Mr. Speaker, I move—

1. (1) That, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 22, the hours of sitting on and after Monday, 9th February, shall be as follows:

   Mondays to Thursdays:

   2.15 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.

   8 p.m. to 10.30 p.m.

   Fridays:

   10 a.m. to 12.45 p.m.

   2.15 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.; and

2. (2) that on and after Tuesday, 10th February, Government business shall have precedence after Questions have been disposed of.

Agreed to.

As this Bill is a hybrid measure, it will now in terms of the provisions of Rule 29 of the Rules relating to Hybrid Bills be referred to the examiners for report.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker, I move the motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

This is a Session coming before an election which will be held a great deal earlier than is dictated by the normal rules controlling the effluxion of the life of Parliament. It is coming a great deal earlier, Sir, despite the assurance given us by the hon. the Prime Minister during the last session of Parliament that he knew of no circumstances which would bring about an early election.

Ben Schoeman knew. He did not consult him.

As an Opposition, you should welcome an election.

Since then, of course, circumstances have changed. Firstly, Sir, the continued assurances by the hon. the Prime Minister to us during the early part of the last session that there were no fundamental differences in policy amongst the members of his caucus have been proved to be completely valueless. Secondly, Sir, statements from this side of the House that the hon. the Prime Minister would have to expel the hon. member for Ermelo from his party have proved to be completely correct. Thirdly, Sir, there were the statements which the hon. the Leader of the House was permitted to make as late as the 13th September last year, namely that suggestions by Opposition members that the Government would have an early election in an attempt to eliminate verkrampte elements were arrant nonsense. Those statements, Sir, have been proved to be arrant nonsense. What possible confidence can the public have in a Government which has been so blind and so lacking in its judgment?

When the hon. the Prime Minister announced the election, he made great play of the fact that in his opinion the election was necessary to show the world that South Africa had a stable Government. The hon. the Leader of the House put the matter a little differently at Maraisburg a few weeks ago. Perhaps, Sir, he put it more accurately. He indicated that he had suggested an earlier date for the election because he felt it could no longer be tolerated that the Nationalist party be undermined by the Hertzog group. In both statements it is transparently obvious that the real reason for this general election is no great national issue. It is simply that the Prime Minister wants the public of South Africa to wash and iron his dirty party linen for him because he has been too weak to do it himself. [Interjections.]

There is a third matter that is worrying the public about this election. That is that, after the deplorable display of blindness and lack of judgment on the part of the hon. the Prime Minister and his Cabinet in dealing with this whole verkrampte issue, if I may describe it as such, the public are not satisfied … [Interjections.] … that the hon. the Prime Minister knows even to-day who his friends and who is enemies are. Daily, Sir, there are defections from amongst his ranks to the ranks of the Herstigte Nasionale Party. There are even doubts expressed among members of the public about the true feelings of some of his candidates who in the past have made statements and expressed views much closer to the views of the hon. member for Ermelo than to the present views of the hon. the Prime Minister.

I want to say that we on this side of the House have no desire to become involved in this quarrel. [Laughter.] We have no desire to become involved in this quarrel between what is really nothing more or less than two factions of the Nationalist Party. Nor are we really interested in their differences over the four issues about which they are quarrelling, namely immigration, sport, the outward looking foreign policy and national unity. I want to state quite categorically that on each of these issues we disagree with both factions. Where the best that they can offer is immigration to meet a temporary labour shortage, we want to see properly planned immigration as part of an overall policy to strengthen the white group in South Africa. We want to see that policy linked to policies which will include practical programmes to encourage larger families in that group, to afford them better educational facilities and to cope with the crying housing shortage. These are all matters sadly neglected by this Government. Where the sports policy of the Herstigte Nasionale Party seems designed to ensure South Africa’s exclusion from all international sport, and where the sports policy of this Government not only seems to be moving, perhaps unwittingly, in the same direction, but also to be based on a mass of contradiction, we on this side of the House want to see sport kept out of politics. We want to see its control left to recognized sports administrators, chosen by sportsmen, to look after their interests and those of South Africa. We have set our view out in this House before and it is not necessary for me to repeat it on this occasion.

In all honesty I do not believe that either the Herstigte Nasionale Party or the National Party have the faintest idea what is meant by national unity as demonstrated and applied by the United Party over the years. All they are interested in, and the hon. gentlemen can tell me whether I am wrong, is co-operation between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking people on terms. It is no surprise to me that the terms prescribed by the hon. Prime Minister and those prescribed by the hon. member for Ermelo happen to differ. Nor is it any surprise to me that as a result of the policy of the hon. the Prime Minister a long list of English-speaking members of the Nationalist Party, of whom the latest is Blyth Thompson, have found it necessary to leave their ranks on this very issue.

Then we come to this outward looking foreign policy. Let me remind the House that we on this side of the House are heirs to the philosophy of Jan Smuts which, expressed in simple terms, means that you cannot live without friends. For how long have we not pleaded not only for closer relations with the other states of Africa but also for better understanding between us and the Western world? Are we really expected to be interested in a quarrel as to whether we should accept black diplomats from friendly black states or not when we know that South Africa has accepted non-white diplomats on and off for the past 40 years? What we want to see are responsible attempts to gain and maintain friends for South Africa in a dangerous world and not a deterioration of our relations with what should be friendly states as a result of incompetence and blundering. I want to say to the people of South Africa to-day that if they want to vote for immigration, if they want to vote for a sensible policy on sport, if they want real national unity and better co-operation with the other states of Africa and indeed the whole of the Western world, they must not vote for the imitation policies of the Nationalist Party. Then they must vote for the real thing, the policy of the United Party.

These are important problems but they are not the most important problems with which South Africa is faced at the present time. There are other more important problems on which I am extremely anxious to join issue with the hon. the Prime Minister and his Government because I believe that his hand ling of them shows that his Government is unworthy of re-election by the people of South Africa. There are six of those issues. The first is the failure of the non-European policy of this Government. The second is the failure of the Government to cope adequately with the manpower problem. The third is the neglect by the Government of the economic interests of the ordinary man in the street. The fourth is the failure of this Government to play its proper part in combating the problems of the agricultural community in South Africa. The fifth is the failure of this Government to promote real national unity in South Africa. The sixth, Sir, is the alarming authoritarian tendencies revealed by this Government. An examination of the Government’s attitude towards all these matters, reveals two things. Not only has this Government lost touch with the people of South Africa, but they no longer seem to care about their real interests. But I do not propose to deal with all these issues. Other speakers on this side will deal with the issues which I do not handle.

I want to start by looking at the non-European policy of this Government, which is now in ruins about its ears. It was only last year that the Government-supporting newspaper Die Burger wrote that this policy was the main cause for the Nationalist Party’s existence, that it was its source of inspiration and its touchstone. I believe, Sir, that I am fair in saying that in so far as the Bantu are concerned, the main objective of that policy is to reduce the number of Bantu in the white areas. That is why there was so much interest in the year 1978, when the flow of Bantu from the reserves to the white areas was to be reversed. That is why there was so much interest and importance attached to Dr. Verwoerd’s statement at the time of the discussion of the Tomlinson Commission’s Report that he would be satisfied if by the year 2000, roughly in 50 years’ time from the discussion, there were equal numbers of White and Bantu in the white areas. That was the timetable to which he was working.

I have pointed out in this House before that this Government has so far achieved no success. The numbers of Bantu in the White urban areas have roughly doubled in the time this Government has been in power. They are continuing to stream in, Mr. Speaker. They are streaming in faster than ever. Whereas for the period 1951-’60 they streamed in at an average of 120,000 a year, for the years 1961-’67 the average increase was about 142,000 to 143,000 a year. They are still coming in. Figures available to me a year ago seem to indicate that if this Government stands by the timetable, which was the ideal set by the late Dr. Verwoerd, the population of the reserves would have to grow as a result of repatriation by approximately 400,000 Bantu a year over the next 30 years. Now there are new figures before us which show that the number of Bantu which was then expected to reach a figure of roundabout 28 million by the year 2000, will probably be between 36 million and 40 million. That means a flow back to the reserves at the rate of about ½ million a year, to put it at its lowest. When one looks at these figures, the paltry little figures of employment opportunities created by this Government in border industries fade into insignificance. Inside the reserves there is virtually no industrial development at all. Manifestly, one cannot move vast numbers of people into areas where there is no work for them and no proper means of subsistence. Development in the reserves on an agency basis has little or no attraction for industrialists. Even a man like Dr. Wassenaar, chairman of Sanlam, who does not belong to this party, made his views very clear in an interview with Die Vaderland last year. He said that neither he nor any institution in which he was concerned was interested in investing capital in industries in the reserves on the agency basis. The cost of industrial development in the reserves is astronomical. The cost of industrial development in the border areas is also very high indeed. Government policy has bumped up against the hard reality of the facts as they are and has been completely shattered. The main objective of reducing the number of Bantu in the white areas is being soft-pedalled and the emphasis is being laid elsewhere. The hon. the Prime Minister now agrees with the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development in saying—

I wish it was only a million people.

In the same speech the hon. the Prime Minister admitted:

This makes me ask in passing what has happened to the political reputation of the hon. the Minister of Community Development. [Interjections.] The hon. the Prime Minister made certain more important concessions than the one I have outlined when he addressed his party’s congress in Natal. There he justified the presence of these Bantu in the white areas. He said that they had to be there because South Africa had developed industrially. He also said that Bantu have for many years remained the chief export of the Bantu homelands and that unemployment would lead to unrest. I agree, but what is the hon. the Prime Minister proving by making these concessions? He is proving, first of all, that his policy of separate development is a farce and a colossal bluff. I think that he is secondly proving that success for the Government’s Bantu policy must bring serious depression to South Africa and a halt to our industrial development. [Interjections.] I am merely applying a few simple rules of logic to what the hon. the Prime Minister has said. If he would examine his speech and try to apply those rules himself he will find that he cannot deny that for many years industrial development will be concentrated in the old established areas and not even on the borders of the Bantustans. Does he deny it? At the same time he made it clear in his speech that it is not the intention of the Government to develop the homelands sufficiently to absorb the surplus of Bantu labour.

Now you are talking absolute nonsense!

It also proves that the only place where work can be found for that surplus Bantu labour is in the white areas of the Republic. To those deluded people who thought they knew what apartheid meant, namely the movement of Bantu from the white areas back to the reserves, these statements of course come as a slap in the face. The whole pipe dream which Dr. Verwoerd at least tried to state as a plan for the future has been proved to be nothing but a dream which has gone up in mist and smoke.

You made the same speech last year.

No, I did not. I would have been happy to have made the same speech last year, but I did not have the additional ammunition, namely these concessions by the hon. the Prime Minister. I also did not have the additional ammunition of these new figures which have become available now. I believe that the hon. the Prime Minister is in such a mess that he must have welcomed this large-scale diversion to use as an excuse for a general election. He should be thanking the hon. member for Ermelo for giving him the hope that he may have a little more time to think up other fantasies with which to bluff the people of South Africa. We can see the difficulties this hon. gentleman is in. He does not know which way to turn. Some of his people are complaining that he is spending too much on the Bantu. He will not deny this, nor will the hon. the Minister of Transport. Others are saying that he is not developing the homelands fast enough. All his newspapers are saying that. Even his Deputy Ministers are admitting it.

The third, and more intelligent, section of his party is accepting that his policy is impracticable and is urging him to accept more limited objectives. The young go-ahead industrialists in his party want more black labour immediately to expand their industries. The man in the street who supports the Prime Minister wants evidence that the black man will disappear from the white areas. Workers see that their future will be endangered in the border areas where black workers are doing white men’s work at lower wages. No rate for the job is being applied. The housewife wants her traditional Bantu servants in the house. Farmers are frustrated by the artificial shortage of labour. They want to develop their farms. They cannot see why the Minister of Transport can step over all the rules laid down by the Government and get all the Bantu labour he wants for the South African Railways. Serious Nationalists want to know where the borders of the homelands are going to be finally and to what extent South Africa will be fragmented. What do we have from the Prime Minister? We have had his arguments that a homogeneous population is an ideal to which one must work even if one cannot achieve it; that consolidation will take place, but only as far as practically possibile; that the homelands will develop, but only so fast and so efficiently as circumstances make possible and as the ability of the black people will permit. However, numbers are not decisive, provided you can, by making preposterous laws, support the fiction that the Bantu are not present amongst us as human beings but only as units of labour. I think these arguments are very interesting as an exercise in discovering how specious human thinking can become. Is it good enough for an hon. gentleman who is asking the country to re-elect him as Prime Minister? After all what is he offering South Africa? He is offering South Africa seven or eight Bantu states rapidly being decorated with all the trappings of sovereign independence. So far as we can see into the future they will never be able to support even a fraction of their citizens at anything like decent living standards. Their political institutions will be dominated by a vast body of voters, the majority of their voters in all probability, who will be outside their boundaries. These people will inevitably agitate for their home governments to bring pressure to bear on the Republic in respect of the treatment of the citizens of those Bantustans. To these impoverished states he is prepared to offer independence alongside a Republic extremely prosperous by comparison. What is he doing? Is he not creating fertile fields for communist agitators? Have we not seen what is happening in Lesotho at the present time? The hon. the Prime Minister is going ahead with this policy. What is he doing to this end? He is already teaching these people that their first loyalty is towards their Bantustan and not towards the Republic. He is trying to convert our entire labour force into a migratory labour force with all its attendant social evils and its clog on efficiency which is an inevitable characteristic of a labour force of that kind. He is disrupting the normal economic development of this country by creating artificial labour shortages for ideological reasons. He is undermining our defence strategy. He can wreck it entirely when one day he sacrifices control over areas where enemy forces could concentrate on what is to-day the soil of the Republic. I wonder whether the hon. gentleman has ever stopped to think. I wonder if he has ever realized, if his policy were ever to have a hope of success, that its only success would be maximum economic growth and a high level of prosperity. But, instead of trying to promote that the policy as he applies it is a continual drag on the economic development of the country. He knows as well as anyone that the vital factor, the best way to combat the communist men ace, the best way to combat terrorist infiltration, is to have the local population on your side. Does he not see, Sir, the dangers of goodwill being sacrificed and friction arising because of the way in which this policy is being applied at the moment by his Minister of Bantu Administration and Development and his various deputies?

Mr. Speaker, by contrast, what do we offer on this side of the House? Our problems are going to be the same as that of the Prime Minister—many more Bantu outside the reserves than inside. But I believe that our policy could lead to a more rapid growth and development of the reserves, because we would not only develop them with private white capital and initiative, but we would develop them as part of the economy of South Africa as a whole, and not as little independent economies each struggling on their own. I believe we will be better placed to maintain high levels of growth and prosperity. As hon. members know we intend to maintain white leadership over the whole of South Africa. We will work to live in peace and harmony with all South Africa’s races in one centrally controlled state.

How many elections have you lost on that policy?

The hon. the Prime Minister asks how many elections have we lost on that policy. I am not like the Prime Minister who changes his policy every time he finds … [Interjections.] … He is not following the policies of his predecessors. And he knows it.

How many have you lost on that policy?

I am going to win this one on that policy. And what is more, the hon. the Prime Minister is going to help me. What is happening in our neighbouring states to-day? We aim to ensure the security of the public and the loyalty to one South Africa by establishing a federal form of government which will consist of a federation of communities in which each race group will have a defined representation in the central parliament. As far as the Bantu are concerned, this will mean representation by eight members of Parliament and six senators who will be White and who will be elected on a separate roll.

When did you decide that?

The hon. the Minister of Community Development who has been spreading all sorts of stories in South Africa wants to know when did I decide that. I challenge this hon. Minister to get up and show me one resolution of congress of the United Party which accepted that there should be anything other than White representatives.

[Interjections.] You see, Mr. Speaker, he cannot attack the policy, so he goes and tells stories about it and tries to mislead the public. [Interjections.]

Order!

Not only is that the policy, but we guarantee that there will be no change made in that representation without the approval of the white electorate in a special election or referendum in which that is the issue. In addition there will be communal councils for the Bantu, both for the reserves and in the white areas.

You went white before the 1966 election too.

The hon. the Prime Minister has still to go white. He is mixed. He is brown at the moment.

He is only going pale!

Those communal councils will control matters of more intimate concern to themselves. Consultation between the Central Parliament and those communal councils will be by way of statutory standing committees. I believe we can control the excessive movement of Bantu into white areas by developing the Bantu reserves so that they will support a large portion of the population. And I said before that I believe that we will do it more rapidly than this Government because of the use of private white capital and not only taxpayers money. The reserves will govern themselves to a considerable degree and be responsible for their own affairs to a large extent. But they will remain under the control of the Central Parliament of the Republic of South Africa.

We accept the fact that our farmers, our industrialists, our housewives and our businessmen need Bantu labour and will always need it. This means that Bantu men and women will be permanently employed and will live within reasonable distance from the white farms, the factories, the businesses and the homes in which they have their employment. Our policy is the employment of Bantu wherever they are needed and it will continue, so that there will be no artificial shortage of labour in factories, farms and businesses, so that job opportunities for Whites and all other races will not decline through a lack of labour. We also accept that the Bantu who are permanently settled in urban areas and who have broken their tribal affiliations pose an entirely different problem than the Bantu who live in the reserves and still have their roots there. We have indicated before that our policy in respect of these Bantu is different, because while we stand for separate residential, social and educational amenities, and we think it is necessary to maintain the pass laws and influx control, we believe these laws should be administered humanely and realistically to meet the demand for labour and to fit the right man to the right job. We want to see these Bantu given a stake in the maintenance of law and order by making it possible for deserving Bantu to gain controlled freehold title to their homes in the big urban locations, by ensuring their enjoyment of undisturbed family life, and by actively fostering the emergence of a responsible middle-class amongst them which will be a bulwark against agitators. We aim at raising their standards of living and their training opportunities for productive employment as well. We realize that this will have to take place within the framework of changing labour patterns and therefore we shall make provision for the protection of the existing labour force. Those urban Bantu communities will have a large measure of local self-government as well and they will participate in the election of the eight White representatives and six White senators in our Central Parliament. I believe that we can say of our proposals that they offer a new and a realistic approach to the problems of South Africa. I believe that under these proposals tensions will decrease because defined executive and administrative powers will vest in each race group. As a result it will be possible to retain wise conventions like social and residential separation without these being symbols of oppression to any race. I believe this policy will bring about responsible citizenship rights for every man in his own community, security for all and the creation of democratic institutions throughout the fabric of our society. The advantage of this policy is that it offers an immediate solution to our problems. We can start with it to-morrow and it will give immediate results. We do not have to wait for 1978 or the year 2000 or some other imaginary date such as the time held out to the public by the Government. It will provide flexibility as opposed to barren rigidity and it will leave the civilized White community in ultimate control so that we can modify or adapt the policy as experience indicates, as opposed to the dangerous finality and irrevocability of sovereign independent Black states. This is the policy that the people of South Africa can give the country at the next election instead of the expensive and impracticable pipedreams under which they are suffering at present.

The second big issue to which I want to draw attention this afternoon, concerns the neglect by this Government of the interests of the ordinary man in the street. I want to suggest that in this sphere the failure, the indifference and the arrogance of the Government are more noticeable than in any other sphere of its activities. I want to start, Sir, by asking you to look at the attitude of this Government towards its own employees, the public servants. At a time when there is a worrying shortage of officials in almost every department of State, the Government persists in under-paying its employees and normally comes with improvements in salaries and conditions of employment only on the eve of general elections. At the same time it overloads the Public Service with new complicated statutes that have to be administered in complex ways, which leads to conflicts with the public and to irritations and frustrates the departments of State. There are many authorities I can quote to establish the accuracy of what I have said. I need only refer to the annual reports by the heads of departments before the Select Committee on Public Accounts last year. Almost every single departmental head complained of shortages of staff which were frustrating the work of their departments, and the hon. gentleman knows it. Need I remind the House of the position in the Revenue Office in Johannesburg, which collects something like 40 per cent of all direct taxes paid in South Africa? There the official in charge has little more than half the staff to which he is entitled. When he made his report he should have had 86 tax assessors, but all he had available to him were 26—26 out of 86. Complicated tax assessments were being prepared by junior staff with neither the experience nor the qualifications for the work. Need I remind the House of the statement by the president of the Public Service Association, Dr. Enslin, who warned on 15th August last year that a serious situation concerning staff was being allowed to develop in the Public Service and that his association has warned the Government for years that this would happen? He accused the Government of neglecting to maintain a just ratio between salaries paid in the Public Service with those paid in the private sector. Instead of doing this, what has this Government been doing? It has been prohibiting other public authorities from paying appropriate salaries, so that its own inadequacies would not be exposed. The House will recall how the Government came to this House a few years ago with legislation empowering the Administrator of the Transvaal to prohibit salary increases by local authorities like the City Council of Johannesburg. You will remember, Sir, how we complained at the time that heads of departments in the Government Service were being paid much less than the heads of public utility companies, although their responsibilities were just as great, if not greater. I remember how we drew the attention of this House to the fact that the salaries paid to senior public servants had a bunching effect on the salaries of all those below them, and that where they did not get the salaries they should be getting, it affected the salaries of all grades in the Public Service. It meant that they did not get the salaries to which their work and responsibilities entitled them. It is no good blinking the fact: To-day in South Africa we have an underpaid and understaffed Public Service, and what is the result? The result is unavoidable delays in serving the public, leading to frustration and estrangement between the public and the servants of the State. That is one of the reasons why our roads are being built so slowly, one of the things that leads to our casualty rate on the road. That is one of the reasons why important irrigation schemes like the Van der Kloof Dam and others are not being built. That is one of the reasons why there are delays in supplying power needed for industry and farmers all over South Africa. That is one of the reasons why there are 80,000 people crying out for telephones in South Africa to-day, which they cannot get because the Government has not the labour to supply them.

And, Sir, conditions of work in the Civil Service leave much to be desired. It was recently pointed out that trained scientists joining the Civil Service received an initial salary virtually the same as the average traffic policeman. South Africa cannot be well governed unless we have a satisfied Civil Service. The man behind the counter as well as the man in front of the counter must be satisfied, the one with his conditions of service and the other with the service that he is being offered by the man behind the counter. We on this side of the House would like to see a better trained and better paid Civil Service that will produce the service the public demands. Civil servants, Sir, are not robots to produce service at the press of a button. They have human aspirations and human problems like everybody else. Good administration means good staff relations as well as efficiency. We would like to see these people in the service of the State kept in touch with through a representative departmental co-ordinating committee and other measures that will bring workers and departmental heads closer together. We are prepared to review cost-of-living allowances quarterly and at stated periods include them in basic salaries. We did it before; why not now? This Government abolished it. In addition, Sir, basic salaries should be reviewed whenever necessary so that civil servants will be given a fair share in the prosperity of South Africa. If we were in power we would introduce a merit promotion system to help to relieve the staff shortages, and while we agree with the re-employment of pensioners we do not believe that they should be employed in posts where they block the promotion of others to higher grades. I believe, Sir, that this Government has failed its servants, in the Civil Service, in the Post Office and in the Railways, and I believe such a Government deserves to lose the confidence of its people, as this Government is losing the confidence of its own supporters.

And I suppose you will abolish all taxation at the same time?

Sir, there is one thing that I will abolish and that is that hon. gentleman as Minister of Agriculture.

Sir, I have dealt with the Government’s own employees first because they are the Government’s prime and immediate responsibility. The way this Government has neglected these people is merely part of a pattern of indifference to the people of South Africa which marks the whole present régime. Over the years the Government has become more and more indifferent and more callous to the needs of the ordinary man in the street, and I want to give an illustration. I believe one illustration is the way in which this Government has failed, indeed refused, to introduce measures of social security which have long been overdue in South Africa. If we look back on our history we find that the only measure of social security introduced by a Nationalist Government was the payment of old-age pensions under the Hertzog Government in 1925. Do you realize, Mr. Speaker, that it was a United Party Government which introduced pensions for war veterans, grants for widows and for orphans, for needy families, for the blind and for invalids? For the rest, Sir, what has this Government done? It has given occasional increases in the original grants and pensions awarded by the United Party Government, normally as a belated confession that money has lost its value under the administration of this Government. In other instances they have abolished or reduced the social service facilities that we used to make available. I think, Sir, of the curtailment of home district nursing, decentralized clinics, and the way in which the Nationalist-controlled provincial councils in the Transvaal and the Cape have abolished free hospitalization. The time is now overdue for the old people of South Africa to have decent pensions paid to them as a right and not as a charity.

Mr. Speaker, no old age pensioner can live decently on R33 a month. You know it, Sir, and I know it. Under a contributory pension scheme of the type we envisage, decent pensions could be paid to these old people, and the means test could be done away with, as we have outlined year after year in this House. Do you know, Sir, it is now almost 30 years ago that General Smuts’s Social and Economic Planning Council indicated that it would be possible to implement such a scheme, in which the means test was abolished, as soon as the national income exceeded R2,000 million a year. To-day it is R7,000 million a year, and we are still without such a pension scheme. Why, Sir? Because of the callous indifference of this Government to the position of the old people in South Africa. I believe that it is absolutely indefensible that South Africa still should be stuck with an old age pension scheme which degrades and humiliates any applicants, which penalizes the thrifty and in some respects gives preference to improvident wastrels.

You sack the old people.

Mr. Speaker, listen to this hon. gentleman. His difficulty is that he does not have any to sack. He is praying to keep what he has got with him, and he knows he cannot. They are leaving him so fast that I do not know what he will be left with before long.

Blaar.

In the same way the Government deserves to forfeit the confidence of the people of South Africa because of its indifference to the plight of hundreds and thousands of South Africans in regard to medical expenses. The doctors and the medical practitioners have made out a good case for higher fees and higher salaries. They are getting them. Hospital services cost more not only because of inflation but because the treatment of disease has become more complex and more expensive with the advance of science. Yet, Sir, South Africa does not have a national medical aid scheme as advocated by us over the years. The citizen, especially the middle-class family, has no protection against the crippling effect and the ruinous cost of major illnesses. Under the national medical aid scheme which we propose doctor and patient relations will be left undisturbed. Doctors will remain independent practitioners. Patients will be free to choose their own doctor. But every South African family will enjoy the protection of this national scheme, to the cost of which employees, employers and the State—and the State, Sir—will have to contribute.

Do you know, Sir, this Government has tried to do some work in respect of housing. It has tried to do some work towards housing the poor in South Africa, but it is lagging a very long way behind in meeting the demands of those who wish to own their own homes, particularly those young couples wanting to start their own families. The Government has been utterly indifferent to the cost of urban building land, caused in many ways by bad administration and long administrative delays. Sir, it is ridiculous. It has happened, I believe, in at least one case that there has been a delay of something like nine years in the approval of a township. The interest on the capital put up by the developer has been allowed to run on while the plans have been held up and examined by something like 30 odd Governmental departments jointly and severally. And that, Sir, before the township is proclaimed! Do you wonder why the price of residential land is high? The Government has appointed a Commission to look into it now. What a confession of failure after all these years! We published our policy to overcome the housing shortage before the appointment of the Commission. We plan that private builders will be the front line troops in that battle. We believe that they should be helped to obtain finance and that they will be used not only by the Government itself, but also in co-operation with the local authorities. We believe that income tests for admission to economic and sub-economic schemes should be made less severe and that people paying off on land and homes for personal occupation should be allowed income-tax deductions on the interest they are paying on that money. The plans have been set out in detail and I cannot deal with them all here. Other speakers will deal with them. These are only a few of the steps the Government could take but does not take to alleviate the housing shortage. That is not the only neglect. At this moment there is neglect of the long-term security of the average white worker in South Africa. At the moment many of our white workers are doing well because there are shortages of labour, largely artificially introduced by Government policy but at the same time the Government is doing its best to overcome these shortages by the employment of black labour in white jobs at lower wages in factories on the borders of the reserves. This is forcing more and more industries to move to these border areas largely with the help of negative measures which make it difficult for industries to exist in established industrial areas and which are designed to make it impossible for them to expand in those areas. What is the main inducement offered to these industrialists to go to border areas? The main inducement offered to them is unlimited black labour at low wages without restrictions on the skills that they can achieve. As a result of this one White is employed for roughly every two Bantu in the existing industrial areas. In the case of the border industries it is one White for every six or seven Bantu. One cannot deny that our labour pattern is changing and will probably have to change if South Africa is to progress, but in my opinion this is an underhand and clandistine way of doing it, namely through this channel of border industries. It is unwise because in the long run it endangers the security of the white worker in South Africa. I believe that this Government is deceiving the workers in South Africa because it does not have the courage to come forward with an overall plan to be applied everywhere in South Africa. We have such a policy. We want to see all race groups, White and non-White, enjoy higher living standards in South Africa. We believe that this will only be possible if we accept that White and non-White are dependent one upon the other. If we accept that that interdependence is real, we can develop our country and create job opportunities for White and non-Whites on a scale impossible if non-White labour is restricted or totally barred. We know that the acceptance of this or even the partial acceptance of this will bring big problems, chief of which is the danger to the more advanced groups of competition from lower paid groups of other races. We plan to meet this problem by a policy which I believe is practical and sensible and already has the support of many responsible employers and trade unionists in South Africa. Our policy ranges from a guarantee of employment for Whites at real present wages to special attention being given to the education and re-education of white workers to ensure the quality of their leadership and their ability to take new and better paid jobs in an advancing economy. Our policy recognizes the right of trade unions to negotiate agreements enforceable by law and entrust to them as far as possible the task of smooth adjustment in a changing labour pattern. I want to say that the workers of South Africa can be confident that their rights and interests will be protected and that any changes in the constitution of our labour force will be to their advantage as well as to the advantage of the whole of South Africa. This Government has no such policy. They are allowing the Minister of Transport to go happily on his way, breaking all the rules they lay down for everybody else.

Thank heavens we do not live in a Cloud Cuckoo land the way you did.

No, no. They are allowing the Minister to bully the trade unions. They are allowing him to employ non-Whites to do work previously done by Whites and at lower wages. He goes round the country and prides himself on what he has done. But what policy is there being applied by other industrialists throughout South Africa? Why does the hon. the Minister not talk to the Minister of Labour and tell him how to do it? They do not have the courage to do it, that is the trouble. They want the old fears and the old prejudices to rule life in South Africa. They are too fear-ridden and uncertain of themselves to allow South Africa to surge forward as it would if proper use was made of that labour, as it certainly would if wise policies were applied. Sir, the people of South Africa want to surge forward. They are tired of restrictions on development and retarded growth. They are tired of the slump on the Exchange. They are tired of stifling the growth of industries in our established centres. They want to enjoy the benefits South Africa can give them under wise and enlightened policies. That is why they are losing confidence in this Government.

The Government’s indifference, its careless attitude, was never more evident than in respect of taxation policies. Not only has it overtaxed us over the years, but we had a wonderful example last session of the sort of position which has been developing. Let us look at the situation. Twenty odd years ago the United Party could administer South Africa on the Revenue Budget of about R260 million a year. In the current year the Government is asking for R1,800 million on Revenue Account and R180 million on Loan Account. Of course our country has grown. Of course money has lost its value under this Government. Of course the population has grown. But is there a sane man or a woman anywhere in South Africa to-day who can say that the people are getting better service than they got then, and at ten times the cost? We all know that much of this vast sum is being wasted. We know it is being wasted on bad administration, poor control of expenditure and their pursuit of ideological pipedreams. I have no time to go into them all, but let anybody who wants evidence go and read the Auditor-General’s Report for 1967 just for a start and see what lack of control, waste and what unauthorized expenditure there have been, and then come back and talk to us about efficient government. Look what happened last session, Sir. New taxation was introduced by the hon. the Minister of Finance, imposing an unfair and disproportionate burden on the poor man in South Africa.

Let me illustrate it. Sales tax was introduced last year. We on this side of the House supported it in principle, provided it was imposed fairly and provided necessities and non-durable goods were as far as possible to be exempted from application. The Minister of Finance paid lip service to this suggestion, but in practice, of course, he ignored it. He hit the family man very hard indeed. Necessities were taxed, from soap to insecticides, from furniture to paint, from writing paper to crockery and cutlery. What was the result? The experts calculated that a man with an income of R5,000 p.a. was the only one who derived any benefit from reductions in income tax and its replacement by the sales tax. Let us look at the position further. A man earning R8,000 or more a year had his income tax halved as a result of the new proposals last year. A man with a wife and three children found that if he earned R10,000, his tax fell from R2,513 to R1,400, a year. Those people benefited. The trade unions worked out what happened to the poor man. Here is the case of a man with an income of R4,000 a year. He saved R40 in tax, but R80 more had to be paid in sales tax.

Nonsense!

The hon. member says it is nonsense. Let him ask the hon. the Minister why he is reducing the tax now. The hon. the Minister will admit that it is hitting the lower income group and by doing that he is admitting that everything we said was true. A man with a wife and two children earning R1,800 a year receives a R11 tax deduction, but has to pay R36 more by way of sales tax. A widow earning R90 per month and who has one child, receives a R5 tax deduction and has to pay R20 per year more by way or sales tax.

Where do you get those figures from?

I get them from the National Union of Distributive Workers’ organ The New Day of August, 1969.

Have you checked on them?

I have checked to the best of my ability, and I believe it is an underestimate. I believe it is an underestimate and that is why the hon. the Minister has now reduced the sales tax.

Why only now on the eve of the election? It should never have been done at all. [Interjections.]

The longer this Government has been in power the less it has cared for the middle class and for the poor. I believe this is another valid reason why it should lose the confidence of the public and why this House should give the public the lead in that respect. When a government has been in power too long it is always open to two major temptations. The first is that it loses touch with the people and the second is that it develops authoritarian tendencies. This Government has resisted neither temptation. I think I have shown how it is losing touch with the ordinary people and I would now like to say a few words about the authoritarian tendency that I think it is developing. I believe that under this Government it has taken three forms. The first concerns the pattern of legislation to which we have been increasingly exposed, legislation designed to give more and more powers to Ministers and to remove the powers of courts to act as the protectors of citizens against administrative injustices. I can give many examples, but I only want to give one or two. I wish to confine myself to the last session of Parliament. I appreciate that I cannot criticize legislation in this House. The first example I want to give concerns what has come to be known as the BOSS clause.

Leave that to Albert.

The hon. the Deputy Minister who made that interjection is well aware of the fate of the hon. the Deputy Minister who introduced that legislation. [Interjections.] I think it is one of the reasons for his discomfort at the moment. But let us come back to a more serious matter. I want to refer to these so-called BOSS clauses and I want to remind hon. members of this House of their history. They will remember that after the Bureau for State Security was brought into being two clauses were brought before this House by later legislation. One of these clauses provided that the publication of any information concerning the Bureau for State Security was prohibited under penalty in certain circumstances. This placed the Press of South Africa in a difficult position. The other clause, namely clause 29, prohibits the giving or production of evidence if in the opinion, not of the court, but of the hon. the Prime Minister or anyone delegated by him, or of any other Minister, the giving of that information or evidence or the production of that document affects the security of the State. We believe that this could include evidence which could be led or given by an accused in his own defence. We protested strongly against that legislation in this House and we condemned the measure. This is not the point, however. The point is that from outside came the condemnation of advocates practising in our major cities including the capital city of Pretoria. There came condemnation from Judges and from people who occupy the highest legal positions in South Africa and whose objectivity made their serious concern all the more impressive. It came also from teachers of law at our great universities, the University of South Africa, the Rand Afrikaans University, Pretoria University and Potchefstroom University. Even the Transvaler—can you believe it— wrote that the clauses concerned have clearly gone too far. Now there is a commission. It may in passing examine the clauses and tell us what their meaning is, whether the Prime Minister happens to be right or whether we and all the other legal authorities in South Africa happen to be right. Here then is an example of the sort of authoritarianism to which this Government is becoming addicted. I want to give you a second example. Last session there was a further amendment to the Population Registration Act. Rightly or wrongly, as passed in this House, it provided for powers that went to Ministers to direct what tests should be applied by Judges where in the past the Judges had applied other tests which proved to be unsatisfactory to the Government. There is something else. It not only fettered the Judges by legislation, but by legislation it quashed a whole series of cases before the Appeal Boards and the Courts. I now leave that matter. It is an example of the type of legislation which is coming from this Government. I believe that they are all part of an authoritarian disease of which this Government is becoming a patient.

Ten years ago you said we were becoming a police state.

Mr. Speaker, the worry about this Minister of Community Development is that you can never accept anything he says. I challenge him to say that I ever said that we are a police state. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member may proceed.

Mr. Speaker, there is another form that this tendency has taken, namely the manner in which the Government has exercised many of its administrative functions. Some of those examples concern the hon. the Prime Minister himself. I should like to give just one or two examples. Sometime ago when the hon. the Prime Minister was in charge of the Police in his capacity as Minister, a newspaper, the Sunday Times, published certain extracts from documents circulated, apparently privately, by an organization known as the Broederbond. The publication must have severely embarrassed the Broederbond. An allegation of theft was brought to the Police. To the amazement of many the matter was not investigated by the C.I.D. but by the special branch of the Police normally concerned with matters affecting the security of the State. I think I am right in saying—the hon. the Prime Minister may correct me if I am wrong—that the officer in charge of that examination is the officer who is at present the Director of the Bureau for State Security, General Van den Bergh himself. I know it has been suggested that the security police are policemen. Of course, they can do ordinary police work. However, it does seem an incredible waste for an officer in such an important position to have his time taken up by a trifling little matter of this kind. One wonders why he undertook it and who directed him.

What year are you referring to?

Some years back. [Interjection.] It is clear that the hon. gentleman recalls it. It was perhaps the first sign of the disease as far as he was concerned. We have had other instances since then. Was it last year that we had the security police made use of to trace the author of certain satirical “letters” which were written? [Interjection.] And, Sir, was it the same officer in charge of the investigation, namely General Van den Bergh? Is there anyone in this House who is impressed with the hon. the Prime Minister’s suggestion that the General investigated personally because there was a suspicion that this two-penny-halfpenny letter was of communist origin? Surely, Sir, it requires no high intelligence to realize that these letters were written by Nationalists unhappy over the leadership of the Prime Minister. The whole incident obviously related to the dissension that was developing in the Nationalist Party under the leadership of the hon. gentleman.

But then during the recess we had a third example. And that third example is what I regard as the indefensible manner in which the hon. the Prime Minister used powers which he undoubtedly had to cause a one-man commission on the Bureau of State Security to adjudicate upon the correctness of a statement made by the hon. member for Ermelo as a politician.

Why steal his thunder?

I am not stealing his thunder. I am only using this to prove my case against the hon. the Prime Minister.

Do you stand by the R50 million or the R4 million?

Is it really important as to who is right? What is important is that the hon. the Prime Minister with all the authority of his office could have denied that statement and could have put the correct figures before the public. That would have been the end of the issue. He could have done it either by way of a public statement or in the course of ordinary political debate. What happened instead? He alters the terms of reference of a State President’s commission. He alters the rules of procedure and he altered the time in which the report was to be made. This was all designed to expose his new political opponent, the hon. member for Ermelo, to the maximum embarrassment.

And what do we further have in all these cases? We have the political interest of the governing party being equated to the interests of the State. We have authoritarian actions by a government flowing from their totalitarian belief that their party is the nation. I say that when a government bases its actions on false assumptions of this kind then the freedom of every citizen in South Africa is beset with danger.

There is a third example of this authoritarianism and that is that the arrogance and contemptuous attitude of the Government towards the ordinary man is inevitably reflected in the tone and the spirit of its administration. Because this Government is arrogant the relationship between the ordinary citizen and the Government’s administration is deteriorating. Do not look to me for the evidence. I want to refer the hon. gentleman to articles in two Government supporting newspapers who in recent months have drawn attention to what they call a new disease in the public life of South Africa, namely the arrogance of various authorities towards the public they are supposed to serve and their failure to account to the public for their mistakes. These are not newspapers supporting my party. These are newspapers supporting the hon. gentlemen.

Have you any?

I would prefer to say no. I would prefer to say that when newspapers support me they support me because they believe my policy to be the right one and not because they are bound by Cabinet Ministers sitting on their boards or because they are tied as trustees in one way or another to support the Nationalist Party. [Interjections.] These are examples of methods which have been used by this Government. I want to recall one of the examples and that is the case of the Bantu prisoners who suffocated in a large van when they were being conveyed from a prison to the court for trial. This took place during the last session of Parliament in March last year. The newspapers complained a couple of months ago that after five months the police had failed to produce the findings of the departmental inquiry that was ordered to go into the matter, and they had not made redress to the relatives. I do not know whether that report has been made available. It has most definitely not been made available to the public. I do not know whether damages have been paid to the relatives or to the dependants concerned, but nevertheless, there was that delay already when the newspapers complained. That was bad enough, and I believe it is worse now. What was worse, is that when the deaths were reported and the matter was raised in Parliament, Government members and especially the hon. the Minister seemed to resent the Opposition raising the matter at all. That is a sign of how sick this situation is at the moment. These authoritarian tendencies of which I have discussed the three main types, threaten the very roots of the freedom and dignity of the individual in South Africa. I want to say here and now that the United Party in power will not tolerate arrogance or abuse of power. We pledge ourselves to end the intolerable growth of ministerial power and government by decree, the continual threats against the freedom of the Press by the hon. the Prime Minister and the Minister of Police amongst others, the stranglehold of bureaucracy and red-tape and above all the totalitarian actions and attitude of the Government against the free access of citizens to independent courts of law. We shall uphold the rule of law and secure the safety of South Africa both internally and against outside attack.

I have dealt with three of the six main issues which I outlined but the overriding consideration in the mind of the public when we come to the general election, will be their judgment on the Prime Minister and his qualities of leadership. Here we have to deal with a story of indecision, of vacillation and of weakness. The public cannot have been impressed by the hon. Prime Minister’s handling of the hon. member for Ermelo. The fact is that he had failed to grasp the nettle in time: he was either too naive or too dis ingenious to recognize the early signs of disaffection. How many times during the last session did the hon. Prime Minister not assure the House that his whole Parliamentary team accepted his interpretation of the Nationalist’s Party Policy! When at last we, on this side of the House, forced him to face the issue, did he do anything effective about it? No, Mr. Speaker, it was left to the hon. the Minister of Transport to repudiate the hon. member for Ermelo. I want to give another example. The Government’s Ministers never tire of telling us of the dangerous world in which we live, about the threats to our security, about the sacrifices we must make, about the strength of will which is required if we had to govern as a white race on this southern tip of Africa. And yet the hon. the Prime Minister cannot, apparently, make up his mind about the future of the Cape Coloured group, a group posing the least threat to our future security. This, in fact, is an issue which, if it had been handled with justice and wisdom, could have done much to strengthen the security of the Whites in Southern Africa altogether. I have no hesitation in saying that I do not like the change in attitude of too many Coloured people towards the Whites which has taken place during the period during which the Nationalist Party has been in power. What virtue has there been in having introduced friction in a sphere where once all those of us who are of a more mature age know there was harmony and mutual trust and there was the security of knowing that Whites and Coloureds stood together. Yet, instead of taking the lead and trying to heal the breach, the Prime Minister weakly leaves the problem in mid-air. What did he say in this House? He said he could offer no immediate solution. His words were that this was the dilemma and the problem of South Africa for the future, and as far as that is concerned our children after us would have to find the solution. I am sure all hon. members were amazed and appalled at such an attitude and such an abdication from a position of responsibility in regard to a problem that has been with us for 300 years. What did the hon. the Prime Minister do? He admitted on that occasion that he believed that a Coloured homeland was not practical policy. He might tell that to his Minister of Information. [Laughter.] He admitted that it was not going to be easy to find a link between the Coloured Representative Council and this House. He said that the Coloureds were not yet a nation, but all the Government had in fact done was to set the foot of the Coloureds on the bottom rung of the ladder. It was quite obvious to us all that he had no idea whatever where that ladder was to take the Cape Coloured people, except to say in his own words that development must not be towards each other, that is, between them and us, but away from each other. I only want to say that the actions of the Minister of Coloured Affairs in making nominations for representatives of the Coloured Representative Council are of a kind which will have the effect of converting that body into nothing more or less than an instrument to carry out Government policy, and that will certainly do nothing to earn their respect for or their loyalty towards the Whites. What a tragic state of affairs has been allowed to develop as the result of this weakness and this indecision!

The position is no better in respect of Bantu policy. The Prime Minister’s policy has failed and he has nothing to put in its place. For him and his party there is no middle road. There has been through the years for them only two alternatives, “uiteindelike algehele apartheid” or complete separation, or complete integration. Complete integration is as unacceptable to us as it is to him. The policy of complete separation no longer exists. [Interjection.] They are now stuck without any other plan. This explains in part their confusion and their weakness on the subject. The Prime Minister is in a hopeless mess on this issue and he will land South Africa in a hopeless mess if we do not stop him. You see, Sir, he lacks the faith in the white man to accept the alternative that we placed before South Africa, an alternative which will secure civilized white leadership and justice to all men in South Africa.

Sir, I have given examples of the indecision of the hon. gentleman, but how many other matters have not been referred to commissions because the hon. gentleman cannot make up his mind? Look at the situation. We have been definite for a number of years in our determination to give South Africa television, but this hon. Prime Minister, at the end of the nineteen-sixties and the beginning of the nineteen-seventies, in the year 1969, has appointed a commission, inter alia, to advise him as to whether we should have television at all or not. I just want to say to the hon. gentleman that if one wants to comment on this the best comment I can make is this. I want to say to him that when we come into power we will abolish this commission and give the people television.

When will that be? When do you expect to get into power?

I think it will be before that commission reports.

You are going to be terribly disappointed.

Sir, this hon. Minister is far more out of touch with the country than I thought he was, and Heaven knows that is bad enough! But there is not just the commission on television which is sitting. There is the one on agriculture, which pops up every now and then with interim reports applying United Party policy. There is the commission on the high cost of residential land. There is the commission on Stock Exchange prices, which has obviously been appointed to try and whitewash the Minister of Finance. [Interjection.] I am sorry, it is a departmental inquiry which has the same effect save that it has the advantage, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, that it does not have to publish the report. That is the only real difference. There is one on water, to distract attention from the shortages all over the country. There is one on the Bureau of State Security, and so we can go on. But I think the last example I want to bring of the vacillation and weakness on the part of the hon. the Prime Minister is the very announcement of this general election. In fact, the Prime Minister vacillated too long; he let things develop. He was waiting for something to turn up, and when the hon. member for Ermelo turned up he did not quite know what to do about it at the Transvaal Congress. He found things had gone so much further than he had ever imagined and he allowed himself to be panicked into an early election, with no regard to the state of the rolls, and Heaven knows what trouble that is causing. And then he was unmindful of the fact that the election date fell on an important religious holiday for a section of our people.

How many times in the past years have I not put policies before this House in opposition to the Government and my policies have been proved correct? Let me remind the hon. gentleman of just two instances. He will recall my warning over the years against the dangers of creating independent Bantustans. Now look what has happened in Lesotho. Has the Government been proved right, or have I been proved right? You will remember, Sir, last year when the sales tax came before Parliament we criticized the hon. the Minister of Finance because we said he was underestimating the revenue, because he was taxing non-durable goods and necessities against the interests of the ordinary man, while the very rich would benefit unduly from the income tax changes. What happened this morning? We found that the hon. the Minister on a Sunday found it necessary to announce great changes designed to admit the correctness of every word of criticism voiced by the United Party. How long must we go on warning South Africa, telling them that this Government is wrong, and then seeing the people suffer as a result of the mistakes and the misjudgment of this Government? I believe the time has come for the people to realize that they must reject this Government, which has shown itself unfit to steer South Africa through the difficult waters on which we are sailing at present. I believe the time has come to put into power the only alternative Government, a Government which, as current events have shown, has been right on virtually every issue.

We have once again listened to the annual charge sheet of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. This time the charge sheet was slightly longer than usual, probably to make provision for the promises for the coming election. You know, Sir, while I was listening to this charge sheet, which in substance is in effect the same as the charge sheet he submits here every year, I wondered what impression a stranger from outside, visiting this House for the first time, would gain from this picture of South Africa as sketched by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

He will feel sorry for the people.

I wondered how he was to feel sorry for South Africa in the light of the picture sketched here by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. On an occasion such as this one, and with regard to the Government, the expression used by Mark Anthony when he said, “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” does perhaps apply to the Leader of the Opposition. It is understandable that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition would not come here to praise us. Nor could one perhaps expect the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to bear testimony here to-day to the fact that South Africa is progressive. Nor could we expect him to bear testimony here to our being a most prosperous country. This would, what is more, certainly be expecting too much from a party which has only very recently started propagating patriotism from its public platforms; it would be asking too much to expect such a party, through the mouth of its Leader, to admit here that under the guidance of this Government, South Africa has become a veritable stronghold of Western civilization on the southernmost point of Africa, and that we are maintaining it here in safety in the face of foreign and domestic pressure—which is a tremendous asset to everyone in this country. I say this is expecting too much from a party that came to this House with the idea of burying Caesar and not of praising him. It is perhaps expecting too much that such a party would betray the fact that all the population groups of this country are comparatively speaking maintaining a very high standard of living. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition had a great deal to say here about the man in the street, but when one speaks about the man in the street, one of the best tests of the way the man in the street lives, is to try to understand and determine his standard of living; and when one looks at the standard of living of our various population groups, Mr. Speaker, it is a fact that we are maintaining a particularly high standard of living. On an occasion such as this one it would perhaps be expecting too much from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to bear testimony to the fact that we in this country are enjoying an enviable and large measure of labour peace, and I think that above all it would be expecting too much from him that on an occasion such as this he would admit that in this country of ours, consisting as it does of many peoples, this country where we are dealing with millions of non-Whites, we have a state of calm and order and racial harmony. It is perhaps expecting too much from a person who only yesterday inscribed patriotism on his banner to bear testimony to these things here.

Tell us about your Coloured Council.

The hon. member will hear about it if he would only exercise a little patience. Sir, this would be expecting too much, and that is why I think it is a good thing that a debate such as this one is held at the beginning of the year before a general election so that the Government may be called to account. But, Sir, not only the Government, but also the other arm of this legislative body can be called to account, and that means the joint Opposition as they are sitting over there. The joint Opposition can also be called to account in this debate. Not only the Government, but also the joint Opposition can be called to account in this debate about the realization of principles and about the respect shown in this country by all groups for law and order and decency. This debate is going to afford the opportunity for such accounting to be done. Having to listen here to the Op position’s attacks year after year, one finds that there is one thing that astonishes one when listening to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, to whom I listen every year with as much attentiveness as I can muster, and that is that after the 21 years he and his party have spent in the political desert of South Africa, he has still not formed an understanding of our fundamental problems, of the problem of our existence. These detailed quotations made by the Leader of the Opposition on the population figures, the statement that the numbers of the non-Whites in the cities have increased such a great deal, that there are no indications of their returning to their Bantu homelands and his gloomy predictions with reference to what has happened in Lesotho, provide one with the best indication of the large extent to which the Opposition has lost touch with the people of South Africa. We in this country have very good evidence of the fact that the Opposition is out of touch with the people. I just want to mention one instance. In 1960 when we were in the midst of the referendum campaign, it was the hon. the Leader of the Opposition who proclaimed at the top of his voice that the anti-Republican vote would win in South Africa. This merely goes to show the extent to which he had lost touch with the nation and with the heart and the soul of our people. Sir, if population figures had to be the decisive factor in the existence of a nation and a country, where would this small white nation have been? If population figures, if non-white population figures, had to be the decisive factor in our history, in our existence, then, surely, our white nation should have disappeared centuries ago. No, the decisive factor, Sir, is not an arithmetical outlook on life; the decisive factor is to have inexorable faith in your right to a separate ethnic existence; this is decisive, and what is important along with that faith, is one’s willingness and one’s readiness to grant others what one claims for oneself in a country such as this; these are decisive. That is the difference in approach which to-day has once again come to the fore so strikingly and so clearly in the speech made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, who is obsessed with non-white population figures and their movements. To him these things are decisive. Perhaps the United Party have no choice, because they do not have the faith to which I am referring; they do not even have faith in themselves; they do not even have faith in their winning the coming election, in spite of that passing reference of his. Their own newspapers have already written them off as a possible winner. How are such people, who do not even have faith in themselves, to have faith in South Africa and in the separate existence of the white nation?

Sir, in that spirit of a lack of faith we have also had to-day these references to Lesotho. The chain of events in Lesotho has now also been brought up here by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. What is happening in Lesotho, is Lesotho’s affair. In accordance with our National policy, i.e. that we do not permit other people to interfere in our affairs, we are not going to interfere in Lesotho’s affairs either; that is their affair. But whereas the hon. the Leader of the Opposition wishes to use the events in Lesotho for the purpose of running down the National Party’s policy of Bantu homelands, I want to tell him that in those instances where he wishes to harness them for domestic, political objectives, he is losing sight of a very significant difference between the political development here with our Bantu homelands, and the political development in Lesotho. The National Party’s Bantu homelands policy, the National Party’s Bantu homelands development, embodies the recognition of the traditional system of chiefs, and because our Bantu homelands policy recognizes and respects the traditional system of chiefs, this also forms an inherent part of our Bantu homelands policy. Thanks to that fact, i.e. that it forms an inherent part, we have this increased stability in our Bantu development programme in this country. As against that Lesotho took over the democratic Western parliamentary system in its entirety. They did not do what we did in South Africa, i.e. the incorporation of this stabilizing factor of the system of chiefs in their political structure. Therefore, should the events in Lesotho now be used by the United Party or whoever, they can only be used to the credit of the National Party’s Bantu homelands policy, in terms of which this system has been incorporated to give at least the assurance that the highest degree of stability can be retained. But, Sir, what one finds astonishing now, with this reference to Lesotho, is the fact that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is losing sight of something else, i.e. that Chief Jonathan’s actions are directed against Communism in Lesotho.

With that very same blunder the Leader of the Opposition once again conjured with the population figures for the non-Whites. Instead of his coming forward and facing the problem of our existence squarely, i.e. how our 3½ million Whites have to hold our own here and at the same time afford the millions of non-Whites opportunities for realizing themselves, he now resorts to, and we are treated to a negative and defeatist outlook on life in connection with non-white population growth. For a considerable time the United Party has been rejoicing at the numbers of non-Whites present in our white cities. In fact, they are rejoicing at our inability to get them out fast enough. The returns of the non-white population figures are a source of rejoicing to them. They are almost hoping, as does one of their newspapers which said the other day, that “population may decide South African policy”. The silent hope cherished by the United Party and their newspapers is that this non-white population growth will force the National Party to abandon its policy of apartheid. This is what they desire heart and soul. Now I want to ask hon. members: If the inference is that owing to the fear of non-White population figures, coupled with intimidation applied to us from outside, South Africa will now have to give in, what then should the alternative be? If we are to give in now because the numbers against us are too great, because their rate of increase is too high, and because the outside world is intimidating us and bringing pressure to bear upon us, what then should the alternative be?

Surely, you have given in already.

Mr. Speaker, that is what the United Party would like. They would like us to give in under the pressure of their population statistics. If we gave in, what would we find then? If we gave in there would only be one alternative, and that is total integration, with its disastrous effects for the Whites. In this country with its realities there is no middle course. Clever names such as the “federation plan” may be mentioned and discussed, as has in fact been done to-day, but there are in truth two courses only. We either follow the course of separate development or that of integration.

Will the hon. the Minister tell us why Dr. Verwoerd said that the Bantustan policy was forced on us in South Africa from outside?

Mr. Speaker, we made allowances for the fact that the time had arrived for the non-Whites to be afforded this opportunity of realizing themselves. We are glad that that opportunity was initiated by Dr. Verwoerd. These population figures which hon. members want to use in order to prove that apartheid has failed—as the gentleman on the other side said, they prove that we have already failed—do not make apartheid a failure. On the contrary, what this growth of the population does in fact require, is that separate development at present and in the future will be more essential than before. This does not make it any the less essential; it does not make it useless. As a result of this increase in non-white numbers, it is, for the sake of peaceful co-existence, more essential than ever that South Africa should remain on the course of separate development. This is what we are going to vote on on 22nd April. I hope that these boisterous hon. members will clearly state their alternative to separate development before that time, for on 22nd April the electorate will once again be called upon to vote on separate development with its advantages, but also with its problems. They will have to vote on the advantages of separate development, advantages to which, apparently, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his side of the House are blind, and also on the problems of separate development, on which the hon. the Leader enthusiastically elaborated. As regards these problems, the hon. the Leader has also obtained the support of another negative party to-day, i.e. the gossip party of Dr. Hertzog. South Africa has to choose between this course of separate development with its advantages and its problems, on which the joint Opposition in this House are agreed, and the course of integration, the only alternative there is. That is why it is unnecessary for us to concern ourselves with a fraud such as a middle course. We should concern ourselves with the realities of this country. At this election the National Party is prepared to submit this statement—i.e. that there are only two courses open to South Africa, the first with its advantages and its problems, and the second with its disastrous consequences for the Whites—to the test of our electorate. They can test us against that on the basis of our record of 21 years. We are prepared to put up our record of 21 years as our argument on the basis of which the electorate can at this election decide on these two courses. But the United Party need not think that because it has not governed for 21 years and the majority of them no longer have any idea of what a responsibility it is to govern, they are not going to be judged by the electorate on the same ground. No, the United Party will be judged on its past and its statements and its conduct up to now. It will be judged on the basis of this fundamental question: What would South Africa have looked like to-day, in the year 1970, if that party had had to govern South Africa for 21 years? I have no doubt that this would result in a damning verdict against them.

Mr. Speaker, in the time at my disposal I want to confine myself to two of the innumerable matters discussed by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. I also wish to talk about the question of the Coloureds and the question of manpower. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition once again deemed it fit to intimate that we had no policy for the Coloureds and that we still had to think about it, and so forth. This was done with the characteristic superficiality with which we are already familiar. Actually, it does not astonish me that the United Party should come forward with this accusation, because there are few parties of which I know which have chopped and changed as much with regard to an important population group such as the Coloureds as in fact the United Party has done. For election after election they fought to get the Coloureds on the Common Voters’ Roll. They fought court case after court case against this Government for the very purpose of keeping the Coloureds on the Common Voters’ Roll. In 1967 they suddenly changed front. At that time they changed colour and cast overboard the Common Voters’ Roll as far as the Coloureds were concerned and accepted a separate roll. This is the chop and change policy of the United Party, and that is why it is perhaps fitting for people who are so fond of chopping and changing to want to project this characteristic of theirs on other people as well.

What about your policy?

I shall now tell the hon. member about our policy. Only people who are not blind politically will realize to-day what the advantages are of the National Party’s policy of parallel development for the Coloureds in South Africa. That side of the House has levelled the reproach at us that we do not have a policy. If this side of the House had not had a policy as regards the Coloureds, the 1,800,000 Coloureds of South Africa would to-day still have been as much of a political football as they were in the days when the U.P. was in power. If we did not have a policy, there would positively have been accomplished just as little for the Coloureds as was accomplished during all the years when they had to live in this country under a U.P. régime. A few moments ago the hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to the harmony which had allegedly existed in their time. In all fairness I think that on the day of the election, at least, there was a small measure of harmony. Actually, the harmony came to an end when they were dropped at the polls. After that they had to walk home on foot. But up to that stage there was a small measure of harmony. That was the harmony there was. If we did not have a policy, we would not have reached this stage where Coloured representation in this Parliament was terminated. The fact of the matter is that this Government has distinctly laid down its guide lines for the Coloureds in this country. We have placed them on a firm course of self-realization, on a course which has been marked out for them. When I had the privilege of opening the first session of the Coloured Persons Representative Council in November, I made this very clear to them.

Who represents them?

I shall tell the hon. member in a moment if he would hold his breath a little. I made it very clear to them that the development which had taken place in this country and was still taking place in their interests, was taking place under the National Party’s policy of parallel development, that parallel development was the political and the life pattern within which the Coloureds could realize themselves with our assistance. This is known to the Coloureds and to the world. How far and how rapidly the Coloureds will move along that parallel, that vertical course, will to a very large extent depend on the sense of responsibility of the Coloured leaders themselves. Let me now give hon. members the assurance that the responsible Coloured leaders in this country, the leaders who adopt a realistic view of and approach to the circumstances of our country, are far more in number than that side of the House would like to admit.

The hon. member wanted to know by whom they were represented. He is referring to the Coloured elections and the appointments I made.

Who won that election?

It will interest hon. members to heat what the position was in regard to those elections. The parties supporting parallel development drew 158,000 votes at those elections, as against the party standing for equality, i.e. the Labour Party, with its 137,000 votes. If the hon. member ever wants to hear of a significant development, then it is this one. It is significant because these elections were conducted in the face of the strongest incitement on the part of the English Press in this country against parallel development. They disparaged parallel development with the slogan “Down with Apartheid!”, “Down with Job Reservation!”, “Down with Group Areas!” That is why I say that it is an achievement that we find at these elections that the majority of the Coloureds voted for those parties which support parallel development, in spite of the emotional force of this “Down with Apartheid” slogan. Sir, I think that this absolute majority of votes which were cast in favour of the parallel development parties, is not only a testimonial to the National Party and the National Government’s parallel development policy, but also a testimonial to the sense of responsibility evinced by the Coloured leaders in South Africa. This impression of their sense of responsibility was confirmed on more than one occasion, inter alia, on the occasion of this first session of the Coloured Persons Representative Council. I have no doubt that within the framework of parallel development this Coloured Persons Representative Council will still become a great asset to the Coloured population, and therefore to South Africa as well. But now the United Party expects us to furnish a kind of blueprint. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has also hinted at this. One finds it strange that when a party such as the United Party is cornered by questions on their colour policy, i.e. at what stage non-white representation is to be introduced and at what stage it is to be extended further, they say that their policy is for the foreseeable future. This is the common U.P. expression. Therefore, these people who are merely planning their policy for the foreseeable future, now expect from us a detailed blueprint for the most distant future. Just as little as this Government could have said 20 years ago that we would have so many factories and so many Iscors in South Africa this year, so little are we now in a position to say what the details will be of the Coloured political pattern in 20 or 30 years’ time. What the Coloureds, the country and also the Opposition might as well know, is that that development for the future, irrespective of how it will be, will not be mixed development. The development of the Coloureds along their vertical course will be separate and parallel.

This is the essence of the development that is in store for them. For a country with many peoples’, a country such as South Africa, where it is estimated that at the end of this century there will be 5½ million Coloureds and millions upon millions of Bantu, this policy of separate development is the only workable policy, if the one does not want to be swallowed up by the other. If the various peoples wish to live in friendship with one another, this is the only policy for the future. Without friendship South Africa would become an impossible country to live in. Without friendship we and the non-Whites would not be able to go on living in South Africa for centuries. This can only be accomplished, not by throwing us together, but by having us develop on parallel lines, so that we may respect one another as such. In spite of all this poison mongering of the United Party and its Press, I want to testify to-day that in this country at present a particularly good spirit and relationships prevail between the Coloureds and the white population, and vice versa. In the talks which I have with the Coloured leaders at regular intervals, I am impressed time and again …

Who are the leaders?

If the hon. member does not know that yet, I do not see my way clear to telling him at this late stage. In the course of talks which I have with Coloured leaders, and not with political leaders only, I am impressed time and again by the confidence the Coloured leaders have in this Government and in its sincerity as regards doing its share. These good relationships which at present prevail in South Africa on the part of the Coloureds towards the Whites, I want to attribute to a large extent to the sincere statement of policy by the National Party. The Coloureds in this country know what the guidelines are which this Government has determined. They know that just as reluctant as they as Coloureds are to mix with other non-white population groups, so reluctant are we as Whites to mix with another non-White population group. It is because they accept these facts of life that we are making progress to-day and being so successful with the implementation of our policy of parallel development as far as the Coloured population is concerned. It is because the Coloured leaders accept these facts of life that we are able to move with so much speed and success. Now the United Party is free to proceed with their hollow slogan, i.e. that we do supposedly not have a clearly marked out course. The answer to them and to everybody is that the good co-operation which exists in South Africa between the Coloureds and the Whites to-day—the calm, the peace and the order which are to be found in South Africa to-day—is the best testimonial to the success of the policy of parellel development. Within this framework of parallel development, Whites and Coloureds will from here onwards be able to inhabit this country further, irrespective of their numbers. Their numbers at the end of this century will not make any difference since we are not dealing here with a defeatist attitude to life, nor with an opportunistic policy such as that of the United Party, but with a sincere policy based on the live and let live outlook on life.

The other question on which the United Party hopes to bring about the downfall of apartheid and which has been included in the United Party’s plan of attack, is the question of labour. The United Party hopes that it will be able to bring about a crack in the structure of separate development on the labour front and, particularly, on the manpower front. As far as the Opposition is concerned, the phenomenal economic development of South Africa over the past two decades is a golden opportunity for propagating their integration plans. Years ago it was different. At that time the United Party set its hopes on something else, i.e. unemployment. The United Party was so eager to cause the downfall of the National Party on the question of unemployment that in 1961, when unemployment assumed grave proportions, they launched a procession through the streets of Johannesburg. Do hon. member know who headed that procession? In 1961 the hon. the Leader of the Opposition headed that procession through the streets of Johannesburg in order to protest. [Interjections.] I shall have to let the hon. the Leader have photographs which were published in the Sunday Times. As a matter of fact, he figured quite prominently in that procession in 1961. However, to-day we no longer have conditions of unemployment. To tell the truth, to-day we almost no longer have a thing such as unemployment. Out of the total number of calculable young white men and men in South Africa who are fit for labour, only .2 per cent are unemployed. Out of our whole calculable labour force only .5 per cent are unemployed to-day. That is smaller than the figure was 20 years ago. The position on the employment front is better to-day than it has been over the past 20 years. Now one can understand that the United Party cannot stage processions in the streets of Johannesburg on this score. They now have to concentrate on something else. They are concentrating now on the manpower shortage. Now they are levelling accusations to the effect that there is a manpower shortage and that we are not making proper use of the available sources of labour. They are accusing us of not harnessing the non-Whites properly. If we do not do that, South Africa will, according to them, go to rack and ruin. One asks oneself what is behind this agitation by the United Party. What is behind this argument, i.e. that there is a serious shortage, or as the hon. member for Hillbrow prefers to phrase it, that there is a crisis, and that our economy will come to a standstill? There is only one single consideration behind this U.P. agitation, and that is to get us to open the door to uncontrolled black employment in white areas. That is the only consideration. That is all that is behind it.

Before dealing with the disastrousness of the United Party’s policy, I just want to refer to the other complaint we have to listen to from their side of the House from time to time, i.e. that we are allegedly not doing enough to train Whites for the economic development of this country. I wonder whether the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his party know that over the past ten years the number of white students at South African universities has increased from 31,000 to 65,000? The number of white students at our universities has therefore more than doubled over the past ten years. This is not only the case at our universities. As regards our technical and vocational schools, the numbers have increased from 9,000 to 16,000 over this very same ten-year period. But let us take apprentices. What is the position in regard to apprentices over the past ten year period? The number of indentured apprentices has increased from 28,000 to 36,000 over the past ten years. The position is not as the United Party often wants to suggest, i.e. that there are simply no more Whites available to do the work. Does this look like deterioration?

And the building trade in Natal?

Splendid. The artisans in the building trade are also very important. Let me give you the figures for artisans in the building trade in this country. Over this period the number of artisans in the building trade in the areas falling under industrial councils in South Africa, showed the following increase: In 1962 we had 19,000 skilled artisans in South Africa; in 1969 this number increased to 35,000. Included in this number are coloured builders here in the Cape and at other places. [Interjections.] Since the United Party is now, before the elections, showing such great interest in the white workers, it should also listen to the following figure for Whites as far as the Transvaal is concerned. In the Transvaal the skilled building work has been reserved for Whites. In that Province the number of white artisans in the building trade increased from 9,400 in 1962 to 14,600 in 1969. I hope it will do your white heart good to know that this is the position.

But now we come to the industrial workers. What is the position there? We have to hear this all the time, and to-day the Leader of the Opposition once again blew hot and cold about black labour. One moment he is dissatisfied about there being too much, because this would cause the factories to be swamped by Blacks. The next moment, he is dissatisfied about there not being more. What is the position in regard to the industrial workers? The position is that in 1948 there were 115,000 white factory workers in our country. By 1968 this number had increased to 306,000. Over the past three years alone the number of white factory workers in our country has shown an increase of 26,000. This proves that the factories are still a sought-after means of gaining a livelihood for our white workers. As this is the case, it is the duty and the task of this Government to afford those white workers working in those factories the necessary protection in order that they may continue to work there. But now members of the Opposition are complaining that our labour policy is allegedly curbing our growth rate. This is, as it were, supposed to be bringing our country to a kind of standstill. Irrespective of how significant the growth rate is, and irrespective of how unfounded these statements are to which I am now going to refer, I want to tell the Opposition that it dare not have priority over the position of the white workers in this country. If we have to choose between the growth rate and the position of the white worker, we cannot give priority to the growth rate. You may call this ideological. You may call it uneconomic and you may call it what you please. This is the National Party outlook on life.

As regards the growth rate itself, there has not been a downward trend over these years. It has not shown a downward trend in the manufacturing industry; on the contrary, this growth rate has shown a stunning rise in the manufacturing industry. Thanks to the increased productivity which we have had in our manufacturing industry, particularly over the past few years, and the way in which the workers and employers have been co-operating in order to increase productivity, we succeeded in increasing the production in a large industry such as the metal industry by 9 per cent last year. In the metal industry alone, one of the most important and largest industries in the country, the increase in production amounted to 9 per cent last year. Does this look like deterioration and stagnation?

And now let us deal with growth rate of South Africa as a whole. The indications are that the growth rate of our gross domestic product for the past year is also higher than the growth rate of 5½ per cent aimed at. But now one often hears from the hon. member for Hillbrow and others that these shortages are serious. It is, as it were, a crisis. I want to tell hon. members that people who are cognizant of this matter and who do not use it for political considerations, have dealt with this matter at the recent session of the Economic Advisory Council. On that occasion various organizations, industrialists and big business leaders sounded the warning that we should not exaggerate this shortage of skilled labour. This is exactly what the United Party is doing. They are exaggerating these shortages to such an extent that they think they can by those means obtain a kind of lever or create a kind of crisis, for they can only derive hope for the future from a crisis. This attitude of the National Party in regard to white employment does not mean that it is opposed to the employment of non-Whites; on the contrary, we have over the past few years ensured that sufficient avenues of employment are created for the non-Whites. In the light of the United Party’s charge that the industries have been swamped by Blacks under our régime, it is important to note that between the years 1965 and 1968 the percentage of Bantu in our industries in our metropolitan areas did not increase but decreased from 53.2 per cent to 52.8 per cent. Although this is a slight decrease, it does show the downward trend created thanks to the measures of control carried through by the machinery of State by our policy.

What are the figures?

I shall furnish the hon. member with the figures. The grand total of Bantu workers in the industries is 634,000 today. What is in fact important about this figure of 634,000 Bantu workers, is that 81,000 of them are already working in our border industries. This is one of the best proofs of the success of our policy of decentralizing our industries. In contrast to what the United Party is suggesting, our industries in our metropolitan areas are not in the process of being swamped by Blacks; I want to prove the contrary of their claims by mentioning to them another industry as an example, i.e. the chemical industry. Over the period 1962 to 1968 the employers in the chemical industry succeeded in bringing about a decrease of 9 per cent in the number of Bantu employees. Now that the United Party sees that this border industries policy of ours is beginning to succeed, we have this agitation. During all these years they have been hoping, and they have been relying on this hope, that this border industry development would be a failure. Now that they see that there are 81,000 Bantu workers in those areas, now that the trend of development on those lines is becoming more and more marked, they are resorting to another form of agitation, i.e. the manpower shortage. On the one hand we are being accused of pushing too many Black into the industries, and. on the other hand, we are being accused of not doing enough for them. The Government itself has never hesitated to state the policy in regard to the employment of non-Whites very clearly. We have never hesitated to make a clear statement on our policy in regard to the Whites. We have never hesitated to tell both Whites and non-Whites that it is National Party policy to protect the white worker with his higher standard of living. This is our policy and we stand by it. As a matter of fact, the white worker is entitled to that protection by the State. But at the same time we have told the non-Whites that we are prepared to provide them with more and better opportunities for work, and although we do in the first place look after our white workers and afford them protection, we are at the same time engaged in providing the non-Whites with opportunities for work, but on such a basis and in such a controlled manner that friction is prevented or, at least, restricted to a minimum. And now, as far as the Bantu are concerned, it is our policy that they should to an increasing extent do the work in their own areas. That is our policy, and in the course of the present session my colleague will introduce a measure whereby the Bantu will be afforded the opportunity to do skilled work in their own homelands. But, Mr. Speaker, you will see that when this measure is before the House, the Opposition will fight it tooth and nail. To them it is not sufficient that the Bantu will be doing skilled work in their own homelands. No, what they want and what certain industrialists want, is that the Bantu should be allowed to do skilled work here in the white areas. That is what they want. In a Press interview in November I said that with this employment manufacturers should, in establishing their factories and in expanding them, also have regard to the availability of labour, and then the hon. member for Hillbrow reacted to it by saying that I as Minister of Labour should be sacked. I must admit that I find this remark of the hon. member for Hill-brow particularly flattering, because that places me into the category of another very respected person, a front bencher of his, whom he also sacked as chairman of the Rand selection committee! [Interjections.] Actually, it seems to me that the hon. member for Hillbrow has now become the great “sacker”, the great expeller in that Party. Since the hon. member for Hillbrow has now taken this new job upon himself—I do not know whether it has been given to him—I want to ask the hon. member whether he and his Party would not make a proper job of this expulsion business on 22nd April. On 22nd April he will be afforded a wonderful opportunity, not only of getting rid of me in Alberton, but also of getting rid of the whole Government. Then he will be afforded a wonderful opportunity of sacking all of us, according to his terminology. But I also want to tell the United Party that if they are labouring under the delusion that the workers are not familiar with the United Party, it is high time we woke them up. If they are labouring under the delusion that the workers do not know what is behind this agitation, and do not know what is behind this concern about the manpower shortage, I think we should really wake them up before 22nd April so that they may fight a realistic election. The National Party is prepared to go to the workers and to the country as a whole and to ask them to give their verdict. But let me tell the United Party that they should not think that the workers are not going to decide about them either. The workers will decide, not only on their past and not only on what they said or kept back in the past. They will also decide on other things. Apart from the speech made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, they have now, inter alia, also acquired this publication, the latest document on United Party policy. It is being published under the title “You want it: we have it”. Sir, I do not wish to turn to Hollywood in order to find a comparison there. I think one could perhaps look for a comparison here in our own country, on a higher level; this reminds me so much of an advertisement placed by a junk shop in South Africa—“You want it; we have it”. And what does this rummage advertisement tell the workers, on which they have to judge the United Party in order to decide whether we should be kicked out or whether they should be put into power? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition also read from this publication, and I want to quote from the same part.

Read the full title.

That hon. former information officer of the United Party wants me to read the full title. Now I want to make another request to him across the floor of the House, i.e. whether he would not be so kind as to make such a publication available to each of our members. If he does that we shall be indebted to him and then we shall be able to quote from it on every occasion. Mr. Speaker, I now want to refer to the assurances and the guarantees given to the workers by the United Party. They give the workers certain guarantees on page 8; the hon. the Leader of the Opposition also referred to them; they arise from the employment of Bantu in industry in the future. The United Party “guarantees the employment of Whites at real wages”. This sounds very good, but now listen to the following: “… not lower than those they earn at present”. What a disgraceful offer! Here they are guaranteed wages which will not be lower than those they earn at present. There is an upward trend in our whole economy; the standard of living of all our population groups is rising; the workers are continuously negotiating for better wages and they are getting them, but the assurance given by those hon. gentlemen is that the workers will not receive lower wages. But, Mr. Speaker, the worst is yet to come; promises and assurances are now given to the workers, and now you must judge what value one can attach to these promises. If the white workers, who are now not going to receive less, agree to non-Whites working in certain spheres of employment, the United Party says—

What happens after ten years? Then I suppose the workers are to be left to their own fate; then they will probably be left to fend for themselves. No, Sir, the United Party will, like us, be judged by their policy. We are prepared to be judged by our policy and our deeds, and the United Party will be judged by its deeds, its statements and its concealments of facts. And do you know, Sir, what concealment is rather important in this election? In this very same valuable “You want it” thing I looked for such a guarantee, for I know that one of the most important assurances the mineworkers want is a guarantee that the industrial colour bar will be retained. This is the guarantee the mineworkers want, and then I looked for such a guarantee in this publication. Sir, here we have two whole paragraphs on the mineworkers; they deal with pneumoconiosis, in respect of which the mine-workers are going to receive extensive protection, and it goes on to deal with pensions, better pensions are promised, but not one single word is said here about the industrial colour bar on the mines—the most important matter for the workers in the mining industry, a matter which, politically, is extremely important to the mining industry. Anybody who knows our labour history, knows what value it has, but as far as the United Party is concerned, it is a case of, “You want it; we have it”. This is something they definitely do not have. They cannot have it, Sir, for that United Party over there hates this industrial colour bar. It is as scared of it as the devil is of holy water. “You have had it”, Sir. Now, I have not brought along all the newspapers in which the Leader of the Opposition appears, but I do have here a report written when he opened the Bloemfontein congress of his party in 1963. The report reads, inter alia, as follows—

Well, if they think this is sinful, let them, but then they should not in this very same “You have it” thing make this statement on the previous page, i.e. “Job reservation is not enough to protect the white workers.” [Interjections.] This sin is no longer big enough. When I saw it. I was reminded of what Dr. Edgar Brookes had said of that party in the fifties. He said that the trouble with the United Party was the fact that “they want to be all things to all men”. Let me, as one who represents a workers’ constituency, tell the United Party what the workers want. Apparently they do not know this. What the workers expect from a government and, as those hon. members are called politically, an alternative government, is sincerity. They do not want to be cheated. If those hon. members think that they will gain the support of the workers in South Africa with this double talk, they should be awakened before the 22nd. Manpower, about which the United Party can become so moving, is not concerned with numbers alone. Over the past year, 1969, as I stated, the growth rate was higher than 5½ per cent in various industries. There were growth rates of 9 per cent, as I said amongst other things. This was not brought about owing to an increase in the number of workers. It was brought about because the workers who were there, worked harder. But do hon. members think that those workers would work harder if they had to harbour a feeling of uncertainty in their hearts, and if they felt that to-morrow or the day after they could be cheated (verneuk) by a government out of the protection they were enjoying? Do hon. members think that they would work harder in such a case?

Order! Does the hon. the Minister think that the word “cheat” (verneuk) is a good parliamentary expression?

Deceive?

I have now heard a very good alternative, i.e. the word “deceive”. I hope that it will satisfy the dignity of the Chair. Sir, one cannot calculate manpower in terms of figures and numbers only. We should also calculate it in terms of disposition, and disposition has to do with a feeling of security. That feeling of security is given to the workers of this country by the National Party, and not by the policy of the United Party.

I now want to summarize by mentioning the following points to the United Party and its partners. The National Party is now more than ready to go to the nation and obtain their verdict on the way we implement our policy. The country knows what our principles are. The people know what our policy is. To the country we say: “Judge us by our principles. Judge us by the implementation thereof. Judge us by our deeds. We are not ashamed of them; on the contrary, Sir, we are proud of our deeds, for under a National Government our race relations in this country have reached the satisfactory stage where we are enjoying a large measure of calm and peace. We have given the non-Whites such opportunities for realizing themselves that we have their goodwill to-day. Our workers know that under a National Government job reservation and the industrial colour bar have been guaranteed. They know exactly where they will not have them under that Party’s policy. Now I want to tell the joint Opposition: Let us go to the elections and ask the electorate for its verdict on these basic points. I know our people, and on the strength of my knowledge of our people I want to say to-day that on 22nd April there will once again be a new and greater triumph for the National Party. On 22nd April those people who are sincere, the sincere South Africans, who mean well by South Africa, will ensure that a strong government is once again returned to power, under the leadership of our energetic, strong leader, Adv. John Vorster …

Hear, hear!

Mr. Speaker, when I sat and listened to the hon. the Minister, I was reminded of the way in which I feel the Government so often approaches problems in this country. This may be likened to the person who remains in the V.I.P. lounge on the Jan Smuts Airport, and does not go into the open spaces to see what is really happening. This hon. Minister has made one startling remark. That is that everything in the building industry is exceedingly good. He has given us figures about artisans. Sir, I should like to show you one page of a newspaper which appeared on Friday. Every ringed advertisement here is for an artisan or artisans in the building trade in Cape Town. Does this indicate that the building trade is quite all right and that there is no shortage of artisans? You see, Sir, Ministers are so keen on standing up and making statements in general terms as to what they believe is the situation …

[Inaudible.]

Yes, I know that the hon. the Minister interrupted a vacation to attend to some matter, and issued an official statement to say so during the recess. The Minister suggested that there are no shortages, and that the manpower position is quite all right.

I did not say there are no shortages. I said the position was not so serious. [Interjections.]

I suppose, Sir, that it was not so serious when he. had to use the Indians quickly in Natal either? He just did it as a gesture? What does annoy us on this side of the House—and I take exception to it —is that this hon. Minister should speak as he did in regard to the attitude which was adopted by my hon. Leader, and say it was lacking in true patriotism. Yet that hon. Minister spoke here as the virtuous Minister who is carrying out his portfolio in a way which redounds credit to South Africa. What has he done in the Coloured Representative Council in terms of what he calls democracy? He calls it democracy to nominate a lot of defeated candidates. Does that redound to the credit of our ideas of democratic government which we are inculcating into the non-white people of South Africa? Sir, the hon. the Minister made one very true statement when he said that what is happening in Lesotho is Lesotho’s affair. We want to warn him and the country that what will happen in the Bantustans after independence will be the Bantustans’ affair, except to the extent that it affects the very life, the industrial and the economic life, of South Africa.

Sir, I want to come back to one matter which my hon. Leader referred to, namely the question of housing. I want to come back to this question because last session, as you will recall, the hon. member for Brakpan did this House a service in introducing a motion which was adopted by this House. The motion stressed the urgency of the problem of housing. It asked the Government to consider every possible means of promoting economic housing by the timeous acquisition of land required for the establishment of townships, and of curbing rising building costs by investigation of new methods of construction. We on this side moved an amendment, by way of an expression of view, that we felt that the Government should be condemned for not having done so already. That was 12 months ago. The House adopted this motion emanating from the hon. member for Brakpan. Government members, including the hon. member for Brentwood, who I see is in the House, will recall that they used rather strong language. In fact, the hon. member for Brentwood referred to “our housing emergency”. He talked about the increase in the cost of building, namely an increase of 11 per cent between 1967 and 1968. He went much further, if he will consult his Hansard, as to say that the little man can no longer afford a house. This is what this House decided last year. What has happened in the interim? What has happened? What attempts have been made, except that a commission has been appointed to investigate the price of land?

Sitting in an ivory tower or in V.I.P. lounges the Government again does not know what is going on outside. It does not know what is going on amongst common men. I want to quote what a Minister of this Government said about this matter in this House in 1968. This hon. Minister said, “The backlog as regards economic housing is smaller than the building programme for one year”. He went on to say that this was not a serious state of affairs and that “The estimated shortage should be worked off by 1970”. That is this year. What absolute nonsense that was. Last year this hon. Minister said something rather strange. He said that he had been a very good Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and promised that he would be an even better Minister of Community Development. Either he has failed lamentably or he sets himself very low standards of efficiency. The hon. the Minister has himself stated that this shortage is not really serious. He has stated over and over again that the housing shortage is not very serious. I want to suggest to him that he undertake a practical test. He must not look at the statistics. I want to suggest to him that he advertise one reasonably priced flat. I want the hon. the Minister to advertise that he has a three-roomed flat available in the suburbs of Cape Town at a rental of R80 per month. Then I want the hon. the Minister to give his own home telephone number for the purpose of enquiries. I want him to sit at that telephone and take the calls he will receive. I think that he will then be in touch with the common man who is looking for housing. Then I think he will find out what demand there is for housing because I know that this was actually done in Cape Town during the past week. The person concerned received 39 phone calls immediately, one after another, after that advertisement for a three-roomed flat at a rent of R80 per month had appeared in a newspaper. That is the housing position which has developed under this Government. I can assure the hon. the Minister that he will hear pleas for that flat, not from the wealthy or from single people who are looking for such a flat in which to live, but from young couples in Cape Town. He will hear it from young people who are looking for space in which to live decently with their children. He would be amazed to hear the kind of requests and pleas he will get over the telephone. But the Government does not know about these facts. The Government has appointed a commission to consider building procedures. The C.S.I.R. and other bodies must now consider building procedures. Surely the men who control the building industry in South Africa are aware of every worthwhile procedure that can be put to practical use to speed up the erection of buildings. The hon. the Minister has appointed a commission to investigate the prices of land but surely he does not need a commission to find out where the troubles lie which are contributing to increases in the price of land. Last year we gave this hon. Minister at least a dozen factors which are contributing to the high prices of land. But nothing is done by this Government in this regard. They have been too busy infighting in and out of congresses to attend to the affairs of the country. I want to suggest that the hon. the Minister carry out the promises he has made although he only has about a month in which to do it. The hon. the Minister should have done something about his promises. When we examine what has happened, I wonder whether the hon. the Minister himself is really satisfied that he and his department are entitled to ask for confidence on the strength of their record. From what one finds when what happens within the Cabinet is made known outside, the idea seems to be that if we vote a sum of money we have solved a problem. It was announced that a considerable amount of money has been voted for the erection of buildings. Mr. Speaker, I am sure that you will agree with me when I say to the hon. the Minister that voting money does not enable the building industry to catch up the backlog. Voting money does not reduce the cost of building. Providing funds does not reduce the cost of land or make land available. Voting money does not speed up the approval of plans for townships. Voting money is not going to stop the last of these evils, namely land speculation. Voting money does not provide homes although it does increase one thing, namely the difficulties faced by the building industry at present. I say this because Government spending on buildings and the voting of money are merely creating a greater demand for the services of the building industry without doing anything to increase supply to meet the demand for new buildings. I have told the hon. the Minister what I suggest he might do. If he does not feel that there is any urgency in this regard I want to ask him to look at one or two facts. I wonder whether the hon. the Minister can tell us through the Department of Public Works whether he receives really competitive tenders from the building industry at present when he spends State money on buildings. I want to know whether he receives really competitive tenders because the position is that the building industry has such a backlog of work with which to deal that I wonder whether he really does receive competitive tenders for large-scale work of this kind. I want to point out to him that from 1964 to 1966, that is in recent years, a backlog of 10,000 single dwelling units had built up under this Government. This was a backlog of plans which had been approved but which could not be carried out and the buildings erected. The hon. the Minister must be aware of this as it is mentioned in his departmental report. He must be aware of the fact that a backlog of R87 million worth of flats existed as far back as 1966 and that there is a backlog of other types of construction valued at R170 million in this country. Similar information appeared in 1967. In the first six months of 1969 the value of plans for flats, complexes and other buildings almost equalled the backlog which had built up during previous years. The hon. the Minister should know that this problem exists but judging from his inactivity one finds it hard to believe that he does know that the problem exists.

Research was undertaken by the National Institute of Personnel Research of the C.S.I.R. and its findings were submitted to the National Development Fund of the building industry. I presume that the hon. the Minister has read this report which was completed in 1968. This report of the C.S.I.R. is rather different to the glowing report which the hon. Minister of Labour attempted to give to us this afternoon as far as the question of the recruitment of apprentices for the building industry is concerned. This is a scientific report and must not be compared with the hon. the Minister’s drawing of figures out of a hat. This scientific report indicated that the recruitment of apprentices was below 50 per cent of the required number. That is the factual position. This afternoon the hon. Minister of Labour in a pre-election speech glibly referred to this question of the manpower shortage and said that there was no trouble in this regard. The Bureau for Economic Research of the University of Stellenbosch compiled a report on building conditions in this country. I believe that this bureau has a good reputation and that it is accepted as being a sound research institute. The bureau did a survey of bottlenecks in the building industry and in its report for the last quarter of 1969 stated that 69 per cent of the firms in the building industry regarded the shortage of skilled labour, of artisans, as serious. Thirty-nine per cent of them regarded the position with regard to apprentices as serious. In so far as unskilled labour was concerned, both as regards Bantu and other, the percentages are 37 per cent and 23 per cent that regarded the position as serious. Those who said that they had no difficulty whatsoever was four per cent of the building industry, according to the investigations done in this research. These are the facts which are available to the Minister. These bottlenecks are there. They exist, and the Minister knows that the solution to the problem of these bottlenecks and of putting the building industry in a position where it can deal with the building requirements of this country, is linked with one matter only, namely manpower. The hon. the Minister, I believe, knows that the solution that has to be found is the use of the manpower available in this country in the building industry. But unfortunately the hon. the Minister is in the position of the Minister of Finance and of the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs: They must bend the economy to meet some ideological theories which they believe in. They put out some parrot cry to the White workers of South Africa that they will be saved by a Nationalist Government while the White worker must remain unhoused. Unhoused because the Government is too frightened to use non-White labour in the building industry. That is what is happening. The hon. the Minister knows that manpower is the problem.

But I want to direct his attention to some of the social consequences of the Government’s inept handling of the housing problem in South Africa. The building costs are such that the consequent rentals and purchase price of houses and dwellings are forcing the young couples of South Africa to live a life in flats, to live more and more in high density population centres. I cannot think of anything more dreadful for a nation than that its young children must be brought up in the confines of flats, without learning to love nature, without being able to have the benefit of a garden and of animals in their surroundings. But this Government through its inept handling of housing is creating just that for the young people of South Africa, and more and more of them are being brought up in these conditions. Surely, young couples are entitled to bring up their families otherwise than in flats. The Government should therefore see to it that they have these facilities.

Then I want to deal with another matter. That is the question of the cost of acquisition of properties. Let us assume that a young man is fortunate enough to get an 80 per cent bond on the purchase price of a property that he buys, and let us assume that that property is worth R12,000. There are very few cottages or small houses in the city that are available at R12,000. In order to buy this small cottage for R12,000 with an 80 per cent bond, he requires a deposit of R2,400 and he requires the transfer costs of R401.83. He requires the bond costs of R106.60. So, that young man must have in his pocket or available or be able to lay his hands on R2,908.46 to buy a R12,000 house. That is what the position is. But what is more dreadful, and I do not think people realize this at large, is that of that R508 bond and transfer costs, the Government takes almost R450 in taxation by way of transfer duties and stamp duties. That is equivalent to five per cent of the purchase price which the youth of South Africa must pay.

Is that anything new?

The hon. the Minister asks whether this is anything new. But when a tax has become iniquitous under this Government and under the circumstances of to-day, is there any reason why it should not be reviewed? Any intelligent government would have looked at this as one of the factors prohibiting young people from buying homes. But this Government does not. This Government has not even looked into it. I want to suggest that what the hon. the Minister of Community Development does not even know what he would lose or what the State would lose if transfer duty was exempted on all properties under, say, R12,000. I wonder whether the hon. the Minister has even thought of investigating what the Government would lose, in effect, in allowing these young people this concession.

There is a further charge which I make against the department of the hon. the Minister. That is the way in which buildings that have been built are being utilized for ideological purposes instead of for housing people. I want to give the position in the city of Cape Town. During the period 1959 to 1968 State loans totalling R21¼ million were paid into the City of Cape Town. The council contributed an additional R6 million for services out of its own loan funds. As a result, 16,847 houses were built. Of those 21 were for White persons. The balance were for Coloured persons. The reason why they were not available for White people, was that the Department of Community Development took by priority claim 4,570 or 27 per cent of the houses to rehouse persons moved under the Group Areas Act, and not for slum clearance.

What is wrong with that?

The hon. the Minister asks what is wrong with that. I am pointing out to him that he has been so obsessed by moving people from one place to another that he is neglecting the housing of the ordinary person in South Africa. But he does not think there is anything wrong!

In the few minutes left I want to indicate what we on this side of the House would do and what we intend doing for this country in contrast with this inefficiency so far as the Government is concerned, changing from Minister to Minister and getting nowhere at all. No policy has been put into effect. We will do it after the research that we have done. We have done this without the benefit of all the State institutions that are behind the Government. We have been able to do our own research into these matters. We have been able to do this study and research in consultation with the industry. We have been able to do it in consultation with the workers in the industry as well. We have a policy in regard to this matter, above all, because we are in touch with the ordinary people who are seeking from day to day to find houses and homes. I believe that this Government and any government should, and we certainly will, co-operate with local authorities in planned development for housing throughout the country. It is no good sitting back and expecting the municipality of Cape Town, for instance, to develop a dormitory suburb on our west coast and to face the expenses of installing the services to such a dormitory suburb. But is there one reason why there should not be Government planning of that sort, so that the young people in South Africa would not have to live in crowded, high density flats in the middle of cities, but could live out and enjoy the open spaces of South Africa? It only needs an intelligent government, which should be able to plan for this development in conjunction with local authorities, and a government which can co-ordinate and see that transport facilities are made available from those dormitory suburbs to the cities.

Apparently you would not want them to pay for the transport!

The hon. the Minister says “I am not responsible for transport”. Surely the Government is.

I say that you would supply the transport free, of course! [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, you will forgive me if I continue addressing myself to you and ignore remarks of that kind. It is a lot of nonsense that the hon. Minister is talking, and he knows it. Planning, and overall planning, is neglected completely by this Government. There is no overall plan except when it is a plan to move a group of people because of the colour of their skins from one place to another. It is the only plan that has been implemented as far as housing is concerned. It is the only plan they are interested in other than handing out funds to local authorities under the Housing Act to build if they wish to do so. In the second instance we would eliminate the red tape which requires a proposed township to be considered by up to 30 different authorities before it is approved.

Why do you not do it in Natal?

If the hon. the Minister is not aware of the legislation passed in this House, I cannot spoon-feed him in regard to this matter. As a result of legislation passed in this House the overriding authority in all townships is vested in the Government. We opposed that measure because we wanted Natal to be free to solve its problems, but this Government, against the advice of the Administrators, passed that legislation.

I want to mention a third point the hon. the Minister might reply to. Has he done anything to relate the ceiling for a housing loan to realistic prices? He ups it now and again by a couple of thousand rand, but each time he is three years behind the market price. There is very little benefit in it for the man who wants to buy a house. In Johannesburg people have to pay R13,000 if they want a house suitable for a young couple. I have referred to transfer and stamp duties that can be reduced to enable more young people to buy houses. Has any consideration been given by this hon. Minister to granting relief to bona fide home purchasers in regard to income tax? It is done in other countries. The Government will probably say that they are thinking of appointing a commission to go into all that, but we say that these are things the Government should have done and tackled years ago and which show why they are not entitled to receive the confidence of this House and of the people. I charge the Government with not having done what we would do, namely to see that there is tax relief to industrialists who are prepared to house their employees. We will see to it that those industrialists will have the benefit and will be encouraged to accept that responsibility. This is done in respect of the border areas and all manner of concessions are made there. The commercial man and the industrialist in the city receive no encouragement whatsoever and will get no encouragement from this Government to house their employees.

Lastly, there have been so many commissions going into various forms of taxation to find means to finance local authorities that one loses track of them. We would certainly very quickly introduce a tax on speculation with undeveloped residential land. Such a tax should be imposed where land which should be used for housing is blatantly being used for speculation. This Government has not thought of anything like that and it takes them nearly three years to decide whether certain townships should be approved of. By doing this they only add to the purchase price by accumulating further interest on the capital that is involved. These are some of the approaches we would make, coupled with a more sensible, logical and proper use of the available manpower in South Africa. It is because the Government has failed to do these things that I support the motion of my hon. Leader, namely that we have no confidence in this Government.

Mr. Speaker, at the amphitheatre in Pretoria, on 4th June, 1948, the late Dr. D. F. Malan, as leader of the National Party, felt himself obliged to say certain things. He spoke to Nationalists who had come to welcome him, and that same evening he also spoke to the people of South Africa over the radio. He held out the prospect of what the National Party would begin to do and wanted to do under his leadership. In referring to the United Party as the alternative government of South Africa, he said the following (translation):

He found it necessary to add:

Those were Dr. Malan’s words and this possibility of “approaching the abyss” would have materialized if the National Party had not come into power.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said that so little had been done in the past 21 years. Before the election it is probably necessary for the Government and the United Party to give an account of what has been done and under what circumstances it was done. The circumstances under which Dr. Malan and the National Party had to assume the reins of government in 1948 were attributable to the legacy which they received from a United Party and its administration throughout the war years, but it was also the legacy of many years of wrong development in the South Africa we love. It is a great achievement for a government to remain in power for 21 years. But even though it is virtually a unique achievement, its work in the future must always be seen against the background of a government which had to rectify matters which had gone wrong in South Africa over a period of 300 years. In those 300 years relationships between Whites and non-Whites in South Africa frequently went wrong. After General Hertzog had pointed the way for file first time, the National Party was entrusted with the task of implementing the will of the Whites of South Africa.

What additional legacy did the National Party receive? The National Party also had to accept the legacy of the immediate postwar years with all that had gone wrong at that time. We received this legacy from a United Party. I concede that things were not so easy during the war years, but the electorate of South Africa dare not forget that when the National Party came into power in 1948 there were the black spots of Johannesburg and Pretoria and those throughout the rest of the country. There were the slum conditions which no one could look upon without becoming heartbroken or angry. The legacy which the National Party received from a United Party consisted of black spots throughout South Africa. The United Party, through the mouth of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, maintains that so little has been done in the past 21 years. How have the slum conditions which existed in many places been cleared away? One cannot simply start building. The slums must first be demolished. The National Party took years to demolish these slums. These are the conditions which the National Party has been up against for almost 21 years.

We were hampered in our demolition work.

Indeed, how true that is! And by whom was the National Party hampered in its demolition work? By none other than the United Party, who have the presumption to say to-day that they want to be the new government of this country. What a struggle has there not been with the United Party-controlled city councils simply to have a Bantu residential area declared? The electorate of South Africa, and particularly of those areas, will not easily forget it. The electorate will not forget that in this Parliament, where the policy of separate development had to be built up, we had to spend nights to get legislation passed in order to carry out the mandate of the South African people. That was simply because the Opposition did not want to co-operate one little bit in implementing the will of the South African people. They offered resistance at every step. Nights were spent in finalizing legislation in regard to the representation of Bantu in this House. That was one of the first steps which the National Party promised the people it would take, and for which a mandate was given. No secret was made of this. It was not the kind of talk one gets from a United Party which has one story for the rural areas, another for the urban areas, one for the black man and another for the white man, one for South Africa and another for the outside world, but the policy that was advocated under all circumstances, i.e. that we wanted to keep this Government white. What has the Opposition done to make it possible, these past 21 years, for a National Party to do its work for the people of South Africa; the work of demolition and thereafter the work of reconstruction; the breaking down of what is wrong and the building up of what the South African people wanted? For nights on end they delayed the work. For days and years on end, by any method at their disposal, the work which the National Party had promised to do had to be delayed. If, in 20 years, a government has achieved no more than what this Government achieved with the removal of the representation of the Bantu and the Coloureds in this Parliament, it has achieved enough.

There is another background against which the position in South Africa and the achievements of the National Party have to be assessed. They must be assessed against the background of the rest of Africa. South Africa was not the only place in Africa where there were Whites. Here was a small nation which had to support itself. But there were other territories in Africa such as Tanganyika, Kenya, the Federation of the Rhodesias and the Belgian Congo. There were parts of Africa in which Whites lived and worked, in which they had possessions, in which they were in governing positions and in which they were supported by major overseas world powers. The whole of Africa has thrown out the Whites. But in one country alone, apart from Rhodesia, a country we take our hats off to and where the Whites still survive, the Whites have still kept the reins of government in their hands; a small people among all the peoples of the world, a small people among all the mighty powers that cried for blood. This one small people was the people of South Africa which was led by the National Party. Is this not a great achievement?

If the National Party had not come into power on 28th May, 1948, if the United Party had remained in power, I should like to know how many representatives of black South Africa we would have had here to-day. We must bear in mind that it would no longer have been eight, the number which now serves as a declaration of policy, that it would have been 20, or perhaps 40 or 100 as a result of the pressure from the rest of the world. They may have outnumbered us in this House, because they are numerically superior to us. That was the alternative with which the electorate of South Africa was faced in 1948. They realized that and chose the path of sacrifice, the path of faith. With faith and understanding combined they chose the road of keeping South Africa secure for the white race. If the United Party have any gratitude in them, and if the hon. member for Orange Grove would think it over, I should like to tell them that if they are grateful for nothing else, they must be grateful for the fact that there is at least a safe future in this country for them and for their white children, as compared with the rest of Africa, because there is a National Party in power here, a party which was previously served by the hon. member for Orange Grove too.

Mr. Speaker, to my sorrow I must also address myself to another part of the Opposition, the new section of the Opposition which has unfortunately made its appearance at this election. It grieves me to observe that so early in a no-confidence debate 75 per cent of that section of the Opposition is absent This Opposition, which must keep South Africa for the Afrikaner and the Whites, and which must protect all these interests because this National Party is no longer on the right road, finds it necessary at this hour of the day to be represented by 25 per cent of its members. Fortunately I can say that we probably do not need a prophet to tell us that after the coming election they will always be represented here by nought per cent, because none of them will be here. Unfortunately it is necessary to refer to that section of the Opposition. I do so with profound regret in my heart, because the late Dr. Malan already warned against it. One of the first aims in his political life was to keep the Afrikaner nation united. This new splinter group deemed it necessary to cause this Party, to which the Afrikaans-speaking section of South Africa owes its language and everything that goes with that, to throw off a fragment. I should like to ask a question in regard to this Party’s policy concerning the non-Whites. One need not be sarcastic about this. One should ask this question with a deep feeling of regret. If their policy is, in fact, as it is advocated by their little newspaper, with suspicion-mongering against their fellow-men and all those depths to which journalism can sink; if the old cry that one can only be a true South African if one calls a Bantu a kaffir, is the policy advocated by our erstwhile friends, we rue the day so much the more. It is necessary for these people to know this. If it is being proclaimed that we, the National Party, have deviated from our course, they must go and learn this from the man who led the National Party to victory in 1948, i.e. “the same language for Whites and non-Whites, for the rural areas and for the cities, for the country internally and for the world outside”. I should like to quote from the radio address given by Dr. Malan on 4th June, 1948. I address this particularly to the friends of the Herstigte Nationale Party. He said (translation):

That was the promise.

Then, in assuming office in 1948, Dr. Malan, not the present Prime Minister, but Dr. Malan, said the following to the world and to his people (translation):

It is not a new course the National Party has adopted. Now call Dr. Malan the liberalist that these people call him! This is the man who said that his Christianity and his Calvinism dictated to him also to be just and honest with people entrusted to his care.

I now briefly want to come to another point, which was just touched upon in passing by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, i.e. the relationship between the two white population groups in South Africa, which he touched upon in his opening remarks. Before the election it is necessary for the National Party once more to give an account of itself to its people in this regard, i.e. that it is still following the same road that the National Party followed in 1948. The United Party put forward an alternative to this. For its build ing of a nation the United Party chose as its goal that one should be neither fish nor flesh. One must be half-Afrikaner and half-English-speaking. The National Party has always adopted the attitude that Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking people in South Africa have a right and a duty, jointly and severally. I once more want to quote from what the late Dr. Malan said at the Union Buildings in 1948. Perhaps I should also address this to my good friends of the Herstigte Nasionale Party and ask them what party they have re-established. This Party of the late Dr. Malan is still following the same course. Dr. Malan said (translation)—

This H.N.P. was the Herenigde Nasionale Party. I am not speaking of this new little splinter group now. Dr. Malan went on to say—

Those were the words of the National Party of 1948. And these are the words of the National Party of 1970. The Herstigtes have no right to the name which they have appropriated for themselves. I do not know what party it is that had to be re-established.

I want to quote once more from Dr. Malan’s speech, and I also want to leave this to the consciences of our friends who do not want to accompany the National Party on the road of Dr. Malan, Adv. Strydom and Dr. Verwoerd. The words of Dr. Malan were subsequently echoed and re-echoed by the late Adv. Strydom and the late Dr. Verwoerd. In regard to nationalism, Dr. Malan said over the radio that evening (translation)—

These are not words from 1970. These are words from 1948 from the Leader of the National Party. He said that we want to encourage that feeling of individual nationhood and national pride in all sections, thereby to build up our general national unity on a common basis.

Mr. Speaker, do I not have the right, and does the Government not have the right, to ask this small group of people who set themselves up as the continuation of the party of Dr. Malan, Adv. Strydom and Dr. Verwoerd, what National Party and whose National Party they have re-established? It is not Dr. Malan’s Party. It is not Adv. Strydom’s Party. On this point it is definitely not Dr. Verwoerd’s party either. It is clear to everyone who would take the trouble to listen to what Dr. Verwoerd said at the Vereeniging Monument, when he warned Afrikaans-speaking people against the phenomenon of hate and contempt which can so easily be cultivated towards people speaking a language different to ours. Many fine things have been said and can be said about the Afrikaner in South Africa. I am proud to be an Afrikaner. But let me add that I am proud to be an Afrikaner together with English-speaking South Africa. If they are reproached by others for having no Calvinism, I know and believe that the English-speaking people of Rhodesia have provided the proof that English-speaking people on this continent are just as determined as Afrikaans Calvinists to preserve their heritage. I also know that English-speaking South Africans who work side by side with us here in South Africa, have in many circumstances already shown that they are as prepared to preserve the Afrikaans and South African heritage.

Because we still want to follow the road which we set out upon in all sincerity in 1948, because we want to keep our word, because we speak the language of 1948 in 1970 as well, because the Nationalist never breaks his word as a Calvinist and a Christian, because he keeps his word to others, to the less privileged and to fellow-citizens, and because he will keep his word to his people and to the fatherland which was given to him, this Party goes forward to the election on 22nd April with confidence and with great expectations. We know what the answer of the people of South Africa will be and we rejoice in the fact that we shall once more have the difficult but joyous task of building the future of white South Africa, but also the future of those whose guardians we are, for the good of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the stirring words of the hon. member for Witbank, who has just sat down. I want to assure him at once that I do not intend to enter into this brotherly love debate between himself and his former colleagues. The hon. member chose to go back 300 years into history. He had the nerve to say that after South Africans had been on this southern tip of Africa for 300 years it was the Nationalist Party which in 21 years had made them safe. What happened during the other 280 years? Who was the government of South Africa before his Government took over? Who kept South Africa safe, not only from the black man, but from Nazism, totalitarianism and foreign domination? Who did that? Then he has the nerve to talk about keeping South Africa white. The hon. member then starts his history in 1948. But I am going to take his same author. I have here a document which was issued three years before he starts his history. It was issued and I quote—

This document was called the “Konsep-grondwet van die Republiek”, which was later repudiated by this hon. member’s party. It was issued with the permission and on the authority of Dr. Malan. It goes on to say that this document does not differ from Dr. Malan’s views on the Republic. What does this document say about national unity? I quote paragraph 5 thereof—

How close are those words to a constitution of another H.N.P. which I have recently read! You cannot quote Dr. Malan in 1948 and then deny him in 1943 or 1944. If you are going to quote one person, then you must be consistent.

It is clear what the tactics of the Government are. They have shown their hand here this afternoon. They have a three-pronged attack for the 22nd April. Firstly we had it from the hon. the Minister of Labour, who started to beat the racial drum, the Lumumba drum, the Congo drum, the drum that is designed to send cold shivers down the back of the white man. He showed that the Nationalist Party is back to the “basterplakkaat” election when they say that you cannot vote for the United Party because you cannot trust them with the white man’s future. Here they have made it clear that they are back to the “basterplakkaat” days, back to the Lumumba drum, back to the Congo drum. They are going to do everything they can to drag them out to frighten people. That is one prong of their attack.

Then the hon. member for Witbank disclosed the other prong. They are going to appeal to the Afrikaner in the name of Dr. Malan not to split Afrikanerdom. Mr. Speaker, did you notice the emphasis on “do not split Afrikanerdom”? The emphasis is not on “do not split South Africa” but on “moenie die Afrikanerdom verdeel nie”. That will be the second prong of their attack.

The third prong of this devil’s fork of the election will be the whispering campaign which is being used in “huisbesoek”. They will say, “you cannot vote for the United Party, vote for us, so that Hertzog does not get into power”. That is what they say. They say, “you have to vote for Mr. Vorster, because if you do not, Dr. Hertzog will come into power. He will take away your right to speak English”. It is coming back to the old days.

Let us get this into perspective. Firstly, the H.N.P., as everybody knows, has no chance of becoming the government. Therefore there is no possibility and they have no right to call upon people to vote for the Nationalist Party because it will save South Africa from a fate worse than death. There is a second reason. The second reason is that there is basically, fundamentally, no difference between the Nationalist Party of Mr. Vorster and the H.N.P. of Dr. Hertzog. There is basically no fundamental difference. They were born of the same philosophy. We just have to look around us. The hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education has made a few interjections. Now he is very quiet. His party, which he supports so enthusiastically, is the party of national unity as the hon. member for Witbank has so eloquently said. It is less than two years ago when that hon. Deputy Minister was saying that marriage between English and Afrikaans would water down Afrikanerdom: “Dit sal die Afrikanerdom verwater en die einde van die blanke beskawing in Suid-Afrika beteken.” I challenge the hon. the Deputy Minister to deny that he has said that the marriage of a white English-speaking person to a white Afrikaans-speaking person would water down Afrikanerdom, and that it is a danger to white civilization.

I denied it in this House in your presence as well as in the Senate.

The hon. the Deputy Minister denied the headlines to the article. He did not deny the contents of the article.

I shall bring you the proof.

I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to bring the proof. He was, I believe, an official of the F.A.K. I realize where he gets it from, because this society published a document, probably when he was an official. They said the same. Speaking of white people they said: “Ons wil geen taalvermenging, kultuurvermenging, godsdiensvermenging of rassevermenging hê nie.” They were taking of white South Africans. This hon. Deputy Minister is now considered as one of the “verligtes” of the Nationalist Party. Then there is the hon. the Minister of Information, who is one of the contestant successors in the Premier stakes, the subject everyone is talking about nowadays, and who is considered a verligte. When he got to Empangeni he made a speech but when he suddenly discovered that there was a newspaper man around he had to deny half the things he had said. However, he will not deny that he stated there that Maori’s would not be allowed in to South Africa. Or will he deny it? It is an easy question. Either the hon. Minister said it or he has not said it.

I shall reply to this question later on.

So, you see, Mr. Speaker, he will not say, but he wants to reply to this question later on. In other words, he will wriggle around it. That, now, is one of the “verligtes” of the National Party. Then there was the hon. the Minister of Planning. He was the one who on one memorable occasion said that they should have shot more Bantu at Sharpeville. Am I right or am I wrong? A “verligte” said that they should have shot more Bantu. However, since he has been wearing a top hat in London, he is a liberal. I said that I will call a witness to say that there is no difference between these hon. members and those hon. members. I quote the hon. Minister of Planning as quoted in Die Nataller of the 2nd August, 1968—

Here I have quoted an hon. Minister of the Cabinet saying that there is no difference between that Nationalist Party and this Nationalist Party. He is the “verligte” in the Nationalist Party!

What is the date of that article?

The 2nd August, 1968, that is, about 14 months ago. [Interjections.] I do not mention hon. members who have taperecorded certain conversations; hon. members who have phoned members of their own party and who have then taperecorded them. I shall not refer in much detail to the hon. member for Klip River, who, when he was elected as leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal, had the following article about him in Die Nataller of the 27th September, 1968.

That was 18 months ago.

Has it changed?

I quote—

This is the point, Mr. Speaker—

That was the opinion of a Nationalist Party newspaper, a Nationalist Party organ which believed that the election of this hon. member as leader of the Nationalist Party of Natal would be a slap in the face of the hon. the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is now considered as a “verligte”. He has said so himself. I again quote from Die Nataller of 27th September, 1968—

That is the hon. member for Klip River speaking. I quote further—

Now an extremist is a liberal “verligte”.

Then we have the hon. member for Umhlatuzana, who wants shop apartheid and all those things. He and his colleague, the hon. member for Zululand, made a few public speeches attacking Afrikaans-language newspapers, and in particular the Beeld and Die Burger, and attacking by name the editors. And the Nationalist Party newspaper in Natal went to the extent of publishing a front-page editorial and it said: “Do not attack newspaper editors. They are criticizing people who say there will be one language, people who do not want national unity, people who do not want Maoris in the rugby teams, people who do not want things which are Nationalist Party policy.” These newspapers were attacking, in effect, this new party on my left, and this newspaper challenged them publicly to stop attacking the editors and to attack the things which the dissidents in the Nationalist Party were saying in conflict with their policy. Now I challenge either of those hon. members to show me where they accepted the challenge of Die Nataller and repudiated the views of the hon. gentlemen who form the H.N.P. today. They are now “verligtes” in the Nationalist Party. We have another instance, another hon. member, the hon. member for Carletonville, and this is what he said—

He is one of the verligtes in this new outward looking Nationalist Party. And so one could go on. There is the hon. member for Rissik, who made a public statement that no Maoris would come to South Africa. The hon. member for Sunnyside of mini-skirt and other fame is also one. We have the hon. member for Oudtshoorn, who defended the hon. member for Ermelo, and lastly I call as my witness the hon. the Prime Minister, who after the break-away and the formation of the H.N.P. issued an invitation to those who accepted its principles and had joined it to come back to the Nationalist Party—all except the four Members of Parliament. He issued a public invitation to Nationalists who had joined the H.N.P. to come back into his ranks, knowing that they had by joining it accepted these extreme policies. Sir, I think that in the light of that I am entitled to say that there is no difference in principle between the two Nationalist parties, and what this election is about is not a squabble between two sections having the same fundamental philosophy; it is an election to decide which government shall govern South Africa after 22nd April. I want to say that there is only one answer, and that is to get rid of them both, both the Nationalist Party and the H.N.P. That is the answer to South Africa’s problems, because there is no danger from this little group. The danger comes from the fact that if the Nationalist Party is re-elected nobody, not even the hon. the Prime Minister, knows how many of the members who are re-elected with it will stand by the undertakings he gives to this House. He does not know how many of his supporters in the Cabinet or on those benches will stand by him when the crunch comes. I want to tell the hon. the Prime Minister that if this little group here gets any substantial number of votes, then you can watch people jumping off the fence; then you will see them jumping on the bandwagon. No, Sir, there is one sure guarantee for South Africa, and that is to sweep them both out and to have a United Party Government, because the people are getting tired. They have had this Government; it has been in power too long. It has lost the will and the right to govern South Africa. It has lost the “dryfkrag”, it has lost the “get up and go”, and all you have to-day is a tired Government muddling along inefficiently, with ministerial privilege the only thing that is driving them along. They have no other inspiration to-day other than the desire to retain power, or if they have any other driving force they are hiding it very well. What Department to-day, what Minister to-day, is really doing his job? You can look at the whole Cabinet and there is not one Department where the Minister is doing his job as it should be done in the day-to-day government of South Africa. I do not have time to go through them all, but what they forget is that there is a new generation of voters in South Africa, people looking for new horizons. They are not interested in the 300 years’ history of division mentioned by the hon. member for Witbank. They are not interested in re-fighting the Anglo-Boer War. They are interested in a government which will care for the problems of to-day. They are not interested in what the hon. the Minister of Labour rakes up; they are not interested in 1948 and what sort of “erfenis” the Government took over. They are interested in 1970 and the decade that lies ahead, the space travel age, and they want a government which will care for the day-to-day welfare and the interests of the people. That is the keyword, a government which cares about the people, not one which cares about Cadillacs and castles, but one which cares about the people and their problems.

Sir, I want very briefly to take you from the cradle to the grave under this Government. When we start with the cradle we have the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration, another of the contenders for the Premier Stakes, appealing for babies. He need not appeal to South Africans to have babies. What he needs to do is to tell the mothers and fathers of those children how they can afford to bring them up in South Africa to-day. That is the advice they want; not to be told that they should have more babies, but to know how they can bring them up decently when the mother has to go out to work and leave the baby with the nanny, if they can afford to have one, or when they are living, as the hon. the Minister of Community Development knows, packed up with their in-laws in a back room because they cannot get a house. They talk blithely of increasing and strengthening the white population, while we need a government which will help the mothers of South Africa to make that possible. The United Party has plans for maternity grants, for medical benefits, and for housing, as the hon. member for Green Point outlined, plans to make it possible for a young couple to bring up a family decently. That is the Government which reduced the maternity benefits under the unemployment insurance scheme. They reduced the benefits to the mothers of South Africa. We need a government which will care for the problems of the people. But let us leave the cradle and go to the schools. The former Prime Minister said they were too busy to worry about education; they were busy with constitutional matters. We need a Government which cares about education and which will see that there are teachers, that the status of teachers is respected, and that there is enough money for education so that every child can be educated, not just the children of the privileged. All the white children of South Africa deserve the opportunity to retain their leadership and to come out of their education with skills acquired either at university or technical college. What has this Government done when only a fraction of our children go on to matriculation and when you still have white youngsters seeking work with a pick and shovel? What a disgrace. Mr. Speaker!

Where?

On the South African Railways you have ordinary labourers with no qualifications; you have labourers engaged in various other occupations with no qualifications. What sort of government allows young Whites to go and work on the Railways as labourers without any qualifications? [Interjections.] Ask the Minister of Transport. Take the Public Service, with which my Leader dealt. Look at the salaries paid in the Public Service, the conditions of service and the staff shortages. Take the Railways with their overtime. There will be another debate to deal with the Railways. The way the railwaymen are being treated to-day is a disgrace. Take the small businessman; take the farmer, who will be dealt with by other speakers on this side; take the artisan, whom the hon. the Minister of Labour tried to bluff into thinking that he was secure when in fact he has no security. But move on, Mr. Speaker, from the worker to the pensioner, the R33 per month pensioner.

I say that there is not a single group for whom this Government is governing properly; there is no single group for whose problems they care or seem to care. They talk a lot when it comes to winning votes, but when it comes to providing the houses, the schools and the teachers, protecting the workers and ensuring decent salaries and decent conditions of work, then they are “tjoepstil” as long as the people vote for them. I forecast that we will have a lot of hullabaloo in the next month or six weeks—promises of wage increases and promises of this and that—but once the election is over, they will sink back into the inertia of a tired and ineffectual government.

But I thought you were going to win the election.

I say that that will be the position if the voters vote for that party.

Sir, the hon. member for Rosettenville will deal with the crippling cost of medical attention. The hon. the Minister of Finance is one of those who have penalized the people of South Africa with his sales tax—his purchase tax—an unnecessary, unneeded, unwanted tax. Every single word of warning that we issued last year has proved to be justified. But what does he do? Instead of accepting that we were right and that he was wrong, instead of saying “I will exempt all necessities from this tax,” he goes half-way; he halves the tax on soap, so instead of having a lousy, unwashed, dirty, smelly person, you have a half-washed person. Is he going to change the tax on a razor blade so that one edge is taxed and not the other? Why cannot he do the job decently? Why could he not have lifted the tax on the necessities of life? Sir, we have had this tax imposed since April of last year. There is one person who took it seriously; he is going to oppose my Leader; he looks like one of those. He obviously could not afford to buy a razor blade or any of the other necessities. Sir, that is what the hon. the Minister of Finance imposed unnecessarily on South Africa. Switching from the cradle to the grave, we find that the cost of funerals in South Africa to-day is a disgrace. I repeat that from the cradle to the grave under this Government there is a neglect of the needs and the welfare of the ordinary person. What we need is a government that will again act as a government and not as a party political machine, a government that will run the country in the interests of better government and not for the purpose of winning more votes and frightening the people. The United Party did it before when it was in power. It is the source of all the positive legislation affecting the life of the ordinary man. I conclude, Sir, by repeating the challenge that I have issued before: Apart from old-age pensions, I challenge any speaker on that side of the House to name one measure that they have introduced with a positive, new concept aiding the ordinary man, irrespective of colour, and helping him in his day-to-day life. Unless they can answer that challenge they have no right to appeal to the people of South Africa, and I believe that they will be flung out on the 22nd of April as they deserve to be flung out.

The hon. member for Durban (Point) said that we were going to hear a great “hullabaloo” during the next few months. That is quite evident, if I have to judge by the “hullabaloo” which we heard from him during the past half hour. I must say that I always enjoy listening to the hon. member. I never believe him and the public are not going to believe him either. I hope that he is going to make many speeches outside of the same kind he made here, for then we could be certain— funeral expenses are very high—that there is going to be one funeral which is going to be very inexpensive for South Africa, and that is the funeral of the United Party on the 22nd April.

Is that the best you can do?

I want to leave the hon. member at that, but I just want to say to him that we hear this type of speech from him every year. We have been hearing them from him for the past 15 years and they always have the same effect, which is to increase the strength of the National Party stronger.

Before I come to the hon. member for Green Point, I just want to say something to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. He became extremely angry when he came forward here with the story that this Government is depriving the individuals of his liberty, is depriving the people in South Africa of their liberty. I then said by way of interjection: “You have been saying those things for ten years now; you have been saying that South Africa is a police state for ten years now”. In reply to that he then said: “That is untrue, we never said that”. [Interjections.] But then he must repudiate his people. I shall tell him what kina of language they used in previous years. It is no use his sitting there now making a noise; let him keep quiet now. I shall tell him now what kind of language they used in previous years. I am quoting what one of his members said here—

That was the kind of thing they said. According to him we passed a Bill here to have children hanged. That same hon. member, in connection with that same Bill, went on to say—

Who said that?

It was said by the hon. member who is now pointing his finger at me, the hon. member for Durban (North).

Read the next sentence.

He then said that we were turning South Africa into a police state.

May I ask a question?

No, half an hour’s “hullabaloo” from that hon. member is more than enough. The hon. member can speak again; I have only half an hour. They accused us of changing South Africa into a police state. What else was their slogan “Vote for the right to vote again” but to say that we were depriving the people of their franchise? What else was it but to say that we were changing this country into a police state? Sir, the people will not easily forget that party’s record of vilification of South Africa and of this Government, and we shall cast it in their teeth as frequently as we can in the election campaign which lies ahead.

Sir, I listened to the promises made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition here, and to the promises which have now been made by the hon. member for Durban (Point). They made one promise after another; increased pensions, increased income, increased salaries for the Public Servants, better homes and everything, and immediately after that he advocated decreased taxation in South Africa! Sir, we are very familiar with this type of speech and that is why I am certain that we will win the election with another increased majority on 22nd April. Just look at the promises the hon. the member for Green Point made in regard to housing. He made the wildest accusations in regard to the housing position—the tremendous housing shortage in South Africa and the emergency which allegedly exists. But, Sir, they do not present this House with the facts. I say to the hon. member with absolute conviction that the housing position in South Africa as far as the Whites are concerned is better than ever before in our history. Not only is it better than it has ever been in our history, but I maintain that the housing position of the Whites in South Africa compares favourably with the best in the world. I am now talking about the housing position of the lower and middle-income groups. But, Sir, we must remember what we had to start with when we took over at the end of that party’s régime.

1652.

No, in 1948. What was the position then? We then inherited a housing situation from them with the worst slum conditions in the history of South Africa. I just want to refer to one, to Sophiatown, where the Bantu, the Coloureds, the Indians and the Whites lived cheek by jowl in a disgraceful manner. When the Government wanted to rectify the position, the United Party City Council of Johannesburg refused to lift a finger to rectify those unsegregated living conditions.

That is untrue.

It is absolutely true. They refused to lift a finger. The hon. member is saying that it is untrue. The only way in which the then Minister of Native Affairs could remedy that position was to pass a special Act here to remove the powers from the hands of the Johannesburg City Council and confer them upon the Resettlement Board. What do we have to-day?

You were the staunchest United Party supporter of them all.

Of course I was a staunch United Party supporter. That is not the tragedy. The tragedy is that you are still a United Party supporter. [Interjections.] The tragedy is that you do not become any wiser. Sir, what do we have to-day in the place of that deplorable and terrible situation we had in Sophiatown? Where Sophiatown once was there is to-day a show-piece residential area, i.e. Triomf, of which any country could be proud. Then we have Lenasia for the Indians. Lenasia is a group area of which any country and any Government could be proud. Then we also have Meadowlands for file Bantu of which any Government could be proud. We have Newclare for the Coloureds, of which any Government could be proud. That is the pattern for the entire country. This is what we did in Johannesburg in Pretoria and in all the major cities of South Africa, and we are at present still engaged on it.

Look what it looks like now on the outskirts of Cape Town.

Yes, I am coming now to the positive side of our housing position in South Africa. The hon. member for Green Point has stated that there is such a fantastic shortage of housing, and that the housing situation is steadily becoming worse. Surely that simply does not tally with the facts. What are the housing requirements in South Africa to-day? I am talking about the Whites now. The National Institute for Building Research instituted an investigation in order to make a prognosis of the housing requirements for the next few years. From 1965 to 1970 the requirement was, as far as the Whites are concerned, approximately 20,000 houses. From 1970 to 1975 the requirement will be 22,500. From 1975 to 1980 the requirement will be almost 28,000 and from 1980 to 1985 the requirement will be 29,000 houses. But in 1967 already, we, i.e. the Department of Community Development, the local authorities and the private sector, built more than 27,000 houses in the Republic of South Africa, whereas the Institute for Building Research stated that the requirement would only be 23,000. In 1968 we built 26,000 houses, and according to the figures which we have to date for 1969, just under 26,000 houses were built. When we have the final figures, this total may possibly increase to 28,000.

The houses are standing empty.

Many houses are standing empty, yes.

Where?

In Port Elizabeth and in Pretoria as well. I will make this admission: There is a very lively demand for housing. There are a few bottlenecks, of which Cape Town is one, and Durban another, but we have reached the situation where we are making up the backlog in housing caused by the previous Government. [Interjections.] We are making up that backlog at the rate of 5,0 to 6,000 residential units per annum. I am now talking about the schemes. The hon. member for Green Point is talking about houses which cost between R12,000 and R14,000. It is the duty of the Government to take care of the middle and lower income groups. We are to-day providing those people with houses which cost between R4,500 and R6,000. Those are houses of which nobody need be ashamed. The hon. member for Green Point accompanied us on a visit to those houses in Benoni, Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth, etc. Now I want to ask the hon. member whether he is satisfied that those houses in Benoni, which we were selling to people for less than R6,000, were good houses?

I am satisfied, but there are only a few hundred throughout the entire country.

Of course they are good houses, we are building thousands of them, and I shall now sketch the position on the Witwatersrand. These houses are for the R225 to R300 per month income group. We are selling those houses to those people for between R35 and R45 per month.

But the demand for them is ten times greater.

That is not so.

Yes, it is.

We took the biggest complex and, in conjunction with the local authorities, had a survey made of the housing requirements of the R300 per month and less income group. This was done in respect of the Vaal Triangle complex, the Witwatersrand and Pretoria. The survey showed that there was at present a waiting list for 4,000 residential units in respect of the entire complex, but the municipalities on the Witwatersrand and of that complex are at present erecting 4,500 residential units which will eliminate the backlog completely. Already plans have been passed and tenders accepted for the construction of an additional 12,000 residential units in that complex during the next three years, and this will solve the problem there completely. It is not our duty to look after people above a certain income group. Those people must look after themselves. The State must see to housing for the lower income groups, and at the moment we regard these groups as consisting of people who earn R5,000 per year and less, and I think that that is quite realistic. I therefore maintain that we are, as far as that group is concerned, engaged on housing schemes which are entirely satisfactory. Within the next three years we shall have dealt a death blow to the housing problem.

The hon. member for Green Point also complained and stated that more flats should be built. It is very easy to say that every man should have a house and a piece of land, but the amount of land available does not increase and the number of people increases a great deal. The only alternative is to build up into the air. We simply have no choice. What about the transportation costs of these people who will be accommodated so far away from the cities? It is very easy for a man to build an economic house 30 miles from his place of employment, but the bulk of his income will then be absorbed by transportation costs. Surely that is totally unrealistic.

How far is Lenasia from the city?

Lenasia is in fact situated 20 miles away, but the transportation costs of all those people are being subsidized. The general trend throughout the world, where one is dealing with such major concentrations, is to accommodate the people as close as possible to their places of employment. To give the House an idea of the progress we are making, I want to mention a few figures. In 1961 more than R20 million was spent on housing in respect of those groups I have just mentioned. Fifty two million rand has been voted for housing this year, and for the next three years R155 million has been voted for expenditure on housing for those income groups.

I come now to another matter, i.e. the policy of this Government to establish balanced housing schemes for the people. In the old days there was a tendency to build houses to one side when houses for less well-to-do people were being built. We have made a complete departure from that tendency and we are now building balanced communities where we place the ordinary worker, the less well-to-do and the middle class citizen among well-to-do people so that their children can go to the same schools, play on the same football fields, attend the same churches, etc. But, Sir, wherever we wish to do this, we get tremendous opposition from that Party. I want the hon. member for Orange Grove to listen for a moment. I said that we are now building up those balanced communities. It is now our intention, and we are going to carry it out, to establish such a balanced community on the farm Rietfontein near Edenvale, part of which lies within the hon. member’s constituency. That means that we are going to situate the ordinary worker there, together with the well-to-do people. Do hon. members know what he did? He led a deputation to see me to beg us not to situate the workers there in close proximity to the rich people. He did this on behalf of his constituency. I now want to inform him that he can go and tell his rich people and his group of snobs that we will erect that housing scheme at Rietfontein.

I now want to come to our resettlement programme. The hon. member for Green Point said that we were not building houses, and that we were merely engaged on ideological matters. He stated that we were merely voting money and not building houses. Strangely enough, we are not paying back a cent of that money to the Treasury this year. I wonder for what purpose it was used. Of course we are building houses. But we are not only building houses: we are developing separate group areas in South Africa. I now want to inform the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Yeoville, who alleged that they are in favour of separate residential areas in South Africa, that I will proclaim throughout the length and breadth of this country that they are in favour of Whites and non-Whites living cheek by jowl in the same areas in South Africa. If they say that they are in favour of separate residential areas, then they say that simply to win votes, for in practice they are in favour of people living side by side.

Before I come to the hon. member for Port Natal, I just want to state what progress we are making with our re-settlement programme. There were approximately 100,000 Coloured and Indian families that had to be re-settled. To date we have already re-settled just over 50,0 Coloured and Indian families. We are re-settling Coloured and Indian families at a rate of 8,500 families per year, which means that our entire group area programme, our entire re-settlement programme, will have been completed within the next seven years.

Now, Sir, I want to come to the hon. member for Port Natal. I want to quote what he said in an interview with the Sunday Times:

Now I want to challenge him to bring me one Coloured or one Indian who was evicted from his house and did not receive a better one.

I will bring them to you by the score.

Let him bring them. Last year I challenged the hon. member for Green Point to do the same thing, and I am still waiting for this to be done. We are engaged in the re-settlement of these people in a way in which we can not only be proud, but which any other country in the world could emulate. The hon. member can go and take a look at Lenasia. Could the hon. member want a better housing scheme than Lenasia? Where did those people stay before? Previously those people stayed in the backyards of Fordsburg and places like that. Let the hon. member go and take a look at Roshnee near Vereeniging. What is wrong with that housing scheme for the Indians? Where did those people stay? In the backyards of Vereeniging, in the backyards of shops. Take for example Laudium in Pretoria. Where did those Indians stay? In the most reprehensible conditions one could possibly imagine. To-day they are staying in a proper housing scheme. The same applies to the Indians at Chatsworth.

Have a good look at it next time.

We drove through it the other day. The hon. member for Green Point was also there, together with quite a number of other members. They could not speak with sufficient praise of the fine houses in Chats worth. They were impressed by the houses in Chatsworth. I am therefore saying to that hon. member that if he says the houses in Chatsworth are not respectable houses he does not know what he is talking about. I wonder if he lives in such a respectable house. I have not yet been to the hon. member’s house, but he could be quite satisfied if he had a house such as those the Indians have in Chatsworth. I am not even talking now about the houses at Isipingo and Pietermaritzburg. I am now going to test the Opposition. They state that they are in favour of separate residential areas. Am I correct when I say that?

Yes.

The hon. member for Sea Point is the only one to say “yes”. The hon. member has to say that because Colin Eglin is giving him a hiding in Sea Point. That is why that hon. member’s cry is now for a white Sea Point. Would the hon. member for Sea Point, if his constituency were where District Six now is, have pleaded for a white District Six?

I would have cleaned up the slums of District Six and made them decent, and I would have allowed the Coloureds to live there again. [Interjections.]

It is the intention of the Government to re-settle the few thousand Coloured families who live there amidst the approximately 400 white families in the Cape Flats. District Six will then become a white residential area. I now want to ask the hon. member for Sea Point a simple question. Will we have his support when that is being done? As the hon. member for Sea Point has stated, District Six will then be cleaned up and put right. However, the Coloureds will get far better houses than they are occupying to-day. They will be houses such as those at Windermere along the national road.

With proprietary rights?

Of course they will be granted proprietary rights. The hon. member for Wynberg, who unfortunately is not present in the House at the moment, stated that she was not in favour of the Coloureds being taken out of District Six. Now I want to ask the major prophet of the United Party, the man who has a statement in the newspaper every second day, i.e. the hon. member for Hillbrow, whether he is satisfied with District Six being dealt with in this way? After all, the hon. member is their spokesman. I know what the United Party will do. When we have cleared up District Six, they will once again allege that we have ill-treated the Coloureds, driven them from their homes and cast them into the outer darkness. That, of course, they will only say at certain places. In the rural areas on the other hand they will tell the people about the beautiful houses which are being built on the Cape Flats for the Cape Coloureds, which are far better than many white houses. That kind of story simply does not go down any more.

I am fully aware of the housing position in South Africa and I want to repeat that there is no serious housing crisis in South Africa. There is in fact a lively demand for housing. I take far more notice of the findings of the National Institute for Housing Research than the unscientific statements by the hon. member for Green Point. However, my Department will have to keep on its toes in order to meet the lively demand. At present many houses are being built for the middle and lower income groups as far as the Whites and the other ethnic groups are concerned, but particularly the Whites, and we are making up the backlog. There is every indication that the backlog will have been made up during the next three years. On 22nd April we go to the nation with our record of White housing, and also with that of all the various population groups in South Africa. We go to the nation with our record of resettlement and of development of group areas in South Africa. We go to the nation with our record of separation and of separate development among the various racial groups in South Africa. We also go to the nation with the record of the United Party. For that reason I have no doubt that on the 23rd April the National Party will return to this House stronger than it is to-day.

Mr. Speaker, a certain English newspaper once referred to the hon. the Minister of Community Development as “the bull of Bashan” of the Nationalist Party. To-day we saw how delightfully true that is. Normally one would like to leave the froth and the wind to settle on its own, but the hon. the Minister made certain statements which I feel I have to challenge most seriously in the name of veracity. First of all, the hon. the Minister made an allegation against my Leader, saying that my Leader had said that South Africa was a police state. My hon. Leader directly more than once across the floor of this House some minutes ago challenged the hon. the Minister to say where he had ever said that South Africa was a police state.

I did not say he said so. I said his party said so.

I will take the hon. the Minister to Hansard after I have sat down, to see what his exact words were. I say that his words were that my Leader said that South Africa was a police state. I repeat that challenge to him, to state when my Leader said that.

I said your party said so.

The hon. the Minister did not say that He said my Leader said that South Africa was a police state.

I did not say that.

Is the hon. the Minister now withdrawing that allegation, or is he repeating it?

I am repeating it.

Very well, I am quite prepared to go with the hon. the Minister after I have sat down to see what his exact words were. In the second instance, after that, not knowing what to do, the hon. the Minister suddenly accused the hon. member for Durban (North) of having said that South Africa was a police state. The hon. member for Durban (North) denied it. Then the hon. the Minister quoted from Hansard. I also have that Hansard here. Will the hon. the Minister read with me and pay close attention to what the hon. member for Durban (North) actually said. I quote from Hansard of the 26th April, 1963 (Col. 4861), to show what his exact words were. He said—

The hon. member for Durban (North) replied to his own question—

Mr. Speaker, if there has ever been false representation of what has been said in Hansard, this is it. Here are the words of the hon. member for Durban (North), where he said: “Are we a police state? I do not believe it.” Yet the hon. the Minister said that it was so. I quote further from Hansard—

If the hon. the Minister of Information can show me where I said that I will probably apologize to him. I never said that.

He never said that.

He did. [Interjections.]

Order!

I am rather interested to hear the interruption by the hon. the Minister of Sport. We have not heard much of him during the past month!

The hon. the Minister of Community Development defended his policy on housing. He said there was no shortage of housing but that there was only a big demand, a sizeable demand, a lively demand for housing. I have here a leading article from Die Vaderland of 22nd November, 1969. I think the hon. the Minister knows this paper. He knows the editor. He knows the politics and he is very much a great supporter of Die Vaderland. Let me read to this House what Die Vaderland says about the housing shortage in South Africa. It says—

This leading article concludes with these words—

That is the editor of a Nationalist newspaper giving a reply much better than I can in regard to the shortage of housing, and furthermore pointing out that the policy of the hon. the Minister in this respect is actually harming the strength of the White population group in this country.

I regret that I have to spend so much time on the hon. the Minister, but he also mentioned a deputation which I led to see him about a certain housing development scheme on the borders of a certain area in my constituency, namely Rietfontein. He knows about that. I came along and presented a petition from the voters in the areas of Glendower and Dunvegan, which falls in my constituency. Let me tell the hon. the Minister that I am extremely proud to have these people in my constituency and that I deplore most vehemently the insulting words he directed at those good voters. They are not only United Party voters. There are also Nationalist Party and Progressive Party voters in that area. He called them rich people and snobs. I do not know whether the hon. the Minister knows Dunvegan and Glendower, but I can tell the hon. the Minister that those people are ordinary middle-class people. They are workers, they are artisans, they are professional men. They are people not in the higher income group. I shall take the hon. the Minister to Dunvegan and I challenge him to come on the same platform with me before those people he calls rich people and snobs and insult them in that way. I reject those words, and I trust that the people and voters of Dunvegan will reject them in the same way.

Tell us what that petition asked.

The hon. the Minister knows that that petition asked that the housing development should be administered in such a way that existing houses should not decline in value, and that it should be consonant with the whole area. They were not against housing development in principle. That the hon. the Minister knows. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr. Chairman, we had another Minister taking part in this debate, namely the Minister of Labour. I do not wish to say much about his speech. I want to refer to the—I do not wish to use the word “dishonest”—unfair way in which he brandished a pamphlet of the United Party which we are issuing for this election. He called it “You Want It—We Have It”. The full title of the pamphlet of course is “The Answer: You Want It—We Have It”. But he went further and challenged this side of the House to send a copy to each single hon. member on that side of the House. I am quite sure that our Division of Information would be only too happy to do so, on one condition: namely, that we have a similar booklet issued by the Nationalist Party stating what their policy is on every, or nearly every, aspect mentioned in our own booklet. Now I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Information whether he is prepared to send such a booklet to every member on this side of the House. Is there any other member on that side of the House who is prepared to send in written form, to us, anyone, the policy of the Nationalist Party set out as completely as we have our United Party policy in that booklet? Surely, the hon. the Minister can reply to that. The hon. the Minister is not as tongue-tied as all that. Where is their policy? Here is the proof, they have no policy! They would never dare to put down their policy in writing. They would never dare to hold a Republic-wide congress, a “nasionale kongres” where their policy can be laid down, because they know that the division in their party about policy matters between north and south, between verkramp and verlig, is as strong as it ever was in the past.

After the Minister has spoken one has to take up some of one’s time in order to reply to him. Therefore I can only now start dealing with what I actually wanted to say. I want to start by saying that I do not think that in the history of parliamentary democracy in the whole world has there ever been a more childish, a more ludicrous set of reasons for holding a general election. Whether the election was called by the hon. the Prime Minister or whether it was called by the hon. the Minister of Transport, as he seems to have boasted at some stage, it does not change the fact that these reasons are entirely ludicrous, entirely indefensible.

Mr. Speaker, calling a general election is one of the most important steps a government can take. It is a recognized procedure in parliamentary government. It is done for recognized reasons. It can be done, for example, if there is a conflict between the two Houses of Parliament, between the House of Assembly and the Senate which cannot be resolved. Then you are justified in calling a general election. A general election can be called as General Smuts did in 1924 in the Wakkerstroom by-election when he made that by-election an issue of confidence.

What about 1961?

Quite right, you can write out a general election, as Dr. Verwoerd did, to start with a clean sheet after South Africa had become a Republic. These are valid as constitutional reasons and I am prepared to accept them. But I am not …

What do you call this one then?

Four reasons were given for this election, for spending millions of rand, for causing consternation throughout the country and for causing an upheaval, a disorganization, throughout the country. What were they? Firstly, the country has to decide on the sport policy; it has to decide whether the All Blacks have to be All Whites. Imagine going to the country on an election platform for a reason such as that. I know that they have changed their policy in regard to that. I do not blame the hon. the Prime Minister for changing his policy in regard to that issue, however much they may deny it. But why call on the country to judge between a government and an alternative government on that question? Here I have a statement which was made by a former Minister—Jan De Klerk. I quote it as it was published in Die Transvaler of 9th September, 1965. He said:

That was a statement by the Nationalist Party. If they did change their policy, fair enough, I grant them that. But why go to the country on account of a mistake which was made in their own policy in the past? Surely, going to the country on an issue such as that is losing all sense of value. Let me quote again. Because they do not believe what I say. I would like to quote Die Vaderland of the 24th September, 1969. Under the heading “Stryd oor Sport” we read this leading article:

Is ons nie ons sin vir waardes en eerbaarheid totaal kwyt as Nasionaliste openlik en onwaardig twis oor ’n rugbyspan wat nog nie eens gekies is nie?