When this debate was adjourned on Friday, I was appealing to the Government not to break faith with the Coloured people, and in the two minutes left to me I wish to end by quoting from a speech made in this House by the then Minister of the Interior, now the Acting State President, on 12th April, 1960, just after the Sharpeville crisis. This is what he said—

I appeal to the Government to live up to the sentiments expressed by the then Minister of the Interior and to play the game with the Coloured people.

I did not intend participating in this debate, for the simple reason that in the first place I deemed it unnecessary to do so after the Prime Minister had summarized in such a clear way the attitude of this side of the House, and in the second place because I did not think it a sound practice to participate in a debate where another Minister carried the responsibility, particularly in view of the fact that my successor in regard to Coloured Affairs, the present Minister of Coloured Affairs, is in my opinion handling this portfolio with great success. But unfortunately repeated attempts have been made on the part of the Opposition to play the former Prime Minister, the late Dr. Verwoerd, and myself who served in his Cabinet as Minister of Coloured Affairs, off against the present Prime Minister and my successor. Repeated appeals have been made to us to furnish explanations as to why the late Dr. Verwoerd and I stated repeatedly on occasion that the present representation of Coloureds would not be abolished. That is why I feel it is necessary for me to say a few words in this regard.

Firstly, I want to make a few remarks about the background of the present representation. I want to begin by saying that it was not the policy of the National Party that the representatives of the Coloureds, as they are sitting in the House of Assembly to-day, should have entered the House of Assembly in this way. The original policy with which the National Party went to the country in 1948 made provision for the representatives to come into Parliament in some other way. We all know that the fact that a separate voters’ roll was subsequently established, on which the present representatives gained entry to this Parliament, was the result of a compromise which had been accepted. [Interjections.] Of course it was a compromise; the hon. member ought to know that. It was the result of a compromise, and the result of the compromise was to give representation here to a limited group because, as was said at the time, under the leadership of the late Mr. Havenga, a promise had been given which had to be kept. On these grounds that compromise was agreed to, because the National Party Government did not, with its first attempt, have the necessary number of votes at its disposal to ensure that its policy was carried through. It was in order to keep the promise which had been made on that occasion that the present form of representation was chosen, but it was not in accordance with the policy of the National Party originally laid down. That is the first point I wanted to make. The second point I want to make in regard to the background to this matter is that this representation, without any doubts, was established on the understanding that it would be white representation; in other words, it would have to be representation in accordance with the cornerstone on which the Union was established, i.e. that this Parliament would consist of Whites and Whites only. Let me remind hon. members of the fact that when the Union was established an attempt was made to do away with that basic principle. That was one of the reasons why the establishment of the Union almost failed. The basic principle was that this House and the Other Place would consist of Whites only. That, in brief, is the background to this representation.

Against this background I want to put a question, and also try to furnish the reply. Did the late Dr. Verwoerd, and myself who at that time served as the Minister responsible under him, ever consider the present representation to be an important link between Parliament and the Coloured population? To that my reply is unequivocably: No. I am going to try and prove this.

I ought to know, and I do know, what Dr. Verwoerd thought about these matters, because he spent hours with me going over Coloured Affairs. He took a great interest in them. He paid special attention to carving out a policy in respect of the Coloured population. I can inform this House that I did not make any important speech during that time in regard to Coloured Affairs in regard to which I did not first consult with him. His view was that we should first follow a positive policy of upliftment.

Did you also consult him in 1964?

Wait a minute; the hon. member should not always talk out of turn— it has already cost him a constituency. His view was that we should first follow a positive policy of upliftment and give the Coloureds a representative council of their own before we could do away with what he regarded as something redundant. I should now like to read out a few quotations. In the first place I want to quote what he said on 7th December, 1960, in a statement after the National Party, of which he was the chief leader, had given very carefully considered attention to this matter. In the first place he referred to the establishment of the Union Council for Coloured Affairs. His speech appeared in an official publication of the Department of Coloured Affairs, from which I am now quoting—

that is the Union Council—

We did not say that we would bring the resolutions of the Union Council and their considered opinion to the attention of this Parliament by means of these remaining four members as representing a small minority, but that we would create new methods and means of doing so. He states further—-

Not a word was said about this important liaison which we are now hearing about from the Opposition side. [Interjections.] Those hon. members must wait just a moment, because I did not interrupt them when they were talking. Subsequently I made a speech on colour policy before the South Africa Club in London by special invitation. I submitted this speech, which I still have in my possession, to Dr. Verwoerd before I made it. Nowhere in that speech did I refer to the present representation of the Coloureds. On the contrary, I stated—

Nowhere in this speech did I refer to the four Coloured representatives in this House. [Interjections.] Hon. members must give me a chance. I shall tell them the whole story. They must not be so restless. I am still going to refer to other matters and hon. members must not become restless at this early stage.

When did you make this speech?

It was in 1963. In 1964 I introduced legislation into this House on behalf of the Government in regard to the Representative Coloured Council. On that occasion, and I quote from Hansard of 10th April, 1964, column 3996, I said—

I stated clearly that what we were trying to establish there was not a final pattern. I stated clearly that we were leaving the way clear to allow of a move in another direction. Nor was there even a reference to the present form of representation, because we never regarded the present form of representation as a growth point for the Coloured population. I shall tell you why. Let us examine the history of this matter. We regarded the Union Council and the Representative Council, together with the other positive steps such as the Department of Coloured Affairs, the Coloured Persons Development Corporation, their own bank, their own educational advisory body and local authorities, as the growth points for consultation with the Coloured population as well. Our premise was that as these positive steps which were taken, were culminated and became a reality, the need for this result of a compromise would disappear.

You never said so.

Presently I shall read to that hon. member a few things which will astonish him. We never wanted to emphasize the possible abolition of the present representation too strongly. I shall tell you why. It was because—and hon. members are my witness—every step which the Government took in those years, whether it was the Development Corporation, or the rural development, or the Education Act, or whatever it was, was fought tooth and nail by the Opposition and presented to the world in a negative way. We adopted the attitude that we should first develop the positive aspect so that they could serve as evidence of this Government’s goodwill and honesty. We would then have been able to give attention to this matter. If we had not done that, the Opposition would have continued to hold up this limited representation to the world as the only steps which the Government wanted to take in respect of the Coloured population. That is why we adopted the attitude that this representation would die out as the other points of growth took shape. That is the history, Sir. Nobody can deny it. Let me now add the following to that.

About the common roll?

My name has been used repeatedly here because, after I had been asked directly whether we intended abolishing these Coloured representatives, I said “No”. I repeat it. I did say that. The late the hon. the Prime Minister said: “Must I guarantee this for ever?” for we were engaged on a positive programme and I do not deny it, but during that entire process I cannot call to mind any occasion where the present system—I am not speaking of individuals—contributed anything to the establishment of those positive steps which the National Government established for the Coloured population.

Sir, why is the United Party and the Opposition as a whole omitting to mention a very important element in this entire history? For this is not where the story ends. The story goes a little further. Mr. Speaker, let me finalize that story for you a little. When the original four Coloured representatives, i.e. Messrs. Bloomberg, Le Roux, Barnett and Holland, came to this House they came here as members of the United Party and of its caucus. They were not here as members of the United Party caucus for long before they withdrew themselves from that caucus … [Interjections.] They withdrew from that caucus. Or else they were thrown out. The fact of the matter was that they could no longer reconcile their conduct as members of the United Party caucus with their position as Coloured representatives.

Only one was ever a member of the caucus.

They issued a statement in which they declared that they were representing the Coloureds only as a group. Initially they had had the support of the United Party election machine behind them when they were elected. They then freed themselves. Why? Because, as the National Party Government came to light with its positive measures in this House, those hon. members were forced to recognize the instruments which this Government had created. [Interjections.] Of course they first tried to make the Union Council appear ridiculous. They first belittled and derided it, and subsequently they accepted it. Just as the United Party also initially ridiculed a Representative Council and subsequently accepted it. In October, 1963, the United Party suddenly changed policy again when it thrust in the hon. member for Karoo as a United Party candidate. That is the further course of that history. After the Progressive Party came to the sudden realization that one could take advantage of the present system of representation to gain representation in this House. Consequently on 31st August, 1964 I made a speech in my constituency with Dr. Verwoerd’s knowledge and permission, a speech which was reported and in which I warned against the way in which white politicians and white political parties were abusing Coloured politics in South Africa. I also warned the Coloured teachers and said that on behalf of the Government I wanted to make an appeal to them not to allow these white elements from exploiting Coloured politics any further. Shortly after that Dr. Verwoerd ratified what I had said in public. But what did the hon. the Leader of the Opposition do? Fourteen days after my speech the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made a speech at De Doorns in which he attacked me. He said that he did not agree with my actions. He said that he could not agree with my warning. Nor could he agree with my actions in turning certain Progressive Party members out of the Coloureds’ rural areas. As I have already said, my actions met with the approval of Dr. Verwoerd.

After that a further step followed, again with the approval and knowledge of Dr. Verwoerd. In September, 1965, the Festival Congress of the Cape National Party was held. On that congress I made a speech, a speech which was approved by Dr. Verwoerd himself. Therein I stated (translation)—

This is what I said with Dr. Verwoerd’s approval and knowledge at our congress of that year, and by means of a special motion the congress ratified this statement. Therefore we did not leave the world in the dark as far as our plans in that regard were concerned. After that Dr. Verwoerd had a bill in regard to political interference, which I had warned against, drawn up and came to this House with it. Then the tragic scene of Dr. Verwoerd’s death played itself out here and the Bill was ultimately discussed here under the leadership of the present Prime Minister. Subsequently the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, in spite of his statement at De Doorns, stood up here and admitted that a prima facie case could be made out for an investigation into this matter. Mr. Speaker, that Bill, which was intended to prevent political interference, was the forerunner of the debate we are conducting here to-day.

What is the position to-day? Throughout history it has been clear that this white representation, restricted as it was to a qualified separate voters’ roll, opened the door to white politicians and white political parties to make misuse of this representation in their own interests. This left only one way open—the Opposition admitted this itself, because when the Opposition was confronted by this problem they abandoned the representation by Whites in favour of the principle of direct representation by the Coloureds themselves. With that they admitted by implication that the only way in which the Whites could be prevented from abusing, or collaborating, with a system of representation as it still exists at present, was to give the Coloureds direct representation here. But that brought the Opposition in direct conflict with the principle to which I referred at the beginning of my speech, in conflict with one of the corner-stones on which union took place in 1910—namely, that this Parliament should consist of Whites only. Without this principle union could never have been possible, and without it there would never have been a Republican constitution. This principle has always been one of the cornerstones on which South Africa has built.

That is why there was only one way in which this problem could be tackled, i.e. to build the Coloureds a house of assembly of their own—in other words, as they develop, as their abilities develop to that stage, and as they reveal the necessary sense of responsibility. In this way the Coloured leader is being afforded the opportunity of keeping in contact with the broad mass of the Coloured population. In terms of the policy which the United Party now advocates they are providing, whether they want to admit it or not, an opportunity to escape to that Coloured leader who does not want to have anything to do with the matter, and who wants to flee from his responsibilities towards the masses, and come and seek refuge in the company of white South Africa, leaving behind the broad masses of the Coloured population as a neglected proletariat. That is the course which the Opposition advocated. If the hon. member for Transkei and others on the opposite side now want to appeal to us to keep our word, my reply is that we have in fact kept our word. We have done so by creating instruments, on the economic, educational and the political level, by means of which consultation can take place; but not only that, by means of which responsible leaders can be called forward, leaders who can serve their own people. In addition we have kept the door open to proper liaison with this Parliament, and not a link which would be a continuation of a compromise which was agreed to years ago. The present representation is not an efficient link, because they represent a small and subordinate portion of the Coloured voters of the Cape. We maintain that if one wants to create a link, one must create a link which will be a proper link between the Coloured Persons’ Representative Council and this Parliament. This then is what the Prime Minister undertook to do, namely to discuss this matter with the Coloured Persons Representative Council when it was established. On the grounds of this consultation, the Government will come to a decision.

Suppose they ask for their Members of Parliament to be returned to them?

What representative council. in which all four provinces are represented, will ask that their four Members of Parliament be returned to them, when they are the subordinate representatives of a small group of voters in the Cape only? Mr. Speaker, only the hon. member for Yeoville is capable of making such a request. Sir, it proves what I said earlier on in my speech: The Opposition has never, nor is it to-day, interested in proper means for consultation; the Opposition was never, nor is it to-day, interested in any means by which the real voice of the Coloureds may be heard. What they are interested in is using the Coloured vote in order to gain a miserable few constituencies.

I really thought the hon. the Minister of Defence, as the ex-Minister of Coloured Affairs, would be able to throw more light on the change of the policy on the part of the National Party, but all the hon. the Minister did was to create greater confusion than is already prevailing on his side.

The hon. the Minister began by telling us that the form of representation which the Coloured has here to-day was actually the result of a compromise. In that case I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether it was the compromise which the National Party agreed to at that time with Mr. Klasie Havenga was a dishonourable one?

A forced compromise.

The hon. the Minister says it was a forced compromise, but I shall quote to him from the speeches of important leaders on that side of the House made during the crisis in regard to the Coloured vote in which nobody ever regarded the matter as a compromise. The hon. member for Parow more or less repeated what the hon. the Minister had said, i.e. that they had never regarded the representation of the Coloureds as a point of growth. But does the hon. member forget the speeches which were made, such as this one by Mr. De Wet Nel, during the Joint Sitting in 1954? This is what he said on 21st May, 1954—

Then he goes further, and in col. 324 he has the following to say—

If he was satisfied that he would be acting unfairly or unjustly towards the Coloureds, he would never have voted for that legislation. In addition he said the following—

That is what the former Minister of Bantu Affairs said, although he was not Minister yet at the time. He only left Parliament a year or two ago. He stated further—

That was the attitude at that time. Now the hon. the Minister has created the impression here that the decision which they took was only a compromise; it was not really an honourable one and it was not really honest towards the Coloureds of South Africa.

Who is saying that now?

The hon. the Minister tried to create the impression that they could not have said all those things at that time; so with the passing of time they must have said these things. He then quoted from a pamphlet which was published by the Department of Information in regard to “The Coloured People of South Africa”, but why did he not also quote what I am going to read now? It is on the first page—

What is this “announcement”?—

This is the present Minister of Defence, who was then responsible for Coloured Affairs—

But I have already admitted that.

But what the Minister is doing is to quote something where the idea was originated by them that the Coloured Council would be the link between Parliament and those people. [Interjections.] How can the Minister now maintain that it has never been the policy of the Government that these people should remain here? And the hon. member for Bezuidenhout is now drawing my attention to the fact that this was a wonderful piece of propaganda. Here is Parliament on one side and there the Coloureds are sitting with their representatives in the Senate, and down below, as large as life, the representatives of the Coloured Council are sitting talking to their representatives here in Parliament. Now I just want to ask the Minister whether this entire pamphlet must now be discarded? Must it be altered or burnt? Must a new piece of propaganda be published for overseas consumption? No, that story of the hon. the Minister of Defence that what they are doing now is not really to change their policy, makes the matter a far more serious one. Then the people of South Africa were the victims of a great bluff in 1951 when they placed the Coloureds on a separate Voters’ Roll for then their argument was precisely that the Coloureds should be placed on a separate Voters’ Roll because the old franchise meant nothing after all and now they were being afforded a wonderful opportunity of stating their case in Parliament through their own people. That is the situation. And that at the beginning in the majority report of this Commission, which we are discussing now, it is stated—

This is what is stated in the majority report of the Commission itself, but now we have been forced to hear from hon. members on the opposite side, such as the hon. member for Piketberg and Parow that the representation which the Coloureds had, never really amounted to much, because the Coloureds were coming to see them. That is what the hon. member for Piketberg said. [Interjections.] Now hon. members on the opposite side are saying that the representation no longer means anything, and the Coloureds are now coming to the white representatives in Parliament. If they do away with representation, what will the position then be? Then the Coloureds will simply come to them again and even greater responsibility will be placed on white representatives in this House. But in the past in 1951, in 1954, and in the years subsequent to that the argument was put forward that the old franchise meant nothing. For that reason it was necessary that they be put on a separate Voters’ Roll and that would be in the best interests of South Africa? And now? Now the hon. the Prime Minister wants to abolish that representation. What is further stated in this report?—

It is precisely because of the fact that these people have not yet achieved maturity that they ought to have representation in this House. Surely one cannot throw the Coloureds to the wolves. They do after all have an interest in the affairs which are discussed in this Parliament, they vote, and their views ought to be heard here.

Mr. Speaker, I think that the opportunity we have been afforded over the past few days of considering the various parties’ policies in regard to the Coloureds and Indians has been a good one. Undoubtedly it is inevitable that these things be reviewed. It is essential for a few very good reasons, because as far as the Bantu in the country are concerned, the course has already been clearly demarcated by the hon. the Prime Minister and his supporters on the other side of the House. Their policy is that these people have no representation in this Parliament; that there should be absolute division as far as the Bantu are concerned; that the Bantu will have separate areas; and that they will have separate citizenship. As far as the Bantu are concerned, the policy of the Government is that they should be set on the road of general, absolute freedom and that the Whites will gradually withdraw themselves from the Bantu. Against that we on this side have also stated our policy clearly as regards the Bantu. It is that there will be no separation; that there will be no general independence; that every form of assistance will be given the Bantu and that there will be representation for them in this Parliament by means of white representatives and communal councils. At least the Bantu have their homelands. The problem as far as the Bantu are concerned is not the same as in the case of the Coloureds, because they have their own territories. As far as the Coloureds are concerned, the position is entirely different. Of the almost two million Coloureds we have in South Africa, approximately 80 per cent are living in the Cape, and the entire Cape is their territory. They can acquire rights anywhere in the Cape under the Group Areas Act. They can purchase land anywhere; they can even farm in their own rural areas; they can build a house on land which they have purchased. In other words, the Coloureds and the Whites are sharing the so-called white homeland territory.

Our policy on the other hand admits clearly that the Coloureds are different from the Bantu. I think hon. members on that side of the House also admit that the Coloureds are “different” from the Bantu, but the difficulty is that they have no practical way of recognizing that “difference”. The approach of the Government has been to try and place the Coloureds on the same basis as the Bantu, with resulting major drawbacks. The hon. the Minister of Defence, a former Minister of Coloured Affairs, has told us that a separate legislative assembly will be created for the Coloureds, but where will the jurisdiction of that legislative assembly or legislative council begin and where will it end? The Coloureds do not as yet have connected territories, except of course their own group areas. If they must have any jurisdiction, then a separate territory for these people is a pre-requisite, and I should like to ascertain what the attitude of the Government is in this regard. What is the end of the road which the Government is envisaging for the Coloureds? Will a ceiling be placed on the powers of this separate body, or will there be no ceiling to their powers? We are told that the Coloureds will now have a great deal more power if they are only prepared to abandon their present representation in Parliament.

It is not the Coloureds who are represented here; it is only a small group in the Cape.

When the Coloureds were granted representation in this Parliament, surely it was not the idea that their representatives here would only represent the Coloureds’ interests. Surely it also affects the Coloureds when we discuss the agricultural industry here, or defence, or education or finance. Their representatives here surely have the right to make their views heard in regard to these matters. They do not come here to present the problems of the Coloureds only. Surely one cannot shift them to one side completely. You cannot give them a parliament of their own, as the hon. the Prime Minister is prepared to do for the Bantu. They share the rest of South Africa with us, particularly the Cape. Mr. Speaker, I am asking hon. members on that side to consider the powers which are set out in Appendix B of the report. Are they being given more powers here than they already have under Act No. 49 of 1964? I think we are entitled to put that question to the Government. Sir, it is being said so often that Coloured representation in this Parliament must be removed because the Coloureds are being exploited; because they are a political football. We are continually hearing that they are receiving much more to-day than they did under the old dispensation, and that we must take away their representation in Parliament because then we will be able to develop a national pride in them. Hon. members on that side are continually telling us that we must remove the elements which can mar relations between Whites and Coloureds, and that the present representatives of the Coloureds are, after all, doing nothing for them. If in the future there should ever be a collision and friction between this Parliament and the Coloureds’ House of Assembly, as the hon. the Minister of Defence has just called it, which one of those parliaments will then be removed, if the argument of hon. members in that regard is correct?

Representation for the Coloureds in this Parliament, as has already been mentioned here, is not regarded by hon. members on that side as a point of growth. They regard the Coloured Legislative Council as a point of growth, but always subservient to this Parliament, or as a body with identical powers to this Parliament. Or will the Representative Coloured Council not have the same powers as this Parliament? I think hon. members on that side ought to give us the replies to these questions, and if they want to see what idea people who more or less agree with them have, they must simply look on page 80 of the report, at the memorandum submitted by Dr. I. D. du Plessis. But, Mr. Speaker, the debate has also taken a very interesting turn. We on this side have been told that we have changed our policy. It is alleged that this Government has never changed its policy and appointed a commission to investigate its own policy. The hon. the Prime Minister did not accept all the resolutions and recommendations of his Commission. He rejected them in more than one respect. For example, it will not be called a legislative council, but merely a representative council. Also, the chairman of the Executive will be designated. In contrast to this the Commission recommended that the chairman be elected. Certain recommendations in regard to the liaison between the Council and Parliament were made, but the Prime Minister rejected them as well. He rejected the Coloured Affairs Commission; he rejected the idea of select committees.

Surely what you are saying now is not true.

But the hon. the Prime Minister rejected the link.

No, I said the link would be determined once the council was established.

That makes a great difference. In other words, the Prime Minister rejected the link which the Commission recommended.

No, not at all.

Or you did not want to accept it. In other words, what purpose does it serve to ask the Coloured Persons’ Representative Council what they recommend? Does the hon. the Prime Minister still adhere to the Commission’s recommendations: is he going to accept the recommendation in regard to the Coloured Council?

The link will be established in consultation with them.

If they want representation in this Parliament, will they get it?

Representation in this white Parliament is out. [Interjections.]

When I listen to the hon. the Prime Minister I am certain of one thing: he knows what he does not want, but as yet he does not know what he wants. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has now put a very interesting question to the Prime Minister. Each year for ten years already we have been hearing that there is a new dispensation for the Coloureds. Every few years new announcements are made here. We have been given the impression that the Coloureds are now standing on the verge of a large-scale new development which will result in wonderful conditions and a wonderful new future for them, and with which they will from now on be satisfied. There is one matter in regard to which I agree with hon. members on the opposite side, particularly with the hon. member for Malmesbury, and that is, as the hon. member said, that a tremendous task rests on the shoulders of the Coloureds themselves, i.e. the task of uplifting themselves economically. It is true that in many respects they have a tremendous backlog in the sociological field. Even physically they have a fantastic backlog. More than anything else it will be their own task to wipe out this backlog. If there are Whites who also want to lend a hand in this respect, people who out of human considerations want to help the Coloureds, should they be influenced against this upliftment work, or should they rather be encouraged to give the Coloureds that assistance? Should only a group consciousness be developed amongst the Coloureds, or should a broad South Africanism be inculcated amongst them as well? According to the present policy of the Government they are only interested in inculcating an insular nationalism amongst the Coloureds, but when it comes to a broad South Africanism amongst our Coloureds, the Government is apathetic. I want to ask, how can we inculcate a healthy spirit of South Africanism amongst the Coloureds without the Whites playing any part? Why should political parties not play a part in this? If this may not be done by means of direct interference, then it can be done by putting the various policies to them. I have a cutting here of a speech the hon. member for Moorreesburg made a few years ago. In that speech the hon. member stated that, “the time had come for the National Party to put its case to the Coloureds”. There is nothing wrong with that. It would be welcomed. Let any political party put its case. Why should we now impede that development amongst the Coloureds?

You would like to play football with them again.

It is not a question of playing football. When he was young the hon. member for Malmesbury probably played football with them as often as I did. It did him no harm and it has done me none either.

You want to play political football with them.

I just want to say, nobody denies the need of liaison between this Parliament and the legislative body of the Coloureds. The hon. the Prime Minister himself admits the need for that; he does not know yet what form it will take. This will be determined in due course. But apparently this will not take place soon, because it will only be in 1971, when their representation here is abolished, that the legislative or representative body will be created, and only after that will the consultation take place in regard to what the liaison will be.

Now it is interesting that amongst a certain group in the National Party the idea of a separate state for the Coloureds, a separate territory for them has originated. The hon. the Prime Minister has not said anything about this. However, we have learnt of the existence of a group who are working for that within the National Party. It is also interesting to note that the National Party newspapers are killing the idea, because they know the Cape, and they know that anything like this is simply impossible. And what are they suggesting now? They are suggesting a strong party commission. It is so strange that another commission should be appointed now. After all we have always heard that this Government has all the answers to the problems of South Africa. We are now discussing the report of a commission, and while we are busy with that, there is another suggestion for another commission to investigate the question of the future of the Coloureds. What reasons do they give for doing so? They say the reason is that an end can then be put to all this chopping and changing in speeches and in writings.

It has been a long time since we last saw in South Africa such confusion amongst the ranks of the National Party in South Africa as when it comes to a policy for the Coloureds, so much so that another commission has to be appointed to go into the matter. It is so obvious that the solutions which were offered in the Commission’s report are totally inadequate. Nobody is satisfied with them. That is why another proposal has been put forward for another commission of inquiry.

When it comes to the Coloureds, the obvious dilemma of South Africa is the following: For obvious reasons we cannot have total integration of Whites and Coloureds. Nor can we have total separation in their own homelands. Here too the reasons are equally obvious. The furthest we can go with the Coloureds, is a form of parallelism on a local basis and a body which can never get much further than a provincial council. That is about the furthest we can go with the Coloureds when we talk about separate development. What can be aimed at is equality … [Interjections.] If the hon. members on the opposite side think they can go further, they must tell us. As I have said, we can aim at equality, or we can aim at equal value in these spheres. But somewhere we must have efficient liaison, because the interests of South Africa, the interests of the Whites and the Coloureds are inextricably linked. Because the Coloured is such a good partner, and has been, it is essential to have that liaison. Representation in this Parliament, whether by Whites, or by Coloureds, is what the Coloureds want, and this has become an irrevocable fact. His representation in this Parliament not only affords him an opportunity of speaking on behalf of his own people, but also gives him a share in all kinds of national affairs. The Coloured is not only concerned with his own affairs, no matter how urgent they may be. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, in the half hour at my disposal, I want to confine myself to what I find essential in the report and in the debate. I want to deal with the matter against the background of my experience as Minister of Coloured Affairs for almost two years now. I want to begin by saying that through my contact with Coloured communities and Coloured leaders throughout the country, especially during the past two years while I have been in charge of Coloured Affairs, I have come to the realization that the greatest single need of the Coloured population in our country is to have pride in themselves. I have come to the conclusion that even if this Government spent millions of rands more on housing, schools, rural development, etc., and the Coloured could not be inbued with a spirit of service to his fellow-men, then all this work of upliftment, however well meant, would ultimately be futile. In other words, if we want to have the Coloured rendering his maximum contribution as a human being towards the development of South Africa, I think it is necessary that the Whites should reach the stage where they stop assigning a permanent position of immaturity to the Coloured. It is my conviction that the Coloured can render this service and contribution as a human being to his own population group and to South Africa only if he is enabled to find his own feet and to stand on his own feet so that he may develop a feeling of pride and self-respect. This report proves time and again how the Whites repeatedly have to do the Coloured’s thinking for him and make his decisions for him. This means that the Whites, who have fulfilled this function over the centuries, must now reach the stage where they afford the Coloured an opportunity of playing a greater part as far as doing his own thinking and making his own decisions are concerned. Though I say that I am convinced that this opportunity of full self-realization is necessary, I am afraid that we, the generation of Whites in this House, will still have to be prepared to accept the responsibility of helping the Coloured to do his thinking and make his decisions at this stage of his development. I say this in the face of the prospect that the decision that will flow from the commission and our discussions here, a decision we are called upon to make, will help us to enable the Coloured to do his own thinking and make his own decisions to an ever-increasing extent in the future. But at present the responsibility to help him make those decisions still rests on our shoulders.

When I say that this is the course that his development must take, it does not mean that I now want to cut off the advice and the guidance which the white man must still give to the Coloured. No, in spite of the steps announced in connection with the prohibition of mixed parties, I want to say that those Coloureds who will still need the advice and guidance of the Whites in the future, will still be able to get it from those Whites whose intentions are sincere. We are not going to allow this interest we have in the Coloured population to be cut off by any action of this nature. All we want to do is to enable the Coloured better to think for himself and make his own decisions as from now on. Otherwise we will land ourselves in the position to which the Rev. Botha, an authority on the Coloureds and a very sympathetic person referred before this commission, i.e. that if the Whites indefinitely take the political leadership of the Coloureds upon themselves, very little will come of Coloured leadership itself in the future. Mr. Tom Schwartz, the chairman of the Federal Party, also referred to this opportunity of self-realization that we are going to create, in the sense that with the establishment and development, of the Coloured Persons’ Representative Council the Coloureds are being offered enormous opportunities. But through various speakers the Opposition has now asked what the optimum of this Coloured Persons’ Representative Council is going to be. This is a strange question. Has this Parliament ever in the past been called upon to determine the optimum of the Whites or of the Opposition? No, I have on various occasions in taking part in Coloured gatherings put it to them—and I did not hesitate to do so, because I considered it to be my duty— that we were showing them the way, but that how rapidly and how far they would progress along that way would ultimately depend upon themselves. I again emphasize this fact here to-day. How important this Coloured Person’s Representative Council is going to become will ultimately depend on their own will and ability. We fully realize that the Coloured has been dependent upon white leadership and advice over the years. We also realize that it will be totally unrealistic and unfair to cut it off all of a sudden. Neither will this be done. No, we will not leave the Coloured to his own devices, in spite of what the United Party says or wants to say. We shall not even leave him to his own devices in this new dispensation. As long as his administration needs the assistance of white officials, they will receive such assistance from this Government. As long as there is a Minister of Coloured Affairs—and I take it that there will always be a Minister of Coloured Affairs— he will be there as the link between them and this Government. He will be there to consult with them whenever they need it. What is more, these liaison bodies to which the hon. the Prime Minister referred will mean far more to the Coloureds than any representation in this Parliament could ever have meant to them.

But now the Opposition comes along with the cry that such political realization is impossible without having a homeland for them. The Opposition are not putting forward this homeland idea because they have become great homeland apostles. On the contrary, we know how they abhor this idea. We know that they abhor the idea of a homeland with self-government and self-development. The idea of a homeland is being put forward by the Opposition with only one object in mind. It is being done in an attempt to embarrass the Government. I do not intend enlarging on the references made by this side of the House, which will appear in Hansard, because then I would also have to confine myself to dealing with such frivolous remarks as those made by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout when he said that the Western Province would have to become the homeland for the Coloureds. No, I do not intend confining myself to the Opposition. I want to confine myself to our own people, that is to say, our thinking people in South Africa. It is understandable, as certain hon. members said, that people should think in the direction of something like that for the Coloureds. I can understand it. It is perhaps our system of Bantu homelands that has caused people to think in that direction. Another explanation may be that it is necessary for the birth of a nation that that nation should have ties with the soil. This is an essential requirement for nationhood in the case of our own nation as well, and this applies to all the nations of the world. Consequently I can understand that the idea of a homeland is being considered. If we think in this direction, however, we shall find ourselves faced with the practical problem, that, unlike the Bantu, the Coloureds do not have a continuous area of this country as their own. This is a fact that we must keep in mind. In our thinking in this regard we then come up against this practical problem. In actual fact the Coloureds in this country occupy mainly two kinds of areas. One kind is the rural areas. The other is of course the urban areas. Because of the pattern of history they at present occupy nearly 2 million morgen of rural area, the major portion of which is situated in the North-West Cape, namely the Richtersveld, Concordia, and the Steinkopf areas, which I myself have visited. This forms part of their rural areas. Elsewhere there are other rural areas, bringing the total to approximately two million morgen. But in addition to these areas, and as a result of the sorting out and the resettlement which have taken place under this Government, group areas which are occupied by Coloureds, i.e. the urban Coloureds, have been established at the white cities and towns in this country. In many of these townships, the urban living areas, the Coloureds can already purchase and own land to-day. This trend is being developed further and further.

I now want to make the statement that in the light of the facts of history these rural and urban areas are the only practical basis on which we can think in terms of a home with an emotional content for the Coloureds. I refer to an “emotional content” as far as these areas are concerned, Mr. Speaker, because I believe that any nation, any person with national feeling, wants to feel that he has ties with the soil. I think this is a basic need in the case of any person in the world with national feeling, i.e. that one wants to feel that one has ties with the soil, because only then can one realize oneself properly. Even though, as a result of the course of history, our Coloureds to-day occupy rural areas on the one hand and urban areas on the other, areas that are not continuous, I am convinced that these areas still conform to the basic requirement in that the Coloureds can have ties with the soil in these rural and urban living areas. This being the position, I want to say that I have no doubt that these living areas, whether they be the rural areas where the management boards are developing, or the urban living areas where we are now, with the assistance of the Provincial Administration, getting greater development of local management, can gradually develop as a home for the Coloureds, and in fact become accepted by them as their home. I emphasize “their home”.

This brings me to the term “homeland”. I feel myself compelled to say a word or two about this term and, at the outset, to warn against its use. You know, Mr. Speaker, one of the things that struck me in the two years that I have been dealing with Coloured leaders, deputations and communities, is that there is quite a feeling amongst the Coloureds that they do not want to be associated with the Bantu. The other day in Kimberley again, where the hon. member for Karoo was also on the platform, a few questions were asked. One question that was put directly to me by one of the Coloured leaders was whether we could not take steps to prevent intermingling of the Bantu and the Coloureds, because, he said, “Mr. Minister, we as Coloureds want to live a life of our own. We do not want to be associated and intermingled with the Bantu”. This being so, I want to say, firstly, that the Coloureds are developing as a separate group. They want to be seen and judged as such in that development. They do not want to be seen and judged together with the Bantu or the Indians. This is their identity that is developing and of which they are proud and which you and I must respect in them. Apart from the fact that the use of the word “homeland” has a Bantu association for the Coloureds, I think we should not use terms that can confuse the Coloured population. I think they have been confused enough in the past. I say this in all amity towards my two friends who thought about the matter. We must of course think about the matter. After all we are not stagnant in our thinking. I say this in all amity towards them: We must be careful not to use terms which may confuse the Coloureds in this country, and what is more, may create illusions which in future may present us with problems the extent of which cannot be foreseen. I think we must be careful in the choice of our terms. I therefore ask that we should not use terms that may create confusion or may perhaps destroy what we should really be building up. Yes, Mr. Speaker, building up; and I say this in the conviction that, even though these rural and urban areas are not continuous like the Transkei—unfortunately this is the only example that one wants to project onto each and every one that is different—the Coloureds will accept these areas as their home as they are developed. To me it is pointless to say that they are not continuous. After all, the home of us Whites is not continuous either. In fact, our home in the Republic is now being interspersed with territories such as Botswana, Zululand, the Transkei, etc. Surely we too have no continuous home in South Africa. Consequently this is no argument to me. On the contrary. As an optimist I have every confidence that as these areas are developed further, the Coloureds will in due course attach national significance to them, an attachment which will make them feel that they too are anchored in the soil of South Africa, so much so that, as Mr. Tom Schwartz said, the Coloureds will be prepared to fight for South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I now come to the reference to our previous Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd. Quotations have been made from what was said by Dr. Verwoerd. Quotations have been made from the speeches of the Minister of Defence and from mine as well. I want to do something very unusual now. I also want to quote from what Dr. Verwoerd said, but from what he said on an occasion which one normally does not mention. I want to quote this because I think it is of significance in getting down to the true facts in regard to the attitude adopted and the development in thought in the past. On 1st April, 1966, Dr. Verwoerd called me to his office in the Union Buildings to appoint me as Minister of Labour and of Coloured Affairs. That day in the Union Buildings Dr. Verwoerd told me amongst other things that he felt that the representation of the Coloureds in the House of Assembly should be abolished, as he did not regard it as logical and correct. He said that he thought it was necessary to allow the Coloureds to stand on their own feet at last. “But,” he added, “there are objections to that.” This is what Dr. Verwoerd told me that day. He believed that it should be abolished. But he admitted that there were objections to it.

Mr. Speaker, I want to emphasize the date. It was on 1st April, 1966. I now want to take you to the second date, which was last year. Last year it was decided by this Government, under the present Prime Minister, that not merely a small part of the work of the present Department of Coloured Affairs would be transferred to the representative council to be established, but in fact the major part thereof. I want to emphasize this, because at that time there was a difference of opinion, perhaps more within the ranks of the Department itself, on the question: Shall we simply transfer it piecemeal, or should we transfer the major part of it? It was under the present Prime Minister that this Government decided that we could no longer feed these people on tiny morsels. If we had confidence in their ability to grow towards maturity on their own, we also had to have the confidence in them to assign that work to them. It was then that the decision was taken which certainly has also given us greater clarity as regards the pattern of development to be followed by the Coloured people in South Africa. I concede that perhaps we did not always have this clarity. But the fact of the matter is that as this development of the Coloured proceeded, as the transference of greater responsibility proceeded, it also became increasingly clear to us that the necessity and desirability of having Coloured representatives was falling away. The fact that there has consequently been a change and a development in Nationalist thinking is not something of which I or anyone on this side need be ashamed. Because, Mr. Speaker, if we want to be ashamed of ourselves, we must be ashamed of ourselves if our thinking becomes as stagnant and inflexible as that of the United Party, a party which cannot come forward with any positive proposals in regard to this difficult matter of colour relations in South Africa. We had many aspects to take into account in this matter. We had to take into account the fact that the Coloureds might feel aggrieved at the removal of their representation from the House of Assembly. It is true that they may feel aggrieved; I concede that. As time and again appears from the report, they regard it as having show value. As has been said, they merely want to be here. They do not mind having only four representatives, but they merely want to be here. Some of their spokesmen in fact admitted that this show value was of little significance to them. But it does have show value, and I concede that in that respect there will be disappointment in certain quarters. But to suggest, as the Opposition does, that it will cause resentment, is absolute nonsense, and I say this with the greatest emphasis, and I say it not because of what is stated in the report, but because of my contact with them in the past two years, which enables me to testify to what goes on in the minds of these people. And what goes on in the minds of these people is such that they said time and again when they were asked what their attitude would be if the Government should decide to abolish representation: If the Government in its wisdom should do this, we would accept it. I concede that perhaps they would not be elated about it, but this white Parliament has a very great responsibility in this matter, and there were many more factors that we had to take into account. We also had to take into account what the Coloured witnesses stated in evidence before the commission to the effect that if one had a strong representative council here which was going to administer R50 million and perhaps more in the course of time, and over against that one had four representatives here, or six, according to the policy of the United Party, one would have a clash between the views of the representative council and those of the people here. This was stated in evidence by these people, and in more than one place in the report of the commission. Dr. Van der Ross, when he was still leader of the Labour Party, was questioned on this, and when he was questioned about such clashes, his attitude was: If clashes occur, the Government will be to blame and they would therefore have to be resolved by the Government. Mr. Speaker, we are not going to wait until clashes occur. That is not the way to build up race relations. That is not the way to handle this delicate situation. No, these people themselves declared that if the Coloureds were represented here as well as on the representative body, they would speak with two voices, and consequently the Government had to take this into account as well. I do not think we can allow the Coloureds to become even more confused in the future than they were in the past. We dare not place them in the position of having two statutory mouthpieces, because that can only lead to great confusion and frustration amongst them.

I want to conclude by saying that we as Whites are called upon to perform a great and responsible task at this juncture. As I said at the outset, we must still assume the responsibility of thinking and deciding for the Coloured people, and we must do this—and specifically this side of the House must do this—without paying attention to reproaches which may come from that side, which has in the past made no positive contribution in regard to this task. We must accept this responsibility and we cannot pay attention to reproaches about reversing of policy. Sir, we have a responsibility in this House which you and I may not shirk. We have a responsibility to place the Coloureds on a road which will enable them to realize themselves, to develop a national pride and self-respect so that they may take their place in this country with pride, and so that you and I can be proud of them as well. Because this is our responsibility, I support the course which is now being taken.

I am not going to traversé very much of the speech of the hon. the Minister who has just sat down. I have listened with great interest to what he has had to say, because we generally listen with interest to what that hon. Minister says. As he was speaking the thought went through my mind that in the years to come no doubt those who come after us will be sitting here and Parliament will one day be debating this question, because we are not solving it now. There will be quotations from Hansard, and I can see hon. members opposite quoting from the speech of the hon. the Minister who has just sat down, and I can see hon. members on this side quoting from the same speech, and they will each claim that what he has said was justification for their point of view in regard to the difficulties with which we will be faced in future. The hon. the Minister said categorically that the Coloured representatives have to go. He dealt with a private discussion he had with the late Prime Minister which we are not in a position to deal with, which he said took place on 1st April. Sir, I think that is an unfortunate date on which to make such an important decision. Anyway, the Minister made that assertion and we can take it that it is so, and now the line to be followed by the Coloured people has been developed by the Minister. It is one of perpetual subservience, without representation in this Parliament, but merely having representation in a “skakelkomitee”, whatever form that is going to take; and apparently there is some doubt about that now, if I understood correctly the interjection by the hon. the Prime Minister. But prior to that, only ten minutes earlier, we heard the hon. the Minister say that the Coloured people will go as far as they are able to and as far as they wish to determine, to the optimum of their development. That is why I say that there will be quotations from his Hansard speech in the years to come. Yes, he said both things. He said the Coloured people should go to the optimum of their development. What is that if it is not representation in this Parliament? What political rights are there in South Africa which do not lead to representation in this Parliament? What are we doing here? It is the optimum as far as political rights are concerned. Is there anything higher? What is there higher than representation in this Parliament? If this is the basic difficulty between the Government and we on this side of the House, then it is well that we should get it cleared up for us by the hon. the Minister who has just sat down. Because as far as we on this side of the House are concerned there is no argument about it that the highest political right a man can have is to have his representative in this Parliament. I want to come back to this presently, but I say that the speech of the hon. the Minister who has just sat down does not help us a great deal. It contained a great deal of yes, if and but. That is the way I take his speech. It does not help us, nor does it help the Coloured people.

I want to take my stand this afternoon on the point that we on this side of the House, and a great many hon. members on that side of the House, believe in principle that white leadership should be maintained over the whole of the Republic. Now they keep quiet. Sir, not a single Nationalist is prepared to say no. I have to take it that they all agree with me. Even the Prime Minister has an ingratiating smile on his face, as much as to say: “You know, Douglas, I agree with you in my heart of hearts”. And I think he does. Let us accept it that at any rate on this side of the House that is basic. If that is so, I can see that difficulties in the political field can arise in regard to the solution of the problem in regard to the Bantu franchise, the Coloured franchise and the Indian franchise. It is inevitable. But what we are concerned with is that a policy shall be worked out on the basis of white leadership over the whole of South Africa. We had hoped that this commission which was established to deal with the Coloured people was going to evolve a policy which, because they were able to sit down round a table and hear evidence, could have led to some form of agreement as to the best principles to be adopted, whatever the details might be. Sir, I want to say that one of the chief terms of reference of that commission was the question of undue interference, and it was not the question of the abolition of the Coloured representatives in Parliament. I am not going to quote at length from the report, because my time is limited, but it is quite clear that the fact is that the question of interference received scant attention from the commission.

That is not so.

Eventually the majority of the commission said—

They said that such legislation was desirable and then left it at that and said nothing about how that undesirable interference was to be dealt with; and they did not say how it was to be handled because they did not know. That is the truth of the matter. [Interjections.] In dealing with the question of undue interference, I want to deal also with the Coloured people in Natal and the Indians, because the majority of the members said in effect that what they were recommending now for the Coloureds they also recommended for the Indians; what is good for the Coloureds is also good for the Indians. I go further than that and say that in my opinion what is being recommended for the one group, whether by this commission or by any other body or group in South Africa, sooner or later will be accepted as the pattern by those who are less privileged. That is the point I wish to make. Any racial group which is less privileged than another will sooner or later come to claim the same rights and privileges as that more privileged group. If we give something to the Bantu and we do not give it to the Coloureds or to the Indians, the Coloureds and the Indians will one day ask for the same treatment.

Let us deal with this question of the franchise at once. In terms of a law passed by this Parliament for the Transkei, there is a franchise, for the purpose of electing their Parliament in the Transkei, for Bantu men and women of at least 21 years of age—for the raw Native, the tribal Native, who used to be called the “red blanket Bantu”. A 21-year old man or woman, irrespective of any kind of qualification in regard to income or education, has the franchise. They are good enough to vote for the members of their Parliament in Umtata. We are told by this commission and by speakers here that the Coloured people are still immature and they are not able to exercise a franchise like that.

Under the existing law they have a franchise for their representative Council.

But their representative Council is not like the Parliament in Umtata. That is the point I am trying to make.

But they do not vote for this Parliament; they vote for their own Parliament.

How grateful I am to the Deputy Minister. Let us get it quite clear. I do not want to misrepresent him. He says they do not vote for you in this Parliament; they vote for their own people in their own parliament. Sir, the Coloured people in Natal vote for me in this Parliament.

How many?

Does it matter how many? How many representatives has the hon. the Minister got representing his constituency in this Parliament? One. There are 11,000 voters in his constituency, and they only have one member of Parliament here, the Minister.

I am not trying to play the fool.

I am afraid the Minister is.

In all fairness, how many of them have the vote in Natal?

Sir. it ill becomes a member of this Government that has deprived the Coloured people of Natal of the right to be registered as voters, to come along some eight or nine years later and then ask “How many Coloured people are there on the voters’ rolls in Natal?” As far as we are able to judge, there are approximately 55,000 Coloured people in Natal and it is believed that some 20,000 of them would qualify for the franchise.

I am not asking how many will qualify.

What the hon. the Minister is saying is this: “I took away the right of the Coloured people in Natal to be registered as voters 10 years ago and now I tell you that there are only a few left on the roll.” He himself is responsible for taking away their right to vote. Sir, how far can irony go in a matter of this kind? What we are dealing with now is the question of the maintenance of white leadership over the whole of the Republic, where the different racial groups are going to demand the same rights as those given to other groups.

Sir, I want to come back to the Coloured people of Natal. Over and over again, throughout the whole of this debate, the Coloured people are referred to as though they are the Coloured people of the Cape. The Coloured people of the Cape are not the Coloured people of South Africa. The Coloured people of South Africa are the Coloured people in the Transvaal, in the Free State, in Natal and in the Cape. There may be far more Coloured people in the Cape but that does not mean to say that the other people are not entitled to justice. What is the difficulty in Natal at the present time? I want to deal with my own province for the time being. They are repeatedly placed in the difficulty that they are viewed through official eyes almost as though they were part of the Bantu population. That is their big complaint—and they are right. They are viewed as though they were a portion of the Bantu population. Sir, they are not derived from the same racial forefathers, from the same nations, as the Coloured people in the Cape. The Coloured people in Natal do not look upon the people from those Western nations as their forefathers. They have a totally different racial derivation. These people, in their religion, in their education, and in the whole of their outlook, are affiliated with a different group of Europeans altogether. They are not affiliated with the Cape Coloureds. They do not look upon their destiny as being associated with the destiny of the Coloured people of the Cape and they are entitled to have their views taken into account, and some of them came forward to give evidence. It is very interesting to see how they reacted to the invitation to come to give evidence. Let me say in passing that the Indians were called in by officials because by and large they said that the Indians were afraid to give evidence before the commissioner of inquiry. They said quite categorically that they were afraid. Sir, the hon. the Minister of Defence, in the course of his speech just now, said that he knew what the late Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, thought in regard to this question of the Coloured people. He quoted from a speech made by the late Dr. Verwoerd in 1960 and from speeches subsequently made by himself. In view of what he quoted here, the question arises why the late Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, did not himself take the necessary steps to do away with the Coloured representatives in this House.

I explained why.

No. I was listening very carefully to hear that explanation. Sir, what I want to ask the Minister of Defence is this: If he knew what the late Prime Minister was thinking in 1960, what was the position of his own colleagues? Did they not know what the late Prime Minister was thinking? For example, did the then Minister of Indian Affairs not know what the late Prime Minister was thinking in 1963? I want to quote what the then Minister of Indian Affairs (Mr. Maree) said on 21st May, 1963 (col. 6434). He felt it necessary to say something about the Coloured folk and this is what he said—

Did the then Minister of Indian Affairs not know in 1963 what the late Prime Minister was thinking? Why was he not repudiated?

I admitted myself that he said we would not abolish it because we were building up positive links to deal with the Coloured people.

Sir, I am sorry, I refuse to accept that. What is behind the statement of the hon. the Minister of Defence? It is that the late Prime Minister, all the members of the Cabinet and other public representatives of the Nationalist Party who spoke on this subject were guilty of the deepest duplicity because at the back of their minds they expected something different. Sir, I think it is a shocking thing.

Be fair now.

They were trying to keep the peace with the Coloured people by saying to them: “Your representatives in Parliament are safe; they will always stay there; that is a cardinal principle as far as we are concerned,” but the whole time they were working out a scheme whereby they were going to remove Coloured representation from this Parliament. The crowning inglory was the appointment of this committee. Why did the present Prime Minister agree to the appointment of this select committee which was turned into a commission, if their minds had been made up since 1960? Now I am beginning to understand why hon. members on that side reacted in the way they did when my colleague, the hon. member for Karoo, and others on this side wanted to know what was the policy of those members of the commission who were adumbrating a certain policy on the commission. They had made up their minds on political grounds even before they started their deliberations. They cannot understand hon. members on this side coming to the commission with an open mind to see whether they can hammer out a solution to this problem. That approach by hon. members on this side was not within their comprehension. Sir, I want to quote now from The Argus of 11th March, 1965. I should like the hon. the Minister to hear this. It says this—

Mr. Blythe Thompson told an election meeting at Sandown, Johannesburg, on Tuesday night. Mr. Thompson is the Nationalist Party English-speaking candidate for the North East Rand.

“I questioned the Minister of Coloured Affairs, Mr. P. W. Botha, when he addressed a public meeting in London,” he said. “He told me it was probable …

Not “possible”—

May I inform you that I immediately denied that report and so did Mr. Blythe Thompson.

Where was this?

Immediately after that report appeared.

In the same paper?

Sir, this is the kind of thing which is bedevilling the whole of our consideration of this problem. The proper place to have denied that report was here in Parliament at the first opportunity when Parliament met. Blythe Thompson was an official candidate for the Nationalist Party and he was fighting an election when he made that speech. I have given his precise words in quotation marks. This paper could have been challenged with regard to the accuracy of that report, because the paper quoted in inverted commas, as a verbatim report, what Blythe Thompson had said. Sir, if that is what a candidate for the Nationalist Party says in a constituency in which he thinks there are a lot of “verligte” people and liberals and others of that kind, namely “the Minister has told me that probably the Coloured people will be back on the Common Roll one of these days”, that is the kind of thing that is bedevilling all our relationships in dealing with this matter.

Sir, I have heard much criticism of the Coloured Representatives in this Parliament. Speaker after speaker on the Nationalist side has criticized them for the little that they have done. There are four of them; how much was expected of them; how much would any four hon. members on that side have done for the plus-minus 2 million folk that they represent here? How much can four people do in this Parliament? What did they have to do? [Interjections.] I am saying that they are being criticized for the little that they have done. I am not saying it; I say that there has been criticism from speakers on that side of the House. There has been repeated criticism. What did they want them to do? What did the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs, who is not here now, do here last week? He took the speeches made by hon. members for Moorreesburg and Uhlatuzana and he rattled all their ideas about homelands for the Bantu; then he shook them clean out of the bag, then he blew it up and he popped it, just as a child blows up a paper bag. He had a big bang, and that was the end of the hon. member for Moorreesburg and the hon. member for Umhlatuzana. Sir, when we are talking about what is done by the four Coloured Representatives here, let us see what was said by the witnesses who appeared before this committee. I have here a very interesting piece of evidence. This is what was said by one Coloured witness from Natal (page 269 of Report)—

That is for the proposed “skakelkomitee”—

Then later on another witness said this—

This question was then put to him—

He replied—

It was not a business matter.

You see, Sir, it was not only the Coloured Representatives in Parliament who were working for the Coloured people. Here was a Nationalist Member of Parliament who appreciated his duty sufficiently to be prepared to work with the Coloured folk, even with regard to business matters.

It was not a business matter. May I ask you a question?

No, my time is very short. I only have about five minutes left. I want to quote a little bit more. Sir, I think the hon. member writes the leading articles for a little paper called Die Nataller in Natal. When you see him busily writing here, he is probably writing leaders for that paper. Die Nataller of 26th January this year had a very interesting leading article.

I do not write leading articles.

But the hon. member is very closely associated with it. In any event, this is what stands in the leading article—

I was told that the hon. member for Unhlatuzana wrote this leader. But, Sir, instead of “Bantu” let us put “Coloureds” or “Indians”. Where are the homelands for the Coloureds and the Indians? This is basic to the whole concept of the full political development of these people, in spite of what the Minister of Coloured Affairs says. This afternoon he was only a tinkling cymbal; what he proposes has no substance in it—he was holding out only prospects in the sky, by and by. There are no boundaries, Sir. There are no boundaries defined for the Bantu; there are no boundaries defined for the Indians; and there are no boundaries defined for the Coloureds. This is the Government’s policy I am talking about. Well, if the Government is going to have this policy then let them tell us where the boundaries will be of the areas they are setting aside for these people so that they can develop, as the Minister said, to the fullest extent to which they are capable—the highest possible political development. But where are these places? Until that is defined in terms of this leading article of Die Nataller. I say it will hamper and hamstring this entire hamhanded effort, i.e. to try and create viable communities. It is nothing else than fairy tales that are being enunciated at the present time, fairy tales to create cover for a completely untenable concept, a concept which the Government has never yet worked out in detail and in respect of which the Government does not know neither how it will work out, nor where they are going. But of this I warn the Government: Do not create a separatist movement in South Africa. I am serious. Do not create a separatist movement. Let hon. members on that side of the House, particularly members of the Cabinet, look at America to-day and at the separatist movement that is taking place there. If this Government had been in America to-day would they have been leading the Black Moslem movement for Negro separatism in the United States? Would they have been the leaders of that movement? Because that is apartheid.

That is altogether a different country.

Yes, it is a different country, but what will they do here in South Africa, which is also a different country and where we have not only the Bantu but also the Indians and the Coloureds, who are much closer to us than the Negro is to the Whites in America. So, I want to warn the Government: Do not start a separatist movement as a result of your own specific party policies. It may catch on. Your separatist movement may catch fire. And then? What will happen to South Africa? Let me go back to where I started: We stand for complete white leadership over the whole of the Republic and a separatist movement is going to wreck that completely. And the Government will be responsible for that, because they put the fire in the dry grass.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, if the hon. member attributes something to me which is not true …

Order! That is not a point of order.

The hon. member for South Coast concluded by warning the Government not to spark off a separatist movement in South Africa. It reminds me of the history of the hon. member himself, because is he not the man who called up Natal to “march” on occasion? Is he not the one who wanted to steer that province away from the rest of South Africa? He explained to us here that the policy of his party was one of “white leadership over the whole of South Africa”. But this could hardly be meant seriously. That is the party which announced at its congress a short while ago, and in this House, that non-Whites would be represented in this House to an ever-increasing degree, a policy which steers away from the principle which has been in force since 1910—the principle that this Parliament will consist only of Whites. And then the hon. member still comes forward and says that their policy is a policy of “white leadership over the whole of South Africa”.

I want to return to the subject of this debate. Thus far the debate has been of a high standard, free of those emotions which typified similar debates in previous years. I am disappointed, however, that this high standard has not been maintained throughout. I refer to the allegation made by some members opposite that the reason for the Government’s plan to abolish the present representation of the Coloureds in this House is that the Coloured representatives are allegedly not supporters of the Government. This allegation was not in accordance with the otherwise high standard of this debate. What is the position in this connection? The Government surely does not need four extra members to reinforce it in this House. On the contrary. There are other people who are in urgent need of help. If members of the Opposition are accusing the Government of wanting to do away with these Coloured representatives because they are not supporters of the Government, I want to ask the United Party why they want to do away with the two Coloured representatives in the Cape Provincial Council.

Because they are Progressives.

There you have the answer, Sir—because they are members of the Progressive Party. The problem we are up against and with which this commission concerned itself, is one of improper political interference, coupled of course with the question of political representation of the various race groups. Surely it is a fact that the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition agreed in 1966 that such a problem did exist and that it was so serious that it should be referred to a Select Committee, which eventually became a commission of inquiry. Surely there is this problem of improper political interference. Hon. members opposite admitted this themselves. Therefore it is inaccurate to claim that the Government wants to do away with these four persons because they are not supporters of the Government. If no case was made out for action to be taken against improper political interference, I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition why his party supported the Government on two occasions in this House when legislation was passed to extend the political life of the four representatives here. Surely they did this in the knowledge that there was a real problem of improper political interference at that stage. Therefore I am disappointed in the United Party in this House and also in its representatives on the commission of inquiry because they are trying to evade that basic problem in this debate and want to imply that no such problem actually exists. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said here that in actual fact there were only two aspects of importance, namely the question of possible financial aid from abroad for political parties, and the problem of unlawful registration, something that can be dealt with under the Electoral Act. I maintain that that side has evaded this problem and pretended that no such thing exists. They evaded it to such an extent that in their minority report they did not even get so far as to make any practical suggestion in connection with this matter.

There is another matter which I feel sorry about and about which I want to express my disappointment. I am referring to the attitude adopted by certain hon. members opposite in that they want to couple the question of homelands for Coloureds as well to the political pattern for Coloureds and Indians. I want to say here to-day that homelands have nothing to do with this matter.

But your own people raised it.

The hon. member raised the matter himself, and he did it very wilfully.

That hon. member raised it.

Yes, I also listened to what the hon. member for Umhlatuzana said. If I remember correctly, the hon. member for Umhlatuzana merely reacted to an interjection or a question which came from the United Party side.

No.

We are well acquainted with the willfulness of that hon. member who is screwing his eyes up now. I want to say that the question of homelands has nothing to do with the question of the representation of Coloureds here or elsewhere, and with whether it is moral or not. The problem which we are faced with calls for practical planning. It is a real problem, as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition conceded two years ago. Now I just want to put this question: Why must the question of homelands form part of the question as to whether it is morally justified to deal with the political dispensation of a certain race group in a certain manner? Because the Bantu have their own traditional homelands, must we think and act in a stereotyped way as far as our population problems are concerned? The Coloureds and the Indians in South Africa are in a totally different position to the Bantu. As I have said, the homelands of the latter are traditionally their own. These homelands belonged to them from the earliest times until a foreign government planted its flag there, ostensibly to protect the Bantu. The position of the Coloureds and the Indians is quite different and can be compared to that of the Negroes, who are a minority group in America. What has happened in America can be a lesson to us. There they attempted to satisfy the Negro by having political integration, as hon. members opposite want to have. They not only failed in this regard, but also succeeded in causing them the greatest economic distress. Therefore I say that those persons whose primary thought is that political rights in this Parliament for the Coloureds and the Indians, who are minority groups, are the alpha and omega of their well-being, are making a very great mistake.

I want to return to what hon. members opposite have suggested, and that is that the Government’s view of the political future of the Coloureds can only be morally justified if it is coupled to the idea of a homeland of their own. Sir, unlike the Bantu the Coloureds are by no means an individual nation which has traditional ties with certain territories. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout suggested that the traditional homeland of the Coloureds was the Boland alone.

They say so; that is what I said.

It does not matter whether the hon. member said that they say that. I want to say to the hon. member that he must make another and better study of the Coloureds.

Schalk Pienaar wrote the same thing yesterday.

That hon. member will not bluff those of us who live in the Boland. If the hon. member had watched the N.B.C. film the other morning and listened to what a physician like Professor Chris Barnard said about the Coloured population of South Africa, he would have known more than what he displayed here. The Coloureds in South Africa are scattered. They are not descended from one group, but from a variety of indigenous population groups and others from outside, inter alia, the slaves. They also have white blood in their veins. They are scattered over a large area of our province. Therefore I say that there can be no question of their already having a homeland. Our Coloureds are in fact not yet a nation. The Coloured leaders who are emerging to-day, also say that they are endeavouring to consolidate the various factions of the Coloured population. That is What we should like to see, i.e. that a nation should come into being. But while a nation does not yet exist, while it does not yet have a community life of its own, there can be no talk of an individual homeland, because in such a community which has not yet found its nationhood, there can be no idealistic urge to make sacrifices for an individual homeland. Let me take Israel as an example, to which people came in the late forties from all the corners of the earth to establish their own homeland, their own home. There was something which inspired them, which attracted them. That is something which must still be shaped and built up in the Coloureds. The basic need and problem of the Coloureds to-day is a social and economic one. It is not a political problem. That is how the Government in its wisdom saw it, and it has drawn up a programme which will be of fundamental assistance to them, and does not promise them something which they cannot attain as yet. We want to assist them to develop economically and socially, starting in their own group areas round the towns and in their rural areas, to which the hon. Minister of Coloured Affairs also referred a moment ago, so that they may develop through their own local forms of government to having their own system of government in which the white man will afford them the opportunity of managing their own affairs and working at their own salvation. This is the road which is being opened to the Coloureds by this Government, and this is the road along which they can develop, beginning with their own community which they must build and develop themselves, through a process to which the hon. member for Piketberg referred last week to the realization of individual nationhood. When this happens and they have their own management bodies, and have reached the furthest point to which they can go in their own management bodies—and there I disagree with the hon. member for South Coast—they will be in a position to help us think and to think seriously themselves about their own future and the future of the areas in which they live and work. Therefore I want to say: Individual homes for the Coloureds are developing rapidly, but the discussion of homelands can only be an academic one at this stage. We are not going to fall for the joke of the hon. members on that side of the House of suggesting that an individual and separate political system for the Coloureds can only work, can only be morally justifiable, if it is coupled to a homeland.

But. Mr. Speaker, why do the hon. members who are so fond of mentioning the moral aspect not apply the moral test to the dispensation which existed for the Coloureds in the past, the present dispensation and the dispensation to come, on the one hand under the dispensation which the Government wants to establish for the Coloured and on the other hand under the dispensation which the Opposition envisages for them? What happened to the Coloureds in the 100 odd years in which they enjoyed so-called political rights along with the Whites in this Parliament, when they were on the common voters’ roll? As far as that is concerned, I want to agree with the hon. the Prime Minister. It was a shadow representation in this Parliament, because not only could only some of them exercise the vote, but even those who could exercise the vote, were in the hands of white politicians when it came to the question of whether they were to be placed on the roll in a certain constituency or not. What did it benefit the Coloureds? Did it in any way promote the social and economic position of the Coloureds? Did it in any way promote their political position in this country? The reply to that is of course, a definite “no”. There has been progress in the past ten years, since the dispensation of this Government was introduced. In this connection it is interesting to look at the debates conducted on this matter in the past, when the hon. member for Bezuidenhout also on occasion assumed the role of a prophet, and I want him to listen to this. On 22nd April, 1952, he said, according to Hansard (col. 4166)—

And this has in fact happened, Mr. Speaker. He went on to say—

Who said that?

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout.

[Inaudible.]

When he was a prophet. As I say, Mr. Speaker, it was done in accordance with the programme which the National Party laid before the people in 1948. The position which the hon. member prophesied in those days, has become a reality. The relations between the Coloureds and the Whites have improved, and also those between the different sections of the white population, and therefore we no longer have the heated discussions of those days.

But at that time no one could foresee— there was then no such thing as a Progressive Party—that the United Party would act like a swarm of bees and that a small swarm would hive off. The Progressive Party came into being. The actions of that Progressive Party were totally repudiated by the white voters of the country. They sought the opportunity to make use of a system in which they do not believe and which they totally condemned and abhorred, namely separate representation, to get into this House once more. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his followers felt as strongly as we did that this was something improper which would break down the good relations which had developed between the Whites and the Coloureds, and that action would have to be taken against it. Therefore, rightly, this commission was entrusted with the task of seeking ways and means of eliminating those unfortunate phenomena which had manifested themselves. Therefore I see a great deal of good in the majority report of the commission and in the Government’s plans announced as a result of the report. Because that majority report and also the Government’s plans go right down to the root of this problem. They seek to create a separation which will ensure the Coloured a political and worthy existence here in South Africa.

The evidence before this commission proved, in the first place, that the Coloureds to-day, after these 10-12 years, attach great value to the body which was created for them by legislation, the Coloured Council. The evidence proved that during this time there had been a growth in leadership and independence among the Coloureds. The evidence proved that the opinion exists among the Coloured leaders, a very representative opinion, that the representation of the Coloureds here in Parliament does not really mean very much to them. This appears from the evidence. It is recorded here in black and white. Now hon. members of the Opposition must not come and tell me, as the hon. member for South Coast did: Do we now consider that these people have not done their duty? I do believe that they have done their duty. But I believe that they had an impossible task in more ways than one. In saying this, I want to come back right away to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. He made the assertion here that representation in Parliament means not only the representation of a constituency, but also the representation of individuals and their problems. I think that the past number of years have proved to us that a representative such as the hon. member for Outeniqua, for example, with the best will in the world, cannot manage all the individual problems of his voters. What is more, Mr. Speaker, effective representation in this House means that one must live among the people and with the people, that one must not only pick out individual little problems, but that one must have one’s finger on the pulse of the people and one’s ear to the ground, so that one may know what one’s people are thinking and doing. A white representative in this House is not in a position to do that, apart from the fact that his constituency is so large, because he does not live with the people he represents. Therefore he cannot be the best form of representation here. While I am on the subject of the size of constituencies and the impossibility of maintaining individual contact with the voters, I also want to refer to the greater impossibility which hon. members on the Opposition side want to create with their proposals for one Coloured representative in this House for the Transvaal and one representative for both Natal and the Free State. How can the man representing those people in this House maintain contact with them? I have perhaps one point of criticism about the manner in which the Coloured representatives in this House have done their work. I think that this is also mentioned by responsible Coloureds. The point is this, that even after three of them left the United Party caucus, they still followed the United Party and voted with them, for example, on a motion of no-confidence in the Government’s agricultural policy, something which has nothing to do with Coloured affairs.

Are there no Coloured farmers?

Yes, there are Coloured farmers. I do not think, however, that those representatives voted on that occasion in terms of their knowledge of such conditions. The ridiculousness of the motions submitted on occasions by that side of the House was so evident that it was also ridiculous that those representatives should follow the Opposition and vote with them on that matter. But the report of the Commission also showed that the point of view of those responsible Coloureds who want to see the retention of Coloured representation here, was only advanced on the basis of expediency. I am not saying this in order to offend those people. I think that Mr. Tom Schwartz was one of the people who said that. It was an argument of expediency because they felt that it will cause a measure of interference for their political party if this representation was done away with too soon.

Not too soon, but if it should ever be done away with.

These people also spoke of a decade or so. This hon. member served on the commission, but I shall have to deal with him as well. When the hon. member was attacked a few days ago about the two contradictory standpoints he took up within the space of five minutes, he said that he had not acted on behalf of the United Party, but as a member of the commission. Now I want to say to that hon. member that on two occasions during the time of that commission he himself said—and it is recorded in black and white in the report—“We of the United Party.” [Interjections.] He acted on that commission as a member of the United Party. I think that the hon. member must read again the report which he helped to draw up. Those Coloured leaders proceeded from the standpoint that the representatives could still remain in this House for a decade or so to lessen the shock of the changeover. But the commission also found that there was a striving towards leadership and individual service among the Coloureds to-day. And as a result it is as plain as a pikestaff that the franchise in the hands of the Whites has never in the past been a blessing to the Coloureds, and that it was the great cause of their backwardness. What the Coloureds need to-day is leadership to teach them that hard work opens the road to success and that a sound community life must be built up in their own areas around the cities and in the rural areas. The acquisition of political instruments which are now to be given to them will open a future of their own for the Coloureds.

Mention has been made here of the proposals of the hon. members of the Opposition in that commission when voting had to take place. I want to reproach them for not having put forward any proposals in the minority report which they brought out, such as those embodied in the proposals which they made when voting had to take place. For me this testifies to inability, I almost want to say to neglect on their part in dealing with this problem. Secondly, I want to make the assertion that the first proposal which they submitted, namely that a return should be made to the position of common voters’ rolls as in the period prior to 1955, is ridiculous in the light of what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition himself said in this House last week about the findings of his Party’s commission, namely that no one among the Coloureds is apparently interested in returning to the position as it then was. To return to that period means a return to the wretched position of the Coloured as described by the late Dr. B. K. Long, in his day himself a member of that Party, when it was proposed to do away with the system of the common voters’ roll in the future. The members of the commission on that side of the House suggested a return to that position, although the Coloureds themselves did not want it. It affords numerous opportunities for improper interference. That is my great criticism of them. They must investigate ways and means of eliminating improper interference, but here they suggest returning to a situation in which improper interference would run riot. The hon. member for Outeniqua testified to what happened in those days and what has also happened of late. Thirdly, I want to reproach them for shortly afterwards proposing a separate voters’ roll with everything contained in the new policy of the United Party. Now I want to ask them why that policy, which they suggested then, of having separate voters’ rolls and separate representation for Coloureds in this House, is not a diminution of rights, even with the removal of the two Coloured representatives in the Provincial Council. A few weeks later their congress made its decision. It made these two proposals of theirs, made within five minutes of one another, look ridiculous. With reference to that, I want to ask what there is for the Coloured population of South Africa in the policy of the United Party and in its plans for their future.

With reference to the statement by the hon. member for South Coast that they want to retain white leadership over the whole of South Africa, I also want to ask what there is for the white man to-day in the policy of the United Party. What happens to the guarantee of peace and order which exists to-day between the various race groups? What is to happen to South Africa if stronger pressure is exerted for having greater numbers of non-Whites in this House? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition says that if he is in power, this will not happen without having a referendum. I put this question to him last year and have not received a reply yet. He intimated here the other day that the standpoint of the United Party in such a referendum would be not to support an increase of such representatives, and that he could rely upon the support of this side of the House in such a referendum. But then surely it is ridiculous. If you do not want something, why must a referendum be held in the matter? That is the question which I asked the hon. the Leader of the Opposition last year and which he has not yet answered.

It is a safeguard for the white voter too.

If you do not want greater representation for the non-Whites in this House, why must you hold a referendum? Who is the hon. the Leader of the Opposition bluffing with that statement? I therefore want to say that the United Party is arousing false expectations in the Coloureds in respect of what they are offering them in this House. They are bluffing the Whites with this sort of story about the referendum, which means nothing. Therefore I want to say that this whole new scheme of the United Party as embodied in its new policy of separate representation for Coloureds in this House, by Coloureds if possible, is actually aimed at bringing about political integration here. They realize that they can get nowhere with the white man’s vote and therefore they are trying to gain support among the Coloureds by this means. [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Stellenbosch had great pleasure this afternoon posing the standard questions put by professional questioners of the Nationalist Party to United Party speakers. It is a pity he had to repeat questions which were answered adequately and fully by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition when he spoke several days ago. Let me begin with the last question. He wanted to know why a referendum would be necessary under a United Party Government and why the matter of the extension of rights to the non-Whites should be referred to a referendum at all with the United Party in power. But he and I both sat here and heard the Leader of the Opposition say that that would not be necessary under a United Party Government; but that it was necessary to protect the people against rash, foolhardy and ill-considered action by other governments that might come into power. He made it perfectly clear that this safeguard would be written into the Constitution and would be binding upon future governments, and he specifically referred to the still startling example of what happened when the Bantustan policy was put to this House by the then Prime Minister without its even having been referred to a congress, nor to the caucus, of the Nationalist Party. I remember distinctly that the Leader of the Opposition specifically said that he felt that decisions like that should not be taken by individuals and by small groups, but by the people. So the hon. member for Stellenbosch can now accept that our policy to have matters like this referred to a referendum is intended to protect the people against the foolhardy actions of a Nationalist Party Government if it should again come into power in future.

The hon. member wanted to know why we were in favour of abolishing the Coloured Representatives in the Provincial Council. The reason is simple, namely that under our policy, now accepted in this respect by the Nationalist Party, there would be a Coloured Council with real executive functions, which would cover the same field of government as the provincial councils and more; those representatives therefore would become redundant. It is as simple as that. But neither under the policy of the Nationalist Party nor under our policy is it the intention to hand over full sovereignty over all aspects of government to the Coloured Council; for that reason the Coloureds should have representation in the Parliament which will conduct the government of South Africa as a whole and which will be sovereign over all the affairs of the people. That is where we differ. But where there is a body which does the work of the Provincial Council, it becomes redundant and superfluous to have Coloured members of the Provincial Council.

Finally, the hon. member for Stellenbosch reproached us for not having participated in the discussions on the Commission, of which I had the honour to be a member, to devise ways and means of stopping improper interference. But I have two difficulties in that regard, which neither the hon. member nor anybody else opposite has cleared up. The first is that we did not have any evidence before us on that Commission on ways and means that could be employed to stop improper interference; and secondly, we are satisfied, and we said so on the Commission—it is on record in the minority report—that all the examples of improper interference which have come to our attention in this House and elsewhere can adequately be dealt with under the existing Electoral Act. We are convinced of that. Look at all the examples we have had of charges of corrupt practices against the Progressive Party, which the Government accepted as true. Surely if the Government accepted them as true, it could have put the machinery of State in motion to prosecute those people who suborned Coloured people and corrupted them. But I want to say at once that I no longer attach as much importance to these allegatoins about malpractices, as I did at one time; because the Government quite obviously could not prove them. If those charges are true, then I accuse the Government of a neglect of duty in not bringing those people to punishment, whether they belong to the United Party or the Progressive Party or the Nationalist Party. Anyone who is guilty of the type of malpractice we have heard about should have been brought before the courts and properly punished. But the only people punished were a few Coloured commissioners of oaths who were found guilty of malpractices, and it is right that they were punished. But if it was proved that they committed those malpractices because they were induced to do so by Whites interfering in the affairs of the Coloured people, those Whites should have been brought before court and punished before the Coloureds, because their guilt was greater. No, I think the hon. member for Stellenbosch has not done himself or the country or his party a service by putting that type of question.

I also want to say that I was very glad, at the start of this debate to-day, to hear the hon. the Minister of Defence. His speech was most interesting. I have always respected and admired his debating ability. There is not another man in this House who can defend a lost cause as ably as he can, and whose imagination is so fertile in finding grounds for defending lost causes.

Is that why your party has put you up to speak now?

He made out a strong case to-day to prove that the representation the Coloured people have in this House is worthless and that it was never the policy of the Nationalist Party to have this type of representation; that it was a concession to the conscience of the late Mr. Havenga. But then I want to know how it was that during those long protracted debates we had in the constitutional crisis concerning the Cape Coloured vote in this House, member after member of the Nationalist Party got up, including the then Prime Minister and the present Minister of Defence, and assured us that the representation they were offering the Coloured people, by white people on a separate Roll in this House, was an improvement on the previous representation.

Of course it was.

And when we asked them whether these representatives would stay, they all said yes. The only exception was the late Dr. Dönges, who said that if the Coloured Representatives did not behave themselves they would have to go. I concede that, but we have had a tribute from the hon. the Prime Minister in this debate and from all the other members who dealt with the matter, a tribute to the conduct of these representatives of the Coloured people. So even Dr. Donges’s qualification was not satisfied. We also had the report of the majority of the Commission praising those people.

I agree.

Not only the United Party members of the Commission, but the majority of the members, paid tributes to the conduct and the value and the sincerity and the South African outlook of the Coloured Representatives in this Parliament.

But I want to take the Minister of Defence a little further. He told us that every time he spoke in this House on Coloured affairs as Minister of Coloured Affairs, he first had long consultations with Dr. Verwoerd. Not only on those occasions but continuously he and Dr. Verwoerd conferred because they had a genuine concern for the interests of the Coloured people. Now I want to know whether he discussed this matter with Dr. Verwoerd when he re-quoted Dr. Verwoerd in his speech in the House on 16th April, 1964?

Yes.

He told us that they were not going to emphasize the fact that it really was their policy not to have the representatives of the Coloureds in this House because they did not want the situation to be exploited by the unscrupulous United Party. That was his argument.

May I explain? What I said—and I am glad that the hon. member is giving me this opportunity— was that we did not want to emphasize the negative; we first wanted to implement the positive, which would then render this system superfluous.

I am most grateful to the Minister. I do not want any misunderstanding between us on this. We want to get down to the facts. They did not want to emphasize the negative, namely the abolition of the representation of the Coloured people in this House, because they wanted to establish the positive. But, Sir, this 1964 speech by the hon. the Minister was made during the discussion of the Bill when they were establishing the positive, namely the Coloureds’ Representative Council. And what did the Minister of Defence quote? I do not want to repeat tediously; it has been quoted twice in this debate. He quoted what the Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, said in reply to the hon. member for Transkei. Mr. Hughes asked him whether the Coloured Representatives would stay here if they had their own parliament, and the Prime Minister then replied—

In other words, when the positive is established—

That is a direct denial of what the hon. the Minister of Defence has said, or else—and this we cannot escape—he is accusing the late Dr. Verwoerd of conniving with himself to commit a fraud upon the people of South Africa; and I do not accept that. I have a higher regard for the honour of the leaders of this country than to accept that imputation. Therefore I think the hon. the Minister of Defence should be ashamed of himself, that he should dare come to this House and make the insinuation that as a deliberate act of policy the people of South Africa were given assurances when at the back of their minds they had already decided that those assurances would not be honoured. I cannot believe it. [Interjections.] I am privileged that my leader should make suggestions to me. I can give the hon. the Minister this assurance that I shall never be put into the position, as the result of the policies my party follows, of having to accuse my leader of fraud. [Interjections.] After the hon. the Minister made the statement that they were bluffing the people, that they were not telling the people the truth—two years afterwards—Allen Drury had an interview with the Prime Minister, and the late Dr. Verwoerd gave Mr. Drury the assurance—he knew he wanted if for publication throughout the world—that it was not the policy of the Nationalist Party to abolish the white representatives of the Coloured people in this House. But the Minister of Defence tells us that long before that interview with Drury, for years he and the late Prime Minister had concocted a plan to abolish the representatives of the Coloured people once certain conditions were satisfied. I think that is a miserable explanation and I think the hon. the Minister should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

You did not listen to what I said.

I want to tell the Minister that he is welcome to speak. We enjoy his participation in the debates, but I want to make a humble suggestion to him. Will he not please establish his facts before he makes factual statements? He made the statement that the Coloured representatives under the dispensation of the Malan Government came to this House in 1958 as members of the United Party caucus. He could have checked that. He is on good terms with the Coloured representatives and he could have asked any one of them. It is simply untrue. I checked.

Mr. Holland came here as a member of the United Party caucus, but the other three were only members of the United Party.

I am very glad the hon. the Minister now admits that he was giving the wrong facts to the House. All I want to suggest in the interest of intelligent debate is that we do check our facts when they are easily ascertainable, before we make rash statements here.

Now, I want to express my regret that the hon. the Deputy Minister of Police, who was Chairman of the Commission which dealt with this involved matter, is not here this afternoon. With his usual courtesy, he advised us that he would not be here to-day for a certain reason and we regret the fact that such reason should necessitate his absence. I explained to him that it would be necessary for me to deal with one aspect of the debate which concerns him, and he fully understood. When the hon. the Leader of the Opposition stood up to reply to the hon. the Deputy Minister, he was very critical of the Deputy Minister’s speech. Members of the Commission, notably the hon. member for Odendaalsrus and others, took exception to that and pointed out that we all respected the quality of the chairmanship of the hon. the Deputy Minister. I confirm that. This was a Select Committee, and afterwards a Commission, on which it was a privilege to serve under the chairmanship of the Deputy Minister. We had the greatest courtesy, understanding and objectivity from him at all times, and the criticism of my leader, as I heard it and as he has confirmed to me in consultations, was not directed against the chairmanship of the Deputy Minister at all. It was directed, and quite rightly so—and I want to emphasize it—at the fact that a man of that calibre had to be forced by the circumstances of his party’s policy, to come and make the speech he made here. To think, Sir, that a man of the undoubted intellectual ability of the hon. the Deputy Minister of Police had to get up here and try to explain why the Nationalist Party majority on that commission did not heed the evidence! I think it is pitiful that a man of such ability should have to be used for a purpose like that. Sir, the hon. the Deputy Minister made the point that the witnesses were not representative and that there were no recognized leaders of the Coloured people. The hon. the Minister of Defence said the same and the hon. the Prime Minister said the same. Apart from emphasizing the valid criticism that they have not produced any leaders for their separate development policy in the last 20 years, I want to know this from the Government: If they knew that there were no recognized leaders, if they knew that there were no authoritative spokesmen for the Coloured people, why did they refer this matter to a select committee and to a commission at all? Why did they have the investigation to try to determine the feelings of the Coloured people amongst other things? Whom do they regard as leaders of the Coloured people? Every political party that I know, which is lawful amongst the Coloured people, came and gave evidence before that commission. Is it the attitude of the Government that all political movements amongst the Coloured people are irresponsible and cannot be respected and that the opinions of their leaders must not be heeded? Is that the Government’s attitude?

Will you please be so kind as to tell this House on what grounds you have arrived at the decision that the Coloureds have to be restored to the common voters’ roll?

Sir, I am most grateful for that question. I can understand why the hon. member is concerned about the future of the Coloured people; it is one of the likeable aspects about this hon. member that he does concern himself with the future of the Coloured people. I promise him that I shall deal fully with his question in due course, but it would be a great help if hon. members would ask questions which relate to the point with which one is dealing. Sir, I think these things should be noted for the record: We had a glowing tribute from no one less than the hon. the Prime Minister to the wonderful work that has been done by the present Coloured Council. No tribute could be more glowing. We have to accept the hon. the Prime Minister’s word for it because the proceedings of the Coloured Council are not published. The Government’s confidence in the value of this Coloured Council is so great that they do not want the world or the South African public to know what the Coloured Council talks about. The Prime Minister tells us that it is a wonderful body, a responsible, respected body. Why then must we hear from the hon. the Minister that there are no responsible or acceptable leaders amongst the Coloured people? Have they been appointing Coloured people—15 of them—regularly to this Coloured Council who are not recognized as respectable and worthy leaders of the Coloured people? Sir, the whole speech by the Deputy Minister was unworthy of his quality and of his calibre. I think it should be placed on record that we do not criticize or condemn his chairmanship. What we condemn is this type of argument by the hon. the Deputy Minister to defend a cause which is in fact indefensible. Sir, I think that hon. members opposite who served with us on the commission will agree with me that it was a commission which for a time held out hope that we would be able to find an approach to the problem of the Coloured people that could be looked upon as a truly South African approach. This was so until the hon. the Prime Minister, speaking first at Durban and then at Windhoek, made a pronouncement about his policy for the Coloured people, a pronouncement which prejudged and anticipated the findings of the commission. We looked upon this as a very serious matter. I was surprised, in view of what I am about to relate, that in his speech on Wednesday, the hon. the Prime Minister levelled the reproach at us that we on that commission sought solutions that did not accord strictly and to the letter with the policy of the United Party as it was then. He thought that we were doing something dishonourable. He suggested that the majority on that commission had no freedom to seek a solution; that they were appointed to that commission merely to propagate and to enforce the preconceived prejudices of the Nationalist Party and that they were not free to look for new avenues or for a new approach to the Coloured people. Sir, I was absolutely surprised because the Prime Minister was contradicting himself and was repudiating the chairman of the commission. I think it was on Monday, the 21st August, when we met here in Cape Town, just after the Prime Minister had spoken in Durban, that the hon. member for Peninsula raised a point of order. He drew the chairman’s attention to the Prime Minister’s speech at Durban. If any hon. member opposite is interested, he will find this at page 295 of the report. in the right-hand column. The hon. member for Peninsula drew the chairman’s attention to this speech by the Prime Minister and said that if this was true, the Prime Minister was defining policy in advance, that this would bind members of the commission and that we reserved our position as the commission would then serve no purpose. He wondered whether the commission should go on. In reply the chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister of Police, made a considered statement in which he said that he had discussed this with the Prime Minister—and hon. members will find that at page 296 in the left-hand column—and that the Prime Minister had given him the assurance that he had spoken in general terms; that he was not prescribing to the commission what it had to decide and he added that no decision would be taken until the commission’s report had become available. These are the words of the hon. the Deputy Minister of Police (page 296)—

The Prime Minister—

He then went on to say that the Prime Minister had discussed this matter at Durban “alles in afwagting van die bevindings van hierdie kommissie”. My colleague, the hon. member for Transkei raised the same objection and also indicated that the minority would reserve their position on the commission, and again the Deputy Minister of Police, the chairman of the commission, said—

Sir, I cannot understand why the Prime Minister has deviated from that attitude to the extent that he has. I cannot understand how in his speech he could reproach us for having taken a line during the sitting of the commission which was a genuine attempt to find a solution which could be acceptable to all white South Africans and, according to the evidence, to most of the Coloured people as well. How has the attitude of our public leaders degenerated over the years! I have in my hand a book written by the late Senator Heaton Nicholls. South Africa in My Time. He devotes a chapter to the history of the Natives Affairs Commissions which led to the 1936 settlement and the attitude that was adopted there. I do not want to weary the House with a lot of detail.

Order! Is that relevant?

Sir. it is relevant to the point that the Prime Minister made that we should have been bound by our party’s policy on this commission. I think it is in the interests of Parliament that we should establish that that is not the purpose of commissions, because then we could never hope, in a select committee or a commission, to find any solution which breaks new ground for South Africa.

Sir, in 1930 General Smuts, according to Mr. Nicholls, raised the question of an article which had appeared in Die Burger when the 1930 commission was about to sit. I quote Mr. Nicholls—

Then speaking to Die Burger, General Hertzog said—

I am sorry, Sir, that such a fabrication has been quoted by the hon. the Prime Minister. I have the authority of my leader to say that if we had been advised in advance that this select committee, which was afterwards to become a commission, was being appointed by the Prime Minister, not in an attempt to find a solution to the problem of the Coloured people but merely for the one party to face the other, each bound by its own caucus, then we of the United Party minority would not have served on that commission. It would have been utterly futile. I think we should get that clear for the purpose of the record.

Answer the question put to you by the hon. member for Malmesbury.

I have lots of time. I promise the hon. member that I will answer it. Sir, let us go back to the commission. I am not going to indulge in long quotations; I want to get to the question put to me by the hon. member for Malmesbury. If one looks at the burden of the evidence given before that commission, one finds that the massive bulk of the evidence was not in favour of Nationalist Party policy because the vast majority of the witnesses wanted representation in this Parliament—on a Common Roll with direct representation or on a separate roll with direct or indirect representation— but very few, a tiny minority, thought that they would be satisfied with no representation in this body. We have quoted to the House again and again how even supporters of Government policy like Tom Schwartz, had to admit that he would have to disband his party if he advocated the abolition of representation in this Parliament. In other words, the Coloured people as a whole felt so strongly about it that they said that no political party among the Coloured people who propagated such a course had any hope of survival. It is the most powerful evidence for a man supporting the Government to say that if he propagated that aspect of Government policy he would estrange himself from his own people. Sir, another thing that struck us —and one must be objective in this matter— was that there was no support for the then policy of the United Party. I want that on record too. All the Coloured witnesses wanted a different form of representation from that which they had before the constitutional crisis of the 1950’s. I also want it to go on to the record that there was no Coloured witness of any importance who saw an ultimate solution to their problems in the policy of the Progressive Party. There were some who supported it and there were some who supported Nationalist Party policy, but they all said that that would be an interim stage in their political development. They all eventually wanted full citizenship. I think my fellow-members on the commission will admit that. Under examination, witness after witness came to the conclusion eventually that they wanted full citizenship, and you cannot blame them. Any human being would ask for that. But in the circumstances of South Africa, in the circumstances of the Coloured community, not one of the three parties that I have mentioned is willing to give them that, not even the Progressive Party. Not even the Progressive Party will give them what they want. That party wants a qualified franchise which, in practice, will disqualify more Coloured people than white people. To that extent it is also discriminatory, because the fact of the matter is that fewer Coloured people than white people can qualify under that party’s policy. That is a fact. The point I want to make is that the Coloured people all want to attain full citizenship as soon as possible, but that the white people of this country are not prepared to give them, and they should not be prepared to give them because it would be dangerous and wrong in the interests of all South Africans.

The interesting thing is that almost all of them, with only one or two exceptions, were willing to accept direct representation as an alternative until we could work out a final solution to their problem. All the witnesses of any standing, let me put it that way, were willing to accept that. They did not want a return to the situation that existed before 1955 when Coloured men could vote in the Cape Province, subject to certain qualifications, when Coloured men could vote in Natal, subject to certain qualifications, when Coloured women had no vote and when the Transvaal and Free State had no Coloured voters. That was the policy of the United Party, too. They do not want to return to that state of affairs. That was our policy because we were involved in the highly dramatic and excitable crisis surrounding the Constitution. Our attitude, trained as we are in the Roman-Dutch law and our system of jurisprudence, was this: Before anything can be done about a problem, injustice must be restored. The Latin maxim is Spoliatio ante omnia restituenda est. It means that before a matter is investigated, injustice must be restored to the despoiled. That was our basic principle. We who served on this commission were satisfied that the Coloured people did not want that from us; they wanted a new deal immediately. I know the hon. member for Malmesbury is still hoping that I will avoid answering his questions. But let me assure him I will not. We then consulted with the hon. member for Peninsula; we acted as friends, consulted with one another and took common decisions on certain matters, not on all, and it was agreed that the hon. member would support the Opposition if we placed on record that it was the policy of the United Party to undo the injustice of the 1950’s. We did so, but our proposals were rejected by the majority of the commission. Then under a solemn appreciation of the importance of the duty which the hon. the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition had imposed upon this commission by the agreement between the two of them, we sought to put before the commission a solution that should have been acceptable to both parties, namely separate representation, direct representation of Coloured people by Coloured people, with representation for their women and for the Transvaal and the Free State too. It was a very conservative suggestion but at the same time an improvement on this side’s previous policy and also an improvement on that side’s policy. [Interjections.] I will come to that in a minute. We had very good reason to believe that the developed Nationalist in South Africa —I wish to make it clear I am not talking about “verligtes” but about “ontwikkeldes”— was in favour of such a policy, because I first heard of direct representation as a real issue in our politics from the leaders and formers of public opinion in the Nationalist Party. [Interjections.] We on this side thought that, in the interests of the country and to get this matter out of the political arena once and for all, and to give the Coloureds a square deal, we should make the suggestion which we did. The four of us make no apologies. It was a measure of our sincerity and our deep desire to find a solution to this problem that we did that, but our proposal was rejected. That proposal was based on ideas raised by the thinking and enlightened Nationalist of the country, but it was rejected by the majority of the commission. Then, as a result of the examinations by the Connan committee, which was a party committee, and as a result of the evidence before this commission, we went to our national congress and, with certain modifications, we adopted the principle of that suggestion as the policy of the United Party, and in the result we got away from the undoubted anomalies—the existence of which we admit—which were contained in the policy the United Party had up to then, which was first to remove an injustice done to the Coloureds. That is my answer to the hon. member for Malmesbury. I hope he is now satisfied. If not, we can argue about it on the hustings. But those are the facts. [Interjections.]

Something that interests me very much is the charge that has come, from both sides of the House, that this party or that party has changed its policy, as if the mere fact that there has been a change in one’s outlook and convictions, an adaptation of one’s thinking to the facts of a situation, is morally evil and should be condemned. If that is the attitude of hon. members in this House then there can be no intellectual progress in this world of ours whatsoever. I do not think we can accept as a tenable moral principle, as a moral precept, that change in itself is evil. What one should do, and here I am calling upon hon. members on the other side to pay attention, is to decide whether the change which one is making is in itself as an act morally defensible. A change can be good; a change can be bad. I want to lay the charge against the Government now that their change is a bad one. Our change was made with several motives. It was made in order to enable the Coloured people to fit into the federal concept that the United Party has developed for South Africa, to make them part of the logical federal concept which we have for South Africa, a concept which history is going to prove as surely as I am standing here to-day to be the only concept which offers a peaceful solution to the problems we face to-day. More and more witnesses are coming from the most unexpected quarters to confirm that. The only white man who could speak with true authority on the Coloured people before the commission was Dr. I. D. du Plessis. Whilst he was under cross-examination he told us that ultimately if the Coloured representation in Parliament was abolished a super body would have to be created in which all races would be represented on a federal basis. He was not prompted but of his own volition used the words “on a federal basis”, because he knows that ultimately that is the only possible solution for the problems of South Africa.

We made the change in our policy also because we wanted a policy which would be uniform for all Coloured men and women in all provinces. In the opinion of many of us this adjustment was over-due, and we are glad that the change was made.

Finally, we made this change bearing in mind that we had to recognize the special position occupied by the Coloured people in this country. The Coloured people—and I want to emphasize this—are part of the Western development in South Africa. They have white blood in their veins. They are Christians. They are Afrikaans-speaking. It is a strange thought, and I speak as an Afrikaans-speaking person, that though we are a small nation, one of the smallest in the world but also justifiably one of the proudest, we are, because of a political Government representing for the time being the majority of the Afrikaans-speaking, also being looked upon as the pariah of the world. We are regarded as such quite unjustly. When I think of the hostile world, then I feel it should be a source of gratification and encouragement to us all to know that we are not completely alone, that there is in the world one other great Afrikaans-speaking community totalling more than 1½ million, namely the Cape Coloured people. Surely the task of statesmanship in South Africa must be not to drive those people away, to estrange them from us, not to deprive them of their few remaining rights and humiliate and hurt them, but rather to bind them to the white people with bonds that cannot be broken. What Dr. Dönges once said in a moment of hopefulness will then become true, namely that in South Africa there will not be three million hearts beating but five million hearts beating as one. That is the fundamental difference in the approach to this problem between hon. members opposite and us on this side.

When one looks at the change being made by hon. members opposite then one sees a different picture. The change is bad, retrograde, shameless and unjust. I have made a very drastic statement and I will prove it from the mouth of the Nationalist Party itself. In the past when we on this side expressed fears that this injustice would ultimately be perpetrated upon the Coloured people, we were chastised by the Nationalist Party and called hateful agitators. We were condemned and damned for daring to suggest that they could do anything so perfidious. In this connection I should like to read to hon. members what Die Burger said, not in 1961 or 1962 or 1963, the dates quoted by the hon. the Minister of Defence as the times when the change came about, but what it wrote on the 7th May, 1965. This is what was said—

Again, we are the agitators! The report goes on—

That is so—if we did suggest that then we were speaking the truth. The hon. the Minister of Defence has now confirmed that we could read their innermost mind, if what Die Burger says is true. I continue—

The sanctimonious rectitude of it all! Here it is: Here we are to-day discussing the commission’s report accepted by the Government, and they are doing exactly what they said was a false accusation by the perfidious United Party. How can we as adult South Africans ever hope to approach this vexed problem of race relations in South Africa if that is the standard by which the Government party is conducting the affairs of this country?

Sanctimonious …

Oh yes, sanctimonious. [Interjections.] What is the position now that the majority report has been accepted by the Government? As far as our relationship with the Coloured people is concerned, and as far as the status and position of the Coloureds are concerned, we have entered a period of dangerous uncertainty. Hon. members do not have to believe me when I say this. I suggest they again read the article by Dawie in Saturday’s Burger where he calls upon the Government for heaven’s sake to keep the dialogue within the Nationalist Party alive. He suggests the appointment of a commission to try and find some certainty because of the uncertainty that has been created. He sees the dangers, the unfortunate dangers created by Government policy. That is so because the Government itself is now uncertain of the future course upon which it has embarked. It has steered South Africa upon unchartered seas, and in the result they find it impossible to answer the simplest questions put to them by the Opposition. I was criticized earlier to-day because I answered in detail questions put by the hon. member for Stellenbosch. But we do that because it is in the interests of the dialogue that we as the white governors of South Africa should keep up to find a solution to the colour problems of this country. But why are hon. members on the opposite side afraid to answer simple questions? Some days ago when we opened this debate my hon. Leader put certain fair questions to the Government, but not one of them has been answered.

To-day the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs attempted to answer one, but I do not think he can be proud of his answer. The Leader of the Opposition, having listened to the hon. the Deputy Minister, asked how members of the Government could justify the complete disregard of the evidence before the commission, but no satisfactory answer was forthcoming. Other members asked the question: If there is no responsible opinion or leadership amongst the Coloured people to be consulted, why then is the Prime Minister so anxious not to establish links between the council and this Parliament until he has consulted the new Coloured Representative Council? Where is this responsible leadership going to emerge from overnight? One election, and the Coloured people will emerge from a dismal darkness of incompetence to the light and to brilliance? It does not make sense. But why is there no answer? Why must this insult to the Coloured leaders of South Africa remain?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition asked the Government (and the hon. the Minister of the Interior when he replies, should note this question): What is the true definition of improper interference by one race in the political affairs of the other? We have had no answer. The only answer we seem to get, is that it is improper interference when people ask Coloured people to vote for anything but the Government. Is that what they mean by improper interference?

There was another question, the one which some attempt was made to reply to, namely “What is the optimum development for the proposed Coloured Council?”, referred to by the hon. the Deputy Minister of Police when introducing this debate. That is not a trick question. It is a most cardinal question, because I can recall, and you will recall, Sir, that the late Dr. Verwoerd some years ago got up in the House and proposed that there should be established for the Coloureds and the Indians their own Parliaments, and he suggested they should be allowed to develop to full sovereignty. For a short period Dr. Verwoerd envisaged three sovereign parliaments, sovereign in all spheres of government in South Africa. Obviously, he could not sustain that, because it is a logical impossibility. Under the federal concept there can be legislative bodies that are sovereign in defined spheres of governmental activities; one can give them certain tasks which they can control in their own discretion; but one cannot in a union as we are, have more than one parliament with full sovereignty. There cannot be one parliament declaring war if we should ever fight the communists and the other one remaining neutral, or declaring war on the side of the communists. It is ridiculous. It cannot be done, and Dr. Verwoerd abandoned that idea. So my hon. Leader is perfectly entitled to ask “What is the optimum development to which this Coloured Council will be allowed to develop?”, and all credit to him, the Minister of Coloured Affairs and of Labour tried to answer. But he laboured. He did not even produce a mouse. He said that the optimum development will be that they will put them on a course where they can develop. If ever there was begging of a question, it was that answer. I want to repeat now to the hon. the Minister who is going to reply on behalf of the Government, the spokesman for the Government: Tell us, when you speak, as you spoke through the Deputy Minister of Police, of the optimum development to which this Coloured Council will be allowed to progress. How far is that? But when they reach that optimum development, what more is there for the Coloured people? At what stage will the Coloured people of this country be made to feel that they belong to South Africa, that they are part of South Africa, that they can also have a voice in the sovereign Parliament which governs their South Africa? I think that, Sir, is a fair question.

Then there is another question which my hon. Leader put to the Government to which there was no attempt to reply, except in some way, to which I will refer, by two young members. What is now the future blueprint for South Africa? We do not agree with the Government, but as far as Bantu policy is concerned, they have a blueprint for the future of South Africa. They will fragment South Africa into about eight states. Seven will be black; and one will be mixed. In the mixed state there will be a vast majority of non-Whites, and the industry of that mixed state will be more and more dependent upon the labour of the pure black states. They have a blueprint; one can see where they are going. They are going to a very dangerous place. But, Sir, what is now the blueprint for South Africa as far as the Coloured people and the Indian people are concerned? We heard voices. The hon. member for Umhlatuzana with more gallantry than insight, tried to suggest that the homeland idea should be developed for the Coloured people.

As Schalk Pienaar wrote in Die Beeld yesterday: It is very easy for people living in Natal to suggest solutions for the Cape Province. But then that hon. member was followed by the hon. member for Moorreesburg, who speculated in the same direction. But those speculations did not go far. The hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs, obviously speaking for the Government, told these young gentlemen not to be stupid. As a matter of fact, he was more critical of them than I could have been, and I think he should be congratulated. I think that he is correct. I must agree with Schalk Pienaar again, who also said yesterday that people who make that suggestion, namely that there should be a Coloured homeland, a colouredstan, for South Africa, are not thinking; they are guilty of escapist flights of fancy. Schalk Pienaar confirmed that if one wants to think in terms of a homeland for the Coloured people, one can only think in terms of the Boland, of the Western Province, extended a little beyond its present boundaries. And he added that no one of sound common-sense, no Nationalist would even conceive of that.

Schalk Pienaar further referred to the suggestion, to go back to the days of Mr. Pirow, that the Coloureds should be given a homeland in the semi-desert areas of the North-Western Cape. He said that is so immoral that it cannot even be discussed in the interests of decent race relations. So that is thought dead, or rather I hope it is dead. We should not delude ourselves. I agree with the hon. the Minister. He did not put it in these words, but I think he will agree with me if I say that this was also his thought, namely that there could be nothing more dangerous in our search for a solution to the Coloured problem in South Africa than for us to indulge in flights of fancy which can never be translated into actual policy, into actual achievement, and to bluff the people of South Africa that we are going to find a solution to the Coloured problem by giving them their own homeland somewhere in the Cape Province, where 2,000,000 people will be able to live and live decently like human beings, without creating the most untold friction between Whites and Coloureds in this country. To bring them under this impression would be grossly irresponsible. That would be an act of injustice to the thinking of the people of South Africa. That would be misleading people beyond even the wiles of the worst politician that you can think of. I am glad and I want to commend the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs that he has scotched the escapist flights of fancy, of the hon. members for Umhlatuzana and Moorreesburg.

I have so many quotations here that I have abandoned all hope of dealing with the matter in the time permitted. But there is one. I would have quoted Professor Olivier, who wrote in a booklet on the colour problem for Sabra in May, 1965, and he pointed out that this idea of a Colouredstan is impossible. But I think, for the edification of the hon. members for Umhlatuzana and Malmesbury, I shall quote what the late Dr. Verwoerd said when he spoke to the Union Council for Coloured Affairs in Cape Town on 12th December, 1961. This is one of the more profound statements made by Dr. Verwoerd, with which every South African must agree. He said:

I do not agree with that, but that was Dr. Verwoerd’s conviction.

Well, that one can do.

Quite obviously it was never a policy or even the thinking of Dr. Verwoerd to do anything so preposterous as the suggestion made so charmingly by the hon. member for Umhlatuzana. Dr. Verwoerd went on and he said:

Then Dr. Verwoerd went on and referred to the point made by the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs that the Coloureds do have vast stretches of land which they own in the Cape Province. But he discounted those tracts of land as ever affording as homeland, in the sense it is used in terms of the Bantu policy, for the Coloured people of South Africa. Dr. Verwoerd went on:

No reference is even made to it being part of their political potential. It is only part of their economic potential which must also be protected.

In the spirit in which the United Party opposition accepted office on that select committee and commission, namely to try to find a solution to this problem, I want to make an appeal to the Government, and indeed to South Africa. Let us keep on thinking and arguing even if we laugh at one another. Let us for God’s sake keep on discussing and arguing about the future position of the coloured people in the South African community. I think we are all agreed that they are an important community. We all deeply regret that among some of them there is deterioration which is visible and which this Government and this Parliament have tried to solve by means of the legislation we adopted last year. There is not a thinking politician in South Africa worthy of his salt who does not want to find a solution to the problem of the Cape Coloured people and the Coloured people generally which will enable them to make their full contribution as South Africans to the solution of our problems, to the creation of wealth and the establishment of a stable society in this South Africa of ours. I do not believe that there is one person, no matter how “verkramp” he may be, who does not appreciate that the Cape Coloured people occupy a very special position in relation to the white community in South Africa. If we want to think clearly at all, we dare not they that fact. Let us keep on thinking and discussing. But do not let us delude ourselves into intellectual cul-de-sacs such as the suggestion that it will ever be possible to create for these unfortunate people a separate homeland where they can develop to the utmost and enjoy sovereignty and realize their personalities to the utmost. I say that that will be an intellectual cul-de-sac. It can lead us nowhere. It must end in frustration, hopelessness and disaster for the peace of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, we are indebted to the hon. member for Yeoville in that he once again adopted a brand new attitude to-day in regard to the future of the Coloureds. It is a brand new attitude in this sense that the so-called referendum question that was dealt with by the hon. member for Stellenbosch, was given a brand new complexion by the hon. member for Yeoville, namely that they do not want to grant the Coloureds more than six representatives in this House. Provision for a referendum is written into the Constitution so as to prevent other Governments from perhaps granting the Coloureds more than six representatives in this House. In other words, I am to accept—and I should like to know if this is not the case —that the quota of six representatives the United Party is prepared to allow in his House, is the ultimate fixed limit of the Coloureds’ representation in this Parliament under any circumstances. It can never be more or fewer; it can only be these six. Is this the United Party’s new official attitude? The Leader of the Opposition did not put it that way. I should like to have clarity in this regard. The Leader of the Opposition definitely did not put it that way. Those hon. members are very quiet now. But I want to go further as far as this theme is concerned. This is what I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. If this were the case, is it morally and ethically right for them to have only six representatives in this House? Another important question is the following: Will the Coloured community accept it and be satisfied with six representatives in this House for ever, whereas the Coloured Persons’ Representative Council is granted limited powers which, according to those hon. members, are not even equivalent to those granted to the Provincial Council? But I shall come back to this point later on. The hon. member for Yeoville placed himself here on a very sacrosanct pedestal. I want to quote specifically the words he used here, words such as “solemnly, genuinely, in all sincerity, with a deep desire”. He used these fine words in order to say how sincerely they had gone into this matter and how sincerely they had sought a solution. Now they are blaming us for not having found a solution to their liking and for having allegedly approached this matter with pre-conceived ideas. But in spite of this sacrosanct attitude adopted by that side of the House, they came forward with a proposal—and I do not wish to go into it now—which they did in fact put forward as their final word, namely that the representation should be as it was proposed by the hon. member for Peninsula. What happened subsequently? Before the Government received the report, in which that fine proposal is to be found, and before the Government had any time to react to that proposal—the Government is at liberty to accept any recommendation, be it from the majority report, the minority report or composed of excerpts from both reports—the United Party threw overboard its entire policy in Bloemfontein and then came to this House with a new point of view. With all its sacrosanctity the United Party rejected in favour of this new point of view everything that had been achieved. Does that give a one permission to put oneself on a sacrosanct platform in regard to this matter? [Interjections.] No, unfortunately I cannot react in five minutes’ time to everything the hon. member had said in an hour. That is impossible, and I also want to make my own speech. As regards those two spheres I touched upon, I do not think that the hon. member brought credit to his side. His sacrosanct platform collapsed under him like an anthill, or rather a dung-hill.

In the time I have left, I should like to make my own speech. I want to say that before gears were synchronised in the motor car industry, the following notice appeared at the start of a steep 20-mile mountain pass in America: “Be careful which gear you choose, because you will be in that gear for the next 20 miles.” That was in the time before gears could be changed while the car was in motion. In respect of the Coloureds I want to say that in view of the fact that the Coloureds are now being granted political rights for the first time really, we should here and now select the right gear, and not the wrong one, to drive in, because we shall be in that gear for a long time. The majority report selected a gear in which we shall not only be able to drive for the first 20 miles but in which we shall also be able to stop after those 20 miles in order that we may review the whole position once again, recongnoitre the road ahead and select another gear in which we may drive further. The United Party’s minority report also selected a gear for the first 20 miles. But after the first 20 miles of steepness they will, in that gear, have no more control over the car and it will unceremoniously leave the road and plunge down the precipice. That is the difference between the majority and the minority report. I signed the majority report, and I want to indicate briefly why I did so without any hesitation whatsoever. In the first place it made allowances for, and it is still making allowances for the basic facts in regard to the situation of the Whites and the non-Whites in South Africa. In the first place, it recognizes the Coloureds as a separate nation. No matter how closely they are related to the Whites by virtue of their language, religion, customs, etc., they are not, they cannot and they do not want to be an integral part of the White Nation. I want to quote evidence to corroborate this. There are two points of view in this regard. The Coloureds themselves view this in two ways. The first is the point of view of the Labour Party. This is the way they put it on page 40 of the report—

In other words, they do not want to be a separate nation. As far as colour is concerned, they want to wipe out all dividing lines and merge with the Whites. But what does the large majority of the Coloureds, as represented by the other two political parties, have to say? On page 60 the Federal Coloured Peoples’ Party says the following—

It wants the Coloureds to form a separate nation. It does not want them to form part of the White nation. What does the Conservative Party say on page 11—

Without a doubt this party also prefers a separate Coloured nation. I also want to quote what Mr. Petersen, the leader of the Conservative Party, has to say on page 130 of the report—

That is the point of view. The Coloureds want to be a separate nation. This majority report makes allowances for that fact. I want to mention a second basic principle for which the majority report makes allowances, namely that at the moment the large majority of the Whites in South Africa are not prepared, just as future generations will, for the same reasons not be prepared either, to accept or absorb the Coloureds as part of the White population. I need not illustrate this fact. I can merely state it. The National Party is not prepared to do so. The Progressive Party says that they are prepared to accept total integration. The United Party—with a few exceptions such as the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, the hon. member for Karoo, and others—is not prepared to advocate total integration with the Coloureds either.

There is a third point I want to make. At present the Coloureds are a minority group— and I am not going to evade this—which may rightly lay a claim to being recognized and to being granted certain rights by the Whites. There is, however, another fact that should be added immediately. In granting these rights the Whites must thoroughly take into account the fact that the Coloureds will not always remain a minority group. The solution to this problem must be such that when that day comes, the course the Government is now marking out for the minority group will also make provision for the Coloureds when they are in the majority, without making the position of the Whites untenable at that stage. That is the next step. Provision has to be made now for the minority group, but when this group becomes the majority group, the same policy must still be applicable. I also want to state a fifth basic concept. At the moment the Coloureds are living, and will be living permanently, within the geographic territory which the Whites, in implementing their Bantu homeland policy, finally set aside for themselves as part of White South Africa. This matter is also being taken into account, and I shall discuss it presently.

There is one last point I want to mention. The time will come when the Whites will have to choose in respect of the Coloureds, as they now have to choose in respect of Bantu between two alternatives, namely either (1) to share political rights in their part of White South Africa with a majority group of Coloureds, or (2) to subdivide that territory as well so that the Whites and the Coloureds, each group in its own territory, may develop to full self-realization. That is the choice with which the Whites are faced.

The majority report made allowances for these basic principles. In his first official speech as Prime Minister, the Prime Minister clearly outlined the policy to be followed in this regard. He did not deal exhaustively with this report or with anything else, but in broad outline he said: “I am indicating to the Coloureds a road, leading away from the Whites; not in hostility, but a road of their own.” He also added, “A commission of enquiry has been appointed and we are awaiting its report.” There is a second reason for my signing it, namely the fact that the majority report took the evidence into account. That is why I felt at liberty on various occasions in this House to say by way of interjection: We have the evidence on the basis of which we did that. I feel that it is my duty to quote this evidence now. I want to start by saying, in the first place, that no Coloured group had asked for a reversion to the common voters’ roll on a qualification basis. Not a single group had asked for that. I am now asking those hon. members where they found the evidence for making such a recommendation. On what evidence did they base their recommendation? I submit, and I challenge them to oppose me, that not one single Coloured group had asked for that. Those who did in fact ask for that, were the very leftist organizations, such as Nusas, the Black Sash, and others. Those organizations I can readily link with that concept, but no Coloured group asked for that. No Coloured group asked that the White representation here should be continued in its present form and that the representatives should still be elected in future in the way it is being done at present. No Coloured group asked for that. There were several other interpretations, but no group asked for that. Except for the leftist Labour Party, all the Coloureds were agreed that interference by one population group in the politics of another was undesirable and harmful and should be combated. If the hon. member for Houghton does not want to believe this, she should read the report more thoroughly, and there she will find all the evidence to the effect that all of them pleaded against interference, except for the Labour Party which welcomed interference. All of the Coloured groups were in favour of the development of the Coloured Persons Representative Council. It was found in the end that all the Coloured groups wanted a link with Parliament in the meantime. I want to quote specifically what attitude the Federal Coloured People’s Party adopted in this regard, as it appears on page 60 of the report. It is as follows—

And then he goes on to say—

Not as is the case at present. Nor is it the United Party’s policy he is propagating here. Not at all. But let us go on. The following question (see page 156) was then put to him—

To this the leader replied, “Yes, that is so.” And then he went further and said, “In other words, if my party is in power at that time, then we shall co-operate.” And then the following question was put to him, “But you yourself do not wish to take upon yourself the responsibility for asking that it should be abolished.” To this he replied. “I do not want to take it upon myself at all.” Later on I shall illustrate the reason for this by means of a further quotation. Now we come to the next step, as indicated by the Conservative Party (page 132)—

And when it was aked why, if that had to be the actual mouthpiece, they still wanted Coloured representatives here and to what purpose this would be, the reply and the real reason came from Mr. Fortuin (see page 133)—

That is the only reason why he wants it. And then (see page 135) the following question was put, “Then they may just as well go after 10 years?” And then, after we had explained to them exactly what the Government envisaged in respect, of this matter, we had the following reply—

And when it was asked what they would say then, the reply was, “I shall say ‘yes’.” In other words, we have the support and we have the necessary evidence. And then the following very pointed question was put (see page 144)—

The reply to this was, “That is all, that is correct.”

Is that the majority of the evidence?

That is the evidence of the two major political parties for Coloureds which are at the moment going down well with the masses outside. Except for the Labour Party, they are the two big ones. Even the Labour Party made this matter essential for us. When it was pointed out to this Party (see page 123) that there was a possibility of a clash about these two points of view between the representatives here and those of the Coloured Persons Representative Council, Dr. Van der Ross personally replied as follows—

In other words, he also leaves us this opening, namely that we may immediately come forward with this solution if necessary. That is exactly what is contained in the recommendation of the majority report. The majority report says that the Government itself should accept the responsibility of abolishing these representatives. In that case no Coloured leader can be blamed for having asked for that, and then there cannot be any political platform from which the accusation can be levelled at him that he would be to blame if they should be abolished. In that way we shall be doing them a favour, as they themselves admitted. We shall also be helping the Labour Party by explaining to them that we want to prevent the clash beforehand. But why is the abolition really being recommended? In the first place, our terms of reference were to discuss and investigate improper interference. And when we discussed and investigated it, we found that the main reason for the interference, as became apparent from all the evidence, was that White persons had to represent Coloureds in this House. That is why there is interference. The Whites interfere in Coloured politics because the Whites have a platform here from which they can talk. That is why there is interference. Then the immediate choice is whether Coloureds should be represented here by Coloureds—then the interference would be less— or whether Coloured representation should be done away with altogether. And they admitted immediately that this was the only alternative. And when it is pointed out that since 1948 this Government has had a mandate from the electorate, namely that no non-Whites may hold seats in this Parliament, and that it is therefore not possible for the Government to take such a decision, the following argument was immediately raised: Then there is only one alternative, then one might as well abolish it. Let us see what the parties did with the evidence contained in the report. The United Party came forward—in the light of the evidence I have just read out—with the most foolish thing imaginable, namely by way of the proposal put forward by the hon. member for Transkei, i.e. that they should be reinstated on the common voters’ roll. As I am saying, nobody asked for that. I challenge the United Party to quote any evidence on the strength of which they introduced that proposal. Then we have this other argument in their recommendation. They accept the new Coloured Council with its 40 elected members, but they do not want any law relating to interference of any nature whatsoever. In other words—let us face the facts—then it means that those Coloured Council elections could degenerate to such an extent that all three of the White political parties represented here at the moment would be able to enter full-steam into those election campaigns with the capital, organizers, workers, and energies each of them has at its disposal. And they would be able to fight to their hearts’ content. One would merely be moving the platform from one place to another. To render a service to whom and to what? The Coloureds? One simply does this to have a lot of puppets there who will realize that they are dependent on the White party that supported and assisted them for their seats in the Coloured Persons Representative Council. That would not imply any future whatever for the Coloureds. That is what they are envisaging with the recommendations, as they stand here. I also want to analyse the United Party’s new policy in this regard. I am now coming back to that point of view, and I also see that I do not have much time left. What is being recommended now, is that there should be six Whites or Coloureds here and two in the Senate. I do not want to accept that this is for ever and ever, as the hon. member for Yeoville said.

I would rather accept his leader’s word that this is being done … Well, I shall furnish the exact reasons for that at a later stage. I shall deal with them later. At present there are four Whites in this House, without any pressure from any side or anywhere, the United Party comes forward and makes it six, not only Whites, but possibly Coloureds as well. We know that the Leader of the Opposition is very allergic to pressure. He admitted it himself. He said so a few times. And if he starts making this concession without any pressure, then I want to say at once that nobody can be sure in what direction pressure will eventually force him. But let us give the Opposition the benefit of the doubt. Let us accept that they want to retain these four members here and, with the minimum expansion to the North, that they want to grant the Transvaal one and the other two provinces one. Let us give them that freedom and that benefit of the doubt. Then I say immediately that that is not all. According to the United Party this number can only be increased if the White electorate were to decide to do so by way of a referendum. And now I want to ask the question which we put to them and which the hon. member for Yeoville tried to answer: What is the advice of the Leader of the United Party going to be at such a referendum? And what was the reply of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition when this question was put to him? His, and not that of the hon. member for Yeoville. By way of a high-sounding statement he said that their advice would be such that White leadership would be confirmed. I invite the hon. member to deny this. He did not say that it was a guarantee against other governments. What does this fine, haughty statement of his mean in plain English? I just want to know what he is saying. He can either stand on a platform and make an appeal by saying; “Vote against, vote no; don’t allow the Coloureds to have more representatives,” or he may stand on a platform and say, “Vote yes, let them have more.” Now I ask the Leader of the Opposition: What proposal is he going to put forward? What attitude is he going to adopt? Will it be the same attitude he has to adopt now? Or what attitude is he going to adopt? Because he will still be in difficulties. If he says, “Vote no,” then it means that he wants to give the Coloureds a permanent ceiling of six representatives. If he says yes, he will never be able to put a stop to the situation, because once he starts moving, on what grounds will he ever be able to cry “Halt!” in this matter? Then he, with his wrongly selected gear, will be on the downhill road on which he will never be able to stop again. But now I want to give him the benefit of the doubt once again. I accept that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will say no, i.e. that one should not go any further. Fine, if he said that, I am asking him whether the Coloureds will accept it. Will they resign themselves to that? Or will they perhaps bring pressure to bear? He need not wait until then to determine whether they will in fact bring pressure to bear. By way of a quotation I can tell him right now what the Coloureds will do in this regard. I am quoting the words Dr. Van der Ross used in his evidence. The Labour Party asked for ten representatives in Parliament. The following question was put to him (see page 122)—

His reply to this was as follows—

He says it very clearly. And then this question was put—

His reply to that was, “Yes.” Then the following question was put to him—

The reply to this was, “Yes.” And then the hon. member for Gardens—the good, conservative, rural U.P. supporter—came forward and said that he would like to try to put this matter right. He realized that the evidence was too damning and that he wanted to do something about it. He put the following question—

He was rather astonished when he asked this. Then Dr. Van der Ross replied very clearly—

All these facts are to be found on page 122 of the commission’s report.

They will ask nothing under your policy.

There we have the policy of the United Party. More and more will be asked. No, the difference is the following. I am saying this to the hon. member for Yeoville right away. The difference is that it tells the Coloureds that they must realize their political ideals here. Here the Coloureds are given the starting-point of six, and here they must realize themselves to the full. We say that we are not granting those things to the Coloureds here. They must not realize themselves here. The Coloured must realize themselves in their own Coloured Persons Representative Council which we have created for them and to which we shall gradually grant more powers. That is the difference. What did the National Party do with this very same evidence? We accept the wish of the majority of the Coloureds and the majority of the Whites, namely that these are two totally separate nations, with separate identities each of which should be developed in its own sphere to full self-realization. That is why we are separating the political rights of the two, and that is why this Parliament will eventually and exclusively become the political home of the Whites only. And at the same time the Coloureds are politically placed in a position from where they may realize themselves to the full through their own political institutions. We are not ashamed of saying this and we do not shrink back from this, namely that by means of the Coloured Persons Representative Council we are now deliberately placing a ceiling above the heads of the Coloureds. But we are granting them control, effective control, of those things in which they are really interested and which are really near to their hearts: their education, their welfare services, local authorities, rural areas, etc. We are granting them those things in which they are really interested, along with real, effective powers. We are placing a ceiling above their heads. We are openly telling the whole world that such a ceiling does exist and that there is also a reason why there is such a ceiling. The reason is that at this stage the Coloureds are a minority group in this country. As a minority group they can therefore not make demands for full control and full government along with the Whites. As a minority group they are therefore given that ceiling above their heads. What it is being given now, is nevertheless much more than is being given to minority groups in other countries. Those rights are far more than those the Red Indians in Canada have, they are far more than those the Eskimos in Greenland have, they are far more than those the Tamils in Ceylon have, and they are far more than those the Asians in Kenya have at present. We say that there is a ceiling above their heads, and we are deliberately placing it there and we are not ashamed of it, but we are specifically not granting them control of international conditions, of war and peace, of foreign policy. They are not interested in those matters, and we, as the majority in this country, are capable of deciding about them for ourselves.

But I want to go further by saying that we do not intend to run away from the idea and the fact that this Coloured minority group may eventually become a majority group. That is why we have now chosen a way along which we can, when we reach that stage, look ahead and move on. Once we have reached that stage, we say that it depends on the Coloureds themselves, if they become leaders, to return to their own people in the meantime and to uplift them rather than to “try for White”, as so many of them are doing. Such people become the leaders of the people and the heroes of the future; the others become the traitors and the renegades who try to ingratiate themselves with the other side. That is what history has always shown. This step places me in the position where at a later stage I can think again, and when I say think again, I specifically put it in that way, that we can think at that stage about what the future should be like, because then it is a new situation. Then I want to say immediately that at the moment it is not the official policy of the National Party to establish a homeland for the Coloureds, as the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs also said here to-day. But the steps we are taking now do not eliminate the possibility of a geographic home for the Coloureds which is their own, if that should appear to be the ideal solution at a later stage. We dare not close that door of a geographic home for the Coloureds. In everything we do now and later, we must always keep that door open, because it may, when we reach that stage, afford us the true and only alternative solution. I want to add at once that it need not be a geographic unit Zululand will never be a geographic unit. Eastern and Western Pakistan are separated from each other by hundreds of miles, but it is one state. The U.S.A. is not a unit; Alaska is situated at a great distance from the other states. Japan is a group of islands. It need not be a geographic unit. The fact simply remains that we shall have to deal here with a situation where we are starting out on a road but shall at a later stage be able to reflect and decide once again. That is what the Government is doing at the moment, and that is the road we shall take. When the opportunity occurs at a later stage, we shall be able to decide again. But if the Opposition has its way, the only decision that can be taken in the future is to grant these people more and more representatives here until one day the majority in this Parliament will be Coloureds, and then they (the Coloureds) will perhaps decide to give the Whites a homeland somewhere in South Africa, because then they will be in control here.

I think that everyone will agree with me that over the days that we have debated this report the differences between the two parties in this House have become much clearer, especially in regard to purpose, aim, thought and direction in respect of the political future of the Coloured population of South Africa. While this is certainly not the last word that will be said on this subject, perhaps not even the last during this session, I now want to move with the leave of the House—

Agreed to.