalist newspapers have admitted it and have called us “the polecat of the world”. Cannot the Government realize that when criticism comes from overseas much of it comes from enlightened public opinion? Admittedly, little incidents such as what happened to a Native boy are exaggerated out of all proportion abroad. I agree that, but your intelligent person abroad, when you go overseas and he talks to you, does not ask you about those incidents. They are the ordinary incidents of yellow journalism. He asks you what about job reservation in your country. He asks you why have the Native people no voice in Parliament, and what about the Immorality Act?

Was that not so in your time?

Those are the questions one has to reply to.

Did they never ask you why the Opposition was so bad?

We are spending R1,500,000 on the Department of Information. I believe that we shall possibly spend much more when the Estimates come out on this new Ministry of Information. Is that money being spent in the best way? Let me take an example. If there were an attack in a periodical in the U.S.A. having a circulation of 4,000,000, if we were to reply to that attack by issuing a three or four-page illustrated pamphlet, and accepting that pamphlet would cost 5 cent for a single issue, then distributing 4,000,000 replies on the 4,000,000 attacks would take up the whole of the printing budget of the Department of Information of R200,000—just to reply to one single attack. Simply giving money to this Department on its own will never serve as a reply to attacks of that nature. We shall simply have to find other methods and we shall have to change our policies in this country. No wonder that a leading paper supporting the Government, the Burger, in despair started working out what each new indiscretion of the Government costs the country. I think they arrived at an amount of R5,000,000 in one case. They said that a certain further indiscretion cost the country R100,000,000. Will not the Government realize that the action of one stupid baboon in the Pretoria City Council can harm us more than all the good words and the apologies of the Government can make up for?

On a point of order, the Pretoria City Council is not represented here to defend itself. Is the hon. member allowed to attack it?

The hon. member may continue.

I forgot that the hon. member was possibly a member of the Pretoria City Council. [Interjections.] Sir, if one travels by car from Johannesburg to Pretoria there is a sign about three miles outside Pretoria which is very appropriate. [Interjections.] It says: “Nasionale Dieretuin.”

And the image of a baboon on it is your picture.

One error of judgment has cost this country millions. I have here an extract from a newspaper saying that the Kennicott Corporation of America last year dropped R20,000,000 in selling its gold-mining interests in this country. Why was that? Simply on account of what happened at Sharpeville, on account of an error of judgment which occurred there.

Here is an example of the sort of thing one finds in the official papers of the Government. I have here a copy of a paper called the Jeugbonder, a paper incidentally to which I believe the hon. member for Vereeniging is quite a regular contributor. After the Union had left the Commonwealth and became a Republic, this paper had the following leading article. It referred to the other African countries of the Commonwealth in these words—

Is that the type of language to use about other states in Africa, even if you do not agree with their opinions? Is that the type of thing that the Director of the Information Service will have to defend? But I am not the only one who says that. Let us again hear the Minister of Information on this. I have here a cutting of a speech he made at a United Party meeting in Orange Grove. Incidentally, he never goes there these days. Then he said this—

I do not know whether the Minister still agrees with that. We hear that the actions of this side of the House are responsible for scaring capital away. But it is not. There is nothing that we would like to see more than to find capital flowing into our country. Here, again, I must ask the Minister of Information to forgive me if I quote him in support of my view. Speaking in this House on 24 January 1952, he said—

Does the Minister remember using those words? To-day we had the interesting spectacle of the hon. member for Vereeniging having to appeal to supporters on his own side not to be guilty of actions or words which might be used against our country overseas. I believe his words were something like this: “Laat ons versigtig wees om nie dinge te doen in verband waarmee ons gevoelens miskien met ons wegloop nie.” My conclusion is that the policies of this Government are indeed bad.

What then about the method and how they are applied? There is quite a lot to be said for streamlining and for greater efficiency. I believe that the Information Service has been doing its best and that, although it has some dead wood, it also has many dedicated members who really have been working hard to put our case across. I would say that the director, Mr. Piet Meiring, has carried out an almost superhuman task with a reasonable amount of talent and with a great deal of hard work. Indeed, one would like to hear from the Minister why the Director of the State Information Office was not made Secretary of this new Department. I cast no reflection on the present incumbent. Indeed, I regard him as someone who could attain high honours in another sphere, but I believe it was wrong to overlook Mr. Meiring when it came to the appointment of a Secretary for the Department.

The new scheme for the Department of Information was announced in the Government Gazette and was adumbrated in an article in the Burger, so I shall not go into details. It is clear, however, that the Department and possibly the Ministry of Information suffer from two great deficiencies. The first is that it does not and did not in the past clearly distinguish between what is information and what is propaganda. Secondly, it is being made an instrument for internal political purposes. That is the greatest accusation that I wish to make against this Department. Externally we realize that the Minister has a terrific job and we shall support him as far as our conscience allows us. We shall support our country, not necessarily the Government. I do not see why we should always follow the Louw line, the Louw line referred to some time ago by the Minister of Foreign Affairs when he said that he was not sure that honesty would be the best policy in our international affairs any more. He said—

I pity the poor Minister who has to defend the policy of the Minister of External Affairs as adumbrated in that statement. Whilst referring to the Minister of External Affairs, I might refer to the troubles the Minister will have, and that he admitted in the past he probably would have, with the present line followed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Again speaking in this Parliament as a member of the Opposition, in 1952, he said this of the Minister of External Affairs—

But what gives us the greatest cause for concern is the internal policy to be followed by this Department. To make it quite clear, I wish to read two quotations. The first is from the Burger, which reads—

Expanding on it further, the Burger says—

Since when is it the task of the Department of Information to deal with the non-Whites of South Africa? Surely when it comes to explaining Government policy to Government officials and to Natives in the Department of Bantu Administration, it is the task of that Department and not the task of the Department of Information which can only give a one-sided view on the policies of the Government? Indeed, according to an interview the Minister gave to the Press, some quite exotic methods are going to be followed in trying to put this new policy across. In an interview with the Cape Times, the Minister said that the Bantu people still have their connection with their homelands; for instance, they have their tribal meetings and dances and he intended making the link more pronounced and more colourful. Sir, that invokes the rather exotic scene of the Minister of Information and the hon. Mr. Hans Abraham joining together in a Xhosa “vastrap” in the Langa Location, simply to tighten the bonds between the homelands and the people outside.

But I want to be more serious about this. I am afraid that this can be the beginning of a vast system of indoctrination and brainwashing of the Bantu people of South Africa under the control of the Minister of Information. It can become a huge propaganda machine with many more pamphlets being issued than at present, with regular periodicals and possibly a Bantu newspaper, and also with closer integration of the broadcast services. Why are we being given frequency modulation? Not because the reception is better, but because frequency modulation can only be heard within a limited area of about 50 miles and it would be possible to supply the Bantu people with receiving sets which can only catch up programmes within that limited area. That is why we are having it. The hon. member for Vereeniging made a very significant statement. I do not wish to misquote him and I would like to know what his words actually were, but I think he said: “Binnekort sal die Minister die radio in sy hande hê”, referring to the Minister of Information. I should like to know from the hon. member whether he was referring to the Bantu Services or to the whole of the S.A.B.C.? These were his words as I put them down, and as I read them out.

You are a worse shorthand-writer than a speaker. It is not true.

We do not want this system of enforced indoctrination of the Bantu people. We believe that this system will be used to give them a one-sided view, the view of only that side of the House. Will the Minister of Information allow this side of the House to put its policy of race federation to the Bantu people of South Africa, or is this to be solely a propaganda machine of the Government? I believe and I hope that the hon. the Minister in his new task will be guided by the good practices of journalism. Mostly these good practices were followed by the Director of Information. I am appalled, however, by some of the things I have seen and heard about this Minister since he has taken office and before. I trust that in his attitude there will be no truculence, that there will be no digging into the garbage can, which he accused the Minister of External Affairs of doing, that there will be no rejection of the honest approach as propounded by the hon. the Minister of External Affairs, and that he will not regard his task as one in which South Africa has to play a wild and woolly rugby game against the rest of the world.

This is not a struggle between two opposing forces on a playing field, as he seemed to indicate when he spoke at Maitland last year. There he told of an incident at Swansea in Wales, in which Mr. Boy Louw, who was then captain of the Springbok team, told his players, “Play fair and play clean,” but as they got down into the scrum he added, “But beat the b—’s up.” Is that going to be the policy of the hon. the Minister? Is he going to appear to play fair and to play clean, but is he, when he gets down into the scrums, beat the b—’s, whoever they may be? I trust that will not be his policy. May I commend to him the policy of the reasoned approach and not the Neanderthal policy of standing in the dark and baying at the moon, beating one’s breast and trying to impress and frighten the rest of the world. May I advise him not to make his attacks so wild and so wide that he attacks innocent people as well as guilty people. Attacks have been made on foreign correspondents and Press representatives.

But you do the same.

Does he know that his own Director of Information once said that the Press correspondents in this country representing overseas newspapers are fair? I quote from the Cape Times of 5 June 1959, which reported an interview given by Mr. Piet Meiring in which he said—

Does the hon. the Minister subscribe to that? I trust he does and that in the same way he will therefore repudiate the unfair and the blanket attacks which are so often made by his side upon Press representatives in this country. I think when it comes to accuracy the Minister should really look to his own actions. Sir, you will remember a statement made by him in November last year in which he said that the Press Commission Report had been handed to him formally. The other day, when we saw this huge pile of books being brought into the House, we confidently expected that the hon. the Minister of Information would lay those books on the Table, but it was not he; it was another Minister to whom the buck had been passed.

Can the hon. member quote a single instance of a foreign correspondent who has made fair criticism of South Africa?

I cannot understand that question. I have just read out an extract from a statement made by Mr. Piet Meiring in which he said that these foreign correspondents gave fair reports. Is the hon. member not repudiating the Director of State Information, who knows more about State Information and journalism than that hon. member will ever know?

Complaints have been made that newspapers overseas do not tell the good news about South Africa but only the bad news. Let us accept that is so. “No news” is “good news”. We do not really publish good news about other countries in our Press. We do not publish accounts of, say, the new development in the southern part of Italy, the Mezzogiorno, where millions and millions of lira are being spent to develop the country. We do not publish facts about the medical services in Britain and about the huge industrial development in France, because that is not news, but we do publish accounts of riots in Notting Hill and we do publish accounts of riots in Algiers. Those things are news. Let us accept that is unfortunately the case, so do not let us blame the overseas Press if they do not always publish all the good news about South Africa. I wish they would, but in the nature of things newspapers do not do so.

May I ask the hon. the Minister also in dealing with the newspapers to trust the Press. I think that a basic trust placed in the journalists of our country will pay rich dividends. Trust them first of all and you will find that they trust you. Let more opportunities be created for interviews to be granted to them by heads of Departments and by Ministers. Let there be less official hand-outs which bear the imprint of being propaganda coming from the Ministry of Information. Let there be more Press Conferences. Let us overhaul the whole system of publications—including Panorama and the South African Digest. Panorama is losing us close on R80,000 a year; that is about R2 per effective subscriber to that paper. I am quoting the figures of two years ago; I trust that the latest figures are better than that.

Finally, I hope that the hon. the Minister of Information will push and publicize South Africa and not this Government, for even he said not so long ago in the course of a speech—

I put it to him that he will have much great success if he publicizes and defends the Republic of South Africa, and not this selfish clique of power politicians. Finally, may I suggest to him that probably the most powerful and the best argument that he could use to the rest of the world would be to tell them that we still have a parliamentary system in our country, and that under that parliamentary system there can be a change of our Government with a great possibility in the near future of a more enlightened and forward-looking Government taking over the reins of office.

I think that the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) really helped to quieten the atmosphere in the House. I will say that his speech was a quiet and reasonable one under the circumstances. Of course, I do not know whether that is so because the hon. member inherited Orange Grove from me. He talked scathingly about my not visiting Orange Grove, but as hon. members will know he superseded me in Orange Grove and from that point of view I say “good luck to him”. But the hon. member then proceeded to quote me against the Minister of External Affairs and against the Nationalist Party, and I could not help feeling that the hon. member’s memory was very short. After all, it was not so very long ago that the hon. member, when I was sitting on that side of the House, was indulging in the most vicious attacks on the United Party and the most vicious attacks on General Smuts in person, so much so that at times they were even considering the question of suing him for libel. He was also making anti-Semetic attacks of the worst type, with which I would never have associated myself. And now the hon. member talked about the garbage can. I wonder whether the hon. member does not say to himself at times that the best thing for him to do is not to indulge in what he did this afternoon but just to keep very quiet because his past is not one which he would like the rest of the House to know. May I also say that when I fell out with Orange Grove as a Conservative, the hon. member rushed into Orange Grove with all the liberal elements of Orange Grove who kicked me out. He rushed in there and he was a great friend of Mr. Einstein’s, who eventually stood as a candidate for the Progressive Party in the Provincial Council election.

Millionaire’s corner.

At that time the hon. member found them to be a very convenient body to work with in the United Party. I never did; I fell out with them; I would not have anything more to do with them, but he did in those days. Now, of course, he has fallen out with them again and he is standing against the Progressive Party with the United Party.

Mighty honourable.

Political opportunism.

I think the hon. member should have kept quiet. He talks very much about how anxious he is—and I do not disbelieve him—to help South Africa in its efforts overseas. But I would point out to the hon. member that I have not been quoted at UNO by the enemies of South Africa, and I never will be, but the hon. member was. He was quoted at UNO by the Ethopian delegate, one of the most vicious enemies of South Africa in that organization.

Disgraceful.

And this is what the Ethiopian delegate said—

who was a very close associate of Mr. Louw not so very long ago—

Sir, listen to that language—

That is what he said about our Minister of External Affairs, and that is what is quoted against our Minister of External Affairs in the United Nations. Sir, I entirely agree that there can be fair criticism of the Government in South Africa, of the governing party, but here the hon. member criticized in such a way that it gave the enemeis of South Africa overseas the right to say that our foreign policy is a Machiavellian policy. Sir, I do not think that the hon. member comes out of this very well at all. I think the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant) who called on him to second his amendment should have thought very seriously about it before he did so.

Now I want to turn to the hon. member for Turffontein and I want to say immediately that his speech after lunch was much more fiery than his speech before lunch; he came here and showed himself in all his true colours.

All of them?

All of them.

There are a lot of them.

He was undoubtedly trying to impress the English Press. He was playing up to the English Press as hard as he could right throughout his speech. He knew what would get him the headlines and, Sir, you will have noticed that the hon. member’s eyes kept on moving up, away from hon. members on the floor of the House. Admittedly—I do not say it with any reservations—the hon. member for Vereeniging called on the House and on all sides of the House to get together and to appreciate that South Africa was facing a cold war. The hon. member for Turffontein seemed to think that because the hon. member for Vereeniging was doing this, we were looking for help from the Opposition. Sir, the hon. member was looking for help for South Africa and looking for a decent standard of conduct in this debate from the Opposition. You cannot tell me that the speeches made by the hon member for Vereeniging and his seconders were destructive speeches. The hon. member for Vereeniging made an appeal to the Opposition to support South Africa and to support this Department. The hon. member for Turffontein said that the hon. member for Vereeniging made an attack on the English Press. That, of course, was nonsense. That was a deliberate attempt to get the English Press to support them, because the hon. member for Vereeniging did not make an attack on any Press. It was an attack on certain writers for the English Press, on certain leading articles, and the hon. member then quoted certain portions of the English Press. In fact the hon. member made a point of saying that the English Press was a tremendous factor which could help South Africa and he called on the Opposition for help.

Did the hon. member for Vereeniging not spend at least ten minutes of his speech in accusing this side of unpatriotic, un-South African conduct?

No, let us get the facts correct. The hon. member quoted from a speech made by an hon. member and he said that speech was not the sort of speech that would do South Africa any good. Hon. members must realize that when speeches of that kind are made—and there have been such speeches made during this Session—they can do a great deal of harm to South Africa. That is the type of speech which is used against South Africa. It is this sort of attempt to belittle and to ridicule any effort by this side of the House to establish a basis on which Black and White can work out their destiny, that is going to drag South Africa down. That is why the hon. member made that appeal. I want to say that I was definitely most disappointed in the hon. member’s reaction to-day. He talked about decent standards and about being unable to erase an image, and he went to the extent of quoting the Singh case and throwing it up in the face of the Government.

But your office did that, not I.

He said that I was a blind apologist for apartheid. He tried in every way to descredit the basis of the Department of Information. His whole attack was designed to show that this was a propaganda department. The hon. member said that we were channelizing everything through the Department of Information, and when I said that we were co-ordinating the information, he said that was the same thing. He talked about Goebbels and Ribbentrop, and then he went on to talk about Mussolini and Hitler. May I ask the hon. member whether he found any reference to Mr. Goebbels and Mr. Ribbentrop in any documents of the Department of Information, or did he himself say it in this House? I should like the hon. member to answer that question. Did he refer to Goebbels and Ribbentrop?

I did and I mentioned Mussolini and Hitler but I quoted what your office said. May I ask the hon. the Minister a question?

No, I will not answer the hon member’s questions. The whole atmosphere that the hon. member wanted to create was that this Department of Information was a Goebbels propaganda department, and his whole object was to try to discredit the Department of Information and to associate it with Nazism and with Goebbels.

How is your Department going to bring about goodwill?

He even tried to give the impression that whereas formerly in Britain they had a Ministry of Information, they considered that was something which bore the characteristics of a dictatorship and that therefore it should be abandoned; that Britain abandoned its Ministry of Information and that the dissemination was now being undertaken by the various departments under the control of civil servants, but that there was no Minister of Information. Instead of following that course, what were we doing? The Prime Minister was setting up a Ministry of Information as a Ministry of propaganda, and the countries which had done that in the past had been ruined. Of course, that is not true. Let me quote to the House, what the position is, because this time the hon. member has not got all the information. The position is that there was a Ministry of Information in Britain up to the end of the war.

I said that.

It consisted of 7,500 people. The numbers had got completely out of hand. What happened after that? The hon. member said that there was no longer a Minister in charge of Information.

I never said that.

The hon. member did say it; I took his words down. He said that the Ministry was abolished, and he went on to say that there was no justification for the Ministry here. He said that in Britain the information services were run by the departments and not by a Minister. What is the true position? The true position is that every department has an information section. Let me quote from a document from the United Kingdom—

That is exactly what I said.

No, that is not true. The hon. member tried to indicate that the idea of having a Minister responsible for information was the wrong system. He said that in Britain there was no responsibility to a Minister, but the true position is that every department has its information system and the Minister in charge of that department is responsible for its information section. There are 30 of these departments.

They have increased it from one to 30.

Yes, they have increased it from one to 30. The hon. member made a big issue out of this change-over to Information Offices. He tries to give the impression that there was no Minister responsible for these information sections; that they were run entirely by civil servants. He suggested that there was no Minister who could influence the policy, because that is what he was trying to indicate. He said that here we had a Nationalist Party Department of Information, a Nationalist Party Department of Propaganda, but do they say in Britain, where the different Ministers are in charge of the various information sections, that those departments are Tory or Conservative Departments of Information? The Foreign Office is run by a Minister and a Foreign Information Service is run through that office. Then you have the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Colonial Office, and even the Minister of the Board and Trade has information sections under him.

Which countries have Ministers of Information?

The reason why the Information Service in Britain is run differently, is because there you have 30 departments, each with its own information section.

We have 14 now.

But each information section is run by a Conservative Cabinet Minister. Does it become a propaganda machine for that reason? Surely it is right for the Ministry of Information in South Africa to show a true and adequate picture of South African policy. Is that right or is it not right? Are we not entitled to show a true and adequate picture of South African policy?

They do not want that.

No. Because we want to put over a true and adequate picture of South African policy we are accused of being a propaganda machine. No, we must only put over United Party policy and then we will not be a propaganda machine.

Then we would be a nuisance.

You see, Sir, the hon. member does not know that in every democratic country to-day it is accepted that you have to have Departments of Information. Some of them are run by individual departments, of which Ministers are in charge.

You are saying all I said.

Sir, I studied very carefully what the hon. member said. He now finds that unfortunately I have a document in my hands which I can quote against him. I want to point out that when we in South Africa set up a Ministry of Information, then it is regarded as a Ministry of Propaganda. It is regarded as propaganda when we say that it is essential that the public should be adequately informed about the many matters in which Government action impinges directly on the daily lives of people; that it is essential that a true and adequate picture of South African policy and South African institutions and the South African way of life should be presented overseas. But that is the basis on which Britain has set up her information sections. In South Africa, however, it is considered propaganda.

They are ashamed of being South Africans.

There is one big difference and that is that this terrible machine which we are erecting in South Africa and which is giving the hon. member sleepless nights, spends comparatively little. Its staff does not exceed 150. In Britain, the mother of democracies, the amount that they spend is £24,000,000 a year; in America they spend $147,000,000 on their Information Agency. They only spend $134,000,000 on foreign servants. They spend more on information than on foreign services. What is more, besides that, America spends more than a billion dollars on creating the right climate for America. But of course that nobody criticizes. Nobody casts nasty remarks about Goebbels, or anything like that.

Have they got a Minister of Information?

Of course Ministers are responsible, because in that way the spending money is controlled. You see, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member makes these wild accusations, he tries to create the atmosphere that in South Africa we are on a totalitarian road, but now he is squealing and not able to face up to the criticism of his statement. He cannot substantiate his statement. The hon. member has an unfortunate way of making accusations without being able to substantiate them. He read out of various books and suggested that I should read this book on public relations, and another book on public relations. I thank the hon. member. I will take an opportunity to do so. But what the hon. member said was, and he laughed: One thing they say in this book is, “If your product is a good one, you can make a sale”. Now the hon. member was the publicity chairman of the United Party on the Rand. I have not read these books, but the hon. member has. Now I want to ask him: Why did he not say to himself “The product is good, I can sell it ”. Why did he not sell it on the Rand?

I never occupied that position.

He only sold Hymie.

The hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) was also connected with the United Party publicity campaign. If the United Party then has such a wonderful product to sell, why have they not sold it? Why could they not sell it to the country? Why did they have to come back election after election in smaller numbers?

You could not sell yourself to Maitland.

Order! What does the hon. member mean by that?

I said that the hon. member was not able to sell himself to Maitland.

It is true I did not win Maitland, but I did get the nomination in Vasco, and I might tell hon. members that there were a large number of people in Vasco that were very anxious to have a by-election there. There the United Party could have challenged the Minister of Information, there they could have given me a go, but for some reason or other they ran away from Vasco.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member then referred to the Times article. I want to tell the hon. member that I did not say anything about the English Press that I am not prepared to say openly. The hon. member referred to attacks I am supposed to have made on the English Press. The remark I made about the English Press was this: I pointed out that in South Africa the position was different to the position in other countries, and I said—

I was referring to the fact that the English language Press in South Africa has a circulation among English-speaking people here, and I said, also referring to the fact that the English Press has a big circulation overseas—

I went on further and said this—

Yes.

I said “responsible newspapers”, I did not say “all newspapers”.

Which are the irresponsible ones?

Very many, some of them helping to spread these distortions overseas. The hon. member seems to doubt that these distortions do exist. He seems to think that is a matter of our imagination.

No, I did not say that.

Even the responsible Press overseas admits that there are these distortions. Even they are prepared to admit the misrepresentation going on overseas. Even the Times, in which this article appeared to which I referred, admitted that there were distortions and that a wrong picture was given, even though it was prepared to write a leader which in my opinion was very much off the mark.

May I put a question to the hon. the Minister? Would you say that it was a distortion on the part of the London Times that they called you a blind apologist of the Government’s policy?

I will say this that the writer of that leading article was undoubtedly a man who was suffering from frustration and irritation, and those are not my words; they are the words in which the English Press referred to him. Mr. Speaker, I feel we should really show this House the type of leaders appearing in a paper like the Times, written by a person who admittedly talks about “a blind apologist”, but who says—

Yes.

The man who writes this sits in a chair, in the protection of his office. He has not got to fend for himself, for White survival in South Africa. He can talk disparagingly about a small White pocket of people, but that small White pocket of people, are the people we are determined to see survive in South Africa. He can talk disparagingly of our efforts, but it is this small pocket of White people that have managed to build up South Africa; it is this small White pocket of people who have created a much higher standard for the Bantu in this country than he has anywhere else in Africa. And they have not done it with the help of overseas, but on their own feet. They have carried on and have built up South Africa. And even on the political side we on this side of the House are making attempts at positive development We are trying to look after the problem, and this leader writer talks about a small pocket of White people. If one criticizes a leader writing in a newspaper, does that mean that one does not believe in the freedom of the Press? Is he so sacrosanct that he can write something scathingly about South Africa, but if you criticize him, you are criticizing the whole of the Press? Of course not. The man who writes in this fashion, who writes disparagingly of our people, who considers that they are expendable as far as he is concerned, is a foreigner, he does not belong to South Africa. There are many English-speaking people like myself who are anxious to create goodwill between our two countries, but an article, a leader of this nature, breaks down the ties that we have built up over the years. It is an irresponsible article. South Africa a friend of the United Kingdom, South Africa until recently a member of the Commonwealth, South Africa who has been a supporter of Britain through the bad and the good days, but a leader writer writes South Africa off as a small pocket of White people who are expendable.

I want to come to the amendment of the Opposition. In his amendment the hon. member says that the Opposition is “nevertheless of the opinion that the extent of world hostility to the Republic owing to racial policies pursued by the Government makes the task of the Ministry of Information impossible”. The hon. member was asked whether such criticism was only levelled at the Government since the present Government has been in power, whether only now there is this criticism of racial policies, and to what extent are the hon. member and his party prepared to change the racial policies of South Africa? Are they prepared to change them so that they will fit into the international concept of human dignity: One man one vote? Are they prepared to change them so to be in accord with international opinion? Are they prepared so to change our racial policies that there will be no criticism of South Africa? Of course not. I say that this amendment does not reflect the position in any way whatsoever. Hostility against South Africa is there because South Africa is unfortunately being dragged into a cold war, it has got nothing to do with the merits of the case. South Africa’s case is far better than that of many of the countries that criticize us. They say that we are a threat to world peace. That is absolute nonsense. South Africa is not a threat to world peace, neither is South-West Africa, and everybody knows it. That is why the hon. member for Vereeniging hoped that his appeal at any rate would not fall on deaf ears, when he said “On this issue let us stand together and face the enemies of South Africa”. But the hon. member for Turffontein again tried to protest that side of the House would change the racial policies of South Africa so that they would meet with the approval of the world.

I now want to come again to the original motion and say that as far as the Government is concerned, I accept the motion on behalf of the Government. I would say to the hon. member for Vereeniging and the hon. member for Innesdale that the manner in which they addressed the House, the manner in which they put over their case with conviction, showed the feeling that lies behind this motion, the determination of this side of the House to look after the interests of South Africa against all-comers. There was not any levity, it was a serious discussion, and it was a discussion which I thought would lead to a far better debate than what it ended up in. I want to congratulate both hon. members, and I want to say to the hon. member for Innesdale that I realize that he is not an old member of this House, but that he spoke with sincerity and conviction and I want to say that I am proud to sit with him and with other members on this side of the House, and I am not interested in the sneers on the other side of the House. They can read as many speeches I made in the past as they like from Hansard. I am not interested. I regard South Africa as a country at the present moment in which we have got somehow to create a unity to meet the difficulties that may lie ahead.

I want to say to hon. members that I noted the points that were made. I consider that it is the duty of every department, every one of us, to improve the relationship between white and black, that the atmosphere should eventually be one as far as the Transkei is concerned, of good neighbourliness. There should be the greatest goodwill. And the true position is that there is this goodwill. You seldom hear of it. The other day a question was answered by the Minister of Justice. The question was: How many murders have been committed of Black against White, White against White, White against Black and Black against Black? I may tell you that it was something like three and four in the case of Black against White and White against Black, but Black against Black it was a question of some 300. It shows that the White man in this country is not the enemy of the Black man. The White man keeps law and order, he sees to it that the way of living in this country is a way whereby all sections of the people can live in peace and live in goodwill, one with the other. I would also like to thank the hon. member for Vereeniging for his tribute to Mr. du Plessis, the Secretary for the department. A good wine needs no bush. Mr. du Plessis has been High Commissioner in Canada, he has been ambassador in New York, and he is a man who, as far as I am concerned, I have complete confidence in. I noticed that there was an attempt by the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) to indicate that Mr. Meiring should have been put in his place and that it was wrong to place Mr. du Plessis in the position of Secretary and Mr. Meiring as Deputy Secretary. That of course was an attempt to try and create an atmosphere of suspicion in the department. I can say with absolute authority for Mr. Meiring and Mr. du Plessis and myself that we are working in absolute harmony together and we are determined that we are not going to be undermined by little petty remarks or little jealousies which Opposition members try to create. [Time limit.]

I can well understand the look of disappointment which was on the face of the hon. the Prime Minister while he listened to the Minister of Information. It was to be my task to reply to the hon. Minister of Information in regard to his proposals for this new Department which he is to run, the machinery for a Department of Information, and how he intended to serve South Africa in the interest of this country, but throughout his 40 minutes he did not refer once to what his Department was going to do. He did not refer once to his plans or intentions; he did not refer once to the objectives at which he was striving. What did we have from the hon. the Minister? We had an attack on the hon. member for Orange Gove (Mr. E. G. Malan) because a speech he had made here in South Africa had been quoted at the United Nations. Does the hon. Minister forget the speeches which were quoted by his present colleagues overseas against South Africa when they were conniving with the enemies of South Africa for a separate peace in time of war? Mr. Speaker, this country has had examples of this in the past, but now we are being accused of undermining South Africa because of our right to criticize. I do not want to quote the hon. Minister on what he thinks of his own Government, but on the basic principle of the right to criticize, I think the hon. the Minister should be reminded of what he believed in. This is not a political philosophy, this is a fundamental credo of the hon. the Minister regarding the right of freedom of speech. I want to quote from Hansard, Vol 55, Col. 1463. Mr. Waring said—

Then there were some interjections, and Mr. Waring continued—

When the hon. the Minister was appearing on the platform with a Communist he believed that a Communist had every right to his own political opinions and every right to express his views. But now that he is under the Whip of the Nationalist Government it is an offence against South Africa to criticize the Government.

What nonsense!

No wonder that the hon. Minister when he sat on this side of the House, complained about the tactics on the other side of the House, when he said (on the same page, in the same speech)—

It was good enough for that hon. member when he was on this side of the House to be called a donkey by the hon. Leader of the House who sits there, but now that he is sitting there as Minister of Information, now anything that is said on this side of the House, our right to criticize, now suddenly becomes a scandal against South Africa.

Where did I say that?

The hon. the Minister attacked the hon. member for Orange Grove because his political views had been quoted outside South Africa. But what is more, he accused my colleague here of stating that we were opposed to any information services, and he quoted at length from the British system. I want to quote the exact words used by my colleague—

At 3.55 p.m. the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with Standing Order No. 41 (3) and the debate was adjourned until Friday, 16th March.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Orders of the Day.

When this Bill was discussed last year there were objections to certain of the clauses. I am not going to reply to those objections, because on the instructions of the promotors of the Bill I shall move in the Committee Stage that the relevant clauses be deleted. They are particularly Clauses 1 and 6. I then trust that the rest of the Bill will be accepted because, as hon. members know, it is non-contentious and refers more particularly to the administration of this institution. In order to refresh the minds of hon. members, I briefly refer to the fact that the amendment Bill provides for the representation in the Senate of members of the teaching staff who occupy pensionable posts and who are not professors, to make provision for the establishment of an agricultural faculty, to provide that the Council will nominate members of the teaching staff in consultation with the Senate, or a Committee of the Senate, and that honorary degrees will be granted only on the recommendation of the Senate.

Amendments put and negatived.

Original motion put and agreed to.

I move—

Mr. Speaker, when the debate was adjourned, I was making an attempt to show how the chiropractic claims were out of all reason and how they would finally, if brought into effect, change the whole face of the health services of the country.

I want the House to appreciate that this is not an effort made from prejudice or from self interest, difficult though that may seem. This is a matter which I have studied over many years, so much so that in June 1934 I read a Paper, subsequently published in the South African Medical Journal of that date …

A good Paper.

Thank you … discussing this very question. So that my interest goes back over a long time. In this Paper I said the following amongst other things—

In other words, in speaking to my colleagues at a scientific meeting, I drew their attention to this fact. I went on to say—

This is rather a long Paper, Sir, and therefore I do not want to weary the House with technical details. But I just want to say how I concluded. I concluded by saying—

I concluded finally by saying—

I quote these words, Sir, to show you that I approach this subject with an open mind. I want to emphasize again that there is no question of competition for patients between the medical profession and the chiropractice. At the most chiropractors claim that there are 120 of them. There are 9,000 doctors in this country and we are training in the region of 350 doctors every year. There is no question of competition at all. But I want to say that the chiropractors and their allies, the osteopaths and the naturopaths, have for years, even before the 1920 Act, obstructed constructive health legislation in this country. I think it took eight years to get the Medical, Dental and Pharmacy Act through this House and most of the delay was due to obstruction by these unregistered practitioners. Ever since then when the Medical Council has come forward with legislation hoping to obtain some control over the supplementary health services, and control particularly over the educational qualifications of these services, those bills have been obstructed and finally prevented from becoming law by the actions of this group of unregistered practitioners. These people who follow a cult, a cult with no scientific foundation. I think it is time that this obstruction to constructive legislation and the building up of the health services of the country should be removed. Unfortunately this is not a suitable forum for a scientific investigation. Prejudices arise, prejudices which are not allayed by words and party strife etc. come into the picture. Therefore, Sir, I hope that the hon. the Minister will appoint a commission, not from members of this House, if possible, not from the medical profession, but from scientists. There are many scientists in this country. I hope the hon. the Minister will appoint a commission to investigate the question of unregistered practitioners in this country.

With the time at my disposal I shall not be able to do more than to take the hon. members for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) and Vanderbijlpark (Dr. de Wet) to task for the speeches they have made during the course of this debate. Unfortunately I shall have to quote extensively to rebut the evidence which they have adduced in the course of this debate. Before I proceed, Mr. Speaker, with the dissection of their arguments, I would like to state my own point of view in regard to this matter. We pray every day in this House to God Almighty and say—

It is in this spirit, Mr. Speaker, that I wish to address the House on this Bill that is before the House to-day.

We have to deal here with the interests of an ever-increasing number of citizens of the Republic of South Africa whose interests have been committed to our charge. But stripping this debate of all clever and so-called scientific arguments, what do we find? I am now asking this question pertinently to the hon. member for Durban (Central) and my colleague here, the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark. What do we find? We find that the accusers of the chiropractors would like to sit in judgment of the accused.

I just made a statement hoping that the medical profession would not be members of the commission.

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the hon. member. They were the accusers of the chiropractors in this debate and they want to sit in judgment of the accused. And I shall prove that by reading from Hansard the speech that was made by the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark. I hope you will save me the time. I shall never vote for such gross injustice. I realize that as a layman, I am addressing this House now on a scientific subject, but I do not apologize for it for one moment because I can prove that the medical practitioners in this House who opposed this Bill and those who have supported them, have been inconsistent, illogical, self-seeking, grossly unfair and unjust. I shall now quote, Sir, from an article which appeared in the South African Medical Journal on 23 June 1934 and which came from the pen of a well-known and a very eminent South African surgeon. The article was titled “Manipulative Surgery”. It started with a quotation from Sir James Paget. I quote—

Almost a century ago—

They are more true to-day than when they were uttered. And this article was written 27 years ago—

I skip a few words.

Don’t skip them; read them.

All right I shall read them—

And now I want to stress these words—

Then he goes on to say—

Sir, this hon. gentleman goes further. Remember he is a surgeon in South Africa who has made a name for himself. He says—

Now this famous surgeon says—

And then he says this—

Now mark these words—

Mr. Speaker, if you would like to have the underlying motive of the opposition to this Bill I can quote nothing better than the following paragraph. It is the penultimate paragraph. It is the penultimate paragraph to this article—

I say that the people who accuse chiropractors in this House to-day also want to sit in judgment of them. And for that reason I shall not vote against this Bill. I nearly forgot to say, Mr. Speaker, that this eminent surgeon whom I have quoted now is the hon. member for Durban (Central). He wrote that Paper on 23 June 1934. I was fair enought to warn him the day before yesterday that I was going to quote from his article. And I told him that he had 17 minutes to try to wriggle out of it. He tried his best but he could not wriggle out of it.

There is nothing wrong with that article.

If there is nothing wrong with the article then there is everything wrong with the hon. member who wrote it, because he has just taken the contrary view of what he said in 1934. I would like to carry on. If I have time I shall return to the hon. member for Durban (Central). I now wish to deal with the arguments put forward by the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark. Unfortunately I cannot show you the photographs which I have in my hand, but he said—

My reply is that because the trade union members, together with their families, represent over a million people or one-third of the entire White population of the Republic. Their interests are (a) economic—that was outlined by the hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. van der Walt) when he introduced the Bill and (b) experience has taught them the value of chiropractic treatment, and they demand the right of obtaining those health services under the protection of proper statutory control. The hon. member for Vanderbijlpark also said that—

I say that this statement is manifestly incorrect and not based on fact. The present-day doctor of Chiropractice is trained at one of the 16 accredited colleges in the United States of America and Canada. The courses offered consist of four years academic and clinical training, comprising an average of some 4,500 compulsory lecture hours. And that compares very favourably with the compulsory lecture hours at any medical school in the world.

Does the chiropractic student have any hospital training whatsoever?

They are not required to have hospital training because they do not operate, they do not prescribe medicine. They practise the preventive section of the healing practice. The students at these colleges are prepared for the following and I would like the hon. members for Durban (Central) and Vanderbijlpark to correct me if I am wrong. The students at these colleges are prepared for the following two external examinations, set and controlled by the various State authorities, not private colleges but State authorities: (a) the licensing examinations conducted by the various State Boards of Chiropractic Examiners; and (b) the Basic Science Examinations conducted by the State medical authorities where the basic science laws apply. This is an external examination common to both medical and—mark my words, Mr. Speaker— common to both medical and chiropractic students. The basic science subjects are: Anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, chemistry and public health, i.e. hygiene and sanitation. The hon. member for Vanderbijlpark said—

I say without fear of contradiction that medical or physiotherapeutic manipulation is not chiropractic manipulation. The hon. member for Vanderbijlpark agrees with me there. There is a vast difference in training, technique and approach.

Just as well.

The hon. member says “just as well”. I agree with him that it is just as well. But the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark also said—

May I ask him this very simple question: How can the protection of the public, through proper statutory control of the chiropractic profession, possibly be a “backward step”, when it is freely admitted that the existence of chiropractic health services in the Republic is an established fact? And not only in the Republic of South Africa, Sir, but in the whole of the world. And again, I ask you, Sir, how can statutory control of chiropractic act against the wonderful things that are being done by medical science? There is no evidence whatsoever that the advances of modem medical science have suffered one iota because of the fact that chiropractic is recognized in the United States of America, or because there are some 30,000 licensed chiropractors in that country. On the contrary, it is a fundamental law of economics that competition spurs to ever increased endeavours and attainments. The hon. member for Vanderbijlpark went on to say—

He is wrong here—

… medical science went back 2,500 years. It is quite true that chiropractic, as an organized system of healing, dates back only 66 years; but the fundamanetal basic sciences upon which chiropractic is founded are identical to those of medicine, and chiropractic shares in this field the same historical background as medicine. Chiropractic did not have to start from scratch with anatomy and physiology 65 years ago. Those were established sciences and were accepted by chiropractic and medicine alike. The advent of antibiotics, barely 15 years ago, surely does not make them invalid. Modern medical science is poles apart from medical practice 50 years ago, but this fact does not make it invalid. Let me quote a few examples, and that is what I say as a layman, but what I have experienced in my own life. Until quite recently doctors kept a woman in bed for ten days after her confinement. They kept their patient in bed for at least seven days after a minor operation, and for two to three weeks after a major operation. A famous German surgeon kept me in bed for three weeks after a gastroenterostomy operation and that was as late as 1929. After 2,500 years, in 1929, they still did that to me. For many years it was almost an adage in the medical world that one must starve a fever and feed a cold, and for an ulcerated stomach they prescribed fluids. To-day these people who want to sit in judgment on the accused—and they are the accusers—what do they do? No woman is kept in bed for ten days after her confinement. No patient is kept in bed after a major operation for longer than about five days. His surgeon will tell him that he must get up and take exercise, even if it causes him excruciating pain. Patients suffering from enteric fever are no longer starved; they are fed, and they are given solid food to-day for ulcerated stomachs, and not fluids. To my mind, this is a tacit admission on the part of the medical practitioners in this House that in the years that have gone by they have often erred in their process of endeavouring to heal the human body. They must honestly admit that.

Those are the advances of science.

Yes, but there are no advances in the science of chiropractic.

There is no such thing.

I will give the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark (Dr. de Wet) five to one—not chiropractors but medical men— who disagree with him. I shall not have the time to do it now, but I will lay him any wager that I can quote him five to one. In this respect I have no axe to grind.

On a point of order, may the hon. member gamble in this House?

This is not a gamble; it is a certainty. I have no quarrel with the medical profession. My own son is a medical man. In fact, I would gladly admit in public, inside or outside this House, that I consider the medical profession as the noblest profession in the world, but what I detest is to see the clear evidence that this noble profession is now trying to lower its status to that of a closed shop trade union.

Before I proceed to the next point, I wish to refer to a fact which cannot be denied by the medical profession. I intend proving to this House that the medical profession is ultra conservative and has often been proved to be wrong. I fully realize that the medical profession should of necessity be conservative, for the public weal, but I do object to ultra conservatism and to rank prejudice. The fact to which I have referred is this. Hypnotism was practised by man for many thousands of years before the medical profession, which according to the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark, started 2,500 years ago, and with beneficial results to people who were suffering, but despite those millenniums, in the latter half of the last century, when an eminent member of the F.R.C.S., to which the hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) also belongs challenged the Medical Council of Britain to put him to certain tests in regard to the healing value of hypnotism. He was ignored. To-day we have general practitioners all over the country and all over the world, and psychiatrists who make use of hypnotism to heal the human body and the human mind. But now it is not called hypnotism any longer; it has the enhanced name of “medical science”. But it took millenniums before the ultra conservative medical profession would acknowledge that this was really an art or science which could be used to promote the health of man. What I would like to hear from the hon. members for Durban (Central) and Vanderbijlpark is whether they can give the assurance to this House that the same things will not happen in regard to chiropractic. As I have told the hon. member on my left, I can quote five to one that for many years it was an accepted fact that the medical profession of necessity had to be conservative. I agree with that idea, but the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark said that the hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. van der Walt) had not quoted a single scientist in support of his contention that the Bill should be passed, and he then quoted a number of medical scientists who said there was no scientific basis for the theory of chiropractic. My reply to this is that during the first reading debate on the Chiropractice Bill of 1961, in March last year, an eminent scientist in the Government Party, the hon. member for Hercules (Dr. A. I. Malan) fully supported the contention that the Bill should be passed. [Interjections.] Even if he is a veterinary surgeon, he is still a scientist and a biochemist. In the limited time allotted to the debate last year it was impossible for the hon. member for Pretoria (West) to quote the many medical authorities who either directly or indirectly endorsed chiropractic principles. The hon. member for Vanderbijlpark also said chiropractic has been very closely studied by the medical profession, and the hon. member for Durban (Central) said, in an article, that he advised the medical profession to study it “if for no other reason than to determine whether aspects of it might not be taken over”. Now I ask whether that is an honest standpoint? The hon. member says of course it is, but is it honourable to damn a practice and then to study it to see whether you, for your own selfish ends, cannot use it?

Cannot you apply that to witchdoctors also?

Yes, but is it honest to say it should be closely studied by the medical profession if for no other reason than to determine whether aspects of it cannot be taken over? Taken over for what purposes?

For the good of the people.

No, for the good of the medical profession, because if there is any good in it the people could get it from the chiropractors to-day, and not from the medical profession. My reply to this is that it is quite contrary to the findings of a large group of doctors in Germany who have investigated the matter thoroughly and have acclaimed it as a major development in therapeutics. These doctors were eventually trained by chiropractors in the technique and are to-day practising chiropractic and they are calling it chiropractic.

Now I come to the hon. member for Durban (Central) again. We know that at least one medical specialist in South Africa who in effect is practising chiropractic although it is not called chiropractic, and that is the hon. gentleman there, and he has admitted it in his article which I quoted.

On a point of explanation …

Will the hon. member allow a point of explanation?

Yes, because the hon. member will find it very hard to explain it away.

Are chiropractors allowed to practise in Germany under the supervision of the State?

Yes, they are.

I am sorry, but I contradict that.

I want to continue. The hon. member for Vanderbijl Park said that chiropractors claimed that all disease was due to pressure on the nerves. I have been a member of the Select Committee on the Auxiliary Health Services, a few years ago. The chiropractors appeared before us, and also the Medical Association and the Medical Council, and all I can tell you, Sir, and I say that in honour bound, is that the chiropractors ran rings around the Medical Council and the Medical Association. It was said by the Medical Council, I think by Professor Oosthuizen, that their art is demonstrably false, and the reply was that it is demonstrably true, and they gave us a limelight lecture, and I tell you, Sir, as members of the Select Committee we were convinced that the chiropractors were right and that the others were wrong.

That is not true, because I was on that Committee.

The hon. member was not on that Committee, which is the injustice of the whole affair. He was a member of the subsequent Committee, because that first Committee did not suit the Minister of Health at the time.

What does the hon. member mean by saying that “it did not suit the Minister of Health”?

The Minister of Health at that time was opposed to it and we brought out a report and that Committee was dropped and a new one was appointed under the chairmanship of the hon. member for Mossel Bay. The hon. member said that chiropractors claimed that all disease is due to pressure on the nerves. My reply to that is that responsible, organized chiropractors— which is what we want with this Bill—have never made such claims. They are well trained to recognize conditions which are outside their scope and never hesitate to refer such cases to the physician or the surgeon. I could quote many cases. As a member of that Committee, I saw a huge record of case histories, where anatomists of fame in South Africa sent their own wives to chiropractors. I know of a case that happened just the day before yesterday. When I was phoning this chiropractor, this anatomist’s wife was in his office, being treated. I can give instances where medical practitioners have failed to give relief …

To wives?

No, to the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark, who seems to be under stress now. I have seen case histories and my friend on my right, who was the chairman, also saw those documents, where medical men who damned chiropractors in public and in Parliament personally go to chiropractors for treatment and also sent their wives. I think that to say the least of it, it is not honest. The hon. member for Vanderbijlpark tried to belittle the hon. member for Pretoria (West) in regard to the evidence which he quoted, and he quoted a certain Palmer and the evidence in regard to him. He was not a scientific man. He quoted at length from the court record. My reply to that is simply this, and I defy anyone to deny that I am right, that the accidental discovery of a natural law is quite irrelevant to the subsequent scientific development of the principle discovered. Had not Newton observed an apple falling from a tree and thus discovered for the first time the principle of the force of gravity, which had been in existence since the beginning of time and not only for 2,500 years, there would not have been any astronauts in space to-day. That is my reply to that argument. It was said that three former Ministers of Health, Dr. Bremer, Dr. Stals and Dr. Gluckman, had all condemned chiropractic as something without any scientific basis. My reply to that is very simple. In the absence of proof that those three very worthy gentlemen conducted a scientific investigation into the merits of chiropractic, their opinions cannot be accepted as authoritative. Then it was said by the hon. member that the Medical Council was recognized by Parliament as the authority to be consulted on medical matters and it should not be abandoned. My reply to that is that the Chiropractors’ Bill does not seek to interfere with the authority of the Medical Council, or with the fact that it should be consulted on medical matters. [Time limit.]

Mr. Speaker, I should like to express my appreciation to all hon. members who participated in this debate for the succinct and sympathetic manner in which they approached and discussed the matter. It once again made one realize the importance of medical services to our country and our people, those services which each of us needs from the time we open our eyes until we finally close them. Now I have been approached from various quarters to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate this very important matter I was requested to do so by the Medical Council and also by the Medical Association and the Association of Chiropractors, and also, as hon. members have heard to-day, by members of this House. After careful consideration the Government has come to the conclusion that the interests of our country will best be served by the appointment of such a commission of inquiry, and I hope within the near future to announce the terms of reference and also the members of that commission.

Mr. Speaker, I think that the decision taken by the Government in respect of this very important issue is a wise one. The trade union movement throughout South Africa has been agitating for many years to get a measure of recognition for chiropractic and for as many years there has been strong opposition from the medical profession. I think that the Bill which we are debating to-day is one which is not acceptable to all members and all parties in this House, but that there can be general acceptance of the proposal that the whole matter be referred to a commission of inquiry I have no doubt whatever. I feel that the decision the Minister has taken to refer the matter to a commission will be welcomed by everyone in the House, and I think the trade union movement will have the opportunity which they seek of putting their case forward so that their members, in turn, can be satisfied that the whole matter has stood up to a very searching inquiry.

In view of the fact that the Minister has made this announcement and that there is general agreement. I move—

I second.