Mr. Speaker, you addressed me as the “hon. member for Bezuidenhout”. I see my way clear to looking after the interests of both constituencies!

[Inaudible.]

I wanted to ask the hon. member for Durban (Point) whether he is aware that it is nomination day in Graaff Reinet to-day and whether the United Party has forgotten to appoint a candidate there?

One victory in Newcastle is enough.

Mr. Speaker, it is the parliamentary right of the Opposition to come forward with a motion of no confidence at the beginning of every parliamentary sitting. We do not begrudge the Opposition that right. To-day is the third day we have been discussing this motion of no confidence, and if we consider the time which is being spent on this motion of no confidence, and take into account the fact that two long days still remain before Friday, then we ought to ask ourselves this question in a very serious and honest way and then give an objective reply. Can the spending of the precious time of this House and the money of the taxpayer in this way be justified? Should we not rather reform Parliament, for why does the Opposition come forward here with a motion of no confidence when the nation outside has expressed its confidence in the Government time and time again? Is it not time we reviewed this old pattern which we follow here year after year and adapt the system so that we will be better able to discuss legislative measures?

Thank (bedank) the Ministers.

Why should I dismiss (afdank) the Ministers? They are doing their work well. I honestly want to advocate to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that he should consider a revision so that the time granted him here can be better spent in the promotion of national interests. Sir, what have we had here during the past two days? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition stated that we should adopt a middle course. He no longer believes in separate development.

And you do not believe in it either.

No, we do believe in it.

Why do you not implement it then?

I want to deal with two other statements which were made here. The hon. member for King William’s Town levelled the accusation at the hon. the member for Bantu Administration and Development that we were establishing one territorial authority after another, that the administration thereof was being left in the hands of the Whites, and that we were not training non-Whites to take over the administration.

Hear, hear!

The hon. member is exclaiming “hear, hear!”, but he will sing a different tune when I have finished with him. I come now to the hon. member for Port Natal. The hon. member came forward with the old story about Limehill. I want to ask him whether he believes in the principle that black spots should be removed?

Go on, reply now; after all, you are the new leader for Natal.

After all, the hon. member is now the new leader for Natal. He has turfed out the hon. member for Durban (Point) there. No, the hon. member has been silenced; he does not want to reply. Does the hon. member want to gainsay the priests there? They maintain that they do not believe in it; they maintain that the black spots should not be removed. They are opposed to the Bantu being removed to better conditions:

Better?

Yes, much better conditions. Sir, I should like very much to return to the hon. member for King William’s Town. The hon. member levelled the accusation against the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development that we were granting self-government or territorial authorities to all the Bantu homelands, and that we were not training the Bantu to take over the work.

I never said that.

Who said it then?

I said your number one priority was authorities.

And there you were wrong as well.

Sir, what has the Government done since the granting of self-government to the Transkei to promote and to train Bantu officials to be of assistance to the Bantu there in order to bring about a greater degree of independence so that they can develop their country? If we examine the position over the past few years we see how this Government has made positive attempts to replace white officials with Transkeian citizens. We see that a great deal of progress in this direction has already been made, we see that tremendous progress has been made. Let us look at the establishment for December 1963.

Are you debating with yourself now?

I am debating with that hon. member opposite. I am now engaged in supplying facts of which that side is unaware. I am now enlightening the ignorant, that is what I am doing, or is the hon. member afraid of my debating in this House? Does the hon. member want me to keep quiet about this matter? If we look at the establishment for 1963 we see that there was a total of 2,444 posts on the establishment of the Transkeian Government, of which 465 were Whites. Looking at the establishment for 1968 we see that there were 3,400 posts, of which 360 were for Whites. Between 1963 and 1968, therefore, the establishment increased by 39 per cent, but the number of White encumbents decreased.

It was a waste of money.

No, it was to the benefit of the hon. member and to the benefit of the entire Republic of South Africa. Or does the hon. member for Yeoville no longer want the Bantu homelands to be developed? Does the hon. member think that they should develop on nothing? The number of Whites on the establishment decreased by 20 per cent. Put another way, in 1963 90 per cent of the establishment consisted of Whites, but in 1968 only 10 per cent of the establishment consisted of Whites. In this way this Government helped the non-Whites in this Transkei, in this way opportunities were created in order to assist them. I also want to mention, and the hon. member for Transkei knows this, that there are even now two offices in the Transkeian territory which are staffed by Transkeian citizens only, i.e. the offices at Flagstaff and Tsomo. Only Transkeian citizens work in those offices. Is that not a tremendous achievement which has already taken place in the homelands? Yet accusations are made here to the effect that we are too slow and that we are doing nothing in regard to this matter.

Is that all over a period of 21 years?

No, it did not take place over a period of 21 years. This was established during the past five years.

What did you do during that time?

I shall now tell you what we have done during those 21 years.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition believes that his middle course of a race federation is the course which should be followed, but I want to give him the assurance to-day that the course he wants to follow is filled with potholes, and most hon. members on that side, even the hon. member for East London (City), do not understand that race federation plan. The voters outside do not understand it. The hon. the Leader will have to explain his plan from scratch because nobody understands it. This afternoon I want to tell the hon. the Leader and his Party that his race federation plan will eventually lead to integration. Let us make this very clear in this House: There are only two courses which can be adopted, one either has segregation in a country, or one must have integration. There is no middle course one can follow. The white voters as well as the non-white voters of the Republic have accepted segregation, but now we want to devote five full days to debating that matter back and forth. Sir, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, his Press and certain hon. members opposite have suddenly stirred into action, and do you know why? Just because certain bodies and certain persons have, through their monthly publication or their organizations, warned the Government and drawn attention to the fact that the homelands should be developed more rapidly, but those bodies and persons support the homeland policy, they believe in apartheid. But now quite suddenly the hon. the Leader and his Press have caught fire and think that this policy of separate development is no longer capable of being implemented.

To-day we want to say this. The pattern according to which white South Africa intends fulfilling its duties of guardianship are determined by three considerations in particular.

The first consideration is that in this modern world a nation cannot be effectively independent or free, unless its people are literate. The second consideration is that the successful self-government of that nation depends upon the existence of a political system which is derived and developed out of that nation. Thirdly, political independence must inevitably be supported by economic development. It is the policy of the National Party to promote education, political growth and the economic development of the Bantu homeland territories. These three considerations must go hand in hand and at the same time determine the rate of development. One cannot single out one facet, i.e. economic development, and establish a comprehensive development programme, while all the other facets are unable to keep pace with it. If the human development in particular cannot keep pace with it one is definitely heading for chaos. It is very desirable that economic development should take place at the greatest possible rate. We all agree with that. But we maintain that it would be immoral to allow the establishment of foreign interests and the exploitation of the Bantu in trade and in industry in its homelands. We must use white capital, initiative and skills—in this regard we do not differ—wisely and on a large scale. We must harness it in order to help the Bantu in their homelands. But at the same time we must harness it in such a way that we protect and retain the economy of the Bantu so that it is not exploited in order to re-establish an imperialistic policy in respect of the Bantu. That is why we advocate the agency basis, but not in the way the Opposition wants it. Now all the Transkei traders have to be bought out. Of what real significance were those Whites to the Transkei?

What is happening now?

A mere nought! Not only a red one, but a red one and a blue one. That is how much significance they had. We can state here to-day that the Government has made every attempt to develop our Bantu homelands into self-contained and economically viable units. I want to use the same quotation used by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. He said the age of fairies was past. I want to tell him that the time is past when a fairy can wave a magic wand and one has an “Alice in Wonderland”. One does not find this any more to-day. Everything must be properly planned. And as the inhabitants of the homelands are able to help themselves, with the assistance of the white man, we are assured of orderly planning. But if we were to apply an everything-on-a-plate policy as was done in the Africa states, we would be heading for confusion and poor planning. We would then be committing an offence against those people in the homelands.

The hon. member asked: “What have you done during the 21 years during which you were in power?” I want to say to those hon. members: “Just think back to 26th May, 1948, when we had to take over your bankrupt legacy.”

Bankrupt?

It was in truth rotten with bankruptcy. One could not eat without standing in a queue in those days, so bankrupt was their legacy. I et us consider the platteland and the urban areas. What had the United Party done since 1936 to develop the Bantu homelands or to purchase land according to the 1936 Bantu Trust Act, or to clear up the black spots in the platteland? What had they done in the cities to separate Whites from non-Whites? What had they done to consolidate the reserves in the platteland? What had they done during all those years? This is what he National Party has done during the past 21 years. Just think back to what the conditions on the Witwatersrand were. White, black and brown people were living next to one another. Just think back to the slums we had. To-day I want to ask hon. members on the opposite side whether there is one person who was removed from one area to another and who is prepared to-day to return to his old area? Is there one such person? Not one person who lived in Sophiatown wants to return there from Meadowlands. Not one who lived in Apex wants to return there from Daveyton. Not one who lived in Cato Manor will want to return there from Umlazi. We still have one area on our conscience, and that is District Six, but there they are saying: “Leave it to Blaar.” He will rectify matters in that area as well. During these 21 years during which the National Party has been in power, we have had to build 258,394 houses for the Bantu alone in order to remove them from amongst the white people where they had been living.

Are they now in the Bantu homelands?

They are in Bantu townships, properly accommodated under the policy of this National Party. We removed them from amongst the Whites and we accommodated them properly in Bantu townships. This is what we did in respect of the Bantu in the cities, but let us consider the position in the platteland. Let us see what the platteland looked like in 1948 when the National Party came into power. There were 399 black spots with a total surface area of 181,996 morgen.

How many black people?

Unfortunately I do not have that overall figure. [Interjections.] We shall be able to furnish you with figures as well, do not be concerned about that.

How many bankrupt spots were there?

Do not become concerned. I am still with you. There were not only 399 black spots, but there were also 69 small and poorly situated Bantu areas in our platteland which constituted a surface area of 394.000 morgen. Let us see in what Provinces the black spots lie. In spite of this that Jeremiah who sits at the back there comes forward and complains about one place such as Limehill. He does not go and have a look at all the other places where the problem has already been solved. Let us see where these black spots are and how they have been removed in recent times. In the Orange Free State there are three black spots, extending over a surface area of 7,547 morgen. The Government has already cleared 882 morgen of that land. Mr. Speaker, did you know what has been hampering the Government there? The Government has been engaged for quite a long time in clearing 5,430 morgen land in the Bultfontein district, in which district there are Fingos living who have to go to Indwe. However, there is some white attorney or other who has told these Bantu that they do not have to move. The Government has acquired 9,000 morgen of compensatory land in the Indwe district. The Government has a very difficult task solving all these problems. Let us look at the position in the Transvaal. I notice that the leader of the United Party in the Transvaal, the hon. member for Yeoville is looking at me intently. In the Transvaal there were 60 black spots, 60.567 morgen in extent, of which the Government has already cleared 29, 33.461 morgen in extent. In addition to that there were 37 poor Bantu areas, 106,981 morgen in extent, of which the Government has already cleared 17, 25,895 morgen in extent, and made this available to white farmers. What is the position in the Cape? In the Cape there were 137 black spots, 64,633 morgen in extent, of which the Government has already cleared 62, 30,895 morgen in extent. In Natal there were 199 black spots, 49,218 morgen in extent, of which 28, 997 morgen in extent, has already been cleared by the Government. Hon. members who represent constituencies in Natal know with what difficulty we have had to deal in Natal. They will know that many of these areas have been subdivided. For example, in the Klip River district there is a piece of land, 81 morgen in extent, which has been subdivided into 103 surveyed erven. It is not an easy task to trace the owners of those erven. They are either dead or they are no longer there … [laughter] … or at least, they are living somewhere else. Mr. Speaker, they are in any case better off than the United Party, because they were able to find a refuge elsewhere. In any case, this is a tremendous task which the Government has been tackling in the 21 years of its office. During this time the Government has succeeded in clearing no fewer than 199 black spots throughout the length and breadth of the platteland of our country. In this way 85.216 morgen has been made available to white farmers while it has bought compensatory land elsewhere for the Bantu.

Out of what total?

The total number of black spots was 399. Of these the Government has, as I have said, cleared 199. The corresponding surface areas are 181,996 morgen and 85,216 morgen respectively. In this way the platteland is becoming increasingly whiter, and in this way the Government is clearing black spots in order to benefit not only the Whites, but the non-Whites as well. In this way the Government is consolidating the reserves and bringing together what belongs together. In this way we are bringing the Whites together, we are bringing the Coloureds together, the Indians and the Bantu in their various ethnic groups.

To what ethnic group do the Coloureds belong?

The Coloureds belong to their own group. But I want to proceed and deal with town planning in the homelands. An hon. member opposite has already asked what is being done in this respect in the homelands. Well, in 1950 there were only three towns in the homelands: Hammanskraal with 250 houses; Zwelitsha with 935 houses; and Umlazi with 906 houses. To-day we can feel proud because there are no fewer than 112 towns in the homelands already.

May I ask you a question?

No, I am sorry, my time is limited.

How many townships are there in the Transkei?

You know how many there are. Unfortunately I do not have the figure available. But, as I have said. 112 towns have already been established in the homelands. During the 21 years 65,000 houses have been built for them, of which the Bantu themselves built 2.000. Is that not progress? But the Government did not simply leave it at that: it is not only the homelands they looked after. We all know what took place when the United Party was still in power—in each town there was a non-white location. Where there was a homeland nearby they did not send them to it. Then this Government came along and where there was a homeland nearby it demolished all the locations by moving the inhabitants to the homelands. In this 46 such towns have been established since 1960. Let me mention a few places where this was done: Duiwelskroon, Nelspruit. Phalaborwa, Pietersburg, King William’s Town, East London. Lichtenburg, Newcastle, Ladysmith, and so on.

So. Mr. Speaker, if we look at our country, South Africa, to-day, then we look back with pride over the 21 years during which this Government has been in power. In this country of ours we see four ethnic groups living peacefully next to one another. We see peace, we see quiet, we see orderliness. They are no longer intermingled residentially …

But they are still intermingled residentially in the Transkei.

We see that there is mutual respect for one another’s morals and customs to-day. In this way the National Party is building the future of our country and its people. But the road ahead is still a difficult one. But the National Party is not afraid of it; nor are they afraid of the attitude of the United Party. We are not afraid of the chattering and barking and interjections from their side. [Time limit.]

There is one most significant aspect in the speech of the hon. member for Brakpan to which I should like to draw attention. That hon. member is a whip of the National Party and he is the first speaker of his party to take part in this debate to-day. He is a good friend of the hon. the Prime Minister. The hon. member has given us an indication of what he thinks of this no-confidence debate. The hon. the Prime Minister has not yet entered the debate. [Laughter.]

Do you think it is worth while?

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to hear that nervous laughter, because it shows that it is not only the Prime Minister who is out of touch with feelings in the country, but also all those who now laugh. And I will say why, and before I go further, let me remind them of the leading article in Die Burger of this morning. I want to say this, Sir. Every single member sitting in this House knows that my leader’s case in his motion of no-confidence has been unanswered, and every single member here knows that it is unanswerable. If the hon. member for Brakpan is reflecting faithfully the hon. the Prime Minister’s views about the situation, then we are going to learn a lot about the hon. the Prime Minister in this debate. Organs of the hon. the Prime Minister’s party have called for a “Volkskongres”, a very unusual step for a Nationalist Party organ to take. Some of the best leading intellectuals on the Nationalist Party side have given vent to considerable worry about the situation. I say again my hon. leader’s speech has been entirely unanswered. I will not say for a moment that South Africa, like Rome, is burning, but if ever there was a picture conjured up in my mind of a man fiddling while things needed to be done, it was the speech of the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development. The hon. the Minister spoke about fences in the Transkei and vegetation and matters which had been developed there, but he completely missed the point, and so did the hon. the Deputy Minister. They both entirely missed the point. Of course, they could not meet the point. I want to say to the hon. the Prime Minister it is true that he looks very relaxed as he sits here to-day. In fact, he came into this debate only a short time ago. Perhaps he was busy on State affairs, but he has taken a very casual attitude in respect to this debate. I want hon. members to read the leading article in Die Burger to-day, because this merely sums up the worry and the concern of people on their side, and how right they are to be worried and concerned! And let me say this, that Die Burger says this attack we have made should not be underestimated. [Laughter.] Sir, we will see who laughs last. It says—

And they ended up by saying this—

[Interjections.] The more hon. members laugh at the point I make, the more I say they are out of touch with the country. The more they laugh, the more I say that they are whistling to keep their courage up.

I say, and I believe it to the full, that there can no longer be any doubt that the grand design of the Nationalist Party has failed. We are now left with a passport apartheid. I called it a grand design; I believe it should perhaps have been called a grandiose design. The grand design was to draw the Blacks back by opportunities in the Reserves. We now have a thoroughly shabby design, namely to remove them, often against their will, to resettlement areas where there is no work for them. Sir, I want to add just very shortly to the evidence on this point. Many speakers on this side made the point that people have been removed, particularly from the Western Cape, where they were in employment. I myself struck this facet. People, a mother and several of her children, in work at Middelburg were taken against their will out of Middelburg, and sent away. This is a serious and most unfortunate feature.

The hon. member for East London (City) said that yesterday already.

This grand or grandiose design was that these people should live a normal family life in the area in which they worked. That was the grandiose design; it was a good design. What have we now got left with us? We have left the shabby design, the design that in all our urban areas, outside the border areas and the reserves, these people shall be turned into migratory labourers. This is the clear implication of the Government’s policy. If hon. members opposite want chapter and verse they can look at the report of a speech made by the hon. member for Heilbron in Port Elizabeth, as reported on the 2nd May, 1968. There he said that there were only approximately two million Bantu economically active in the white homelands and that there were actually six million there, and then he said—

Sir, I say that this shabby idea is not worthy of the men who designed it; it is not worthy of the Nationalist Party, let alone of South Africa. I believe that the people of South Africa are entirely against these aspects of the shabby design and indeed against the whole design. We are against this and the churches are against it. Sir, I hope hon. members opposite will take due note of the fact that the Dutch Reformed Church on the 25th January, 1969, also came out entirely against this idea of breaking up native family life. This is what they said—

In another passage they expressed deep concern at the effect of the system on the Native people. They gave a certain amount of credit to the Government in certain respects, but the fact remains that they completely condemned this aspect of Government policy. Sir, the great point is that the grandiose design of the Party required family life for its people. It is this shabby design that requires migratory labour for as many as possible, and strong condemnation of this system has been expressed by this much-respected body. Sir, in saying that, I do not want hon. members to think that the only result of this system is its effect on the Native families themselves. Reports from the Dutch Reformed Churches made it very clear that this break-up of family life was a cancer in the life of the Natives, a cancer which would not leave us South Africans untouched. Sir, I personally do not think that the Government will get far with their whole policy or with this policy in particular, because as soon as the South African people know the facts they will not have it.

Sir, there is so much of this policy of theirs which is contradictory. The Government, in terms of this shabby policy of moving these people to the reserves in this way, are going to strike big snags. When these Bantu states, in terms of the other aspects of their policy, become independent, they are not going to allow these people to be pushed back into the reserves in this way. They will not accept these millions of people back into the reserves. Already the Transkei refuses to have them back. They refuse to do anything about the repatriation and re-settlement of the Blacks from the white areas. I want to remind hon. members opposite, if they think it is going to be easy, that for many years already there has been a sum of R5,000 voted in the Transkei for the re-settlement of these people in the Transkei and that money has been entirely unused; they won’t use it. Does any hon. member opposite think that when these states, instead of merely being self-governing to a limited degree, become independent states, they will allow a single one of these people to be pushed back into Mnxeshas and Hinges and Sadas such as we have to-day? I ask hon. members opposite to think again.

Surely they would want their people back.

It is well-known that not only Kaizer Matanzima but the whole Legislative Assembly of the Transkei were united in their refusal to accept this repatriation until industries were established in those areas and employment created. Therefore I say these people will not accept them back until doomsday because the way this Government is going about things means there will not be work for them until doomsday. We see in to-day’s paper that 100 Bantu have been laid off in a decorticating factory at Butterworth, apparently because of the drought, but I think the business is probably not paying. So many undertakings that we have heard from hon. members opposite are not paying. So we find at the present time that the Government are resettling people in the Ciskei, before it attained its present status, and piling them into other areas where to some extent they also have a lower status. I believe that will not be possible as we get further on and in this respect, too, Government policy is becoming unstuck.

I should now like to look a little deeper at certain aspects of migratory labour and family life, and related it to United Party policy. My hon. Leader has stated our policy and he said—

This contrasts sharply to the rightless, rootless mass of migrants with which the Government is encircling our industrial areas. My Leader said there is a place for migratory labour, he referred to young men in the mines, to the Natal sugar plantations, and so on. These are very largely unmarried men. This is my first answer to the new Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education. The hon. the Deputy Minister said here that at the 1st of June. 1966, approximately 1,600,000 single natives—“enkellopende naturelle”—were working on contract in the Republic. He then proceeded to say that under the United Party policy all of these would be in the cities with their families. That was a statement by a Deputy Minister and of course it was given wide publicity in Nationalist Party organs. What he said was utterly irresponsible, as I shall proceed to show. He therefore places an additional eight million Bantu in the white cities under United Party policy, and he then proceeded to calculate it would cost the earth to house them, let alone provide all the other facilities. I do not doubt that he said this unintentionally. But it is an absolutely gross misrepresentation of what the position would be like under United Party policy. Let me tell him that this misrepresentation of our policy is one of the ways by which hon. members opposite are always trying to frighten the public and influence them against this party. Let us therefore look at this fairly and freely together here to-day.

I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister how many of that 1,600,000 were in fact unmarried men? He does not know, but he made calculations.

They were single men in the European areas, that is the point.

No, the Deputy Minister said under our policy there would be an additional eight million Bantu people in the cities.

Of course, if they bring their wives and children in with them.

That is what I am asking the Deputy Minister, I ask him how many of those are unmarried. I ask him, secondly, how many of those people would fall under the provision which my Leader mentioned, namely that there is a place for migratory workmen in our policy? He did not tell us how many were perhaps miners. I do not know how many are on the mines in the figures he gave. How many came from outside South Africa? How many of those people fall under the category which my hon. Leader had earlier on mentioned in the debate? I want to ask the Deputy Minister this. How many of those workers would want to bring their wives. The United Party is not going to force anybody to bring his wife. There are other aspects, including the aspect of influx control. I think any fair-minded man in this House will admit that the Deputy Minister has no answers to those three questions and his figures are not correct.

I have not finished with the Deputy Minister because I want to tell him there are three other vital factors which will greatly affect the number of people in our cities under United Party policy. The first of these is the following; and everybody should be fair and see this. Our economy has been giving employment to approximately 300.000-400,000 Black people every year for the past few years. Here I have Mr. Kueschke of the Industrial Development Corporation, who says that in the next 30 years there will be an immense expansion of production and “werkverskaffing in die nywerheid sal verdriedubbel”. In other words, this process is going to go on. These people have to come from somewhere. There are either going to come raw Natives with red blankets from the reserves, or they are going to be people from our towns. Surely it is better to use the children who have grown up as children of people in towns than to bring in people from their home conditions in the reserves to work in our towns. This is largely what the Government has in fact itself been doing these last few years. Our hon. Leader mentioned that the population of our urban areas has increased by 2 million over the last 16-17 years. Those are largely children from families living under Nationalist Party policy who have been taken up in employment. Why can that not happen under a United Party government? Referring to the figure which the hon. member mentioned, I want to say the following for the consideration of hon. members: If we have a settled population in that way, we shall need far fewer Native people to come into our cities and to work there. My hon. Leader mentioned that fact. They will be far more efficient than the raw chap that comes in and does one’s garden or acts as the houseboy in your house. [Interjections.] I am sorry, but I do not have time to deal with questions. I have a great deal to get through. This is the point. If these people are permanently employed here, they will be urbanized. Read some of the Government propaganda on how our Native population has urbanized, and compare the chap in the Transkei with his red blanket to the one who has become used to his transistor radio, etc., who should and naturally can be happily absorbed in that work.

But there is a second point. I have mentioned that, because they will be more efficient, we will need far fewer. But there is another point with regard to this question. Our policy is to establish industries inside those reserves. Of course, where that occurs, there will be family life and employment around these factories. The hon. the Deputy Minister, I think, admitted that the Transkei people are working in East London. I do not think that they abandoned their huts in the Transkei in every case. They keep two homes. Consequently, it is more expensive and it does not attract as many people.

There is another point. We will be able to keep far more people at work in the reserves for the following reason: Everybody knows, and many people boast, that we have political stability in South Africa. We are glad it is so. But what kind of political situation is there going to be in these reserves when they are independent. Who thinks that the industrialists are going to take the chance of going into some of these places and establish their factories. Under our policy, where they have the guarantee and the assurance of the Republican Government to safeguard their interests, they will go in. Therefore, far more people in that way will have work and family life.

But now there is another aspect of this that needs to be mentioned. Hon. members opposite are already packing Native people around our towns. They do it in two ways. Firstly, they extend the borders of the reserves very often to take in areas previously White. They have done that in many places. They have done that in Mdantsane. But the fact is that they have, and they are apparently quite happy about it, under their policy and urban proletariat. I say there is no difference. Those people are as urbanized as the people of Soweto are, certainly when they have been there for as long. I therefore say that there need be no fear at all. I believe it is misrepresentation to suggest that there is going to be this vast influx. There is not going to be anything of the kind, and if anybody disagrees, I hope he will give me reasons. I now want to move to a conclusion.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that this side of the House has convincingly destroyed the whole basis of Government policy. I believe that the grand design has been absolutely axed. Now we are busy with a shabby design. The shabby design is something to which they are twisting and turning in order to hang on to power. They are trying, just as the hon. member for Brakpan, to bluff this House and to try to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, by saying that this debate is not a crucial and a vital debate for this country. Hon. members opposite are hoping that they can get away with this policy amongst the people. I say that they are using valuable time, and it is good that there is a reservoir of goodwill which enables us to have time. I know that they have done and meant to do their best, but our population distribution here is such that it leaves no alternative but that we must show that all groups can live in harmony within one federal state. I know that hon. members opposite say that there are nations here. Maybe these people were once upon a time nations and completely separate, but they have become so interweaved that the position is now different. It is as if we have an island of people and then an entirely different people went onto that island so that it no longer is a straightforward position. Take the case of Britain. The people of Britain consist of English, Scots and Welsh on one main island, leaving the Irish on one side. Those are all people of highly different individuality and nationality but they are now so distributed over their land, and for other reasons, that they accept that they must work as one country and have one loyalty. My hon. Leader has said that our policy does involve inequality. Anybody can see that it involves inequality. This is a position that has come down to us and on which we propose to build. We wish to reduce this inequality, but we shall take no chances with the future of South Africa. We will take no chances with the high standards that have been built up here, both economically and culturally.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the hon. member for Pinelands that he tried very hard to reply to what the hon. the Deputy Minister said, but did not succeed in doing so. During the last five minutes of his speech he said that he was reaching the climax of the speech, and I saw the hon. member for Bezuidenhout looking askance at him. I want to draw the hon. member’s attention to that, because this afternoon I am going to discuss what he and the hon. members for South Coast, Durban (Central) and Port Natal said in connection with Limehill.

During the past year a great deal has been said about Limehill. In this hon. House we now actually have to listen once again to things being said about Limehill. These things are also being said by persons who have personally visited Limehill. I want to say at once that before one can speak about people in the Bantu homelands, one must know the traditional customs of those people. One must know those people of Limehill and of the Bantu homelands. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) went to look for typhoid the other day in a small stream at Hammarsdale. A photograph appeared in the newspaper in which he, a Bantu woman and another Bantu were sitting on a stone and looking for typhoid in that small stream. [Interjections.] Now I want to say to him that it is not necessary for him to look for venom in my words, because he brought that venom here. Before one can express an opinion about these people in their homelands, one must know their habits and customs. Hon. members such as the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Port Natal cannot have any say in the matter, because they do not know the customs and the traditions of these people. They know the urban Bantu, who have accepted the customs of the Whites. They know the Bantu who bath in a bathroom. The Bantu in the homeland enjoys sitting on the bank of a river and taking his bath there. His laundry is done there at the river. I am not mentioning these things this afternoon as an excuse for the removal of these people to Limehill. I am saying these things because anyone who goes to Limehill can only speak about it with authority if he knows the customs, the habits and the traditions of those people. If he does not know these things, he must not express an opinion about those people at Limehill. [Interjections.]

In the homelands the Bantu live high up on the mountain slopes. You can go to Msenge and the Tugela River and you will find very few houses beside the river. It has become tradition among the Bantu to live high up on the mountain slopes. This custom has the following origin: in the days when malaria was a problem, they did not want to live in the valleys. They went to live up on the mountain slopes; and the children of those Bantu, and the Bantu women as well, in some cases have to carry the water for miles from the rivers up the steep slopes of the mountains. I can understand that if the hon. member for Houghton went there and saw a child of four or five years of age carrying a four-gallon tin on her head, she would say, “Shame”. I can understand that, Sir, because those hon. members do not understand these things, the customs and habits of these people. This removal to Limehill is not the first which this Government has tackled. The officials who carried out this removal know their jobs. The officials have already been engaged in this project for a long time. I want to say this afternoon that I give full praise and credit to these officials who are carrying out this difficult task so successfully under provocation. These people often have to work in the presence of high priests and clergymen …

And members of the United Party!

… yes, and members of the United Party, who came from Johannesburg, Ladysmith, Ermelo and all over the place to be present at Limehill on the first day of the removal.

Tell us about Limehill.

I am dealing with Limehill. These officials deal with these people in the most sympathetic way possible, and we praise them for what they have done. Having said this, I must also point out that the hon. the Minister demands to be kept well-informed from day to day of what is happening there. I also want to make it very clear that the hon. the Minister gave instructions that Limehill should not only be visited by the Chief Bantu Affairs Commissioner or the local Bantu Affairs Commissioner, but that visits should be made to Limehill from his head office from time to time.

When did that begin?

I am sorry that the hon. member has just woken up. From time to time the hon. the Minister saw to it that he was kept abreast of and received first-hand information about what was going on there. The hon. the Minister sent officials from his head office. Even the Secretary to the Department went to Limehill to see what the position there was. The hon. the Deputy Minister was sent to have a look. I went to have a look. Yes, Sir, even the hon. the Minister himself went to have a look at Limehill. Is the hon. member satisfied now? The difference, however, is this: when these officials and people from the head office and the Ministry went to Limehill, they went without Press photographers. We went without sensationalism. We were busy carrying out a task at Limehill. We did not drag these people along in order to get sensational reports in the newspapers. We went there to do a job, and these people are busy with that job day after day without getting sensational reports in the newspapers.

The question arises: where do the Vergelegen-Limehill-Uitval people come from? These people who have now been settled at Limehill, Vergelegen and Uitval were brought from over-populated black spots and over-populated mission stations. In the areas in which they previously were, namely in those black spots and over-populated mission stations, they paid up to R20 a year in rent. To-day they pay R1 a year in Limehill, Vergelegen and Uitval. They paid R20 a year for a plot with a shanty on it. They had no sanitary facilities. Where are the hon. members now who wanted to cry to high heaven about sanitation? Have any of them ever raised a cry about the sanitation to be found in the black spots? I put the question here: has one of them ever given an account here of the parlous conditions in which these people live in those black spots and at those mission stations? But when the Government places these people in better circumstances, there is an outcry about all these things. They paid R20 while having to draw water from small streams, rivers and gravel-pits. Then there was no outcry. They paid R20 a year for eroded and trampled bits of land where the pasture has become worthless. They paid R20 a year while there was no clinic nearby. Schools and shops were far away. But when the Government resettles these people in the Limehill-Vergelegen-Uitval area, there is the outcry: where is the school? I ask the hon. members of the Opposition: why do you make no outcry about the shortcomings prevailing in those black spots? If you want to do something, why do you not act in the interests of those Bantu? Have the clergymen, the high priests, or hon. members of the United Party and certain English-language newspapers ever complained here about the precarious position in which the people in those black spots find themselves? I ask whether Senator Henderson, who was neighbour to a black spot which has now been removed to Limehill, ever complained about the precarious conditions on those farms? Now the hon. members of the Opposition have nothing to say. Sir, I have here before me three sets of photographs, one of the Limehill-Vergelegen area, the other of a black spot and the third of a Bantu township in a homeland, Mondhlo, which has already developed to quite an extent. I want to invite hon. members of the Opposition to look at these and to tell me if they are still prepared to make a single speech about conditions at Limehill after they have looked at them.

May I have them, please?

Yes, you may have them. If these are the conditions existing in the black spots, then I ask, why all this fuss about the Limehill-Uitval-Vergelegen area? Then I ask the clergymen, the high priests and the members of the United Party and some English-language newspapers, why all this fuss?

Sir, I shall tell you what the answer is. All those that I have mentioned here are in the process of realizing that the policy of the National Party is succeeding in respect of the clearing up of black spots and the consolidation of Bantu homelands, and they cannot swallow that. They cannot tolerate the fact that this policy should succeed in the Republic of South Africa; hence all this fuss.

What does the Burger say?

You do not understand the Burger.

I want to refer to an article in the Natal Mercury, a report by Mr. Lawrence Morgan, who has already been mentioned here, in the issue of 28th January, 1969. He visited this complex as a newspaper man and talked to the people of Limehill, and he states in this report that he also talked to a pastor, Tshabalala, of the Methodist Church; in Mr. Morgan’s own words the pastor had this to say; “To sum up the general attitude of the community,” and I now quote what Pastor Tshabalala said to the Mercury, not to me—

There you have it in the words of a minister of the Methodist Church, a person who is at the head of a congregation that has many members there and who comes into contact with many people there. Here he declares frankly that it is 100 per cent better there than in the areas from which they came. He goes on to say—

That is what Tshabalala says to the United Party and to these clergymen. That is what is being done under this Government and that is the gratitude expressed by the people. They are grateful to the Government for having brought about these changes. I personally visited this area on 20th December, 1968. I also talked to the people and found them happy and satisfied.

Naturally they would tell you that.

None of this agitation in regard to this Limehill-Vergelegen-Uitval area originated within that area itself; all of it came from outside. Not a single person in that area was quoted as having said that he was dissatisfied with the conditions there. The hon. the Minister talked to the chiefs and they told him how happy and satisfied they were. Now the United Party members have to come along, and that is what beats me, and create this terrible fuss, which is lapped up abroad. That is what they are doing to the Republic of South Africa. That is what they are prepared to do to this country.

During my visit there I discovered that in spite of a prevailing drought, the people were busy laying out their gardens, making additions to their houses, developing their plots and beautifying everything. In spite of the drought they appeared to be happy. We received no complaints from them, except that one Bantu said that he was not happy. He said: “I was accustomed to washing in the river and now my wife has to fetch bath water for me from a tan, but I suppose I shall have to get used to that.” Typical again. In this quoted report by Mr. Morgan about Limehill there is also this striking caption: “No Water Shortage.” That is what the Mercury says, not I. He then goes on to say: “And that is more than can be said for some white areas right now.”

Read to the end.

You can read to the end yourself. He writes further—

One year later.

I continue quoting from this report—

He goes further and writes—

I am quoting the words of someone who paid a visit to that area and then wrote these things, but now it will be said that Mr. Lawrence Morgan went there long after these matters had been solved. I want to make the point here that all the necessary services, all the necessary facilities, were already there and that advance planning had already been done. On the first day of the removal everything was in readiness to receive the people there.

Repeat that.

I repeat that the day the people arrived there, everything was in readiness to receive them.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

Sir, I only have 30 minutes at my disposal and in any case I am not going to finish; I am very sorry. But the hon. member may come to Ladysmith and put all his questions there. Sir, with every lorry that we supplied for the transport of those people, four labourers were provided to assist those people in the conveyance of their goods. During the entire removal there were never more than ten families removed per day, so that one could keep pace with the needs of those people. The hon. member for South Coast said here that there was an old, dirty little dam at Uitval.

They should simply have thrown him into it.

At Uitval there are five boreholes, one containing untested water and one which is dry, but in this entire complex there are many windmills which can be reached. Even though the windmill is not at Limehill, one can reach a windmill in another area, just over the border, because the area forms one large complex. One can even walk to and fro to obtain water or other requirements.

What date was that?

The question is on what dates these boreholes were completed. Number one, borehole No. 332A, was sunk on 3/4/1968; it is 248 feet deep and it delivers 456 gallons per hour. Number two, borehole No. 332B, was sunk on 18/7/1968; it is 380 feet deep and it delivers 666 gallons per hour. Number three, borehole No. 332C, was sunk on 13/9/1968. Number four was sunk on 3/4/1968 and number five on 10/4/1968. Mr. Speaker, there you have five boreholes which were sunk at Uitval.

They are not at Uitval. Were they in Limehill or Uitval?

At Vergelegen there are eight …

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, my time is almost up and I am only half-way through my speech. At Vergelegen there are eight, on which six windmills are mounted; two have power pumps, and there are two auxiliary power pumps in readiness in case something goes wrong with the others.

Deal with Uitval.

At Limehill there are two, with two windmills. When six families arrived at Limehill on the first day, there was water … [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member may proceed; he must not pay any attention to interjections.

When six families arrived at Limehill on the first day, water was obtainable at a windmill 700 yards away. The following morning, at 6 o’clock, the taps were laid on in that area. The water mentioned by hon. members which was conveyed in tankers and drums, was brought there for the people for building purposes, in order to bring it nearer to their houses. Sir, the Departement provided wood free of charge. The priest Nelson also had wood, but he sold it to the people there.

And he obtained the wood free of charge.

Throughout this residential area of Limehill, Vergelegen and Uitval there are large cement dams with roofing or covers over them; there is water for those people which has been tested and is under cover. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, what right have hon. members opposite to start this agitation throughout the country and to create a big fuss despite the fact that these things have been done in such a way as to do credit to all those people? Sir, one cannot tolerate such statements being made in the exercising of free speech. If hon. members make such statements inside and outside this House, is it not understandable that the Press will make a fuss and assist in exaggerating these things? I therefore stand by the hon. the Minister and I say: Lock the doors and the gates of those places so that such people cannot enter there. Sir, when those people are off-loaded there, they are provided with rations for three days. In this particular instance rations were provided not for three days only. Rations were supplied to them free of charge for six days. I am under the impression that persons of about five church denominations were moved there. One of them, I think the Ethiopians, held a thanksgiving day for the successful way in which the removal had taken place. They held a thanksgiving day, and then there are still people who come and tell you this sort of thing, while the people actually involved, the people who were moved, are grateful for what was done for them. All these things were done to make things easier for the people. Latrines were built for them. Where it was difficult for them to build, the Department did the building for them at a small fee of R1. It was then recommended that that soil be used for building purposes, but because it is subsoil and not topsoil, it was not suitable and the Bantu then, as is their custom, used antheaps to build their houses with, and when the Department saw this, antheaps were conveyed there for the people. What more should the Minister and his Department have done? Had we done anything more, the hon. member for Durban (Point) would have said: “You are a lot of negrophilists (Kafferboeties).”

He says so anyway.

Sir, more was done than could humanly have been expected, and in spite of that these things are still being said. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time that I have had the misfortune to listen to this speech by the hon. member. I heard him make the same speech in Newcastle about six weeks ago when, I must say, he did it a little better than he did it here this afternoon. I want to start where he ended off. He ended off, as he did at Newcastle, by saying that the test of what they had to do at Limehill was not what was good, not what was necessary for the Bantu, not what was necessary in the interest of health; the test was that they did not do too much in case they were called “kafferboeties”. [Interjections.] The hon. member has just said it now in the House: “We could not do more because we would have been called ‘kafferboeties’.” But the hon. member made a mistake. It was not me he had to be afraid of, because I have never called members of the Nationalist Party “kafferboeties”. He should have consulted his friend, the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Development. Speaking also in Newcastle in 1968, the hon. the Deputy Minister had this to say:

It is therefore not I that the hon. member for Klip River must be afraid of, but his own Deputy Minister, who has said that in the Nationalist Party they are talking about doing too much for the black man.

I did not say that.

These are the notes taken by a reporter present at that meeting and this is a photostat of his original typed script.

I say that that is a lie.

I had this report confirmed by three other people who were present at the meeting. In view of what he has just said I want to challenge the hon. the Deputy Minister. He has said that this is a lie. Did he not say at Newcastle last year that only R110 million out of a budget of R2,000 million was being spent on the Bantu?

Yes, I did say that.

I also challenge the hon. the Deputy Minister to tell us whether he did or did not say: “There is talk in the Nationalist Party that too much is being done for the black man.”

No, that is not being said by members of the National Party. I repeat that it is a lie.

Mr. Speaker, that is the trouble with hon. members opposite. Their yardstick is not what is necessary in the interests of the country but what impact the things they say will have on votes. We saw just now how the hon. member for Klip River took that as his yardstick. It is therefore no wonder that his own newspaper Die Natallerwhen he was elected leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal, used the following significant words:

It is not a question of what would do the Nationalist Party the most good, but what would do the least harm. The least harm they could think of was to elect the hon. member for Klip River. I think that in fairness to the hon. the Prime Minister I should read the next paragraph of this report:

The Nationalist Party congress gave the Nationalist Party Government that slap in the face.

There are other members on this side of the House who will deal in detail with the hon. member for Klip River, the non-minister for Klip River. I want to refer to only one point made by the hon. member. He referred to the visit to the Limehill area made by himself and others without the hullaballoo of newspapermen. I take it then that he condemns those who had their photographs taken and who made Press statements; that is of course except for his colleague, the hon. member for Umhlatuzana, who went there with a photographer and the Secretary of the Nationalist Party.

I did not.

Perhaps the hon. member took his own camera then. He got a photo of himself taken with his own camera. In the photograph were also the Secretary of the Nationalist Party and a few of his friends. They were all in the photograph taken at Limehill, a photograph taken at this Utopia.

It was taken by a sneak photographer.

This photograph was published. I agree with the hon. member for Klip River, who condemned his colleagues’ actions in seeking publicity through photographs of himself. If this Utopia of Limehill, Uitval en Vergelegen is so wonderful, I am sure that the hon. the Minister will now open it to the Press for the world to see just what a Utopia it is. There will be other comments regarding the details of the speech to which we have just listened from my colleagues on this side of the House. These remarks will show how far from fact many of these statements were. They will prove the original criticism made, namely that our complaint is not against the removal of black spots. We accept that; we have never opposed the removal of black spots in principle. What we have opposed is the lack of planning and facilities which accompanies these removals. To say now, a year later, that these areas are a Utopia does not answer the criticism that there was a lack of planning and action when this was needed in the beginning.

I read last night that the Hansard of this Session will be equivalent to approximately 45 novels. The Nationalist Party contribution will be the fiction section of that library. In fact it will be the space fiction section when it comes to dealing with the reality of the issue which this House is debating, the issue of race relations and in particular Bantu affairs in South Africa.

Cadman is listening to you.

The hon. the Minister’s colleagues such as Jaap Marais and others will tell him that we in the United Party have sufficient able people to share responsibility. In our party we have friendly rivalry. We do not have a “stryd agter die skerms”.

The main problem in trying to bring this debate down to fundamentals is that the Nationalist Party was launched into orbit by the late Dr. Verwoerd but they forgot to put retro-rockets on to their craft. They are now circling in perpetual orbit and our problem is to get them back to earth, to get their feet back on to the ground so that we can deal with what is happening in South Africa. We have listened to the whole of the Bantu Affairs team on that side of the House. We have listened to the Minister, the two half-Ministers and the three members of the Bantu Affairs Committee as well as the aspirant Commissioner-General. If that is their first team then I can see that they are due for relegation to the reserve league. After all those speeches we are no nearer the fundamental issue which faces us, namely that the Nationalist Party’s alleged policy has already failed or whether it has any prospect of succeeding. We heard from the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education a beautifully-phrased letter and how well everything was going. To digress—I notice that the hon. the Minister of Community Development is here. The present Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education has taken over from him. As everyone knows, there was a small-time gamble of a political reputation concerned with reversing the flow of the Bantu. When I heard the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration speaking I remembered my reaction on seeing this photo of the Minister of Community Development, the new flower child, wearing a garland. In this photo he has a smirk on his face like the cat that ate all the canaries. Obviously he was thinking of that small gamble he took, the gamble of his reputation being staked on his reversing the flow of Bantu labour from the white areas. When one looks at the photograph one’s heart bleeds for his enjoyment in wearing garlands instead of talking nonsense about Bantu affairs.

The Deputy Minister who took that Minister’s place quoted a letter here from a Bantu saying how pleased he was to be rehoused. But he did not stop reading soon enough. He forgot to draw a line at the spot where he should have stopped and went on to deal with a request for a service station in his new area. When we asked him what about the other letters then there was a “tjoepstilte”. This was the only one of all these letters which stated how well off they were now. [Interjections.] I should like to hear some without applications for concessions and without ulterior motives.

The whole team has talked here for two days and not once have they got down to basics. They have quoted odd letters and reams of statistics, statistics of 200 shops bought, 100 businesses opened, so many miles of barbed wire, barbed wire to put round the Limehills and Vergelegens and other places so that nobody can come in. They have a few thousand morgen under irrigation. All this to show the success of apartheid. Put into perspective it is but a drop in the ocean, it is like a drought-stricken figleaf covering the nakedness of their real policy for solving the problems of Bantu affairs. They quote these figures and they are impressive-sounding on their own. But put them against the background of 12½ million Bantu, against the background of 28 million Bantu at the turn of the century, put them against the moving of 2 million Bantu in Natal which has been estimated to be necessary by the turn of the century, consider the figures we have had quoted here, and they have not even scratched the surface of the problem.

There are four fundamental issues. Firstly, the establishment of homelands, secondly, the resettlement of the Bantu in them, thirdly, making them economically viable, and, fourthly, making them politically independent. The hon. the Minister complained that other people set up targets for them and then criticized them when they did not achieve their goals. I assume the Government will accept that those are the four targets.

Not in that order though.

I will come to that. My next note is that, as usual, the Nats start at the end of everything and put politics before the basic establishment of the homelands, the making of them viable, and the settlement on them of the people.

What country is viable? Is Lesotho viable?

The Nationalist Party always starts at the wrong end of everything. Accepting the Nationalist Party’s priority order, those are the four fundamentals, the fundamentals of establishing Bantustans, making them viable, resettling the Bantu in them, and giving them political independence. I think they must accept that is a fair summary of Government policy. If the talkative Deputy Minister of Justice wants to go into orbit over other countries, let him go. I am dealing with South Africa and South Africa’s problems. I say that in this debate not one of these issues have been given clarity.

Firstly, the establishment of homelands means consolidation. I have here three statements by the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, one made on 7th October, 1967, saying that “consolidation is the basis, land partition the ultimate aim” and dealing with the importance of consolidation. Then there is a statement by the Deputy Minister of Justice who has been making so much noise here, saying the black spots will be cleared in this decade, that is before 1970. He is like the hon. the Minister of Community Development, only he has not staked any reputation. The Deputy Minister said the elimination of black spots would be completed during this decade. That was also on 7th October, 1967. Does he deny it? He has now less than two years to go. We have had the latest figures quoted by another member of the team and they are not even starting to get close to the target. That was the year before last. Now we have in July of 1968 the Minister himself, the Minister who thought this was so important, saying the following. I quote from the magazine Bantu of July 1968—

Now where are we? Is it important or is it not important whether we have consolidation and whether the Bantu live in the Bantu areas? Quite clearly it is important to the Nationalist Party’s planning, for they themselves have said so, over and over again, but now recognizing the total failure of that, they are now creating paper states and paper citizenship. They are creating paper states by giving a passport to people and saying, “You are now in Bantustan”. They make paper citizens of the Bantu by saying people can live where they like, they do not have to live in the Bantu homelands; but have they solved the problem of consolidation and resettlement? Where does one go when the Government contradicts itself through its own Ministers? In one year a Minister says consolidation and the moving of people is essential, and then he contradicts himself later. I have not got time to quote everything I have here, I have masses of quotations here on the importance of moving people back to the homelands, of doing without Black labour. The hon. the ex-Deputy Minister was one of the most outspoken people on the return of the Bantu to their homelands, but now we are told it does not matter where they live, labour is the white state’s problem, it does not matter where the people live, as long as they have some paper to show that they are citizens of a foreign state. This is the double-talk that is going on. But there is no doubt in the mind of the Bantu politicians. The Chief Minister of the Transkei, after repudiation by the hon. the Prime Minister, in August last year repeated demands for more land, yet we are told now that consolidation and the presence of people are not important. But here we have a Chief Minister who, despite two or three repudiations, during an interview given in August last year again claims the districts of Elliot, Maclear, Mount Currie, Port St. Johns, and so forth. So, in other words, we have a Bantu government, a Bantustan, knowing what it wants and demanding land, and we have a White Government which has no policy in regard to consolidation or resettlement. It quotes figures here which are but a drop in the ocean and says, “This proves how we are solving the problem”. I want to refer very briefly to our main objection to what the Government is doing in this regard. We accept that the reserves must be developed. What we object to, is the utter wastage of money and effort through the hamhanded way the Government is doing this for ideological purposes and not with the object of building up the reserves. There are farms bought for thousands and tens of thousands of rand, lying idle for years. One of them, Platt’s Estate near Ixopo is used as a week-end shooting box for Government officials and visitors. It was bought years ago, and there is not a Bantu on it. At Qudeni, Nqutu, and all over Natal, land has been bought and taken out of productivity and is living there idle. But in the reserves, to which the Bantu are being pumped back, there is the most shocking soil erosion it is possible to contemplate. I went to Msinga and the surrounding area towards the end of last year. I was also there about a year before. There is not only no grass. There is no sand. It is down to bare rock in most places. There is not a leaf on the trees to graze on. That is where they are pumping back thousands of Bantu to be resettled in their homelands. I challenge the Government, the Minister and his whole team of Bantu Affairs people to show what those people are going to live on. They have taken over the Tugela Estate, for which roughly million of white taxpayers’ money was paid. That beautiful farm under irrigation consists of 2,000 acres and lies in an area that averages between R200 and R400 income per acre per year to all the white farmers in the area. Do hon. members know what it is producing now? Between R10 and R20 per acre per year. If they ask me where I got the figure, I did what the Deputy Minister wants, I went to an official and I asked him. He told me that was approximately the average. I checked it. This beautiful estate, which consists of 2,000 acres of productive soil and which is under irrigation, yields a few peas and a few mealies, where all the other land in that area produces up to R400 per acre. This Government has wasted the money of the taxpayer, bought the land, put Bantu on it and are producing nothing. There is one white supervisor to run that whole estate.

You are deceiving this House by alleging that the income of that area is R10 to R20.

Per acre.

That is not true.

That was the figure I was given by the official in charge. What is the figure?

I do not have it here.

The Deputy Minister may not have the figure, but I have been there and I have seen the shocking state that land is in. A couple of Native women were working there, “skoffeling” away on what should be productive land, able to feed the Bantu. Alongside, packed in in their thousands, are people being resettled, with nothing to live on, no land to graze cattle on or to farm and with no employment available to them.

What about the water sheds of Natal? The water sheds of all the rivers are in Bantu areas, the lifeblood of South Africa being exposed to the desert which the Bantu homelands are becoming. There is still to-day a fight going on between the Departments of Bantu Affairs and Soil Conservation over the question of the protection of the watersheds of Natal. Every river in Natal is threatened, either in its head waters or somewhere in its course. We object to the spending of money, not to develop, not to increase productivity, but simply so that lines can be drawn on a map. The land can lie idle, waiting to turn into more desert, more wasteland, and more danger for white South Africa if the policy of that Government should ever succeed.

I do not have time to deal with the other aspects of the failure. But the failure starts at the beginning, at the consolidation—the very creation of homelands. It has continued through every phase. The Government only shrug their shoulders and say “As long as we have dealt with the political issues, everything in the garden is rosy”. Then Limehill becomes a Utopia and the problem of homelands does not matter, because there is no vote for the Bantu in White South Africa, because we have given them a bit of paper. This side of the House has proved that the whole policy of the Government has failed in every field. All the Government has come back with, is a few statistics to show that here and there they have a couple of brittle showpieces which they can hold up and say “Look what we have done”. But they have made no attempt to prove that their philosophy is possible of implementation. If what we have heard is the truth, then they have in fact strengthened our case. If what they have said in this debate is their answer to our accusations, then what we have said is doubly correct. Because we have had no indication whatsoever that this Government even has a plan, let alone a possibility, of implementing the grandiose scheme which in fact is still circling around out in orbit.

No wonder it is then that there was hollow laughter when my Leader moved the vote of No-Confidence. The hollow laughter was whistling in the dark, because we find some interesting things going on in the Nationalist Party. We find on the same day, for instance, a heading from one of the few supporters who have come out openly for the Prime Minister: “Vorster is besig om te wen”, by an ex-Minister, the “kami-kazi” Minister, Mr. P. M. K. le Roux, who in the same statement says that the greatest service he can do the Nationalist Party, is to resign. On the same day we see “Verligtes verloor, sê Jaap”. Here the hon. member for Innesdal is reported as saying “Die verligtes verloor. Die verkramptes gaan wen”. Sitting opposite him in the front bench, the ex-Minister of the Interior is saying that the “verligtes” and the hon. the Prime Minister are going to win. I think we should have some clarity. I challenged the hon. member for Innesdal last year in the first and again in the last debate to get up and say that he backs the Prime Minister and his “verligte” outlook. I challenged him again at the end of the session and I sat down before my time expired so that he could answer me. I gave him four minutes to answer. I hope now that he will get up and tell the House, tell South Africa and particularly the Prime Minister that he is behind him. We do not know where we stand. Another ex-Cabinet Minister is attacked by no less than three Ministers. He is virtually called a liar by Mr. Blaar Coetzee. He said “Hy het al teen Verwoerd gemompel”. He accused him of having intrigued, even in the days of Dr. Verwoerd. The hon. the Minister of Justice says: “Ek moet my sterkste afkeur uitspreek teenoor die onverkwiklike aanval van dr. Hertzog op Die Beeld. Dr. Hertzog praat van ’n liberale groep.” [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, before coming to the question of Limehill, with which I also intend to deal more fully, I would like to reply to certain accusations that were made by other members opposite. It was the hon. member for King William’s Town who in his speech referred to a quotation from Die Oosterlig as to what I was supposed to have said. Just for the record I wish to say that whatever he quoted, was not a correct statement of what I had said in Port Elizabeth. Whether it was quoted correctly or not, I have not had an opportunity of checking. I can call witnesses, inter alia, the hon. members for Algoa and Port Elizabeth (North), who attended the meeting. Those were definitely not the words I used at that meeting.

Did you have Mr. Reinecke with the tape recorder there? [Laughter.]

I would like to refer briefly to the plea made by the hon. member for South Coast when he appealed to the Prime Minister to give Natal a Cabinet Minister, even if only a wee little Cabinet Minister. I can quite appreciate his plea remembering that he thinks with nostalgia of the years when he resigned as Administrator to become a Cabinet Minister and then missed the boat.

I would now like to deal with the question of Limehill. Yesterday the hon. member for Port Natal accused the Government and the National Party of callousness towards the whole question of resettlement of Bantu and the prevailing circumstances. I would like to say that far from callousness on the part of the Government, or the National Party or the Department, he himself, if anyone, is guilty of callousness in dealing with this whole question, because when he deals with it he is playing politics for the sake of politics and not for the sake of truth. I also paid a visit to the area, but I certainly was not prepared to pay a one-sided visit only, as he did. I made an effort to take as guides the accusers on the one side and a departmental official on the other side. Part of my visit was therefore with Father Nelson, who has said a lot about this area. The other half of my visit was in the company of the departmental heads who were responsible for the removal and the resettlement from the very first day. Consequently, I feel that I am in a better position than he is to give a balanced picture of what has happened. In the first instance, whereas the first visit with Father Nelson was an interesting visit, whereas he showed me the graves, the representatives of the Department showed me the development that had taken place there. They also showed me what had been done and the circumstances under which those people lived before they came to Limehill.

Did you go to Boshoek?

I went to Boshoek and I have got colour slides and black and white photos portraying the situation there. Boshoek was owned by the tribe and is a farm of some 8,000 acres. The farm is subject to soil erosion, which has rendered the 8,000 acres almost useless. Nowhere within five miles of that farm is there a tap with clean water. The only water they could obtain there was, as the hon. member for Klip River said, from dongas and dams. I have got colour slides of the dirty water in the dams in which little boys swam naked.

And from springs.

And from springs which they had to dig in the dongas to allow the water to seep through. That was the only available water. Not one single pint of the water that was available was ever tested by the C.S.I.R. or anybody, to see whether it was fit for human consumption or not. After the resettlement, and all the noise, the water at Boshoek was tested and found to be not fit for human consumption. Every drop of water which was made available by the Department at the Limehill complex had been tested and had been found to be suitable for human consumption.

What about the water coming from the dam?

The water in the dams is not fit for human consumption. There is ample tested borehole water fit for human consumption. That was verified by an independant investigator, namely the Agricultural Editor of the Natal Mercury. In spite of what the hon. member for Durban (Central) said yesterday, namely that he bore witness to what he saw, I want to suggest that next time he goes there he takes glasses to enable him to see more, or that he takes a better guide who is prepared to show him everything and not limit his viewing to a few sites which a biassed guide might have shown him. In the article on Limehill, which was called a balanced article by the hon. member for Durban (Central), it is said that there are no less than 50 boreholes in the Limehill-Vergelegen-Uitval area.

How many?

Fifty. I will quote from this article by Mr. Lawrence Morgan. He said—

How many have water in them?

It is immaterial how many boreholes have water. What is material is that every single reservoir is supplied with water, whether it is from a borehole or from tankers. Every single reservoir is supplied with water and there is no shortage of water for human consumption or for other purposes. The United Party say that their objection is that the removal was done without preparation and that the Department was not planning. The facts are that on the first day of February, 1968, six families were moved and when they were moved there was water available, as the hon. member for Klip River has said, within 700 yards of where they were settled.

How many houses were there?

There were tents provided and on that issue I would like to reply to the accusation. The accusation appears to be that they should have been provided with ready-built homes. The facts are that, on a formula which is more than just, every single person who was moved was paid in full for every improvement he had in the previous settlement from which he was moved. They were paid in cash for every single improvement they had where they previously came from. If they had cattle they were paid.

Squatters as well?

Those who were removed on the first day were not squatters, whereas every single one of them had been paid, they were supplied with tents to live in; there was water available, and they were supplied with free food for the first six days.

Why only six days?

They were not supplied with free food at Boshoek where they came from. There they had to buy their own food. The food that was supplied was 3 lbs. of mealie meal and milk powder while coal for fire, building wood, and medicine were also provided free. On the second day after the removal a shop was provided and manned by a Bantu from a tent. It was expected of these people to build their own homes because they had been paid in full for the improvements they had at their previous residences. But the hon. member for Port Natal now asks whether toilet facilities were available. I do not know whether he expects water-borne sewerage to be provided, but can he tell me if, within five miles, there was even a single pit latrine where they came from previously? The only sewerage they had in the place where they came from was nature itself, that nature which also provided the water running into the dams they used. [Interjections.]

Order! I think the hon. member for Port Natal is making too many comments.

Criticism has been levelled that the school facilities were not adequate in the new area. In the area where they came from, Boshoek and Lylle, they had two schools with 678 children and eight teachers provided by the Department of Bantu Education. They had been provided from the first day with school facilities in tents, and within six weeks in prefabricated buildings, and now they have a brick school and there is another one under construction, and the others are still provided with prefabs. But four new schools were provided against the two they had previously, and against the eight teachers they had for 678 children they now have 13 teachers. But it is the new conditions against which the protests have been made. I have with me the photographs of the schools they had previously and they were not wonderful schools either.

A lot has been said about the disease, about the typhoid. When I visited the area on 9th January there was not a single confirmed case of death from typhoid. It is quite true that there were deaths. There were also cases of typhoid, but there was not a single death from typhoid. Up to now, according to the latest figures, there were 18 confirmed cases of typhoid, but the ballyhoo that was made about the typhoid in that area is out of all proportion. It was made out as though it was an epidemic. I have taken the trouble to get the statistics for the whole of South Africa for typhoid, and the facts are that in 1965 in the whole of South Africa, among the Bantu, there were 4,585 cases of typhoid. In 1966 there were 5,436 and in 1967 there were 3,391, and of all those cases more than 85 per cent of the typhoid was in the rural Bantu areas. But now with 18 cases, and at that time not a single death, protests went up to high Heaven, as though it were an epidemic of indescribable proportions. It is true that there were deaths in that area, and deaths among children as well, but that is so throughout the whole of South Africa, especially among the non-Whites. No accurate statistics are kept because many Bantu fail to register deaths. It is therefore impossible to compare the incidence of these cases with those of the previous area. But what is true is that the conditions in the Limehill-Uitval-Vergelegen complex are far superior in every single way to the conditions that prevailed in the previous area.

The question now arises for what reason was this outcry made throughout the country and overseas, and I want to stress “and overseas”. I maintain it was in the same pattern as the protests which were made by Father Huddleston, by Ambrose Reeves and Canon Collins and all those people in regard to every single removal and resettlement that has been made in the whole of South Africa’s history. It is in that same spirit that these protests have been made. Another very interesting feature is why the protests should be made and attached to the name Limehill, because in this complex there are something like 1,084 families that have been moved, and of those only 287, just over a quarter, have been moved to Limehill. Over a half, 576, were moved to Vergelegen and 84 to Uitval, and 125 elsewhere. Most of them were moved from the farm Boshoek and some from the farms Lylle and Meran. Now I ask whether the reason why the name “Limehill” was chosen was not possibly, because, for propaganda purposes the word “Vergelegen” does not roll off the tongue so easily, whereas the name “Limehill” rolls off the tongue very easily, especially overseas. The names “Limehill” and “Lylle” roll off the tongue, but the names “Boshoek” and “Uitval” just do not catch on overseas; and Limehill, after all, rhymes with Sharpeville. What a lovely propaganda stunt this was to use against South Africa—not against the Nationalist Party, but against South Africa and against the whole pattern of removal and resettlement! This was a trick perpetrated by those people on the country.

Sir, they have complained of the lack of medical and health facilities. At Boshoek, which was occupied for 100 years by the tribe, no district surgeon ever visited that area as a matter of routine, and no protests were ever made. At Limehill, Vergelegen and Uitval a district surgeon came there once a week. But they protest and say no proper facilities are provided. Recently two district surgeons have gone there on two days a week. The Bantu have left an eroded farm of 8,000 acres, and have been resettled on a farm of 12,000 acres, a farm which is not eroded, a farm where the cattle—and I have the slides of it—are fat and in first-class condition in spite of the drought. I have the whole layout of the area. There are close settlement areas which have been planned; other areas have been set aside for communal grazing, first-class land with a stream running through it, and other areas have been set aside for ploughing and for communal agriculture. The whole area has been planned from the start without any hitch, and yet the United Party have let themselves be caught hook, line and sinker by this propaganda stunt which has been perpetrated on South Africa. It is nothing more than a propaganda stunt and the unfortunate thing is that Sunday newspapers have gone the whole hog in making use of this propaganda stunt. In the Sunday Tribune, which has been one of the main culprits in this respect, on 12th January they had a full-page article on Limehill, with photographs. On the opposite page they had an article on Adolf Hitler, with photographs and also a cartoon of tens of thousands of graves at Limehill. The implication of that is nothing short of scandalous. In a subsequent article in the Sunday Tribune they come again with front-page headlines about typhoid, but this is now typhoid in another area. Just to keep up the connection with Limehill there appears next to this article another with the heading “Limehill Priests Praised”. That is on the front page. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) incidentally fell into the trap there. Sir, I hope that this nonsense about Limehill and this whole propaganda and the whole pattern of the attacks on the removal and resettlement of the Bantu will stop, and I hope that the United Party will also give some heed to what the agricultural editor of the Natal Mercury wrote when he said that basic to much of the unhappy history of Limehill up to the present has been the conflict and the clash of personalities between one or two local officials and the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. Nobody can be in any doubt that all these people seek only the well-being of the Africans in the area. I wish that that were the case. Is it not time that they got round a table and called a truce and got something positive to bring about the improvement of the area? It is quite obvious that the United Party and those whom they use, or by whom they are used, have no interest whatsoever in the improvement of the people who are resettled. They are playing at politics and they are playing a dirty game.

If there is one Department in this country which is run very badly, then it is the Department of Bantu Administration and Development. If there is one Minister who cannot tolerate any criticism, it is the Minister in charge of that Department. Whenever anyone on this side of the House criticizes his Department, he comes back with sneers and objectionable criticism.

Like when?

I remind myself of his jokes in such bad taste last year when Limehill first came to the fore and how he criticized and sneered at those people from various churches who went to help the people who had been resettled at Limehill, Uitval and Vergelegen. I want to tell the Minister that it is not only Limehill or Vergelegen or Uitval that is an example of bad management on his part. His whole border industry campaign is run badly, and I will come to that presently. His whole re-settlement scheme is in a shocking mess. His whole idea of apartheid is a mess of pottage and if anybody lifts the lid of this mess to see what is cooking, he sneers at them, he condemns them and he calls them un-South African because they have the cheek to criticize his Department.

Why not stick to medicine?

Sir, the hon. member over there who has just become an additional assistant manager of this Department says that I should stick to medicine. Well, I stuck to medicine and I went to Limehill to see what was going on there. I did not go there as a propagandist. I went there with the sincere wish to help. The hon. the Minister says that I went there and that I did not take the trouble to see any of the officials in the area. Is that correct; did he say that? I want to tell the hon. the Minister that as usual he is wrong. The first people who stopped me at the gate when I arrived at Limehill were persons who were associated with his Department. They directed me to the Limehill clinic and they went so far as to tell me the way to the mission clinic as well. I thought it was very nice of them. I did not think that I was doing anything illegal at the time and I, for one, never dreamt that I should have to have a permit to visit a showpiece of South Africa because that is what it appeared to me after listening to the hon. member for Umhlatuzana. According to him, this is an area which is so much better than the area from which they came. Sir, for 20 years they have allowed Boshoek, Meran and the associated areas to exist under conditions which to-day they are condemning. There was never a district surgeon in the area; there was never a latrine in the area; there were no signs of any hygiene. For 21 years those conditions existed. I did not know that they existed; I had never heard of it. But I did hear about Limehill and I went there to see what was happening.

In other words, you also slept for 20 years.

When I got to Limehill and Uitval and Vergelegen I looked around and I thought to myself: “Well, this is not too bad; what is all the fuss about?” But when I investigated, then I saw what the trouble was; then I suddenly realized that 9,000 odd people had been suffering for over a year and had been in trouble for over a year. The hon. member for Klip River made the statement here to-day that when the first people arrived at this re-settlement area, everything was in readiness for them. That is what he said, and I asked him to repeat it. Sir, this comes from the mouth of the present leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal. On 13th February, 1968, a year ago, I asked some questions and they were answered by the present Minister of Community Development. I asked the Minister—

The reply was—

Fair enough. Then I asked him (and I want the hon. member for Klip River to listen to this)—

It was a straightforward question and I got a straightforward answer: “No permanent provision was made.”

“Permanent”.

He went on to answer—

One borehole.

For six families.

That is more than you can take with your whisky.

Sir, that was at Limehill, to supply water for 9,000 people, irrespective of how far they were from that borehole.

For six families.

Sir, I asked him whether the necessary provision had been made before the first people arrived at Limehill, and if not, why not, and the answer was—

No provision had been made for sanitation. The hon. member for Klip River said that full provision had been made; the Minister says that no provision had been made—a round nil. Surely the reasonable attitude for the hon. member and his colleague to adopt …

He misled the House.

On a point of order, Sir, the hon. member for Yeoville is accusing the hon. member for Klip River of having misled the House.

The hon. member did not say that he had done so deliberately.

He did do so deliberately.

On a point of order, Sir, you say that he did not do it deliberately and now the Whip over there says that he did do so deliberately.

Order! The hon. member may continue.

Sir, the hon. member for Klip River indicated to us that there was a clinic available to the people who came to Limehill and the hon. the Deputy Minister agreed.

There was a tent available.

What did the hon. the Minister of Community Development say to me when I asked him whether there was a health centre or clinic? His answer to question number five was “none”. There was no clinic available. I asked him whether there was a medical officer available at Limehill and, if not, why not, and the hon. the Minister’s reply to question six was “no”. May I now ask the hon. member for Klip River what was available? He is the leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal and I ask him: What was available there?

All the essential things were available.

Sir, I asked the hon. the Minister whether there was a possibility that the people who had been re-settled would be given food and he told us that food was being provided for six days. I do not doubt that at all.

A shop was provided the second day.

And the money to buy?

I asked him whether it was possible to get milk and meat and things of that kind, and what was I told? I was told that there was a pedlar who went around and sold meat from his little cart. I asked the hon. the Minister at the time whether it was possible to provide provisions for the people who had been re-settled after they had exhausted the first six days’ supplies and I was told that there was a pedlar who sold meat in the area.

What would you have liked us to sell—caviar?

Sir, that reply is typical of the way in which Ministers of this Government treat human beings. I wonder whether any of those hon. members sitting opposite have ever been short of food?

If they have no bread they could eat cake.

When a Bantu is short of food, then the hon. the Minister says: “What do you want him to eat? If he wants bread, give him cake.” He goes further; for meat he substitutes caviar. I would ask the House not to joke about this tragedy.

It is only a tragedy in your own mind.

Sir, I am not going to go through all the figures, but I do say that when it comes to the health aspect of Limehill, Uitval and Vergelegen, it is an amazing thing to me, in the face of the knowledge of the Minister of Health, in the face of his attitude towards patients in the past, in the face of the known fact that he has been a very, very good doctor and honourable man, how he could personally protect the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development. It is obvious to me that his first duty was towards his party; he protected the hon. the Minister. It was after that protection that I think the other things took place. He made a statement in which he said that sickness in the area was no worse than sickness and death in other areas of a similar kind.

Is that not true?

I am sorry to hear that there are other areas of a similar kind. Then I asked why the people in this area were not inoculated against typhoid. I am still awaiting a reply from the hon. the Minister.

But you were there; what information did they give you about typhoid?

I want to tell the hon. the Minister that I obviously could not attend the patients at the clinic at Limehill; that was run by the district surgeon and it was not my business to go there and take over from him.

May I inquire from the hon. member which member of the Department of Health he contacted while he was at Limehill?

There was not any member of the Department present there. I could not find out from anybody whether any single person had received an inoculation against typhoid.

You did not go to the clinic?

I was at the clinic and there was a nurse there.

Did you not ask her?

Of course, I asked the nurse what arrangements were being made for inoculation and she said “none”. The hon. the Minister must tell me whether, since I was there, he has instituted a campaign to inoculate the residents against typhoid. It is a reasonable thing. He knows quite well that that is exactly what he would have done if typhoid had broken out in any other area. If there were 16 cases of typhoid in a white area, what would we have said? Would we have said that it was an epidemic, or not? Would we not have taken every precaution to find out where the source of infection was? Would we not have been informed as to where the source was? Would an effort not have been made to remove the cause? Would the contacts, at least, or the people in the immediate vicinity, not have received inoculation against typhoid?

I do not think that anything of that kind was done. Perhaps the Minister can give us information in this regard. I for one will thank him for having done it, if he has done it. I will be very pleased to hear that he has done it.

Why do you speak about this if you do not know what the position is?

As far as I know it was not done. I am waiting to be corrected. I will be only too happy to receive that correction.

Will you apologize to him for this accusation?

Yes, I will apologize to him. I will even thank him apart from apologizing for having said this.

Now that we are dealing with the Limehill question let us deal with other difficulties that have arisen there. The hon. the Minister knows as well as I do that dozens of open pit lavatories were in existence there. The depth of these lavatories depended on the amount of soil that could be taken away. The depth also depended on how soon they struck rock in digging these pits. I want to know from the hon. the Minister what instructions he gave to his officials in the department to ensure that those latrines were given some kind of disinfectant. I suggested chloride of lime. I went there to see whether any chloride of lime had been used in any of those areas at all and I could not find a drop if it anywhere. When a group of people is taken from one area to another in terms of resettlement arrangements, do we go forward or backwards, or do we remain stationary? I can tell the House that to go forward in this department is almost unheard of. The best that they can do is to remain stationary. [Interjections.] Yes, status quo is the cry of the hon. members opposite; the Bantu must not be given too much.

I want to discuss now the question of the building of their homes. I have heard hon. members on that side say that it took these people a year to build a hut. What were they doing in that time? I watched what was going on there. A paraffin tin of water must be filled and carried to where the hut is being built. The paraffin tin of water weighs 40 lbs. and it must be carried.

What is wrong with that?

There is nothing wrong with that at all. That paraffin tin of water must then be mixed with soil and made into mud. There is nothing wrong with that. That mixture makes approximately a yard and a half of a thin layer of mud and there is nothing wrong with that either. When that layer of mud is put on to the hut the man who is building the hut walks back to the water supply and fills the tin again and returns to where the hut is being built. That is why it takes a long time to build a hut. That is also why the man who is building his home cannot do anything else but build his home. He cannot go out to work. If he were to leave his hut it would be either half finished or he would have to ask somebody else to build it for him. These people are short of money.

That is an ordinary thing that every man does.

When the hon. the Deputy Minister wants a house built is that the way he sets about doing it? He probably gets the hon. Minister of Bantu Administration and the hon. Minister of Health, those two healthy bachelors, to do the work for him. That is the kind of thing that goes on there.

I come now to the question of water. The hon. member for Durban (Central) explained with insight what the position was there.

Whatever he said was a fabrication.

The hon. member for Durban (Central) is an honourable man. He is a man who is trained to observe and he would not come to this House and tell us untruths. As far as I am concerned, I would rather listen for one minute to what the hon. member for Durban (Central) has to say than the rantings and ravings of the hon. member for Umhlatuzana.

I still say that it was a fabrication.

The hon. member for Umhlatuzana has the cheek to tell me that what the hon. member for Durban (Central) said was a fabrication. In many cases their water had to be boiled and it must still be boiled to-day. The real difficulty, however, arises with fuel. I do not know how many hon. members on that side have been to see the area there. It is a lovely grassy area.

Have you seen Boshoek?

In Limehill and Uitval you cannot see a single tree although there are some trees at Vergelegen. I am told that if a man from Limehill or Uitval goes to Vergelegen and collects dead wood and brings it back to use at Limehill he is liable to a spot fine of R10. I do not know whether something like that can be true. There is no firewood at Limehill and Uitval. I saw a woman on her knees keeping a little fire going with little pieces of grass and the paper labels of tins. They are using the labels from tins for their fires. I immediately started looking around me and I could not see a piece of scrap paper anywhere in Limehill, Uitval or Vergelegen. Paper is valuable there because it is used to heat and for cooking purposes. They have to make up their minds how they are going to use the little fuel they have. They must decide whether to use it for the cooking of food or the boiling of water. In nine cases out of ten they use it for the cooking of food. The result is that there is illness there and that illness is rife. In this regard I have some figures here which were taken at the little clinic at Umakazi. These figures were not compiled by Father Nelson, who is under the suspicion of those hon. members. In the period 28th December to 19th January, 760 people were examined at this little mission clinic. 269 of those people were suffering from diarrhoea; 68 of them from diarrhoea and vomiting; 47 from pellagra; 24 from kwashiorkor; 108 from abdominal pain of unknown origin; 43 from cystitis; 21 from eye infection; and 66 people suffering from cough. The statement I have here says further that there have been at least 22 cases of typhoid at the Dundee hospital. The point is that the hon. Minister of Health cannot have correct figures because no figures are kept. As far as I know there is no registration of disease there.

Where did you get your figures from?

I am going to tell the hon. the Minister now. There is a register at the clinic in Limehill and diagnosis is recorded in that register. What surprised me, and this is something I think the hon. the Minister ought to know, is that there is a little column next to the column for diagnosis which tells you what the patient paid. I do not know what arrangements the Minister has made about fees collected by the district surgeon, but I am quite certain that the district surgeon who was charging the fees did it in all good faith. However, these patients are indigent people and I do not think they ought to be charged a fee at all, and it is because they are being charged a fee of 20 cents, 30 cents or even 50 cents that these people do not go to the clinic as often as they should and they would rather go to the mission clinic where they do not pay at all, they get free service there. It is from this mission clinic that these figures have been taken; they have been taken from cards that have been filled in by doctors. Every single one of these figures is from a card filled in by a doctor. The Rand Daily Mail may have used these figures but they do not come from the Rand Daily Mail.

I say finally: Let us stop this quarrel about Limehill. I say the Ministers of Bantu Administration and Development and of Health must admit things are not as they should be at Limehill, at Uitval and at Vergelegen. Let us see rather if we cannot improve conditions there. Let us make it an area where the people can get help, where the people are supplied with proper water supplies, where food can be made available to them, and not at exhorbitant prices because of the distance the food has to be carried from the nearest towns to Limehill. Let us do that.

Do you know who sells the meat at Limehill? Father Nelson.

[Inaudible.] [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think that there can be any doubt about South Africa’s having had a very good year last year. Things went better for South Africa abroad, and at home there were such great achievements that even the outside world not only took cognizance of them, but they also benefited South Africa. All right-minded South Africans are grateful for the fact that the year 1968 was the way it was. But to the enemies of separate development and the people who seek to put South Africa in a bad light, 1968 was a disastrous year. Our Prime Minister was quite justified in saying the following in his New Year message (translation)—

Limehill is one of the onslaughts of that kind. It is an attempt on the part of the Progressive Party, it is an attempt on the part of the Black Sash, it is an attempt on the part of newspapers such as the Natal Daily News and the Rand Daily Mail, the Citizens Association and the United Party, which has now been dragged along, for there is going to be an election in Newcastle amongst other places, in order to present South Africa once again—now that she is doing well—to the world as a monster, a country which should be regarded with horror. I am now levelling this squarely at the United Party and their Leader for being instrumental in presenting to the world an ugly and distorted picture of South Africa.

One should be grateful for the Opposition, and I want to tell the people of South Africa that if they want to be grateful, they should take cognizance of what they are doing. What did the Opposition, all of its members, do in the recess of six months? They visited one place in South Africa of which I know, and that is Limehill. [Interjections.] I did not see any report in any newspaper to the effect that they had visited other places. The total task of the Opposition was to pay visits to Limehill and to express opinions about it. The rest of South Africa did not exist for them.

Senator Cadman and I and others were at Msinga and Weenen at the same time …

The only other thing that happened, was that Mr. Cadman worked with the hon. member for Durban (Point).

We were at Msinga and at other places at the same time; a whole lot of us went all over the country.

Let us add a few more “Limehills”, Msinga is near by. How far is it from there?

Quite close.

That is what the Opposition did, and let the electorate now take cognizance of that. That was their task during the recess, and now? Now we have a debate, and this year it is not four days, but five. We have now almost reached the end of the third day, three-fifths of the debate is past, and what has the Opposition done? Two things. In the first place, they have used this debate to say that the Government is doing too little for the Bantu because we are not developing them the way they want them to be developed and, in the second place, they have spoken about nothing but Limehill. There have only been two themes in this entire debate. Over there we have the people in the Press Gallery—what else could they write about? The Opposition have been talking about our haying done too little for the Bantu and about Limehill. This is the Opposition of the Republic of South Africa. They have used three of the five days, and in the remaining two days they have to give up time to the Progressive Party. Three of the five days have been used for those two topics.

Now I want to deal with Limehill, Uitval and Vergelegen, and I should like to furnish the House with the facts as I have them, and I want to point out what we have done there. I am not going back to the very beginning. I am taking this last episode in which the point at issue was mainly the sanitary conditions and the so-called outbreak of typhoid fever. On 13th November the Natal Daily Newspublished the following report—

This actually started with the report published by the Natal Daily News. I want to furnish the figures right away. I shall return to this report later on, Hon. members must remember that this newspaper wrote that “typhoid fever is raging”. Subsequently the newspapers were full of this. What are the facts? The following cases of typhoid fever have been reported since the date of resettlement, up to 18th January—in other words, over a period of round about one year. In Limehill there was one case, and after notification the patient could not be traced. In Uitval there were 18: 14 children and four adults. In Vergelegen there was nil. In other words, since the first people were resettled there up to the present there have been 18 cases of typhoid fever and one death out of a population of approximately 7,500. Yet this newspaper wrote, “Typhoid fever raging”. Subsequently the Opposition were up in arms and the whole country was set ablaze, and the outside world was turned against South Africa on account of this. If that is not a disgrace, if that is not something with which we can accuse the Opposition of being disloyal to their fatherland, then I do not know what it is.

The hon. member for Rosettenville who is sitting over there, has now become the pious angel. He gave me a testimonial here. I was good, but, upon my soul, I was not as good as that. He did not come to me and tell me those things. He has access to me, he has access to my Department, there is not a single doctor in my Department he does not know. No, he turned to the Sunday Times, and now you must see, Sir, in whose company he was there. He never denied it; it says so here in the Sunday Times. I quote—

That is the hon. member for Rosettenville. He does not come to my Department, he does not go to his colleagues. [Interjections.] They were there for two days, and they could not have stopped over in Limehill, surely. Where did the hon. members stop over? [Laughter.]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, may I ask, without any further comment, that the Minister withdraw that remark?

What remark? [Interjections.]

Sir, I shall tell you exactly what I meant. The hon. member was there for two days; he stopped over for one night. He told me that the only person of my department he could find, was the nurse at the clinic. [Interjections.]

Order! Order!

Mr. Speaker, the point I want to make …

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, may I ask the Minister to withdraw that remark?

This is Father Nelson.

The Minister may just as well sit down. Nobody is interested in what he says.

Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that once one gets the reply that Lime-hill is not a disgrace to South Africa, those hon. members are no longer interested. The hon. member knows what to do; he can leave if he wishes to do so.

The fact of the matter is the following: Twelve of the cases that were supposed to be “acutely ill” according to Father Nelson, were sent to hospital. What happened then?—

From 3rd to 5th December the following took place—

In addition they went from home to home and investigated matters there. But I was not satisfied with these home visits. I asked my medical adviser, Dr. Roux, to go there. He visited that area on 6th and 7th December, and this is what he reported. Hon. members must bear in mind that he visited 542 kraals, from home to home; 4,126 persons were visited. This is what he found: Of those who were indisposed, eight were confined to bed and 91 were not confined to bed, whereas ten had been admitted to hospital. If these figures are not normal, then there are no normal figures in the entire Republic of South Africa. The report submitted by my representative from Pretoria goes on to say (translation)—

Of this number only one person was sick, whilst the others were sent back home.

In addition, as regards this home to home investigation, as well as Dr. Roux’s visit, the following conclusions appear in the report—

I would also like to read out the following from this report—

Now I want to ask hon. members opposite whether there is any reason for any Minister of Health in any country of the world to lose his head if this is the report of his medical adviser following upon the report he received from his district surgeon? However, I was still not satisfied and instructed him to furnish me with another report at the end of January. Subsequently he re-visited this area from 20th to 23rd January. I am now going to give you, Sir, his report in detail. In the first place, the facts in regard to Limehill: This is the report submitted by my medical adviser in consultation with the chief medical officer in Durban. These are officials of the State who have over the years cared splendidly for the health of all races. The report reads as follows (translation)—

This is not a report by members of the Department of Bantu Administration. It is a report drafted by medical men who took the same oath as was taken by me and the hon. member for Durban (Central) and others. I wanted to say in passing that I appreciate the fact that the hon. member for Durban (Central) contacted me and discussed the matter with me as it is proper for colleagues to do. The report reads further—

I am now referring to people who have been resettled and who come from a place where no facilities existed.

And then Limehill has to be publicized as the place where death, epidemic, suffering, privation and human tragedies occur. I am reading further—

So much as far as Limehill is concerned. In respect of Uitval the report reads—

At the moment there are communal latrines. I want to add that the hon. member for Klip River was quite correct in saying that we should also have regard to the way of life of these people. What are the facts? The fact of the matter is that although the latrines are being erected, their everyday habits are not yet such that they use these facilities. I am saying this here and let us say this to the outside world as well, namely that we are not dealing here with people who are as developed as is the case with people in major cities abroad. In another report it is stated—

These things should not be blazoned abroad as if these facilities do not exist. The fact of the matter is that these facilities exist but are not being used. I want to return to the report and read out more about conditions at Uitval. The report goes on to say—

And then as far as Vergelegen is concerned—

This person, Dr. Botha, has been in practice for 18 years, and what does he tell us?—

That we know, too. I now come to the figures that were bandied about so in the newspapers—there were so many graves and so many had typhoid fever. These figures range from those furnished by Nelson to those of the Citizens’ Association and those of the Rand Daily Mail. What are the facts? According to the latest figures obtained from every possible available source, a total of 73 persons died in the Limehill-Uitval-Vergelegen resettlement area over a period of five months. Only one of them had typhoid fever. The total population of this area is estimated at approximately 7,500, and this has also been confirmed by the Department of Bantu Administration, but the figure is probably a higher one. If on an average a population of approximately 7,000 is used as a basis for calculation, it gives one a calculated death rate of 25 per 1,000 over a period of 12 months. This figure compares favourably with the only other available death rates for rural populations. In the African country of Chad it is 32, in Gaboon it is 31, in Guinea it is 41, in Mali it is 30 and in Morocco it is 20—as published by U.N. These are the only figures we have. I quote further—

Sir, to summarize I may just say, in the first place, that our Department has carried out home to home investigations, that the Director in Durban and my representative from Pretoria, my adviser, have paid regular visits there and reported on them, that toilet facilities have in fact been provided there, that the water there is adequate and pure and being tested regularly, and that immunization has in fact been carried out there. And in this regard I just want to say that immunization is, as a matter of policy, only carried out on contracts, and approximately 600 persons have been immunized. So, there can be no doubt about the fact that in Limehill or Uitval or Vergelegen there never was a situation which deserved such publicity as it received, and that that name only became a familiar one because an attempt was made by the enemies of South Africa, including the United Party and its members, to find one way of besmirching South Africa, both abroad and at home, in the year that was a good one for this country.

With the rosy pictures we have had painted here by the hon. the Minister and all the other members opposite in regard to conditions at Limehill, one is driven to wonder why it was that any kind of outbreak of disease took place at all. I was one of the hon. members of this House who did not have the opportunity to visit Limehill, but I took the opportunity of visiting Mondhlo, which was one of the first areas resettled by this Department, and I want to ask the hon. the Minister, or any of his Deputies, whether there was an outbreak of this kind at Mondhlo? Was this condition duplicated there?

Having failed at Limehill, you now seek for something at Mondhlo.

There you have precisely the same conditions and precisely the same people living under precisely the same conditions of resettlement. I went there and made a specific point of asking the superintendent there whether conditions such as at Limehill were going on there, and whether deaths were taking place on this scale, and the answer was no. Sir, it has now taken them a year to get Limehill to the position where they can now come here and paint such a golden picture before the world and pose here, as they do, as the benefactors of the Bantu population. But this is being wise after the event. We know, and the public outside knows, that things went on and deaths took place at Limehill which could and should have been prevented by the early action of both those Departments, Health and Bantu Administration. There is a culpability attaching to them that no amount of excuse can ever get off them. Without any question at all, they are culpable and they cannot evade their responsibilities. [Interjection.]

Sir, I feel sometimes that we come into this House and we sit here and we debate and we argue and we exchange opinions across the floor of the House, and sometimes I wonder whether we are here in an unreal atmosphere altogether, because the problem that we face is the problem that the Nationalist Party in 20 years has had only one success. They can fairly claim only one success after 20 years of government, and that is in regard to the indoctrination of the minds of their supporters to the point where it is almost impossible to have a real meaningful debate in South Africa, where the opinions put out by this side of the House are obscured and blurred and never get across to the supporters of the Government on that side of the House. [Interjection.] We have tried to get our opinions across time and again, but this is what has happened over the past 20 years. There has been a process of the formation of the minds and the thinking of the Afrikaner volk, or a section of it, by that party, so much so that the debate between the political parties has become unreal. It is not only I who say so. It is the greatest problem in politics to-day, and that is why we bring this charge against the Nationalist Party that they now in this debate have to prove that they are making progress, prove that they are going to make a reality of apartheid, and prove to the people outside and to their own people, in order to create the conditions for real debate among their own followers, that there is something real being achieved in South Africa by all the efforts they have made over the past 20 years. Because what they have done is to create a generation with closed minds, and the Minister of Information has been playing his part in it. [Interjection.] The policy of this Government …

Our policy is a dynamic idea.

The Chief Whip says it is a dynamic idea. We want this Government to prove that statement. We have had no proof. We have had no reply from the hon. the Minister or from his Deputies or from the Chairman of the Bantu Affairs Commission that any real progress has been made here in South Africa towards separation. We have heard certain figures given that a certain number of Bantu have been taken out of certain areas and rehoused in others. We have had certain figures given that certain areas which once before were White have now been declared Black and turned into homelands, and the Bantu who lived nearby have been repatriated, it was claimed, but this is the old story we had last year. But the problem which this Nationalist Party faces, and not only the Nationalist Party but all of us, English- and Afrikaans-speaking, White and Black in South Africa, is an economic problem which this Government has failed entirely to solve and to-day is making no attempt to solve. I will tell you what the problem is, Sir. The problem is that the strength of the economy of South Africa rests on a degree of co-operation between White and Black in this country.

Nobody has ever denied that.

No, you have not. The strength which gives us the ability to develop the Bantu Reserves and to contemplate the millions and millions of rands which are going to be required, comes from the cooperation in the white areas between White and Black. What this Government has committed themselves to is to reverse that, to take the Bantu out of the life of the white man, to take him away to a homeland of his own, for political reasons, to begin with. The problem they have is to make that a reality, and that is the charge that has been levelled against them by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, that they have not taken even the first step towards achieving the reality of economic separation in South Africa. Not one step have they taken in 20 years of government. They have not done it, Sir. It is impossible for them to come to-day with serious arguments to say that they intend doing it, because what has happened is that the urbanization and the industrialization of the Black people in this country has given us as White people the one weapon that we have got with which to civilize the non-White population, particularly the Bantu. Their integration—and I use the word “integration”—into the economy of South Africa is the one weapon the White man has, which is the key to his survival. You have here a Nationalist Party to-day which is busy turning its back on that process. The only development which is taking place among the Bantu population is that of a form of political self-government which has no real base on which to operate because it is founded in the backward areas; it is founded in the areas of our country where the Bantu know, and the White people know, that they cannot maintain a separate, independent existence. And this is the thing which this Government has got to face. If they are facing reality at all, this is what they have to face, and they are refusing to face it. And the whole of this business of separate development and apartheid and all the things they say in this House is a gigantic bluff, being run by a Nationalist Party which has become a vested interest in South Africa. It is a party with an interest of its own over and above and greater then the interests of South Africa and all its people. That is the problem we are facing. [Interjection.] My hon. friend from Oxford was making an interjection which I did not catch.

I said it was nonsense to say that the carrying out of our policy was a big bluff.

I say it is a complete tissue of laws; it is a paper tiger. The policy of the Nationalist Party is a paper tiger, built on laws and things on the Statute Book, but the people with whom the laws are concerned are still there; they have not moved, they will not move, and they will still be there in future. Let us look at what has happened to the Bantu population in 20 years of this Government’s policy, 20 years of apartheid. They have moved more and more into closer relationship with the White man economically, but does the Government recognize it? What do the laws of the Government say to-day as far as the Bantu are concerned? I refer to the Bantu in the urban areas upon whom our day-to-day existence depends. Without him we could not lift a finger; we could not turn a wheel. Does the Government recognize their existence? What we hear from the Government is that they are not really there. When you get 600,000 people living in Soweto, the Government turns aside its eyes and says they are not really there. It refuses to allow them secondary education in Soweto. They must go back to the Transkei because they are not really there—600,000 people living in one of the biggest cities in South Africa, who are not really there. They are ignored and they are not regarded by this Government as being people of substance or reality, but as people who are intended one day to go away. They have been trying for 20 years to tell them to go away, and they know they cannot go, and the Black people know they cannot, and South Africa is going to reap the consequences of that knowledge, that this Government has tried for 20 years to implement apartheid and to achieve real separation in this country, and they have failed. The consequence of that is that we are going to have to make all kinds of adaptations which this Government has wished upon us by their nonsensical ideology ever since 1948 when they first started talking about apartheid. [Interjection.] No, I cannot forget 1948. I believe we should have a “treur-dag” when the day comes around to celebrate the day this Nationalist Party came into power. It should be a national day of mourning, because that day the hope and the future of South Africa were seriously prejudiced. But I will say this for the Nationalist Party. We are grateful to them for one thing, that they tried to make this idea of theirs work and that they failed, because now we have to get down to reality. Now we have to find a way of getting on in this country as we always have been, living together, co-operating, and maintaining our civilized standards. And we have to do it. This is the truth, and as long as the Nationalist Party fails to recognize it, so long will we live in a dream. The Nationalist Party knows perfectly well that the countries to which they want to send back the Bantu population are inadequate to absorb or sustain them; they cannot make a living there. They know they will never leave what they have to-day to go back there, and I think this is a political subterfuge. That is what all this talk of separate development is, a political subterfuge to gull all the voters, to lead them to the idea that there can be some kind of other security than one of real and proper co-operation between the races of this country.

And they still do not support you.

Yes, because you have bred yourselves a generation of subservient voters; that is why. In the words of one of your prominent educationists—

Connie Mulder.

Sir, what is important about what is happening in South Africa is that we, the white people, are engaged today in a struggle with the communist world for the control of the mind of black Africa. That is what we are doing—all of us. We are engaged in a struggle with the communist world for the control of the mind of black Africa.

On whose side in the United Party?

The weapons at our disposal are precisely the urbanization and the industrialization which is going on in our country and which has created the only real revolution in Africa; which has taken the Bantu people out of their tribal security; which has put them down in urban areas; which has made individuals of them. Sir, this is the only place in Africa where this has happened. It is the only place in Africa where they have permanently broken away from their tribes and where they are living in urban, industrialized, civilized conditions as individuals. Sir, when you are seeking the control of the mind and the thoughts of a man, you are not looking for the control of the tribe; you are looking for the control of the mind of the man as an individual. That is what we have started here in South Africa; this is the only place in Africa where it has started. One of the greatest threats to the white man, to Western civilization and to Christianity itself is the power vacuum which is developing in Africa to-day, where the communists to-day are reaching out their claws seeking to gain control of central areas in Africa, to use against us, because we here—all of us—are the last bastion of Western Christian civilization.

Now we are on common ground.

What about all the untruths we have heard here about health conditions at Limehill? Does that sort of thing help?

The hon. the Minister’s sense of humour is running away with him. Sir, unless the Nationalist Party can show quite clearly that they are creating in the Bantu areas a system which is able to replace what we offer the Bantu here in our areas, then they are giving the victory in the struggle to the Communist Party on a plate, unless they can create in the Bantu areas conditions which will satisfy the whole of the populations of those areas, all the people whom they intend to put there. The goal which they have set themselves is to put back into the Bantu areas the bulk of the black population, and they have to do it soon. Unless they can create that kind of condition which is going to satisfy those people, they are going to give to the Communist Party on a plate the victory in the struggle which we are waging. Let me tell you why, Sir. Mao Tse Tung has warned us quite clearly what he is going to do. He has said quite clearly that Chinese communism will inevitably conquer the world because, he says, “we will gain control of the rural areas and through the rural areas we will gain control of the rural continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and we will squeeze the West into submission by cutting off their raw materials”. Sir, the hon. the Minister of In formation shrugs his shoulders. He does not mind.

That is nothing new; we know it.

Sir, the living illustration of this is in Vietnam where the Chinese and their Vietnamese allies and the Communist Party control the countryside. You have an American army there of over half a million men; you have a billion dollars a day being spent by the American nation in an attempt to control an organized terrorist movement, and because they do not control the countryside they cannot move from town to town. They cannot control the country and to-day the whole emphasis of the struggle in Vietnam is being placed upon controlling the hamlets, controlling the villages. Sir, since that pattern has been started there, do you think it will not be proceeded with here in Africa? If you are going to withdraw the hand of the white man from vast areas of South Africa, are you not then simply inviting the Chinese communists to come in here to put their plan to work? Do you think they have not seen it already? Do you think they are so stupid that they are sitting back and not contemplating any kind of plan?

They welcome what the Government is doing.

I quite believe that they welcome what the Government is doing because what the Government is doing is slowly and steadily to withdraw the hand of the white man from vast areas of South Africa and leaving behind what will become a vacuum of power.

They are critical of the Transkei.

Does the hon. the Minister really believe that if Mao Tse Tung was really pleased with the Transkei he would say so?

The MINISTER OF TOURISM [Inaudible.]

This is out of your depth.

I am afraid the hon. the Minister is not switched on but perhaps later on we will get the chance to explain things to him.

You will have to use simple words for him.

Sir, there was a war of liberation which was fought in Algeria against the whole might of the French army, and the one thing that destroyed the French in Algeria was having foreign countries to which the F.L.N. could escape, where the French army could not follow. The one thing which the Nationalist Party have failed to face up to is that they are withdrawing the hand of the white man from large areas of South Africa. They are deliberately creating borders …

What about Swaziland and Basutoland?

My hon. friend mentions Basutoland. I have a stack of cuttings here in which farmers in my constituency are complaining about stock being rustled from Basutoland and I can tell the hon. member that a shooting war is going to break out on the Basutoland border one of these days if this goes on. Is that hon. member going to support this being carried out in more border areas of South Africa; is that his policy?

Who established Basutoland?

Let me ask the hon. member whether throughout history borders have not been the source of friction? Has that not been the position since time immemorial? As soon as a border is set up there is a war as to where the border should be. Mr. Speaker, you can go back into the history of England; you can go right back to the time of the old Mercian Settlement, you can go back to the time of Hadrian’s Wall, you can go to the Lords’ Marchers, you can go where you like in Europe … [Interjections.]

Order! I must appeal to the hon. the Minister of Tourism to give the hon. member an opportunity of proceeding with his speech.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your intervention. My point is that in the last century in our own country, in the Cape Province, there were over eight kaffir wars all because there was a border between White and Black, and it was not until the white man put his hand upon the whole of South Africa that we had peace and order and any chance to develop.

“Ag!”

The hon. member says “ag” and he puts his book back in his drawer.

You are talking nonsense.

Sir, let the hon. member consider what happened in the Cape Province in the last century. Let him consider what his Government is doing. Is it not their intention to create these Bantustans, these separate independent areas as borders between Whites and Blacks? Does he believe that this is looked upon with equanimity by the white population and especially the farming population, who have already asked that a 13-strand barbed wire fence should be erected to-day between White and Black at a time when these areas are still under the control of the South African Police? This is what this policy means on which they are deliberately embarking. I am only too grateful to be able to say that I do not think they are going to make anything out of it. I believe that the facts which my Leader cited—the magnitude of the task, the almost physical impossibility of financing and organizing it—make this a task which is quite beyond the means and the reach of this Government. Sir, I believe that the Nationalist Party is fiddling. The hon. member for Pinelands said that he would not say that they were fiddling while Rome burnt. I believe that they are fiddling while Rome burns. What we are facing is one of the greatest crises that the Western world has ever faced and we to-day stand slap in the path of the judgement of the Chinese communist coming down Africa, and what this Government is doing is to reject the whole contribution made by the Bantu population. They are rejecting it; they are telling the Bantu people to go away. [Interjections.] When the hon. the Deputy Minister who is in charge of the task of carrying this out tried to get rid of domestic servants in Randburg he was put to flight by the housewives with two mops and a “vadoek”. This is the sort of practical proposition from these hon. members, trying to make work a policy which is destructive of what we are trying to achieve, which is destructive of the whole forward-looking tendency of South Africa, which is destructive of the whole process of civilization and development which is going on among the Bantu population in association with the insistence of the white population. Sir, what is happening is that the white man is taking to himself the right to set the standards. That is what white leadership is. We have taken to ourselves the right to set the standards that shall be met in this country by all the racial groups, and nobody in the world can hold it against us that we are doing so. We have the right to do so; we are the civilized element in this country, and the policy of this side of the House is designed specifically to allow the process of civilization that we have embarked upon to go ahead. That is what we want to do; that is what we have to do.

Mr. Speaker, we are riding a tiger—not a paper tiger, like the Nationalist Party, but a real one. We have created a demand in the minds of the Bantu population for all kinds of civilized amenities, demands which we have to meet, because if we fail to meet them we know what the result is going to be to us and to the civilization that we have produced. The Nationalist Party has not yet in this debate come face to face with that point. We have embarked on a policy of civilization and leadership, which they are actively denying and which they are turning back upon itself by their insistence that there shall be a separate development, as they call it, where people shall go in there own directions. Sir, we have led the Bantu people in our direction for a very long time. If they now insist that the Bantu must go in their own direction, in what direction will they go? Are they going to go in the direction of Black Africa to the north of us? Is that what hon. members opposite want? [Interjections.] Sir, this is the truth. That hon. member knows that it is the truth. The policy of his party is to turn the Bantu people away, to turn them aside, to turn them out of the main stream of the life of South Africa; to force them back into homelands of their own where they will have a sort of life of their own; I ask: What kind of direction will it be?

Self-realization.

“Self-realization” is a catch-word; it is a slogan, just as “apartheid” was a slogan in 1948. It is a meaningless phrase. Sir, they have not yet taken the first step to implement it and to realize it and to try to make it a reality.

I have been listening to the United Party speakers throughout this debate, and it has become evident that what has been coming from the opposite side was not attacks on the Government but in point of fact nothing but complaints, accusations and a defensive line of action. One comes to the conclusion that the United Party is really like a fox terrier sitting on a lawn. A red ant is biting him somewhere on his backside and he is snapping around in the air not knowing what is happening to him and where he is actually being bitten. It was for that reason that the hon. member for Mooi River was inviting the communists under Mao Tse Tung by implication to use the empty plains, which he and his imperialistic predecessors created in Central Africa, for gaining entry into our territory. The hon. member made the statement that we were creating vacuums for the communists. I just want to remind him that there is an Act on the Statute Book in South Africa to deal with communists. But I should like to know whether he has read in Hansard where his people, the United Party, whose numbers were considerably more at that time than now, stood as far as the legislation with which we combat the communists was concerned. At that time they were on the side of the communists, and they even went so far as to say, after a man had admitted that he was a communist, that he did not know what he was talking about because they knew that he was no communist. But now these very same people are once again inviting the communists to our country by making the statement that if we were to apply our policy of apartheid, we would be creating a vacuum which would enable the communists to come to this country. In reality this can only be double-talk. If they want to accuse us of not implementing our policy, why are they complaining? The hon. member’s leader said that we could not implement this policy, and that we would have to look for a middle course. We are not looking for a policy, because the policy of the National Party still is what it was when the party was formed, namely that the white man will be master in his own country and that the black man will be master in his own homeland, although initially under the guardianship of the White until such time as we can lead them to political independence and, if they insist, to complete autonomy eventually when they are ripe for that. I want to make the statement here this afternoon that a period of 20 years is by far too short for any party, irrespective of its numbers and its strength and unless it wants to act dictatorially, if it has such a reckless opposition as the one with which we have to contend. Every project we launch to promote humanity, they try to besmirch. I have also listened to the hon. member for South Coast, who, unfortunately, is not here at present. He is a person who will stop along any road and simply question any man he meets about conditions in that area. On the strength of that knowledge he comes to this House and tries to mislead it.

Order! I think the hon. member should withdraw the word “mislead”.

I withdraw the word. The hon. member then tells us things in this House without having established how authentic those things are. If we go back to what was said by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, we find that he said in reply to a question that he was not in favour of differentiation of votes, in other words the loading and deloading of constituencies. But he is not consistent because more or less one-third of this House consists of United Party members and two-thirds of National Party members. Quite sanctimoniously they then take their turn one by one to participate in the debate, in other words, proportionately they have three times as many voices to raise as the National Party has. But we have no bone to pick about that, because if they had fewer voices, they might in any event have been able to say more.

I want to come back to the question of Limehill, about which we have heard such a great deal. The hon. the Minister said quite rightly that he did not want to discuss the question as such but the principle involved. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (South) drew a comparison here between conditions at Limehill and those at Mondhlo. Has he forgotten that when the Bantu of Besterspruit were being removed to Mondhlo the priests went as far as hiding under the dresses of old Bantu women so as to escape from the eyes of the police? Has he forgotten that, and has he forgotten what a fuss they kicked up in this House about the removal of those Bantu to Mondhlo? Now Mondhlo is a model town because there are no cases of gastric fever. He failed to say, however, that Mondhlo is situated much higher than Limehill and these other places. This difference in altitude does have an effect on these diseases. But this whole issue fits into a definite pattern, and that is that where the National Party tries to implement its policy and where it wants to accelerate its pace, the United Party slows it down to the extent of not even caring what methods it employs and the help of what person it enlists. Now, we know that it is an old habit of the United Party to look for help where it ought not to look for help, and that is on the other side of the colour bar. That is why they will attach much more value to what was said by a non-White along the road, without even being sure that that non-White does in fact live in Limehill. To that they attach much more value than to the information they would have been able to obtain from an official. While we are talking about the officials, I also want to express my gratitude to them. My leader, the hon. member for Klip River, has given a very clear explanation of what people in other provinces may find difficult to understand, and that is that our people in Natal have to face up to many problems which crop up in connection with the resettlement of Bantu. I shall mention them to you, Sir. At the present time the United Party still is the strongest party in Natal, but that will not be for long. After the election results of Newcastle, however, I think that they will consider putting up much fewer candidates, because they are going to discover that they are becoming the weakest party. At present, however, they still are the strongest party, and they have the local government in their favour. I must tell this House this afternoon that the co-operation we receive from members of the United Party in uplifting the Bantu, comes to nothing whatsoever unless there is some political advantage to be gained by them. When they can gain some advantage, one finds some local authority in the province introducing budgets accordingly. One finds, for example, that they are spending R26 million on hospitalization. Of this amount the tax payers, and these include all of us, have to pay R24 million for the treatment of non-Whites.

It is provided for in the Budget.

That has nothing to do with the Budget here. The hon. member is not listening to what I am saying. Out of the total budget of R26 million R22 million is spent on the Bantu and R4 million is recovered and this amount is paid in by the Whites. This is only one of the problems there. As far as resettlement is concerned, we find that repeated references has been made to the other problem, which I now want to mention. Just as we find that they mispresent our policy and want any statement of policy we may make to be an established fact the very next day—the schools have to be completed, the hospitals have to be completed and everything has to be completed before we may allow anybody to move in—so we find that that essential point which was stated so clearly by the hon. member for Klip River, namely the primitive way of life those people still follow, is being overlooked by them. The Zulu have their peculiarities and even if we were to place them in the cities for many, many years, they would under no circumstances loose their peculiarities and national identity. A Zulu remains a Zulu. A Zulu may be accommodated in an urban complex for 20 years, but as soon as one returns him to Zululand, he will be wearing his beshuand his snene the next morning. He will have his hide shield in his hand and he will be drinking beer with the others as though he has not been away for 20 years. This people do not take into account. However, we are not on the defensive. At the outset I said that our policy had been stated very clearly, and if the hon. member for Mooi River now wants to go as far as prescribing to us how we are to implement our policy, or whether he now wants to call in the Chinese communists as allies for bringing the National Party to a fall, I want to give him the assurance that the National Party will implement its policy without deviating a single step from that policy. I want to tell them this; to want us to accommodate and educate 13 or 15 million people overnight, and in spite of the undermining done by some of the hon. members of the United Party, is asking a very great deal. They are not allowing sufficient time.

I do not want to allow this opportunity to pass without mentioning in passing and devoting a few seconds to the election of our leader in Natal. The hon. member for South Coast referred to this matter and said, inter alia, “There is Natal, and it does not even have a Minister as its leader”. I, as a Natalian, want to say quite plainly that I am not that sentimentally provincialistic; nobody in Natal, except people on that side, is so provincialistic that we expect any Prime Minister, whoever he may be, to admit that because Natal is one of the provinces, it has a right to a Minister although there may be better talent in Pretoria. I want them to understand very clearly that as far as this side of the House is concerned, we believe that the Government should consist of the best Ministers available in the Republic.

I believe that the Ministers who have been chosen by our present Leader are the best ones available in the Republic at this very moment. That side should not come along with the allegation that Natal has no leader or Ministers; they should not try to force us to deviate from our old party principles as they have been applied throughout the years. That is why I detest what they are saying as well as what they quote from newspapers which have not determined the truth either. The allegation has been made that there has been wangling behind the scenes as regards our affairs. We are not hiding anything; the National Party has nothing to hide, not in respect of its policy, especially not in respect of its Bantu policy.

I think the main theme of attack of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was that we had done nothing as yet, and one speaker after the other on that side maintained that nothing had been done in connection with the implementation of our Bantu policy. Now I should just like to ask whether that side sees and does not perceive. Do they not want to see? Can they remember what Brixton and Vrededorp and those places looked like when we took over in 1948? They have to tell us now whether they want to go back to the conditions which prevailed at that time, or whether they are going to accept what we have already done to improve conditions. We have disentangled the mixture of race groups which existed at that time; we have separated them at last so that we now have orderly towns, orderly residential areas and exclusively white areas. I know that the financial people on the opposite side who have now come in, will make a big fuss about this, because they are going to make a little less profit on account of the fact that they will have to pay a little more in fares to get the Bantu to their businesses and their large money-making concerns. This does not worry me, but what does worry me is that they are so deucedly honest that they are too cowardly to tell people in a place such as Durban, “When we get into power, we are going to undo everything the National Government has done in respect of the race policy, and we shall once again allow Indians to buy houses in the central part of the city and in the white residential areas of Durban and we shall allow them to live in those houses as they did when we used to be in power”.

Do you recall who passed the pegging laws?

The hon. member for Yeoville should rather not refer to those pegging laws, because they did not peg down anything. They had those laws, but they could not even peg down the progress of the National Party, let alone implement those laws. The fact of the matter is that when that side forms an idea, when they form a judgment about the application of their race policy, the question, “How much money can we make out of process?”, is always at the back of their minds. Their argument is that if Indians were to go and live amongst the Whites, that would decrease the value of land, and subsequently, when the Indians were removed by the National Party, they could make money on the resale of those properties. That is how that side reasons. This is what has been happening in Durban. Whether they want to know this or not, their policy is so unacceptable that when they enfranchised Indians in 1946, the Indians themselves said, “We do not want the vote from you under these circumstances”. And what do we have now? Now we have local authorities consisting exclusively of Indians in the peri-urban areas of Durban. They are perfectly happy with those authorities which the National Party has given them. Is this how the policy of the National Party as regards our colour problem is not being implemented?

Is this the only self-determination they are going to get?

The hon. member wants me to tell them what we are going to do with the Indians and where the boundaries of the Bantu areas are going to be, so that they may be in a position to get off to a quick start and buy all the farms on those borders with the large amount of capital at their disposal so that they may make a profit. That is why I say that even if I did have that information, they would be the last people to whom I would divulge it. We have had enough of this speculation and these unfair dealings in land and farms in areas in which resettlement, and other things going hand-in-hand with resettlement, is taking place.

Earlier on I said that the hon. member for Mooi River had made the accusation that the National Party had created a following of people who can only echo its sentiments. He used the words “subservient voters” and I made a note of that. He must not deny that, because I am going to visit Newcastle and I am going to tell those voters, “The hon. member for Mooi River says that you are so stupid that you cannot even think for yourselves; you have allowed the National Party to turn your vote into a subservient vote.” He must not deny this. I am going to tell them that. I am going to tell them that they have been misled to such an extent that they can no longer think for themselves. He said that here in this House.

You are quite right.

Are you admitting it?

Yes.

Very well, we shall tell them that. Then the people in the Limehill spot, which is adjacent to that constituency, as well as to my constituency, can form their own judgment. I have been listening to the ignorance displayed by the opposite side about basic facts which they ought to know before making allegations in this House. The hon. the Minister made an interjection, and I asked myself whether it would not have been a good thing if those people had spent the night there and had driven on to Msinga to see how things were there. Then they would have seen what an area looks like in which a Bantu community is living and which has not been consolidated as yet because of a lack of funds and where it has not been possible as yet to complete the process of consolidation. Then they would have been able to compare those areas to the areas surrounding Nongoma, which also falls in a Bantu homeland, where planning has been carried out, where contours have been constructed in the fields and on the grazing lands and where fences have been erected. Those fences were not erected, as (he hon. member insinuated, in order to keep them within certain definite reserves, but to make separate camps in order to apply decent farming methods. Our officials trained the black officials in order to enable them to do that work amongst their own people. To have mentioned this would have been the correct line of action, and then one would have been able to say that it was worthwhile listening to this Opposition. But they prefer to believe what they read in the newspapers about these places, and what is more, most of them do not even know exactly where these places are to be found on the map. They have never been there in person. If they had visited the Msinga reserve, I should like to know from them what they were doing there. White farms, which have been planned by Whites, are situated next to the Msinga reserve. With the exception of a few, most of those Whites live in or in the vicinity of Grey-town. Hon. members opposite should go and have a look to see what the farms of those people look like. They have the same climate as those areas to which the Department of Bantu Administration and Development has been unable to give attention as yet because of the magnitude of its task. They should compare those areas with the areas in which progress has been made in the application of our policy.

Complaints were also made about the provision of schools and this was presented as a further illustration of the failure of our Bantu policy. There are many schools in the hinterland of Natal, especially in Zululand too. What struck me was that hon. members opposite at least did not complain that it was still necessary for Bantu children to walk to school. There are some of them who have to walk three or four miles. When the black spots have been consolidated, and in my constituency many have been consolidated, things will be much better. I want to thank the Department and all its officials for the consolidation which has been carried out in my constituency, because now we are once again living a happy life. The non-white population has been separated and only little remains to be done before the policy will be fully implemented as regards the northern part of my constituency. We can give you the assurance, Sir, that it will be a model as soon as the work has been completed.

Now I want to make a final remark. It has been alleged that we want to demarcate large sections of our country by means of borders and that eventually wars would be fought about those borders. Europe has been successfully demarcated.

And what has happened there?

Wars and other clashes did break out from time to time, but the wars would not have been such major ones had people who had nothing to do with those borders not poked their noses into the matter. They wanted to lend a hand from far and near, because the sun never used to set on that empire, but to-day it is merely an island, a mere speck. I am mentioning this because we in this country are doing this because we believe that when the non-Whites in this country are elevated to their own states, the borders will not be the important issue, but the disposition between the Whites and the non-Whites. We hope that when the borders have been determined and the Bantu homelands have been established, when they are reasonably independent states, or are moving in that direction, we shall no longer have such a reckless Opposition as the present one which is always out looking for trouble and besmirching our attempts in the eyes of the world. We hope that goodwill and good understanding of each other’s problems will be found along this road. A strange thing is that the same process of the disentanglement of races has been taking place in the northern parts of Africa. The Whites had to move from those areas because the non-White states felt that those were their areas, and yet not a single member of this Opposition objected to that and said the treatment the Whites were receiving there was shameful. But here in our country they want to incite unrest amongst the races; by means of the speeches they make here, they encourage the non-Whites to think that they are being done a tremendous injustice, and they are doing so without informing the public and the Press in a reasonable and courteous and civilized manner to what the nations concerned, the Zulu nation to be specific, was used prior to their resettlement. They are children of nature, and because they are children of nature, they obey the laws of nature. To want to make a fuss here about this and that, about toilets and that kind of thing, is absolutely foolish to us who live in Natal. Any child, no matter whether it is a White child, an Indian child or a child from anywhere on earth, has to be taught all things from birth, and if he is not taught to use a toilet, he is not going to do so. I think it is absurd to kick up a fuss here about things like this. I grew up amongst the Bantu and I know their language. I do not talk to them with a view to indoctrinating them to one side or the other. I think I can say on behalf of those I deal with every day that this Government has done wonders during the 20 years of its rule as far as the resettlement of Bantu in those areas is concerned. I have received quite a number of letters from Bantu. Had I known that this was the course the debate was going to take, I would have brought those letters to this House. Satisfaction about the progress which has been made by the Government is expressed in those letters. But the United Party which knows nothing about these matters, and which does not know the language, culture, religion and philosophy of these people, is not satisfied with the progress which has been made. They maintain that we have not reached our target. I want to conclude by saying that we in the National Party are completely satisfied that the money we spend is yielding good fruits because of the correct implementation of our policy. From the day our policy was formulated it has not been changed one jot or tittle and has not been sent in any other direction than that in which it was intended to go. We are still on the old road: South Africa first. We stand for our nation, for our God and our fatherland. For these three things we shall sacrifice anything, even if we have to sacrifice the entire United Party.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just sat down concerned himself firstly with words of encouragement for the hon. member for Klip River. He said that it might still be necessary to have a representative of Natal in the Cabinet. I am sure that the hon. member does not wish me to elaborate on that. The second point he made and over which he took a considerable amount of time again illustrates the charge which we have against that side of the House, namely that they are more concerned with votes and election results than with the serious problems which are before this House. He was more concerned with what capital could be made for the by-election in Newcastle than with the debate which is at present in progress.

I should like to deal with a problem which was referred to by the hon. member for Mooi River. It is a problem which is particularly relevant as far as the cities are concerned, namely the Government’s attitude towards those Bantu whom they seem to wish did not exist. I am speaking of the Bantu in the Soweto’s, the Langa’s and the Guguletu’s. I speak of the Bantu who are detribalized and who live away from their tribal homes in and around our cities. The late Dr. Malan in this House referred to these Bantu as those who are detribalized and who have never lived in their own tribal areas. I should like to deal with this question in some detail. At this stage, however, I should like to move—

Agreed to.