Mr. Speaker, with your leave I should like to make the following statement—

Guests attending the inauguration service by invitation, will start taking their appointed seats in the Groote Kerk at 8.45 a.m. From that time until approximately five minutes before the inauguration service will commence, there will be organ music alternated with the Stellenbosch University Choir and the Free State Youth Choir.

Escorted by a mounted police guard the State President-elect will leave from the entrance to his official residence in the Avenue for the Groote Kerk. As soon as the procession enters Adderley Street, it will be joined by an armoured car squadron from Wale Street, The arrival of the State President-elect at the Groote Kerk will be heralded by a fanfare. The State President-elect and his retinue will be met at the church door and escorted to their seats by Dr. J. S. Gericke. Dr. P. S. Z. Coetzee and Professor W. D. Maxwell, the three ministers of religion who will, at his request, officiate at the inauguration service. In terms of the provisions of the Constitution the Chief Justice, Dr. the Hon. L. G. Steyn, will conduct the inauguration ceremony. After the inauguration ceremony the guests will be afforded the opportunity of taking their appointed seats on the Grand Parade. Leaving the Groote Kerk the presidential procession, escorted by a mounted police guard, an armoured car squadron, and a flight of helicopters overhead, will move down Adderley Street to the fountain in the Heerengracht, back along Adderley Street as far as the Darling Street intersection, and then to the Grand Parade. The entire route will be lined with troops.

At the Grand Parade the procession will follow a route which will be marked down the length of the Parade and be lined with spectators on both sides. That will afford everybody, White and non-White, the opportunity of seeing the presidential procession from close by.

The dignitaries will be provided with seats on a dais to be erected on the Castle side of the Grand Parade. Seats will be reserved for Members of the House of Assembly, Senators, Provincial Councillors, heads of Departments and all persons whose names appear on the Table of Precedence. The State President and his retinue are expected to arrive in front of the dais on the Grand Parade at approximately 11.15 a.m., where they will be met and escorted to their seats on the dais by the hon. the Prime Minister and Mrs. Vorster.

The moment the State President appears on the dais, he will be saluted by a fly-past of approximately 80 aircraft. Immediately after that the hon. the Prime Minister will request the State President to deliver his message to the nation. The Defence Force, the Navy, the Air Force and the Police and their bands will take a spectacular part in the proceedings. Ample provision will be made for both Whites and non-Whites on the Grand Parade.

Approximately 6,500 scholars and members of youth organizations of all population groups are expected to be present and special seats will be available for the youth. Special provision is being made for the participation of non-Whites, and the band of the Coloured Corps will start playing on the Grand Parade at 8 a.m.

The proceedings in the church and on the Grand Parade as well as the presidential procession from the church to the Grand Parade will be covered fully by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The Government gave serious consideration to declaring this day to be a Public holiday. Unfortunately such a step would cause the country too much disruption in the economic and industrial spheres, particularly is view of the fact that the inauguration will take place shortly after Van Riebeeck Day and just before the Easter weekend. Consequently it has been decided not to declare the day of the inauguration a public holiday.

There are already indications that people will be attendine the proceedings in large numbers, If on the day in question the working public have to go to their places of work in Cape Town as usual, tremendous traffic problems may be caused by the additional flow of people coming to town to see the inauguration. The Government has decided that all Government offices in Cape Town and its immediate environs will be closed in the morning.

An earnest appeal is now being made to businessmen and all other undertakings in the Cape Peninsula to close their businesses, if at all possible, until 12.30 p.m. on that day. Such a gesture on the part of the private sector would be highly appreciated and would greatly facilitate the arrangements for the proceedings. It would also afford the workers in the Peninsula the opportunity of seeing the presidential procession and hearing the message of the second State President of the Republic.

A further appeal is being made to all persons who occupy or own premises situate along the route to be followed, to decorate their buildings and so to do their share in adding lustre to the inauguration ceremony and making the day a memorable one.

Upon the conclusion of the proceedings on the Grand Parade, the State President, preceded by the mounted policeguard and followed by the armoured car squadron, will return to the original point of departure along Darling Street, Adderley Street, and Government Avenue.

Immediately after his arrival at his official residence, Westbrooke, at approximately 12.30 p.m., the State President will meet the members of the Cabinet. At 4 p.m. the State President will receive diplomatic representatives at his official residence, Westbrooke. At 8 p.m. a banquet in honour of the State President will be given by the Provincial Administration of the Cape in the Parow Town Hall.

On the following day, 11th April, at times still to be fixed, the State President will meet the leaders of the various non-Whites population groups in the Lady Anne Barnard Hall in the Castle.

I should like to convey the Government’s gratitude to the Cape Town City Council for the cordial co-operation we have already been receiving from them.

Further details in regard to the arrangements will from time to time be announced through the medium of the Press and the radio by the organizing committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. J. Driessen, Secretary for Public Works.

Inquiries may be addressed to the organizer, Mr. M. du Preez, telephone 45-4559 or room 1409, Plein Park Building.

Mr. Speaker, when we adjourned yesterday, I stated that a large number of people representing different organizations were against the Bill on Improper Political Interference. Bodies like the Christian Institute, the Institute of Race Relations, Tucsa and several churches are all convinced that if this Bill, or something similar, becomes law, it will hamper their organizations and they are therefore totally opposed to the Bill.

It was just over two years ago that Die Burger advocated in a leading article that the Nationalist Party should now propagate their policy among the Coloured people. The article, dated 21st May, 1965, and translated by the Cape Times, read as follows—

Die Burger, the political organ of the Nationalist Party, did not then think, and that was after the provincial council elections, that it was wrong to take part in elections for Coloured people, but strongly advocated it. In fact, on many occasions Nationalists stood as independents in elections for Coloured representatives. We all know the results. What the results would have been if they stood as Nationalists instead of under the cloak of independents, we can well imagine. The fact that the commission reported that the Bill in its present form should not be proceeded with, and the fact that it could not produce an alternative Bill, is surely proof that they saw the impossibility of implementing any measure to stop the so-called improper interference of one political party in the affairs of another.

I now wish to say something on political representation. The hon. the Prime Minister made the extraordinary statement yesterday that now for the first time, the Coloured people are getting political rights, this by way of the Coloured Representative Council. They got these rights in terms of the 1964 Act but the Government delayed its implementation up to now. At most they will be equal to provincial council voting rights. They will never have more power than a provincial council has. The real meaning of full political rights is to enable them to have representation in this House, a say in the central Parliament. The rights were diminished in the 1950’s when the Coloureds were removed from the common roll and now they are to be abolished altogether. In the Cape and Natal they still vote for representatives in this House. The point has been made that the number of registered voters is small. The Prime Minister stated that approximately 700,000 Coloureds in the Cape could be registered. I do not think that this figure is correct. That figure may reflect the total number of males over 21 years of age but they do not all qualify. However, the fact that those who could qualify are not registered, is immaterial. We must remember too that this Government made it very difficult for a Coloured man to register at all. The point is that the ability to elect members to the central Parliament is of the utmost importance. They are not getting something better in exchange. They are getting a provincial council status which, as I have already pointed out, they virtually got in terms of the 1964 Act. When that Act was passed, it was stated definitely by the late Prime Minister that their representation in this House would not be abolished.

In other words, the late Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, definitely intended the Coloureds to have the Coloured Representative Council as provided for in the 1964 Act, as well as representation in this House. I have no doubt whatever that it was not Dr. Verwoerd’s intention that such representation should be abolished, certainly not at this stage. This Act is breaking faith with the Coloured people. The statement that they are getting something better in return, will not wash with them. They want and must have both.

I now wish to refer to the report. On the question of the political representation of Coloureds and Indians, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has already informed the House that a great volume of evidence in favour of representation in the central Parliament was received. Approximately 27 people were in favour of such representation as against nine who were against it. The responsible Coloured and Indian parties and other bodies want this representation. Of the nine who did not think that this representation served a useful purpose, only one Coloured organization, the District Six Association, was such a body. But even this body qualified its statement by saying that if these representatives were to report back regularly, they would be happy to retain them. The Rev. Engelbrecht was one of those who stated that they did not attach much value to the representation in this House, but on page 273 he states:

Professor S. P. Olivier from Natal holds the views held by Sabra, but even he states that the time will come when the white man will have to give some sort of political rights to the Coloureds and Indians. We have dealt with the views of Dr. I. D. du Plessis at length. Mr. Dollie was referred to by the hon. member for maimesbury as an outstanding personality in the Coloured community and as one who does not want representation in the central Parliament. But what does he want? He wants a Coloured Parliament with equal rights to those of the present-day sovereign Parliament. On page 330 we have Mr. Dollie’s reply to a question by Mr. Bloomberg:

As regards Sabra, I have no comment to make; I think they are idealists.

So, Mr. Speaker, the evidence against representation is of very little value. On the other hand, the evidence in favour of representation for Coloureds in the central Parliament is overwhelming. The Labour Party states that Coloured people are being driven further and further from the Whites. The Group Areas Act has brought bitterness, particularly because of its one-sided application. I am sure that if this Government proceeds with its plan to remove the Coloured representatives from this House, the bitterness will be very much increased.

The hon. member for Outeniqua gave evidence and I think he knows the Coloured people as well as anybody else. He knows his constituents and he knows their views. He says with absolute conviction that there will be shock, consternation and frustration, and the harm done to the confidence of the Coloured people will be irreparable, even if the Coloured Council is built up.

The Federal Party, represented by Messrs. T. Schwartz from the Cape Province, J. Poley from the Transvaal, P. Sanders from the Orange Free State, and others representing the greater part of the Republic, were firm in their opinion that the Coloured people should be represented in Parliament. I do not think it is necessary to quote what they said in particular. A good bit of that has already been done. But the fact nobody can dispute, is that they want representation in the central Parliament.

The witnesses who represented the Conservative Party were equally convinced that representation in this Parliament was necessary. Mr. Fortuin also stated, like Mr. T. Schwartz, and I quote—

He goes on to state that he sees on the basis of a common roll the building up of a very important Coloured body, namely the Coloured Representative Council. Despite this important Council, he still insists on representation. He says that he will fight the next election as a Nationalist.

Then there are both Ds. D. P. Botha and J. A. J. Steenkamp, who have spent many years of their lives—one something like 44 years—amongst the Coloured people, and who I am sure know them very well. They are not men who are against the Government’s apartheid policy. They both state that the Coloureds must retain their representation in Parliament. Ds. D. P. Botha says that if it is abolished, it would be a terrific shock. There is overwhelming evidence from the Coloureds and the Whites, and from the Whites who know the Coloureds very well, that representation in this Parliament must be maintained. The abolition will do our relations irreparable harm. Abolition will mean breaking faith with the Coloured people. I must again remind the House of the assurance that was given by the former Prime Minister in 1962, and we shall quote it again later on, and again by the Minister of Coloured Affairs, namely—

It was not their intention that the Coloured Parliament should replace the Whites. The then Minister of Coloured Affairs gave a similar assurance and left no doubt in the minds of hon. members, the public and the coloured people that representation in this House will not be abolished.

I am reminded of the words of the late General Hertzog, when referring to the Nationalist Party after their change of policy and their decision to put the Coloureds on a separate roll, when he said: “Wat ’n skande! Wat ’n gruwelike verbreking van jou erewoord!”

The wise King Solomon said that there were a few things that were incomprehensible and inexplicable to him. One of those was the way a snake passed over a stone. I think that if King Solomon could have looked to-day at the course the United Party has taken in the field of Coloured politics, he would have shaken his head and remained silent. The hon. member for Gardens referred in his speech to the removal of the Coloureds from the Common Voters’ Roll by the National Party early in the fifties, and said that the National Party had diminished the political rights of the Coloureds in that way. Is the hon. member for Gardens also prepared to say that with its somersault policy at its recent congress held at Bloemfontein the United Party is also diminishing the rights of the Coloureds? The hon. member says that by taking that step the National Party was diminishing the political rights of the Coloureds. Since then the hon. member and his party have, as regards the political rights of the Coloureds, been following a winding political course which nobody can understand. But now, after 15 years, they accept the principle of separate development. Yet to-day the hon. member is once again levelling the accusations he levelled as far back as 15 years ago.

The hon. member for Gardens was a member of the commission whose report is under discussion at the moment, and he was chairman of the commission that was appointed by his leader. On 9th October last year the hon. member wrote a letter to the chairman of the former commission in which he solemnly stated that he identified himself wholeheartedly with the findings of the minority report and that, if he had not been precluded from being present by reason of illness, he would also have signed that minority report. Please note. The hon. member made this statement on 9th October, i.e. on the eve of the United Party congress. And the hon. member knew that at that congress a committee of inquiry, of which he was the chairman, would submit a report in which it would be recommended that the Coloureds should be kept on a separate voters’ roll. Mr. Speaker, where would one find another hon. member who is as great a political opportunist as is the hon. member for Gardens? This would even make a statue blush. King Solomon would have been rendered speechless if he could have observed to-day the manoeuvring of the United Party and of the hon. member for Gardens.

The point at issue here, is the Prime Minister’s announcement that he has accepted the recommendations of the majority report—inter alia, that the political representation of the Coloureds in this House should be abolished. A further point at issue here, is the Government’s decision to expand the Coloured Persons Representative Council by investing it with greater powers and status. Another point at issue here, is that the Prime Minister has stated frankly that a suitable link between the Coloured Council and this Parliament would be created as soon as the new Coloured Council has been established and consulted.

The first question that may be asked now, is why do we not retain the present set-up? From 1956—when the Coloureds were placed on a separate voters’ roll—to 1966, was for the Coloureds a period of political calm. Then the United Party set the example again, through the hon. member for Karoo, by once again poking their noses into the political affairs of the Coloureds. The example set by he hon. member for Karoo was followed by the Progressive Party. But in those ten years of calm a great deal was achieved for the Coloureds under the present set-up. Mention has already been made of the extensive work that has been done by the Department of Coloured Affairs, particularly under the socioeconomic upliftment plan for the Coloureds. A great deal of appreciation has been expressed for this work that has been done by the Department, a department that was disparaged by the United Party at the time of its inception. They did not want to have anything to do with it and subsequently they slandered it and stirred up suspicion against it amongst the Coloureds—in fact, they did everything possible to prevent the Department from being able to do its work properly. All the positive steps that were taken by this Government, were fought by the United Party—amongst other things the take-over of Coloured Education. There is evidence that in this period a national pride has come into being amongst the Coloureds and that a great deal has been done to arouse amongst them a sense of nationhood. But at the same time it is being admitted generally that all these positive and constructive things could only have been undertaken in the climate that was created when the Coloureds were taken out of the political struggle of the Whites. The fact that during the period 1953 to 1956 the National Party did not take any notice of the fuss that was made by the Opposition and its hangerson outside, but continued to do what it considered to be in the interests of the Coloureds, created the right climate. The step taken by the Government to place the Coloureds on a separate voters’ roll, a step history has already proved to be the right one, created this climate which has made these positive steps possible. Virtually everybody who appeared before the commission, admitted that the period 1956 to 1966 had been the most fruitful period in the history of the Coloureds, because during this period more was done for them than was done in any other period of their existence.

Another point the commission had to take into account, was that if it were decided to retain the political representation of the Coloureds, as it exists in this Parliament at present, we would not be able to prevent people from insisting that the number of representatives should be increased. In fact, everybody admitted that if it were accepted that the Coloureds should have a political point of growth here, the number of representatives would in fact have had to be increased gradually. The possible number of Coloured voters in the Cape to-day is between 160,000 and 200,000. As a result of the economic development in the country, development which stands the Coloureds in good stead, and as a result of the upliftment programme for the Coloureds on the part of the State and with the education facilities that are being placed at their disposal, this voters’ potential is growing every day. It was pointed out in evidence that the Separate Representation of Voters Act and the speeches of Nationalist leaders of that time made allowances for the fact that the number of Coloured representatives here would have to be increased in the course of time.

Another fact of which we had to take note was, that it became very apparent from the evidence that if the political representation of the Coloureds in this Parliament were to be continued, we would not have found any moral justification for limiting it to the small, select group we have to-day. At some stage or other the franchise would have had to be extended to Coloured women, and sooner or later—I say that it would have had to happen sooner—political rights would have had to be granted to the Coloureds in the northern provinces. This is an obvious fact, and the United Party admits it in their policy. In their proposed policy they grant political rights to the Coloureds in the northern provinces, and they are most certainly making allowances for it. This is the principal reason why the United Party is now abandoning the Common Voters’ Roll and introducing separate representation. Just imagine what would happen if one had a Common Voters’ Roll in the Transvaal and in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal and Free State United Party supporters would then have to go to the polls along with the Coloureds. That would be the end of the United Party.

In the first place we must take into account the fact that the logical outcome of the Coloureds being represented in this Parliament by Whites, would be that at some stage or other in the future we would have to allow the Coloureds to be represented here by their own people. This is a logical fact; we cannot escape it. We as Nationalists are saying to the United Party that the eight white representatives they want to bring in here for representing the Bantu, will not always remain white, nor will they always remain eight in number. One simply cannot get away from that. In spite of all the assurances the United Party wants to put in writing, we say that we do not believe that the number will remain eight and that they will always be white. As Nationalists and Dawie wrote in Die Burger in 1960: if one retained the white representatives of the Coloureds here and if one granted the Coloureds a point of growth for political rights in this white parliament, then the outcome would be that the number of representatives would not be four only and that they would be represented here by their own people. The commission had to face those facts, and in addition to that the evidence showed very clearly that it would be attempting the impossible to combat political interference by the Whites in Coloured politics with any degree of success if the candidates of the Coloured people continued to be white persons. On the other hand we were given the alternative solution that one could possibly establish an electoral college to prevent the interference by the Progressive Party and the United Party which is taking place at the moment. The proposal was that one had to prevent this interference by making the Coloured Persons Representative Council an electoral college for nominating their representatives in this Parliament. That alternative proposal fell flat for the simple reason that it would rather increase political interference than reduce it. The political parties will do everything in their power to have those members elected whom they consider to be the right persons, to nominate the right persons to this Parliament, and subsequent to that the Coloured representatives will be subject to improper pressure, which we simply cannot allow.

Sir, what was the commission to do then? I should like to lay some emphasis on the evidence that was given before the Commission by non-Whites and by non-White political parties. I did not, as the hon. member for Gardens did, sit down and count the number of witnesses. Some of them are not worth counting. Some of them are standing outside— at the upper end of Adderley Street—with a poster, and the Coloureds are Laughing at them. They were sitting around like political vultures —people such as the Black Sash—waiting to see whether there was anything to scavenge. I say that the Coloureds are laughing at them. It is not worth the trouble to count them. I want to read out here the evidence of Coloureds themselves; I want them to speak Their evidence is valuable in this sense that if it is at all possible to-day to talk about a representative Coloured opinion, then it is to be found, to the extent it exists at present, within the commission. There were representatives of all three political parties that appeared before the commission. There were representatives of all three of these political parties whom it was worth listening to. What were their views on the various possibilities that exist? Let us take first the old set-up before 1956, the period of the common voters’ roll. I can state quite frankly that with very few exceptions the Coloureds did not have a good word for that period. It was generally said by the Coloureds that that was the most frustrating, the most ineffective and the most useless period in the history of the existence of the Coloureds. The vote of a Coloured person was all that mattered at that time. His vote was used as a football for their own purposes by white political opportunists, and the stirring up of suspicion, the incitement and the corruption that went along with it, landed these poor people in a bottomless morass, and in all other spheres they were sorely neglected as far as their development was concerned. Moreover, in that period the race relations between Whites and non-Whites were upset in a ruthless way because the Coloureds were forced into a position of having to act as a political arbiter between white man and white man. I just want to refer to the evidence in this regard. In the first place, I shall refer to the memorandum of the Federal Party on page 59. I want to concede, as the hon. member for Malmesbury did, that under cross-examination people sometimes say things they have not thought out well, but the following is a quotation from this memorandum—

I also want to refer to the Labour Party, one of the few parties that was in favour of the retention of Coloured representatives here in this House. I want to refer to what Dr. Van der Ross said on page 121 of the report. Arising from a question that had been put to him, he said—

I also want to refer to what the Rev. J. A. J. Steenkamp, the moderator of the D.R. Mission Church, said on page 127. He said—

If this evidence is not sufficient, then I should like to read from a statement issued by the Federal Peoples’ Party shortly after its inception. It deals with their programme of principles. They say (translation)—

This is merely the introduction; what I want to read out, is the following—

Then they go on to say—

Then it says—

But there is more to come. I am reading on—

I should like the Opposition to give consideration to that. What was the attitude adopted by the various Coloured political parties in respect of the present set-up we now have here, and in respect of which it is now being pleaded that we should retain it here? It can be seen from the evidence that everybody admits that as a transition period this system has served its purpose. It created that calm, that climate, in which it was possible for the Coloured population to prosper for ten years, but in that same period it was also very clear that the Coloureds had lost their interest in this political representation, obviously because this political representation had very little significance for them, and they guided their interests into other directions. Evidence of this is the fact that between May, 1953, and August, 1963— in ten years’ time—the number of registered voters decreased from 47,849 to 9,839—by 38,000 in ten years’ time. But further proof to this effect is the evidence given by the Rev. Steenkamp on page 125. He said—

In the third place the general evidence before us was that these white representatives who had been sitting here since 1956, were of very little or no significance to the Coloureds. Without giving any offence to these representatives, I want to say the evidence before us signified that the Coloureds merely accepted them here as a necessary evil. It was openly admitted that these people did not mean anything to them. It is not necessary for me to go into this aspect; it has already been done by other hon. members and I think that it is being accepted generally.

What was the attitude adopted by the Coloureds in respect of the abolition of this representation? Now I want to tell the United Party, which says here that the overwhelming concensus of opinion was that these people should remain here. The people who matter, the most important three groups before us, were the three Coloured parties. Two of those three parties stated frankly in their evidence before us that the fact that they advocated the retention of the white representatives in this House, was merely a question of practical politics. They argued that a kind of sentiment attached itself to this representation, and they told us that if any of them were to use the abolition of this representation here as a plank in their platform and to accept it as part of their policy, then a tremendous political campaign would be waged against them on this issue, and that was why they did not advocate its abolition openly. But they tell the commission, “You may do so at any time; you may abolish them if you want to, but, please, do not say that we asked you to do so”. That was the attitude adopted by two of the three political parties. You can find it in what Mr. Fortuin said on page 139, and in what Mr. Petersen said on page 144. You will find it in the evidence given by the Federal Party and also in the memorandum submitted by the Federal Party, on page 60—

They say that as far as they are concerned, once the Coloured Persons Representative Council has been elected, that Council will decide what is to become of these people here, but in the meantime they can only emphasize the fact that these people do not have any significance for them. This is also the tenor of the evidence given by the other political party, the Conservative Party. They say: Let there be a transition period for approximately five or ten years; they are of no significance to us, but then we may decide later to abolish them.

Now I should like to say this. What did the commission therefore have as an alternative? The commission had only one alternative before it, namely that white representatives in this House be removed and that a political instrument be placed in the hands of the Coloured population, an instrument by means of which they may realize themselves in the field of politics, something which is worth while to them, a council through which this Government will also be able to give them much more than it is normally able to give them when they have representation in this House. That is why the commission recommended that the representatives here be abolished and that another link between Parliament and the new council be sought. By removing the white representatives of the Coloureds from this Parliament, we shall also have further developed the National Party’s policy in respect of political apartheid. This is a logical step, a pattern of development which has been in progress in this country since 1910. namely to remove the non-Whites’ representation in this Parliament and to guide it into other directions. This is the pattern which has been continued under this Government and which has gathered momentum under this Government.

I have no more time left, but what I want to state here very positively is that it is absolutely essential that there should be political separation if we want to carry through separate development for the Coloureds in all the other spheres. This was also admitted by a witness such as the Rev. D. Botha—who was opposed to the abolition of these representatives—namely that if one wanted separate development in this country to succeed amongst the Coloureds, then one would have to set political separation as a pre-requisite. That is why it is a logical step to abolish the present representation in this House. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, we have had a discussion here yesterday and to-day during which, in the main, the members of the commission who signed the majority report tried to justify their course of action and recommendations, recommendations which are not borne out by the facts placed before the commission, and which to my certain knowledge are not borne out by public opinion, either White, Coloured, or any other group in this country. This afternoon I wish to deal with what the alternative to the present system will be, namely what the commission recommends should take the place of the four representatives in this House.

Reference has been made here to the shortcomings of the Coloured representatives, of whom I happen to be one, but I ask: Who put us in this position? The gentlemen on the other side. It is that side’s own proposition; it is their own scheme. When the hon. gentlemen on that side put their own men into the field at election time, they were hammered into the ground. Indeed, I think some of them lost their deposits. The biggest crime I committed in our political world is that I beat a man who was really a Nat although disguised as an Independent. However, we found out who he was and, what is far more important, the Coloured people found out who he was. Had that man won the election there would have been none of the nonsense we have been having these last few years, because that was the big throw of the Nationalist Party.

We have heard a lot of talk here about interference, proper and improper, but I can assure hon. members that when I fought that election I dealt with Nationalist Party canvassers and organizers. I myself had to enter Nationalist Party offices to collect ballot papers which Coloured people felt should have come to me. Of course, that is all in order; that is not improper. What is more, those organizers hung on to the ballot papers and made it as difficult as possible for me to get hold of them. So, hon. members on that side must not talk here from that lofty perch of the ivory tower of innocence in the political world, because it is not true.

Much has been made of the attitude of the chairman of the Council for Coloured Affairs. One significant fact is he did not give evidence as the chairman of a Government body but as the leader of a very small and ineffective Coloured political party which, on his own admission, says it cannot win an election if it agreed to the abolition of the four Coloured representatives in this House. Why did he not speak as the chairman of the Council for Coloured Affairs? There is a reason, and a very good reason.

As recently as last year a motion was introduced in that council by one of the inexperienced members urging the council to resolve that the four representatives here should be done away with. To the eternal credit of the chairman—and I give him that credit in full measure—he said that as a council it could never support the motion. There was a furious debate. My information goes further and is to the effect that during the tea interval talks took place amongst the members. Of course, white officials attend these meetings. Afterwards the motion was withdrawn.

I can assure hon. members that the Council for Coloured Affairs, from the chairman to the most lowly member, acknowledge and say quite frankly that the points of view expressed in this Parliament by the men who sit here on my left, are identical with the views they express in the council, but the Government takes no notice of them. This is the sort of thing they say, and this is a Government body with nominees, not elected people. The Government dare not face an election among the Coloured people on their policy. To the present day there is a vacancy arising from the resignation of a man from Richmond who resigned years ago. For the same reason they dare not attempt to fill the seat of the late Mr. Charles Barnett—God rest his soul. So, let us not speak of interference, because the Government is interfering in the Coloured political world every day of the week.

Remember you submitted a memorandum.

That is right, all in good time. Let me deal with my memorandum which has been such a thorn in the side of the hon. the Prime Minister. He has had four “go’s” at me in this House over that memorandum.

Let me say here and now: That memorandum was compiled by me. The views expressed therein were mine, and what about it? Since when have I, a citizen and taxpayer of this country, not the right to attempt to influence a commission? Interjections. Never mind what we have to say. Interjections. I will come to you. A commission is appointed which the Coloured people think is really going to get to grips with this problem of their political rights. I, as one of their representatives, travel a lot among the Coloured people. Hon. members on the opposite side are wrong when they say we see our people seldom. Indeed, I almost live in my constituency. Those people support the views in my memorandum, and what about it? Now I come to the point which hon. members opposite are worried about and about which the Prime Minister has been at great pains to point a finger at the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. The views expressed in my memorandum were submitted to the party delegates, the same as all good points of view raised in the United Party. We are not a bunch of stooges. Our policy is not dictated by Die Burger, or Dagbreek, or Die Beeld. A congress took place at Bloemfontein at which I had my say, like everybody else. That congress consisted of nearly 600 men and women from all walks of life, from all occupations and professions in the country, and we had a magnificent discussion on this subject. I say that that is what the commission should have done. The upshot of that discussion was the policy enunciated by my Leader which, let me tell that side of the House, I support fully. Hon. members opposite, who always talk about what other people should do, have been swinging like a flag in the wind over the Coloured people for many years.

The Council for Coloured Affairs has been a failure. The hon. the Prime Minister said that I belittled it. That is of course not true. The people who belittle the Council are the Coloured people themselves because they do not know what goes on inside it. It is a secret society. An hon. member said that the Coloured representatives in this House have never been to the meetings of this council. How is one to know when the meetings are taking place, if you do not receive a notice. In all the years that I have been in this House, I have never received a notice telling me when the council will meet. We do not receive such notices because the hon. the Prime Minister does not want us to know when the meetings take place. He does not want me to know what the Coloured people are saying.

Have you ever asked when the council will be sitting?

It is a strange thing that I even get a notice from the Secretary of this House telling me that Parliament is going to sit. The hon. the Prime Minister says that the Coloured people are going to get this legislative council. In 1964 I forecasted exactly what has in fact happened in connection with the representative council which received a great fanfare of trumpets. Nothing has been done in this regard. There are no voters’ rolls. The whole matter is as dead as the dodo. I forecast that this council is going to be just as dead because the hon. the Prime Minister ripped the insides out of this council yesterday when he said that the Government retains taxing powers. The council will have no right to levy any taxes. What body can do anything unless it has the right to raise money?

That brings me to the point made by the hon. member for Parow. What is the ultimate end of this council? This is the question we must answer. Where is the promised land for the Coloured people? Where is the land of milk and honey and the manna falling from heaven? Mr. Speaker, I can assure you that the Coloured people do not believe that that is going to happen. Any knowledgeable person who looks at the recommendations of this commission will see that there are only two things offered to these people. I shall, however, deal with the five rights mentioned by the hon. the Prime Minister in his address at the opening of the council last year. He said that they would control finance. In other words, he would give them some money to spend. They would control local authorities, education, social welfare and pensions and Coloured settlements. Let us deal with these in order.

The first item concerns finance. If this council is to be run properly it must have money. A big show is made in this report of the R46 million the Government is going to give the council. That money is already being spent, mostly by Coloured persons in the service of the Department of Coloured Affairs. Let us therefore be sensible. In regard to local authorities, I recall when the then Minister of Coloured Affairs, the present Minister of Defence, dragooned the Administrators in Pretoria into introducing legislation to set up separate local authorities. The attitude was: If you do not do it, we will. The Provincial Administration of the Cape appointed a commission under Senator Jasper Rossouw who was then chairman of the Provincial Council. He made a detailed study of the possibility of creating separate local authorities. He found that it could not be done. He said that it was impossible and that the Government should forget about it. The first of the five planks which the Prime Minister held up to these people in the Council of Coloured Affairs therefore went by the board. Let us now consider the question of education. The Coloured people can only ask for one thing. They want the same pay as that received by white teachers, the same hostels as those of white children, concessions for transport and a better arrangement in regard to books, as well as many other things. Let us now assume that this council resolves to do those things, so bringing them up to the level of the white man. Assume also, that in regard to social welfare and pensions they ask for the same pensions as white persons and that rural pensions must be on the same level as those of white persons. Let us consider what must be the result. If the council agrees to these requests, it will need double the money the Government has voted so far. Will the Government then merely vote the extra money? Let us assume that the Government does grant the extra money. Why should we put up the machinery for 60 people of which 20 are going to be interfering in the affairs of the Coloured Council, when that is exactly what the Coloured representatives in Parliament have been asking for for years. Education therefore falls by the way as well as social welfare and pensions, because it depends on money.

I shall not deal with farm settlements now because it is a relatively minor matter. We have heard of the great future for the Coloured people. At one time it was suggested that the Coloured people should have a homeland in Namaqualand. But then somebody discovered diamonds in that area. There is a mine in that area and it is being worked by Whites. This is being done in the homeland of the Coloureds. When the Coloured people were talking about getting a fishing harbour in their homeland, somebody found that most of our crayfish are caught on that coast. The quotas there did not go in quite the right way. In both of these cases therefore the Coloured people got the short end of the stick. There is no homeland for them. There is no future or prosperity of any kind for them other than administering education and social welfare and pensions by means of this sum of R46 million.

I think that whatever the Government would do with this council, it must admit that it is no substitute for representation in Parliament. If we want to teach these people to work democratically, this is the place in which they must be taught. You do not learn democracy on a small committee which works cap in hand and which has half of its members appointed. I want to go further. The Government has been misleading this country in regard to the Coloured people for 20 years. Its own newspapers say so quite plainly and clearly. The real reason why the Government does not want to do anything about the Coloured man, is that if he develops to his maximum potential, he will have a parliament equal to this in every respect—or will he not? That is the question I want the hon. the Prime Minister or some other hon. member to answer. We have heard from the Prime Minister and other hon. members that the sky is the limit for the development of the Coloured people. Now we want to know where the sky is. The Minister of Defence told me in writing, when I asked him, that no future development for the Coloured people in the Defence Force is envisaged. Nothing further is envisaged than the little detachment at Eerste River. The Minister of Mines told me that there is no reason why there should be any training facilities for Coloured people in the field of mining. If the Coloured Council, which this Government wants to thrust upon these unfortunate and unhappy people, decided that the Minister of Transport did not run his Railways properly, would they be allowed to build themselves another railway alongside his? It is ridiculous. Are they going to be able to run a separate department of agriculture? [Interjections.] The Minister of Sport cannot even find 5 cents for any Coloured undertaking or sporting body. I asked him that. Do you know what he said to me, Mr. Speaker? “Oh the department did not apply.”

What!

That is what you told me. The department did not apply to you. That was your reply to me.

Oh no, it is not. Go and get the letter and do not come to me with this nonsense. [Interjections.] Read the letter. [Interjections.]

Order!

When we discussed these questions affecting the Coloured people we threw words across the floor. I must say" that I was terribly disappointed that this commission did not look at the Coloured community as part of the great whole of South Africa. Because, you know, Sir, the Government talks about the “Kleurlingnasie”. The Kleurlingnasie is bewildered, because they just call themselves South Africans. Hon. members know the old phrase “Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, ‘this is my own my native land!'". They say, “nee, basie, dis ’n blanke gebied". There is the whole situation.

Are you against it?

One cannot take a group of people like these, because what is a Coloured man in terms of Government. Anybody who is not white or black. There is a tremendous amount of camouflage and talk going on, but no real facts, no real thinking is being brought to bear on the problem facing us. That is the difference between the Nationalist Party and the United Party. We apply our minds to the problems of the day. I say to the hon. the Prime Minister that he can do away with me. It is quite easy. He can just by a stroke of the pen put an end to it. But he will not do me any harm and he will not do himself any good. That is the point. I was most terribly disappointed yesterday to listen to a man in the position which the hon. the Prime Minister holds. We have had distinguished men in the Prime Minister’s office. I am one of those who admire a man in whose … [Interjections.]

Order!

I want to give the hon. the Prime Minister a little advice, quite kindly. He should cut the antics that he went through yesterday out of his repertoire. He is not doing himself any good. He is not doing his party any good and what is worse, he is not doing the country any good.

Mr. Speaker, if I were not a true South African … [Interjections.] Yes, I have been here as long as anybody else. I would like to tell these hon. members that my family, my people, have made as big a contribution to this country as anybody sitting over there [Interjections.] We do not think like sheep.

But I want to come back to my point. The Prime Minister in defending a weak case, chose to spend most of his time trying to belittle certain members of the commission and particularly me.

A member of the commission?

I was not a member of the commission. I have never in all the years that I have been in public work resorted to personalities or to the sort of tactics which the present Prime Minister adopted. I say to him, in his own interests, he should stop this and he should ask his best friends how he sounds and how he looks to the outside world when he acts like a comic and a buffoon.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just resumed his seat arrogated to himself the role of a patriarch of the nation to prescribe to the Prime Minister of this country how he should conduct himself. Consequently I think it is high time the hon. member took a look at himself and at the reflection of what he is in the political life of South Africa. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to descend to the level of personalities, but let me say this: He made attacks here, apart from the attack on the Prime Minister, attacks which we scornfully reject; as well as attacks on people he is supposed to defend and to represent. These attacks were prejudicial to this Coloured Persons’ Representative Council which has been gladly accepted by all the witnesses. He said something about the “sky” being the “limit”. He put it this way: “The sky is the limit”. Sir, I want to give you the assurance that the limit we are setting is not the “merging of all groups into a Common Roll”. It is the heavenly arch he has set for himself. But I shall return to the hon. member again in a moment. I just want to tell him in the meantime that he was really complimenting himself this afternoon when he began by visualizing himself as the “thorn in the Prime Minister’s side”. Just imagine, Sir! The thorn in the Prime Minister’s side! He is not even a burr. But if he is not a thorn in the flesh of the United Party caucus, we must accept that his memorandums and his statements are posies in their political thought. Then we accept that that is the position and we deal with them accordingly.

He is a com (liddoring).

Now I just want to refer very briefly to the activities of the commission, and I wish to start by saying the following about its chairman. As hon. members on that side have testified, I too want to testify that, in spite of the most acute difference of opinion between us as commission members, the activities of the commission and its proceedings were characterized throughout by the greatest degree of courtesy and good breeding. In spite of the difference of opinion this Commission comported itself in the best parliamentary tradition. That image which the commission presented throughout, is to the highest degree attributable to the exceptionally capable leadership of its chairman.

I come now to the commission’s report. If we were to analyse this report, we would find that it emphasized nine important matters. The first is what the hon. member for Karoo denies, i.e. the enthusiasm with which the Coloured population are looking forward to the establishment and expansion of this Coloured Persons’ Representative Council. There was not a single witness who underestimated the value of this Council—and the witnesses were the official representatives of large groups of Coloureds. On the contrary. There was the greatest appreciation for the rehabilitation work which was being done, the achievements, the socio-economic development, and so on. To tell the truth, this report and the evidence contained therein is a glowing tribute to the Coloured Persons’ Council and the Department. Secondly, the evidence given before this commission confirmed that the Coloureds were discovering an identity and a group consciousness of their own. The hon. member for Karoo has just said: Why did we not view the Coloureds as part of the larger framework of the South African population? Sir, I am not calling the report to witness now; I am now calling to witness the hon. member for Yeoville, who in the newspaper article which the hon. the Prime Minister also quoted, told us the following—

The third point which one finds striking when you go through the report, is the practical realism of the Coloured population in respect of the task which lies ahead. The witnesses who appeared before us, expressed opinions in regard to what the ultimate objective could be, because they were asked to do so, but their interests and their evidence dealt with the immediate task which lay ahead, not what would happen in a 100 or 50 years’ time, but the immediate socio-economic development of the Coloureds and their immediate requirements. We asked one of the witnesses, Dr. Du Plessis, how he saw our task. After Dr. Du Plessis had discussed this entire matter of the future (on page 327). the question was put to him whether the following was an accurate summary of his view (translation)—

Dr. Du Plessis’s reply to that was “yes”.

Fourthly we see very clearly from this report that our only choice lies between two things, either separate political development or political integration. There is no other alternative, and this the witnesses also stated to us. These are the two alternatives. Political integration is unacceptable to the Whites; for the Coloureds and the Indians it is unfair, a handicap to their development and discriminatory in practice, and it must lead to inevitable frustration.

Fifthly, this report revealed that the principal cause of political interference was the presence in this House of Assembly of white representatives, and the alternative, as the witnesses put it to us, was that Coloureds should represent Coloureds in this House. The alternative therefore is political integration, political integration which the Whites do not want and which the Coloureds do not desire.

Sixthly, it is very clear to us from the evidence that the retention of white representatives here, or the introduction of Coloured representatives for the Coloureds in the white parliament, alongside the Coloured Persons’ Representative Council which is a developing body, implies in essence an untenable, indefensible political dualism, a dualism which rests on a politically weak foundation, which is politically explosive and which will have hampering and frustrating effect on the socio-political development of the Coloured.

In the seventh place there was sufficient evidence before the commission to indicate that something would have to be done to eliminate the harmful interference on the part of one population group in the political affairs of another population group, particularly on a party-political level.

In the eighth place the evidence before the commission gave us clear proof of the United Party’s reckless political game. The hon. the Prime Minister has already referred to that, and I shall presently quote further evidence in this connection.

In the ninth place this report and the discussion which followed upon this as well as reports in the Press, taught us that the Opposition have, after two decades of struggle, accepted the principle of separate Voters’ Rolls and that it is now presenting this political dish to the voting public. It is an apartheid-political dish, but it is very strongly flavoured with Institute of Race Relations salt and it is being served with a Progressive Party sauce.

We will see at the next election.

The hon. member for Houghton is saying “we will see at the next election”. I take it that she will go and regale herself on that dish, together with the Opposition.

Mr. Speaker, I now want to come to the question of improper interference. The minority Report stated that there was overwhelming evidence that this entire matter was covered by the Electoral Act. But surely the Report does not tally with the facts. It does not tally with the facts at all. Twenty-eight individual bodies appeared before the commission to give evidence. Of them nine were either church bodies or representatives of white political parties— the Liberal Party, the Progressive Party—or they were trade unions or workers’ organizations, or Indian representatives. The nonpolitical bodies were concerned with one question only and that was to what extent the legislation would be prejudicial to them in their activities, ecclesiastical or otherwise. Of the 19 remaining bodies which were concerned directly or indirectly with the Coloureds and their politics, no less than 14 admitted that there had been interference and requested that something would have to be done to prohibit interference, particularly on a party-political level. They admitted that there were practical problems but they also emphasized that there were malpractices. On page 123 of the report I put it to the Leader of the South African Labour party that the aim of his party in its constitution was described as follows: To consolidate the position of the Coloured people in South Africa. I then went on to ask him (translation)—

His reply was (translation)—

Sir, in order not to waste any time I am merely going to refer to the following evidence in this connection which was submitted to the commission: The South African Labour Party, page 123; the Rev. Mr. J. A. J. Steenkamp, page 21 and 129; the Conservative Party, pages 11 and 141; the “Federale Kleurlingvolksparty”, pages 150 and 158; the Rev. Mr. T. P. Botha, pages 34, 163, 167; the District Six Association, pages 45 and 172; J. P. Johnson, pages 10 and 181; Judge Van Wyk de Vries, page 225; Sabra, pages 62 to 65; the Rev. Engelbrecht, page 275; Prof. S. P. Olivier, page 279; Dr. I. D. du Plessis, page 327; Mr. S. Dollie, pages 50 and 329; and Mr. Holland M.P., pages 352 and 353.

The central principle of the Bill referred to us was to investigate the entire matter of unauthorized or harmful interference, particularly on a political level, and how it should be eliminated. Sir, after all this evidence which I have mentioned here, which confirmed throughout that something would have to be done, how dare the minority group tell us that there was insufficient evidence? How dare they tell us that they cannot see how it was practicable? When we accepted the principle, with a vote on the commission, as the Minister indicated, that we should in fact do something, and subsequently wanted to hold a consultation in regard to the matter, they refused to participate in that consultation. It is clearly indicated in the minutes. After we adopted the resolution that something would have to be done, the hon. members were gone. Hon. members will find this recorded on page 31 of the minutes.

They are like the U.N.; they walk out if they cannot have their own way.

The fact that something would have to be done, was what gave rise to the appointment of the commission. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition told us that great irregularities were taking place. The hon. member for Peninsula waxed lyrical in regard to these irregularities as he explained them to us in this House. On page 163 of the report the hon. member for Peninsula put a question to a witness, but he was not actually putting a question; he was putting an opinion to the witness which he wanted confirmed—

Reply—

His next question—

Sir, they did not even try to draw up something practical; they offered no solution whatsoever. Sir, if the electoral laws of the country are adequate and cover these circumstances, then I want to point out that surely the electoral laws were necessary; surely they have been in existence for many years; surely the Opposition was well acquainted with them— the hon. member for Peninsula was well acquainted with them. How was it that they suddenly came to discover that the electoral laws were good enough to save the position? Why did they come to this House and hold long tirades in regard to the impossible things the Progressive Party were getting up to? Why did they not give them a drubbing under the electoral laws? No, all of a sudden the electoral laws were wonderful and quite adequate. I wonder whether this changed attitude could possibly bear any relation to the new policy of the United Party, which then thought: If we were perhaps to support the practical suggestions of the members of the commission who signed the majority report, it could perhaps hamper us in the implementation of a new political integration policy, whereas it would now be possible for us to practise politics amongst the Coloureds.

But, Sir, that is not the worst. We have two reports before this House, a minority report on representation, and a majority report. The majority report comes forward positively and sincerely with what it believes; it makes concrete proposals, based on the belief of those on this side of the House in the principle of separate freedom and separate development. But what does one find in the minority report? It is vague, pious and non-committal. All that they say in regard to this representation is that it ought to be retained “in some defined form”, but nowhere is the “form” defined. That is the last word on the matter. All the minority group placed on record was a question mark on the political record of South Africa, a question mark after the sitting of the commission: Can any one help us find a policy? That was the stage they had then arrived at. Of the hon. members who spoke about onus and said: “Those who wish to change the position must justify it.” I want to ask them to justify the onus resting on them.

We had the following course of events, to which the hon. the Prime Minister referred yesterday: A first motion, emanating from the members of the United Party, for the retention of the Common Voters’ Roll and the return of the Coloureds to it. This was negatived. Within 15 minutes there was another motion, that of the hon. member for Peninsula, and this they supported lock, stock and barrel. Sir, they were so precipitate that we did not even have a chance to move a motion. Then I experienced on this commission the greatest political about-face which we have ever had in South Africa, all within the scope of one hour. The U.N. were no match for these people when they accepted this second motion with its separate voters’ rolls. Why was this motion which they then voted for, not followed up in their report? There was no mention of separate voters’ rolls in that minority report. I wonder, at that moment when it happened, how Advocate Strauss would have felt if we think of his words in the Joint Sitting (14th June, 1954, col. 579)—

He was speaking on behalf of all those hon. members on the opposite side, and he was placing it on record for generations to come. He quoted General Smuts and said that General Smuts had said (col. 584) (translation)—

This is as the hon. member for Karoo wants it. Then Mr. Strauss went on—

He went on to say—

But we continue. In the minority report they did not mention these two motions at all, but what was the position? We find in the Press, from the pen of the hon. member for Yeoville, that for all of two years they have been engaged on a commission of inquiry of their own, together with the Coloured leaders. The hon. member for Yeoville consulted with them, and they made two demands. The one was for equal rights. That we could not give them. They then put an alternative and this was accepted. At the stage when this vote was being taken, on 29th August, this commission had been sitting for a long time. To tell the truth, the chairman of that commission was also a member of this commission. But then they still did not know where they wanted to go. Then they still came forward with conflicting policies. What muddled thinking! I want to add this. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition stated in the Press—I am quoting from the Sunday Times of 5th November, 1967—

He was quite certain that this commission would give an indication of Government thinking. But did he not also think that his people would give an indication of “Opposition thinking”? And what did we get from them? A report which states precisely nothing. If we consider the behaviour of the Opposition, we find the most damning picture of chaotic thinking. They have been engaged on this investigation for two years; yet a caucus member submits a memorandum to our commission which differs from this new policy. On the eve of the congress, the night or two before, the hon. member for Karoo came to light with great banner headlines in the Press and made an appeal—

Then the hon. member went on to say—

This is what he did on the eve of the congress.

At least the old man is honest.

After my hon. leader in this House raised this same matter last year and asked the hon. the Leader of the Opposition whether he agreed with the statements and opinions of the hon. member for Karoo, the leaders of the United Party could no longer deny that there was anything of this nature. They must surely have asked him what his intention was. But on the eve of the congress he was given banner headlines and he made an appeal to his congress to make a point of thinking along these lines. Why did he do that? Did he not do that because he had permission to do so?

We now come to this account of the circumstances, i.e. first, the voting on the commission for the Common Voters’ Roll with qualifications for franchise, and then a second motion, namely separate voters’ rolls without any qualification; and after that a report without mention of either Common Voters’ Rolls or a separate voters’ roll or qualifications. After that we had a Bloemfontein congress with separate voters’ rolls, and qualifications which remain undefined. But we now find two kinds of Coloured citizens, those who vote for the Coloured Persons’ Representative Council, with no qualifications, and those who vote for representation in this House, with qualifications which remain undefined. Nobody knows who they are. In other words, the United Party is now creating two kinds of voters within the Coloured group. It is now creating, with its policy, if it should ever happen that it came into power, discrimination and frustration, and it is creating an impossible situation which is illustrated for us very revealingly in the evidence on page 139. There Mr. Fortuin states these very significant words (translation)—

Do you see, Sir, where this policy is heading? To sow that kind of dissension in the ranks of the Coloureds. Now, after I have sketched the situation, we find ourselves in the midst of this “confusion worse confounded” and we hear one very clear voice, one man speaking with “clarity”. The hon. member for Karoo has been sharply attacked here, but I want to take up the cudgels on his behalf. I think he deserves great credit, because he, at least, stated in plain terms what he thought. Now I just wondered, with reference to this Press report on the eve of the congress, whether he did not perhaps have a function to fulfil? Was it not perhaps a feeler which was being put out to see how the wind would blow on the congress? [Time expired.]

The hon. member who has just sat down rode into Parliament on the backs of the voters of Odendaalsrus, and he has given us an interesting analysis of the Commission of which he was a member. I must say that this is the first analysis we have heard in this House, because the Commission itself in its majority report did not give any such analysis. [Interjections.] The hon. member talked about the minority report giving very little by way of analysis and recommendations, but I have the same comment to make about the majority report. One does not expect a commission report of this kind to contain the analytical recommendations that one finds in a judicial commission such as the Fagan Commission, and one would not expect the statistical information that one would find in a commission such as the Van Eck Commission or the Industrial Legislation Commission, but one would have expected something more than just a glib statement which the majority report contains. I cannot say that I was really surprised at this. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition stated, when he asked for a debate in this House on this Commission, that he had been disappointed at what had emanated from the Commission. I cannot say that I was disappointed. I was not even surprised, because I knew perfectly well that nothing could come out of that Commission. I knew that the Government members were going into that Commission with preconceived ideas and that no matter what evidence was presented before them, they were going to emerge from the Commission with exactly the same ideas. So it comes as no surprise to me to find what has in fact emanated from this Commission.

What have we had from the Commission in fact? We have had the glib statement, firstly, that the Coloureds as a whole are not interested in politics and that they have not yet attained political maturity. We have heard that the Commission found evidence that the Coloureds were subject to political exploitation and to improper interference. We were told, and again this is just a flat statement—there is nothing at all to back this up—that in order to introduce a more effective type of political representation for the Coloureds they would have to lose the representation they already have in this House and that they would be compensated for the loss of that representation by a Coloured Legislative Council. We were also told that a Bill would have to be introduced in order to control this interference across the colour line in politics, and no doubt this Bill, when it does emerge, will not be called the Improper Interference Bill, because that has gone by the board, but it will probably be called the Protection of Politically Immature Coloured Persons Bill.

Now let me deal with these four findings. First of all, the Deputy Minister of Police, the Chairman of the Commission, expressed surprise that so few representatives of Coloured organizations appeared to give evidence before the Commission, and he was surprised to find that so little interest was displayed by the Coloured people in this Commission. The reason for this did not seem clear to the Deputy Minister, but of course the real reason is that the Government has quite deliberately inhibited, as far as it possibly can, any political organizations amongst non-Whites. I might say also it has deliberately destroyed politically aware people in this country who are non-Whites, and therefore the evidence that was presented to the Commission must be read against the background of the years of Government interference with the political activities of the non-white people. What is this background? First and foremost it is one of intimidation, visits by the security branch to any Coloured person who has the impertinence to take an interest in political affairs. I say it is a background of threats.

Why didn’t you come and lead that evidence before the commission?

My party presented an excellent memorandum to the commission …

But why did your party not come and give oral evidence?

My party submitted an excellent memorandum and, in fact, also appeared before the commission but the interesting thing is that no questions were put to its representative; no examination whatever took place and that despite the accusations inside and outside the House about the way in which my party is supposed to have behaved. I have referred to a background of intimidation and of visits by the security branch. In addition, we have had bannings, magisterial warnings, massive administrative action through the Group Areas Act, through the appointment of teachers and through job reservation. This is a background of utter futility for the Coloured people, a background of frustration. This frustration was immeasurably increased when the Government came to this House with legislation to prohibit so-called “improper interference”. By doing that they made it absolutely clear that no matter what the Coloured people wanted, no matter what the voters wanted, they were not going to be allowed to elect representatives of their own choice. So, their background is one of immeasurable frustration. This is why so few Coloureds came to the commission to give evidence and this is why they are showing so little interest in what is going on. The Coloureds are not politically immature—they are politically emasculated and they have been emasculated deliberately by the Government. That is the truth of the matter. When one compares the amount of interest that the Coloureds have shown in this commission with the amount of interest they showed when the commission on separate representation sat in the early 50’s, it is all too evident what has happened to the Coloured people over the last 20 years—they have had the guts knocked out of them. The political guts has been knocked out of the Coloured people. That is why they took so little interest in this commission.

As regard this so-called “improper interference”, let us for a moment examine this flimsy pretext under which the Government now wants to strip the Coloured people of their rights. I have read through the report of the commission very carefully. But the only evidence I could find to “support” all this talk about so-called “improper interference” came from a witness named Brink. He was cross-examined by the hon. member for Peninsula, who is a very skilful lawyer. [Interjections.] The hon. member need not thank me for it. In a moment I am going to say other things for which he will not thank me. The hon. member put a series of leading questions to that witness—a very unreliable witness I might add; I can give chapter and verse to this House of his unreliability. But the hon. member put a series of leading questions to the witness, questions which literally put words into the witness’ mouth. So, we end up with a lot of unsubstantiated insinuations and allegations which would never have been made outside the protection of the commission. There was another attempt at getting evidence but this was mainly aimed at the United Party. This was done by the hon. member for Outeniqua, who is at the present moment not in this House. He took advantage of the commission’s sessions to take a good old swipe at the United Party for the way in which they had treated him when he had been a party organizer and was seeking nomination. At the same time he took a few swipes at the Progressive Party as well, but only by means of insinuations—no evidence whatsoever which would stand up to an examination in a proper court of law. I might tell the hon. member for Peninsula that he and his witness would have both been slung out of any reputable court of law had the proceedings been conducted in that manner, and he knows it.

May I ask you a question?

No, I am sorry. I do not have the time. If I have time later on, by all means you can ask me.

You can just say in passing, was the witness duly convicted in a criminal court or not?

Yes, but it has nothing whatever to do with my party.

Despite the fact that he was defended by the Progressive Party?

He was not defended by the Progressive Party; he said he was refused defence. You should read your own evidence.

The Progressive Party promised to defend him?

No, we did not. Any way, to continue with this, the real truth is there is not a shred of evidence about any of this improper interference. It came down in the end to some registrations which were improperly witnessed by commissioners of oaths. This man was not one of our employees; he was a State employee, as a matter of fact. But leaving that to one side, there was absolutely no evidence except about some of these registrations. Incidentally the people concerned were put back on the roll. It was not as if they were not entitled to be enrolled. The commissioner had not witnessed their applications in the correct way. It was not anything approaching the improper procedures that go on at white elections, believe me. This had nothing to do with the election as such; this was registration procedure. I have never heard anybody suggest that white people should be disfranchised because there had been irregularities at elections. I have never heard that suggested by the hon. the Minister of Sport even, and he has made some extraordinary suggestions in this House, believe me. If the Government really wanted to do something about these registrations, what it should have done, of course, was to make the procedure more easy for the Coloured people. That is what it should have done. It should not have made is so difficult for Coloured people to get on the roll, as it has done. It should have put its own offices at the disposal, in fact, of the Coloured people to enable them to be registered.

But the fact of the matter is, of course, is that the Government is not concerned about irregularities, not remotely; it is not concerned at all. What it is concerned about, what it had been concerned about all along, is the prospect of having four more Progressive M.P.s. That is really what has been worrying it. I could say this is a compliment to myself, but I do not, however, because I know the real background to this. The real background is that the Government cannot bear to have exposed the simple stark fact that, whatever they say about the Coloured people being so grateful for everything that has been done for them, about the Coloured people feeling so strongly about the magnificent work of the Coloured Council, whatever they say about that, they know perfectly well that, given the option, given the ordinary, democratic choice, the Coloured people would not opt for separate amenities, for separate representation, for separate freedoms—they would opt against apartheid. They would back the people who promise them a fair deal; the people who promise them, and would give them if they had the power, equal opportunities for their children, compulsory education, vocational training; the people who would do away with group areas, and things like that. Those are the things that concern the Coloured people, not these separate freedoms that we hear so much about. And the Government knows perfectly well that, given the chance to exercise their political rights, that is the way in which the Coloured people would exercise those rights. By the way, they do not necessarily desire “one man, one vote”, which, incidentally, one of the somewhat ignorant men of the commission asserted to be the policy of the Progressive Party. It was the hon. member for Kimberley (South).

In fact that is what this whole commission is about, nothing else. The Government was trying to find a way, a tortuous way, but nevertheless a way, in which it could prevent the Coloured people from showing quite clearly and conclusively that they unequivocally reject the whole oppressive concept of separate development, of apartheid. As I say, the Government can say what it likes, it knows the ballot boxes would prove the contrary. The ballot boxes would prove the Coloureds are not accepting apartheid, and the ballot boxes would show that the acceptance, such as it is, is under duress, and that is a very different thing indeed from voluntary acceptance. The ballot boxes would show there is despair and resignation in this acceptance, and that there is no joy or hope in the acceptance of separate representation.

I say that all the guff we have heard and all the guff we have read about irregularities is just a smokescreen—and I might say a completely transparent smokescreen at that. It is a smokescreen for the most blatant, cynical, unprincipled act of political expediency, and that is the only way that I can describe what is going to be the legislative follow-ups of this commission’s report.

In 1950 the Government began its campaign to take the Coloureds off the Common Roll, and they did it then because the Coloured people were voting for the United Party. That is the only reason why they did it. Now, in the 1960’s, the Government is now taking separate representation in Parliament away from the Coloured people for one simple reason only—because the Coloured people were beginning to vote for the Progressive Party. That is all. The whole thing is as simple as that. That is what it was all about in the fifties and this is what it is all about in the sixties. It is because when the Government finds the Coloured people are voting into Parliament people they do not like, the Government simply and quietly removes the right of franchise from those people.

We hear from the Government, from members of the commission, and especially from the hon. the Prime Minister yesterday, that the Coloureds are going to be given something much better than they ever had. This is the third contention of the commission. Something much better, they say. Yes, the hon. member nods his head. It is a pity the Coloureds have not been given the option through the ballot box to decide if that is what they want. They have not been given a referendum to decide if that is what they want. No, Sir, not at all— the white man always knows what is best for the Coloured man, especially if it is to the white man’s benefit. It is said they are going to be given something better than anything they have ever had before. This brings me to the incredible statement I heard from the Prime Minister yesterday. He had the effrontery to stand up in this House yesterday to make the extraordinary statement that the Coloureds as a whole never ever had any political rights in the Republic and that they were now going to enjoy those rights for the first time.

Do you not agree?

No, I do not agree.

With what do you agree?

Wait a minute, I will tell you if you will only be patient. This is really a barefaced piece of effrontery and I reckon the Prime Minister should get an Oscar for this, or at least the State President’s prize. Let us give him the State President’s prize for this. Let us examine his statement.

It is perfectly true that the Coloured people as a whole did not have voting rights outside the Cape Province and Natal, and that only males had the vote. That is absolutely true. But the implication of what the Prime Minister said was that what they had was of no use to them anyway—it was absolutely useless, and this is just not true. Because if it were true that the Coloured vote was meaningless, will somebody tell me why we had the constitutional crisis of the fifties? Will somebody tell me why the Government made every effort to get the Coloured people off the Common Roll with these meaningless rights that they had? Why did the Government try to pass a High Court of Parliament Act? Why was it necessary to have a packed Senate? Why did we have such a huge upheaval throughout the country for these “meaningless votes” that the Coloureds enjoyed? Why did we have all that? I will tell hon. members. It is because by 1948 the Coloured vote, limited though it was, was beginning to affect the elections in the Cape Province, and there were at least 20 seats where the number of Coloureds on the Voters Roll was more than the majority of the party that won. I take the Paarl election of 1948 just as an example. There were hundreds of Coloureds on the Common Roll there and the seat was won by 348 votes. That is why the Coloureds had to come off the Common Roll, and that is why the hon. the Minister of Defence, then a party organizer, went speeding up and down the country on his broomstick, or bicycle, if you like—if he were a female, I would say broomstick, but he is a male, so I will refer to his bicycle—he went up and down the country, this organizer, making racial trouble, preaching racial hatred, hostility, wherever he went, in every constituency in the Cape, saying, “The Coloureds must come off the Roll because the Coloured vote is the determining factor in so many of the Cape seats”. So for the Prime Minister to say this vote is meaningless is nonsense; it is absolute nonsense.

He did not say that; he said it was the first time that all the Coloureds of South Africa were getting the vote. [Interjections.]

He said it was the first time they enjoyed political rights. [Interjections.]

Order!

I might say, that apart from this aspect, other Governments in the past have been aware of the importance of the Coloured vote, not only this Nationalist Party Government, such as when they put the white women on the Roll and left Coloured women off the Roll, and when they removed registration qualifications for Whites, but did not remove them for non-Whites. All this was done for one reason, namely to reduce the influence of the Coloured vote. That is all. It was too influential. I might say the essence of having a vote is not to have universal franchise for a meaningless body but to have a vote which is going to have an influence on the power structure in the political life of the country. That is the reason for the vote, and that is why it was meaningful, even if it was limited, as long as it was on the Common Roll. I must say, even on the separate Roll, it has some meaning, simply because it was some sort of quid pro quo. Removal will therefore be a diminution of rights, but nothing like the diminution it was when the Coloureds came off the Common Roll.

Now I am afraid that I now have to turn my attention to the Opposition. [Interjections.] Now, I have not got much time, unfortunately, but I shall do the best I can … [Interjections.] I want to say that it is just this demographic reality which has motivated the United Party’s recent change of faith. Unfortunately this is true. It is a result of the demographic picture, the rising number of Coloured voters who could come on to the Roll. And by the way, if there had been proper registration, of course, the Coloured voters in the old days when they were on the Common Roll, would have affected many, many more seats in the Cape Province, which is why registration was made so difficult.

This is quite clear and this fact has emerged from the findings of the Connan Commission which advised the United Party not to adhere to its promise to put the Coloured voters back on the Common Roll. And it was not only the male voters who were actually on the Common Roll when they were taken off, as the hon. Leader of the Opposition seems to imply; it was a promise to all the Coloured males in the Cape and Natal who were already on the roll plus all the new voters would have to qualify.

No women.

surely no women! I know the hon. member would hate to have women. [Laughter.] He is not so keen on women in Parliament either. We know why that is. He knows that, too. Anyway, if this is no longer so, perhaps it is the hon. member for Wynberg who has changed his mind. But to return to the subject, the whole reason why the United Party has changed its mind about the Coloured franchise, is because an examination by the Connan Commission made it realize that within a foreseeable period, if Coloured voters were put back on the Common Roll in the Cape, no matter what the qualifications, they might very well outnumber the white voters of the Cape, within, as I say, that foreseeable future. This is why they changed their minds. They think that politically this is a terribly dangerous thing to propose. That is why they have changed their minds. Gone are the brave words about 100 year old common franchise. Gone are the strenuous arguments we listened to about the dangers inherent in the bloc vote. Those are gone. Gone are the promises that were made to restore the Coloureds to the Common Roll. The only thing that has not gone, are the 12 M.P.S that were supposed to go. Has everybody forgotten the strong statements made by the hon. member for Constantia, who is not here to-day? He said:

Everything is gone, but the 12 M.P.s have not gone. They are still here. It was not necessary for the hon. member for Odendaalsrus to quote Mr. Strauss. There are much more recent quotations, by the present Leader of the Opposition. In 1960 Sir De Villiers Graaff said that “the Coloured people had reached the standard where they should be accepted as a Western people. As a first step they should be restored on the Common Voter’s Roll”. In 1961 there was a United Party publication, headed “The answer: you want it; we have it.” I suggest they change that name to “Have horse— will trade!” That United Party promise that Coloureds will be accepted as part of the Western group and that they will be restored on the Common Roll with the right to sit in Parliament if so elected, has been abrogated. Incidentally the right to have Coloured men sitting in Parliament was accepted by the United Party as long ago as 1961. This is not an advance, although it was put forward by the Press as a great advance by the United Party that they had decided that they would allow Coloured men in Parliament on a separate Roll, at the Bloemfontein Conference. Way back in 1961 they accepted the idea that Coloured men on the Common Roll would be allowed to sit in Parliament. I could quote from more recent statements, made in 1965 but it is all irrelevant. It does not matter any more.

It is quite true, as the hon. member for Parow and the hon. Leader of the Opposition said, that none of the Coloureds who did give evidence, were interested in going back to the situation as it was in 1955. Of course not. What the Coloureds want, is not to go back to that sort of Common Roll in the Cape and Natal, and for males only. What they want is what any intelligent political person wants, namely a meaningful vote throughout South Africa. In other words, they want Common Roll representation for all people who qualify, that is all people who can show they have reached certain standards of education or of integration with a modern industrial society, and a vote, of course, on a Common Roll for members of both sexes and throughout the country. Obviously that is what they want. I cannot see why anybody is surprised about that.

The hon. member for Malmesbury, pointing to me, yesterday said: “She and her party are enemies of apartheid.” He is quite right. Of course we are enemies of apartheid. Shall I tell this House something? It is my and my Party’s democratic right to be enemies of apartheid. There is nothing sacrosanct about apartheid. It is not the will of God. It is simply the political machinations of human beings that have made apartheid and nothing else. If we purport as we do, to be a Western democracy—and I have heard the hon. Prime Minister claim this time and again—it is my right, providing I behave lawfully and constitutionally, to oppose official Government policy, to oppose apartheid as loudly as I care to do. And I shall continue to do so, and so will my Party, as long as I possibly can, because that is the meaning of democracy. These hon. members are so riddled with their authoritarian ideas that they have not the glimmering of understanding about Parliamentary democracy. They have not any idea that what is meant by democracy, is the right to oppose, to put forward unpopular opinions and to oppose the régime of the day. That is what Parliamentary democracy is.

It is our duty, our right to persuade the voters of South Africa that they should sling out this unrealistic oppressive policy of apartheid and that they should substitute something which is more in keeping with the thinking of the Western world. That is our right. [Interjections.] Yes, but then the hon. members must not say that as long as I put forward any ideas within the framework of apartheid, I am all right. But the minute I do not, the suggestion is that one is subversive and unpatriotic and that one is undermining law and order. One becomes an “agitator” immediately, as if it requires me or anybody else, for that matter, to tell the non-Whites about the disabilities under which they are suffering in South Africa. The vote, I say again, is only a means of exercising power and influence in the course of politics in a country. That is why removing the Coloureds from the Common Roll was a grave diminution of rights. And now the Government is replacing what they have here, where they could at least have had four representatives who might have represented the views they want; not the people who are being kept in office now for double the time they are supposed to be by the Government’s edict, but people whom they would have chosen to represent their views. That is why this too is a diminution of the rights of the Coloured people.

I am not going to go into any detail about this legislative assembly which has been proposed by the majority report, because we will have a Bill dealing with it in this House, and I will be able to say everything I want to say about that Bill.

I just want to say that no pious talk about protecting the poor, immature Coloured person from political exploitation, no phoney explanation about bigger and better rights will have mitigated the blow that the Coloured people will suffer when this proposal is translated into legislative action.

Mr. Speaker, I find myself in disagreement with the hon. member for Houghton. I say this for the simple reason that the proper way in which this report must be seen as well as its background and the problems before us requires a proper understanding of our history. That is the proper background against which to consider this report and to take a decision.

In 1853 when the Cape was a British colony, the British Colonial Office issued an instruction that Coloured males and Native males in the Cape must be put on the Voters’ Roll.

This was done without their asking for it themselves. It was an instruction and a condition on which the Cape received representative Government from Britain. Coloured and Native males had to be placed on the Common Roll with the right to elect Members of Parliament. Between that instruction and the position in which we find ourselves to-day politically, there is a straight, unbroken line. Let us consider what happened when we came into being as a nation in 1909. In 1909 there were four colonies, namely, the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and the Free State. In the Free State and the Transvaal where the white South Africans had their say on their own, only white people were elected to their legislative assemblies. It must be remembered that the placing of the Coloureds on the Common Roll in the Cape was something that was forced on South Africa from outside. South Africa never wanted it.

You must read the history of the National Convention again.

I intend to talk about the National Convention now. When South Africa was to be brought into being as a nation we were in the hands of Britain and only the British Government could bring us into being as a nation by passing the South Africa Act. It is true that the Transvaal, the Free State and Natal, the most English part of South Africa, were very unhappy about the Coloured and Native franchise in the Cape. General Botha said that he had very strong views on the matter. But because he wanted to bring about Union, he obviously did not want to clash with the British Government. In a speech in 1909 in Johannesburg, General Smuts said that the majority of white people were against the Coloured and Native franchise. We see, therefore, that two great South African statesmen knew at that time that the majority of white South Africans did not want Coloured and Native participation in the Government of South Arica. General Botha said that the Cape could not be blamed because it was not responsible for the state of affairs. It had been forced upon them by an overseas nation. While Britain for her own reasons wanted the Act of Union passed, a compromise was reached through the offices of Natal whereby the Coloured and the Native franchise would be confined to the Cape only. Only white people could however be returned to Parliament. It is on record that General Botha—and I hope that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is listening—said that if there had been a different attitude about Coloured and Native Members of Parliament, there would have been no Union. There can be no question but that General Botha expressed the views of South Africa. We must remember that when we are a white minority nation in South Africa, we brought from Europe the industrial skills and the constitutional ability to rule and it was in the hands of white South Africa that South Africa’s problems were placed. This was brought about through history. It must be remembered that an overseas nation attempted to tie the hands of white South Africa by writing into the Act of Union in section 35 that the Coloured and Native vote was to be entrenched in the Cape.

The British Government made no alteration to the Act as it was prepared in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I am satisfied that the entrenchment of the Coloured and Native vote was brought about at the behest of an overseas nation against the wishes of South Africa. We have heard from the other side of the House talk about Coloured rights. During all the years that the Coloureds were on the Common Roll, it is undoubtedly true that they remained backward and illiterate. The vote was no good to them. Admittedly it was very useful to the United Party on many occasions but to the Coloured people it was no use at all. In 1912 the National Party was formed with a view to solving the South African dilemma in the light of our South African experience. After a long struggle the Bantu were in 1936 taken off the Common Roll and given three white representatives in this House. But after the war, in the uncertain, difficult and dangerous post-war world, the voters of white South Africa returned the National Party with a mandate to carry out their policy of separate development as a solution for our problems. White South Africa obviously intends to preserve the white identity. Quite apart from moral and religious considerations, it is quite obvious that we cannot rule and arrange things selfishly. It has been, and will always be, the task of white South African statesmanship to arrange things in such a way that the white minority is safe, but that the Natives, Coloureds and Indians are also happy and contented. If this is not brought about, we will have failed. Just as in 1909 the entrenchment that a foreign nation had put into the Act of Union was a stumbling block, so we found that to carry out our policy of separate development, the entrenchment of Coloured representation in the Act of Union was a stumbling block. I should like to tell the hon. member for Houghton that that is the reason for the constitutional crisis. White South Africa asserted its will to untie the knot with which Britain had tied its hands. That is the explanation. We were fought in our efforts to solve this problem. We were not fought as a political party or as South Africans of another opinion. We were fought as if we were a foreign invading enemy. As the hon. member for Malmesbury said last night, any foreign-orientated person, any communist Solly Sachs, was good enough to be inspanned in the fight against the legitimate Government of South Africa and, instead of argument, we had vilification and blatant hatred of the legitimate, properly elected white South African Government. There is no doubt that much of the trouble we have to-day at the Olympics and all over the world, stems from this hatred of South Africa to which a deposed Opposition gave expression in the world.

You must he very gullible.

A close look at much of the anti-South African propaganda, convinces one that it unmistakably bears the stamp “Made in South Africa by the United Party”.

Sir, the hon. member for Houghton has spoken about Western democracy. It must be realized that the system of democratic government in which we believe and which originated in Western Europe and in Britain, only works when one race is represented in Parliament. It may sound all right overseas but every South African knows that it is no good saying that the Coloured people speak English or Afrikaans and that they belong to the same churches as the Whites. We know that they are different and that they react differently, and they will always react differently when mixed together with Whites politically. Not only do the Coloured people react differently, Asians also react differently. The Asian people in Kenya are not very happy with Bantu rule. We know very well that we must either have political integration or complete political separation, which most white South Africans want. We want a white Parliament. That is the unquestionable desire not only of Afrikaansspeaking South Africans in the National Party, it is the desire of the vast majority of South Africans, right across the language line. It will redound to the credit and honour of the National Party that it was this Government which gave us a purely white South African Parliament. This act will stand as a monument to the present régime.

Sir, this change that we are going to bring about is obviously the right thing. It will be to the advantage of everybody. Can anybody deny that since Bantu representation was removed from this House and the Bantu placed on the road to separate development, black/ white relations have improved tremendously? The black man has never been as happy as he is to-day. As far as the Coloureds are concerned, we moved first in the direction of separate representation, and because we moved in the direction of separate development, we were able to uplift the Coloureds educationally and to give them a better deal in the economic sphere and as far as housing is concerned. But the Coloured leaders are not developing. The presence of white representatives in this Parliament stultifies Coloured development and, secondly, there is no question that there has been very serious interference. A seat in this House is very valuable to propagate political ideas and the temptation is always there to buy the votes of the Coloureds. I am satisfied that the proposed new legislation will be a tremendous asset to the Coloured people because for the first time they will have a body consisting of a majority of elected members, a body which will be able to give us and the outside world the genuine voice of the Coloured man. Sir, only people who are blind and refuse to see the truth will refuse to recognize this. Here is evidence of our good faith towards the Coloured people. If we wished to suppress him, would we give him this voice, not only in South Africa but in the world? Would we give him this chance to develop? Sir, I am satisfied that the decision we have taken will be of tremendous advantage to the Coloured man and to the whole of South Africa.

Sir, I must say that the hon. member for Maitland has got his history so cock-eyed that it is not worth while replying very seriously to what he had to say. May I just add that I do not think he is any asset to the constituency of Maitland. At the next election we are going to take his seat back from him.

Sir, without making any unpleasant insinuations with regard to the chairman of this commission, who happens to be a good friend of mine—we served together in the Cape Provincial Council for many years—I nevertheless ask my first question, and it is this: How seriously did the Government members on this commission apply their minds to the issues contained in the report? I go so far as to say that their minds were made up long before they started, and I say that Government policy on this issue had virtually been formulated long before the commission completed its work. One can even go so far as to say, and I do so without hesitation, that the whole exercise might well be described as something of a farce if it were not for the opportunity which this commission undoubtedly gave to various Coloured and white bodies and to individuals to give evidence before it, which evidence has since been published for the public’s benefit. That evidence, as has already been stated in this House, was published very much to the detriment of the Government’s cause. Sir, why do I say that their policy was decided long before this commission even started its work? In the first instance, the hon. the Prime Minister in this House, on the 22nd September, 1966, had this to say—

The hon. the Prime Minister makes the position quite clear; he says—

Well, that is the last thing they have done. He ended by saying—

Sir, please note the word “irresistible”.

Then we have the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs making a statement in this House, which was reported in Die Burger of the 23rd November, 1966, under the heading Verdwyning van L.V.’s. This was in 1966, long before this commission was appointed. The hon. the Minister in the course of his speech made the following remark—

Well, of course, the Council for Coloured Affairs, as the hon. member for Karoo clearly showed this afternoon, has asked for no such thing.

Are you proud of the hon. member for Karoo?

I am very proud of him. He is a friend of mine and, what is more, he is an honest man.

I suppose that is all that can be said for him.

In that same debate in which the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs participated, the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education, who can never keep his mouth shut in any circumstances, was also reported in Die Burger on the same day as follows—

A Coloured Prime Minister in a body which is not to have sovereignty of any description whatsoever! What a lot of nonsense! This is the sort of stuff that we consistently have from the Government.

A nominated Prime Minister.

Sir, the evidence given by Mr. Schwartz, the leader of the Council for Coloured Affairs, has been quoted in this House quite often in this debate and I do not intend to repeat it but let me remind hon. members of what his deputy leader said on this issue as far back as 1966. Mr. J. P. King, who was one of the members of the deputation that submitted a memorandum and gave oral evidence before the commission, wrote a letter which appeared in Die Burger on the 26th September, 1966. This is what he had to say—

Then he went on to say—

Sir, this was the deputy leader of the Federal Party who was asking as far back as 1966 for direct representation by the Coloured people in this House. I would like to know to what extent the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs anticipated the report of this commission, because I have here a copy of a page or two from Alpha, the journal of the Department of Coloured Affairs, giving an account of a meeting which the hon. the Minister held in Natal with Coloured leaders on 19th August, 1967, while the commission was still sitting. Let me quote what he told this meeting—

And I want you to listen to this, Sir—

How does the hon. the Minister arrive at that figure of R40 million a year when the figure mentioned in the commission’s report is R46 million? It seems to me to be almost too good a coincidence to be an accident. Then, Sir, there is another point which has not been raised in this debate. You will find in the report of the commission that on the 22nd August the hon. member for Peninsula took a point of order. He challenged the chairman on a matter which he considered to be of paramount importance because of a speech which had been made by the hon. the Prime Minister in Durban a day or two before. The hon. member for Peninsula said this—

Now I should like to draw attention to a report which appeared in The Cape Argus of Thursday, the 17th August, purporting to report a speech made by the Prime Minister in Durban the previous night. For the purpose of the record I should like to read the news item. It is headed “Hint that Coloureds’ M.P.’s may go. Natal speech by Vorster.”

At that time, Sir, the commission was still sitting—

Sir, this was said when this commission was still busy with its work! The chairman of the commission had the temerity to tell us that their approach was completely objective when they started, but the account in The Argus, quoting the Prime Minister, goes on to say—

The chairman of the commission, when he was faced with this point of order, tried his best to handle what must have been a very difficult position for him, and he said—

We challenge the validity of that interpretation of the Chairman of the Commission, because here is another indication of the extent to which this policy was fixed and clear in the mind of the Government long before this commission reported. On 3rd September, when they were still busy, writing under the heading “Parliament Purely for Whites”, Dagbreek en Sondagnuus carried a report which said that it was not improbable that the final steps to make Parliament representative only of the Whites were at hand. It quoted a statement by Mr. Vorster in South West Africa in which he said—

Now, I would have thought that that was evidence enough to prove that the Government had already decided upon its policy before this Commission was appointed or even started work, and that they were merely playing for time. It is quite clear that in spite of the weight of evidence given against them in this report, they will press on with these plans. Of course, the only startling difference is that the Government’s predictions, for example by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Coloured Affairs, that the Coloured people themselves would ask for these changes, have now been discounted once and for all. For the Prime Minister or the Government to suggest that these plans to remove the Coloured Representatives arise from the recommendations of this Commission, I say, is so much rubbish. The first warning we had that this was coming came in 1965 from the then Minister of Coloured Affairs, Mr. P. W. Botha, and as was his way when he held that portfolio, it was in the nature of a threat. We became accustomed to his addressing the House in that manner. It was a threat to the effect that unless everybody fell into line with Nationalist Party principles, the Coloured M.P.s might have to go. I quote what he said in this House—

This is the man who to-day repudiates the very promise he made in 1965. Then he went on to say—

So it was a political manoeuvre which started a long time ago.

I am in effect to-day accusing the Government of bad faith and of fooling both the Coloured community and the white electorate over this issue as far as this commission’s report is concerned. One does not have to think up any elaborate arguments in order to indict the Government and their firm determination to remove these people, which has been apparent for quite a long time. As far as the Coloured people are concerned, it is quite clear that the message to them is: Think Nationalist or else … I would say that they have been convicted by their own statements, as I think I have shown this afternoon. In other words, the findings of the commission were neither sincere nor objective assessments, as they should have been, nor are the findings of the Commission in any sense in the interests of the Coloured people. As Dr. Verwoerd has already been quoted as having promised that the Coloured representatives would not be removed from this House, I do not intend dealing with that issue any further, and of course hon. members are only too familiar with what has been quoted here already, namely the letter to the Australian Prime Minister saying that representation of Coloureds in this House by their own people was one of the possible alternatives for the future. In other words, he was looking in exactly the opposite direction from that of our present Prime Minister. Among all the promises that have been given by that side of the House about the Coloured Representatives never being removed, I have a particularly personal and poignant memory about this matter, because in 1959, shortly after Dr. Verwoerd’s New Vision for the Bantu people and the abolition of the Natives’ representatives from this House, a provincial election was held. The Government asked for a mandate in that election, retrospectively of course, to endorse the Prime Minister’s new vision for the Bantu people, the creation of eight Bantustans. During that election, on one occasion I travelled 700 miles for the purpose of questioning the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration at a meeting at Maclear, and I asked him questions, and I have a cutting here—

No.

Yes, Sir. That was Mr. De Wet Nel, so do not let hon. members opposite talk about our having had an “omme-swaai”, because we have all the evidence that we need to show the opposite.

Let us go a little further back. In 1929 the late Mr. Strydom as a member of a Select Committee supported a proposal for direct representation of Natives by Natives in the Senate. Dr. Malan later was in favour of extending the Coloured vote to the northern provinces “sodat hulle dieselfde politieke regte met die blankes sal deel”, and I am quoting from Hansard of 21st February, 1929, col. 242. He was in favour of votes for Coloured women, and he also pleaded that Natives and Indians should be represented by their own people in our Parliament. And not one single Nationalist in those days repudiated either Mr. Strydom or Dr. Malan over those statements. Towards the end of 1960 we know that Die Burger had a long correspondence on the subject, and many Nationalists expressed themselves in favour of representation by Coloureds in this House. But such expressions of opinion were by no means confined to the Cape, because, even after the Prime Minister and the Federale Raad of the Nationalist Party had issued an ultimatum that this was not to be the policy of the Nationalist Government, Willem van Heerden said in an article on 4th December in the paper of which he was then editor—

And after the ultimatum by the Federale Raad, Mr. Van Heerden went on to say—

I hope the hon. member for Odendaalsrus will note this. And, finally. General Hertzog at Smithfield, on November 13th, 1925, said—

I want to deal very briefly with the question of how this whole matter of the Coloured franchise arose and why it has become so difficult. I agree with the hon. member for Houghton, who said that the basic motive in 1948 was pure, unadulterated selfishness on the part of the Nationalist Party and their lust for power. They had a majority of four votes in the House in the 1948 election. They wanted to entrench their position, and they started this ong battle just to get the Coloured voters off the Common Roll, because the Coloureds held the balance of votes in anything from 12 to 16 seats in the Cape.

Dr. Malan said it at Paarl.

Yes. All the mealy-mouthed talk which we have had over the years, of which we have become absolutely sick, about the Coloured people becoming a political football and that for that reason something must be done, is just so much humbug. The Coloured people never showed any signs of wanting to become a political football until the Nationalist Party threw them into the arena … [Interjections.] Sir, why did we fight that battle? We fought that constitutional battle and we are fighting this one on a matter of principle, a principle from which we have never deviated, namely that they should have representation in this House. General Smuts stated that principle very clearly—I have not time to quote it fully—in his Oxford Lectures way back in 1929, when he said that all people, of whatever colour, should have representation in this House.

I just want to make one point before I sit down. Why did we change to a separate roll? Let me say that once this Government had introduced the principle of universal franchise, i.e. one man, one vote, into our political life for our non-white people, it was clear to anybody with any capacity for thought at all that the whole constitutional structure in South Africa would have to be re-assessed and revised. In terms of the Transkei Constitution Act, every Xhosa, man or woman, of the age of 21, if they had paid their taxes, is allowed to vote, and this is going to be extended to eight Bantustans. This is a political actuality. For purposes of the Coloured People’s Representative Council Act of 1964, the same principle was applied. Men and women of 21 could vote with no further qualifications, and the same will apply to the Indian Council. It should be quite clear that the Government having established this as a political principle, any subsequent administration in South Africa taking over from the present Government before sovereign independence is granted, if it is ever granted, to these eight Bantustans, would be faced with the hard fact that all our non-white people, even in matters of limited jurisdiction, would have experienced what it is to vote on the basis of a universal franchise. Any new administration taking over would be very rash indeed to tamper with that right and suddenly turn to these people and say that now they had to have an educational or some other qualification. That is why our friends in the Progressive Party to-day, with their blueprint for qualifications, are way out on the end of a limb, because the Nationalist Party has entered the arena and has established the principle in South Africa of universal franchise as the basis of voting for our non-white people. [Interjections.] You will not be in power for ever. It became quite clear to us, and I was a member of the United Party’s Connan commission, as hon. members know, that on the basis of one man, one vote, which hon. members on the other side have established, representation in this House, in terms of the balance of power, would have to be based on group representation. On that basis only can a balance of power be maintained. As for us on this side, at our national congress in Bloemfontein, the change was one not of principle but of mechanics, and the mechanics were forced upon us by the introduction of this principle of one man, one vote introduced into South Africa by the Nationalist Party in power.

In conclusion I wish to say that the main reason why the policy of the Government will fail, is because of its vagueness. Because plans for a Coloured council, whatever its limited powers, hold out no hope whatever for any further political development for these people; this is the important point. There can be no hope of them moving on from there, because politically it is a dead end.

It is a proximate end, not an ultimate end.

It can only end by being a source of frustration. The council will be hamstrung inevitably because of the limitations placed upon it by virtue of the finances voted for it. I say this is another abuse of the rights of the Coloured people who are taxpayers of this country on a very considerable scale. We ought to be concerned at this period of our history with means of contact and not of separation, and with how to share our rights and responsibilities rather than how to isolate everybody. All the cultural and economic assistance that has been given to the Coloured people by this Government has been largely neutralized by turning them into inferior citizens in this way, because they are now becoming a permanent underprivileged minority.

There are real dangers attached to the steps the Government propose taking. Once the powers-that-be legislate to eliminate all direct contact, and I mean direct contact by representation in this House at the highest level, an element of compulsion and interference of a most unpleasant kind is introduced, such as the questioning of members of the Labour Party amongst the Coloured people by members of our security branch. These are police state methods, there is no doubt about it, and they introduce a retrograde and very unpleasant element into our politics and our affairs.

The basis of Nationalist thinking in these matters appals us in the United Party. I want to say it is crudely the basis of that side’s thinking that if one encounters political opposition which one dislikes or fears, one simply legislates that section of the community out of real political existence. This is totalitarianism, and nothing less.

I am proud to be a member of a party, a group of South Africans, who will have nothing whatsoever to do with this change which is being introduced by the Government. Let it go down in history that our party at least would have nothing to do with the removal of the Coloured members from this House, and my prediction is that this Government will live to regret its decision very much indeed.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Wynberg intimated in her speech that the members of her party were indeed political opportunists. She gave the reason for their having recently changed their policy in respect of the Coloureds, and she said that the reason for their present decision to grant the Coloureds representation on a separate Voters’ Roll instead of on the Common Voters’ Roll was that the National Party was extending the political participation of the non-Whites onto a broader plane. She spoke of a “universal franchise”. In other words, as long as the political participation of the non-Whites is limited to a small single group, a group such as 33,000 out of the 700,000 Coloureds, then they are prepared to give the Coloureds representation on a Common Voters’ Roll, but as soon as the political participation is extended to an effective participation, then the United Party are no longer in favour of it and then they want to limit them in another way. If that is not political opportunism, then what is it?

Another matter which the hon. member touched upon, is this. She said that as soon as the National Party encountered political opposition which they did not like or which they feared, they simply introduced legislation to get rid of the opposition. That is not true. Let me inform the hon. member what the basic principles of the matter under discussion are about. This matter concerns the political participation of various groups in the present political society of the whole of South Africa.

In other words, according to you the Coloureds are the same as the Bantu?

Obviously they are not the same as the Bantu. We recognize the difference, and it is precisely because we recognize the difference that we act accordingly. The hon. member for Wynberg also referred to a letter which the late Dr. Verwoerd wrote to Sir Robert Menzies and in which he allegedly suggested that an alternative policy would be to have Coloureds represented in this Parliament by Coloureds. He never indicated in that letter in any way that this was his point of view. He merely discussed and explained his policy and other policies in that letter. It was not his point of view at all that the solution would be to have Coloureds represented in this Parliament by Coloureds. When speaking to an ill-informed person, when speaking to someone abroad, I try to speak to him in terms which will make it possible for him to understand the circumstances. I try to put various points of view so that he may get an idea of the conditions that we have in this country. I am convinced that Dr. Verwoerd only directed the letter to a foreigner in the knowledge that he knew nothing of conditions in this country. He only sketched the general position as regards various points of view which provided possible solutions. It was not Dr. Verwoerd’s point of view at all.

The hon. member also quoted what the late Adv. Strijdom allegedly said in 1929 on the possible representation of Bantu by Bantu in the Senate. One must, however, also bear in mind that those discussions always took place in circumstances that were practical at that time. The National Party principle has always been that we would under no circumstances jeopardize the future of the Whites in South Africa by granting common political representation to the various races. Because the Senate in itself is a body without any authority, a place where debates are held but where no legislation can be stopped, this possibility was suggested as one idea in 1929, when conditions in South Africa were totally different. But it has never been the policy of the National Party to have a common political development of the various population groups of South Africa so that the various political tendencies may be integrated.

I also want to refer to a few ideas expressed by the hon. member for Houghton. Her speech here to-day in fact represents the political opinion of the United Party of yesterday, it is the opinion of the Progressive Party of to-day, and most probably again the opinion of the United Party of to-morrow. After all, it is the position that only since the United Party has become the Opposition, an ever-declining opposition in view of the disposition of the electorate, who are moving more to the right, has this party—indeed an opportunist party—considered it necessary to move more to the right too in an attempt to catch the votes of dissatisfied persons who may possibly break away from the National Party.

May I ask the hon. member a question? I want to ask the hon. member which National Party congress in Natal approved of the abolition of Coloured representation?

The National Party congress in Natal, like the congresses of the party in other provinces, only determines the broad policy of the party and not necessarily every detail of such policy. The abolition of Coloured representatives is in this respect a detail of the policy. I shall come to that later. It is by no means a change of policy. The hon. member is apparently not aware of the difference between the method in which policy is applied, and policy or principles as such. I cannot blame any United Party member if he cannot distinguish between the two, because he naturally does not know what method or principles or policy is.

As I have said, the speech to-day by the hon. member for Houghton was merely the United Party policy or standpoint of yesteryear. She did mention a few points which were indeed correct, and which are in fact the reason why this side of the House is doing what it is doing. She claimed that, if the Coloureds were asked to choose, they would “opt against apartheid”. That is perhaps possible. The Coloureds may perhaps be opposed to apartheid. That is a possibility. But now I want to put the following question. If it is accepted that the Coloureds as a group are opposed to apartheid, while the overwhelming majority of the Whites are in favour of apartheid, what must the solution then be? How must the problem then be solved? If we have one group opposed to apartheid, a group which has no say in the political society of South Africa, a minority group in the country as a whole but the majority group in a province, while the group which has the political authority in their hands are in favour of apartheid, what must the solution then be? Would it be a solution to apply the policy of the United Party, to offer a federal system? Does the Progressive Party offer a solution in simply advocating an amalgamation because the Coloureds are opposed to apartheid and the Whites are in favour of it? Is it not clear that tension would then develop? If one group goes in one direction, and another group in another direction, will tension not be an unavoidable consequence? Surely the whole purpose of a government is to reduce tension between the various groups in this country. And the only way to accomplish this, is to eliminate friction. If one group is in favour of the abolition of apartheid, while we as Whites are in favour of apartheid, surely they cannot force its abolition upon us? We can then say that we as Whites prefer apartheid, and if the Coloureds want no apartheid, they can abolish it in their own community and say that they want no apartheid. But, Mr. Speaker, I know for certain that the Coloureds as a group are just as much in favour of apartheid where their group is concerned. They are not in favour of integration of the Coloureds and the Bantu, or integration of the Indians and the Coloureds. If they are only in favour of integration of the Whites and the Coloureds, and we as Whites are not in favour of it, then a solution has to be found. The only logical solution is the solution of the National Party, namely separate development. In terms of that each group can fulfil its own needs, its own development, the development of its own essence and future. It is for this reason that the National Party is in favour of the policy of separate development, because clashes will inevitably occur between the various group interests as long as there are such minority or majority groups in any country.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Houghton also said that it was her inalienable right to be opposed to apartheid. I grant her that. It is her inalienable right to be opposed to apartheid, to attack it, to say whatever she likes. But the right which I do not grant her, is to incite minority groups, or even other groups, in order to create tension between Whites and other groups. If she is opposed to apartheid, let her be opposed to it within the group of which she is a part.

Where is the tension you are speaking of?

The tension has been eliminated by the policy of the National Party. The tension would not have been eliminated if it had not been for the consistent application of the policy of the National Party. I can refer her to any country in the world where there are different groups with different standpoints or policies, or which differ from one another in any way. I refer to India and Pakistan, to Kenya, to the island of Cyprus. I refer to the Catholics of Southern Ireland and the Protestants of Northern Ireland. I refer to the French and Flemish-speaking people of Belgium. Wherever there are people of different standpoints, tension is caused and clashes occur. The only way in which to reduce tension is separate development. I am convinced that this view is not appreciated in South Africa alone; in fact, it is being appreciated and understood more and more in the outside world to-day. Is it not strange that even in the United States the black leaders are already insisting that five of the States of the U.S.A. be given to them and that they will then have racial peace? Is it not interesting that this line of thought is also gaining acceptance there?

I am in fact grateful that the United Party is asking where our policy is heading. I shall furnish the reply at once. Our policy is heading in the direction of the recognition of diversity, and not in the direction of a merging (not on the highest level and not on the political level either) of the various national identities in this country. Our future direction will rather be towards the recognition of diversity, and if it should mean that in the future we must think of homelands for the Coloureds and the Indians, then we shall work in that direction. At the moment it is not practicable yet, but I do not want to exclude the possibility that we may work in this direction in future.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member whether it is a consideration on his part to give the Coloureds a homeland here in the Western Province or elsewhere in the Cape Province, and if so, where will it be situated?

Mr. Speaker, I can easily answer that. It is not yet a practicable policy which has been seriously considered in the party, but I can in fact say that there are various persons on this side of the House who are thinking seriously in this direction.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member a question?

Yes, but this is the last question I am going to answer.

The question that I should like to put to the hon. member, is this: If the Coloureds and the Indians are not to be given their own homelands, what is the moral justification for his policy?

It is precisely because we see it as the outcome of the moral justification of our policy that we are thinking in this direction. But now I want to put the counter-question: What is the moral justification of the United Party’s policy? The United Party is speaking of South Africa as a country with a unitary political future. The United Party sees South Africa, with its diversity of nations within our present political boundaries, as one political nation of the future. They now speak of a race federation. A race federation inevitably means that the highest political body, which exercises the highest authority over the entire people, must be a representative federal parliament. If it is a representative parliamentary body, then it means that there must be representation, not by means of surreptitious political deceit, but in a responsible manner which will do justice to the representation of each group: to the Coloureds, the Indians, to the eight main Bantu groups and to the one white group. But their policy now is that they will initially have 166 representatives in Parliament for the Whites, and they will now go so far as to have six Coloureds, or Whites as representatives of the Coloureds, elected. There will be so many for the Indians and so many for the Bantu in this Parliament. They say that they will provide a constitutional safeguard by laying down in the Constitution that there shall be no increase in political rights unless it is decided upon by means of a referendum in which only the Whites will vote. If there are 166 representatives in this Parliament for 3½ million Whites, and for nearly two million Coloureds in this country only six representatives, even if they are their own people, where is the moral justification for it? If only two representatives are to be granted to the half a million Indians in Natal, where is the moral justification for it? If in course of time a demand is made, if pressure is exerted, for greater representation, and only the Whites must decide upon it, what will be the end result of that decision of the Whites? Will it not be that, if they refuse it, tension will develop between the Whites and the non-Whites? If they refuse it and the non-Whites insist on having a greater say in the central Parliament, the highest body, and if the United Party members should then vote with us against something like that, what moral justification do they have for wanting to move in the direction of one common political state? In their policy there is not the slightest semblance of moral justification; there is only political bungling, political eyewash. If they are now apparently moving more to the right, it is only because they are in opposition and because they are bent on trying to catch more votes. When they were in power and in a position to give effect to their policy, they moved more and more to the left. I should like to mention another matter which has already been mentioned twice by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. He has already quoted twice from Hansard what Dr. Verwoerd allegedly said about the granting of political rights to the Bantu in the Transkei. He wanted to make out that Dr. Verwoerd said that it was done as a result of pressure.

He did say that, not so?

I accept that he did say it. But now I should like to sketch the difference between the reaction of this side of the House and that of that side of the House when pressure is exerted. If pressure is exerted, then it is clear that action must be taken as a result of that pressure. Dr. Verwoerd did act, but what direction did his action take? The direction which he took was one of political realism and one moving along the separate directions in which the various races are going to develop separately. In other words, Dr. Verwoerd did in fact take into account the pressure, which is not being exerted specifically on South Africa, but the pressure of the political development throughout the world. He took into account that political pressure which developed and he acted realistically. But when that pressure developed, the United Party, through the mouth of the Leader of the Opposition, showed that they were political opportunists and that as soon as pressure is exerted, they move in the other direction to yield to the pressure. They want to move in the direction of joint representation. I do not mind admitting that when pressure is exerted, it is necessary to act in order not to have yourself destroyed by the pressure. But the way in which action is taken is a matter of principle. The National Party acts in accordance with its principles, but the United Party, as a result of its political opportunism, yields to the pressure and moves in the other direction. This is the fundamental difference between the United Party approach and the National Party approach.

I find it interesting to read in this report what the standpoint is of a person who gave evidence and who is a member of the Liberal Party. I read here of the evidence given by Mr. Pat Poovalingam, an Indian from Durban. He is a member of the Liberal Party, but not just an ordinary member. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Convocation of the University of Natal, and he occupies other important positions as well. His standpoint was that he actually preferred, as a result of the make-up of his political ideas, that we should all move into the future as one group. That will in fact be the end result of the United Party’s policy. But he also says—

Here is a member of the Liberal Party who can quite see the point of the policy of separate development. He agrees that if that policy can be applied in practice, he is prepared to go along with it. But because the person who gave evidence here reads no National Party newspapers and because he only reads the newspapers supporting the standpoint of the opponents of apartheid, and because suspicion is continually being sown against the application of National Party policy, he doubts whether the policy, which he agrees is in fact the ideal solution, will be applied in practice in this way. Let me say here that it is the earnest and sincere intention of the National Party to give genuine effect to that policy in order to allow each population group in South Africa to develop to the full, according to its own initiative and according to its own needs and according to its own resources.

Tell us how it is going to be done in the case of the Coloureds.

I cannot help it if hon. members have just entered the House in the last few minutes because they heard that interesting statements were being made. I have already answered that point. The fact of the matter is that the National Party is consistently giving effect to the basic principles of conservatism, namely the acceptance of the fact that there are differences between various groups of people in South Africa and that justice must be done as regards the development of the rights of each group. Each group has the right to have a political say in the matter of its own future. It is also our policy to move away from liberalism, the direction in which the United Party is the first step, the Progressive Party the second and the Liberal Party the third. It is our policy to move away from the direction in which the differences must be reduced and eventually obliterated. The National Party gives recognition to the differences which exist between the various language groups in South Africa. The Whites are one nation, although we are English and Afrikaans speaking. It is the standpoint of the National Party that each language group must be fully aware of the group to which it belongs. There must be no attempt to reduce and obliterate the differences, but we are one single nation. We cannot form one nation with the Coloureds, the Indians, the Zulu, the Xhosa, the Sotho, the Tswana and all the other groups. It is for that reason that we are moving, as Europe did, in the direction of recognizing the diversity that exists, just as it is possible to have economic co-operation within the Common Market of Europe, where there is even a free movement of the workers of the various nations for the sake of economic co-operation, but there is no intention of eliminating the political boundaries between the various countries of Europe, which are culturally already at a much higher level of uniformity than we in South Africa can ever achieve. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, we have known the hon. member for Umhlatuzana as a philosopher of the Verwoerdianpurist school, but I am sure that if the late Dr. Verwoerd had been here to-day, he would have been amazed at how far the hon. member wants to go. What are we talking about in this debate? Are we not talking about the realities of South Africa and the political problem as to how we can give the non-white people a share in government and how, in the second place, we can consult with them best, and yet, at the same time, keep control of the whole situation? Is this not really what this debate is all about? Here we have an hon. member who comes along and talks about a line of principle. He talks about a direction. All I want to know is in which direction is it, forwards or backwards? What is the direction of this grand philosophy that he envisages? What is contained in the majority report? It is direction backwards, not forward. The hon. member talks about a “nasie”.

A “nasie”, not a Nazi.

That is not what he talked about. What he talked about was a “nasie”. A “nasie” is, as I understand it, a nation. Am I right? Does the hon. member agree with me? What is a nation? South Africa is a nation. [Interjections.] You see, Sir, we are now talking in terms no one understands.

One finds that Dawie, the greatest protagonist of the new scheme of things, the greatest excuser as to the change from the old order, tried to nail us to this in the March issue of The New Nation on this matter. The hon. Leader of the Opposition dealt with this matter when he spoke in this debate. We are talking about words. Let us say the word is “nasie”. What is a “nasie”? Is it not an entity which has completeness, freedom and sovereignty? Is not that a “nasie”? If that is a “nasie”, how do you give these three things to the Coloured people? Where do you give it to them? How do you give it to them? The hon. member will concede, as a member of the purist school, that they should, in order to bring this to fruition, have their own homeland. Does the hon. member agree with that?

Yes.

The hon. member says “yes”. I agree with him that if this concept can be put into operation, a Coloured homeland is necessary, a necessary ingredient of their becoming a “nasie”. Now, where is that homeland going to be? How are you going to get them there? What is their flag going to be? Are they going to have a national anthem, etc.? It was all well and good to talk about a Bantustan, or the Transkei. But I feel that one cannot talk about it in this regard. The hon. member is at least honest in his approach to this matter, but the theory of it is impossible of fulfilment. The hon. member went even further. He went so far as to say that the announcement made by the hon. the Prime Minister yesterday was not a change of policy, but a development of that policy. The first step in that development was to take the Coloureds off the Common Roll in 1951, and the second step now is to remove their representation altogether. The 1951 step, of taking them off the Common Roll and putting them on a separate roll, was part of the scheme, was it not?

Yes.

He says it was. The hon. member for Umhlatuzana is not alone in this. The hon. member for Parow, who is not here now, knows about this matter. He also said that it was part of the plan to scrap Coloured representation in Parliament altogether. If this is so it is the most terrible, frightful fraud that has been perpetrated on the voters of South Africa. If the 1951 removal of the Coloureds from the Common Roll to a separate roll was part of the scheme of things, and there has been no change in policy so that this is the logical conclusion of their scheme, then it is quite disgraceful that anyone could have taken them off the roll on the basis upon which that was done.

It was a positive improvement.

Improvement for whom? This is the question. Improvement for the Nationalist Party? Improvement for a party that has now got itself in a cleft stick? A party that cannot explain how it is going to deal with the various race groups? The hon. member has given an answer. But I wonder whether the hon. the Minister for Coloured Affairs who is sitting here is prepared to subscribe to the answer that he gave, namely that in order to bring this to fruition there will be a Colouredstan, a homeland where they will be. Let us be realistic about this. Let us examine what we are talking about. What we are talking about is the issue whether in keeping control of the situation, keeping control of South Africa and its developments, we can allow the non-White groups to take part in government firstly, and whether we could also consult with them properly. This is what we are dealing with. And this is exactly where this Government finds it impossible with its present approach to fulfil those two things. And I shall indicate that we on this side of the House have the only formula whereby these two things can in fact be achieved.

What is participation in government? It does not mean sitting in this House. We do not participate in government. Participation in government is the oiling of the wheels and the turning of the wheels of administration of the day to day lives of people that are necessary in modern government and in a modern social state. It is the civil service with its executives, executive decisions and the courts. That is participation in government. That is why we the other day supported a Bill which dealt with the Indian Council. Inadequate though it was, it was an interim step in the creation of a communal council. There is no other word for it. It is a council to deal with Indians, with the affairs of the Indian community, wherever they may be. That is what these councils are for. On that aspect as I understand the position, the commission are at one. Everyone wants this council to be set up and they want its powers to be developed, increased and improved. That is in fact the only way you can allow non-white people to participate in government, unless you are prepared to break down all the barriers and make your civil service a multi-racial, competitive organization. That is an impossible situation in South Africa. Now, how do they participate in government? And that is why this aspect of it should be supported, namely the creation of a council to deal for example with matters that concern only the Indians. The hon. member who has just sat down must know this, namely that the Indian community is a different community. They are part of our country and part of our province. But they are a different community and they have all sorts of different practices and customs. They have different divorce laws and so on. And these are the matters they should deal with, matters that concern them only. When we have done that we have given them the power, the facility and the machinery to take part in government. And if I may coin a phrase of the hon. member for Yeoville, that is the genius of race federation. That is the kernel of the thought. And that is what this Government has realized and is precisely what they are now taking over. We are glad, but remember where this came from in 1961.

But, that is not the issue upon which we are joined here. We join issue on this report with the decision to remove the Members of Parliament who represent the Coloured people. It is clear that that is the decision the Government is taking. They are going to accept the majority view. But, having set up all these councils about which much has been said— the Coloured Council has as yet not even been set up—why must the members representing the Coloured people go? What is the function of a Member of Parliament representing the Coloured people? This is the sovereign Parliament which determines their destiny. It is here in this Parliament that the future of all the race groups will be decided, as well as matters of defence and so on, which are not going to be entrusted to any of these councils. If that is so, we should surely consult them when we make decisions concerning them. Is there anyone in this House who will say that we should not consult them? But how do you consult them? I wonder whether hon. members have ever asked themselves the question as to what they are doing sitting in this House. Apart from the members of the Executive, members of the Cabinet and Deputy Ministers, what is the function of the other members here? It is to represent a point of view, to represent a group of people. The only reason why we have a House of Assembly is that it would be inconvenient for everyone to come to one big place. So everyone here represents a point of view. And we sitting in this House are part of the consultative process ourselves. This is the place where consultation takes place, here in a debate. This is consultation. The elected members come here and form themselves into groups for convenience and they then debate the issues which concern the people they represent. That is consultation.

They do not take much notice, however, do they?

They may not take much notice but the majority view is formed after hearing debate. Any suggestions that we want to make, any amendments we wish to move to the legislation, we move. And the House considers them and votes on them. Whom do you consult with best? Do you consult best on a matter through a Government Department, or do we in this House consult? That is the decision. The Government can make any executive decisions it likes. But it has to come back to this House. In this House we make laws—the Executive does not make laws. We make the laws here and I am sure that we would like to know, whether we make laws concerning the Indian people, the Coloured people or the Bantu people, what they think about those laws. We would like to be able to debate it with them. And it is no answer to me as a Member of Parliament with my own rights here and with an opinion which should be well informed, to be told that the Government, the Executive, is going to consult with them and that they will tell me what their decision was. That is not the issue. The issue concerns that which we have here. What do we have in Parliament? How does Parliament, the sovereign legislature consult? And how does it consult except by having a spokesman here in the House with whom you can debate the matter and whose views can be debated and decided by this House? Not by the Government. This is a fundamental principle. It is not done by the Government but by this House. And if one of their representatives for example wants to move an amendment to a Bill, then he will move it. And it is for the House to decide whether or not that amendment is acceptable and whether the law should be amended in that regard or not. It is for the House, for us, and not for the Government. But there has crept in here a very unfortunate attitude of mind.

Is that the case for every race group in South Africa?

Of course … [Interjections.] The hon. member asked me whether that is so for every race group in South Africa. I say of course, this argument cannot apply only to one race group if we make the laws here concerning all the race groups and want to consult with them or pretend that we want to consult with them. If one says one does not want to consult with them about the laws we make, then, of course, my point has no validity. But I doubt whether there is any responsible member in this House who says that he does not want to consult with them.

If you consult Coloureds for the Coloured group you must also consult Blacks for the black group. [Interjections.]

Does the hon. member want to consult with them? This is the point.

What is your policy?

No, is the hon. member prepared to answer that question whether he is prepared to consult with them. Does he want to consult with them?

You were told by the hon. the Prime Minister how we are prepared to consult with them. [Interjections.]

I thought the hon. member had some idea as to what his rights are as a member of Parliament, never mind about whether he is a supporter of the Government.

[Inaudible.]

Let me say this to the hon. member too. The only people who can tell us what that race group thinks are the people who were elected by that race group in the same way as we operate. Because they will express in this House the views of the people that they represent. And, if they do not express other views and do not properly represent their views, they will be thrown out at the next election. This is the process, the normal process of representation in any body that there is. That is the whole thing. What the Government has decided to do is to reject for all time in our Parliament, government by debate in the matters that concern all the race groups. That is what is happening. It means that we will never be able to properly debate an issue in this House. We will not have government by debate. It almost boils down to the position that the opportunity to test the opinion of this House is denied to those representatives. The idea is that that should be done through a Government department and whether that is so for every race group in that there should be some sort of liaison also with this Home. But, that is not enough. That is liaison only in those matters entrusted to that council. It does not have a function in a matter such as defence or railways or anything of that sort. It does not have a function there. It is in fact quite impotent to do it that way. I appreciate that there are other views on the subject. The hon. member for Houghton says that the object of the vote is to have an influence in the power structure. Sir, that may be so in a homogeneous society, but I doubt very much whether one could justify it—one cannot justify it—in a multi-racial society. This point was also taken up by Dawie, the main spokesman of this new turn-around-the-corner, which is now declared to be a follow-through in the same direction.

But he has to be an apologist.

Yes, he has to be an apologist for himself as well as for the conscience of the people he represents. Let me quote what he went on to say.

What are you quoting from?

I am quoting from New Nation of March. 1968. not a propaganda journal. This was written by Dawie—The findings of the commission have not yet been made known but the two basic lines of thought behind its deliberations appear: Must the Coloured group representation in Parliament be regarded as a growth point for the future or as a remnant of an extinct order?

Sir, it is very nice if you can phrase it this way. I may say that he started off by saying that at its congress at Bloemfontein the United Party had decided to have one country, one nation, one loyalty, an argument which my hon. Leader has dealt with. Sir, this is the next argument with which he justifies this extraordinary turn-around-the-corner—

Sir, this is the growth point approach. Surely there is a difference in function, as I have tried to indicate, between participation in government and consultation. This is not a growth point: nothing grows from here. You cannot, by giving to the Coloured people or the Indian people or any of the non-white people, representatives in Parliament, create something whereby they can take part in government, any more than the presence of members of the Opposition here is a growth point for something else, except more members in the House, and that is not the purpose of having them. Let us remind all the Jeremiahs who have spoken in this House that in our history there have always been representatives of non-Whites in this House. In 1936 when the Native Voters were removed from the Common Roll and placed on a separate Roll, there were three representatives for them in this House and they sat here from 1936 until 1959 and their number was never increased by one. Why? Not because they did not want greater representation. Obviously and quite simply because this Parliament was not prepared to pass a Bill giving them greater representation. It is as easy as that. Throughout the days of United Party Government and thereafter the Nationalist Party Government, the number remained at three. Was there any talk of a growth point from that? They were here for 23 years, but did anyone say that they feared that the presence of the Native representatives here would be a growth point for greater representation? Of course not. I think we must differentiate between the functions and in considering this report we must consider why it is that we want the Coloured Council; why it is that we support the expansion of the Coloured Council. It is that the Coloureds may participate fully in government in matters which concern them. And it is, in the second place, that we want representation by them to continue in this House. Speaking for myself, I am very much wiser and very much more able to decide what should be done and what decision I should make as a member of this House by reason of the fact that there are persons who represent the Coloured people, who represent their views, who speak on their behalf and who tell me. here, when a decision has to be made, what those people think.

Where are they?

They may not be in this House at the moment but the fact remains that these representatives were elected by the Coloured people and they will represent their views until such time as another election is held and other views are put forward. Sir, to support anything but the minority report would be a most retrograde step and would be a breach of the honour of every single man and woman in this House.

For more than three centuries the white people and the brown people in this country have been walking the same road. When we speak of the brown people and their future in our political set-up, and if we look back over the years that have passed, many reproaches can probably be made when the two white political parties discuss matters with each other. But because I believe that with the proposed legislation we are on the eve of a completely new dispensation in regard to the brown people in this country, I want to adopt a positive attitude in looking at this debate. But before doing that, I wish to move at this stage—

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker, I move, as an unopposed motion—

Agreed to.

At the conclusion of business yesterday I was pointing out that the white people and the brown people had been walking the same road in this country for more than three centuries. As I was saying, this has been a long road, one extending over three centuries, and we have been covering it in our own particular way. When we analyse this long process of development, there is one outstanding period which may be described as the most unfortunate period, when a small section—and please note, Sir, only a small section—of our brown people was being used mercilessly in our political arena to act as arbitrator between White and non-White in this country. As a party man who played an active role in our party machine, I recall those days and how United Party women from such select residential areas as Kenilworth, Rondebosch and Pinelands, came to constituencies like Vasco, Parow, Malmesbury, Worcester, Paarl and others on polling day. What did they come to do? They came to drive Coloureds to the polls on polling day, once every five years, and to use them there as arbitrator between White and non-White in this country. And that evening, after the closing of the polls, those United Party women returned to their select areas in the Peninsula, and for the next five years they were unconcerned about the weal and woe of the Coloured population. Thereafter those people had to fall back into their poverty and return to their poor residential areas. That was one of the most unfortunate periods in the process of development of our brown people in this country. In those days the brown people were no more than a cynical, futile, power political factor in the political disputes of the white man. Brown community development in its true sense and at its present rate only became possible after a National Government had launched a search for new patterns for the future of our brown minority in this country. Even to-day any person who wants to be fair in his judgment must bear me out that the old, shadowy, ambiguous position of the Coloured on the fringe of our white community is in the process of being exchanged for that of a population group in its own right. Just see how this pattern has taken shape over the past number of years.

Over the past number of years announcements dealing with brown community development in the news columns of our newspapers have come to read like a beautiful and many-sided serial: A new dispensation in education for our Coloureds, colossal plans for house-building and school-building projects, recreation places and facilities, a Coloured Development Corporation, a Coloured Persons’ Council, and a university, which will have a student body of nearly 600 enrolled students this year already. This is already more than twice the number of students enrolled at the old Victoria College at Stellenbosch in the days when it produced leaders such as Dr. Malan, General Hertzog and General Smuts. What a contrast to the old dispensation which extended over many hundreds of years and during which it was difficult to produce impressive evidence of the positive side of any policy which preceded the policy of separate development. Now we find that we are already far advanced in a forward movement in which work on the future of our brown people is being done at a totally new rate in numerous spheres by numerous bodies and persons. Sir, as a young man in this House I listened with the greatest admiration to the courage, to the spirit of adventure, but also to the confidence which radiated from the Leader of my party, from the contribution made to this debate by our hon. the Prime Minister two days ago. An idealism, far removed from the days when the brown man, as a result of the struggle about his political role, had to be regarded and treated as a threat to the integrity and the standards of our white community, radiated from his vision of the future for the brown man who at present and at this stage shares this country with us.

But I want to proceed. Is it not remarkable that over the past number of years we, the Afrikaner Nationalists, have been the very people, who, in a new spirit, have been in the forefront with new plans, with a new vision, for brown community development in this country? Afrikaner Nationalists have devoted their best energies to the practical development of a true, brown civilization, which must be properly manned by leaders of ability, breeding and character. This is the spirit in which and the courage with which we, in pursuance of this report, are once again going to take a further step in respect of a brown dispensation in the future pattern of our country. I think it is fitting at this stage for us to turn our eyes in the direction of the brown man and, while we are creating a new order at this stage, for us to talk very seriously to the brown man in our country and tell him certain things. What should we tell him? To-day, on this occasion already, we should tell the brown man this: Here is a further opportunity for you, but remember that in the end a nation has to save itself. Now opportunities for understanding the white man and cooperating with him are being opened to the brown man as never before. Therefore the brown man must come forward and must prove to us that he does in fact deserve the bigger role, the higher status, within the borders of the country we live in. If the brown people prove this, the opoortunities to develop into good and valuable partners in the Western civilization of the white people are virtually unlimited. Here there is an opportunity now for giving new momentum to a national attitude from which the old and often unfounded disbelief in and suspicion against each other can disappear to an increasing extent.

If we study this report and if we give further consideration to the new order and future pattern of South Africa, we may tell one another that there may be other alternatives to those which may flow from this investigation. What are these alternatives? I want to mention a few of them without motivating them in detail.

In the creation of new patterns, as I have indicated, there are certain alternatives, and the first alternative is that this strong, white Government of ours, this National Government with its large numbers that has been governing South Africa for the past 20 years, could immediately have done one thing as an alternative. It could have decided that the brown minority in South Africa had to be pushed out to the black majority. But it is axiomatic that this side of the House and this Government will not follow that line of action. Something like that would not be a sound policy for the white man, because it would in point of fact mean suicide for him. To us on this side of the House it is a matter of elementary common sense to lay down the principle that the brown and the white people belong on the same side in the real and great contrasts threatening in Africa. And they belong on the same side not because of an irrevocable anti-black hostility, but because of that equilibrium which is so essential to political peace.

The hon. member for Umhlatuzana mentioned a second alternative, i.e. the possibility of the creation of a separate homeland for the Coloureds. Basically it is true that at the present time there is no homeland of their own for the Coloureds in which they can realize their aspirations. That is so and it is as a result of that fact that this idea is being put forward by way of suggestion. Let me say immediately that theoretically such a suggestion does not appear to be impossible at the moment. There was a time in the history of my party when some of our most prominent leaders said that a policy of having separate states in South Africa, of the creation of separate freedoms for the Bantu people, was not practical politics. And yet, as far as this is concerned, we are standing knee-deep in a new dispensation at the present time, so deeply so that even if the United Party were to come into power to-morrow, it would not be able to undo what had been done. I say the idea of a separate homeland for the Coloureds is one which exists in theory. The technological and industrial revolution of our times may make the implementation of such an idea possible. I do not know. There are great and courageous visions in regard to the future of man. To-day physical scientists are doing things and dreaming with new fantasy about the future of man. But at this stage we must still be realistic and do what has to be done. On the face of things it would seem to me as if White and Brown are destined to live alongside each other—during our lifetime, during the lifetime of our children and during that of our children’s children. Within our borders we shall still have to seek for many years to come for those boundary lines which are necessary for good neighbourliness. I say "good neighbourliness”, because none of us, no supporter of the United Party or of the National Party, wants to see the perpetuation of a dichotomous symbiosis in South Africa at present, a condition in which White and Brown will constantly irritate each other. We are looking for a new order. To-day we may tell one another that the time of “the bl. … boer” and “the Hottentot” are drawing to an end for ever. As far as that is concerned, we are approaching a completely new world.

Then there is the other alternative—that of gradual absorption or integration. I do not even want to discuss this alternative. In our South African politics it is as dead, as much of a fossil, at the present time as the United Party is in South African politics.

I am convinced that the proposed legislation, the legislation which will flow from the report of this commission and from this discussion will take us further with our modus vivendi, the way of this party to seek, untiringly and wisely, the ideal formula for coexistence in this beautiful country of ours.

The hon. member for Umhlatuzana informed us yesterday that his side was giving serious attention to the creation of a separate “homeland” for the Coloureds. This has just been confirmed by the hon. member for Moorreesburg. I think I have good news for the hon. members. A few days ago I had an opportunity of talking to some of our most prominent Coloured leaders. The question of a “homeland” cropped up in the conversation, and the good news I have for the hon. members is that the Coloured leaders do not think that this is such a foolish idea.

The concept “homeland” does after all mean a place where a population group has its roots. Their approach was that they did in fact have a homeland in the sense in which the Government uses the term. That homeland is Cape Town and the Western Province. And every single one of the Coloured leaders told me that they would not have any objection in the least if the Whites wanted to move out! Therefore, hon. members opposite need not think so seriously about the matter. The only thing they now have to do, is to go forth and convince the Whites of this. And perhaps they can commence this task of convincing the Whites just a short distance away at Bredasdorp and Swellendam. And once we have arrived at this new order, in which the Western Province has been given to the Coloureds, and Natal has been divided between the Zulus and the Indians, the Whites may go and crowd one another out at Putsonderwater. Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Umhlatuzana and the hon. member for Moorreesburg have simply proved an old truth, i.e. that once one has started thinking in the wrong direction, as the Government is doing in regard to the Coloured question, one lands oneself in one ridiculous situation after the other, with the one position being more unbearable than the other.

Therefore I prefer to come back to a more mature discussion of the matter. Hon. members opposite—and these include the hon. member for Moorreesburg—tried to create the impression in this debate that a great, new dispensation for the Coloureds was being born from the report of the commission, and that this new dispensation would be so comprehensive that that would justify the abolition of the Coloured representatives in this House. But, Mr. Speaker, we have already had the debate in a new dispensation for the Coloureds, i.e. in 1964. In that year the Government established a new Coloured Persons Representative Council by legislation. The only thing is that the Act has not been applied as yet. But a new dispensation with a new, comprehensive Coloured Persons Council, a dispensation which extends the franchise to all Coloureds, men and women, over the age of 21 years throughout South Africa, a dispensation with legislative power to the Coloured Persons Council on which the Government may decide at any time, and an executive committee, the chairman of which is to be appointed by the State President—this new dispensation has already been laid down in legislation, i.e. in the Coloured Persons Representative Council Act of 1964. The only thing the Government is proposing now is to increase the number of members from 46 to 60. Put the debate on the great new dispensation for the Coloureds has already taken place and the announcement has already been made. The new dispensation has been created in its entirety—it only has to be carried into effect. Therefore only two things are implicated in the matter to-day: Firstly, whether the Coloured representatives are to be abolished and, secondly, the question of “improper interference”. Now the strange thing about the position is that when the new Coloured Persons Representative Council was established by legislation in 1964. a council which has legislative power and which extends the franchise to everyone throughout the country, there was no talk of removing the representatives of the Coloureds from Parliament—on the contrary. I recall that debate very clearly. It was a fairly lively debate. The reason for that was a certain statement made by me. The liveliness resulted from a statement made by me and recorded in Hansard, Vol. 10, col. 4174. I stated—

I then proceeded and said (col. 4175)—

The hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs, now the Minister of Defence, replied, “I give it now.” But then I proceeded, “Will the Prime Minister also tell us that he no longer stands by what he said previously?” The Prime Minister then replied, “I have already said it here”, meaning that he was no longer standing by what he had said in 1961. These were solemn assurances that the new dispensation, the new Council, would not replace the M.P.s but would supplement them. What is more, every speaker on that side who participated in that debate supported that point of view, namely that there was no intention of abolishing the Coloured representatives. One of them was our esteemed ambassador in Brussels, advocate Fritz Steyn. This is what he said in the same debate (col. 4148)—

I then asked by way of interjection, “For always?” Mr. F. S. Steyn replied: “Yes, Mr. Speaker; there has never been any doubt about that … The National Party has never doubted that the representation of the Coloureds in this House, on a separate voters’ roll, was a permanent feature of our constitutional development.” Mr. Speaker, one asks oneself, “What explanation will this representative of ours overseas, over in Brussels, have to think up to justify the self-destruction of this Government undertaking?”

The hon. the Prime Minister quoted from a speech made by his predecessor in 1961. That was quite correct. But that was not the full story. In April, 1961, the late Dr. Verwoerd made his well-known “state within a state” speech in Parliament. That was the speech from which the hon. the Prime Minister quoted. Mr. Speaker, as the hon. the Minister of Defence himself subsequently explained with reference to that speech, Dr. Verwoerd was not announcing a policy at that time, but was merely putting forward the idea of a “state within a state” as a direction to be considered. Dr. Verwoerd said at that time that if the concept of a state within a state with parallel parliaments became a reality then in those circumstances there would “not be any need for representation of Coloureds and Whites in a common parliament”. The idea of a state within a state was thrashed out fairly extensively at that time. It was discussed in the Press as well as here. Hon. members will admit that it was not at all favourably received. Consequently it remained an unfruitful idea until the previous Prime Minister himself admitted in 1963, and I am quoting his words. “There cannot be two parliaments within a single state.”

Where did he say that?

When addressing the Indian Council in Durban. I am reading from the report of Die Burger of 27th August, 1963. When the idea of a state within a state fell away, there was every indication that the Government under the leadership of the previous Prime Minister, and especially as a result of the feeling which existed within his own Party, had reconciled itself to the idea that the Coloured representatives had to remain. That is why we received such strong assurances that the Coloured representatives would not be removed. They did in fact want to take steps to eliminate “interference”. That was said. And for the remainder the hon. the Minister—now the Minister of Defence—made it clear that they would prefer representatives here to be designated, not by popular vote, but by the new Coloured Persons Council. Since 1964 one emphatic assurance after the other has been given. I have here a publication. The Coloured People of South Africa. It was being distributed abroad as recently as 1966. At the beginning there is a message from the Minister of Defence, at that time Minister of Coloured Affairs. On the first page there is a statement in which it is said that a committee of the Cabinet plus a special committee of the National Party of the Cape Province, as well as the Minister of Coloured Affairs, can give the assurance that the idea of abolishing Coloured representation will not be entertained.

I shall answer you at the proper time.

That is what Parliament is there for. It is easy for political parties to upbraid one another with having changed their points of view, and we have heard quite a number of reproaches in this regard across the floor. But we must remember that a Government is more than a political party; a government represents the country. It speaks officially on behalf of the country. Therefore it is always a very serious matter when a solemn undertaking, dealing with such a fundamental matter as parliamentary representation, is discarded by a government in its own time like a piece of paper thrown into the wastepaper basket. It is a reflection, not only on the Government, but on the country it represents. The important point, one which we want to emphasize once again, is that the assurance that the Coloured representatives would not be abolished was given in connection with the very new dispensation we are discussing here.

We have before us a report of a commission. Let me say that I have taken the trouble to read through practically the entire report. I have left out small parts, but I have read practically the entire report. I must honestly say that I might just as well have refrained from doing so, because it is time for us to realize that it is unnecessary to appoint a commission in order to determine what the Coloureds, or any other population group, want. In this regard, the Coloureds are no different to the white South African or the white Afrikaner. His aspirations are exactly the same. The Coloured man wants to be nothing less than an ordinary citizen of his country in full and equal measure with the white man.

On a separate voters’ roll?

That is a question of method. In this regard the Coloured is no different to the White. He wants to be a citizen of South Africa in an equal measure with the white man. This is what he wants, and that will always be so. That will never change. He will never be satisfied with any mock parliament or any substitute for full citizenship. Dr. Malan once expressed it very effectively: A nation which does not insist on his rights, is a nation of slaves. To think that the Coloureds will ever be satisfied with anything less than that with which the Afrikaner is satisfied, is something which can only be accepted by people who believe in ghosts. Therefore a commission need not look for very long to find what the Coloureds actually want. Their aspirations are exactly the same as ours. The only thing which we as white rulers have to determine is to what extent we, in the circumstances of South Africa, are able to meet them. It is as simple as that. Nor did we need a commission in order to determine what the Government would eventually do.

In spite of the undertakings giving by the Government in 1964, I have never had any doubt that it would look for all possible and impossible reasons for abolishing the Coloured representatives. The true reason is very simple. If the Coloureds had elected National Party representatives over the years to sit here and to support the policy of the Government, there would have been no problems. Then there would have been no talk of abolishing such representation. On the contrary, then they would have used such representation as the best means of proving to the world that they had the solution for all and that their policy was succeeding and being accepted by all. But what has in fact happened? The longer they have been in power and the longer their policy has been implemented—and now we are speaking more specifically of the Coloureds but for the greater part this applies to the other population groups as well—the more the Coloured has given his support to the political line of thought most removed from that of the Government. This was so in the case of the Bantu, and for that reason the Bantu representatives were abolished. This has become so in the case of the Coloureds, and that is why their representation in this House now has to be abolished as well.

I want to say that it is true that the Coloureds to-day come to realize more and more that they have to make the fullest use of every political and administrative handle which they can get hold of, however imperfect it may be. Whereas before they tended to boycott public bodies founded on apartheid they now utilize every possible channel which exists in order to improve their material position. And I think they would have been foolish if they did not do so. But the mistake the Government is making is to interpret every acceptance of opportunity by the Coloureds, which they regard as being the least they are entitled to, as support for the Government’s policy, which in fact it is not. The Government may indicate as much as it likes that it has a solution for South Africa, or that it even has a solution for the world now, and that all groups are satisfied and support its policy. The position in respect of the Coloureds surely proves the exact opposite. Every election to be held, be it an election for this House or one for the Coloured Persons Council, will to an increasing extent come out in favour of those political lines of thought which are removed from separation on the ground of colour and colour alone. I know that the Government realizes this. The further the Coloureds progress and develop materially, the stronger and more militant will the rejection of separation on the ground of colour alone become. The Government is aware of the fact that there will then in increasing measure be a living proof of the rejection of its line of thought. The rejection will grow in intensity until the dogmatic policy of compulsive separation has been replaced by a policy of co-operative association; of the acknowledgement of each group for what it is, with co-operation without domination. [Interjections.] The term “co-operative association” comes from a South African Quiz published by the State Information Service!

The Coloured representatives are being abolished because in the eyes of the Government the Coloureds do not send the right people to Parliament. Mr. Speaker, all the other reasons are window dressing. Things such as irregularities at elections, exploitation, back-riding and interference by Whites, are all things which really occur. But as far as irregularities are concerned, the arena of white politics are littered with court cases about irregularities at elections. Everyone who used to be an organizer, knows what irregularities took place in regard to postal votes in days gone by. I have no knowledge of anything as irregular in Coloured politics as the things which occurred in this field in white politics. But we do have a means of rectifying such things such as the means we employed in changing the laws relating to postal votes. That is idle reason for the existence of the Electoral Laws Act. If the Electoral Laws Act is not sufficient, there are means of amending and improving it. As far as back-riding and exploitation are concerned, one regrets having to say this, but these things are characteristics of politics all over the world. Where would the Government have found itself to-day had it not exploited racial feelings as skillfully as it did? Would it ever have come into power? As far as “interference” is concerned, I want to say that this is a creation of the Government itself. The Government has laid down that the Coloureds are obliged to elect Whites. The result is that the Government has therefore invited Whites to interfere in the elections of the Coloureds. They are doing so at the invitation of the Government. There has always been a very easy way of eliminating interference. The simple solution is for the Coloureds to elect their own people. Then three-quarters of the problem of interference will be solved. For that reason the right of the Coloured to elect his own people forms the essence of the policy to which we subscribe. We subscribe to group representation on an independent voters’ roll, which in our opinion is the only way in which we can really achieve national leadership amongst the Coloureds, with the privilege of sitting here in Parliament themselves so that White and Coloured may consult man to man on the highest level and hammer out the future of the two groups that are so intertwined as the Whites and the Coloureds are and always will be. Why are we in favour of that? In the first place we believe that the abolition of Coloured representation may create the false idea in the mind of the white man that he can get away with all kinds of formulae and sham solutions which avoid the essence of the problem. In this way we will not be rendering the white man any service.

The second reason why we want the Coloured representatives to remain is this. We admit that there is scope for a Coloured Persons Council. The Coloured Persons Council has a function, but that function is at the level of local government. At that level it is a step forward. But the powers of the Coloured Persons Council will always remain very limited. I want to wish the Council the greatest measure of success possible, but personally I do not believe that the Coloured Persons Council, broadly speaking, will ever exceed the status of even a provincial council. I admit that administratively it does open up fine opportunities and new channels for the Coloureds, but politically speaking it will remain extremely limited. Let us take one of its most important functions, namely education. Once one has debated matters of policy, education is handed over to the Administration. Then the political debate on the matter ceases. The fact of the matter is that the real political functions of this Council are going to be and remain extremely limited. All matters of real importance will remain under the care of this Parliament. Do not forget that thousands of Coloureds are working in the postal services; thousands of Coloureds are working on our railways. Our Defence Force is an integrated one. The previous Minister of Defence told us, “The members of the South African Coloured Corps were now an integral part of the S.A. Permanent Force.”

They fought for South Africa.

We have an integrated army and the former Commandant General, Commandant-General Grobbelaar, said that within a few years one tenth of South Africa’s Defence Force would consist of Coloureds.

Where is he now?

A magnificent soldier.

Together with us they will have to defend South Africa. How can one ensure their loyalty in the long run when there is such a gaping difference in quality between their and our citizenship. The Police Force too is integrated. Thousands of Coloured policemen, who are armed, have to assist along with the Whites in maintaining order and ensurang the safety of everyone in South Africa to-day. In regard to all these vital matters—postal services, railways, police, defence, living space, general political policy—in regard to all these aspects which give meaning to the concept of citizenship the Coloured Persons Council will never have any say, because the lives of the Coloureds and of the Whites are indissolubly connected. But there is yet another reason, and that is that the existing Coloured Persons Council, to which the hon. the Prime Minister rightly paid high tribute and which he presented as being such a responsible body, has unanimously resolved on two occasions that they wanted representation by their own people in this Parliament. If they are such a responsible body, do they not deserve to be thanked by way of the Government’s recognizing their feelings and moving in that direction? But another thing we often forget is this: Sir, our work here as members of Parliament is not only to make a few speeches. Ask any member what his most important work is. We are inclined to pay such close attention to groups that we forget about the interests of the individual. But the major part of the work of an ordinary member of Parliament is to deal with the representations of individuals. because the individual has access to his M.P. and his M.P. has direct access to the Government. This is the work we do day after day. Some people can go to their M.P.C. when it is a matter concerning the M.P.C., but others come to their M.P., and I say that the access which an M.P. has to the Government, is of so much importance to the individual in the country that it will be an injustice to the Coloureds when they have no direct access to an M.P. who can also cope with their individual interests.

There is a further consideration. I must say that I am sorry that the Prime Minister tried to talk away the effect which his plans will have to the outside. The vast majority of Coloureds have always been concentrated here in the Cape Province and for that reason they have been given the vote here. Even though a minority number elects their representatives, the thing that is important is that they have representation in Parliament. They have a voice in the highest legislative body in the country. That is what is important.

How many of them?

That is unimportant. They have parliamentary representation. It does not matter whether it is the top layer that elects their representatives. There is parliamentary representation for the whole. I am not saying that we are to allow anyone outside to dictate to us, but at present there is a U.N. Committee that makes a study, in the minutest detail, of the laws made by the Government—not of what we say here—but of the laws themselves. Let us have no doubt about this, it is not going to take long before this new step announced by the Government is going to be blazed abroad overseas. Since our position is so delicate as it is, need we place more ammunition in the hands of our enemies at the present time? Here we are allowing a big chance to slip by. I am convinced that if we were to follow the direction of direct group representation for the Coloureds, it would not take long before half our struggle overseas would be won. [Time expired.]

The hon. member who has just sat down was as confused and unconvincing this morning as I have ever heard him be. This morning he advanced arguments in which he really became a Progressive in the main and during which he stated, inter alia, that the aspirations of the Coloureds were exactly the same as those of the Whites. What his remaining comments amount to is that the Coloureds must therefore be completely integrated into the white community and must move in the same stream. Sir. if that is the view of the hon. member, then he does not know the Coloured population. I want to read to him a single passage from what one of the respected Coloured leaders said in this connection, and this is the opinion of S. Dollie. He said the following—

(this Paliament)—

Hon. members opposite, as well as the hon. member who has just sat down, completely fail to appreciate the real difference between White and Coloured. There definitely are similarities. We admit that the Coloured population is predominantly Afrikaans-speaking and has close associations with the white community. We admit that they are a predominantly Christian community. These are good points and we can appreciate them, but we cannot fail to appreciate that the way of life and the aspirations of the Coloured population are essentially different, and anybody who fails to appreciate this is dreaming political dreams which are far removed from reality.

I want to refer to only one more statement made by the hon. member. He referred to the necessity of direct representation here for the Coloureds and to the value of a Member of Parliament to the Coloured in connection with his needs and his problems. But this is precisely one of the practical problems facing the Coloureds. With their limited representation in this Parliament—four Coloured representatives who represent very extensive areas, especially the few representatives from the rural districts —the Coloureds generally have no access to and no practical representation in this Parliament. Hon. members in this House will admit that members of the Coloured population often come to us with their problems because we are the ones who are near and who understand their problems. If one talks to them about Mr. So-and-so, they tell you “I do not even know where he lives”. If we keep in mind the fact that a new Coloured Persons Representative Council, in which the majority of members will be elected members, is being established not only for the Cape Province but for the Coloureds in Natal, the Free State and the Transvaal, we can form an entirely new picture in our mind’s eye, and that picture is that someone will be within reach of every Coloured over the length and breadth of the country, someone who will really be his representative in the Coloured parliament. That parliament will co-operate most closely with and will have access to the Department of Coloured Affairs and through that Department and the Minister of Coloured Affairs it will have access even to the Cabinet of the white Parliament. That is the very thing we envisage, namely that the Coloured population will in a practical way have a political instrument and have access to the Government of the country and be able to bring their needs to the right door in this new dispensation which is being held in prospect. Therefore I say the hon. member who has just sat down, was talking at random this morning and I gained the impression that he could not convince himself either. At the beginning he made the statement that if one was following wrong lines of thought, one landed oneself in some ridiculous situation time after time. Well, this I cannot apply to anyone else with as much conviction as I can to him himself, because if I look at the political career of the hon. member I only see Mr. Japie Basson in some ridiculous situation time after time.

I want to proceed by pointing out in the first place that when we look at the report of the commission, it strikes us that from all the evidence submitted one fact emerges about which there can be no shadow of doubt. That is that the present political dispensation, the present form of parliamentary representation for the Coloured population, is insufficient and unsatisfactory. Virtually no one came forward and expressed the opinion that what they now had at their disposal was their ideal or was satisfactory. We read that in the evidence of the Federale Volksparty and in their memorandum. We read that in journals in which responsible people write. Time and again the idea comes to the fore that these people see the present representation in Parliament as a kind of substitute. As one of them puts it, they are expected to follow like a small dog follows its white master, and with that they are not at all satisfied. I say this becomes clear from the evidence presented to the commission as well as from general evidence and the whole attitude of the Coloured population. I just want to read to you what appears in the commission’s report in the evidence of the Federale Volksparty (translation)—

Mr. Fortein stated in an article which he wrote at one time, and he gave this as his considered opinion and not as an opinion expressed by way of question and reply before the commission—

You see, Sir, this is an expression of that feeling of frustration and disappointment which is very common amongst our Coloured population and their leaders, even amongst the people who do not co-operate at all and who do not agree with the present policy of the Government. Indeed, the fact that the Progressive Party has, according to the latest developments, gained such tremendous support with its high offer of integration, is an indication that what exists is unsatisfactory and not acceptable. I think I need not dwell on this any longer.

I should like to continue by emphasizing that amongst the Coloured population, as is the case with any other nation in the world and particularly amongst its group of leaders, there is a strong desire for self-development. This is also clear from the evidence before the commission. There responsible people said, “Our problem is a problem of development”. What is more, those people revealed that they would like to participate in that development. They would like to take the initiative. They would like to continue giving the lead in that process of building a nation. They yearn for a nationhood of their own and a national identity of their own and they know that they can never be Whites. This is accepted by the vast majority and they say they are proud to be Coloureds. They also yearn to serve their own community. On the road of integration, on the road of limited, white parliamentary representation for the Coloureds, the Coloured population has always been withheld from realizing those aspirations, and from realizing themselves. Allow me to read only a few sentences from an article by Mr. C. I. R. Fortein. He writes—

Then later he says about the Coloured—

I quote this as an illustration of the line of thought found amongst responsible Coloureds on a reasonably wide front, namely that these people have a serious desire to share in the process of building a nation in their own community, in the creation of a tradition of their own. Why was the white Afrikaner frustrated for so many years. Because he was forced, as a British subject, to reconcile himself with British loyalties, with a British crown and with foreign ideas. He kept up the struggle and at present the Coloureds refer to that in their writings and say that as the Afrikaner has struggled to achieve his national self-realization. they too would like to struggle to become a nation, to have an existence of their own and to render service to their own community. It was Dr. William Nicol who once said that without service a nation can have no heroes. As long as we keep the Coloured population on the level of a population group without the opportunity of rendering service to their own community, without cultivating a national self-respect and a national consciousness, there is no proper opportunity for service and there is no opportunity for the development of a Coloured national hall of fame. As long as we continue on that road, the Coloured population will feel frustrated and will continue yearning for the day and the opportunity to be able to be themselves, and to be able to bring out the best in themselves. As long as he is following as a small dog follows his white master on a lead, there is no opportunity for pride in his own past and there is no inspiration for him for the future and no strength for the task and the challenge of creating a future of his own for himself. When I read the ideas expressed by thinking, responsible Coloureds, it strikes me every time that these people feel the need to create a future of their own for the Coloured population. They accept that there will be a white nation in South Africa and in us they see the guarantee for their safety against the vast Bantu majority in Southern Africa. They accept that and they acknowledge that with gratitude. But they also want to be themselves; they want to be a nation. And as long, as we want to treat and regard them as being an inferior appendage of the Whites, they will remain frustrated and will continue asking and yearning for the day when they will be able to work at the realization of the ideal of their own nation and a nationhood of their own. To me, as to everyone on this side of the House, it is a privilege to testify, when we look back on the work of the National Party over the past 20 years, that we have not only sought the realization of our own national ideals, our ideals as white South Africans, but that we have also been engaged in creating the pattern under which the Coloured will also have an opportunity of becoming a nation. Actually they are not a nation yet: they still are a population group only. Only here and there do we find signs that they are rising from the ashes, that they are becoming conscious of a nationhood of their own. When we started with the implementation of the policy of group areas, we started with the creation of a good and healthy community life amongst the Coloureds. One may go to Bellville. to Parow, to Goodwood—indeed, virtually to any town in the Western Cape—and everywhere one still sees the remnants of the old dispensation: Coloured shanties amongst the white houses, in backyards and slum areas. There was no opportunity for them to have a healthy community life. We then started with the creation of group areas, the provision of better housing, and the creation of large complexes for these people. Gradually a national consciousness started to develop amongst these people. It was the National Party that had made that possible for them. We had started extending the educational facilities of the Coloureds; we had established a Department of Coloured Affairs and in that Department we created ample opportunities for the Coloureds to start qualifying themselves in the administration of the country. We had started developing his rural areas, something which the Coloureds on the platteland in particular greatly appreciate. We so often have the experience that responsible Coloureds admit that they could never have thought that these things would have been made possible for them by a National Government, because they had always heard that the National Party was the suppressor of the Coloureds. But now it is the National Party that has made these things possible for them, that has created these facilities for them and that has opened these opportunities to them. In addition we have given the Coloureds their own development corporation which is training Coloured businessmen in the interests of the Coloured community itself. To me it is also self-evident and logical that we must arrive at the point where we have to give the Coloured his own political instrument. Very well, let there be restrictions at the beginning. After all, they do not have a great deal of experience in this field. I think we would be making a big mistake if we were to give the Coloured too large a measure of self-government at this stage. But we expect that they will be taking a greater share in the management of their own affairs with an increased measure of skill. This is the best proof of the fact that we are engaged in giving the Coloured the opportunity of not only enjoying certain facilities but also realizing his political and national aspirations. We are not afraid to give the Coloureds the opportunity of developing a leadership of their own. The Coloured population is large enough and the task awaiting its leaders is great enough to keep them occupied for centuries. A tremendous task awaits them and I can well imagine that they will be happy in cherishing and realizing the ideal of building and creating their own nation.

In their own homeland?

We may debate the question of a homeland of their own for the Coloureds. At the moment I do not have the time to do so. The hon. member knows that we need not necessarily attach all these things to any particular place, to a homeland. These people are co-owners of South Africa and know that South Africa also belongs to them. Therefore they can continue exercising their rights and realizing themselves without their necessarily having a homeland at one particular place. However, I do not want to elaborate on this now.

It was an English-speaking person, one Dr. MacMillan—I think he was the moderator of the Presbyterian Church at one time—who said in 1938 that they, as English-speaking people, had to help the Afrikaner in realizing his national identity, his national ideals, the destiny of his nationhood. Only then, he said, would we become a true nation in South Africa. I think it is the task and duty of the white man in South Africa to give the Coloured population at least the opportunity of realizing a nationhood of their own and a national identity of their own, as we are doing in the case of the Bantu, If they can serve themselves, they will be happy. If they have the prospect of achieving something and making good within the boundaries of their own communities— even now there are signs of that here and there—they will be happy. Then we may rest assured that we shall have good neighbourliness between the Whites and the Coloureds in the future.

The theme of the speech of the hon. member for Piketberg was one of “nasiebou” as far as the Coloureds are concerned. But what worries us about the policy of the Nationalist Party is, what do they exactly contemplate under “nasiebou”? Towards the end of his speech, in reply to an interjection from the hon. member for Simonstown about “tuislande”, he said we could talk about this some other time as he did not have the time to do so now. So this question of a homeland for the Coloured people, a Colouredstan, remains the 64 thousand dollar question. We cannot leave it in the air in this manner. It was put pertinently by my leader to the Prime Minister. But there was no answer. And we are still waiting for an answer. As yet not a single member on the other side has tried to answer that question. One of the backbenchers on the opposite side, the hon. member for Umhlatuzana, talked about a group which was thinking about this. Well, who is this group? Why were we not told about this by one of the senior members of the party, by members who sat on the commission—by the member for Parow for instance? Why were we not told this by any of them? [Interjections.] The hon. member for Algoa says we must wait and see. Is he then going to make a statement?

This question was not part of the terms of reference of the commission.

I am not talking about the terms of reference of the commission, but of the future of the Coloureds. All we have had from the opposite side in this debate is that they are developing the Coloured people to nationhood. But we ask, to what type of nationhood? The hon. member for Piketberg and others in their speeches eulogized the Government for what it had done for the Coloureds, for offering them something new. Well, that philosophy of theirs as applied to the Bantu is certainly defensible, because, as far as the Bantu are concerned, the Government has gone the whole hog. They have said to the Bantu: “We will treat you on equal terms. Thus you will not always be under our control and subordinate to us. We offer you everything we enjoy ourselves, full independence.” Now there is a moral content. It may be impracticable.

What is your moral content?

From the moral point of view it can be justified. It is logical. But to the Coloureds they make no offer of that nature. And when the hon. member for Piketberg quotes Fortein, who apparently wrote an article in which he said that he wanted to keep out of the conflicts of the white man, that they, the Coloureds, do not want the white man to control them any longer and that they want to preserve their own identity? Is he offering Mr. Fortein that? Are they offering Mr. Fortein that? Of course they are not! All we hear from them is that the Coloured will remain under the control of the white man. They will manage their own provincial affairs and affairs of that nature but they will remain under the control of the white man. The supreme power will be vested in this Parliament where the Coloured man has no representation. Naturally he quoted Mr. Fortein. I could have quoted Mr. Fortein. I could quote him against the Government. One cannot quote him in favour of the Government. The same is the case with Mr. Dollie. He quoted him too. Mr. Dollie said: “Allow us to manage our own affairs. Then we will have no interest in your Parliament.” Naturally, if one gives Dollie his own country where he manages his own affairs completely, he will have no interest in our Parliament. Naturally they will have no interest in our Parliament. In fact, I was going to quote these speeches against the Government.

The hon. member has told us what the Government has done to assist the Coloureds. But I say it would be shocking, had the Government in 20 years not done anything to assist the Coloureds. The way they talk one would think the Coloured group is the only one they had been giving any assistance. But, surely, it is all part of the development of South Africa. Everybody else has got assistance; why should the Coloureds have been left out? The Whites, the Indians and the Bantu have got assistance. Are we now to be thankful that this Government has done anything at all?

I tried to show you what our aim is.

You did not show me anything; you might have tried. The commission was appointed to inquire into the prohibition of improper interference. That is how the Bill reads. I must say that, if one reads through the evidence given before that commission, and I think every member on the Government’s side will agree with me, there was certainly no comfort for the Nationalist Party. That is why they have to try and ignore the evidence that was given there. But the commission was appointed to deal with this Bill which is before us. What was the main purpose of that Bill? It did not mention political rights or the abolition of the coloured vote. The Bill dealt purely with trying to stop interference in the political affairs of other races. It is very noticeable that not one person, sympathetic towards the Government or against it, who appeared before that commission, supported that Bill. Even the majority of the members of the commission could not support the Bill.

The hon. member for Odendaalsrus asked why the minority members did not help the majority to formulate some measure for prohibiting improper interference. I say that we did not do it, for the same reason as they did not produce a Bill, because it is impracticable; one cannot do it. That was the difficulty that faced us. We found no way of being able to do it.

Why did you then sit on the commission?

We went on that commission to see if we could find a way of doing it. That is why we went there. Why was the commission appointed? Why was that member on the commission? He was asked to find a way of doing it; why did he not produce a Bill?

We found a way. We have laid down the principles.

Where? The hon. member made some vague suggestions, but there is no Bill to deal with it. I want to give an example of the type of thing we were faced with in considering this measure, in considering how we were going to prohibit improper interference. I am going to give an example of what can happen if an irresponsible Nationalist Party organ starts a witchhunt. I want to quote from Dagbreek. This appeared in last Sunday’s Dagbreek. It starts—

He is speaking.

You just listen and I hope you will repeat it outside. It is all very well to sit here and be brave. Go and say it outside. This paper has the courage to publish it. It has the courage to face up to actions and actions are being brought against it. It does not hide behind protection as that hon. member does here. It reads further—

We are still waiting. Then it goes on to give the names of five people who they say took an active part. Four of them have been banned and named as communists. The other, I understand, is taking action against the paper.

Then they go on further to talk about the Progressive Party and they say—

And then, having mentioned the communists and Arenstein who is in goal, they go on in the same article to link up others—-

It says it is still the case. It is continuing. Who is the chairman of the United Party in Umtata? I am the chairman. That is right. Now this allegation is an ascertainable lie. This interference they say, is continuing. I want to say this. I have let my house for the last three years. It is alleged his car is standing outside my house. The people living in my house have no connection whatsoever with the United Party. They are not even members of the United Party. I have accommodation in a hotel. Mr. Guzana has never called on me either in my house or at my hotel. But this paper alleges that the car is “gereeld daar te sien” standing outside. But suppose Guzana did call on me. Suppose he did come to me for advice—is that a crime? Does this Government not consult? We wish they would do more consulting. But they do consult outside. The Prime Minister eventually appointed an economic committee to help him. We in the United Party do consult with others, we would like to consult more, and every opportunity we get of consulting with others, we do. What would be wrong if Mr. Guzana did come and consult with me? But as it happens, he has never come to me for advice.

He goes to the Government.

No, he would not; I do not think he would go there. But I say I would not be ashamed if he did come to me. The article goes on and says—

Again I ask: Is there anything wrong with that? I am not ashamed of the fact that I know Mr. Guzana and that we are on a good footing. He and I belong to, and practise, the same profession. We come into frequent contact with each other. I often have discussions with him. What is more, this Government is proud of Mr. Guzana; this Government’s information officer arranges for important visitors to the Transkei to meet Mr. Guzana. They do not have to go out to his office in Mqanduli; the Government arranges for the visitors to meet him in the Government buildings. This Government does it. But the suggestion implied in this report is that Mr. Guzana is a communist.

I say I am friendly with Mr. Guzana, but I want to say this too: I am just as friendly, if not more so, with Chief Kaizer Matanzima, because Chief Kaizer Matanzima and I have a closer association than Mr. Guzana and I have. Because Chief Kaizer Matanzima was articled in my office and his son is at present articled to me. I have more discussions with Chief Kaizer and the members of his Cabinet than I ever have with Mr. Guzana. Does this paper mention that? It does not mentoin that I am also friendly with Chief Kaizer Matanzima and that the relationship is good.

What is this all about?

The hon. member asks what this is all about. Well, this is what I am getting at; I will read the article further and then the hon. member will see what I am getting at. It goes on to say this—

The hon. member asks what this all has to do with the motion before us. It has this to do with it: The measure introduced by the Government in its original form would stop any association between people of the different racial groups in political affairs, that is what it sought to do. The effect of this Government’s actions and of the Government agencies is to intimidate people. Respectable, law-abiding citizens are becoming afraid to be seen talking to non-Whites, because at once they are suspected of being communists. What does this whole article suggest? It names named communists, it names banned people, it names a man who has gone to goal, and the writer links with those names my name and the United Party. What is the impression given to the reader of the article?

It is a private quarrel you have with the newspaper.

This newspaper speaks for the Government. Who is the chairman of this newspaper? Unfortunately the hon. the Minister of Transport, who is the chairman, is not here now.

I say it is time that steps were taken against this particular paper because it is becoming more and more irresponsible; it is saying the most shocking things, and this is the type of thing we can expect in future. I sincerely hope the Cabinet will not carry out the advice of this newspaper by introducing legislation of the type suggested by the paper.

I want to reiterate what the hon. member for Peninsula said about the Prime Minister’s early entry into this debate. I think it is a great pity that the hon. the Prime Minister came into the debate so early. The whole idea of this debate was the following. The request of my Leader was that before the Government made up its mind as to what it is going to do, we should have a chance of discussing this matter in this House and put our points of view, and then let the Government make up its mind after it has heard the discussion. But what happened? As soon as my Leader finished speaking, the Prime Minister got up and said the Government had decided to abolish Coloured representation here. The whole object of the debate was defeated. The Prime Minister started his speech by referring to the political rights of the Coloureds, and he suggested—and this amazed me—that the Coloureds have no political rights. What a suggestion! The hon. member for Houghton has already replied to him to a certain extent on the question of the Common Roll. Other hon. members on this side, for instance the hon. member for Bezuidenhout this morning, dealt with this subject too. The point is not how many were on the voters’ roll when they were taken off the Common Roll. There were about 50,000 odd on the voters’ roll, taking Natal as well. The point is this: They had the right to vote; in Natal and the Cape there were people with a qualified vote. More could have got on the rolls if they qualified. In the Free State and the Transvaal they had the right to take part in the election of senators. All provinces had some political say, some political rights. What is being given to them now? The political rights which they had in the South African Parliament, the highest legislative body in the land, are being taken away from them and in return they are being given the equivalent of provincial council rights. That is all they are getting. The Coloured Council will never develop to anything more than a provincial council; it cannot develop to more than a provincial council. Why is it necessary to take away their political rights just because they are being given a council? I am not going to read all the speeches made at the time, but when the Coloured people were given that council it was not given as a quid pro quo. They were not told, “We are giving you the council because we are going to take away your political rights.” They were just given the council. There was no suggestion then of what is happening now. In fact, the suggestion was to the contrary.

The Prime Minister went on to attack my Leader for our change of policy. He said we had changed our policy. The Prime Minister defended his attitude by saying he had not betrayed any promises made by the late Dr. Verwoerd. My Leader had reminded him of promises made to Coloureds. He said he would fulfil the promises made by his predecessor. But the Prime Minister did a shocking thing—I take it he did it unwittingly. In order to prove to the House that he was carrying out Dr. Verwoerd’s policy he quoted from a speech made in 1961. I refer to it again because I was mentioned in that speech. I had questioned Dr. Verwoerd, and he had then indicated that once the Coloureds got their own parliament they could lose their vote in this Parliament, their political rights here. I say it was a shocking thing for the Prime Minister to do, because he should have known, or his Whips should have corrected him and told him, “Look here, the next year, in reply to the same member”—that is in reply to me —“he made a different statement”. In 1962 when I questioned him on the subject again he then made it quite clear that he did not intend abolishing Coloured rights. I am not going to read the whole statement. He was asked by Mr. Barnett for how long the representation would stay, and the then Prime Minister replied as follows—

The previous year I had questioned Dr. Verwoerd on this aspect, and he had given me a different reply. I then asked him: “If they had their own parliament?” The hon. the Prime Minister then quite rightly said: “The hon. member looks surprised …” I was surprised. He went on to say: “I have already said it twice; what I said was that when we have that parliament, then in my view the white representatives will still be here. Is that clear now?” Sir, I did not ask him; Dr. Verwoerd asked me: “Is that clear now?” But, Sir, what is worse, the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs in stating his policy in 1964, read out the whole of that Hansard report. He read out Dr. Verwoerd’s speech; he quoted my question and he quoted Dr. Verwoerd’s reply, and he said that that should be the end of the matter.

You will get your answer on Monday.

Sir, who is going to think of an answer on that side between now and Monday? They will need the whole weekend to think out an answer. Sir, after that Mr. Fritz Steyn made a similar statement, which was read out here again to-day by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. Mr. Fritz Steyn made the position quite clear; there was no argument. He spoke in even stronger language and said that the Coloureds would retain their rights here. How can the Coloureds have any faith in anything we say, in the future if this is what happens to our promises and to our pledged word?

You said that you would never take them off the Common Roll.

It has been said by certain members here that Mr. Fortuin was prepared to let the Coloured representation in this House go and so was Mr. Schwartz. It has been said that they only asked for it because they said that if they did not ask for its retention, then their party might as well disband. Mr. Fortuin said that it was a question of good faith between the white man and the Coloured that this representation be retained. He said that that was why the Coloured man wanted it; that it was a question of good faith. Mr. Schwartz at one stage said that his party would have to write itself off at an election if he agreed to the abolition of representation. It was suggested then that personally he was not much interested in the matter, and what was his reply? He was asked specifically if he had any interest in it personally and he said “yes”. Let me quote the question and answer—

The question was then put to Mr. Poley: “What about you, Mr. Poley?” His reply was: “I agree.” The question was then put to Mr. Sanders—

Sir it is no good hon. members opposite trying to pretend that the Coloureds are not interested in this representation. All the evidence given before us shows that they were interested. It is no good saying that the Coloureds were not taking an interest in this matter and that it was difficult to persuade them to come and give evidence. I do not think that, it was so difficult to get them to come and give evidence. All the political parties gave evidence before the commission. Sir the hon. the Prime Minister says that there is no representative Coloured voice for us to consult and that is why he ignores the evidence given before the commission.

No.

Why then does he not respect the views expressed by them? Sir, if that is so. why did he not consult the council? We asked him and his reply was that the council consisted of a majority of nominated members and therefore it could not speak for the Coloured people. We then ask the Prime Minister why he does not wait until this Coloured Council has been established and then hear what the, majority of the elected members have to say. The Prime Minister himself said that it would not be done until the Coloureds themselves asked for it. Why does he not wait then until they do ask for it? Why does he not wait until this council is established? Why does he rush into this thing now? This question could not have been considered when this Bill was first published in 1966 because in that Bill provision was made for white representatives for the Coloureds in this Parliament. The representatives are expressly excluded from its operation. The Bill gives the Coloureds representation in this House. I say therefore that when the Bill was formulated in 1966 there was no question of doing away with this representation. All that Bill sought to do was to try to prevent interference because, as the hon. member for Bezuidenhout said, the Government felt that it could not interfere in the politics of the Coloured people to its advantage, so it tried to prevent others from getting the support of the Coloured people.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move the motion as printed in my name—

Since I am submitting this motion to the House, I should like to motivate it as follows: We have already had an opportunity earlier on in this Session of taking the initial steps; this was done with reference to the motion of the hon. member for Gordonia, and on that occasion we confined ourselves principally to two aspects. In the first place we discussed how more adequate funds could be made available for research, and in the second place we exchanged ideas in regard to how those persons, who had accomplished achievements in scientific and other fields in a manner which required national recognition, could be honoured. We feel, however, that we must go further; we feel that there are other matters of an organizational nature, and that we should in addition try to determine whether the arrangements existing at present are of an optimum nature; we must also investigate whether it is in any way possible to give added impetus to research activities in South Africa.

By way of introduction let me just say that during the recess we were afforded an opportunity of paying a visit to the C.S.I.R. On behalf of this side of the House I should like to convey my thanks to those who were responsible for these arrangements, and I am certain that I am speaking on behalf of all here when I say that each and every one of us was impressed by what we saw there.

Let me say at once that the crux of my argument is not that we are behind in this field. I am aware of what is being done, but it is all relative. If we are doing well, then surely we can still try and determine whether we can do better than we are doing at the moment. The other day, when this matter was being discussed, the hon. the Prime Minister told us that we were at present spending R40 million per annum on research. That sounds like a large amount, and it is in fact a great deal of money, but scientists maintain that we are at present losing R400 million every year, merely in the form of our soil nutrients which are being washed away to the sea. If one views it in that sort of light, one realizes that everything is relative. But what to my mind is the most important matter in research is that it is very often a minor discovery, a minor invention, that results in a large-scale change. One random example which occurs to me is for example gunpowder. Formerly, as you know, we had throughout the world the feudal system of the knights of old in their suits of armour, with their castles, and an entire way of life which they built up around them, and then gunpowder was discovered and the entire system changed overnight. Cities were then laid out in a new way; warfare was conducted in an entirely different way. In fact, other things such as physical size and personal relationships changed, because if you fought with a sword or a lance, physical size and strength could be an advantage, but if you fought with fire-arms it could be a disadvantage. It therefore resulted in a levelling process and that in turn led to and made for large-scale social and political changes.

It is being maintained that we are on the eve of large-scale changes in science, and it is no wonder, measured in terms of the number of scientists involved, because they are increasing at the rate of 7 per cent per year. That means that every ten years the number of scientists doubles itself. It is calculated that 97 per cent of all the scientists who have ever lived and worked, are living and working to-day. In other words, many of the things we see here to-day, are the labours of only 3 per cent of all the scientists there have ever been in the world, and what great achievements did they not accomplish! They represent all the nations of the world. There is Copernicus, the Pole; there is Kepler, the German; Galileo, the Italian; Einstein, the Jew; and then there is probably the greatest scientist of all, Newton, the Englishman.

What about Barnard?

You may as well add him too. The scientists to whom I referred often accomplished their achievements despite circumstances and great handicaps which hampered them in their work. Just think of Copernicus. What he did he had to accomplish in the face of great persecution, persecution by our own church leaders. Luther and Calvin persecuted him because he had stated that the world was round and that it revolved on its own axis. They said: No, that is not what is stated in the Bible; the Bible states clearly that Josiah commanded the sun to stand still; he said absolutely nothing about the world revolving on its own axis.

Mr. Speaker, we are on the eve of large-scale changes and perhaps we should take just a little look into the future. We must make a random test to try and determine what is still lying ahead for us. But before we do that, we could perhaps place matters in their proper perspective. The human experience, the human being—homo sapiens as we know him—apparently dates back about a thousand generations. We represent the thousandth generation. Just to give you an idea of how rapidly things change I can make the following comparison; the first 800 generations left almost no record, because they were completely nomadic. It was only the last 100 generations who left any sort of record, and this often took the form of stone implements. It is only the last ten generations who have had any knowledge of the art of printing. It was only the last five generations which were able to measure heat and cold with any degree of accuracy, and it is only our own generation, the thousandth generation which has knowledge of television and antibiotics and all the other marvels of modern science.

Not in South Africa.

We now stand before the 1,001st generation, which is just around the corner. What are the prospects and what are the possibilities which lie ahead for them? I can only touch on a few things here and there. The field in which the greatest changes are probably going to occur is that of transport. We have moved, within a few generation, from the ox-wagon to the jet aircraft. Five hundred years ago our transport was so poor that people in Europe were not even aware that America existed. To-day our means of transport are so efficient that within this very generation people are going to move around on the surface of the moon. A radical change is going to take place in the entire world of transport. In America they have already found that the present cost of transporting goods is five cents per ton-mile, and the curve is steadily decreasing. They expect to decrease the costs by another third within ten years. On the other hand, the cost of surface transport, of railways and motor truck transport, is steadily increasing. These two curves are going to cross in the immediate future, and when that happens almost all our transportation will be done by air. That is the reason why politicians like ourselves must look to the future. We must anticipate what is going to happen. We must aim ahead, or as the Englishman says, “One must lead the target”. If we do this, we will reap a rich reward, but if we do not do this, we will find ourselves in the position of the English politician many years ago, who stared so fixedly at the present that he began planting oak trees on a large scale because he argued thus: If we do not plant oak trees, Britain will not have enough oak wood with which to build its warships.

But there is a second field. The hon. the Minister of Planning, who is also the Minister of Mines is sitting here before us, and let us consider some of the things which could happen in his field. One of the greatest problems in the world is that our supplies of raw material are becoming depleted. It is said that for every person in the modern community one must extract 20 tons of raw material from the soil each year. In America nine tons of steel and eight tons of coal are necessary for every individual in file country. How can we keep up? After all, the world does not have that much raw material. We can only do so if we tackle a few things. In the first place we will have to effect a complete improvement in our extractive processes. In the past we were not interested in copper unless the ore value was approximately 5 per cent. To-day we find that copper is being processed if it is near to 1 per cent, but we will have to do far better than that. Technically it is of course possible. We are already processing uranium where file ore value is only one in a million particles. In other words, the ore value is .0001 per cent. Once we are able to do this, if we are able to process this material when it has an ore value of this frequency, the situation of course changes immediately. Here we have the sea around us. The sea covers 400 million cubic miles, and each cubic mile, they say, contains gold to the value of R70 million and four million tons of other ores, salt and minerals.

But we need not even go to the sea. We can look to the surrounding countryside. The whole world is full of igneous rocks and these igneous rocks contain all the constituents which the modern community needs to keep it on the go. Every 100 tons of igneous rock contain eight tons of aluminium, five tons of iron, 140 lbs. of manganese, 40 lbs. of nickel and 20 lbs. of copper, to mention only a few. But to be able to do all these things, we need not only the technical knowledge to process it, we also need the energy. Here we have one of the great problems of the world. Up to now we have primarily been making use of coal to give us energy. But scientists maintain that our demand for energy is going to increase to such an extent that towards the end of this century we will need as much energy in one year as the world needed from its beginnings up to the present. And when you begin to view energy in this light, then all our coal reserves are going to be totally depleted within 30 years. We will have to look further, therefore, and the world is already doing so. To-day already we are thinking in terms of nuclear power, and here the prospects are of course more favourable, because one ton of uranium can be used to generate as much energy as 10,000 tons of coal. We shall also have to think in terms of solar power, and perhaps we should go even further, and once again I return to the sea. The sea currents of the world have just as much energy as 1,000 Mississippi’s. With its waves, its swells and its tides the sea generates far more energy than we would obtain if we used all the coal existing to-day. But perhaps we should look even further than that. Using a small wheel as a fly-wheel, one can drive a very large machine. Here we have the greatest fly-wheel of all, the world itself. The world revolves at a tremendous speed on its own axis and is moving through the universe all the time. If we could succeed in harnessing this energy, all these problems to which I have referred would no longer exist.

But let us look at something else. I am thinking now in terms of our business world. The people whose task it is to look into the future, tell us that at the end of this century 95 per cent of the world’s business will be controlled by 300 large international organizations, and it is expected that two thirds of them will be American, and 20 per cent will be controlled by the Japanese. Perhaps South Africa could also have a few amongst these 300 if we were able to effect a total improvement in our business and management and if we were prepared to make full use of our human potential. I see many indications that this is not being done. There has been a management system for quite some time in America, I am referring now to the Scanlon procedure, which gives one an increase in productivity of 20 to 30 per cent in one year, and I see no indication that we are utilizing it in South Africa. To give a dramatic example of what can be achieved with this procedure, I am referring to what happened a few years ago with file Parker pen organization, the largest pen company in America. They were doing well and showing good profits, and then, almost overnight, one of their competitors came onto the market with a new kind of pen which was equipped with a snorkel apparatus. One presses the snorkel in and this draws the ink out. Their advertising was wonderfully managed. They had a beautiful blonde appearing on television who sat there with long white gloves on drawing the ink up and showing her hands afterwards without one ink mark on them. The sales of the Parker pen organization dried up overnight; they were in a terrible predicament. In desperation they turned to the Scanlon procedure. They converted their entire management system, and to-day the Parker pen is still there and the organization is still a leading one in the American business world. This is the sort of thing I had in mind. But, in my opinion, to deal with this matter before us to place science on a proper basis, three things are necessary.

In the first place, we must have enough scientists. It is expected that by 1980 South Africa will need twice as many scientists as we have at present, and at the end of this century we will apparently need three to four times as many scientists as we have at present. Where are we going to get them from? To reach this target, we will have to do quite a few things immediately. We shall have to try and eliminate the present losses. It is calculated that three quarters of our sons and daughters who go overseas for post-graduate study never return to South Africa. We must find out why that is so. I do not know whether the estimation is correct, but in any case we are losing many of them, and we must find out why this is so. At the moment we are spending plus-minus R140 per annum on the training of our gifted children, and we are spending R420 per annum on the training of our retarded children. And it is precisely the gifted children who offer us a future, but we are doing nothing in particular in regard to their training. We shall have to tackle the entire educational programme in another way. There are modern methods such as programmed training, the learning machine, the staple course technique, all methods which are being used overseas but which we are utilizing on a relatively small scale here. We will have to change the emphasis in our training. Japan is spending nothing more on school training than the English are doing, but they are producing twice as many technologists. Experts say that their phenomenal economic development is precisely owing to this. But we shall also have to make use of our womanpower. We are always talking about manpower, but as far as our women are concerned we have a large reservoir of brain-power which we are not always harnessing. In America 1 per cent of the engineers are women, but in Russia 20 per cent are women. In America 20 per cent of the scientists are women, and in Russia 50 per cent of the professional group are women.

As far as scientists are concerned, we shall also have to see to it that we make proper use of all our scientists, and that we remunerate them properly. What our scientists are receiving at the moment in terms of financial remuneration, is quite inadequate. As far as scientists are concerned, it is often clear that they would rather have remuneration in the form of research apparatus or opportunities to meet persons who are working in similar directions here or overseas. That is the remuneration they often want. I mentioned a few examples of the kind of steps which can be done to increase the number of scientists in South Africa.

But there is a second important step which we shall have to take. We must have a policy for research, a pre-determined national policy for innovation. This is particularly important for a country such as South Africa, because in the field of research I think one can divide the countries of the world up into a few major groups. In the first place there are the super-states, such as America and Russia, where the entire spectrum of research is covered, and who are financially strong enough to be able to do so. Then there are countries such as France, Britain and Germany, and possibly Japan, whose funds are not entirely adequate enough to cover the entire field, but who are nevertheless able to tackle it on a large scale. Thirdly there are the smaller countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden, apparently South Africa will also fall into that group, where it is necessary to go to work selectively. We do not have the funds to cover the entire research spectrum. With us priorities have to be determined. That is why I say that it is necessary for us to have a national policy in regard to research for innovation.

In the third place it is also essential—and this is what our scientists feel so strongly about—that there is proper liaison with the legislature. I think we must consider here whether it is not possible to make further improvements on the present position. In most of the Western countries scientific research is taken up into a specific department with its own Minister, which undertakes all co-ordination. We have representation of the scientists as far as the Cabinet is concerned, but there is division. Social research is now going to be handled by the Minister of National Education. The C.S.I.R., for some reason or other, is under the control of the Minister of Planning. I think it is necessary to go further. In several Western countries this matter is deemed to be so important that the Prime Minister himself holds this portfolio. That was also the position in South Africa with the C.S.I.R. when General Smuts was in power. That was also the case when General Malan was in power, and I think there are many people who feel that we should return to that position.

But we must go further. The British have established a Parliamentary Scientific Council. That is a council which consists of members of both Houses and of both Parties who meet scientists from all the scientific research institutions. They meet from time to time, and together they discuss the research problems. This is an idea which we could possibly use here, but perhaps it is a technique which would be more successful in Britain than it would be here. That is why I have a fourth suggestion, and this is to be found in Britain as well as in certain other countries. It is that the Government should think, and I am suggesting this with all the earnestness I have at my disposal, in terms of the establishment of a standing select committee for research, which will make a special task of remaining in contact with research undertakings. What our scientists want is that they should not be left out of the reckoning or treated as stepchildren. They must have contact with the Government and with this Legislature which has to vote all the money for that purpose and has to lay down the policy. That is why this kind of arrangement is the one about which the Government should really think. I should like to put it to this House that we are facing a major challenge. We must accept this challenge. We must not act in a way similar to that of the old English lady in America who recently wrote to Werner von Braun, the scientist and space-explorer in America, as follows—

It appears to me that we are not going to have the diversion of television in South Africa. That is why I think that we should grab at the moon instead, and do so with both hands.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Hillbrow most certainly regaled us with a highly interesting dissertation, which depicted in a panoramic way his vision of the science of the future. There are perhaps one or two things in regard to which I do not agree with him. But I should like to say something that will bring us back to earth. This motion is concerned with the organization of science, to which the hon. member referred towards the end of his speech. To my mind scientific research means research in the field of the natural sciences and not that in the field of the humanities or the social sciences. In addition legislature means to my mind this Parliament. We have in South Africa to-day a very large number of small or large organizations which are concerned with scientific research and which were in fact the result of that astonishing scientific and technological development which the hon. member spoke about. This has taken place during the last ten years in particular. These bodies have already been established to make adjustments to contemporary demands. But to-day there are many cases where the State regards it as its task to carry the responsibility for the efficient implementation of research, and we must look to the State to implement this task efficiently.

This motion implies that there ought to be better liaison between the legislature and the bodies undertaking research in this country. And if there are obvious deficiencies or very great deficiencies which we can expose, I would agree that we should do so. Although grounds for improvement to exist—because we are dealing here with something dynamic— I cannot entirely agree with the overhastiness which is contained in the motion as such. I want to tell the hon. member that almost all the modern countries of the world to-day are seeking improved structures for and organization of research. Everywhere the needs are fluctuating. Everywhere a general tendency to decentralize planning and organizational structures is in progress. This is the case in all the European states, such as the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and others. In addition some of them are federations, and in federations one always experiences a number of problems in regard to certain rights. These countries are far ahead of us in technological development. Nevertheless they have not yet found an ideal solution. If one considers the position in South Africa, then the immediate, overhasty action which is being advocated here—if one considers the position over the past few years when the development was so rapid—is hardly justified.

In South Africa we have an existing central organization which, since 1964, has remained more or less the same in substance because we have a Scientific Advisory Council on the highest level, with its scientific adviser who advises the Prime Minister and the Minister of Planning. Since the hon. member has just, despite all his other great knowledge, displayed his ignorance by alleging that we have not already rectified this aspect of organization, I want to tell him that Professor Mönig who had instituted an investigation into the organization of science, in his comparisons with overseas organizations for research, regarded the South African arrangement as it existed, as the ideal arrangement. In this he was supported by many experts whom he consulted on his overseas trips. If, in addition to this, cognizance is taken of what has happened over the past few years in particular, and what is at present being envisaged and has been put into operation, it is amazing that we have a research organization which exhibits so few deficiencies. While we are discussing organization the ideal, in my opinion, should always be that there should be continuous contact from the highest authority down through the heirarchic structure to the base of the research pyramid where the active research work is being carried out. It should not be severed. I want to intimate that we have that contact here.

What is the set-up in South Africa? Apart from the scientific advisory council and the adviser to the Prime Minister who is included in that and who also advises the hon. the Minister of Planning, we have only one particular research council, namely the C.S.I.R., which one can regard as an excellent institution and in regard to which the member also expressed his appreciation. Parliament delegates power to the C.S.I.R. in order to expand fields of knowledge through groups of experts. It is consequently the responsibility of the C.S.I.R. to report annually to Parliament, since Parliament supplies it with its basic revenue. If the hon. member wants further mediators in this regard, I do not know. The idea of a standing committee for research, which he raised, sounds a little overhasty to me. It also sounds to me like something, as I view the present set-up, which does not exactly fit in. Research is usually a highly specialized task. The priorities in connection with this is something which a parliamentarian—most of us anyway—said in all due deference, cannot decide on. However, nothing prevents us from taking an interest. For that we have the Department with all the information and access to the Minister so that we can convey our ideas to him. It is therefore a debatable point.

I think that as further needs arise, autonomous research councils will be expanded. If will be organized in such a way that there will be continuous contact and liaison by means of the research councils, between the research worker and the Minister. We still have the situation in South Africa, which perhaps is not entirely satisfactory, whereby the Department of Agricultural and Technical Services undertakes its own research. This is a traditional set-up. It has worked very well up to now. One must consider the circumstances of the country, its development and its manpower, which was also mentioned by the hon. member and which we do not always perhaps take into consideration enough. But in the Department of Agricultural Technical Services one has the Legislature in the person of the Minister who is responsible for research in his Department. And then there are various other departments in our country which are undertaking their own research. They are independent to a lesser or greater degree. Now, if the situation is not an ideal one, one can to a degree concede this. But in countries which are far ahead of us technologically, people are still seeking ideal solutions in regard to the organization of research. Let us take the overseas countries. The hon. member specifically mentioned that the Legislature, the Parliamentarians, should be brought in.

In this regard I want to inform him that in countries such as France, Belgium, and even in America, the tendency exists to create a comprehensive and reasonably complete organization or central organization which controls research in all its aspects. This covers departmental research as well. There it falls, as the hon. member said, under the control of a Prime Minister or a President. But that is precisely what really happens here as well. In France there is an inter-ministerial committee for science. It stands under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister. This committee in turn advises a consulting committee for science and technological research, which consists of scientists and technologists and not of legislators. In turn this committee is advised by a delegate-general for scientific and technological research. This body then does preparatory work and co-ordinates research for the State Departments. In Belgium there is something with much the same set-up. In the U.S.A. the President has a scientific advisory committee under him. The chairman of that committee is the President, and he has a scientific adviser and he runs an office for science and technology in the executive department of the President. In all these countries we also find that research is being done by State Departments, which are to a lesser or greater degree autonomous, in truth a research council. We find this in connection with agriculture, health, defence and these people are undertaking research as a part of their executive function. One would almost regard it as applied research. Obviously it is impossible in a large country—and in this respect I differ from the hon. member—to have only one Minister of Science with all these research activities falling under him. This has been proved in almost all these countries. If the hon. member were to go into the matter and glance at the committee report of Dr. Mönig of 1964 he would see that that was his conclusion. Therefore I cannot agree with the hon. member in that regard. The relevant Minister cannot maintain control over all the scientific activities and the concomitant research.

When we consider the central organization of the overseas countries, we find representatives of Parliament in the central organization which must control research and govern financially in only two countries—these were all I could find—i.e. in Switzerland and Western Germany, two countries which have a federal set-up.

The English are also doing this.

To a degree yes, it is so, and it was you who put it in this way. I am talking more of Europe now, but I concede that this situation is also found in England.

Then there are the national research councils. I am only mentioning the national research council in Switzerland. Twenty-seven scientists are members of that council. Two members of the federal government are also on the council, but they are also scientists. In reality it is only the scientist who can operate efficiently in such a council. In the German scientific advisory council we find 39 members. There are 11 Ministers of Education of State and six representatives of the federal government. I think in these cases it is more to control the federal government by taking care of the finances for research. Except for this I really cannot see why these members are serving in the council.

But after all comparisons alone do not bring us any nearer a solution. One feels that if there are deficiencies, these should be emphasized without being overemphasized. We know that matters of policy in regard to the natural sciences have become an urgent necessity to-day, and it is because of the effect of scientific development on all human requirements. The hon. member put it very well. It is health, foodstuffs, clothing, housing, transport, communication and the industries. In brief, we find this in the entire economic field. All these development aspects are, for their maintenance and continuation, dependent upon scientific research and organization. As a result of that we find this technological revival.

Research work has become extremely difficult; it has become complicated. To-day it requires team work. We have groups of scientists, experts and specialists who have to work for better planning and management and greater financial effort. This leads to the demand for more centralized guidance and coordination. It also results in problems. It results in our instituting improved investigations into seeking a correlation between the research— the essence of research. It brings us to the concept of research economy, in which we are seeking a correlation between the research expenditure and the economic growth which originates as a result of that. I want to tell the hon. member that the C.S.I.R. is investigating all those aspects. They are looking at the economic value of any research project. In this case control is taking place; they have been engaged on this for a long time now because it is an extremely difficult matter.

We as policy makers would like to know what part of our national income ought to be spent on research. We should like to see this research being carried out with our restricted manpower and financial means in an economic way. Now it is a question of a delicate balance between two possibilities. On the one hand we must also afford the research worker the opportunity of dedicating himself to the full to his task, with a measure of freedom, even though it is within defined limits. But in the smaller countries research has to be planned and co-ordinated and we must keep in mind the concept of research economy. We received reports in regard to what is being done. We have proof of this. There are the annual reports, you can obtain the information yourself, and you can obtain it at any time. For us as legislators to be representatives ourselves in research bodies—and as I understood him, the hon. member meant a Select Committee—is not desirable. Such a Select Committee would have to concern itself with the determining of priorities, with the allocation of finances, and with all those kinds of things. I am just not certain that research, this particular field, lends itself to a select committee consisting of what we must, after all, regard as amateurs.

This freedom for research is, as far as I am concerned, very important. We have it here now. In the existing circumstances the Government has decided to delegate authority to people in certain fields. There should also be a central authority at the very top in order to determine priorities. The central authority must look to the future and must always look at the possibilities for development lying ahead, based on the developments of the past. There should always be the idea of no education without research, and no research without education. We have the advisory council at the very top, and I believe the scientific advisory council is a good integration of the scientists with departmental representatives who form a minority. I regard this scientific advisory council as the ideal central body to determine ultimate preferences. Under it will come what the Government now ultimately intends instituting, i.e. the research councils, after a committee which was nominated last year brought out its report. The recommendation of the committee is even now that a national structure of organizations and co-ordinating and financing be investigated. I believe that we have now found a new direction for the organization of research and we will in future have this position that there is continuous contact from the research worker at the bottom right up to the highest legislative authority.

Mr. Spearker, it gives me much pleasure to support the proposals made by the hon. member for Hillbrow. I think in his speech to us this morning it became more apparent than ever that if there is one language that is understood by all thinking people, no matter in what country they live and no matter what race or creed or religion they adhere to, it is the language of the scientist. It became clear to me that what scientists do is to find ways and means of making the lives of all of us, no matter where we live, no matter what standard of living we reach, more pleasant. They do this because I think they have within themselves something built-in which makes them want to do more for their fellow-man. There are no secrets amongst scientists. They give what they have discovered to the world. Perhaps there is one exception, and that is only for a temporary period, and that is when a scientist discovers something which can be used to kill people.

Business suspended at 12.45 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

Afternoon Sitting

Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned for lunch, I was saying that the only exception we have in the field of science which does not bring betterment to the people, is during the time of war when secret weapons are being used. I said that was only a temporary measure because after the war one soon learns what has been going on. I think it is agreed that scientists work in such a way that their final results and progress are rarely, if ever, kept confidential. There is a desire for co-operation between the peoples of nations and this may be on national or international level. The fact that there is competition in research is good. I think that it is a good thing for a country, and the people of a country, when there is competition in the fields of research. It is a spur to better things and it does help to bring results to fruition more quickly. With the advances that we have had in communication and transport, as said earlier to-day, great strides have been made in the dissemination of the results of research work. To a great extent a lot of overlapping has been minimized.

In the medical field, especially, I would say that there is greater co-operation between countries as far as their discoveries are concerned than in any other field. There is also a desire to get the results of research to the people as quickly as possible. One of the key values of research is to make sure that there is no great time lag between the findings and the eventual production so that those who are going to benefit from the work, can benefit as quickly as possible. As far as the field of medical research is concerned—and I think that this is extremely important—work which is done by scientists in the field of medicine and their findings are never secret. They are there for everybody to see. If such findings are kept secret, then we who deal with findings are always suspect. I do not think that scientists have any time for those persons who work alone and devise secret formulae which they use for their own benefit. Such formulae usually land in the hands of the quacks and the charlatans. For those people we have no time.

If we are to do our medical research in this country properly, then we must have a reorganization of the present state of affairs. We must assess, firstly, what staff we have at the moment, what training facilities we have and the maximum benefit that can be made of the available resources. The acquisition of knowledge must be made possible to all those who want it. With our population, we find ourselves in the position where we will have to concentrate on the quality of production rather than the quantity. I think that we have had recently a great example in this country of the co-operation that we are willing to give from this country to the outside world. It is helped by the progress we have had in the fields of communication and travel. As we all know, Professor Barnard was immediately ready as soon as he was able to show that there was a way of treating a certain disease, to go and tell other people about what he was able to do. He was not prepared to keep this as a locked-up secret. He gives his knowledge to all who want it. As a result of this medical feat that has occurred first in South Africa, I am hopeful that heart transplants and tissue transplants will soon become commonplace. We can be justly proud of having the first operation of this kind performed in our country. The great thing was that with the limited resources and with the knowledge that was gained from other people, this man was able to find an end to that trail. As soon as he found it, he gave it to others who wanted to know about it.

We are faced to-day with research activity in our country which can perhaps be graded under three heads: State, private and State-aided. The Public Health Act of 1919 states that:

We have the C.S.I.R., which is a national body, and which is expected to do the research work for the Department of Health. As recently as 1964, an Act was passed in this regard but no provision was made in this Act for the needs of health research. The Act, however, specifies that it shall promote the productivity or the productive capacity of the population of the Republic. There may therefore be a link between productivity and research in that productivity will depend on the health of the people. The State believes—and the Minister must tell us whether he believes this—that the C.S.I.R. is responsible for medical research for the Department of Health. But is it? Is there an agreement between the two? Is there any proof that such a state of affairs really does exist? I think that it is through the goodwill of C.S.I.R. that progress has been made. This point must be clarified as soon as possible. If it is not clarified, there is a possibility of research not coming to a standstill because that will go on, but being hindered and retarded in its progress. I think the time has come now for any confusion that may exist between the Department of Health and the C.S.I.R. to be cleared up. Delegated powers must be given by Parliament to the C.S.I.R. They must be able to know what they are expected to do and they must be able to do it on their own. What virtually happens now, as far as I can make out, is that the Department of Health tells the C.S.I.R. what they would like them to do. How can the C.S.I.R. budget if they have projects that they want to undertake but cannot undertake because of the shortage of funds. Sir, the hon. the Prime Minister has mentioned that overall R40 million has been voted for research. Well, that is a fair sum of money for our country, but it is not the amount of money that is given for research that is important. What is important is how that money is used; whether there is any wastage anywhere and whether it can be used to better advantage. A body like the C.S.I.R. should be allowed to pile up reserves. Take a man, for instance, who is on the way to discovering the life cycle of some insect. He starts and goes half way and he suddenly discovers in the course of his work that something important has been observed; he wants to go off at a tangent to find out what the end-result of his observation is. Well, he is handicapped. He is handicapped for two reasons. First of all, there is nobody to carry on his original piece of research because of the shortage of manpower and our failure in the past to train sufficient people. Secondly, there may not be sufficient money for him to carry on with his research. Take the case, for instance, of Dr. Fleming who discovered penicillin. If he had not been able to go off on to a side path, we would still have been without that drug. He was encouraged, however, to go in for further research. We do not want the C.S.I.R., if they are going to undertake research for the Department of Health, to be handicapped by a shortage of funds. Nobody can say how much a research project is going to cost because nobody can tell how long it is going to take. It may be a short-term or a long-term project. We have examples of money being spent year after year on research, with little progress being made. Take the question of bilharzia, for instance, where we have spent millions but the disease to-day is as rife as ever, and perhaps it is even spreading. That is the sort of thing that happens. Who is going to undertake further research into venereal diseases which are spreading all over the world? Here we are lagging behind. Sir, I am not condemning anybody. My purpose in making these observations is to try to help. We must open our eyes and see what is happening around us. If we are going to be handicapped by a lack of funds and a lack of co-ordination—and the co-ordination must be from top to bottom—we are going to find ourselves trailing behind most of the civilized countries of the world. I say that there must be some controlling body for research, and that is why I want to support what the hon. member for Hillbrow has said. Let us try a select committee. We have not been very successful up to now, although we have done a lot of work. We must remember that we have gained more from outside than we have been able to give to the outside world.

That is not correct.

That is perhaps because of the nature of things. We have been fortunate in being able to use what the outside world has given us, but having now got onto this wonderful platform of heart and tissue transplants with the limelight blazing on us, let us take that platform, use it to the best possible advantage and stimulate research workers to carry on with their work. We have two great South Africans overseas to-day— Sir Basil Schönland and Sir Solly Zuckerman. We in this country are fortunate in that we are able to make use of the work that they have been doing overseas; and there are many others as well. I ask for us to set up a body that can help in the direction of research and that we can use in order to budget and plan for the future.

I do not want to follow up on what the hon. member for Rosettenville has said, except that I shall try in my argument to prove that we do not subscribe to the standpoint that everything which is being done in South Africa in respect of scientific research should always be belittled, as if we were achieving nothing in this process.

I listened with interest to the hon. member for Hillbrow. It became clear to us from his motion that it was his purpose to obtain liaison between the legislature, which would be this Parliament, and institutions undertaking scientific research. We listened to him with interest, and we should like to felicitate him on his speech, but we want to object to the suggestion that what is being done in South Africa in respect of research in general and in particular on certain levels of our political economy is taking place without co-ordination and without any progress being made. I want to say at the outset that liaison and interest on the part of the legislature in the work which is being done by research workers is both good and correct. We must at all times do everything in our power to assist and stimulate that work. But since I want to refer in particular to the agricultural sector of our political economy, I want to say at this stage that we should not lose sight of the fact that it is this Parliament which makes the necessary funds available for research. Of course we take an interest in research in various other fields, but in the time at my disposal, I cannot touch upon those matters in this debate. It is because this Parliament makes the necessary funds available that it is our duty to take an active interest in research, but the Legislature as it is constituted here naturally does not consist of people who are all scientists or scientific research workers. For that reason I think that we as legislators do not have the ability to judge research projects and the work of research workers. I think it is the duty of the members of this legislature to take particular interest in the results of the research and the applicability of the results in practice.

Since, at this stage, we want to make special reference to scientific research which is being undertaken in the agricultural sector, we want to refer to what has been achieved and express our warm appreciation for what has already been done. Sir, mention was made here of a Select Committee in respect of scientific research. From the few ideas which I have expressed here it will be clear to you that I will not oppose an idea like that tooth and nail, but that I do have a few reservations as to whether it would be the right thing at this moment. As far as the agricultural sector is concerned, we know that there is an idea to establish an advisory council in respect of scientific research. In that regard I want to say at once that this may give the appearance of co-ordination, the appearance of liaison, but as a result of practical circumstances, I feel that the opposite will be the case. The reason for this is that there are so many interested groups in agriculture that it is absolutely an inhuman task to constitute an advisory body which can represent the interests of all those groups. That is why the appointment, by Minister P. M. K. le Roux, of the Rautenbach Commission in 1959 was so important, as well as the resulting directorate of agricultural research. The establishment of that body was of real importance for the industry in South Africa, because it was under this body that the so-called advisory committees originated. At this moment there are no fewer than 18 of them that are already doing important research work. Inter alia, I want to refer to the advisory committees in respect of barley cultivation, tobacco, the fibre industry, potatoes, wool and wine, etc. If we look at the Barley Cultivation Advisory Committee, then we see at once the liaison, the co-ordination, which the hon. member for Hillbrow is so eagerly seeking, for on this committee the Department of Agricultural Technical Services is represented by the Secretary or his representative, who is responsible to the Minister, who in turn is responsible to this House. The Wheat Board is represented thereon, as well as the Brewers Institute of South Africa, the breweries that are not members of the Institute and the farmers. If we had the time, Mr. Speaker, we could describe how the other 17 committees are made up and you would then see that this co-ordination which is being advocated now does in fact exist, and in addition you would also see, since the impression is now being created that research work is in fact being done but that we are not actually achieving results, that this is not the case. If we had more time, we could elaborate on this; and I can only mention it in passing.

Sir, this legislature has created many opportunities and channels along which we can obtain the necessary co-ordination. We as members have been organized into various working groups, and on those working groups we must do the necessary work in the interests of the group we represent. We have, inter alia, an agricultural group, and I think I am quite at liberty to state that we are being afforded the opportunity, through the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, to pay periodical visits to research institutes and establishments. Surely that is general knowledge. Hon. members sitting in this Legislature must surely know that in the regions in which they live, periodic invitations to visit research undertakings are being issued. If any hon. member of this House has any reservations in respect of any research undertakings, then he has the opportunity of visiting such an institution on his own request. The classic case is that of an hon. member in the Other Place who had tremendous suspicions in respect of the citrus industry, and who levelled criticism which was not at all times worthy of him. After a visit to the undertaking at Nelspruit, he saw matters in a different light. Sir, when we talk about liaison, do we not take note of these beautiful publications of the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, publications in which everybody who wants to serve can become acquainted with the work which is being done in respect of scientific agricultural research in South Africa? Sir, owing to lack of time I must make haste, but I want to ask hon. members on that side whether they do not realize to what an extent co-ordination already exists to-day? Just think of the liaison committee which exists for example between the C.S.I.R. and the Department of Agricultural Technical Services where research is being carried out in regard to matters of common interest. We think in particular of the groundnut farmer with his problems of aphlatoxin poisoning or contamination of his groundnuts. Through the co-operation between these two undertakings, the C.S.I.R. and the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, a solution was found. We think of tribulosis among sheep. It seems that co-operation between them is going to help us in this case as well. It seems impossible for a simple farmer to believe that there can also be liaison between the Department of Agriculture and the Atomic Energy Board, but we who are interested in these things know that this is nevertheless the case. Here at the fruit experimental farm Bien Donne, research is being undertaken by the particular liaison committee in regard to radio isotopes, with special reference to plant nutrition. On another level there has been liaison between Onderstepoort and the C.S.I.R., again in respect of radio isotope research, with special reference to the effects of that on animal feeding. There has been liaison with the Department of Water Affairs in regard to hydraulic research. But to my mind the most important is this one, where I said at the outset that agricultural research is being undertaken with a purpose, we are not satisfied with mere basic research, as in countries such as Australia and England, where the knowledge is accumulated and then left to stand on the shelves purely for the information of the scientists. No, here I once again want to pay the Department of Agricultural Technical Services a compliment. You who know how this Department is organized will find that there is a chief for the region, that there is an assistant chief for information, and that there is an assistant chief for research. Through co-ordination they still remain responsible to Parliament. There we have this co-ordination by means of which these people hold their consultations, and what they have discovered can be conveyed through the Department’s information services to people who need this knowledge the most, the practical farmers in South Africa. That is why, owing to lack of time, I just want to say that we do not have any reason to reject this motion summarily, but we want to leave the impression here that it is with the greatest appreciation that we recognize what scientific research in general has meant for South Africa and in particular what it has meant to the farmer of South Africa.

*Dr. J. H. MOOLMAN. I am sorry that the hon. member for Smithfield tried to create the impression that the first speaker, the hon. member for Hillbrow, wanted to create the impression that there was no co-ordination as regards our research. I think he spoke most highly of the research that was being done in this country with the funds we have available.

Yes, but the hon. member for Rosettenville spoke differently.

I should like to talk about agricultural research, and I want to put it this way, namely that to us agricultural research is probably the most important form of research. If it is true that unless other measures are adopted, we shall have a population of more than 40 million by the year 2000, then I want to know how it will be possible for our thin fertile layer of the earth’s crust to feed that population by the year 2000, unless research is done. The elementary needs of man are, after all, his food and his clothing, and owing to research it has already become possible to-day to provide artificially for the needs of man as far as his clothing is concerned. They have made so much progress that they can even extract from the air what they need for the manufacture of clothing. But the fact remains that, even in the flight my hon. friend for Hillbrow took in looking into the future at all the metals and minerals we shall be able to extract from rock, we shall never be able to extract bread from a rock; it has to be produced, and the food of the people must be produced by the farmers out of the fertile vegetable earth we have at our disposal.

Nor is agricultural research the most spectacular and the most stimulating career a researcher can pursue. There are many things that are more spectacular. If we think of the space research we have to-day, and if we think of the scientific research in the field of electronics and the mechanisms that are connected with space travel and atomic energy, then agricultural research is certainly not one of the most interesting forms of research that can be pursued. It astonishes us that we still have at our disposal, although not enough of them, people who are still prepared to do agricultural research. To my mind agricultural research remains the most important of all forms of research.

The hon. member for Smithfield created the impression that this motion of the hon. member for Hillbrow could not even serve a useful purpose, but I want to tell the hon. member for Smithfield that if it is possible for this motion to render any service to research, then it was to stress that what should really be done in regard to this matter, was that funds should be voted in this House and allocated among the C.S.I.R. and other research projects, including agricultural research. I know that we as members can go and look for ourselves, but I think the motion introduced by the hon. ber for Hillbrow could not even serve a use-support, points at one of the methods that can be employed, not only to acquaint this advisory body with the needs of the various projects for research, but also to afford the researchers the opportunity to go to such a committee and to state their needs in regard to the allocation of funds in the first place, and, in the second place, the necessity of the projects as far as research is concerned. When I talk about agricultural research, I mean veterinary research, the biological research that is connected with agriculture and forestry, the physical research, and as the Minister calls it, the geological research connected with the structure of the soil and the water. I think the Minister has appointed committees to inquire into all four of these spheres.

But it still does not follow that this is the ultimate aim. It still does not follow that once they have brought out their report we would be in a position to co-ordinate to the best of our ability, which would be necessary for agricultural research. In my opinion there is food for thought for everybody when we consider what fantastic progress has been made in regard to research, particularly in the field of medicine; when we think of the longer span of life man enjoys at present as a result of improved medical facilities and increased and better balanced diets; when we think of the reduction in the mortality rate amongst our children and the methods that have been devised to combat dreaded diseases, and everything that makes it possible for us to live longer; when we think of the phenomenal increase in the number of human beings all over the globe at this stage. Then one wonders how much one should make available, whether one has the powers to do so and whether in a century’s time or in half a century’s time it will be possible to produce food for the people. Food is the most elementary need of any living being, of mankind as well. I know of the resources which may perhaps be exploited. Once the soil has been exhausted, we can turn to the ocean and see what foodstuffs we can extract from it. But at this stage these are the limits of the resources we can exploit for extracting foodstuffs for the people.

Here in South Africa we have, as far as agricultural research is concerned, more extensive problems to cope with than is the case in any other country I know of in the world. This is attributable to the fact that we have more wild life than is to be found in any other country in the world. Consequently we have more carriers of external and internal parasites than is the case in any other country in the world. Therefore we have at our disposal, if not the very best, then surely one of the best research institutes in the field of veterinary science in the world. This was inevitable; we needed it and we still need it. We shall probably never surmount all the problems. We shall certainly not be able to cure all the diseases caused by parasites and carriers over which we have no control. For as long as we in this country prefer to be the wardens of our fauna, we shall be saddled with these problems.

But we also have other problems in regard to which we are lagging behind as compared to other countries, such as the problem in regard to the increase of our livestock. In paging through the old Hansards this morning, I saw that as far back as 1964 I spoke to the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services about this matter, and at that time I made mention of the percentage of calves in this country. The figures I mentioned at the time showed that the percentage of calves reared in our country was 55 per cent, whereas it was 80 per cent in Australia, 88 per cent in America and even higher in some European countries. If it is necessary to increase the livestock, and it certainly is necessary, and if it is necessary to produce the fodder with which animals are to be fed, and it certainly is necessary to do so, then the necessity for research in two fields—i.e. those of water and the utilization of the water resources at our disposal, and the possibility of providing additional water resources by means of desalinating sea water or by any other means—becomes one of the most important aspects of research in this country. A tremendous amount of research is necessary in respect of the way in which we may, with our available water resources, develop to such an extent that we shall be able to feed much more livestock and produce much more. Just as several other southern hemisphere countries— in contrast to the few northern hemisphere countries which experience similar conditions —we are stricken by periodic droughts, droughts which are apparently threatening to become permanent; they last from one year to the next.

I think that the research which can still be done in the field of protecting ourselves against droughts and their harmful effects, is one of the greatest projects that can be tackled in this country. At this moment our agriculture is experiencing a crisis which is unprecedented in the history of our country. Everybody says that this country has never known anything like it. In this regard I think that we have not done everything in our power—as far as basic research is concerned—to defend ourselves against the destruction wrought year after year by droughts in this country. If in centuries to come we want to feed our population, and if we want to clothe our people, but especially if we want to feed them, then we need research in the fields of agriculture and biology, much more intensified research than we have at present.

I know about the co-ordination that exists in respect of our agricultural research. The hon. member for Smithfield spoke of a coordinating board, an advisory board, for agriculture. Such a board—on which I, too, served —was established in the fifties: It was an agricultural research advisory board, and after two meetings it simply petered out by itself. It was one of the boards which comprised some of the best brains in the field of research in our country. But, as I have said, this board petered out by itself. The board was comprehensive enough to represent all departments. But all the good qualities of this board could not even save it, and, as has been the case with many other advisory boards and committees, this board simply petered out. Boards of this kind seldom last. An advisory board is established for agricultural research and for other kinds of research, but it only functions for a short while and then dies a natural death.

I think that the motion under discussion can yield very good results. It is an idea that may be put into practice, not only in respect of the co-ordination of all forms of research—I do not know whether this board can assist a very great deal in co-ordinating research—but also in respect of matters related to it. After all is said and done, it is this board which has to provide funds for research and which must eventually decide how the money is to be allocated amongst the various research boards, be they medical, scientific, industrial or agricultural. For that reason it gives me great pleasure to support the motion introduced by the hon. member for Hillbrow.

Mr. Speaker, I rather like a fight in this House, but to-day is not such a day, and I want to welcome this because scientific research and allied matters are probably one of the most important things to South Africa. We have had a good day to-day and it gave me great pleasure to listen to what had come from both sides of the House. I also want to express my appreciation for the way in which this question was approached and also for the thanks that were expressed, specifically to the C.S.I.R. and other bodies.

The hon. member who introduced this motion said that we were doing well in respect of research, but that one could always do better. That is true and we endorse it fully. But I nevertheless think that if one looks at what we have achieved in South Africa, one should also lay emphasis on the good work that has already been done. And that came from both sides of the House.

I also want to express here, and this is the first opportunity I have, the highest appreciation for what has been taking place in recent times. We are thinking of Dr. Barnard and his team and their achievements. We are also thinking of Dr. Van Wyk of the Johannesburg General Hospital and his proud achievement in separating the Siamese twins. This is a unique achievement. That is why I like to talk about these two recent achievements in the same breath. I also want to add to that that we, the House, should say and make it known to the public outside that we are not unaware of those hundreds and thousands of silent researchers whose names one never hears, researchers and technologists who are making it possible for these achievements to take place.

I also want to add the following to that: I think the hon. member for Rosettenvüle did not give us an entirely faithful rendering when he said, “We gain more from outside than we have achieved ourselves and given ourselves”. I do not think that this is a faithful rendering of what the situation is. The fact of the matter is that in virtually every sphere our scientists are ranked amongst the foremost in the world, perhaps not as far as the scope of the work is concerned, but most certainly as far as the quality of their work is concerned.

I am grateful that it became apparent here to-day that there is appreciation for the virtually immeasurable importance of science and for the practically unimaginable advantages it may hold for us in the future. However, we have a task to do—and I, who am responsible for the Department, am including myself— and that is to judge all these matters very calmly and with both feet on the ground when it comes to priorities and judging how we are to achieve them when we want to effect improvements. I just want to refer to a few general matters that were mentioned by the hon. member for Hillbrow. He referred to our vanishing assets. I agree with him. It is a matter to which we are paying attention and to which we shall have to pay more attention. I shall mention one example to hon. members. In the past it was always said, simply in passing, that South Africa had inexhaustible coal reserves. A while ago I asked the Coal Commission to ascertain for me whether this was in fact so. This also applies to iron ore and raw materials. No country can afford—or may do such a thing to posterity—to allow such reserves to be exported if there are not sufficient reserves left for future generations. In this regard the quantities may be there, but whether they can be mined, and, as the hon. member rightly said, whether the methods of extraction can be used, is a question that has to be answered. Now I just want to say that in respect of research in mining a tremendous amount of work and good work is being done by the National Institute for Metallurgy.

Then the hon. member made a statement which I think he made rather hurriedly, namely that South Africa is losing roughly 75 per cent of its researchers and students who are studying abroad. This is very much exaggerated. I have a few figures here, and I should like to give them to hon. members. They relate to the years 1960 to 1965. In medical science the loss is roughly 8 per cent; as regards holders of scholarships granted by State Departments, 5 per cent; as regards holders of scholarships granted by the C.S.I.R., 2 per cent; as regards holders of scholarships granted by the Atomic Energy Board, 5 per cent; as regards Afrikaans-language universities, 6 per cent; and as regards English-language universities, 20 per cent. In agriculture, so I am told, the figure is one to two per cent. These are the maximum figures.

I have obtained from Dr. Naude of the C.S.I.R. other figures which I shall make available later on.

Yes, but I am sure that they do not relate to exactly the same aspect. It may therefore be a maximum percentage of perhaps 15 per cent. I want to concede at once that 15 per cent is too high. Even that South Africa cannot afford it. But it is not 75 per cent as the hon. member wants to suggest.

Then the hon. member asked that we should now have a national research policy in South Africa. Let me say at once, Mr. Speaker, that, as the hon. member for Smithfield pointed out, a tremendous amount is being done in respect of co-ordination, the determination of priorities and the most efficient way of providing funds which have been set aside for this purpose—a tremendous amount. In a striking way he indicated here how this was the case in agriculture. The fact of the matter is that in years to come we shall have to see to it that there is even greater co-ordination and greater determination of priorities as far as the various projects are concerned.

Then there is just one last general point, namely the objections the hon. member raised to the separation of human and natural sciences. I think it is sound. The separation in respect of responsibility to various ministries—of three things, really—has been accepted in South Africa, and I think that in actual practice it has very great advantages. There is the separation between the human sciences on the one hand, and the natural sciences on the other hand. Let us, as far as the whole research programme is concerned, operate on this basis rather than to join the two. This is the case to-day, and I fail to see any reason why it should be changed.

When we talk about research, the determining principal factors are to my mind the following two: firstly, the available capital and, secondly, the manpower. As regards the capital, this is something which is very difficult to determine. It is a problematical matter to be able to determine specifically how much is being spent in respect of research; there are no exact criteria. However, along with approximately 30 other countries we have nevertheless analysed this extremely complicated matter on the basis of the formula of which the hon. member is aware, and we determined that the amount made available for this purpose was approximately R40 million per annum over the past few years. That is roughly .5 per cent of the total gross product. It is very low. But when it is compared with comparable countries, it is still not very low. In Spain it is .3 per cent, in New Zealand .4 per cent and in Australia .6 per cent. But one should also take into account here that some of these countries are buying foreign know-how. In this way Germany bought 80 per cent of its know-how in the post-war years. This situation has changed and at the moment it only buys approximately 12 per cent of its know-how and undertakes 88 per cent of its own research. In Australia there has also been a complete change. Here in our country the ratio, having regard to the position our country occupies, is quite sound, since approximately 40 per cent of our knowhow is purchased, whereas we are undertaking 60 per cent of our own research. I think that a 40-60 per cent balance compares well at this stage. It is a favourable comparison with countries which are comparable to us.

In respect of the capital that is available, I must inform the House that the Government is paying serious attention to this, particularly in respect of funds that may possibly be made available from the private sector. At the moment I am examining this matter very closely to see what should be the composition and other related aspects of a possible central national trust foundation, where the private industrialist, the individual, will be able to render his contribution in respect of research.

Will he be happy with it?

There are several considerations one should take into account. Firstly, should it be a trust foundation established for open amounts, for donations only, as well as for specific research?

Will they be tax free?

As hon. members know, that is not a matter for me to decide. That is for the Minister of Finance. I am now dealing with the principle of whether such a trust foundation should be established or not. Secondly, it must be determined by what type of council it should be controlled. There is another very important consideration, namely that several of our universities, virtually all of them, are at the moment engaged in their own fund-raising campaigns. The question is: how will this affect the foundation? In this regard I should like to make it quite clear that one should differentiate between the fund-raising campaigns of our universities for the purpose of their normal growth and expansion, and those donations which are specifically made for the purpose of research, research which will mainly be done at the universities.

The hon. member asked whether the donors would be satisfied with that. I want to invite them—because some of them do come to see me about this matter—to send in their ideas in this regard to my Department or directly to me. The problem is that there are big companies and other bodies which receive a tremendous number of requests for donations in respect of research. But the board of such a company is not always—and usually it is not —in a position to judge where its money will be utilized best. I think that if such a national trust foundation is established—a trust foundation with a board of high standing consisting of capable people whom we have at our disposal in South Africa, people who are unique in their fields, people who do not have a personal interest in research, and we can mention names in this regard—our companies and other bodies will be more inclined to donate money to that trust in the knowledge that it will be administered in the best national interests and distributed amongst the various research projects in the best possible way. I want to emphasize here once again that I should very much like to exchange ideas with those persons who are interested in these things. There is one company which came to see me and which is prepared to donate 1 per cent of their profits, for a period of 10 years, to research, but then they want the assurance that it will be utilized in the national interests, on the highest level and in the best possible way. It seems to me that such a trust foundation will possibly serve this purpose.

The second point, Mr. Speaker, is in respect of the researcher himself. I obtained certain figures in regard to full-time and part-time researchers in South Africa—these are tentative figures, of course—and found that there were roughly 5,000 full-time and roughly 2,000 part-time persons who are doing research. As far as technicians are concerned, there are more than 3,000 on a full-time basis and approximately 200 on a part-time basis. If one analyses this further, I can say without any hesitation that, after the necessary adjustment has been made as regards the amount of time part-time researchers devote to research, that there are in South Africa at least 5,000 to 5,500 persons who are doing research work on a full-time basis. Percentage-wise South Africa compares very well as far as this matter is concerned. Among certain bodies which are doing major work, there is great concern about the future of our researchers. I just want to sketch this very briefly. We have the researcher whose talent is average, but in order to make breakthroughs we should look after the really talented researcher. I may say that I have received several memoranda in regard to this matter. One of these memoranda says the following (translation)—

Hon. members will realize that once one starts to select certain categories, it may create terrible problems. I nevertheless think that it is incumbent upon us, upon the Government, to see how we can cope with this matter. In respect of our talented researchers—apart from the recognition which will be granted to these people pursuant to the announcement made by the hon. the Prime Minister—I have decided in principle to ask a number of persons to advise me on this matter, so that I may approach the Cabinet with an absolutely well-considered submission in respect of our talented researchers. I should like to tell hon. members whom I have had in mind to furnish me with the necessary advice in this regard: Dr. Mönnig, the scientific adviser, as chairman and convener; somebody from the Public Service Commission; Dr. Meiring Naude of the C.S.I.R.; Dr. A. Roux of the Atomic Energy Board; Mr. Gerhard Jooste, retired Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Professor Andries Brink of the University of Stellenbosch; somebody from the Department of Agricultural Technical Services; and Dr. Robertse of the Department of National Education.

What about a few English-speaking persons?

Mr. Speaker, is it not strange, particularly here in the Western Province in the grape season, how a whole basket of beautiful grapes can be spoilt so by one little grape which may perhaps have the appearance and disposition of this hon. member. Whether they are English or Afrikaans-speaking is not the point here. I am giving you these names, Sir, in the knowledge that one really has the best people here. I am not committed to all of them. If this hon. member had come to me with five names, as one would have expected from a lady, we may perhaps put all five of them on this board. However, it is very clear to me that there is something that troubles her.

I want to make haste and deal with the following point, namely whether we should have more liaison with this board. Mention is made of this in the motion introduced by the hon. member for Hillbrow. I want to say that I cannot accept it. I want to tell the hon. member that at this moment four committees are inquiring into this matter. We have the committee on physics and engineering; the committee on medical sciences; the committee on geological and ecological sciences, and the committee on biological sciences. Their terms of reference are specific, a suitable national structure for organizations for the purpose of effecting satisfactory planning, implementation, co-ordination and co-operation in the wide field of scientific research, development and application. I think that it will be advisable to await these reports. It is not a lengthy inquiry. I have already said in reply to a question in this House that these reports will most probably be available to us by the middle of the year.

Secondly, I want to tell the hon. member that I do not think, as the hon. member for Smithfield rightly said, that such a standing committee will really be competent, even if it is a select committee, to give an opinion on the priorities, and so forth, of research. Thirdly, I want to tell the hon. member that we have our caucus groups. I would appreciate it highly if the caucus groups on both sides would take a more active part in respect of the scientific aspects of the activities of the Department. I also want to say that all scientific work has to be accounted for in this House by various Ministers. I am responsible for the C.S.I.R. and my colleague the Minister of Agriculture is responsible for research done in the sphere of agriculture, and so forth. All funds that are being spent on research to-day and all research that is being done, has to be accounted for in this House by the responsible Minister. What is more, all funds that are made available for this purpose are subject to investigation by the Committee on Public Accounts. That is why I do not think that that will be the solution. I also want to tell the hon. member that in view of the fact that I do not think that this is the proper way, we should rather put our trust in the expert advice which will possibly be forthcoming from these committees.

I also want to reply to the point raised by the hon. member for Rosettenville. The position is that the C.S.I.R. is not doing research for the Department of Health. What is in fact the case, is that in the field of medicine the C.S.I.R. is responsible for the administration, control and allocation of funds which are being made available for medical research at universities and other institutions by the Government and other bodies. It is also true that the Department of Health does a very small amount of medical research. The C.S.I.R., through its committee for Medical Research and a vice-president, has been responsible for that up to now. But even in this respect the question has arisen, particularly in the light of our recent achievements, whether the time has not arrived for a separate medical research council to be established in South Africa. Hon. members will know that something of that nature can only be done by way of legislation. This is under consideration at the moment, namely whether we should in principle entrust the research in the field of medicine to a separate medical research council established by statute. Bodies of which we have to take a great deal of notice have been urging very strongly that such a medical research council should in fact be established. At the moment this matter is in my hands. I want to tell hon. members that even legislation for establishing such a council has already been submitted to me, not by my Department, but by bodies which feel that this must be effected. I hope that in the near future we shall have made so much progress, in respect of the financial implications as well, that I may possibly submit the matter to the Government, and that legislation in this regard may perhaps be introduced during this year still; if not, then in the course of next year.

Are we going to have an agricultural research board as well?

In that regard I just want to say that to my mind such a need does exist. However, I want to make it very clear that in principle the Government has not yet decided on this matter. In respect of the faculties of agriculture and veterinary science a recommendation has been made by the scientific adviser and the scientific advisory board to the effect that at the least the question of where it should be situated, should be investigated. As hon. members know, this board is made up partly of departmental and partly of university staff for the purpose of dealing with problems in that sphere. I may say that the Government has decided to accept that recommendation, and that the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of National Education and I will possibly make an announcement in that regard. I repeat that it has not been accepted in principle that it should necessarily be located elsewhere. However, the recommendations made by the scientific advisory board have been accepted, namely that investigations should be carried out in that regard and that a detailed report should be submitted.

Mr. Speaker, I think that this has been a fruitful debate. I think that there is one thing that we can say without hesitation, namely that our scientists may rest assured that this House and the Government are not adopting an attitude of indifference towards them. I want to express the hope that to-day’s discussion will be a new stimulus to those persons who are doing research in South Africa to soar to even greater heights in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I want to deal very briefly this afternoon with the social sciences in spite of the hon. the Minister’s reply because it seems to me that social sciences are very relevant to the motion before us to-day. They have not been discussed at all as yet. I would admit that many of these in their turn cannot be divorced from the field of medical planning and research. I think it is true that the two of them more or less go hand in hand—at least they should. The social sciences are of course also linked with the question of education, housing and community life in general. It is a well-known fact that despite all the sophistication and the technical knowledge and ability of our modern world, ignorance, poverty and strife still remain rampant in many communities, including our own, and require very careful attention indeed. I am afraid it is necessary to say that these conditions often make a mockery of many of our more brilliant intellectual achievements and are so often forgotten. These are very definitely matters with which the legislators in this country are concerned. I want to remind hon. members that on the 29th January of this year. President Johnson of the U.S.A. presented the highest ever national budget that his country has ever seen. In spite of the appalling costs to the U.S.A. of the war in Vietnam and the aid which they are committed to giving to under-developed countries, in the U.S.A. budget the emphasis was placed upon sociological programmes considered vital to the whole fabric of American society. I want to quote very briefly from what President Johnson said—

He then selected specific issues for increases in their national budget, namely manpower training, model cities, control of rising crime, family planning and health care for mothers and infants, air and water pollution and particularly educational research. I would say that South Africa herself is in dire need of a planned and constructive programme of sociological research of a similar kind. South Africa is not only faced with the recognized problems of human adaptation in a technological society, because our society is becoming a technological society like every other society in the world. We have also to consider with the greatest care the necessary adjustments, which are very important in the scientific field, in the human relations which govern the lives of our four population groups here in South Africa, all of which at this stage happen to be at different stages of development. This in itself presents us in this country with a plethora of sociological problems which are inevitably linked with the provisions of social services with which this House is very much concerned. I would say that this is one aspect of our responsibilities which we ignore at our peril. The liaison between the legislature and the institutions concerned with scientific research, as suggested by the hon. member for Hillbrow, is absolutely essential. One has only to think of a very few items which are matters of obvious concern to the community in terms of the social sciences to which the State, the legislature, the sociologists and all the other people involved should pay attention. Take, for instance, the question of migratory labour and its devastating effects upon family life, and not only that but its devastating effect upon the individual human psyche. Take the question of illegitimacy which we have on an unprecedented scale amongst our Coloureds, and, to a certain extent, amongst our Bantu people, and the dangerous relationship that this bears in its turn to neglected children and juvenile delinquency with its subsequent development, in many cases, to crime. Moreover, poverty, as we know, is rampant in many quarters in South Africa. Indissolubly linked with all these things go the two twin nightmares for any modern community, those of ignorance and malnutrition. Of course, from malnutrition and poverty we then go on to the question of disease, which is a medical question with which I do not intend to deal. But in terms of the motion, I make the point again that all these problems require the closest co-operation between us in this House as legislators and those who work in the field of medical research, social research, educational research, economic research and so on. They are all inter-related: the one cannot possibly function without the other.

I make the point, Sir, that deterioration in community life, which we cannot afford to ignore, leads inevitably to the deterioration of the individual as well, and Government action and research are quite clearly linked as far as these two are concerned. Sir, take the question of the Government’s inquiry into the problem of divorce in South Africa. The whole notice of inquiry has just been published in the Government Gazette and the names of the members of this commission have been issued as well. Sir, I am sorry if I introduce a jarring note into what has been a very pleasant debate so far—it has been like a cooing of doves as between the two sides of the House—but I want to say that the personnel appointed by the Government to undertake this research into the reasons for the high rate of divorce in South Africa are good people; there are sociologists, churchmen and welfare workers amongst them, but, of course, it is quite inadequate to undertake an inquiry into the divorce rate in South Africa only amongst the Europeans. This inquiry should cover the whole field of family life throughout South African society, and I would like to know why there are no representatives from the sociological departments of our universities on this commission. I should like to know why there are no ministers of religion from denominations other than the Afrikaans churches. I should like to know quite frankly why there is not one English-speaking person on this commission and why the Minister could not see fit to appoint one or two members of this House to assist in the work of this commission. As I have said, I do not want to introduce a discordant note, but it seems to me that this is something which should be said.

Sir, if you take the very practical question of the substitution of Bantu labour by Coloured labour in the Western Cape, which is Government policy—this is a matter of great practical concern to everybody in this House—you will find that everybody will tell you that the Coloured people are entirely different from the Bantu people and that this is one of the prime difficulties with which our industrialists and employers of labour in this area are faced. I would suggest, just as an example, that this is a suitable subject for considerable research at a very high level by people from all walks of life in South Africa as well as by people who are concerned with the legislature.

It is reasons such as these, I think, which make it imperative for the Government to support the motion moved by the hon. member for Hillbrow. I agree entirely with his suggestion that there should be a standing select committee of members from both sides of the House. Sir, a lot of the initiative and dynamic could in fact come from members of this House if we were in a position to give it. We are, after all, the mouthpiece of South Africa’s population. We are familiar with their problems and I would think that there is every justification for our playing such a part. Sir, one of the things that interested me was the hon. the Minister’s comment on the question as to whether donations from private enterprise to some form of trust fund for research purposes, should be free of tax. I want to read out one brief extract which proves how muddled our thinking is in this regard. This is a letter which the Minister of Finance wrote to the Associated Chambers of Commerce of South Africa in February of this year The Minister in his letter to the president of Assocom says—

That is to say, that donations should be tax free—

Sir, when you consider that as a result of the magnificent achievements of our heart transplant team at Groote Schuur Hospital over the last few months, several mining houses in Johannesburg donated R1 million to the medical faculty of the University of Cape Town for cardiac research purposes, then it seems to me that to have the Minister of Finance making the final decision in all these instances, is wrong in principle and that this country suffers as a result of it. I would like the Minister of Planning to have freedom to build up his trusts on an entirely different basis.

I entirely support the hon. member for Hillbrow in his motion that we in this House should also be allowed to play a more vital part and that we should have more direct contact with research workers in many fields when we are called upon over and over again to legislate here as a result of the findings of the people who work in these particular fields of research.

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that the introduction of this motion led to a fruitful discussion. I should like to express my thanks to all who took part in this debate. I also just want to say that I hope the hon. the Minister will find upon reflection that the positive proposals we submitted to him have greater merit than he may perhaps think at the moment. Be that as it may, with the leave of the House I should now like to withdraw my motion.

With leave of the House, motion withdrawn.

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

1. (1) there should be better co-ordination of the work undertaken by the Central Government, provincial administrations and local authorities in respect of the health services rendered to social pensioners and all indigent persons;
2. (2) the powers, duties and privileges of district surgeons should be re-examined with a view to increased efficiency; and
3. (3) consideration should be given to extending district nursing services with a view to increasing the services to be rendered at old-age homes and other welfare institutions.

In submitting this motion to the House for consideration and particularly in inviting the friendly attention of the hon. the Minister in this regard, I realize that a discussion of this nature must necessarily be conducted with a great deal of circumspection. In the second place, however, I feel quite at liberty to submit this motion to the House as I know that the matter with which this motion is chiefly concerned, namely the care of our aged and other indigent persons, is one which surely is near to the hearts of all members of this House. Sir, I have said that a motion such as this would have to be discussed with a great deal of circumspection. There are certain reasons for this. I should like to mention them briefly in order to clarify my own point of view, which is, I believe, also the point of view of this House as far as certain points mentioned in this motion are concerned.

Firstly, when one speaks of the rendering of services, one necessarily will have to speak of the work that is being done by the provinces and by the local authorities, including the divisional councils of the Cape, the Peri-Urban Areas Health Board of the Transvaal and other bodies and persons concerned in these matters. At the outset I should like to state emphatically that it is my considered opinion that the work which the provinces have been doing in regard to health services over the years, particularly since the commencement of Act No. 36 of 1919, deserves the appreciation and gratitude of the Government. This applies not only to the provincial authorities, but also to our local authorities, divisional councils and other bodies and persons. The work they have been doing in regard to health services, deserves our appreciation, and I should like to testify to that here. Therefore any remarks made with regard to their work are meant as honest criticism of a system rather than criticism of their work.

But, secondly, the work of district surgeons and district nurses will have to be discussed in this debate and that is why we must be circumspect in dealing with this motion. These two groups are held in high esteem by all of us and they deserve our esteem because they are doing great work. The medical and the nursing professions are among the best professions one can choose, and I think that the work being done by these two groups in particular in our country, deserves our appreciation. But the third thing to be discussed here is a situation that, without anybody being directly responsible and perhaps with the best intentions on the part of the people concerned, has nevertheless arisen during the course of the years, and one is afraid that saying the wrong thing might easily have an adverse effect on the good services that are being rendered.

To return for one moment to the work of our surgeons, the hon. the Minister mentioned here a moment ago that we as a House have taken note of the great service that has been rendered by our surgeons, as well as the work done by research workers. Professor Barnard and his team, the surgeons in Johannesburg, and other surgeons have rendered great services in special fields. I should like to emphasize to-day that the work done in the past and up to this day by ordinary doctors, especially district surgeons in the outlying areas of our country and in mission hospitals etc., deserves as much praise and appreciation as any specialist deserves for his achievements. For that reason the second part of the motion contains the request that the position of district surgeons in particular be reconsidered so that they can do their work, which is also essential, with greater freedom. Thirdly I should like to give the Government and the Minister in particular the assurance that I am aware of the fact that the matter being dealt with here, is a subject which is being dealt with by commissions of inquiry, the reports of which are still being awaited, i.e. the Schumann Commission and the Borckenhagen Committee, and the contents of these reports cannot of course be anticipated. I know that the Government is engaged on these matters and that it cannot, at this stage, consider far-reaching changes.

Mr. Speaker, I have said that I feel myself at liberty to introduce this motion, and I am doing so for several reasons, the first being that this matter has often been the subject of discussion in this House, and what one has always found striking in the discussion of this matter has been the sympathetic approach of all political parities in regard to the problems of our aged and other indigent persons. It is obvious that this should be the case when the Aged Persons Act, introduced by the hon. Minister of Social Welfare, was being discussed last year, the hon. member for Hillbrow made this very interesting statement. He said that the help being given to indigent persons, including the aged, could always be statistically calculated as an indication of the cultural level of the rest of the community. I think the help which is being unselfishly given to our non-Whites in particular, is certain proof of the cultural level of the Whites of South Africa who are rendering the best services to those people. Therefore I feel myself quite at liberty to introduce this motion to you.

But these matters have not only been discussed in this Assembly. Other people connected with our provincial authorities have in the past had very definite and resolute things to say in regard to the problem with which our aged and indigent people as well as others have to contend. I should like to refer to a speech made by Mr. F. R. Odendaal, Administrator of the Transvaal, on the occasion of the opening of the Congress of the Municipal Health Inspectors in Pretoria. There he had the following to say (translation)—

I shall return later to what Mr. Odendaal has said with regard to the aged. Not only the Provinces, but also the commissions that have specially been appointed for this purpose and instituted an investigation into medical services, have reached the same conclusions. I need only refer to the Snyman Commission, a report known to all of us. I should like to take one quotation from it, forcefully worded by the Snyman Commission, which deals with health services in general. They stated—

This is what the Commission said, but the same thing was also said by people outside the medical profession and outside the assemblies of the country. As another instance I need only quote Dr. Cloete, the well known expert on constitutional law who said the following in his book on the provincial, central and local authorities, when he discussed this question of co-ordination. He said (translation)—

I now maintain that changing conditions mentioned by Dr. Cloete, and the discrepancies against which he issues a warning in his book, have originated in our country in the past years in respect of our aged and the other indigent persons, and that this deserves serious reconsideration by the Minister concerned, the Government and by us as House of Assembly. It is a well known fact that the hon. member for Kimberley (South) and other members who participated in the debate during the discussion of the Aged Persons Act last year, stated most emphatically that we should face up to this problem which we have to deal with in South Africa to-day since special circumstances have changed our people’s way of life to such an extent that we have a much larger number of aged persons in our country, and that the problem of caring for these aged persons has also as a result of changing circumstances become greatly aggravated and has assumed greater proportions. The hon. member for Kimberley (South) and others pointed out that the urbanization of our population and the industrialization of our country had resulted in our old people moving to towns and cities, thus departing from the large farm houses where a quiet atmosphere prevailed, and where they could enjoy a restful existence in their old age. But those things which we had in the past, are gone for ever. A calculation mentioned in last year’s debate, indicated that only 25 per cent of all our aged people were still living with their children in their own homes. 68 per cent must fend for themselves. Two per cent of them, in the words of the hon. member for Kimberley (South), are with strangers, and only 5 per cent could be provided for in old-age homes, which in the words of the hon. member for Waterberg should really be called homes and be developed into homes. We are now being forced by these changing circumstances affecting the lives of our old people to make special provision for their care, even though we do not do so in the other fields of medical provision for the other groups of our population. We may talk at length about how children neglect their duty towards their parents, but one thing we must accept as a fact, namely that this situation exists. Wilfulness on the part of children is not always the cause; it is circumstances such as small flats and economic circumstances, as for example when women have to go to work to supplement the income. These are circumstances that make it necessary for the State to render the best possible services to these people who, in their old age, have become helpless as a result of many adverse circumstances and are dependent on others for help. I should like to quote what Mr. Odendaal, the Administrator of Transvaal, said in the same speech from which I have just quoted. He said (translation)—

I am sure this House would agree with me when I say that we appreciate very much the work that has been done by these people and organizations over the years. I am thinking of the National Council for the Welfare of Aged Persons who has built homes and undertakes administrative work under difficult circumstances. I am thinking of the work being done by the Federation of Women. Who can evaluate that work in terms of money? I am thinking of the work being done by churches in taking care of the aged who have become helpless, having taken upon themselves the responsibility for doing that work. One need only pay a visit to a home such as the Van Rensburg Home in Pretoria, where aged people that have become weak or senile are housed, to see under what difficult circumstances this work is being done. I should like to mention only one example of an ordinary old age home such as we find throughout the country, and my plea is that assistance of a medical nature be given to people living in this kind of home in order to care for them properly. It was the hon. member for Gordonia who said the following last year while the motion of the hon. member for Germiston was being discussed—

The truth of this statement has been demonstrated more than once in the work being done by charity organizations in regard to the care of the aged. At Witbank, where an old age home has been built, English-speaking people and Afrikaans-speaking people and all the churches co-operated because they had accepted joint responsibility, and considered it a joint privilege to take care of the aged there. To this day it is being run jointly and there are long waiting-lists of people who want to spend their old age in that home.

But having said all this, I should like to know why there are such long waiting-lists? Why is it that the Department of Social Welfare has voted such a large amount this year for homes, but that those homes that are needed, cannot be built as rapidly as those aged persons require them to be built? I want to make the assertion that there is one deficiency which exists in regard to all old-age homes, and not only old-age homes, but in regard to the care of our aged and other indigent persons. This is the overlapping of services and the confusion in the services being rendered to indigent persons. I should like to mention an example. No unanimous norm is laid down in the four provinces according to which subsidies are payable with regard to health services. I must compliment the Cape for being ahead of the other provinces as far as this is concerned. Medical services at old-age homes are being subsidized to an amount of at least 90 per cent of the cost, compared with approximately 60 per cent in the Transvaal, although it has in fact improved a great deal in recent years. But in the Free State this work is being done solely by district surgeons and district nurses under the Central Government, and in Natal—so I am informed by an inhabitant of Natal—the situation is such that people who fall ill in an old-age home, even from a slight disease such as an attack of bronchitis, simply cannot be treated there; it is expected that they should be taken away to be treated in a hospital. Now you can imagine the confusion which will necessarily be caused in those organizations when they attempt to make these services available to aged people and wonder how far they can go and what they may undertake. There are at present four homes for the senile aged in our country. These are the Helen Home in Johannesburg, the Secura Home in Cape Town, the Home of the Natal Christian Women’s Association in Pietermaritzburg, and the Van Rensburg Home in Pretoria.

Mr. Speaker, if there are aged people who really need help, then it is those groups of aged people who are not really ill but fall between those who are physically in good health and those who are really ill, those who require regular nursing. Why cannot provision be made for this group of people? I maintain that the system of control being divided as it is, it is simply impossible to make adequate provision for this essential medical care at present. I maintain that the experience of our aged in Transvaal, is also the experience of aged people all over the country. I should like to mention an example, and we may laugh because this is the example of one person only and one may think it is a question of appealing to the emotions, but it is the simple truth. In the Transvaal, where this work is being done by the Central Government and the province and the Peri-urban Areas Health Board and the municipalities, who have every intention of doing it well, such a case is not only possible, it happens every day. For example, an aged person living in the area of the Periurban Areas Health Board, falls ill, so ill that the services of a surgeon are urgently required. A surgeon is called in for that person by somebody sufficiently interested in his case, but the law requires that before that district surgeon may go and visit that aged person, he must first be authorized by the magistrate. Only in exceptional cases can this be done later. Now he has to find someone to go and ask that magistrate to issue such an order, and this person must sit there and wait until a magistrate becomes available. Then he must drive back to tell the surgeon, himself a busy man, and if the surgeon arrives at the aged person after hours and finds that that person, who has rendered his services to this country, requires hospitalization, then he informs such an aged person that he must go to hospital. Now a difficulty arises in regard to ambulance services since he is outside the area of the Peri-urban Areas Health Board and they ask beforehand who is going to pay the costs. When he arrives at the hospital, the Provincial Ordinance stipulates for the information of this man and the surgeon on duty that he may not be admitted until the doctor is convinced that it is a case for which the province should pay. Once again forms are filled in and declarations made; this person is eventually reexamined and then goes to hospital. In the rural areas this happens every day. Then, after a few days in the care of a second surgeon—and surgeons complain that they are not in a position to give their patients the necessary after-care—they tell him that he may go home, and then he goes back to the district surgeon. He then returns to the district surgeon. I know he is able to obtain free medicine from the district surgeon. It is so. All concerned mean well. But what happens to this poor aged person? Once he has returned he must obtain another order from a magistrate to have the doctor visit him so that the doctor can state once more that the patient is sick enough to require medication. Once he has received the order, he can obtain that medication free of charge. Or he can go to the Province, pay 50 cents and then he can obtain that medication through the provincial hospital. Is it right that there should be this kind of confusion among our old people? I am not saying it is a humiliation; I maintain that the service is being rendered to them with the best of intentions. But now I want to ask: Can we understand that the old people regard this procedure as a humiliation, that the elderly person feels as if he must go with his hat in his hand, almost as if he were asking for alms when he needs those people who have offered their assistance to him? And this is simply as a result of this overlapping of services. Last year the hon. member for Gordonia said that in the Cape the position was practically the same. I do not know what the position is in the other Provinces.

In the second part of my motion I specifically requested that the position of district surgeons should be taken into reconsideration. I believe, together with the late Mr. Odendaal and others who have expressed opinions in this regard, and together with hon. members of this House, that these services can be supplied under one central control. I know there may be people who will say: “The autonomy of the Provinces and the local authorities is once more being tampered with here.” In that case I want to take the sole responsibility upon myself. If autonomy of any local or provincial government means confusion, then I say, “Away with autonomy”. However, it does not mean that I in any way desire that the rights of our Provinces and local authorities, bodies which are rendering such excellent services, should be tampered with. I want this matter to be seen from the point of view of those bodies as well, in that they sometimes do not know where they stand in regard to the subsidies and the different laws which are promulgated and which they must obey. This need for coordination, which must be considered for our aged and indigent persons, is now an urgent necessity. A start can be made with this coordination with the work of district surgeons.

Over the years we have had various part-time district surgeons at Witbank, people who did outstanding work. At Bronkhorstspruit, in my constituency, there are full-time district surgeons. But I want to put this question: Why is it that posts for these people, whose special task it is to look after the indigent and the aged, are not filled? Why is it not possible to fill these district surgeons’ posts? Why is it that of a total of 101 full-time posts 56 are at present vacant? Why do part-time district surgeons give up their work so easily? I think that we must think seriously about reconsidering this problem. Other hon. members will elaborate on the reasons why the position in respect of district surgeons is so unsatisfactory. I only want to express one idea in this regard. In each town the district surgeon, as far as medical services are concerned, ought to be the main figure, because he is the person who works with our aged and indigent persons; because he must not only be a doctor but also an ambassador to our non-Whites, a person who has to convey the opinions of white South Africa and the image of white South Africa. I want to request that this House make district nursing services available to them and make it possible for them to fulfil the role which is worthy of them.

I conclude by saying that the position, in my opinion, cannot be better summarized than has been done by Dr. J. D. Verster, in control of hospital services in the Transvaal, when he addressed the congress of the South African National Council for the Welfare of the Aged, at its special meeting in Pretoria in 1967 and spoke in particular about the aged. He said he had the following to say (translation)—

This is what the Director of Hospital Services of our largest Province had to say, and I as a layman would like to subscribe to this, and I as a layman believe, together with hon members of this House, that our old people, our aged persons, our indigent persons—non-Whites included—deserve this re-orientation. I believe that along the directions I have indicated a start can be made so that there may ultimately be the necessary co-ordination in other fields as well and so that it will be possible to render satisfactory services.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Witbank has made a fine plea for the care of the aged. He has repeated what my colleagues and I here have been saying for many years. I hope that because this latest plea has come from that side of the House more notice will be taken of it now. We have pointed out over and over again the tragic position of the aged and the difficulties with which they are faced. Any man who has actually practised in this country, in town or countryside, appreciates this position and realizes that it is becoming worse. It is, as the hon. member has said, because we are ceasing to be a rural population and people are moving into the towns, that those who remain behind their contemporaries no longer have the care which they used to receive from their own families. There is no room for the elderly in the house and in the result they have to board out or live in aged homes where, unfortunately, they meet loneliness and lack of personal care.

The first leg of this motion calls for better co-operation and co-ordination of the services. It also should have called, I think, for improvement in the services. There will never be co-ordination and co-operation to the proper extent for these people until the care of these people is placed under one head. I think this matter should fall under the Department of Health. At the moment it is divided between two departments, neither of which really has responsibility over the whole field. As the hon. member said, theoretically the district surgeon has to attend to the old people, but by the time the unfortunate patient has found the district surgeon and the magistrate, and when he has obtained the necessary permission, his condition has generally deteriorated to such an extent that he has to be moved into hospital. But even more, the patient’s condition has deteriorated because time has passed and because the conditions under which he lives are so lonely and so difficult, nobody takes any real interest in him. The Department of Social Welfare more or less feels that when it has given the old man money with which to buy food, it has finished with him. It has no great interest in the man. The district surgeon is a man of many parts. Very often he is but a part-time man. As the hon. member said there are numerous vacancies in this field, and we should like to know why there are so many vacancies. The district surgeon is expected to be a forensic physician, an authority on medical jurisprudence, a searcher after detective stories for crime discovery and a post-mortem pathologist. He also has to perform various other police and state duties which are only indirectly connected with the care of the sick. I wish to emphasize the words “the care of the sick”. So long as the district surgeon’s time is occupied to such a great extent by his other work, so long will we experience these difficulties connected with the care of these people.

In Cape Town a good system is in operation, largely, I believe, because of the subsidy from the Cape Province. Nevertheless, the Cape Town M.O.H. tells me that his department accepts full responsibility for the care of the aged and indigent. At one time they did have a full-time practising doctor, who had nothing to do with the district surgeon, carrying out this work. From a medical point of view they have found it more convenient to divide the city into blocks and to appoint a general practitioner in the area who will undertake the care at all times of the aged and indigent. In this way, so has been found, the care of these people is improved, and the number who have to go to hospital has diminished. The reason why this system is so good is because it is separated from the forensic activities of the district surgeon. The doctors who are employed by the Department of Health of the City of Cape Town are practising doctors, not connected with any other particular medical responsibility. They are simply doctors who have accepted the responsibility and who receive remuneration from the Department of Health of Cape Town. At the moment this system is as near as possible to the ideal. It emphasizes what I have said in the past, namely that the Department of Health should undertake the care of these people. They should not in any way be placed under the care of the Department of Social Welfare.

For years I have been of the opinion that the Department of Social Welfare should come under the hon. the Minister of Health. I think if medicine and social welfare both fell under the Minister of Health, it would be a much better combination of portfolios than that of Posts and Telegraphs and Health, as was the position until recently. If the Department of Social Welfare was abolished and Pensions were given to the Treasury or some like department, then we would have a very much better Department of Health and much improved care for the socially indigent, not only those who lack money but also those who are indigent as regards friends and family. In all cases these aged people ultimately come back to the doctor; there ultimately comes a time when they see their doctor, and there they find relief. They receive kindness and sympathy which, after all, it is the doctor’s duty to dispense.

If the district surgeon’s duties were separated into the two categories which I have suggested, and the district surgeon were used only for forensic work whilst the doctors were to look after the sick and the aged, there would be better forensic work performed and better care of these people.

Let us investigate, too, the question of home visiting, the question of home doctoring. At the present time the aged and infirm are frequently not seen at all by any professional person of the type referred to until they become ill. And that is not the outlook of modern medicine. The outlook of modern medicine is to see that people do not become ill. We all know that with ageing come various degenerations, various susceptibilities to the diseases of the aged. We know that on the limited amount of money given by the Department of Pensions to these people, they can afford few luxuries in the way of food and few luxuries in the way of heat, and consequently they are exposed to malnutrition. The malnutrition of the aged among people without teeth and frequently without the means of heating their food, is a well-known condition. I think the hon. member mentioned chronic bronchitis. We have aged people who smoke, and probably they have been smoking pipes and cigarettes for years, and they will all get chronic bronchitis. But they do not have to be neglected to the point where they develop pneumonia and have to be cared for in a hospital. I believe it is the duty of those who are responsible for the care if these people to see that they are visited every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. They must not be left to die in their single, lonely rooms, and their bodies discovered only when someone has noticed four or five bottles of milk outside the door, or a neighbour, after not having seen an old lady for a couple of days, decides to see what has happened to her. They should be visited by a district nurse or some other competent person every day, including, as I saw Saturdays and Sundays. Never a day should pass that they are not seen by somebody. Preferably they should be seen every day by a professional nurse, although at times visits by the social workers would be a great help and encouragement, especially unpaid voluntary social workers. I would go further and say that at least once a week either a doctor or a psychiatric nurse should call. Many people in mental homes could have been kept out had their position not been allowed to deteriorate. Nobody with a skilled eye and ear like a doctor or a psychiatric nurse, had seen them, and noticed them steadily going downhill. Had such a skilled person visited the patient, it would have been noticed that the patient was developing certain illusions and delusions. The patient could then have been attended to. It is the prevention of illness, of malnutrition, of lack of care that is so very important. These old people must be attended to. They are old, and we will be old soon. Perhaps we will have to go into these old age homes or single rooms, and we would not like the fate I have described to descend upon us. Many of these people have few, if any, relatives. It is the duty of us in this House to see whether we cannot, all of us together, model an ideal way of attending to the old people. We can make a start by blending Social Welfare with Health. We can ask the Department of Health to use their resources—the district nurses, the psychiatric nurses, and others—to the advantage of these people. The Department of Health should ensure that all these services are available more easily where and when needed. “Easily” is the keyword here. We cannot expect an old man of 80 or 90, crippled and with a heavy limp, to go out and look for a doctor, hunt for a magistrate, and things of that nature. We cannot expect him to sit for hours in the magistrate’s building, waiting to see the magistrate, often without food, and then to go and find a doctor. Thereafter he must still get an order for his medicine. By the time he has done all these circuits, he cannot even find his way home. Eventually he gets to where he should be, namely in the hospital, because the police or the ambulance will pick him up in the road. That is the sort of thing our old people have to face. They either have to endure all this discomfort, or they stay at home and a few days later somebody notices bottles of milk outside the closed little door.

The two Ministers concerned with this subject have a responsibility to see that they provide a service which helps these people, not a service on paper but a service in practice.

We are truly grateful to the hon. member for Witbank for having introduced this motion. We are grateful for the manner in which and the seriousness with which he introduced the motion. We are also grateful for the attitude adopted by the hon. Opposition as revealed in the speech made by the hon. member for Durban (Central), who is himself advanced in years and who will also soon fall in this category of aged persons. We agree wholeheartedly with what he said, and I do not want to enlarge on it any further, except to say that we should not regard the health services rendered to the aged as forming part of the pattern of ill-health so that it should fall under the Department of Health. I do not think it is right to draw a clear distinction here between the work of the Department of Social Welfare and that of the Department of Health.

This motion consists of three parts: the patient, the doctor, and nursing and medicine. We should bear in mind that our aged are increasing in number because, whereas the life expectancy in the year 1900 was only 49 years, it was 55 years in 1920, and in 1960 it was 68 years for males and 70 years for females. When breaking down these figures, we find that the life expectancy of man has, on the average, increased by four months per year. Most of us can still remember quite well the big gathering we had in earlier times when grandfather reached the age of 70, and we can still remember that the mayor of the town came to congratulate the aged person who turned 90. Only recently we heard aged persons who were older than 90 years being congratulated over the radio. Two years ago we still cared to listen, but to-day we hardly listen when they congratulate somebody who has reached even the age of 105 years. We should, therefore, bear in mind that we are living so much longer. I do not want to go into all the reasons for it. Partly it is as a result of the good work done by the Department of Health. Our higher standard of living also contributes to it, and so does research, better medical aids, better surgical methods, and so forth.

We are dealing here with the indigent, those people who are the responsibility of the district surgeon. As a matter of fact, this is what the motion is dealing with. We are not dealing here with the aged person who still enjoys good health. The aged person regards himself and wants to regard himself as being independent. He fights against the intrusion of things which are strange to him. His thoughts turn inwards and when he becomes ill he involuntarily believes it to be his final illness, the beginning of the end. Such a person requires special care. Under the present state of affairs, it is the responsibility of the district surgeon to care for him. The district surgeon treats him at home and when he becomes seriously ill he is transferred to a provincial hospital. If he recovers there, he goes back either to his home or to the institution from which he came. We must try to keep these people in their own environment. As far as this is concerned, I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. member for Durban (Central). An aged person is quite a different person when he is ill—for example: his reactions are slow; the thought immediately enters his mind that you only want to send him to hospital to die there and he does not want to go; consequently, he conceals certain symptoms; in other words, he does not tell you everything he should. Such an aged person requires somebody who can approach him sympathetically, somebody in whom he can have confidence. He does not want to be treated by one doctor to-day and land up in a hospital to-morrow where he is treated by a different doctor. Usually he is slow to react and forgetful. He cannot remember what to tell you. He tells you about his illness starting at the time of the rinderpest, and it takes him ten minutes to take off his jacket so that he may be examined. As the hon. member for Witbank said, he gets his medicine through a cumbersome process: through the magistrate to the doctor and from him to some chemist or other. He cannot even read the instructions on the bottle. He is quite a different person. We must remember this because we may also reach that stage one day. For this reason I am glad the hon. member for Durban (Central) mentioned “home doctoring”. We should like to see such a person being treated at home, but the district surgeon cannot always cope with it alone. The only way in which the district surgeon can be helped—and this I want (to plead for—is by extending the district nursing services. These nurses may act as a direct link between the aged persons who are ill, the sick, indigent people on the one hand, and the district surgeon on the other. Then there is also the problem of aged persons who require hospital care. Where do they go to after that? Probably they cannot be cared for at home. It is particularly in cases such as these Where the district nurse may act as a direct link between the sick aged person and the district surgeon so that she may keep the surgeon informed of the condition of such an aged person.

I now want to say a few words about the services rendered by the district surgeon. In the first place, we should bear in mind that a district surgeon is an ordinary, trained, general medical practitioner and not a special type of doctor. He receives the same basic training as that of any other general medical practitioner. His training includes only a brief course in forensic medicine—such as postmortems, the examination of wounds and so forth. His training in psychiatry does not cover a wide field either—it includes only the basic facts. He receives only a brief training, probably not more than a few lectures, in geriatrics, i.e. the study of the symptoms displayed by old people. Now this person is appointed district surgeon. Later on I shall elaborate on the reasons given by the hon. member for Witbank for there being such a shortage. What are the duties of the district surgeon? What does he do? I should like to distinguish between two types of district surgeons: the district surgeon in the countryside and the district surgeon in the urban complex. The main task of the country district surgeon is quite rightly to care for the indigent and the needy, whom we are discussing now, the aged and the poor. But included in that we also have 95 per cent of the Bantu population in the country districts, who are also entrusted to his care. That forms one part of his work.

Another part of his duties consists of forensic work, for example the carrying out of post-mortems, examinations in cases of assault, whether criminal or any other kind of assault. He is responsible for the medical services of the police and prisons; he has to issue all the necessary certificates and he undertakes all the medical work in connection with new appointments in all but a few Government departments, as well as the Defence Force. He has to conduct investigations on behalf of the Department of Social Welfare, for example in cases of child neglect, and numerous other investigations which are not directly related to the nature of his training and his status as a physician. We think of the many hours the district surgeon has to spend on court cases. I must say we are grateful for the fact that the magistrates are so kindly disposed and helpful towards the district surgeons in calling them to give evidence at an early stage of the proceedings in cases of assault and so forth. Just think of the district surgeon who has to determine the percentage of alcohol in the case of drunk motorists at any time of the night, also on Saturday nights. He has to attend to all these matters.

The main function of the district surgeon in the country districts is to render services to the Bantu, of whom 95 per cent are under his care. He also has to travel thousands of miles to remote places. I can remember quite well a case which I experienced personally. One Saturday afternoon I had to travel 30 miles to go and examine a Bantu. When coming to the fifth gate I was nearly desperate At the sixth gate I found a Bantu who opened the gate for me. When I asked him who the patient was, he said: “I am, Master”. Mr. Speaker, these are the problems we experience.

The main task of the unban district surgeon, on the other hand—as the hon. member for Berea, who knows them well, will know—is to carry out post-mortems and forensic examinations as far as the legal aspect is concerned. The district surgeon was not actually trained to do this. He also does inoculations for passport purposes. In the cities, unlike in the country districts, there are public health services such as immunization against contagious diseases, etc. These services are rendered by the district surgeon in conjunction with the local authorities. The result is that a position arises for which we cannot blame the Department of Health, namely that, as the hon. member for Witbank has said, 56 out of 105 permanent posts are vacant and that 59 out of 402 part-time posts, are vacant.

Mr. Speaker, what are we doing? We should also exchange positive thoughts. I should like to emphasize district nursing once again. Secondly, I want to suggest that we should raise the status of the district surgeon to that of an important person in the community. We should assist him to do the work for which he is qualified, namely, rendering medical services.

Another method of once again giving him that stature is to make him the leading figure as regards health education, as the hon. member has said. I am very sorry that the Press did not give publicity to the establishment of the National Council for Health Education a month ago. That should be the main Object of the district surgeon. He should keep the people healthy and informed. We should make it attractive for him. He should be a person who not only visits those people, but also instructs them as regards their duties. He should instruct them as regards certain symptoms, so that they will be able to notice such symptoms in good time and the disease may be checked. It is so easy to say that we can do so much research to fight, for example, cancer and vote so much money for that purpose; why cannot we do just as much to detect it in good time? We will then be able to know that we can obtain better results by treating it.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion I want to read to you a short extract from the latest South African Medical Journal. The leading article reads as follows—

Mr. Speaker, an old Bantu once called me to a place far in the country. A small Bantu child was sick; he had pneumonia. I explained carefully to his father, when I gave him a handful of pills, that he should give one pill every four hours. I told him he would be well the next morning. The next day the old Bantu travelled 18 miles on horseback to come and ask me for more of those pills. He had gathered all the Bantu of the kraal together and given them each a pill.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Brentwood referred in his speech to the question of the growing number of old people and referred to the growing challenge that is with us, the challenge to deal with this increasing number of old people He also referred to the question of the district surgeons and I, too, in the course of my remarks wish to come back to this particular aspect.

The hon. member for Witbank in the way in which he introduced this motion indicated that it was his intention that it should be discussed outside the circle of political acrimony. I believe that this afternoon we have had a discussion on that basis, one which in certain instances has evoked comment and one perhaps which has also evoked criticism. But I believe that the criticism which has been given this afternoon has been given as constructive criticism.

One aspect which has been most market, I believe, in the remarks of all the speakers so far, is that there has been very little mention of the term old age pensioner. I think that is something for gratification. Our friends on that side of the House have referred to the “oues van dae” or the “bejaardes”. I would like to think that we should use the term as far as possible “our senior citizens”. We should get away from the term “an old age pensioner”. We should regard these people as respectable members of our community and we should give them a term similar perhaps to the suggestion of senior citizens.

I want to deal with the first part of the hon. member’s motion, in which he refers to the health services rendered to social pensioners and all indigent persons. We have had as a result of debate in the House in the past statements by the hon. Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions, and also by the hon. Minister of Health, which would indicate to us that all social pensioners or senior citizens are regarded as indigent for the purpose of receiving free medicines and medical services. We have had from the Minister of Social Welfare an admission that pensioners may have difficulties in regard to claiming their rights, because in many instances they are not fully aware of their rights. The Minister of Social Welfare indicated that he was going to investigate the possibility of issuing some sort of document or authority, which a pensioner would be able to use, which would enable him to know exactly what his rights were in regard to the receipt of free medical services and free medicines. The hon. Minister of Health has agreed in the past that pensioners may have difficulty in regard to information regarding district surgeons. It seems to me then that there is a necessity for some greater liaison and co-ordination between these two departments: firstly, to see that pensioners are provided with the information which they need in regard to these services; and secondly, to see that the manner in which the services are given, is most efficient.

I think it is fair at this stage to ask that if the hon. the Minister is coming into the debate, he should indicate whether anything has been done in the co-ordination of these two departments, and also in regard to the hon. the Minister’s undertaking that in so far as the names of district surgeons in telephone directories are concerned, steps would be taken at least to standardize the form of announcement which was made. I realize that these matters take time. I hope, though, that the hon. the Minister will be able to tell us that something has been done in that regard.

Reference has been made to the position which exists in the platteland. I believe that in the platteland, while the position is very different from that in large urban areas, there is a more intimate relationship between the district surgeon and the magistrate, so that this procedure of the magistrate having to give some form of authority before the district surgeon can carry out his professional services is not as difficult as it might be in the larger cities. We know that once the senior citizen requires the services of a district surgeon, he is entitled to medicine, and if the district surgeon is one who has his drug allowance, he is in a position to supply it. If not, then facilities exist for the medicine to be supplied on the basis of the Government dispensing contract. But, Sir. the problem seems to be more acute in the large areas, in the large cities. If we take for example a city like Durban with a population of roughly 182,000 Whites, we find, according to a survey, that there are estimated to be 24.000 white people over the age of 60. I do not believe that it is unreasonable to state that of those people there could be up to 5,000 senior citizens or people who are in receipt of some form of State pension.

In a city of that nature, there are 5,000 souls, old. more subject to illness and more in need of medical treatment, who rely on the services offered by the provincial authorities and also who rely to a certain extent on the district surgeons.

Now we know, Sir, that the provincial authorities in hospitals supply both an outpatient and an in-patient service. We know that these people can obtain their medical treatment and their medicines from that source. But there are certain problems; there are problems of delays and there is the problem, too, of the senior citizen who lives alone. The hon. member for Durban (Central) has referred to these people, people who might find in the middle of the night that they require urgent medical service. Take for example an asthmatic. What is the position at the moment? As far as I have been able to ascertain, a person in that position could call upon an ambulance to be taken to a provincial hospital. There he would receive the necessary treatment. If it is a case of asthma, it might only be necessary for one injection to be administered and the patient might be ready to be sent home perhaps that night or the next morning.

As far as his return home next morning is concerned, I believe that Social Services offer some form of assistance to these people so that they can at least return home by taxi. But I submit that this is a wasteful and extravagant way of treating a person in this position. I believe that other means could be adopted whereby a call from such a person should result in a medical man being available to attend to that person in the place where he lives, be it a room or a flat or anywhere else. I think particularly of the people who live on their own and who are completely dependent upon outside aid. I know that there are people who are so concerned about the fact that they are unable to get a service such as that at any time of the night that they are not prepared to forego the benefits which they get by virtue of their husbands or wives being members of a benefit society or a medical aid society attached to their former place of employment. It means that a couple who may have a small pension by virtue of the husband’s employment and who enjoy a social pension, are called upon to pay regular monthly installments to a medical aid society in order to ensure that if at any time they need medical services, they are assured of getting them. I believe that in the big cities, with due respect to the district surgeons and I do not want to belittle their work in any way, the district surgeons do not come out at night if they are contacted for cases of this kind. I believe that the ideal manner in which these problems could be treated would be for a patient to be in a position to phone a district surgeon by day or by night, to receive treatment and if necessary, medicine. We know that in the large cities the district surgeons do not have drug allowances and do not do their own dispensing. Facilities do, however, exist in most of the large cities for urgent prescriptions to be filled day and night. I believe that under the Government contract this could be done so that the persons could be assured of medical treatment and medicines with a minimum of delay. I believe that recovery would take place more rapidly under those circumstances.

Previous speakers have referred to the question of the position of the district surgeon. The complaint has been made that the position in this regard is not satisfactory. I am not criticizing the district surgeons in any way. I believe that they are doing a wonderful job of work, but I believe that their numbers are inadequate, as previous speakers have pointed out. I also believe that their working conditions are not what they should be and that they are overworked and underpaid. I believe that the time has come when the State will have to consider very seriously what can be done to overcome the shortage of district surgeons and to fill the vacant posts which exist now. To indicate the position as far as the district surgeons are concerned, I want to quote from the annual report of the Association for the Aged in Durban (Tafta):

To sum up I should therefore like to make the following suggestions. First of all we do accept that the position is unsatisfactory. We do agree that departmental co-ordination between the Department of Health and the Department of Social Welfare and Pensions is necessary. We agree that pensioners need to be informed of their rights. We also accept that the services offered should be available to them. We feel that if the State cannot always provide this service, private enterprise should be enlisted to provide this service. This must not however be done at the expense of the senior citizens. I believe also that the working and salary conditions of district surgeons should be improved as a matter of urgency. Finally I believe that the standard and adequate publication of details of services must be a priority so that our senior citizens know what they are entitled to.

Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with an important subject to-day, namely the care of the aged. I think that we are placing rather too little emphasis on the first part of this motion in which the hon. member for Witbank asks for better coordination to promote better care. When a world-renowned expert in the field of surgery, Dr. De Largy, was asked how it came about that he became interested in this subject, he replied “I saw it coming”. In South Africa today we are on the crest of the wave of exceptional publicity as regards medical achievements. I want to say that those who are not blind to what is happening, and who had the privilege of seeing those films about the wonderful achievements should have said, like Dr. De Largy, “I saw it coming”. But if one just turns aside from that tremendous achievement for a moment to consider what it all involves, one realizes that one cannot ignore the factors which contributed to it. Between 23 and 30 doctors and nurses took part in that successful operation. Since we are faced with a manpower shortage to-day, our advice to industry is always that they should introduce automation and should mechanize and so employ much less manpower. But in the case of this remarkable medical achievement, we have the very opposite process. In earlier years we needed perhaps one nurse to care for 20 patients, but to-day, in these special cases, we find ourselves in the position that at times we need 20 nurses to care for one patient. Here we therefore have a movement in the opposite direction.

Consequently I want to make the statement here to-day that I do not think we can afford the luxury of having a divided control of our health services much longer. I believe that if matters continue in this way, and if the development in the field of medicine goes much further, as seems likely at the moment, we shall be faced with an acute shortage in our nursing services. In expressing my concern about nursing services, I feel that it is in fact by means of nursing services that we should assist our aged in the first instance. The actual medical treatment must only come afterwards.

But one must also consider the extent of this problem. It has been viewed from all angles. Tremendous costs are involved. We have in this instance a very clear dividing line between the costs involved in rendering assistance to the Whites and the cost involved in rendering assistance to the non-Whites. Until a few years ago 45 per cent of the money made available to the Bantu for medical aid was used for the treatment of tuberculosis, a contagious disease. The diseases mostly found among the Bantu to-day, are mainly contagious diseases. These contagious diseases have virtually disappeared as a matter of real concern among the aged in the other colour group. We are now up against metabolic diseases, diseases of long duration. Very heavy costs are involved in treating such diseases. In the U.S.A. it is calculated that almost one third of the amount voted for health services is used for the treatment of chronic illnesses. It is an enormous amount of almost 16,000 million dollars. That is a great deal of money, but it is not so much if one considers that it costs each member of the population in the U.S.A. about R40 per year to live 20 years longer. Seen in that light, it is in fact a small contribution.

But I consider the manpower shortage to be an even greater problem, especially in the case of nursing services. I foresee that we shall have to provide special clinics for the aged, clinics where they can feel at home and where there will be no need for them to hurry. What is more in such clinics they will not have to consult a doctor in circumstances which are strange to them. These will primarily be clinics where perhaps one doctor will be able to care for ten times as many patients because they all suffer from the same complaints, whereas one doctor is necessary for ten patients in an ordinary hospital. Because there are only very few such clinics in existence, the provincial hospitals have to attend to these people at the very high cost of between R9.50 and R10 per patient per day. I believe that in such clinics which will each deal with one specific complaint only, it will be possible to render a cheaper yet much more effective service. We are in the position that taxes for health services are levied on four planes. Services are being rendered on four planes. It is not possible to separate these services either cartographically, politically, or economically. Health does not lend itself to division. There is only one object in the case of any medical service, and that is the preservation and restoration of health. The object of any service provided to our aged must be the prevention rather than the treatment of disease. I do not think this this can be done properly under the present circumstances where we have an overlapping of services, a wastage of manpower and are faced with a possible shortage of nurses which may become disastrous in a few years’ time.

It appears to me that we are all agreed that the under privileged, and the pensioner, have to receive treatment often and do receive treatment but that what they receive at the moment may or may not be satisfactory. I think we are all agreed here this afternoon that we will expect the Minister to heed the pleas that have been made to him and that he will be able to present to this House some way of looking after those who cannot possibly look after themselves. It seems to me that the question is how we are going to give these people good treatment. It has been conclusively shown to the House that the present system of treatment by district surgeons, however willing the district surgeon is, is not altogether satisfactory. It is not satisfactory for two reasons. Firstly, the district surgeon himself is overwhelmed with work. He is doing work which he should not be doing; he is unable to give sufficient time to the sick patient and, secondly, there is great difficulty in getting his services. Let us take the question of trying to get hold of the district surgeon. The hon. the Minister was recently Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. If he looks at the telephone directory he will find that it is very difficult to find the district surgeon’s number. Can you imagine an elderly person, deficient in eyesight, unable to distinguish between the Government section of the directory and the ordinary section, looking for the district surgeon’s number, probably at night. The first thing that I would suggest is that the district surgeon’s number should be printed in bold print right in front of the directory, on the same page on which the numbers of the ambulance service, the fire brigade and the police appear.

What about his lawyer?

He will come behind the ambulance. The district surgeon should be able to be contacted without difficulty and the obstacles which present themselves before he is able to make the necessary contact, such as having to get a warrant from a magistrate, must be done away with: Sir, red tape could be done away with quite easily. I suggest that the Department of Social Welfare and Pensions, with which the hon. the Minister must be in touch, should issue a card to every pensioner, a card with his name and identity number or photograph on it. That card should entitle him to three things: Firstly, it should entitle him to get the services of the district surgeon; secondly, it should entitle him to get an ambulance either from the Central Government. the Peri-Urban Areas Health Board or the local authority. He must be entitled to get an ambulance and one authority must not pass the buck to another authority. Thirdly, the card should entitle him to have his prescription dispensed without answering a long list of why’s and wherefore’s and all that sort of nonsense. At the same time I would suggest to the hon. the Minister that he should tell the Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions that he must issue a brochure to the pensioner, a brochure which will set out not only the suggestions made by the hon. member for Berea but which will also tell him how to live. It should tell him how to use food so that he will benefit by it. Sir, I believe, like other members, that it is very often much better to see that the man or woman is fed properly than to find under-nourished people continually having to receive services either from the district surgeon or from district nurses.

It is no good our expecting miracles to happen overnight but we must make a start and we must make a start as soon as possible. I like the idea of the hon. member who has just sat down. We previously propagated the idea of clinics. I think the clinic idea is an excellent one. These clinics should be established in or together with or in the vicinity of old-age homes. We have examples of that in Johannesburg. The Witwatersrand Home for Aged Jews has such a clinic, and these people, whether they have means or not, are treated at that clinic and, if necessary, are actually hospitalized there. This does obviate the necessity of having a multitude of nurses and it obviates the necessity of doctors retracing the history of these people over and over again for illnesses which may be minor or major. We know that when a person is ill he considers his case to be the most important at the time, whatever the illness is; it may be a bad dose of flu or an appendicitis or a heart transplant. The under-privileged people now have to go cap in hand for the necessary medical or nursing service, but I think it is time we in this country put a stop to that state of affairs.

Then again, education must be brought to the patient so that he will not have the fear which the hon. member for Brentwood mentioned. The hon. member said, aged persons are very often afraid to go into a hospital. They are afraid because they think that that will be the last ride. Well, we must impress upon these people that the quickest way to be cured is through hospital services. I think we should canvass that idea and see whether we cannot introduce the card system that I have suggested, Secondly, we should see whether we cannot have clinics attached to old-age homes and, thirdly, whether we cannot educate the aged how to use food properly. Fourthly, we must impress upon them that hospitals are there to cure people and not to kill them. I also want to make the suggestion that the Department of Social Welfare should, if possible, encourage the establishment of friendship clubs in close proximity to or at these clinics, friendship clubs where people can exchange ideas and where they will be encouraged not to remain alone but to come out and meet other people to discuss matters of common interest.

Sir, unfortunately I am unable to continue because of the time allocated to me. I will now sit down and await the Minister’s reply with interest.

I know that the House expects me to be brief, and I shall try not to disappoint them in that expectation. In the first place I should like to congratulate everyone who has taken part in this discussion, on the valuable contributions which they made. I want especially to congratulate the hon. member for Witbank, firstly for the fine subject which he chose and then also for the splendid, warm and humane manner in which he presented it. I should like to give him the assurance that it is not only his heart which beats warmly for our aged; I think that the hearts of most of us beat as warmly for them. It is because we have such a soft spot in our hearts for the old people that we should like to do the best for them. We should like to do everything for them. We should like to give them more if it is possible. But the question in connection with all these problems is: What is possible? However much one would like to give them everything, if it is not possible, then it is simply precluded. In this discussion we must never forget that the numbers of the aged are constantly increasing. Not only are the numbers constantly increasing, but the pattern of society has changed. The aged no longer live with their children. They are no longer cared for by their children. They do not live in one place; they are dispersed in our cities. It is that pattern which is creating so many problems for us to-day. It is that pattern which makes it so difficult for us to render services to them which otherwise would so easily have been possible. Sir. we have a white population of 3½ million in South Africa. Let us make a very low estimate and say that 10 per cent of that 3½ million are aged persons who are in need of those facilities which we all need when the years have mounted up. In other words, there are no fewer than 350,000 of these persons who need that assistance and those privileges. To afford them those priviliges we do not only need money—we can perhaps afford it—but we also require manpower. We require the services of the doctor, the nurse, the ambulance driver, the services of hundreds and hundreds of people. The question is whether that manpower is available and whether we can afford to pay for it.

The hon. member for Witbank told us in the first place that we must provide district nurses to serve our aged. Sir, how gladly would we not do so, and how necessary is it not, but is it possible to provide these facilities, although we would very much like to do so? We know that there is a shortage of doctors and nurses. If there is already a shortage of nurses, will it be easy to provide sufficient nurses to render these services to all the old people everywhere in the cities and towns? It may be possible to a certain extent, but we shall certainly not be able to do so on a comprehensive scale. As you know, Sir, the State already provides district nurses to the country areas, to the local authorities and to welfare institutions. The State pays seven eighths of the nurses’ salary and only expects the local authority or the charitable institution or the women’s organization in the country district to pay one eighth—only one eighth, but it is an essential one eighth, because it is that one eighth which ensures that that body takes an interest in the nurse and sees to it that the nurse renders good services. I know that these services are not available in our cities at present, but the Department of Social Welfare is already considering, and has already decided, to subsidize such nurses to a larger extent in the cities as well, and I want to give the assurance that where it is at all possible in the cities, the Department of Health will give serious attention to the matter. But there is still always the problem of the manpower shortage.

Now we come to the second request made by the hon. member for Witbank. That is that we should place the services of our district surgeons at the disposal of our aged, free of charge and without their being inconvenienced in having to obtain permission from the magistrate. Let me just remind the House of the difficulties in this regard. The difficulty in the first place is to obtain sufficient district surgeons. As one of the hon. members has reminded us, there is a shortage. Nearly half of our permanent posts for district surgeons are vacant. They simply cannot be filled. There are various reasons for this. The first is that as the standard of living in our country increases, and everybody wants more and more services, and more and more persons expect doctors to call at their homes, the greater the shortage of doctors, because they simply cannot meet all the calls we make upon their services. Therefore, with the increase in the standard of living in our country, there is an increase in the shortage of doctors and their services. In America the doctor-to-population ratio is the best in the world; there are more doctors per unit of population than in any other country in the world, to the extent that our own country and European countries look almost ridiculous by comparison. But even in America there is already talk of a shortage of doctors. This is because the standard and the requirements set for medical services, are so tremendously high. We must therefore accept that there is a shortage of doctors in South Africa. But at the same time we want to say to the district surgeon that when he is called in by an aged person, he must go immediately without a magistrate’s having given permission or having issued a certificate. But do you know what the effect of that certificate is? It is merely that small check which prevents people from calling in the district surgeon unnecessarily. All doctors will tell you that one of the things to which they object is to be called out for trifling matters or unnecessarily during the night. That temptation is always there, and unfortunately the same holds good for our aged as does for the rest of the population. This is one of the greatest objections which doctors have to-day in connection with the medical aid funds. They do not want to render services to those aid funds because they say that they are called out at any time of the day or night when it is often unnecessary. If we should do away with magisterial permission altogether, it would mean that we must expect the number of district surgeons we have to decrease even further. Even more of them will leave our service and they will be even less inclined to accept a Government position and to assist the aged. There is one aspect of the position in this connection which is not so gloomy, and that is where the relationship between the magistrate and the aged is a personal one, where he knows them personally and can consider the matter on a personal basis. He can then go to the district surgeon of his own accord and say that if those persons whom he knows should call in the district surgeon, the call must be considered a necessary one. He can say: “I grant you permission to visit them freely if they should call you in.” It also depends on the personal relationship between the district surgeon and the persons concerned, but it depends primarily on those persons themselves.

The hon. member for Durban (Central) suggested to us, as did the hon. member for Brentwood, that we should increase the status of the district surgeon and that we would then obtain more district surgeons. We are doing so, and have already done so to a large extent. This is receiving our constant attention. We have already made the function of the forensic surgeons, those surgeons who have to conduct post mortems and who have to investigate accidents and murders, and who have to appear before the courts all the time, a special one. We have arranged special courses for our own doctors at the medical schools, so as to have specialists among our district surgeons, men who specialize in forensic medicine alone, so that we may relieve most other district surgeons of that burden and in that manner increase their status. But remember, even if we increase their status, the other problems still remain.

Now, if we regard the problem of our old people in this light, as one which we should very much like to solve, then I ask, together with the hon. member for Rosettenville, what the solution is when the aged are scattered all over the country, when one often finds that they are neglected, when one cannot obtain sufficient nurses to visit them regularly, when one cannot even obtain sufficient doctors to visit all of them regularly. Does the solution not lie in a totally different direction? Is the real solution not to come nearer to that one which we already see so much in South Africa, and that is to make more homes available for our old people, homes where they can be happy and not feel humiliated, where they can feel they are still respected members of the community? There can perhaps be one nurse there, or the matron can perhaps call in a nurse when she thinks that it is necessary, which will largely eliminate the need for the services of a full-time nurse, and which will mean that the district surgeon will not be called in unnecessarily. Are we not much nearer to finding a solution when we approach it from the housing point of view? If we approach it from this point of view, do we not then almost automatically solve all these other problems? I really think that if we consider the problems which we are up against as a country, as a Government and as right-thinking people who are trying to do what is best for the aged, then the solution which we are seeking is to be found along the lines of housing. The hon. member for Rosettenville made a very interesting suggestion with a view to facilitating matters for our aged. He referred to the telephone directory. I want to remind the hon. member that last year I extended an invitation to the hon. members opposite and told them that we would welcome all their suggestions for improving the telephone directory and making it a handy book But I am still waiting for the hon. member’s suggestions, and it is now perhaps a little late already. But the hon. member made another suggestion. That is that we should issue brochures to educate the old people in the matter of eating and living habits, because, as he rightly pointed out, one’s health is largly determined by what one eats. But is this not part and parcel of life in general? Throughout our lives we are constantly educated and trained to try and have us eat and live properly, and nevertheless there are so few of us who know how to eat and how to live. I think that the hon. member for Rosettenville is starting rather late in life if he thinks that one can teach people correct eating and living habits in their later years when they are already old.

We have had a very fruitful discussion here. I know that the House feels that the time has come for us to conclude, and I therefore gladly comply with that wish.

With leave of the House, motion withdrawn.