Mr. Speaker, with your leave I should like to make a statement in regard to the manufacture of explosives and propellants for military purposes.

When I introduced legislation during 1968 for the establishment of an Armaments Development and Production Corporation of South Africa, Limited, I stated that one of the most important objects of the Corporation would be to help to ensure that in all respects the Republic of South Africa might even sooner become independent of the outside world for its armament requirements. In terms of the Act the Corporation also had to gear itself for ensuring that the armament requirements of the Republic were met as effectively and economically as was practicable.

In the execution of its task it would be the duty of the Corporation to advise me on (a) the desirability and necessity for the State to obtain through the Corporation a share in and / or control over the development and manufacture of the more strategic items; and (b) steps which ought to be taken in order to place on a sounder basis the existing direct or indirect financial interests of the State in such activities.

As explosives and propellants for military purposes are indeed the lifeblood of a country’s system of defence, it was obvious to the Government that the control over the manufacture thereof as well as the State’s accumulated direct and indirect financial interests therein, were matters which had to receive the necessary attention as soon as possible. In consultation with me the matter was subsequently discussed very frankly by the chairman of Armscor with the firm African Explosives and Chemical Industries, Limited, which has been responsible for this activity up to now. I should like to avail myself of this opportunity to express my personal appreciation for the spirit in which the discussions took place, and, in particular, for the sense of responsibility displayed throughout the negotiations.

Since the most important points of agreement have now been finalized, I find it a pleasure to announce on behalf of the Government that, in consultation with the firm African Explosives and Chemical Industries, Limited, it was decided to issue simultaneously the following joint statement at this stage—

Mr. Speaker, I rise for just a moment to register our protest against the fact that the normal traditional procedure of informing the Opposition about the statement to be made by the Minister has not been followed in this case. It is very convenient and quite right for you, Sir, within your discretion, to permit such a statement, which may be debated later, but I think the traditional procedure of informing the Opposition should be followed. This indicates the disregard that this Government has for minorities in this country.

If one has listened to this debate up to this point one can only have arrived at one conclusion and that is that hon. members on that side regard the Railways, the interests and the weal and woe of the railwaymen as their particular terrain. They are the only people who can judge whether things are going well with the Railways and with the railwaymen, and we on this side of the House have no say or any information or any experience of what is happening on the Railways.

You have no knowledge.

I got that impression, particularly after listening to the hon. member for Langlaagte and other members on that side. Let me tell the hon. member that the railwayman is not being disloyal to his undertaking. nor is he being disloyal to this Government if he should air his grievances to us on this side of the House, which he is to-day being forced to do because the aspirations and grievances and problems of the railwayman are to a large extent being glossed over by hon. members on that side of the House because it is not in the interests of the National Party to bring those problems to the fore. Consequently the railwaymen have to rely to an ever-increasing extent on us on this side of the House to air his problems, and that is why he expects from us, to an ever-increasing extent, that we will bring his problems to the fore in this House. In the same way it also becomes the task of this side of the House to bring the interests of commerce, the interests of industry and the interests of agriculture, when it comes to our national transport system, to the attention of the government. The hon. Chief Minister of Transport, when he took over some years ago from a former National Party Minister of Transport, said more or less that he had problems with the Railways, but that if he were given capital he would see to it that our national transport system, the Railways, would be placed on a proper basis. Now there is no doubt that the hon. the Minister has over the years obtained the capital with which to improve the position of the Railways, but I think it is high time—and the hon. the Minister has time from now to the election—he again asked the people of South Africa and this Parliament to come to his assistance in order to do something to improve the position. The hon. member for Yeoville put it to the hon. the Minister that the manpower shortage on the Railways to-day is such that it is not only restricting railway services, but that it is also causing major problems and dissatisfaction among the railwaymen themselves. But it was pointed out to the hon. the Minister of Transport years ago that South Africa, with its rapid development, would have this manpower shortage and that he would have to make provision for it. And the hon. the Minister took steps in accordance with a statement which was made by a previous General Manager of the Railways, Mr. Hugo; the late Mr. Hugo envisaged that our labour pattern in South Africa would have to change. In order to solve this problem he has already employed many more non-Whites to do work which had previously been done by Whites. The hon. the Minister’s problem in the Railways in this respect remains a major one and he will not give that satisfaction he ought to give with the Railways unless he reconsiders his policy in this direction even further. Now there are hon. members on that side of the House who will immediately say that it is the policy of the United Party now to replace Whites with non-Whites.

Do you want non-White stationmasters?

The hon. member for Colesberg ought to put that question to the hon. the Minister of Transport, for he is already changing that labour pattern and in this respect he will have to go even further.

And he need not be afraid that he will offend the white railwayworker. There are hon. members who want to use this for political purposes, but we on this side say to them that they are keeping certain railwaymen at a particular level while they could move much further up the scale and could do better work, receive improved remuneration and bear greater responsibilities. Unless they are prepared to accept that direction, they will never solve the manpower shortage on the Railways.

*Mr. S. F. KOTZÉ: What direction is that?

The direction which was envisaged by the former General Manager, the late Mr. Hugo, and which the hon. the Minister has already been following over the past few years.

*Mr. S. F. KOTZÉ: Mention a few examples.

To-day, in all humility, I want to state three requirements in respect of our transport system, or rather lay down three criteria. In the first place there is this criterion: Must our national transport system be far in advance of development? Must it run parallel to the development, or must it lag a little way behind? That is the first criterion I want to put. The second criterion I want to put is this. How are we looking after the interests of the railway worker? And the last criterion is this: Does it satisfy its clients, i.e. the users of the Railways? I think that when one takes all three these criteria, one can reach no other conclusion but that the government has not given its attention to the Railways as it ought to have done: and I hope to mention a few examples to the hon. the Minister to demonstrate why I think so. The last criterion relates particularly to our agriculture.

But the first test is whether the Railways is keeping pace with the development of the country or whether it should run parallel, whether it should be a little in advance or should preferably lag a little way behind. I want to state that if one were to go through the reports of the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Industries and the S.A. Agricultural Union, one would find the hon. the Minister is faced with one problem after the other in regard to the provision of adequate services, which are reiterated year after year to the Minister and to which insufficient attention is being given. I can understand that during the past few months the hon. the Minister has had a difficult time and perhaps did not have sufficient time to enable him to give sufficient attention to the Railways, but before that the Minister had a long time in which to do so. The last few months, we know, he has been flushing certain people out of their holes, and has been experiencing problems with his political organization in the Transvaal, but that is no excuse.

I then want to put the second requirement to the Minister, i.e. whether he has looked after the interests of the railway employees? The railway worker to-day is complaining to us about the overtime. They are complaining to us as a result of the high cost of living. They are complaining to us as a result of the high rates of interest they have to pay on housing. The hon. member for Colesberg boasted of it here that the salary and wages of railwaymen had been considerably increased, and that is correct, but only last year, in 1969, the cost of living increased by 5 per cent in South Africa. The hon. member for Colesberg and other hon. members on that side must not think that the railwaymen have forgotton the time a number of years ago when wages and salaries were frozen, and when the hon. the Minister came forward with that R43 million which he only gave to the railway people on a subsequent occasion. There was the same dissatisfaction in regard to that situation. The railway employee is dissatisfied to-day because his interests are not being looked after in this respect. I could mention examples to-day of people who had problems in regard to housing and who are today still struggling to get approval from the Railways Administration so that they can obtain money for their homes from some building society or other. If you travel up to Johannesburg along the main line to-day and talk to the ticket examiners on the trains they will tell you that they have been on duty for ten to 12 hours. Then they only get a few hours’ sleep and then have to repeat the process.

When last did you go by train?

The hon. member is asking me when last I went by train. I can give the hon. member the assurance that I often travel by train. What is more, I am not prepared merely to talk to those people. I am also prepared to listen to the problems they have. This is good advice to that hon. member.

Sir, if it is a requirement that we should look after the employees of the Railways, one wonders whether the Government has succeeded in that respect. If it had succeeded there would not have been so many grievances aired with us, and those grievances would not have been increasing every year. The other criterion I want to put is: To what extent is there satisfaction amongst the users of the Railways? This point was put very clearly by the hon. member for Yeoville, and we realize only too well that our railway workers are working under extremely difficult circumstances. If delays and snarl-ups take place, one must bear in mind that these people are often working under difficult circumstances. They get little sleep, and they work a great deal of overtime. But in addition there are probably malpractices which take place from time to time in regard to the control of the Railways, which affect our farmers in particular very closely. Hon. members have stated that they were not responsible for the overcrowding of slaughter animals, nor for the fact that many slaughter animals recently died in Johannesburg. It could be true, as a result of the abolition or the quota system by the Meat Board, that there was a tremendous increase in the number of animals, but surely this is not the first time this has happened. I can quote the hon. member what happened as recently as 1967. At the time a great many animals also died in Johannesburg. A report in The Star in this connection reads, inter alia, as follows—

In addition it is said—

In this report it is clearly stated—

This is what a member of the Animal Protection Society said.

[Inaudible.]

Where does the difficulty lie? I shall tell the hon. the Deputy Minister of finance where the difficulty lies. That question is also answered in this report. It is the duty of the stationmaster and the loading master to ensure that such a truck is not overloaded.

At what siding did this happen?

It makes no difference what siding this was. It could perhaps have been the hon. member’s siding at Prieska. The point is simply that in this case insufficient control was exercised. That is why the animals died on the train.

I have often loaded 130 sheep in a double load truck.

Sir, if one has reasonably fat sheep, such as those in the part of the world I come from, you would find it difficult to load 130 of them in such a truck. [Interjections.]

There are also many two-legged sheep in your part of the world.

Yes, and some of them even become Ministers. [Interjections.] According to a report in Organized Agriculture, Mr. Nick Deacon, of Vleissentraal had already stated on 3rd February of last year: “Cattle die on trains.” In the same way I can quote to him from Die Beeld as recently as 25th January. A report with the heading, “Ministers in hot water over 320 deaths”, reads, inter alia, as follows: “Farmers are embittered, because they are losing money”. The hon. member for Prieska’s brother, a prominent farmer in Postmasburg, sent telegrams to the hon. the Prime Minister to lodge complaints against the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Transport regarding the situation on the Railways.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member a question? I want to ask the hon. member whether he can tell me what the mortality rate was during that period when my brother sent a telegram to the Prime Minister and what the mortality rate was in December.

I do not know what the mortality rate in December was.

Can the hon. member tell me what the mortality rate in the week prior to that was?

Mr. Speaker, I am dealing with the question of these 320 sheep and cattle that died in that week of 25th January. If the hon. member is saying that there were other animals which also died before that happened, then it only makes the situation worse. I therefore do not know why he is putting those questions to me. If there is no obligation in this regard on the Meat Board, then surely there is an obligation on the Railways which transports these animals under certain circumstances. The Meat Board cannot be held responsible if these animals are not given any water and fodder en route. The hon. the Minister knows that it is one of the most frequent complaints to-day that animals are transported for long periods of time in trains without being taken off at strategic places and provided with water and fodder. Surely this is the responsibility of the Railways and not the responsibility of the Meat Board. We want to make an urgent appeal to the hon. the Minister to have an inquiry instituted into this matter, and not only in respect of the position in Johannesburg and at the abattoirs. He must also have an inquiry instituted in order to what extent the Railways are responsible for this situation. I want to bring it emphatically to the hon. the Minister’s attention that approximately 27 per cent of the goods traffic of the Railways consists of agricultural or animal produce. The hon. the Ministers are receiving a tremendous income from our South African agriculture. If he does not do something about incidents of this kind which are taking place on the Railways to-day he cannot expect those people to have confidence in the South African Railways.

I want to mention a further example to the hon. the Minister of how, as a result of poor service and administration, the Railways is affecting agriculture. I want to mention to him this example of an eminent farmer in the Hankey area of the Eastern Cape. He developed a new citrus variety and received orders to send this variety to Cape Town at certain times of the year. This is what he wrote to me in this connection—

Sir, he conducted one negotiation after the other with the divisional manager in Port Elizabeth to get this matter solved. We want to encourage our farmers to develop our own inland markets, to find their own markets. Then they suffer damage as a result of the fact that their products remain in transit for long periods, arrive at the market in a poor condition and then do not fetch a proper price. Now the hon. the Minister must not say that I am sucking these things out of my thumb. One can read daily accounts of criticism of this kind. One can read in Georganiseerde Landbou, Landbounuusblad or Farmers’ Weekly how farmers are objecting as a result of this bottleneck in our Railways.

I am going to mention a further example to the hon. the Minister. I am going to give him the example of a farmer, not far from here, who recently began distributing deciduous fruit in the northern provinces and Natal. This man requires refrigerated trucks in order to transport his products. Apparently he gets about two trucks a week. But recently it so happened that one of those trucks, conveying produce to Durban, took nine days to reach their destination. Now hon. members can imagine what his clients must pay for that farmer’s produce under those circumstances. In the meantime this man has invested thousands of rands in pre-cooling facilities. But the moment his produce must come on to the market he is left in the lurch as a result of the fact that the service is not available. This is not the first time this has happened. The same thing has happened before. What is more, when the Railways saw that this truck which I am talking about did not turn up, an in vestigation was not instituted. No, Sir, if it had not been for his clients who investigated the matter themselves when the produce did not arrive, that produce would perhaps still have been standing somewhere along the line. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that this is his opportunity now to do something for our agricultural industry.

I want to mention a further example. There are to-day still large drought-stricken areas in South Africa where rain has not yet fallen. This is the position in Calvinia, Namaqualand and the North Western Cape. There are farmers who have to wait for weeks before orders which they placed in respect of lucerne and mealies can be executed. When that produce must be delivered, one simply finds that the bus driver and perhaps his assistant are compelled to throw of the goods because they are so busy and do not have workers at their disposal. Then hon. members on that side of the House say that people are satisfied with our transportation system. Not only is the railwayman satisfied, but also the railway user. If the hon. the Minister is not going to make better use of his time than to spend it on the difficulties in the National Party, I can tell him that difficulties of this kind will not pass unnoticed at this election on 22nd April. It is our task to point these things out to the hon. the Minister. If he is unable to furnish a reply to this, then the nation has no other alternative than to reject him as Minister of Transport.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Newton Park made out a great case here of the cattle that had to stand over on the Rand and could not be slaughtered immediately. The hon. member tried to lay the blame on the Railways. I wonder, however, if the hon. member thinks carefully about this matter, who he thinks was the cause of it not being possible to slaughter that stock. There was only one reason for that, i.e. the Rand municipality did not make provision for the increased meat consumption of its inhabitants. The stock arrived, and because certain of the municipality’s slaughtering facilities were out of operation it was not possible to slaughter that stock. After all, it is not the Railways’ task to establish waiting pens and other facilities if stock cannot be slaughtered. The Railways’ task is solely to convey the stock to the Rand, or wherever it is. I think the hon. member for Newton Park is laying the blame at the wrong door.

The hon. member also mentioned this question of the labour pattern and said that it would have to be changed. He said that more non-Whites would have to be employed. He went further and accused this National Party Government of already replacing Whites with non-Whites. I wrote down the hon. member’s words. Fortunately I have the numbers of persons employed, as well as other comparative figures. On 31st March, 1959, there were 113.726 Whites in the employ of the South African Railways. On 31st March, 1969, this figure had increased by 2,000 to 115,142. The hon. member stated that the number of non-Whites had increased and that they had replaced the Whites. On 31st March, 1959, the number of non-Whites in the employ of the Railways was 111,827. In March. 1969. their numbers had decreased to 109,464, which is 2,0 less. The true state of affairs is therefore exactly the opposite of what the hon. member stated it to be. During the past ten years 2,0 additional Whites have been employed while 2,000 fewer non-Whites are being employed. However, the hon. member alleges that it is just the other way around.

The next objection raised by the hon. member was that railwaymen had to pay such a high rate of interest on their house loans. On departmental house loans railway servants pay 4 per cent interest. The loans which railway servants obtain from building societies are being subsidized, just as in the case of other public servants, and they only pay 3½ to 4 percent interest on those loans. Again, this is just the opposite of what the hon. member claimed. The hon. member claimed that railway servants were paying higher rates of interest. but the voters in my constituency are grateful for the fact that they are paying such low rates of interest. The last assertion the hon. member made was that the consumers were dissatisfied with railway tariffs. I have here in my possession the yellow booklet of the United Party with the title “The answer: You want it, we have it”. On page 26 the following is said—

What does that mean? The Railways itself has a deficit of between R30 and R40 million which has to be carried by the Harbours, Airways and Pipelines. Hon. members on that side of the House referred to the high tariffs. But surely they realize that if the policy elucidated in this little yellow booklet were to be accepted, it would immediately result in an increase in the tariffs, for from what source will this R30 to R40 million be obtained? Therefore, the United Party is not pleading here for which is in the interests of the people who make use of the railways transportation services, but for something which will be to their disadvantage, tariffs will have to be increased. because that is the only way their plan will succeed. Who are the people who make use of the train services and who will have to pay the high tariffs as a result of this system? It is for the most part the less well to do people, the older people and children. The United Party, through this policy of theirs, therefore wants to place these people in a very unequal position.

I listened attentively to the course taken by the debate and all the criticism on this side of the House, as we have just heard from the previous speaker. It is clear to me that those hon. members are with great difficulty trying to find fault with this mammoth organization, i.e. the transport system of our country. Much reference was made to manpower shortage. It is a problem. We realize that. It is the only matter they touched upon which does in fact have some substance. To my mind, however, the solution they proposed holds great dangers. I fear that their proposed solution will endanger our white workers. I shall refer to that again later.

The other question they raised is the elimination of level crossings. This matter is a familiar one to us. We have been dealing with it for many years, and a great deal has been said about the problem. We want to thank the Minister for having doubled the amount for the elimination of these level crossings. We also believe that the elimination of these level crossings will take place much more rapidly in future. Nevertheless, I want to express my gratitude for this new method whereby half of the road is closed as trains approach. This will, without doubt, be of great assistance. I just want to tell hon. members that they are very conveniently losing sight of one thing. That is that where flashing lights have been introduced and where the bell system is in operation, numerous accidents are nevertheless occurring. It is clear that the Railways are doing what they can from their side. Surely we realize that it is impossible to eliminate the 4,000 level crossings immediately. These signs, etc., which have been put up at level crossings are ignored by the public. The public pay no heed to them and simply drives across the lines. I want to make an appeal to the motoring public to pay more heed to these danger signals at level crossings.

We are on the eve of an election. On 22nd April the people will be asked to give a decision affecting the weal and woe of our nation. It is with the greatest confidence that I leave that choice in the hands of the voters to decide who shall govern this country.

You will get a shock.

My seat is a very safe one. It is a seat where the United Party does not dare put up a candidate. It is necessary for us to see this matter in its correct perspective and to glance back for a moment. If the Opposition were to take over the reins of Government, what would the position be? In the first place I want to ask what the United Party offers the railwayman if it should come to power. To my mind that is a very important question. Is the future of the white workers safe in the hands of the United Party?

Yes.

I am glad you are speaking so unambiguously. The hon. member for Hillbrow is no ordinary person.

He is the policy maker of the United Party, the up-and-coming leader and the ouster, who has ousted our good friend there in the front bench. That hon. member states unequivocally in the recent no-confidence debate that work reservation should be abolished, and that the colour bar in South Africa should disappear. It is not that member only. Years ago the hon. member for Yeoville had already begun with this story.

*Mr. S. F. KOTZÉ: In 1965.

He advocated the abolition of the colour bar. I am now going to quote to you from Hansard, Col. 2411, of 1965. Here the hon. member uses the following words—

Work reservation is regarded by our people as being one of the important cornerstones for protecting the white worker.

Can you give me the name of one group or one single railway worker who falls under the work reservation clause No. 77?

We all know that clause 77 does not apply to the Railways.

But this is work reservation.

Wait a minute, we know what the traditional policy of this Government is. These people have a guarantee that the colour bar will be maintained by this Government. But they have no guarantee from the Opposition. I do not in any way blame the United Party for thinking in this way and pleading their case in this manner. However, I want them to state in clear terms to the voters outside what their policy is.

But it is not only the hon. member for Yeoville and the hon. member for Hillbrow. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout and the hon. member for Karoo also pleaded for this in very plain terms. The hon. member for Karoo stated here that the vacancies on the Railways should be filled by Coloureds. But will the United Party, if they come into power, abolish the colour bar?

Did you not listen to my Leader?

I have now mentioned three persons and quoted from their speeches. I have quoted from Hansard what the hon. member for Yeoville said.

He did not say a word about the colour bar. He was talking about work reservation.

That is hairsplitting. The fact remains that under the United Party these workers, as far as the colour bar are concerned, will not be safeguarded. But I want to go further. The hon. member for Karoo mentioned the possibility here of their being appointed as waiters on trains and on aircraft. Now I want to ask the hon. members a question. The hon. members speak of the labour shortage and the manpower shortage and this matter is blown up as if we had found ourselves in a tremendously critical situation. Is that the hon. member’s solution? The hon. member for Karoo stated that waiters on trains and in the airways, conductors, shunters and ticket examiners could be replaced by Coloureds. I want to warn hon. members that the negroes in America took over the public service within the space of a few years. The percentage of negroes in the public service increased by 25 per cent a decade ago to more than 80 per cent at the present moment.

You are talking rubbish.

It is the truth. I also thought it was impossible. When we arrived in Washington and our courier told us I said that it was impossible, although 600,000 of Washington’s population of 800,000 consists of negroes. I could not believe it either that 80 per cent of the public service of the United States have been taken over by the negroes.

That is not so.

It is a fact, and the hon. member can convince himself by going to find out for himself. This happened under the policy of President Kennedy. I want to warn the United Party that if they come into power, the same thing will happen here in South Africa. Opposed to this there is the National Party’s guarantee to the worker, i.e. work reservation with a colour bar. The worker knows this, because he knows the National Party and that is why he has confidence in it. The hon. member for Parow raised a matter here yesterday, i.e. the question of the Railways becoming black. He covered the field quite well and I want to congratulate him on that. In 1923 we had the Jagger mentality in the South African Party. This mentality still exists in the United Party. In those days the Whites had to be replaced by non-Whites who could supply cheaper labour. To-day they want to replace the Whites under the slogan “manpower shortage”. Whatever their motives are, the deed remains the same. That United Party is a mere extension of the old South African Party which did those things.

I now want to deal with this serious complaint raised by the United Party, the complaint in regard to overtime. This is also the last of the complaints I want to deal with here to-day. The United Party is so concerned about overtime the workers have to work. My constituency is probably one of the constituencies with the most railwaymen in the country. Not one single railwayman has, so far, complained to me about overtime. They are grateful for the extra earnings.

[Inaudible.]

That shows me how much hon. members on the opposite side of the House are out of touch with railway-men. They do not know the heart and pulsebeat of the railwayman. My people are eternally grateful that they are able to work overtime. If they do not want to believe me, I challenge anyone sitting on that side of the House to get to his feet and propose that we abolish overtime.

It can be done if they could only receive a decent basic wage.

I challenge the hon. member to rise to his feet here and say that overtime must be abolished. The railway-men themselves will be up in arms against such a statement. The United Party is kicking up a row there on the other side of the House in regard to matters about which they know absolutely nothing, and the railwaymen are laughing at their ignorance in respect of this question.

When last did you talk to a railwayman?

Order!

I want to say here that I rue the day these Railways are transferred to that United Party. What will the state of affairs then be? We know what chaos there was in the Railways in 1948. We know that in those days money even had to be borrowed from the Treasury in order to pay wages. We also know that the provident funds were used illegally. This Government had to pay millions of rands into those provident funds. Take the behaviour of the United Party during the past year. I challenge anyone to mention one occasion to me when the United Party rose to present a plea in the interests of the railwayman. On every occasion they merely presented pleas in the interests of the other sectors. When mention is made of high tariff goods, which provides 51 per cent of the Railways’ income, they advocate that it should be handed over to private transport. What must become of the Railways? Where must they get their revenue from? With what must we grant salary increases to Railway officials? Not only do they complain about high tariffs, they are also dissatisfied about the unfair protection the Railways enjoys, about the monopolistic tendencies of the Railways. They are prepared to chop off the head of the goose that lays the golden eggs. Now they have come forward with this booklet, this pamphlet in which their policy statement is contained, and they advocate that the Railways, the Harbours, the Airways, as well as the Pipelines be separated. This is further clear proof that they want to break down the S.A. Railways, because the deficit on the transport side of the S.A. Railways must be carried by the other sectors. There is no other solution. What they are advocating must result in one thing only, i.e. increased tariffs.

In addition they refer to mechanization, in such a way that they imply that it is merely a less important matter. According to them the efficiency of our Railway services has not really improved. The truth, however, is that it was only with the aid of mechanization and improved working methods that it was possible with the limited number of staff to achieve such a major success as that which was in fact achieved. The index of labour productivity indicates that the production figure increased by 166 during the past two decades. Mechanization of track maintenance resulted in a manpower saving of more than 600 platelayers and 10,000 Bantu labourers.

The last matter I want to refer to is the centralized traffic control System. In my constituency people went so far as to express concern that the introduction of this system would give rise to unemployment. In fact, quite a number of station foremen have been eliminated through this system. Fortunately it was possible to take them in elsewhere. With the introduction of this system on only a few lines the services of altogether 72 station foremen were eliminated. For years our Minister has been warned that he will have to get along with less labour. That is why he has gone over to increased mechanization and to-day we see the fruits of this in the sphere of labour saving.

The strength and the success of the S.A. Railways, however, lies, in the training of manpower. in the fact that they are training their labour units to become experts, so that every person can do his work as an artisan. Such training therefore means a great deal to the S.A. Railways. Under this régime we have not only had tremendous industrial development, but also a spectacular development on the S.A. Railways. Nevertheless, they have not failed to meet the country’s transport requirements and have conveyed all offered traffic. The hon. member for Newton Park alleged that people were now supposedly struggling to get trucks, and so on. That I simply cannot understand; such complaints do not reach us. Where farmers were unable to get trucks, this could perhaps be attributed to the fact that the markets were already overloaded, as was the case recently when there was an accumulation of slaughter stock in Johannesburg and all stations subsequently received instructions not to load any more stock. Perhaps that is what the hon. member for Newton Park was referring to. The fact of the matter is that efficiency on the Railways has made it possible to increase its production more than threefold and that despite the fact that the complement of staff has remained virtually constant. The workers salaries has also increased more than threefold. On 31st March, 1948, the average income of a white person on the S.A. Railways was R910, in comparison with R2,962 at the end of March 1969.

Then the people had to work for a tip.

It is the policy of the Minister to hold discussions from time to time on the highest level to see where adjustments are necessary, and the reason why the railwayman has such great confidence in the Administration is because this is being done The railwayman knows that the profits made by the S.A. Railways are ploughed back to their benefit. That is why the railwayman has so much confidence in this Government. In contrast to that the United Party wants to break down the S.A. Railways. The hon. member for Yeoville is even concerned about the fact that there will be a large surplus this year. Opposed to that we on this side are grateful for surpluses because it enables us to do something more for our people, for those people who work hard and co-operate with the Government to increase the efficiency of the S.A. Railways and to expand it further. As far as I am concerned, I want to express my gratitude to the Minister and to every official, from the highest to the lowest, for the part each one has played, and give them the assurance that we are proud of them; they are the pride of our country.

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to follow the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) too far in the theme he developed. However, there are one or two things in connection with his speech I should like to comment upon. Firstly, would it not be nice if in a debate on Railway matters we could apply ourselves to a discussion of the means whereby the Railways could attain maximum efficiency instead of looking for voting points and for vote catching phrases with an eye on the coming election! I have heard arguments from both sides of the House about the number of Africans, the increased number of Africans, now being employed by the S.A. Railways. As far as the Opposition is concerned, they use this argument to show that the Government’s policy of apartheid is failing, whereas Government members, on the other hand, deny that there has been any replacement of Whites by non-Whites at all. But what does it matter? The only thing of importance, surely, is that the S.A. Railways should be run at a maximum efficiency. It ought not to matter if in so doing the hon. the Minister should find it necessary to increase the number of non-white employees. I have no doubt that he only does that when he has to, in the light of the particular philosophy which motivates him.

As far as I am concerned, I think it is quite wrong to try and make political capital out of this fact, because this is counter productive. It means that when the hon. the Minister might be considering increasing the efficiency of the S.A. Railways by employing more non-Whites, he is pulled up sharply by the realization that political capital is going to be made out of it, more so in these days when, so it seems to me, every Nationalist Minister is so aware of the fact that beady little eyes are fixed on them. They seem to me to be too much aware of the fact that beady little eyes are fixed on them trying to make political capital out of every colour issue in which their respective Departments might become involved and which might mean increased employment of non-Whites.

I commend the hon. the Minister of Transport for taking on more non-Whites if this has increased the efficiency of the Railways. We know that there are vacancies and that there is no unemployment amongst employable white people. At any rate, you have to be a very bad worker indeed, if you are white in South Africa, if you cannot find employment these days. Therefore I commend the hon. the Minister for taking on more non-white workers if by so doing he is increasing the efficiency of the Railways on the one hand and providing additional employment to non-Whites who require work on the other hand. It would be a very fine thing indeed if we could discuss this entirely from the economic angle and from the angle of the best benefit to South Africa rather than always trying to make political capital out of this. I wish the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District), in replying to the hon. member for Newton Park and other members of the official Opposition side, had used that argument rather than trying to prove that the Minister had in fact not taken on more Blacks and had taken on more Whites. I find it all a pretty sickening spectacle and I want to say so.

Sir, the other matter which was raised in passing by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) was a matter which was raised by a couple of members on the official Opposition side, and I want to say something about this also. I have various other matters to raise with the hon. the Minister too. I am not raising them in order of importance, but since the hon. member has raised this matter I want to deal with it right away. Sir, I want to talk about the scandal of the livestock deaths in Johannesburg in January—the fact that over 300 animals died of heat, exhaustion, starvation and overcrowding. Where does the blame lie? The hon. member for Newton Park blamed the Railways and I think he blamed the Livestock Board. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) and, I think, the hon. member for Colesberg who spoke the other day, blamed the Johannesburg Municipality and said that the abattoir did not have sufficient facilities; that they did not, for instance, employ non-white slaughtermen and why did they not do so. I do not know why they do not but leave that aside.

The blame was laid, as I say, on the one hand on the Railways and on the other hand on the Johannesburg Municipality. Well, I do not know where the blame lies but I do not think nearly enough has been done to find out about this because it is not the first time that this has happened. It is the worst incident that we have experienced in Johannesburg, and people in Johannesburg were shocked at what was going on in the abattoirs at Newton siding during January. It was a shocking, disgusting spectacle, but it is not the first time that this has happened. Indeed I wrote to the hon. the Minister—he may or may not remember it because it is a small incident in his very busy life—-about an incident which happened in December a year ago where something like 2,000 sheep were found in a miserable condition, dying of heat and exhaustion, crammed into trucks, by somebody who happened to go down to Newtown station to consign some horses, found these conditions and telephoned me about it. I wrote to the hon. the Minister and, as is his wont, he sent me a very polite reply saying that he had had the matter investigated, that no blame attached to the Railways but that there had not been liaison presumably with the Livestock Board. Attention had, however, been drawn to this and in future this would not happen. But, Sir, this happens over and over again. What happens apparently is that the quota is lifted: far more animals come into Newtown than can be coped with by the abattoirs and then there is this hopeless situation that nobody seems to be able to do anything about.

Sir, I suppose if I were sensible I would appeal immediately to the self-interest of the farmers. I find that that is always the best instinct to appeal to in this House. The farmers at least ought to get cracking on this and see that something is done because this involves loss of weight, loss of stock and loss of money for the farmers, apart from the suffering of the beasts which happens to be the thing that interests me. Anyway, something has to be done about this.

Now is it or is it not true, for instance, that the Government has not allowed the necessary extension to take place at the Johannesburg abattoirs? Is it or is it not true, that the Johannesburg Municipality—for whom I hold no brief, but I do not see why they should take the blame if it is not in fact their fault—has repeatedly requested the Government for permission to increase their facilities, and to double, if not treble, the facilities they have to offer, and is it not the Government which has forbidden this? Is it not true that a regulation which lays down that consignors may or may not request the Railways to feed and water animals en route still obtains? I am informed that there is such a regulation and that it is up to the consignor to decide whether or not he wants his animals to be watered and fed en route. If this is so, this regulation should be scrapped and consignors should have to request the Railways to water and to feed stock en route. I am told that in this recent tragedy there were horses which had been consigned from South West Africa, and they had been en route for about two weeks, during which time they were fed and watered only once. This is a disgrace to any civilized country. I realize that human beings are shunted around a lot in this country, and there is no concern for what happens to them at their destination, so one should really not be surprised that this is happening to animals.

You are wrong there.

I am not wrong. I suppose I should not really be surprised if this happens to animals, but I still think it is a disgrace to have such things happening in a civilized country. I am concerned about that regulation; I also do not know why there are not these facilities, but it should not be beyond the wit of a Government as powerful as this one is to see to it that the largest meat market in South Africa does have sufficient facilities to cope with this situation, and that this does not happen over and over again, as indeed it has been happening. I want to know why it was that the Meat Control Board lifted the quota without ascertaining, firstly, whether there were sufficient trucks to enable the animals to travel in relative comfort and, secondly, ascertaining that the abattoirs at the other end were able to cope with the situation; and if the abattoirs could not cope, why these animals were not taken to other sidings where they could be fed and watered until they reached their final destination, the slaughterhouse. This surely is the least that one can expect in this day and age. Johannesburg is an area which deals with thousands upon thousands of livestock and yet these conditions are continually applying. And I hope I get a better answer from the hon. the Minister when he replies to this debate than the one he gave me when I put a question to him on 6th February when he said that the difficulties experienced were brought about by the inadequate kraal facilities provided by the Johannesburg Municipality and the consequent inability of consignees to take delivery of all livestock; and that the Railways could not accept responsibility for the conditions. He went on to say that the reintroduction of the quota system by the Meat Control Board should prevent a recurrence of similar conditions. I think he certainly should institute a more searching inquiry into the matter. I think he should again find out whether it is true or not true that the municipality desires to increase its facilities, and whether it is in fact the Government which is the stumbling-block. I think he must liaise with other Ministers. He may not be at fault, but there is lack of liaison and that is what has caused the situation.

Now I want to pass on to something which is more important in many ways and which I have raised with the hon. the Minister again and again in this House, and I am sure I need not give him more than one guess as to what it is going to be. Every single year I raise with the hon. the Minister the question of the hopelessly inadequate rail facilities to Soweto, where something between 600,000 and ¼ million Africans live, entirely dependent for their livelihood on their work in Johannesburg, all of them having to move from Point A to Point B in the morning at the same time to get to work, and moving back again from Point B to Point A when they return home. I have raised this matter every year, and every year I get a reassurance from the Minister that the lines have been doubled, more carriages have been ordered and more engines have been put into use. All these assurances have been given to me, and therefore I cannot understand why the position remains as abysmal as it still is, after all these years of improvement. One only has to go down to the station at rush hours to see the conditions and to realize how absolutely appalling they are. There are overcrowded trains, packed like sardines, with dangerous conditions on the stations, with people rushing and crowding in an attempt to get on the train, the sort of thing which happened when the footbridge at Dube collapsed not so long ago, when there were fatalities simply because there was a stampede of people trying to get to the station in time, knowing that if they missed that train they would not be able to get to work on time. Now I know that there are trains every 2½ minutes at rush hours, but that is still not enough. People still have to get up at four o’clock in the morning in order to get to work by 7.30. They get back home any time between 8 o’clock and 9 o’clock at night. My pleas do not seem to have made any difference, Sir. I have pointed out that the overcrowded conditions are physically dangerous. I have pointed out that this is a source of tremendous friction amongst the non-White people, particularly the Africans at Soweto. They work hard and long hours and they feel that they are entitled to better facilities. I have pointed out that the overcrowded conditions mean that they are a prey to tsotsis. Every time they receive their paypackets they are in danger of being robbed because the overcrowded trains lend themselves to these conditions. However, as I have said, I do not think that I have made very much impression on the hon. the Minister, because conditions have certainly not improved. I refer him to a voice which may have more effect on him than my small voice. That is the voice raised by members of the Johannesburg Sakekamer, at the Central Transvaal Regional Congress of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut at Vereeniging not so long ago. Every single one of the factors I have mentioned were reiterated by spokesmen at this congress. The Africans, or the Bantu as they called them, have to stand in long queues, they said. These people had long waits, and they had long journeys, even after they had reached the station in their township, Soweto. Most of them faced another half an hour walk to get to their places of work. They found that these people had to leave their homes in darkness in order to arrive at work on time. They arrived home back from work in darkness. They found that these people were packed like sardines in trains, that their wages were stolen and that they were attacked and robbed by bandits in the darkness. This does not come from me, Sir. This comes from the Sakekamer. They are worried because their labour is effected. They know perfectly well that the efficiency of people who have to put up with these conditions daily, is adversely affected. This sort of thing does not only occur now and then, when there happens to have been a breakdown on the line, and people are crowded into trains. These people have to put up with these conditions every single working day throughout the week, throughout the month and throughout the year. It is wearing, Sir. It wears down the efficiency of these people, and something has to be done about it.

Not only are these conditions as bad as they have been over all these years that I have been raising these matters in this House, but during the past year the hon. the Minister has increased the fares. He does not provide better service, mark you, but he puts up the fares. From 1st October, 1969 he raised the third-class rail fares for the second time in 12 months. In some cases the fare has been increased by about 14 per cent. I believe that in Durban the fares have been increased by as much as 50 per cent. The fares are now anything up to R2.80 per month. This is an enormous increase for people living below the breadline, where every solitary cent counts. I should not have to remind the hon. the Minister of the walking that took place some years ago when the bus fare was put up for the journey between Alexandra township and Johannesburg, by one cent per trip. People walked for 10 weeks in order to obviate this increase. The hon. the Minister saw reason in the end. For once this action was not put down to communist agitation. For once the hon. the Minister took the right step. He did not place the burden of the additional fees on the workers who could not afford it. Instead he instituted a transport levy. If the treasury is suffering so grievously because of the subsidy that it is paying out in respect of third-class fares, why put the burden on the workers who cannot afford it? Let the Minister increase the transport levy, if he has to. I do not think he has to. I shall tell him why I do not think he has to. He should not have to do so, because third-class fares have yielded additional revenue of 6.1 per cent anyway. And the hon. the Minister expects a further 3 per cent increase from this source during the 1969-’70 year. What is more, as far as I can make out, the hon. the Minister has a thumping surplus on Railways. Why did he therefore have to increase these fares to this extent? This is another source of burning grievance, Sir, and the hon. the Minister ought to know it. The Africans are suffering from a sense of grievance as a result of this increase. I want to remind the hon. the Minister that he said that no considerable hardship was involved in the recent increases. How does he know that, Sir? Does he have any idea what the budget is like for people living in Soweto? Does he know for instance that the Johannesburg Municipality conducted a survey not long ago? They found that the cost of living in Soweto had, in the case of essential articles, increased by 12 per cent. Does he know that more than 60 per cent of those families are living below the poverty datum line of R53 a month? How can he say that a 14 per cent increase of fares is not a considerable hardship? He is wrong. It is a considerable hardship and the money must be saved somewhere else. It is very difficult to make a budget, which is as tight as these budgets, an elastic budget so as to cope with an increase in an essential expenditure like transport. It is one of the expenditures which one cannot cut down. The Minister has increased it, so the money must be found somewhere else. There are only two sources. The rents cannot be changed. They are fixed and they are also going up. It therefore comes from food to the detriment of the worker, or from clothing or fuel, the three essentials that form part of a poverty datum budget. Let me tell the House that a poverty datum budget worked out at R53 per month. This was some years ago and is probably hopelessly inadequate now in view of the increased cost of living. It makes no allowance whatever for any small luxuries in life, for any replacement of domestic appliances or anything like that. It is a budget of the barest minimum. I want to plead with the hon. the Minister, firstly, to revise his opinion and, secondly, to revise the fares and decrease them. The hon. the Minister of finance has reduced the sales tax and for that we are all very grateful. It should never have been imposed on essential commodities in the first place. It was never meant for that purpose. The hon. the Minister of Transport should now reduce the third-class rail fares which he increased.

On one occasion, long ago, the hon. the Minister said something that interested me. I hope he has not changed his mind since because I think he talked very good sense on that occasion. I cannot quote the exact source but he once said that if government policy forced Africans to live many miles from their work, as a result of the apartheid policy or separate development, removal schemes and so on, and forced them to commute every day, it was up to the government to subsidize their transport. The hon. the Minister was quite right. I know that the government is still subsidizing their transport costs. I am not saying that the increase in these third-class rail fares means that all subsidies have disappeared. He has, however, talked about repaying the Treasury R11 million subsidy per annum that is being paid in respect of transport. He was referring to the resettlement areas. Why should the Africans have to pay for this? The resettlement schemes are part of government ideology. Nobody among the Africans asked for them. They do hot want them. They have protested against them every single time they have been faced with them. I presume that when the hon. the Minister speaks about resettlement areas, he means Meadowlands. I hope he will tell me what he means because I cannot make head or tail out of this. He said that the increase in fares was to repay the subsidy on the resettlement areas like Soweto. I presume that he really means Meadowlands because the rest of Soweto is not a resettlement area. I hope he will explain this to me, but whatever he means, his reasoning is wrong here. Nobody living in Soweto, be it inside or outside the resettlement area, should have to repay the Treasury for a subsidy which I say the government owes to people that it forces to move a long way out of town. We not only force people to move a long way out of town resulting in their having to pay high fares for essential transport; we also have many other laws in this country which inhibit the earning capacity of Africans. We have laws that inhibit the capacity of Africans to earn a living wage. They are not allowed collective bargaining machinery. They are unable to join registered trade unions. They cannot go in for any of the closed shop occupations. Their skills are inhibited. For all these reasons they earn low wages. For this reason also, and not only because we force them to live a long way out of town, it is up to the government to subsidize essential items such as transport. I therefore raise this matter with the hon. the Minister once again. He will be glad to know that I am going to end my speech on a note of praise. [Interjections.] This might get him into trouble as I see that the hon. member for Worcester is fixing me with an eager smile. I wonder whether I should not perhaps omit this hon. member. It might do the hon. the Minister no good to have words of praise from me. It might very well be the kiss of death, who knows? All the same, I am going to go ahead.

You may find the Nats will vote for you.

The Nat vote in my constituency always goes to the United Party. We have discovered that in two elections. The Nat vote goes to the United Party, because obviously their colour policies are so much closer to each other than the policy that my party advocates. Notwithstanding that, I am afraid hon. members are going to have to put up with me for a few more years. [Laughter.] Yes. I am afraid so. I just want to say something about file Airways. I want to say that I think our Airways compare very favourably with any other airline on which I have travelled in any country in the world. As for efficiency, safety and punctuality, I think they are second to none, and I have travelled on many airlines in different countries of the world. I think the hon. the Minister could do one thing, however, namely to stop the tendency of overbooking. This is causing a lot of irritation among the users of the South African Airways on the internal services. Flight after flight is overbooked. People have their tickets. They book through agencies. They are entitled to believe that their tickets are valid. They get up sometimes at dawn to catch a plane and when they arrive at the airport the plane is overbooked by 10 or 12 passengers over and above capacity. I know the explanation is that the agencies overbook the flights. People do not turn up and the airways cannot take chances, but it is extremely irritating to be one of those passengers who arrives with a valid ticket and to find that one cannot get a plane after having made all the arrangements to be met at the other end. I would ask the hon. the Minister not to impair the fine record of the air service with this sort of irritation.

Finally, I want to ask him why he has seen fit to do away with the 60 lb. free train luggage—I have forgotten how many kilos it is, but I shall get to that stage sooner or later —the additional train luggage allowance granted when one was travelling by air, over the 44 lb. allowed on the plane. This was a very fine concession which was much appreciated by everybody. I do not think it could have cost the Railways very much to carry the additional baggage. I also want to ask, why do we have to go through all that intricate procedure in order to send any luggage air freight to England, for instance? In London, if one wants to send a case air freight, one simply takes it down to the air terminal and it is booked through. In Johannesburg one has to get a permit from the bank, of all things, and then go down to the Customs and have it cleared, then take it back to the Airways Office and then, if one is lucky, the case is sent through. This was my last experience. I admit it was more than a year ago. The situation may have changed since then. I want to know whether there is any special reason for all this intricate machinery, which again is a source of irritation and which I believe is an unnecessary blemish on the otherwise pretty faultless record of the South African Airways.

Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of her speech the hon. member for Houghton alleged that as long as the Railways functioned smoothly and efficiently it did not make that much difference if non-Whites were employed. That hon. member would, of course, welcome it most heartily if non-Whites could be employed, even in posts such as those of engine driver or conductor, as long as this resulted in the smooth functioning of the Railways. We know that her philosophy and our views in this connection differ so tremendously that we do not even want to argue with her about that.

With regard to the other matter she raised here at the end of her speech, the matter of the tariffs the Bantu pay for transport to the Bantu townships, the hon. member would also probably like to see the Bantu simply living among our people in the cities and our cities becoming blacker and blacker.

[Inaudible.]

That is what I deduced from what the hon. member said. We know that this is her philosophy and I leave the matter there. I should like to make an observation in pursuance of what the hon. member for Newton Park and other Opposition members said. The hon. members wanted to make us believe that the railway people come to them with so many complaints and grievances. I represent a very large railway constituency, and the railway people in my constituency also come to me with their problems and their requests. But the difference in approach between myself, other members on this side and the members on the other side of the House in the handling of requests from railway people is that we use the normal channels. If it is a complaint, we take that request to the General Manager or to the System Manager concerned, as the case may be, or we take it directly to the hon. the Minister. I want to state here that the hon. the Minister of Transport is a person who investigates each matter and each complaint very thoroughly. It has already happened that in reply to my representations I have received a reply from the hon. the Minister running into four typed folio pages. This proves what a sympathetic ear the hon. the Minister has for the railwayman’s affairs. But what does the Opposition do? They collect those little complaints and requests in the course of the year and then come along and submit them to the House when there is a railway debate. Then they act as if all complaints are big ones.

We get all the complaints that you cannot put right.

The hon. member knows that he is talking nonsense now. The railway people in my constituency, Koedoespoort, will not go to the hon. member for Durban (Point) with their complaints and difficulties.

A great deal was said in this debate about resignations from the South African Railways. Hon. members attributed these resignations to grievances, dissatisfaction and unsatisfactory working conditions, to excessive overtime, poor remuneration or the high demands made upon the railwayman. Statistics prove that a very large percentage, i.e. 75 to 90 per cent of employees leaving the service of the Railways, make subsequent efforts to return. Very often these people come to members of Parliament to request their help in getting them back into the Railways. In many cases they actually plead to be taken back again. In 1967 there were 16,199 requests from former white employees alone for re-employment by the Railways. During the period December, 1967, to December, 1968, 18,846 white persons resigned from the Railways. Hon. members opposite will now immediately say that we should take note of the number of people resigning from the Railways. These people did not always resign as a result of excessive over time or as a result of the high demands made upon them, as hon. members opposite claim. Neither did they necessarily resign as a result of dissatisfaction and other grievances. A large percentage of these people resigned because they are possibly unsettled people or because in some cases they are work-shy. During the same period that I have just mentioned, 16,875 ex-railway employees applied for re-employment. This number is a little more than the number of persons who resigned during the same period. I should like to give hon. members the latest statistics.

How many were reemployed?

The hon. member must just listen to the figures I am going to furnish. During 1969 21,945 Whites resigned from the Railways. During that same period 16,272 applied for re-employment. That is about 75 per cent.

How many were reemployed?

If that hon. member would just give me a chance I shall reply to his question.

The interesting aspect of this matter is that the South African Railways accepted 8,956 of the re-employment applications. What does this prove? It proves that the Railways Administration is selective in dealing with those applications. As I have said, many of the people resigning from the Railways were restless in the service. It is not because they are working on the Railways, as such, that they resign. Even if they were working for any ether employer they would possibly have done the same. Now, with re-employment, the Railways can be selective. The people the Railways re-employ are people with good records who resigned from the Railways, as the Railways Administration itself is perhaps aware, because of circumstances beyond their control. Now we come to the important point. This shows me that those people come back to the Railways because they know that the Railways is a good employer and because, comparing the Railways with their other, interim employer, they are satisfied that the Railways is, in fact, the better of the two, offering greater security than they had in the interim. It belies the Opposition argument, raised in the course of this debate, in connection with the resignation of people from the Railways and the dissatisfaction which is supposedly prevalent among them. I repeat that if the people were so dissatisfied with their previous employer they would never have returned.

There has been a great deal of talk about the staff shortage. Almost every speaker had something to say about it. On this side of the House it was raised as a counter-argument against the arguments coming from that side of the House. We on this side of the House accept the fact that there is a staff shortage. No one is denying it. That was a string the United Party was continually strumming on, with one discord after another. We know that there is a general manpower shortage. However, this is not a shortage exclusive to the Railways. The manpower shortage is being experienced throughout the entire country. We have this shortage in the Public Service; even the highly esteemed private sector is also experiencing this problem, notwithstanding the fact that they have so many enticements for drawing people to them. We know that in this regard the Administration is applying scientific methods to combat this problem with which the Railways, like the other sectors, is saddled. In this connection the Railways looked to the future and planned accordingly. They knew that bottlenecks would develop in certain sections. That is why they made provision for dealing with and overcoming those bottlenecks. I do not want to discourse at length about this. However, we know that by mechanization and automation, by the improved training of employees and by making use of improved organizational methods, the employees’ production level can be increased. Consequently, as has been shown time and again by this side of the House, a greater quantity of work is done by a smaller staff. Yesterday the hon. member for Salt River said that he could not understand this. I realize that it is perhaps something that is very difficult for members of the Opposition to understand. This mechanization was implemented in various fields. I do not want to go into that in too much detail. However, I have a few cases in mind. For example, the use of mechanical equipment for the maintenance of tracks has resulted in a saving in staff. At the same time it also resulted in an improvement in the track surface. In addition I have in mind the improved present-day mechanical train control systems in use on certain sections of lines, ensuring that the capacity of the section concerned is increased. I have in mind, for example, the traffic which has increased; nevertheless, even with a smaller staff all the traffic offered was handled. Since 1967-’68 this traffic has increased by almost seven million tons. All the traffic offered was handled. The tractive force was also improved by the substitution of steam locomotives by diesel and electric ones. Thus, during 1968, 93 electric and 40 diesel locomotives were taken into service, while the obsolete and useless steam locomotives were withdrawn from service.

I still want to refer to one small matter in connection with the attempt being made to combat the shortage of shunters. A new apparatus, something like a walkie-talkie, is now being used by means of which, in busy areas, the engine driver and the shunter can communicate directly. In this way the number of shunters on each shift can be reduced. I particularly want to refer to the application of the organization and method technique and to express a few thoughts about that. One of the steps taken, intially in the administrative Offices, was the application of the organization and method technique by which work is analysed, eliminated and streamlined. After the initial experimental investigation, which was very successful, it was decided to extend the organization and method technique throughout the service. The task was tackled on a scientific basis by a fully-fledged organization and method body which was established during 1968. Then the investigation was initiated. From information obtained it appears that on account of the wide field that must be covered, more suitable officials, who had taken this course, were appointed to investigate Offices and other sections. I also learned that this organization and method investigation, which also covered the reclassification of work, was not only crowned with a great deal of success, but would possibly be continued. I am aware of the fact that there are sections in the Railways where this organization and method technique is not yet being applied, i.e. in the evaluation of work and in the comparison of work with other sections. I now want to ask the hon. the Minister whether it is, in fact, also the idea to continue with this organization and method investigation in connection with work evaluation in the sections where it is not yet applicable. I should like to come to an aspect which concerns my constituency in particular. In the past, on behalf of my voters, I raised the question of air pollution here with the Minister. That smoke is caused by the mechanical workshops at Koedoespoort. The public in the immediate vicinity of the workshops complained a great deal about the air pollution caused by the foundry. Now, I do know that an investigation into this matter has, in fact, been instituted at very high level and I want to thank the hon. the Minister for that. I understand that the C.S.I.R. was approached to investigate this air pollution. Since I am asked this frequently by my voters, I just want to inquire how far this investigation has progressed.

At that foundry there are not only the persons working at the furnaces, but also other related workers, such as the crane-drivers, working under the same roof. We know that there has already been a great deal of investigation in this regard and that a great deal has also been spent to combat this air pollution, thereby making the working conditions more pleasant for those people. I want to convey to the Minister the thanks of the foundry workers. However, we know that that smoke is still causing a great deal of trouble. We want to express the hope that as science progresses and better methods for combating smoke come to light, the scientific methods will be applied at the foundry and the furnaces to make the task easier for the workers.

In conclusion I want to put a question to the Opposition. This question is also in connection with this “Booklet of 108 Promises”, as one of my colleagues, who counted the promises, called it. This question is also concerned with the aspects raised here by the hon. member on our side of the House who spoke first and also by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District). This question concerns this United Party policy of separating the Railways, Harbours and Airways and then making them autonomous departments. I now want to ask the hon. Opposition, what then about the Pipelines? Do they also want to separate this from the Railways? If this is done they are at least being consistent since it is one of the four sectors of Transport. Last year the hon. member for Yeoville said in this connection that the Pipelines would furnish a R20 million surplus in 1969 and a R40 million surplus in 1970. The latter amount is almost as much as the shortage in the Railways over the entire country. He then said the following (translation)—

Here the hon. member acknowledged that there could be a loss on the Railways as such. In this undertaking we know that one section with a surplus must supplement the shortage in another section. The pipeline was instituted in the service of the country as such, but also in the service of the Railways in order to assist the latter. The pipeline was initiated by the Railways and initially established by means of capital made available by the Railways. I should like one of the members opposite to tell us whether they also want to separate the pipeline from the other sections, because if they want to separate the other departments, they must of necessity separate the pipeline as well, if they want to be logical about it. The Opposition will probably want to divide up the pipeline profits somewhere; I do not know where this must be done. One would very much like to know what the Opposition suggests in that connection.

The hon. member for Koedoespoort touched upon a very interesting problem, that of the smoke nuisance or air pollution. It is a problem which has world-wide implications and with which large cities throughout the world are faced wherever there is a large concentration of industries, and it is a problem which should be tackled in good time. If it were to be neglected, we would be faced with the same problems which New York, London and other large cities have to-day. Mr. Speaker, at the mention of the words “smoke nuisance” or “air pollution”, my thoughts involuntarily turned to the following lines from Eugene Marais’s poem entitled “Skoppensboer”—

I want to tell hon. members on that side that when they so boisterously announce what their political successes will be on 22nd April, they should sometimes turn their thoughts to these few lines.

Mr. Speaker, it has been mentioned several times in this House that the Railways is the biggest employer in South Africa and that the South African Railways is a very large business undertaking. That is correct. It is also true that any business undertaking should strive, amongst other things, to have (a) satisfied shareholders, (to) satisfied staff and (c) satisfied clients.

Exactly what the hon. member for Newton Park says.

One has satisfied shareholders when profits are made and one has a satisfied staff when the employees feel secure, when their material needs are met in a reasonable way and when their work is appreciated. One has satisfied clients when their needs are met at reasonable, fair prices. In this connection I immediately want to lodge a complaint as a client, and I shall be grateful if the hon. the Minister will inform us in this connection. I have in front of me a telex from Pretoria which deals with an airmail parcel handed in at 1 o’clock on the morning of the 10th for dispatch with the first flight which left for Durban at 7.30. That parcel never arrived in Durban. It was traced between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on the 10th in Windhoek. The waybill number, for the information of the Minister, is 9480, and the waybill did arrive in Durban. Normally, identical addresses appear on the parcel and on the waybill. At 12,05 p.m. on the 10th it became known that that parcel was not at the Cape Town airport, and in order to get that parcel to Durban in time, a special chartered flight had to be used last night to transfer that parcel to a point from where it would not arrive in Durban too late. I want to say immediately—and I speak from experience—that the air freight department of the Airways usually provides very good service, and in this ease there was apparently no problem with the address, because the waybill did arrive at the correct place. The question arises whether, seen against the background of the good service which the airfreight department provides, there was deliberate sabotage in this case. I should like to get a reply to this from the hon. the Minister.

What kind of parcel was it?

Sir, those hon. members must control their curiosity: they will soon know what the parcel contained.

Curiosity killed the cat.

There is another aspect which does not affect the clients of the business undertaking—in this case the Railways —but which affects the staff, and must be examined. I said that in a business undertaking the aim must be, amongst other things, to keep the staff happy and satisfied, because a happy and satisfied staff is a productive staff. The world in which we live demands of us that we aim for and reach higher, greater production levels. Here security involves not only physical safety—I shall return to that later— but also the feeling of not being threatened, the feeling of not being cheated. In this connection I must refer to a question put in this House and answered by the hon. the Minister yesterday. The question was put by the hon. member for Innesdal and concerned a circular relating to the withholding of certain disciplinary measures. The reply was laid on the Table here and I do not wish to repeat it. I just want to ask the hon. the Minister whether that suspension of disciplinary measures during the period 16th January to 16th April involves Whites or non-Whites. In the second place, I should like to ask this: Should there be any charge during the period 16th January to 16th April, charges of misdemeanours which are withdrawn in terms of this, and should the experiment to which the hon. the Minister referred in his reply not succeed, would those charges fall away, or would a member of staff who was guilty of such an offence still be liable to be punished after 16th April?

Sir, there is another aspect of staff security which should be attended to. Last year the hon. the Minister said in this House that 7,000 or 8,000 or 9,000 white posts were filled by non-Whites. His standpoint was that he did not want to see Whites working with picks and shovels. I support him fully in this. But from a reply given in this House yesterday, it appears that a total of 1,156 so-called “graded staff” posts are filled by non-Whites. My question is this: To what extent are non-Whites intruding in work traditionally held by the Whites? Can I accept that the “graded staff” are equivalent to skilled staff? Must I accent that it refers to administrative staff as well? If so. will the Minister tell us where those non-Whites are employed, because we have heard that there are approximately 115,000 Whites in the service of the Railways and it is surely very necessary that this country and the railway worker know where they will be threatened by the employment of non-Whites in traditional white work, if we have now passed the pick and shovel stage.

Another aspect of security which must be dealt with, is the physical safety of the railway worker. I am not talking about physical safety in the process of the performance of duties now I am talking about the railway worker who. as a user of the road, is exposed to the disaster of accidents at level-crossings. A great deal has been said here about level-crossings. I think the hon. members who protested so vociferously that political capital was being made out of this matter were a bit too hasty, because extremely interesting but disappointing statistics are available in this connection. I want to mention for the record that I asked the Minister for these statistics and that they reached me from his Office. [Interjection ] No, it is not a secret document. For the sake of the record I want to repeat a few figures which are mentioned here.

There are approximately 4,000 unguarded level-crossings in South Africa, and the elimination of these, according to an estimate which may not be very scientific because it has to be done in the future in a time of rising prices, will cost about R800 million, and the cost of installing improved protective devices will be approximately R80 million. We have also heard that since April, 1928, 752 crossings have been eliminated and 276 unguarded crossings made safe at a cost of R35 million. But now I come to the statistics which I find really shocking. I asked the hon. the Minister what the death toll at unguarded crossings was and the reply was that no distinction was drawn between accidents at unguarded and those at guarded crossings, but that the death toll was furnished for the total. In the 10 years from 1909-10 to 1918-’19 there were 132 deaths at level-crossings. For the next 10 years it was 234, for the next 10 years 397, for the next 10 years 465, for the next 10 years 667, and for the next 10 years, ended 30th June, 1969. it was 703. Over the 60 years there were 2,598 deaths in accidents at level-crossings, which is an average of 43 a year. The average rose from 13.2 to 70.3 a year. The lowest number of deaths in any one year was seven in 1916-’17, and the highest number 97 in 1955-’56. I investigated these matters as a result of the statement made by the hon. member for Wakkerstroom, and I quote from the unrevised copy of his Hansard, where he dealt with the plea for the elimination of level-crossings. He said that in putting forward this plea these hon. members were in fact defending carelessness, thoughtlessness and transgression of the law.

I want to test the truth of this, and a good criterion for that would be to compare the number of licensed vehicles with the number of casualties over the years, and this produced the following very interesting information. I have left horse-carts and ox-wagons out of account, because one can accept that those vehicles move relatively slowly. [Interjections.] I have obtained statistics on the number of licensed motor vehicles, including lorries, commercial vehicles, motorcycles and buzz-bikes, but excluding tractors and vehicles which are granted exemption from registration, i.e. State vehicles. I found that in the year 1919, for every 3,077 registered vehicles, one person was killed. That figure rose through the years to 30,0 vehicles for one death. If the same ratio had been maintained, ten times as many people would have been killed for the 30,000 vehicles in the year 1968-’69; that is to say, instead of 703 it would have been 7,030, but the ratio dropped.

But in 1917 there were surely no motor vehicles.

Yes, there were, and you will be surprised to know how many. There were 40,000 licensed motor vehicles in the year 1919-’20. The hon. member misunderstands the matter completely and I shall have to give him a lesson. I am talking about ratios. There were about 2.1 million vehicles in the year 1969. [Interjections.] Does the hon. member not understand my point? My point is in fact to prove that the citizens have become more law abiding and more careful, but that in spite of this the actual number of accidents have increased every year.

Do you know that story of how the man went to call his sister Sarie?

Yes, I know the story. The point is that the elimination of crossings is so tremendously important a matter that the rate at which it is being done is much too slow and the position has been reached where we no longer dare allow money to be spent on matters which, on the basis of merit, cannot be compared with this. It will be an indictment of this Government if they leave this very important matter in abeyance and continue with the elimination and protection of crossings at this slow rate. This matter is of great importance to me personally because in a certain part of my constituency there is a large primary school which is served by school buses which cross four crossings 16 times a day. In addition there is a high school which also makes use of such buses. Those school buses go over the crossings eight times a day. That community has for many years been agitating and asking for the protection or elimination of those crossings. Hon members must not say that I am trying to make political capital out of this, because I have here a copy of a telegram which was sent by a non-political body. I wish to read the telegram for the record. It was sent to the hon. the Minister of Transport. It reads as follows (translation)—

To whom was the telegram sent?

The telegram was sent to the hon. the Minister of Transport. That is surely the proper person to whom to address such a request.

Where did you get the telegram? It was probably sent anonymously by post.

Hon. members may joke, but this telegram was in fact sent. In all fairness, I want to add that a letter, stating that the General Manager of the Railways would attend to the matter, has already been received in reply to this telegram.

Is it in your constituency?

Yes, it is. The hon. member did not listen.

May I ask a question? Has the hon. member for Wonderboom since 1966 ever made personal representations to the hon. the Minister in regard to these fly-over bridges?

That is a very fair question, and I shall give a very fair reply to it. I had made representations to the hon. the Minister in regard to a specific crossing. That crossing was not in this area. It was near Rosslyn, where a few tragic accidents occurred, and where quite a few people died. Within the bounds of what was practical and possible, the hon. the Minister tried to rectify that matter as quickly as possible. I want to say this in all fairness. For this reason I have brought this matter to his attention as well, because I believe that if it is practically possible to rectify this matter, it will in fact be done. Hon. members must not try to attribute the same suspicion which is in their minds, to everybody else. I want to emphasize that this matter is very urgent. In the light of the statistics which I mentioned, urgent attention must be given to it, and not as slowly as in tile past.

Never mind, Willie, we will attend to it. [Interjections.]

There is another matter which requires attention. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) pointed out that the salaries for Whites increased from R910 on 31st March, 1948, to R2,962 on 31st March, 1969. If he works this out, he will find that there was an increase of R2,052. Expressed as a percentage, this amounts to an increase of 225 per cent.

No, it is three times as much.

Sir, the hon. member must do his sums again. The increase is exactly 225 per cent. The hon. member suggested by that that the railway worker should be satisfied with the increases and compensations he received. By way of comparison I just want to point out something else. According to the statistical quarterly bulletin of the Reserve Bank for September, 1960, the gross domestic product at market prices was £978 million in the year 1948. It is estimated that the gross domestic product at market prices for the year 1969 will be approximately R11,023 million. This represents an increase of R9,067 million, which is equal to an increase of 463 per cent. The increase of 225 per cent sounds very large until one compares it with these statistics. Then it does not seem quite so favourable any more.

It is important to note the composition of the staff of the transport services. It appears from a thesis for a doctorate, “Die Afrikaner in die beroepslewe van die stad” (The Afrikaner in urban professional life), by Dr. S. van Wyk, that about 75 per cent of the total establishment of the South African Railways and transport services is comprised of Afrikaners. If one considers the Afrikaner’s contribution to the development of the country by performing this important work, if one considers the Afrikaner’s possessions in the private sector, and if one compares the increase in remuneration with the increase in the gross domestic product, one gets the impression that these people have been left behind along the way. This is a matter which cannot indefinitely remain without being attended to. Serious attention must be given to it.

Many speakers referred to another aspect, namely the shortage of manpower. It was shown, in some cases successfully, in others not, what is being done to overcome the manpower shortage. I want to suggest that one important aspect of the manpower shortage, or rather the shortage of technicians, to put it correctly, has not yet received attention here. I want to point out that there is no sense in bringing people into this country, through immigration or through natural increase, only for their active contribution to the country’s economy to be cut short as a result of their dying cruel deaths on our roads. If one considers what is happening on our roads, one is simply shocked. There is only one year in respect of which full statistics are available, and from these it appears that in the first ten months of 1968 there were no fewer than 138,0 road accidents, in which 241,000 vehicles were involved and which resulted in a death toll of 4,800, of whom 1.176 were Whites. The rest were non-Whites. If these statistics are used to calculate the average figure per month and this is projected over the year as a whole, it appears that in the year 1968 about 165,0 road accidents occurred, in which 289,0 vehicles were involved, and which resulted in a death toll of about 5,760. the white component of which was about 1,400. This is a grave problem which is seriously increasing, because in only the first three months of 1969 there were 44,778 road accidents. That is to say, 5,463 more than in the comparative period in the previous year. This represents an increase of 14 per cent.

Order! The hon. member is out of order in discussing this matter. In any case, his time has expired.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member must excuse me for not following him in his arguments I believe the hon. the Minister will reply to the arguments advanced by the hon. member. I want to address my remarks to the hon. dead sheep of the United Party.

Mr. Speaker, I did not intend participating in this Railways debate, but I am perhaps forced to do so as a result of certain statements which were made here and which I think are incorrect. I just want to assure the railway worker that his security lies in the hands of the National Party Government and the Minister of Transport. They will defend and protect to the death the white railway worker and every other worker in the Railways. But what the Opposition would like to see happening and will do nothing to prevent from happening, is that when the manpower shortage in our country has reached saturation point and when such major expansions on the Railways can no longer take place, the white workers should be dismissed, or that the non-White worker should be dismissed and white workers be appointed in their place. That is what the United Party wants to see. The way I know the Government and the Minister, I want to give the assurance that such protection to the railway worker will be guaranteed at all times so that he will never have to go and do work previously done by non-Whites.

I want to deal with a few matters concerning the agricultural sector served by the Railways. Mention was made this afternoon of the conveyance of fodder to certain parts of our country. I want to say now that, where such problems have arisen, the Railways cannot accept sole responsibility for such a state of affairs. The Railways is least responsible for this. We know that certain grades of mealies are specified on the orders given to the Mealie Board, for example. Those orders are then placed at certain depots of the Mealie Board. When mealies of the grades specified are not available, the orders are forwarded to other depots. Hon. members opposite now expect every depot to be provided with trucks, whether such depots receive orders or not. After all, we know about these problems. Do hon. members expect the Railways to keep a supply of trucks there they cannot use? After all, we do not know of which depots the orders are going to be placed and what the nature of the orders will be that are going to be placed at the various mealie depots. Surely, this is unreasonable and unrealistic.

I now come to the overcrowding of animals at the abattoirs. I want to ask the hon. member for Newton Park, who spoke on this subject. whether he has really acquainted himself with the facts of the matter. When speaking about matters such as these, we must make a point of first acquainting ourselves with the real facts in question. One will not find one single farmer who is not prepared to express his regret about this matter. It is a pity that farmers have not only suffered losses, but that animals have had to suffer as well. But if something of this nature happens as a restult of coincidence of circumstances and when nobody in particular can be blamed for it, we should not pretend that only certain people are responsible for it. From 9th to 23rd January this overcrowding of livestock occurred. We regret the fact that losses were suffered, but the losses were not so great as hon. members tried to make out here.

Were the losses not 300?

No, the losses were much higher. I shall deal with that presently. The information of the hon. member is not even correct as far as that is concerned. During the whole of that period 673 sheep died, as well as 16 head of cattle and 50 pigs. I now want to ask hon. members what number of livestock died in January of the previous year. What was the number of animals that died during December compared with the number that died in January? Compensation amounting to R5.969 was paid to farmers in respect of the 673 sheep, 16 head of cattle and 50 pigs. This price does not make any difference to any assessment during any time in the past two years. I am glad we have such a scheme in terms of which provision is made when farmers suffer losses such as these. Could the hon. member assure us that these losses were suffered as a reult of something the Railways had done? We accept that the figure regarding the number of deaths is correct. This is the number of animals that died during the period November to January, while the livestock were being transported by rail. We know that December and January are exceptional months, because sheep have a difficult time in the heat. Furthermore, a terrible heatwave prevailed during that time. These sheep died from prussic acid poisoning during that period. I investigated the matter personally and so did the cooperative societies. What proof is there then that the Railways was responsible for these deaths?

Was it not as a result of the long period of transportation?

No. Many farmers have made representations to me that we should no longer provide livestock with fodder and water at points of off-loading, for example at De Aar. This was mentioned by the hon. member for Upington. I have been inundated with requests from farmers in this connection during the past year. The farmers allege that when sheep are off-loaded at points of offloading, they do not eat or drink and that the farmers nevertheless have to pay for this facility. The hon. member now accuses the Railways and the hon. the Minister that livestock were still being fed and watered at these points of off-loading notwithstanding the requests made in this connection. I regret that some hon. members get up in this House and raise matters without having acquainted themselves with the actual facts. What is the function of the Railways? The function of the Railways is to provide the trucks at the various loading points on the date allowed by the quota, for example on a Wednesday or a Friday, providing application was made well in time. Another function of the Railways is to convey and deliver the livestock loaded on the days concerned, to and at the proper destination at the specified time. Hon. members may perhaps be able to mention one or two consignments in respect of which matters went wrong, but generally the hon. member for Newton Park cannot give any proof of livestock which were supposed to arrive at Newtown market on a Saturday afternoon but which did not arrive at the appointed time. The hon. the Minister will probably give hon. members the reasons for the overcrowding in certain cases at a later stage. However, I should like to ask hon. members what the Meat Board and the hon. the Minister can do when the sidings to abattoirs get out of order twice on the same day. This is what happened. When the number of animals intended for slaughtering at a certain time of the day cannot be slaughtered, the facilities for the watering and feeding of animals which are to arrive the next day, become inadequate. Whose fault is that? The report of the Commission is being awaited at the moment and we do not want to provide facilities now which will force up the marketing costs to such an extent in future that farmers will not be able to afford it. To my mind the hon. the Minister has made a wise decision. I also think that a solution for this problem will be found in the near future.

I want to thank the hon. the Minister, the Railways Administration and the railway worker for the diligence they displayed in the past. I want to thank them for the high sense of responsibility they displayed during the years of service they rendered to the agricultural industry. The sense of responsibility of the railway worker will always be appreciated and recognized by the National Party. For that reason we are sure that the safety and security of the railway worker will be guaranteed. We cannot blame the railway workers as a whole for carrying out their duties inadequately and incorrectly merely because of the negligence displayed by one or two people in the service of the Railways who sometimes make mistakes. I want to thank the hon. the Minister and the railway personnel for having retained their sense of responsibility under all circumstances and for having done their best to accommodate the farming community, so much so that our railway workers threw hundreds of buckets of water over the animals in the trucks to try and save them, although it was not their job to do so. All the Railways receives, is complaints. It has become a habit of the Opposition always to level accusations against the Railways and the railway workers while they never try and protect them or express towards them the appreciation they deserve. I want to express my appreciation for the fact that the hon. the Minister and the railway officials have always done their duty, even in the coincidence of circumstances which were responsible for this incident.

Mr. Speaker, I am not a farmer. The hon. member for Prieska will, I am sure, excuse me if I do not follow him in regard to his remarks concerning the trucking of animals. I believe the hon. member for Newton Park has expressed the point of view of this side of the House. The attention of the hon. the Minister has been adequately drawn to this matter. I hope the hon. the Minister will take cognizance of the remarks made by both sides of the House.

However, there was one aspect of the hon. member’s speech which I feel I must react to. The hon. member for Prieska said that this hon. Minister would protect the rights of the White worker to the bitter end. Under this Minister a fragrant breach of Nationalist party policy is taking place. It is not something which we condemn. We regard it as an enlightened phenomenon. However, integration in the Railways is taking place at a very high rate under this particular hon. Minister. If the hon. member will listen to the figures I shall quote later on, I am sure he will be forced to agree with me.

I want to refer with regret and disappointment to the fact that the annual report of the General Manager has not been made available to the House before this debate. We had a short session of Parliament in 1966. Then we were called upon to vote R480 million for the part appropriation of the Railways. During this short session we are being called upon to vote an amount of R650 million. Yet we have not had the opportunity of making an examination of the report of the General Manager. Before the last short session, the report was issued on the 27th January, if my memory serves me correctly, and the similar debate took place in this House on the 2nd February. I realize that in subsequent years the release of the report has come later and later. However, it is important particularly for the Opposition, to have access to the report. I can only assume that its non-publication before the debate on the railway part appropriation is due, in part, to the labour crisis which exists in the railway service. This is one result of the critical staff shortage. I believe that the staff shortage in this respect is now hampering even the work of Parliament.

I would like to refer to another critical staff situation. That is in regard to the four harbours in South Africa. I will confine my remarks mainly to the harbours of Durban and Cape Town, because I believe that in so far as the other two ports, Port Elizabeth and East London, are concerned, the problem is not so acute, and that the traffic they are required to carry as a result of certain international events, is not so heavy. The ships of 55 nations use the ports of South Africa, mainly Durban and Cape Town since the closing of the Suez Canal. It has been said often by authoritative spokesmen on the government side of the House that the closing of the Suez Canal has been to South Africa a great financial advantage by virtue of the sea traffic which is using our ports and the ancillary services that have been called in; the supplies that have been sold; and the labour it has provided.

I just want to deal with this one aspect concerning Durban’s harbour. I know that other representations at a high level have been made to the hon. the Minister by responsible bodies in regard to other aspects of Durban Harbour. I believe that this is something which requires the urgent attention of the hon. the Minister. One has only to look at the congestion of shipping that waits outside Cape Town and Durban to realize the magnitude of the problem. I think that the problem has been aggravated by the fact that there is lack of sufficient staff to deal with the work inside the harbours themselves. I do not say this inadvisedly. I want to point out, too, to the hon. the Minister and know that he will agree with me, that as far as the harbours are concerned, they are quite a good money spinner for his department. In fact, in 1968 the surplus earnings over expenditure of the harbours in South Africa amounted to no less than R22 million. This is something which we cannot disregard. What I do wonder about is the extent of the loss which various shipping companies, based in South Africa, are being called upon to bear as a result of unnecessary delays in many instances, which are occurring in the two harbours due to a shortage of staff. It is disturbing that the staff situation in Durban is worse than it ever was. I would Say that Durban could be regarded possibly as the biggest and one of the most important harbours in the link that we have to-day between the East and the West. When we examine the latest position we find that there has been an increase in the number of authorized posts in the Durban Harbour, of 676. This is a figure which was supplied after the figure of May, 1969. When we go into other facts we find that the number of permanently filled posts, despite this increase of authorized posts by 676, is one post less than it was in May of last year. When we come to the position of temporarily filled posts, we find that there has been an improvement, namely seven more posts which have been filled on a temporary basis. As far as the number of casual servants working in the Durban Harbour area is concerned, that number too has decreased. There are now 29 less. According to figures given to me yesterday, the picture at the moment is as follows. Of the total authorized posts in Durban Harbour totalling 4,262, less than half are filled by permanent personnel. Including the temporary and the casuals, the overall shortage amounts to 24 per cent. I think this is a very serious position indeed. I should like the hon. the Minister to explain how he expects the Durban Harbour to operate efficiently under the stress and strain which have existed since the closing of Suez and whether he has in mind any steps which will alleviate this staff shortage. If so, it would be appreciated if he could tell the House what those steps would be. On the general aspects of staff and labour, I have already referred to the fact that the Minister appears to be flouting government opinion in his approach to the labour problems in the South African Railways. I reiterate that we on this side of the House do not condemn the Minister for this. We congratulate him for this new and enlightened approach to this problem. However, I believe that this hon. Minister’s behaviour only serves, to highlight the impracticability and the hollow mockery of this Government’s labour policy. In order to make any point, I wish to quote further figures which have been supplied to me on an official basis. In 1966 I was told that there were 686 Coloureds, Indians and Bantu who were doing temporary work normally performed by White graded staff. Yesterday, roughly four years later, the figure has almost doubled to 1,162. These are non-Whites who are temporarily performing work which is normally done by white graded staff. In addition the reply indicated that over 14,000 Coloureds, Indians and Bantu were performing work formerly done by unskilled and ungraded workers. We must examine the salary conditions under which they are being employed. I would say that they, are being employed under conditions which almost amount to sweated labour. I say this because out of more than 16,000 non-white employees, only 526, a mere 3 per cent find themselves in the position that their salaries and their bonuses exceed R2 per working day. The amount of R2 per working day has been regarded over the years as a reasonable minimum wage for non-white workers. That was the amount considered to be the minim wage almost 10 years ago. Here we find to-day that only 3 per cent of the non-white employees are enjoying a wage in excess of this minimum which was regarded as being reasonably adequate 10 years ago. The overall record of the Railways in this connection is very bad. Out of the 92,000 Bantu who are employed on the South African Railways, less than 5 per cent are earning more than R2 per working day. This proportion compares very unfavourably with the figure which applies to private enterprise.

The insular attitude in regard to government policy which has been adopted by this hon. Minister goes a little further than this. Yesterday I asked the hon. the Minister whether he could give approximate figures of the annual loss or of the annual contributions which are being made by the Railways in terms of government policy in regard to Bantu suburban rail services and Bantu suburban road services. Secondly, I asked him a question in regard to the annual loss or contribution concerning incentives to border industries. The answer that was given to me was a double “no.” In other words, there is no loss in either of the cases, and no contribution is being made. In my second question I asked the hon. the Minister if there were any other sources which involved any loss or any contribution by his department. The answer again was “No”, in other words, a very positive negative.

I want now to refer further to the Minister’s attitude, particularly in regard to staff and overtime problems. I want to lay at the Minister’s door the blame for his failure to deal with long-distance passenger train services. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister to adopt an enlightened approach to this problem. I believe that the archaic approach which this Government has adopted for many years to this question of speeding up passenger train services has resulted in a significant proportion of overtime costs, which eventually are met from the pockets of the taxpayer. But, Sir, on a human level I believe the Minister has a right to be concerned. What of the manpower situation? Key personnel are required to spend unnecessary hours, occupied in working passenger trains which are operating on outmoded schedules which have never been up-dated in so far as developments in regard to the track, signalling and other modern improvements are concerned. Surely some of the time saved by these people, if trains were operating on efficient and faster schedules could be spent by them with their families. Time spent with one’s family nowadays seems to become a rare commodity. I believe that this is an aspect which the taxpayer must take into consideration because in the end-result it is affecting the amount which he is paying to the State, through wasted time.

Mr. Speaker, I say that the Minister has failed to go along with the times in regard to the running times of passenger trains because, apart from one train, the Trans-Natal. he himself said in 1965, I think, that there had been no alteration in overall running times. Sir, I may be wrong in so far as certain developments in the Eastern Cape are concerned but basically many of what are regarded almost as our crack passenger trains have enjoyed no improvement in their running times. In fact in so far as trains running between Durban and Cape Town are concerned, the benefit derived from the opening of the new section between Pentridge and Umlaas Road is nullified along the line because the Minister told me that there was a saving of, I believe, 20 minutes in one direction and nine minutes in the other direction, but this is negated because the trains either sit in stations or go more slowly from point to point on other sections.

Arising out of the hon. the Minister’s comment yesterday concerning the Harrismith-Kroonstad electrification scheme—I understood from the Minister that the section between Harrismith and Bethlehem is now in operation —I would like to ask him what plans there are for speeding up the running times on that section and whether he can give an indication as to what the overall saving in time will be, on passenger trains which will be traversing this newly electrified route.

Mr. Speaker, I will be the first to admit that the decline in patronage of long-distance passenger trains is not a problem unique to South Africa; it is a world-wide problem, but then I would be the first to say that many other countries in the world are dealing with this problem. They realize that if they wish to regain some of the traffic lost over the years through increasing plane travel and through the increasing use of private motor-cars, they have to offer the travelling public something special. In Europe, I believe, there is a trend back to travelling in comfort on properly operated, speedy, efficiently run passenger train services. You know, Sir, this could almost be regarded as a hardy annual on my part. I raised this matter in 1962. I dealt specifically with the Orange Express. I thought I made a good case. I quoted figures which to my mind proved—they were not contradicted—that the improvement in running times had not kept pace with the improvements in the track, electrification and tractive power. Since then I have raised this matter over the years during this debate and twice the Minister has reacted. Twice I have been the recipient of pleasant flattery from the Minister.

You are lucky.

That is dangerous.

In the first instance the hon. the Minister, after I had raised it in 1962, said that if I should ever lose my seat in Parliament he would give me a job in the statistics section of the Railways.

He will not be there.

I want to assure the hon. the Minister that I have not yet seen fit to avail myself of his kind offer, and I do not see that there is any likelihood of my doing so in the immediate future.

He will not be there for the next ten years.

I take it then that the offer drops?

No, just keep it in mind; the offer will stand.

I thank the hon. the Minister. The second instance when the Minister gave me a little quiet flattery was when he commented favourably on my professional prowess. I am grateful to the Minister for that, but, Sir, it does not answer the questions that I put to him.

He never does.

Sir, it is not my intention to re-tell the sad saga of the air-conditioned dining saloons. I am sure the Minister will remember, as I do, that in 1963 he made promises which have taken up to seven years to implement. When these air-conditioned dining saloons finally made their appearance on the track from the drawing boards an interval of time had elapsed, but apart from that the cost had increased considerably. The cost was estimated in 1963 but the taxpayers who had to pay for these particular dining saloons in 1968-’69 had to pay considerably more than the estimated figure.

Sir, I want to refer to this slow delivery of coaching stock because I believe that it is having a very serious effect on the image of the S.A. Railways in so far as passengers are concerned. I know that we have had what I have come to regard as very pious statements in the annual report of the General Manager about the achievements and the number of new coaching stock placed in service, but when one surveys the overall position and bears in mind the number of very ancient ones that have had to be withdrawn, the net gain does not really keep pace with the requirements of first-, second-, and third-class long-distance passengers travelling on the S.A. Railways. I believe, as I have said before, that many users of the S.A. Railways who should be encouraged to use the long-distance facilities provided, never have a chance to enjoy the limited modern facilities that are available because it is only the regular passenger trains which enjoy these limited facilities of air-conditioned dining saloons and air-conditioned lounge cars. The majority of holiday makers and people who use the trains at seasonal peak periods find themselves conveyed to their destinations in the older type of rolling stock and suffer the draught and heat of the old-fashioned dining saloons.

And do not forget the rattle.

I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he cannot tell this House— he has been asked on many occasions—when he is going to introduce air-conditioning on the important passenger runs? Sir, I believe that we are very far behind many civilized countries. I believe we are further behind than India, for instance; we are far behind Australia and we are far behind other countries where the air-conditioning of most forms of transport seems to be very, very much ahead of ours. The only air-conditioned train of which we can boast is the Blue Train, but its accommodation is strictly limited to, I believe, about 106 passengers. Sir, what about the other people? I referred this matter to the hon. the Minister some years ago and I pointed out the unpleasant experience of any traveller who had to journey through the Karoo in one of our allegedly crack passenger trains during the heat of the day without air-conditioning in the compartment. Do you know, Sir, what the Minister’s reaction was? He drew my attention to the days when he as a man on the footplate had to work that section on a steam locomotive. Now I realize that that must have been a very arduous experience but I suggest that the Minister should realize that time marches on and that if he wishes to provide the people of South Africa with something commensurate to the times in which we live, he must not adopt that attitude. He must really give us some indication of what is being done in the planning stage and the implementation stage as far as air-conditioning goes. I have been led to believe that experiments have been made which might lead one to assume that possibly some of the new coaching stock could be adapted to air-conditioning on a general scale for long-distance passenger trains, and I want to ask the Minister whether he will take the House into his confidence and indicate what those plans are. I believe that if the Minister wants greater public support he must deliver the goods.

In conclusion, I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he can give us up-to-date information in regard to the stage of development of the two Blue Trains for which Parliament voted the initial expenditure some years ago. Could he say when they are likely to be on the tracks?

In 1972.

I think the hon. member is more at home among his herbs and bushes than among trains, but I shall leave the matter there. I want to refer to the hon. the Minister’s opening address in this debate, when he once more recalled the achievement of the S.A. Airways in inaugurating a new route. I am now mindful of the fact that in referring personally to the hon. the Minister we shall once more hear the scornful laughter from the other side, and that they will say that all we can do is praise the Minister. But despite that, since the matter has been called to mind again, I nvertheless want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the hon. the Minister and his planners once more for the way in which the S.A. Airways was provided with an alternative route when Africa was closed to us. As the hon. the Minister rightly said, this had to take place within the space of a few hours, and it is a fact that is known throughout the world and that has placed the South African Airways in very high esteem among its competitors, i.e. that they could switch over to that alternative route without missing a single flight. We want to thank the Minister for the part he personally played in that and for his almost prophetic foresight.

I want to refer to certain staff aspects which featured in a regular complaint from the other side of the House. The hon. members opposite are now the self-appointed recipients of complaints from the workers in the S.A. Railways. In season and out of season the hon. members want to serve as self-appointed spokesmen in respect of things that are organized in a very orderly and efficient way in any case. In the S.A. Railways there are the seven staff associations and they in turn have come together in the Federated Staff Association which holds an annual congress. After that congress the executive committee of that Staff Association meets the hon. the Ministei and the Railways Board. In that way staff matters are discussed at a high and very efficient level. In fact, there is not a single aspect of the conditions of service of railway personnel that cannot be brought home directly to the Railways Board, to the Management of the Railways and to the Minister through these channels. Matters such as working conditions are discussed on those occasions. The classification and grading of staff are discussed there. Matters concerning salaries, fringe benefits, pensions and housing are all channelled through the staff associations to the Federated Staff Association congresses, and from there to the Management and to the Minister. In addition, the best and most cordial relations exist between those associations on the one hand and the hon. the Minister on the other, and this has always been the case. The best relations have always prevailed, and the greatest degree of mutual trust exists between these staff associations and the Management.

But it is also clear to us that there is something else going on here. These 117,000 white railway workers are among the happiest people in their line of service, with the representations they can make through their staff associations to the Management and to the Minister, and in consequence we have the greatest degree of peace and quiet in that labour sphere. Hon. members opposite cannot possibly rejoice at this peace and quiet prevailing in this sphere. That is why they come here as self-appointed agitators to disbrub that peace and quiet prevailing between the Management and the Minister on the one hand, and the staff associations on the other. But we must bear in mind that when these representations are made by the staff associations through those channels, and they consult the Management and the Minister but cannot reach agreement about certain representations, this is still not the last of the measures they can adopt in order to obtain satisfaction. There is additional machinery that can be set in motion. In the case of a dispute they have the opportunity of asking for a commission. The State President may then appoint a commission to go into the matter in greater detail, and such a commission represents the staff associations as well as the Management. On that commission the matter can then be settled at a high level. To the best of my knowledge there is one such commission at present engaged in adjudicating upon a particular dispute. In the past we have had the most cordial relations and this continues to be the case. All the United Party wants to do with their agitation is to place our staff associations on the same level as the British trade unions, in order to create the same kind of unrest and the same unhappy conditions here

I am glad the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) is in the House, because I want to settle a few matters with him. Last night he made certain allegations in this debate which cannot be allowed to pass because they are quite easily capable of the wrong interpretation and because I think that he did not present the facts quite correctly. He had a question on the Order Paper and the hon. the Minister gave him certain answers. Then he drew further conclusions, which he used last night in his speech. I want to refer to some of the erroneous conclusions he drew from the reply he received. He referred here to the shifts worked by the pilots of the South African Airways. This is what he said—

It was probably an unfortunate choice of words to say that on the domestic flights the pilots have to land and take off perpetually. The word he used was “perpetually”. I think it was an unfortunate choice of words. That hon. member also flies with the South African Airways. Surely he knows that this 91/2-hour shift is the maximum allowed. It is the maximum laid down for pilots of the South African Airways. The hon. member knows that there is a great deal of tolerance within that limit, but let us assume, for the sake of his argument, that that maximum shift is worked. There are surely interim landings, and those landings are not ‘perpetual”, as he is trying to imply. The most landings are made on a flight which leaves from Johannesburg, lands in Cape Town and then make a turn again along the coast at Durban before returning to Johannesburg. There are consequently interim periods in which the pilots are not landing or taking off.

There are six landings.

There may be six landings. That is quite correct, but what is the present-day routine in the cockpit of a passenger aircraft of this type? It is neither such strenuous nor such dangerous work as the hon. member wants to imply. There are surely the routine portions of a flight when the pilot relaxes. There are surely routine portions of a flight when the aricraft’s automatic pilot keeps it on course. Surely, it is not right for him to try to create the impression among the public that these aircraft are still piloted in the way in which he, if he is a pilot, probably learned to fly, i.e. with a stick gripped between his knees to try and keep the aircraft on course. A Boeing aircraft is no longer controlled in this fashion.

What about international flights? Why do you not speak about them?

I shall also go into that aspect. If there is ever more routine work and more tranquillity it is, in fact, on an international flight. Let us take a typical international flight. Let us take the new service between Cape Town and London. The aircraft takes off at Cape Town and lands in Luanda about three or four hours later. At about 10 p.m. it takes off from there and lands at 2 or 3 a.m. the following morning on Sal Island or on Las Palmas. What happens after the aircraft has taken off from Luanda and before it lands again at Sal Island or at Las Palmas? During that time the most important task is to keep the aircraft’s height and course correct and to ensure that everything is going according to the normal routine for a Boeing aircraft. If there has ever been a wonderful discovery in science then it is the modern aircraft turbine which peacefully drones on hour after hour without any attention whatsoever from the pilot or the cockpit personnel. Surely the hon. member knows this. If there is ever a pleasant and enjoyable experience it is to sit and chat to the captain in his cockpit on that flight, and to watch this gigantic monster rushing along peacefully and safely 300 miles from the nearest land. The personnel of such an aircraft are changed at one of those interim landings. Another team then takes over. They take off between 2 and 3 a.m. and then they land later that morning in London, Frankfurt or Rome, or wherever the aircraft is heading for. If there is ever a peaceful and enjoyable routine adopted, then it is specifically the routine of the personnel of those overseas flights.

I also want to object to certain other things the hon. member said. He referred to the reply the hon. the Deputy Minister gave in respect Of the training of pilots on our aircraft. I have the Deputy Minister’s reply here before me. Let us take one of the types of aircraft dealt with in his question. The part of his question referring to the Boeing 727 aircraft concerns our internal service. According to the reply the hon. the Deputy Minister gave him, the training of a pilot for such an aircraft takes about 23/4 months, consisting of five weeks of lectures on the ground, 40 hours of simulator training and 10 hours of flight training. The hon. member objects to the 10 hours of flight training. He says that those 10 hours are barely enough in which to complete two trips from Johannesburg, via the coast and back to Johannesburg. However, the pilots do not do their flight training in that way. The hon. member has the wrong end of the stick. After they have completed their simulator training, the 10 hours of flight training include take-offs and landings with instructors. This is done at an airport. It does not include routine flights at all.

At every airport?

No, not at every airport. I am coming to that, if the hon. member would just not be in such a hurry. His problem is that his tongue is quicker than his intellect. He cannot keep pace. What happens in practice is that this pilot first attends lectures, then he receives his simulator training. If the hon. member were to take the trouble to try to fly the simulator at Jan Smuts Airport, he would find out what simulator training is all about. He would then find out that precisely what is included in simulator training, and what it is all about. I can assure him that it is one of the most intensive types of training any man could possibly receive. After the pilot has completed his simulator training he is given ten hours of practical flight training by a senior instructor of the Airways. They take off and they land, and they take certain emergency action that may be necessary in certain cases. The pilot then learns to deal with any of these emergencies. This is something that cannot be done when there are passengers on board. That is why I want to rid the public of the impression that a pilot is being trained while flying from Johannesburg, via the coast back to Johannesburg again. People are not trained in this way. In those ten hours certain manoeuvres take place which do not take place when passengers are on board. After those ten hours the routine flights begin. Then he takes the right-hand seating position and flies in the company of a senior captain. Numerous routine flights are made, and then he lands at all the South African airports under actual airways operational conditions and under the control of the senior captain. Senior captains are still in charge of the flight. After he has completed many hours of this, and after he can handle the routine work to the satisfaction of the senior men, he becomes a commanding Officer. Only then does he become a senior captain of the aircraft. The hon. member is creating a wrong impression among our people in South Africa if he says that this is not so.

Something I also object to is another statement the hon. member made. Referring to the ten-hour training period he said—

I am now quoting from the hon. member’s Hansard.

Read the previous sentence as well.

I shall read the previous sentence as well to satisfy the hon. member. This is what he said—

Then comes the sentence I read a moment ago, i.e.: “I wonder whether this is not why we have had more and more reports of bumpy landings and of bad take-offs.” Is the hon. member satisfied now? I have now read what he wanted me to.

I merely asked the hon. the Minister a question.

Sir, the hon. member is making a speech at the same time as I am. He is welcome to do so, but I now want to ask him: How does one make a bad take-off with a Boeing? Could the hon. member explain this to the House? Sir, there is no such thing. What complaints does he receive about bad take-offs? The routine is such that all takeoffs, with the type of Boeing he is referring to, are the same. He surely knows this, He knows that the weight of the aircraft …

You do not have a clue what you are talking about.

I know that the hon. member does not know what he is talking about. It is very clear from the hon. member’s Hansard that he does not know what he is talking about. Before the pilot takes off, the weight, the quantity of fuel and the temperature are all taken into consideration. When the aircraft reaches the required speed it is lifted from the ground with simply nothing else to be done in between. It either lifts off the ground or it does not. As far as aviation is concerned, that hon. member’s intellect has not lifted off the ground yet. There is no such thing as a bad take-off. I do not know what complaints he received, because there is no such thing. Such a thing cannot exist. In addition the South African Airways is accused of being guilty of bad take-offs, something that is physically impossible and does not exist. Such a thing is simply not possible. They are also accused of bad landings. The technique in the South African Airways differs essentially from that, for example, current in America. The South African Airways is specifically known for the fact that we apply a technique which is essentially different from the training our pilots receive in the U.S.A. on the same type of aircraft: one simply needs to ask any international traveller about this. For the sake of clarity let us just look at the American technique. The American pilot’s technique is to select a point at the end of the runway and then to land on that point at all costs, at a higher speed than we in South Africa do. In other words, they fly the plane in up to a point on the runway. That is their normal technique. The technique of the S.A. Airways is to make a soft landing and not necessarily to aim for a point, although this is still a primary consideration. They do not necessarily aim for a point, but try to bring the aircraft in at the safest and most convenient possible speed, and to lift the nose for a soft landing. This is the essential difference between the South African and American techniques. The hon. member is welcome to ask pilots of the S.A.A., who receive training in the U.S.A., what the position is. Some of our pilots receive advanced training there. They will tell him that our techniques and or practice in South Africa are infinitely more convenient, better, easier and, in addition, safer than what they experienced in the U.S.A.

In the time left to me I should like to refer to another matter which the hon. member touched upon. The hon. member referred to the new and very unpleasant phenomenon of aircraft hijacking. This is indeed very serious and comparable to piracy in the olden days. This is so, but there is one small practical problem with which the world is faced to-day. This applies to the U.S.A. in particular. The problem is that the island of Cuba is not very far from their coast. The majority of hijackings of aircraft usually take place from the North or South American Continent to the island of Cuba. When the state where the aircraft lands, after it has been hijacked, is not prepared to deliver up the criminal, the aircraft, the crew or some of the passengers, it looks as if, at the moment, the world is completely helpless in the face of the problem. The whole solution seems to lie in an international agreement between countries according to which the hijacker will be treated as a criminal, the matter placed in the same category as piracy and the guilty person brought to book. The hon. member now blames the hon. the Minister for supposedly having taken certain steps. He referred here to an Amsterdam Conference which took place and to a subsequent Tokyo convention. The Amsterdam Conference to which he referred was merely an international conference that convened in Amsterdam, a conference of the International Commercial Pilots’ Organization. They adopted certain standpoints about this phenomenon, but this conference was never accorded any status to enable it to prescribe action of any kind to the governments of countries. The International Commercial Pilots Federation merely adopted certain standpoints and made certain recommendations to the governments of the countries from which the pilots came. After that the Tokyo convention was held. With this convention the world was faced with precisely the problem I mentioned earlier, i.e. that when this evil cannot be dealt with on a voluntary basis, there are no other obvious solutions. I hold it against the hon. member for trying to get a reply from the hon. the Minister about what we are doing in South Africa and how we are doing it. If there was ever anything about which we did not want a lot of talking, and pre-eminently not on the part of the S.A.R.. it is the ways and means adopted by the pilots and the Management of the S.A.A. as a whole in order to overcome this problem. If there is anything we pre-eminently want to say as little as possible about, it is specifically this matter, about which we want to make as few particulars as possible available.

Read my Hansard.

I read the hon. member’s Hansard. Negotiations about this matter are at present in progress on an international level. It is therefore a matter that is receiving very serious attention. The hon. the Minister has already given instructions that a most careful investigation should be instituted into all the aspects of this matter in so far as South Africa can become a contracting party to any international agreement which may come into being. I think that this is as much as the hon. the Minister should say. I hold it against the hon. member for wanting to find out more about this than is beneficial to the security of our country. In the few minutes remaining I just want to refer to another matter. The hon. member for Prieska also referred to this matter. It concerns the livestock that died during January on the way to the abattoir. The hon. member for Houghton also referred to this, but in an altogether twisted and distorted fashion. What are the implications of this matter as far as the Railways are concerned? We must ask what the task of the Railways is in this connection. The task of the Railways is as follows. Somewhere in the country or in South-West Africa livestock is offered for transportation. That livestock must be transported to another point, usually the abattoir, in this case the Johannesburg abattoir. To blame the Railways in any way for the acceptance of freight in the form of livestock at the point of origin is the most unreasonable accusation that could possibly be made against them. On the one hand the onus rests upon the agent who offers his client’s livestock for transportation by the Railways at some point or other in the country. That organization of marketing agents has nationwide branches. They are in touch with one another by the hour and by the day. They can keep this matter under control and they ought to ensure that livestock are not offered to the Railways in a manner and in quantities which they themselves and the branch of their organization at the market cannot handle. That is the primary point of departure. Those agents must ensure that this is done and that the necessary control is exercised. On the other hand, when the receiving facilities at the terminal collapse, when it is impossible for the abattoir to do the slaughtering and for the market agent to do the off-loading, we again cannot blame the Railways. Then the Railways is least of all to blame. The Railways’ only task is to transport what is offered to it from this point to that point. Mr. Speaker, I can see by the look in your eyes that I no longer have much time left, and I do not want to make things difficult for you. I should have liked to go into further detail about this matter, but I want to conclude by saying that the South African Rail ways only did their duty in this connection, nothing less and nothing more.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know about the flying experience of the hon. member for Middelburg who has just sat down, but when he makes the claim that one cannot make a bad take-off, I must admit it rather surprised me; because I was in the Air Force and I can assure hon. members that I was involved in many bad take-offs and held my breath on more than one occasion.

Not on the Boeing 727, surely.

The hon. the Minister must listen to what I am saying and then something might sink into his head.

We are talking about Airways and not Tiger Lance.

I have forgotten, Sir. We are probably honoured by the presence of the hon. the Minister of Sport and Recreation, because he was also in the Air Force during the war. I hope he did not make as many bad take-offs as the hon. member for Middelburg.

The hon. member for Middelburg said that we in the United Party had set ourselves up as the recipients of the official complaints from railways staff. Surely, if this is so, that is a reflection on the hon. member’s party itself. Why should they come to us if they get satisfaction from the members of the Nationalist Party? But they are coming in our direction, because the Nationalist Party has long given up any pretence of representing or standing up for the rights of the railway workers. The hon. member also said that the different staff groups had their associations and that these were working very well with the hon. the Minister. But if this is so, then perhaps the hon. the Minister could tell us when he replies to the debate why he is having such a long drawn-out argument with Salstaff. As I understand it, the argument he is having with Salstaff has been going on for very many months now. Therefore, when the hon. member for Middelburg says that they are well represented by their own associations and that the Minister gets on very well with these associations, I would suggest that he probably knows as little about the Railways as most of the other hon. members on that side.

I am a little sorry that the hon. member for Umlazi is not here at the moment. He still is a constituent of mine; surprisingly enough, though he left my constituency four years ago, the hon. member for Umlazi is still a constituent of mine. The hon. member does not bother to change his registration. He leaves it in Port Natal. He probably realizes that he has a better representative in Port Natal than he has in Umlazi. The hon. member for Umlazi made all sorts of claims here. But what surprised me most is that everything he said was just the opposite of what he said two years ago. Suddenly the Minister of Transport is a fine chap and everything he is doing is perfectly correct. What he is doing with Durban harbour is what the hon. member for Umlazi wanted him to do. But if one looks at the hon. member for Umlazi’s Hansard, one would see that in fact he is now supporting something which he opposed very bitterly not very long ago.

I should like to deal with one or two other matters. The first thing with which I want to deal before I deal with staff matters, is complaints from members of the public. In my own constituency—we have complained to the hon. the Minister and his Department in the past—a very large marshalling and shunting yard has been developing over the last few years. We have had promises from the Department that they would electrify all the trains working in the shunting yards. Since the shunting yards are surrounded by a densely populated area, a residential area, the noise that comes from this marshalling yard late at night has caused disturbance which seems to become worse and worse. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister if he can give us an assurance that this noise will be brought to a halt as soon as possible. He has said that he is going to electrify these yards as soon as he can, but it seems to me that he has taken a very long time and people are going to be very old before the hon. the Minister succeeds in having this done.

We had hon. members on the other side stating that the railwayman is quite content with his lot. I am going to suggest that they are so out of date that they do no realize that, where railwaymen a few years ago referred to “Uncle Ben” with some affection, they now in fact are seething against “Uncle Ben” and the Railways Administration.

Do not say what they call him; Mr. Speaker will stop you.

Order! The hon. member is continually interjecting and interrupting hon. members delivering their speeches.

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the hon. the Minister that somewhere at high level he and the Government have taken the decision that the 115,000 railwaymen we are talking about can and will be exploited by the Government. I believe they are following a deliberate policy of exploitation against the railway worker; because if this was not so, I would suggest that the hon. the Minister, who claims to have been so loyal to railway workers for so many years, should see that they earn a decent living wage. But he, dare not pay them a living wage, because if he did so, he would not be able to get them to work overtime. This is the only reason why they will work overtime, because he will not pay them enough to live on. He is the Minister who once said that they will eat “pap”, but still vote Nat. They have not forgotten this fact. Now they are being exploited. If we want confirmation of this, we do not have too go very far. Not more than a few months ago somebody made this statement:

This statement was made by the hon. member for Newcastle, Dr. Viljoen. He was complaining at the Nationalist Party congress in Natal. He was complaining about the treatment of railwaymen. He was replied to by the Deputy Minister. Yet to-day and yesterday members on that side got up and said that there was nothing wrong in the Railway Service. There are in fact complaints coming from all quarters. The hon. the Minister knows that he can only get people to work overtime if he pays them so little that they have no alternative. He knows, for instance, that of the 15,0 odd clerical workers on the Railways to-day a very considerable proportion are working four hours overtime every day, driving trucks, acting as shunters, forklift drivers, and so on. Can the hon. the Minister in all honesty say to this House and to the people of South Africa that a man who is trained as a clerk, who has worked as a clerk since he left school, would be prepared to drive a truck or a forklift truck or act as a shunter if he was earning sufficient money? Can the Minister say that this person would be willing to give up four hours of his life with his family at the worst time of the day if he was earning enough money? I would suggest that the Minister is taking advantage of these people. He can take advantage of them, because, as I said just now, he sees that they do not get enough money and they have to work to pay their rentals. If this was to continue. what would happen to the staff and what is going to happen to the staff of the South African Railways? The Minister might, at the present time, be using thousands or hundreds of these clerical workers doing this type of overtime work to which they are completely foreign, but which they may do, according to the Department’s instructions, “either in the middle of the day, between 12.30 and 4 o’clock or between 5 o’clock to 9 o’clock, depending on how the shift system works”. But if these people are to continue doing this job how long will it continue? Where is the Minister going to find the labour to replace these people so that they can go back to their normal hours of work?

The tragedy is that they are already working a full nine-hour shift in the Railways. Organization and method Officers have ensured that they are kept busy all the time, but somewhere in between they are sent out to work. If a railwayman refuses to work overtime he can be fined. In 1968 I asked the hon. the Minister how many people have been fined for refusing to work overtime. This was in May, 1968, and the hon. the Minister then replied as follows:

And then he said something very interesting, namely:

I think the hon. the Minister must have misunderstood my question when he said that only 22 people were fined for refusing to work overtime during a three-year period. I am quite sure there is not an hon. member sitting on this side of the House who cannot say that he must then have had those 22 cases in his own constituency. I know that I can certainly produce more than 22 cases in my own constituency. The hon. the Minister was dealing with the whole country. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister just how many people have in fact been fined for refusing to work overtime in that three-year period.

I have here a pay voucher of an employee of the Railways which shows that this man earned a net income of R94 per month. This person is a married man with five children. We have been given figures in the House which show that something like 60 per cent of railway employees are earning a similar income. This man’s basic income is R170 per month and he has little opportunity of working overtime in his particular line of work. After deductions he only takes home R94 per month. The interesting aspect of this man’s basic salary of R170 is that R50 of it is paid for rent to the Department of Community Development. It seems that even the hon. the Minister of Transport cannot protect his own workers against the Department of Community Development. Nowhere else in South Africa is it expected that anybody should pay this proportion of his income for rent. I want to say to the hon. the Minister that it seems as if there is some breakdown between him and his department.

The hon. the Minister will tell us that he has had no complaints of railwaymen in regard to language, but I wonder how many of these complaints ever reach him. I would like to tell him of an instance where a man I know, after 27 years of railway service, resigned as a result of the language issue. This person wrote a test in Afrikaans and failed and this was not the first time he failed. Each time he failed, this resulted in the blocking of his promotion for six months. When he went to his superior Officer and informed him that he was resigning as a result of the language issue, this Officer told him that he would refuse to state that reason in the report he would send to the Head Office. He would simply say that the man was leaving for a better job. This happened to a fully trained man after 27 years of service on the Railways. When the hon. the Minister, therefore, says that he knows of no such instances where this could happen, I have to accept that he does not know. What I want to say to him is that the information is never brought to his attention and that is the reason why he does not know, and not for any other reason. In dealing with this question of language I want to ask if it is right that when a person writes a language test he is not given the result? All he is told is that it does meet with the railway authorities’ requirements. Why should this be so? Surely he is entitled to know whether he failed miserably or that he only just failed. If a person should fail his promotion is blocked for six months and he cannot rewrite the test during that time. Where else does this happen? I want to suggest to the hon. the Minister that if he expects railwaymen to be loyal to him I believe the time has come that he should be loyal to them. He should start seeing to it that some of their rights are protected.

I would now like to deal with a matter concerning harbours in particular. In the hon. the Minister’s White Paper on page 8 he talks about what will happen if the harbours are separated from the Railway Administration. He says, inter alia, that the existing organization does not make ample provision for Officers to acquire specialized knowledge of harbour affairs. Some time ago I pointed out to the hon. the Minister a complaint I had regarding railway servants working in the harbours. Promotion to the System Manager’s Office is blocked for them. All the top jobs in the harbours were filled by people transferred from the System Manager’s Office. This system did not work in reverse, however. I mentioned this to the hon. the Minister, but he said that it does not happen. I can assure you that it does happen and that what he says here is not entirely correct. I would also like to ask him in view of the shortages of staff in the harbours whether the congestion that took place recently in the Durban harbour will be repeated. I know the hon. the Minister has no control over the weather or the sudden arrival of a number of ships, but most of the congestion is not caused by that at all. It is caused by the acute shortage of labour. Nowhere in the speech of the hon. the Minister or in that of any other hon. member opposite has there been any suggestion how the shortage of labour is going to be tackled by the Government. It seems to me the only way it is tackled is to make sure people are paid less so that they have to go out to work. Ultimately we will most probably see Members of Parliament on the other side working down in the Cape Town docks when Parliament closes in the evenings. At no stage during this debate did the Government try to give any answer to this problem. In the hon. the Minister’s White Paper he also does not mention ship repairs in any detail. I am informed by ship repairers in Cape Town that the country is losing millions of rands in possible business through lack of facilities in Cape Town. The tragedy is that the facilities for ship repairs will probably cost the Government very little, because these people are prepared to invest money in such ventures as piers, and so on. The Government will, however, not make any provision in this regard. I would like a full reply from the hon. the Minister on this question of repairs in shipyards.

The only other issue I have to raise is one that I raised privately with the hon. the Minister and I do not intend to repeat it over the floor of the House. I would like to ask him, however, to give me a reply on it as soon as possible as it is one of great urgency.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Port Natal devoted the greatest part of his speech to the alleged dissatisfaction among railway servants. This is of course a very general complaint, which we now expect to hear from all Opposition members, who will repeat themselves in order to drag in alleged complaints. However, I want to ask the hon. member for Port Natal in particular whether my information is correct when I say that he opened a special Office in his constituency to receive complaints from railway workers. Is my information also correct when I say that the railway workers in Port Natal were not interested in taking their complaints to that Office, and that that Office has now been closed down? Secondly, I want to ask the hon. member for Port Natal whether my information is correct when I say that from the time he was elected to the present he has never yet attended meetings of post Office workers to which he was invited, nor has he held any meetings for railway workers in his constituency.

You are talking absolute nonsense.

The hon. member for Port Natal need not furnish us with the answers to-day. He can furnish the answers in his constituency. I think his voters will themselves furnish him with the answer on 22nd April.

The test as to whether or not there is dissatisfaction among railway workers can best, in my opinion, be applied by those who represent constituencies which consist primarily of railway workers or people who were formerly in the employ of the Railways. I think that we who represent the northern suburbs of Cape Town are best qualified to reply to the question of whether or not there is dissatisfaction among our railway workers. If I may speak from personal experience I want to say that during the past 12 years I have been in politics there has never been a time when there were fewer complaints from railway workers than during the past two or three years. The speech made by the hon. the Minister of Transport in this House makes very interesting reading. He gave us a picture of the development in the transport system in South Africa since 1948. We as South Africans can be grateful for the fact that for so many of these 21 years this hon. Minister in question stood at the head of this tremendous undertaking. We can look back with gratitude this afternoon to what has been accomplished during the past two decades to give our transport system the image it has in South Africa to-day. When I speak of transport, I am thinking of transport in all its branches, i.e. the Railways, the Harbours, the road transport services of the Railways, and the South African Airways. There are certain aspects in particular which are very striking. The first is the tremendously high efficiency of this undertaking. This great efficiency is attributable to the fact that a great deal of advanced planning is done on the Railways, advanced planning on the part of the hon. the Minister who implements national policy, as well as advanced planning on the part of the Management. Even in times of crisis when, in my opinion, few transport services in the world would have been able to make the grade, the South African transport service was able to maintain its high efficiency through the experience of its officials. I want to refer, as the hon. the Minister of Transport did in his speech, to the period of crisis when the air routes across Africa were closed to South African aircraft. At very short notice the South African Airways opened a new flight route which was as efficient as before. We as South Africans will always remember the banner headlines which appeared after the announcement that African airports were closed to South African aircraft and that a different route had been opened. I also find it striking that our transport service is itself not yet satisfied with the good service which it has been rendering over the past two decades and that it is continually subjecting itself to a self-examination in order to make sure that the services it wants to render to the South African people are satisfactory enough. That is why we welcome the fact that a market research section was established about a year ago so that the transport services could use the information it acquired by taking a critical look at itself to enable itself to undertake planning of an equally good standard in the future as it had in the past. This gives us the assurance that there will be the necessary advance planning in the transport service for the next two decades of National Government as well. I am certain that those who will get to their feet in this House in 21 years’ time to discuss the role of the Railways, will praise this step in particular as one of foresight and advanced planning. They will be grateful for the fact that the Railways was prepared to take care of its liaison, to see where its markets were situated and to see what service it ought to render to South Africa.

To-day, as a National Party representative, as a representative of a constituency where thousands of railway workers are living, I want to say thank you very much not only to the hon. the Minister and the Management, but to every railway worker. In this debate, shortly prior to the 1970 election, we have had to listen time and again to stories of railway stall who are being over-exerted to such a great extent. This has created the impression that the Opposition is very grateful that an election is in fact being called now. I am thinking, in passing, of the speech made a few days ago by the hon. member for Windhoek, in which he analysed the attitude of the Opposition towards this election. If we were to listen to their speeches and were to believe that they were speaking with conviction in their hearts, I find it very significant that in spite of those speeches they are nevertheless afraid of the election which is going to be held within two months from to-day. I think it is a further proof that even representatives of constituencies on the opposite side realize that this alleged dissatisfaction among the railway workers does not exist. I have never seen so much loyalty among any officials in any service of this nature as does in fact exist among our railway workers. This has been my experience in my constituency as well. The fact that the Railways has been able, over a period of two decades, to increase its traffic by 200 per cent, while in contrast to that its staff has only increased by 50 per cent, is proof that these people are doing dedicated work in the posts they hold. We think that they are not only doing it for the sake of their salaries and remuneration for overtime, but that they are also doing it because as dedicated officials they like doing this work for our country.

The main speaker on the United Party side mentioned, inter alia, the disciplinary steps which are taken from time to time against officials of the Railways. In my day I was myself in the employ of the State Attorney. I often acted for the Railways and for railway officials at many kinds of inquiries. I also have a good knowledge of the procedure which is followed. I have had experience, not of scores, but of hundreds of cases. I am prepared to say that the standard which is maintained as far as the disciplinary steps taken in the railway service are concerned is not lower than in any other Government Department. I think a large undertaking like the Railways owes it to the country to be able to maintain high standards of discipline and safety. That is why it is essential that officials must know that steps can be taken against them when they err. Steps must be taken against them, not only when they commit criminal offences, but also when they make other mistakes, mistakes which could mean losses, mistakes which could cost lives. I think the railwayman himself is grateful for the fact that such procedures exist, procedures which will help to keep up the good name of the Railways and preserve that fine image the Railways has created for itself. I have never, in my whole life, acted in any type of inquiry where the person for whom you appeared did not believe that he was 100 per cent right. It rarely happens that one finds a person who really believes that he has made a mistake when steps are being taken against him, whether it be a criminal procedure or any other inquiry. At all times he believes that there was an adequate excuse for his behaviour and for the mistakes he made. We can accept that those people with experience who act as chairmen and members of these committees will act in an objective way and that they are not asked to find fault where no fault exists. It is in the first instance their task to see that justice is done to that official appearing before them, as well as to see that justice is done to this Service and the standards they must try to maintain. That is why this charge the Opposition is bringing against the Railways and which is supposedly causing dissatisfaction among the railway workers must be rejected.

There is one aspect I should particularly like to draw attention to, i.e. the question of housing which was also mentioned by the hon. the Minister. The hon. the Minister mentioned the large amount which has been spent since 1948, i.e. R118 million for the purchase of 28,0 houses by railway officials. He pointed out an amount of R85 million which had been spent to build 13,500 departmental houses. This brings us to a total of 23,000 departmental houses, which can now be rented to railway officials. What I find particularly significant is the figure of approximately R10 million which he also mentioned and which the Railways is giving to its officials as additional compensation in the form of losses they suffer in regard to those schemes. I do not think one can ever do enough in this direction. In spite of the enormous amount which has already been spent by the Railways for the supply of housing, perhaps even more can be done in this respect, particularly in our metropolitan areas such as Cape Town. I wonder whether it is not the right time now for the Railways to reconsider to a certain extent the merit system according to which houses are allocated. The problem is often experienced that people do not agree on what merit really is. A person who has been in the employ of the Railways for several years and who has not yet been able to acquire a house directly from the Railways is often dissatisfied and feels that he could perhaps be allocated a house on merit. For that reason I wonder whether the actual number of service years should not be utilized as an absolute criterion, or the only criterion. Let us take a railwayman who, for the sake of argument, has been in the employ of the Railways for the past eight years or so. He is therefore a person whom we can accept as one who has made the Railways his career. I wonder whether it could not perhaps be accepted as policy, or whether we could not at least try to do so, to have other considerations, such as merit considerations, cease to apply after a person has been in the employ of the Railways for such a period. The number of service years must therefore be accepted as the only criterion. I think this will help to cause officials, particularly those who have a long period of service on the Railways behind them, to feel that since they have shown that they want to make the Railways their career, and apart from the fact that they may perhaps have fewer children than others, or that other considerations may possibly apply, service years will be the only criterion. This ought to bring about a large measure of satisfaction in this respect.

I should also like to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister to the fact that a very interesting article has appeared in the latest edition of the monthly magazine of Assocom, i. e. Handelsmening. In this an analysis is made of the position of female labour. The figures furnished were revealing. This indicates the low percentage of women who are remuneratively employed in South Africa. As compared to the male population of whom 55.7 per cent have some occupation or other, this figure in the case of women is only 19 per cent. According to tables which were worked out by the writer, Dr. Machanik, it is also clear that the marriage age in South Africa is still reasonably low. The average age is 22 years. This indicates that most of the children of our families have already attained a reasonable age before the wife attains the age of 40 years. It is also pointed out that it appears from the lastest investigations which have been made, particularly in England, that quite often there is less neglect of children in cases of mothers who work than in cases of mothers who do not work. It appears that one must arrive at the conclusion that the objection which is often raised, i.e. that there will be no proper supervision in homes where both parents are working or, if a woman is husbandless, where she is not working, are unfounded, and it is more likely that a tendency to neglect children exists among certain people. One can therefore find the case of homes where only the man is working, or those of widows with children who are not working, where child neglect still occurs under those circumstances. Therefore this appears to be almost the only criterion on which to form one’s own point of view in respect of this problem, i.e. whether one should encourage female labour or not.

I find it particularly revealing if one notes that the hon. the Minister stated that in the latest year the staff position on the Railways has deteriorated further. Possibly we should, under these circumstances, see whether we cannot make more use of female labour. If we consider the various directions in which female labour is done, in our own country and in other countries as well, and if we take note of the role they are playing to an ever-increasing extent alongside the man in the engineering profession, the medical profession and virtually all our technical professions, one wonders if, in the case of the Railways, consideration could not perhaps be given to the training of women in certain directions, directions which we traditionally accept as those belonging to men only. So we have what is virtually a progressive policy on the Railways under a National Party Government and they are ever prepared to listen to new ideas and make a critical appraisal of themselves, they could perhaps in this respect reconsider the position in order to determine whether these shortages which exist, and which will continue to exist for a long time, cannot be coped with in this way.

In the report of the Marais Commission, there appears quite a number of recommendations to which, according to the hon. the Minister attention will now be given. Inter alia, there is one recommendation in particular which is of great interest to me personally as an inhabitant and a representative of this part of our country. That is, namely, that it is recommended under various heads that the costal shipping industry in South Africa ought to be encouraged to a greater extent. I have already discussed this subject on previous occasions in this House. I want to inform the hon. the Minister that since he is now going to give consideration to all the aspects of this report, aspects in regard to which he has not yet adopted an attitude, that to my mind, apart from the motivations given by those appearing before the commission and on which the report was based, as well as the conclusions of the commission itself, there is a much more important consideration than any of those which appeared in the report, i.e. the location of our industries in the future. I have already pointed out that virtually every industrialist in South Africa, virtually everyone who has to give thought to what the future establishment points of our industries will be, point to the increasing role the manufacturing sector will have to play in our exports. They point out how decisive it will be in the years to come for the mere survival of South Africa and the raising of its standard of living. That is why I want to request the hon. the Minister to keep this extremely important consideration in mind when he returns to this House, after he has been elected once more as member of the House of Assembly and, we hope, Minister of Transport in the new National Cabinet, to deal with the various recommendations of the Marais Commission with us.

Mr. Speaker, during the course of this debate we heard from the hon. members on that side of the House about the great satisfaction which exists amongst the railway employees. Indeed, it does seem surprising that when there is satisfaction amongst the employees, we have an increase in the number of resignations and of people leaving the service. That applies to Whites in particular. During the past week the hon. the Minister of Transport replied to a question which I put on the Order Paper asking for information as to how many railway employees left the Railway Service during 1969 and how many employees joined the Service in 1969. The figures supplied only pertained to White railway employees. It is interesting to note that 24,566 white employees left the service of the Railways Administration whilst 21,301, joined the service during the same year. This, we must bear in mind, is in a growing economy and, as the hon. member for Vasco has just stated in a call upon the Minister, the Railways must have a progressive policy to meet developments in South Africa. Surely it is a serious state of affairs when with a growing economy there is in fact a net loss in the number of employees. A progressive policy is therefore urgently required not only to attract more persons to join the Railways Administration, but also to retain the services of those who are already in the employment of the Railways Administration. We know that there are many people who, after they have resigned from the service in order to go into a job outside the service, rejoin after a few years. However, it is alarming to see that last year 10,488 white employees resigned from the railway service. What is more alarming is the fact that about the same number, namely 10,437 employees, absconded the Railways service. I believe there should be some explanation from the hon. the Minister to indicate why such a large number of white employees are absconding from the Railways Service.

Sheer happiness.

To me this appears to call for some sort of explanation from the hon. the Minister. Out of the 24,500 who have left the service, 20,900 either resigned or absconded from the service. I believe that this question of retaining existing staff is perhaps a very important factor in dealing with the whole question of the shortage of manpower in the Railways Administration. We know that the Railway Service is looked upon as a secure career and is a career which many people join due to various fringe benefits which exist in the service.

Business suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 8.05 p.m.

Evening Sitting.

Mr. Speaker, when business was suspended for supper, I was dealing with the question of the decreasing number of white employees in the Railways Administration. If the number of Whites is going to decrease every year, I think it becomes obvious that the Minister will have to employ an increasing number of non-Whites to keep the Railways going. Unless the Railways Administration is able to retain staff, I think it is a case of facing the reality when we say that the overall loss caused by the number of people joining the service being less than the people leaving the service is going to increase in the future, making the gap wider and wider. In these circumstances it is important to ascertain in what manner the hon. the Minister can retain existing staff. In this connection I should like to refer to the question of fringe benefits. We know that the Railways Administration has always had the attraction of being a secure medium of employment. This state of affairs should continue to exist. One of the attractions has been the fringe benefits derived from such employment. I believe that closer examination should be given to these fringe benefits. First of all I want to refer to the position in regard to the existing pension scheme. We all know of the Superannuation Fund of the Railways. We know that the Superannuation Fund of the Railways has been subject to investigation and ways and means have been studied to improve this position. During the course of last year we had legislation based on the statements which the hon. the Minister made in his Budget speech, whereby improvements were made as result of the recommendations of a joint committee which comprises both representatives of the staff and the Administration. I believe that those adjustments which have been made had the full approval of the Railways Pensioners Association as well as the staff associations. However, I think the whole position requires a further examination. If one looks at the practical application of the improvements which were made last year, one sees that they benefit future pensioners to a certain extent. We on this side of the House supported the theory whereby the pension could be increased by 2 per cent per year compounded so as to offset increases in the cost of living. However, one has to look at it closer than that in order to get a picture of the present position appertaining to the Superannuation Fund. At present the fund has assets to the value of some R500 million. It would appear that for a number of pensioners this adjustment in the pension last year really did not result in any great increase in the payment of the pension they receive. That applies in particular to the older railway pensioners. If we look at the position, we will see that in many cases the only increase the older pensioners received was R6 per month for a married or R3 per month for a single railway pensioner. Here we have a situation whereby a pensioner is paid a basic amount from the Superannuation Fund. Various allowances, which come from Revenue and not from the Superannuation Fund, are added and this means that the emphasis was merely placed on the basic pension that was paid from the Superannuation Fund being increased and the amount of the allowances that were paid from Revenue has been decreased.

Whilst we have a system of this nature it is obvious that various difficulties will arise with regard to the allowances which are paid and indeed there are large numbers of separate allowances—temporary allowances, supplementary allowances, a special supplementary allowance to war veterans over 70 years of age, and bonuses. These are all additional amounts which are met out of Revenue. It would appear that the whole structure of the present pension scheme should be further investigated to see whether it is not possible to institute a non-contributory system as far as State employees are concerned. We know that in the case of the civil servants their pension contributions have been reduced. I have heard from railway pensioners that they understand that there is a possibility of these contributions to the Superannuation Fund being reduced by as much as 50 per cent. Whether there is any truth in that statement or not, I do not know. However, it would be interesting to hear from the hon. the Minister whether he is prepared to give consideration to the whole question of the structure of the present pension scheme that is available for railway employees. If it is not possible to have a non-contributory scheme for these employees, one could consider the question of reducing the contribution of the employee.

Then I come to the increases in pensions which were granted last year and their effect. I have mentioned that it is a fact that many of the older pensioners only received an increase of R6 per month. Where they were receiving a minimum pension of R94 per month, in the case of married pensioners, this was increased to R100 per month. Many of these pensioners anticipated a far greater increase. When one examines how this pension is arrived at, one finds that all that has happened is that money which was previously paid as an allowance, is now being paid as part of the basic pension. I have looked at one or two cases to see what the effect of this has been. Let us see what the position was prior to the improvements which were made last year. In one particular case, where a man was receiving a basic pension of R40.50, he was receiving allowances amounting to R53.50, giving him an income of R94 per month. After these adjustments were made, this merely became a basic pension of R56.17, and his allowances were then reduced to R43.83, making his total pension R100 per month. So in spite of the 10 per cent addition to the basic pension, in spite of the 2 per cent compounded for each year that he has been on pension, this person only received an increase of R6 per month, which those in receipt of the minimum pension are also receiving. Sir, one can see that these difficulties arise where you have allowances which have been paid as separate amounts. Here I would like to ask the hon. the Minister to consider whether the time has not arrived to consolidate the temporary allowance, which has come to be looked upon as a cost of living allowance, with the basic pension. I believe that this would result in a considerable improvement in the pensions payable on the basis of an increase of 2 per cent compounded. The consolidation of the temporary allowance with the basic pension would result in a greater basic pension. Quite honestly, Sir, I cannot see what merit there is in keeping this as a separate temporary allowance or a cost of living allowance, in view of the fact that there is no longer any means test applied for the payment of this temporary allowance. It is in fact being received by all railway pensioners and there seems to be no reason why it should not be consolidated with the basic pension.

Let me now examine the increases that were given. The hon. the Minister did say last year that as far as the temporary allowances and bonus payments were concerned, the committee of investigation had also made certain recommendations affecting these payments, but that the actuaries had advised that they would prefer to await the results of the quinquennial valuation as at the 31st March, 1969. It would be interesting to hear from the hon. the Minister whether any further action is being taken in regard to the temporary allowance and the bonus payments, because this is obviously a matter which also received the consideration of the joint committee which went into this particular aspect. Sir, where you have a system such as we have, namely a superannuation fund, it is inevitable that a considerable number of people, when faced with financial difficulties, will contemplate resigning from the Service so as to obtain some immediate financial benefit to meet their commitments. This, of course, is a problem which does arise in other pension schemes as well. Indeed, the Cilliers Committee of Inquiry into Pension Fund Matters certainly highlighted this particular aspect when it indicated that no less than R60 million was paid out of various pension funds over a four year period in cases of other than death or retirement. This was due to resignations and the withdrawal of funds, which are funds specifically designed to meet the requirements of employees when they go on pension. Where an employee resigns from the Service in order to obtain an immediate lump-sum payment, then if he rejoins the Service he has sacrificed, in many instances, a good number of years’ service. When the time comes for him to go on pension, he has to be content with a reduced pension and he is unable to meet his requirements. Where you have a non-contributory pension scheme, however, you can have a different system of payment where employees resign from the Service. Here too I think the hon. the Minister would be justified in giving consideration to this particular aspect, having regard to the large number of resignations that take place from the Railway Service.

Then, Sir, I believe that the whole question of the present pension scheme is a vitally important one in so far as fringe benefits are concerned. It is within the power of the Railway authorities and of the hon. the Minister to revise the present system and to introduce a more modern system which will enable him to meet some of the shortcomings of the present scheme and also to meet the competition which obviously arises from commerce and industry. To-day large numbers of commercial and industrial firms have their own pension funds, so the prospect of a pension, with the security that it involves, is no longer an attraction which is offered only by the Railway Service.

Sir, I have also mentioned the question of the decreasing number of white employees in the Railway Service and the fact that the hon. the Minister has inevitably had to employ more non-Whites so as to keep the traffic moving. In this connection the question of the pension requirements of the non-white employees obviously arises. Since the hon. the Minister has to use the services of non-Whites to a greater extent, he will also have to give consideration to the question of fringe benefits as far as they are concerned. As you know, Sir, they are not members of the Superannuation Fund. They have their own scheme under the Railways and Harbours Pension Act in terms of which they can receive annuities if they have had not less than 15 years’ service. There are various other stipulations concerning the payments that will be made to them either by way of a lump sum, by way of a gratuity or by way of an annuity. It is interesting to note that their system is on a non-contributory basis. In reply to a question last year in which I asked the hon. the Minister for further information in this regard, he said that no contributions were being paid by non-White servants for these benefits, which are payable only if they are retired from the Service owing to redundancy, reorganization, permanent ill-health or the attainment of the age limit. Here the principle of a non-contributory scheme is accepted. Then, in addition, the Railway Administration has a compulsory savings fund, to which these people make contributions depending upon their level of income. They are refunded this amount, together with compound interest at the rate of 4 pet cent per annum, on leaving the Service.

As I have said, improvements were considered last year as far as the Superannuation Fund was concerned, and improvements were certainly brought about in terms of the legislation passed in this House last year. In those circumstances I think the hon. the Minister should also review the position of the non-White employees. If non-White employees are to be used to a greater extent in the Railway Service, then a system should also be devised whereby their fringe benefits can be improved in terms of pensions or payments for services rendered to the Railway Administration.

Then there are two further points that I would like to raise with the hon. the Minister. The first deals with the question of housing. The hon. member who spoke before me, the hon. member for Vasco, dealt to some extent with the provision of housing and the availability of funds from the Railway Administration for the purchase of houses. In this regard I would like to look at the position of railway pensioners, who are also faced with difficulties when it comes to accommodation. Some of these people were unable to obtain a railway house while the husbands were working, and when the time comes for them to apply for accommodation in a home for the aged, their applications are rejected on the ground that the minimum pension of R50 per month, which many of them are receiving. precludes them from being accommodated in some of these homes. I should like to know therefore whether the hon. the Minister or his Administration has given consideration to the representations which have been made by the Railways Pensioners Association for accommodation and homes to be made available to these people in the latter part of their lives. It is important, of course, that we should provide housing for the present employees, but we must not forget those former employees who rendered service to the Administration during very difficult times in the course of their careers.

In the few minutes left to me I would like to put to the hon. the Minister for his consideration a point which has arisen because of the fact that many old people to-day are having to move from the cities in order to find cheaper accommodation outside our large towns and cities. Many of these people, have travelling expenses to meet; they often have to travel considerable distances to attend the out-patient departments of provincial and other hospitals, but they receive no concession as far as rail fares are concerned. We know that in some municipalities special facilities have been made available to these people. They are provided with concessionary travel tickets for use on municipal transport. I hope that the hon. the Minister will be prepared to give sympathetic consideration to the question of concessionary fares for social pensioners. Although the Minister has indicated on a previous occasion that the suburban and interurban rail fares are less than the ordinary fares, numbers of social pensioners face considerable financial hardship when they have to travel regularly to attend the out-patient departments of hospitals and where they have no means of transport other than the railways. These people look to the hon. the Minister for sympathetic consideration of their plight. I am sure that the hon. the Minister must be inundated from time to time with requests from various groups for a reduction of fares or concessionary fares. I believe that in view of the present high costs and the fact that many of these people are having an extremely hard struggle to exist on small pensions, particularly the social pensioners, the hon. the Minister should see whether it is not possible to assist them with regard to the cost of transport. This assistance, in many instances, is absolutely essential.

Sir, the establishment of homes for the aged, in many cases outside the cities, has also meant that these people are having to make use of railway facilities to an increasing degree. I hope that the Minister will give an indication as to whether he has given this matter further consideration to see whether it is not possible to assist them in their needs.

I believe that most of us in this House have great appreciation for the hon. member for Umbilo’s supposed knowledge of pensions, but his whole argument this evening has again demonstrated to us something which is very obvious in our present-day politics, namely that when you know you will not be placed in a responsible position, it is very easy to create expectations among and make promises to the people outside, and in that process try to suggest that this National Party Government has no sympathy and that it is in fact the Opposition who must plead for these things to be improved for the electorate. In the past the hon. member for Umbilo had this field to himself in this House, but I want to warn him that he should use every opportunity often in the future, because he can now expect very strong competition from the mighty party spread out in front of me here.

In the past few Budget debates it has become obvious and almost traditional that hon. members opposite me always find some or other tragic happening to raise during a Railway debate in an attempt to rouse feelings in order to gain some political advantage. I remember well how the hon. member for Durban (Central) stood up here last year and tried to rake up that tragedy of the Boeing disaster at Windhoek in order to stir up feelings. What do we find this year? This year we have the position that the tragic event at the level-crossing at Henley-on-Klip became the subject of discussion in this Railway debate. Unfortunately I could not keep a record of how many speakers from that side referred to this matter, but it was done entirely to arouse feelings. I recall that the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) pointed a prophetic finger in the air and said that he had warned the Minister last year that another accident would occur at a level-crossing. Mr. Speaker, can you imagine that it requires a prophet to predict that another accident will occur at a level-crossing! It is not without compassion that I say that it certainly requires no prophet to predict this evening that there will most probably be another accident at a level-crossing in the future. But the interesting thing about this whole situation, this pattern which has developed during this Session, is that the hon. member for Wonder-boom associates himself very strongly with that argument which is being presented here. The hon. member for Wonderboom produced an impressive series of figures to motivate his charge of neglect against this Government. Then the hon. member for Rustenburg quite innocently asked the hon. member for Wonderboom whether he had already made representations in the past in regard to those level-crossings which formed the subject of his speech and his charge to-day. Then came the revelation that he had made representations about another one, but never yet about this one. In his entire parliamentary career he has never made representations about those level-crossings, but now that it is a dramatic occasion, he levels the charge. In other words, this hon. member to-day has to make use of a tragic disaster in an attempt to evade his own political disaster. But from the statistics which were flung across the floor by the hon. members for Wonderboom and Pietermaritzburg (City), it appears that almost 4,000 level-crossings still remain. Then the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) made this brilliant statement. He said that at the present rate at which crossings were being eliminated, it would take us 200 years to eliminate all the crossings.

But I never said that.

I beg your pardon. I cannot attribute so much intelligence to the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District); I meant the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (City). But surely that was an absolutely outrageous statement for the hon. member to make. I do not believe that in future it will be necessary for us to eliminate all level-crossings. I call to mind a railway line which I used in the past, and I am referring specifically to the railway line between Bredasdorp and Caledon. I venture to say that there are probably at least 50 crossings on that line alone. Sir, I can assure you that on that railway line the train is always doubling back because there are so many crossings and bends on that line. While there is so much agitation today for the elimination of crossings, it is probably no more than realistic that we should consider the other side of the picture too, and that we should take note of the fact that urgent representations to the contrary are sometimes made, namely that where crossings are proposed to be eliminated, the matter should be shelved indefinitely.

I would be grateful if the hon. member for Wynberg would pay some attention now. I recall a specific case which occurred as recently as last year. I want to say at once that I am definitely not mentioning this case in order to embarrass the hon. member for Wynberg, because I believe she really regarded it as her duty to deal with it. In Kenilworth there is a specific level-crossing which is on the priority list for elimination. At a certain stage the hon. member for Wynberg came to ask me whether I would assist her, as some of my constituents might also be affected, and that we should make representations for the closing of that crossing to be taken off the priority list, since it appeared that the Ratepayers’ Association of Kenilworth was strongly opposed to the closing of the crossing. This group of ladies came to see us one day and we granted them an interview. It then appeared that these representations actually had nothing to do with my constituents, but out of courtesy towards the hon. member for Wynberg I undertook to submit the representations to the system manager to ask him if she could lead a deputation to see him. I did this on 10th April last year. On 17th April the system manager replied that he could see no sense in an interview, as these matters were not dealt with by him; they were dealt with by a permanent committee. I do not know what further became of this matter, but I am just trying to indicate, and the hon. member must please not be offended, that there have been representations in the opposite direction as well. Since this specific case was raised by the other side of the House. I really cannot understand this arrogant claim of the Opposition that they are pre-eminently the people who are agitating for the elimination of crossings, and that the Minister and this Government are adopting so indifferent an attitude to the danger of crossings. It is surely clear that these people are trying to hold up a false image in order to hide their political bankruptcy.

Then we recently had the improper wooing of the railway workers’ vote. Last year the hon. member for Yeoville came along here and pictured the manpower shortage in the Railways as having developed into a crisis. Then he dramatically exclaimed that as long as we continued the present labour pattern, the manpower shortage would not be solved. But what happened when the hon. the Minister asked the hon. member for Yeoville: What do you mean by that; what do you mean when you say as long as we continue the present pattern? Do you mean that all vacancies should be filled by non-Whites? What reply did we receive? the only reply we have received up to now is that they will appoint non-Whites in those posts with the co-operation and approval of the trade unions. In other words, they are still hiding behind the trade union, but we are still waiting for a reply to the Minister’s specific question as to what they would do if the trade unions did not agree to that. But surely it is clear what these people want to do, and that is why they do not want to give a reply. It was very clear in a debate here the other day, when the hon. member for Hillbrow showed us his slip. Did he not tell us in so many words that work reservation was a farce, and that it provided false security? But the white workers in South Africa, and the railway workers in particular, know that they are not safe under the United Party. The hon. members for Durban (Point) and Port Natal make a great fuss in every Budget debate after spending the entire recess in their constituencies to receive railway grievances. Then they come here with a file and fling all three which they had received, across the floor of this House. I now want to warn the hon. member for Durban (Point). If he is busy collecting grievances— and in the past he picked up three per recess—then he will have to take into consideration that he will have to compete with a mighty party in connection with those three grievances. No, the railway worker will not allow himself to be caught by the fine words in this yellow booklet, these fine words that they will have the work evaluated by experts. The railway worker will not allow himself to be caught by a word which comes so easily on the tongue, because he knows the man who really let the cat out of the bag is the hon. member for Salt River, who, after all. is an honest man. Did the hon. member for Salt River not say last year: “Make use of all the available labour”?

I want to conclude with the greatest confidence. I want to tell you, Sir, that we National Party representatives who represent the vast majority of the railway electorate, live with and among our people, and that we join them in thanking the hon. the Minister of Transport this evening. But then it has become a disgrace to say thank you in this House, and hollow laughter usually emanates from that side when we do so. I prefer to do it in another way. Because we do not get the opportunity to do so in private, I should like to invite the hon. the Minister of Transport this evening to visit my constituency, which is exclusively a railway constituency, so that we may express our thanks and pay tribute to him in a proper way. What is more, on 22nd April we will give this Government a present in the form of a shattering defeat, and in the process we will also enrich the Treasury with several thousands of rands in forfeited deposits.

Mr. Speaker, so far we have heard only criticism from the opposite side of the House in this debate. The main point chosen was the bus disaster at Henly-on-Klip, and then there were also smaller points of criticism against the National Party and the hon. the Minister of Transport. The previous speaker said that he thanked the hon. the Minister for what has been done. I too want to express my thanks. I do want to thank not only the Minister, but also the officials of the Department of Transport, for what they are doing for South Africa and for us. In the course of the debate a great deal of criticism has been expressed, but I have not heard one word of thanks to our railway officials from the opposite side of the House. We on this side of the House should like to express out thanks to those who work many hours overtime, and to those who are separated from their families for long periods for our sake and for the sake of the people of South Africa. To them we want to say; thank you very much.

The railway officials have been looked down upon in their profession for many years. I think the time has arrived for recognizing the railway official as a person rendering a service. May every one of us sitting in this House succeed in showing these people that they are rendering a service to us, and that we are grateful for it and appreciate it.

A great deal has been said about the abattoirs of Johannesburg. A great deal of criticism was levelled at the Minister and the Railways Administration. However, I now want to ask the United Party whether they have really conducted an investigation into what happened? It has been said that the trucks stood there waiting to be unloaded. Many hon. members have mentioned the animals which died. However, I have a cutting here in which a veterinary surgeon, a certain Dr. Ryksen, makes a few observations in this connection. He does not belong to the National Party, nor is he a member of this four-bench party in front of me here. He is a member of the United Party. He said that he had taken specimens from animals which had died.. He had found that in one single truck there had been 11 head of cattle which had not died as a result of hunger or thirst, but had died from prussic acid poisoning. Prussic acid poisoning cannot be contracted as a result of feeding on the dry fodder which is used by the Railways. It cannot be contracted from the water which had been given to them. Prussic acid poisoning can be contracted only when the cattle are fed wilted and over-ripe fodder before being loaded onto the trucks. [Interjections.] Let us look at this matter objectively. There were problems, but not only the National Party and the Department of Transport were responsible for them. The United Party Municipality of Johannesburg was also responsible for them. Now the blame is laid on the Minister and this party. Every one of us who is fond of animals and every one of us who wants to see to the conditions in which animals live and in which they are transported, must admit that mistakes can occur, but they are not the fault of the National Party or the Minister alone. There are also other people responsible for what happened in Johannesburg.

Yes, put the blame on us.

I am very glad that the hon. member admits that they are also to blame. I said at the start that we are grateful for the service rendered by the railway officials, but this evening I should also like to plead with the hon. the Minister for our railway officials, and specifically for the young people. We are very grateful that the Minister established a department in which young railway officials are scientifically tested for skilled and semi-skilled labour. Last year a little more than 20,0 officials were tested. These tests were followed up by further observations, which also take into account their emotional and personal circumstances. It was then found that 53 of these persons had shown increased productivity. We want to express our deep appreciation to them. They are people who may have limited capacities, but who showed increased productivity as a result of this development and these tests. We therefore want to ask the Minister to continue with this system which he has introduced. I think that this is one of the reasons why the number of passes at Esselen Park were 90.12 per cent last year. For that we want to pay tribute to the officials of the Railways. We find that in some cases many young railway officials resign not as a result of their salaries being too low, but because they have perhaps had to work overtime and there was no time for recreation and other activities. We should like to ask the Minister not only to increase salaries, but also to grant these people an opportunity of having leisure time for normal association with people, etc., when they ask for it in advance. These people work very hard. We realize this and we are very grateful for it, but we also wish to grant them those moments of recreation and the opportunity to associate with people outside the Department.

There is another matter which I should also like to bring to the attention of the Minister. It often happens that some of our officials fall ill and then have to be examined by a medical practitioner or by a specialist. I wonder whether the time has not come for the Department to employ a group of doctors as well as specialists on a full-time basis in order to examine railway officials when the need for it arises. In conclusion I want to address the following request to the hon. the Minister: Retain the sympathy which you have for the railway officials. Also keep in mind the young railway officials and let us all be ever grateful to those who render us service.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Tygervallei, who spoke before the last hon. member, illustrated the truth of an old Afrikaans saying which goes as follows: “Waar die hart vol van is, loop die mond van oor.” He completed his speech by saying that he had a “geskenk vir die Nasionale Party op 22 April—’n groot nederlaag”. Sir, I agree with him. He has a gift for the Nationalist Party on the 22nd April. He has stated it, and it will stand in Hansard. His gift to the Nationalist Party will be a smashing defeat. [Interjections.] Sir, that is what he said. Let him look at his Hansard tomorrow morning. If the speech of that hon. member was a case of “wat die hart van vol is, loop die mond van oor”, then the hon. member for Bethlehem also said something with which I can agree. It is not often that this happens and I find myself in a difficult position at the moment. I agree with them on certain points. The hon. member for Bethlehem said that the time had come to recognize railwaymen as persons who were giving service. How I agree with him! This side of the House will recognize the railwayman as a person who gives service. I am glad that the hon. member for Bethlehem recognizes that the time has come when that should happen, because it has previously certainly not come from that side of the House. The railwayman has not been a man who has been recognized as one who gives service. When we have pleaded for his welfare and his interests we have been accused of “vryery na sy stem”. Therefore I want to put on record tonight, speaking as a member from Natal, that we have in Natal certain concentrations of railway voters. We have for instance Glencoe in the seat of the hon. member for Newcastle, who is not here. Glencoe has a very large railway population, but we have heard not a word from the hon. member for Newcastle on behalf of his voters. We have the constituency of Klip River, which is held by the leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal, the hon. member for Klip River. Again we have heard not a word from that representative of another railway centre on behalf of the railwayman of Natal. We have a large number of railwaymen in Umhlatuzana, and what did we hear from the absent hon. member for Umhlatuzana on behalf of the railwaymen of that constituency? There are also railwaymen in Umlazi. The hon. member for Umlazi did stand up but during half an hour he did not say one word about the welfare of the railwayman. He told us how he had changed his principles since he had gone to sit on the other side of the floor and that when he was on this side he criticized and now that he is on that side, he praises. But we have heard not a word about the welfare of the railwayman. There are railwaymen in Zululand and the absent member for Zulu-land has made no plea for the railwaymen of Zululand. He is absent as the hon. member for Klip River is absent, as they have been for most of this debate. In fact, I counted yesterday that apart from Ministers and Whips there were 13 members of the Nationalist Party sitting in their benches listening to the affairs of the railwayman in South Africa being discussed. There were 11 members on this side of the House. How is that for a proportion: 11 out of 37 and 13 out of 127. That is the interest they show.

I said that this was an awkward occasion for me because I found myself in agreement with the hon. member for Bethlehem. I now want to agree also with the hon. the Minister on two counts. What is more, I want to confound the forecast of the hon. member for Bethlehem, because I want to express three words of thanks, but I regret that I cannot express them to the hon. the Minister. I do, however, want to agree with him in expressing the thanks of all of us on this side of the House towards those who fought the Cato Creek fire and who did such a great job there. I think they deserve the thanks the hon. the Minister expressed and I agree with him. Why I cannot extend those thanks to the hon. the Minister is because I would have liked him to have seen the conditions under which Cato Creek used to operate. I went there on three occasions to see the congestion and the impossible conditions under which that depot was operating. I should like to ask him to go and see the conditions under which the Railway fire fighting service of Durban has to operate. Then he would be able to speak with the same sincerity with which I speak when I speak of the work which was done by the staff and the railway fire fighters, because I know the conditions under which they had to struggle and under which they had to work and under which the railway fire fighters still have to work in Durban.

I agree with the hon. the Minister on another issue, and that is in expressing appreciation to the loyal members of the railway staff, who have carried the burden of the struggle for another year. Again I cannot extend those thanks to the Minister because the hon. the Minister and this debate has revealed that an increase in staff of 15 per cent are carrying an increase of 100 per cent in responsibility and duties. I want to associate myself with the remarks that have been made by hon. members on this side of the House in regard to the load which is being placed on the railwaymen of South Africa, the strain which is placed on them physically and the strain which is being placed on their family life as well as the effect of that strain on the operation of the Railways. I intend to try to illustrate this in the few minutes available to me.

There is a third matter which I want to place on record. I want to agree with the hon. the Minister on a third issue. I believe that this will be the last time that I will have to agree with him as an hon. Minister. After this session I may agree with him as the Opposition spokesman on transport matters. However, I will agree with him in his present capacity for the last time in associating myself with the compliment paid to the staff of the South African Airways, who are a fine staff and an organization of which one can be proud. We on this side of the House have not attacked them, but have tried to help them by dealing with the problems which they face so that they can maintain the fine record that they have.

We have listened now to two days of debate and from every side of the Government benches there has only been one refrain, from the hon. the Deputy Minister downwards: Railwaymen are content, they are happy, they are well cared for and they have no complaints. The Opposition is sucking complaints out of their thumbs and everything in the garden is rosy except for one or two malcontents.

Bring along all your letters.

I do not need letters. I have some here to which I may refer if I am questioned on them. I want to get it clearly on record that in this last debate on Railway matters of this Parliament Government members stated in chorus that railwaymen in South Africa were in the words of the Deputy Minister: “Satisfied, happy and well eared for”. That is the view of every member on that side of the House, except the hon. member for Koedoespoort, who insulted quite a number of railwaymen. Having proved that 9,0 railwaymen had been taken back into the Railways in one year, and I assume a similar proportion were taken back in other years, he called those 9,000 and all the other tens of thousands who have gone back to the Railways “werkskues en onstandvastiges”. Let us therefore have it on record that the hon. member for Koedoespoort not only thinks they are happy, but also says that amongst the railwaymen there are thousands and thousands who are afraid of work or, in his own words, “werksku en onstandvastig”.

No, that is not true.

This is in Hansard. I should like to see the hon. member’s Hansard, because he did say it.

Order! The hon. member for Brakpan is not allowed to say that it is not true.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my words.

Mr. Speaker, against this background of a Government which believes that the railwaymen are content and that everything in the garden is rosy, I have something to say to the hon. the Minister. The hon. the Minister and hon. members on that side have praised the railwaymen. We have done so too, but words are cheap; it is deeds that matter. The hon. the Minister and his Government are the government with the power to do things which must be done. I want to put it to him that apart from the election holiday bonus, a haphazard bonus, doubling the original bonus when he heard there was an election coming, there are four fundamental fields in which the Government has failed to deal with the problems of the railwayman.

The first of those has been dealt with before and I will not elaborate at length. That is the question of overtime. We were challenged by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) and others to state that we would abolish overtime. What a nonsensical challenge. Under this Government with their wage structure those members and the Government know that if one abolished overtime, the railwaymen could not exist. Our argument is that a man should not be forced to do overtime work in order to make a decent living. The hon. member asked for letters. One does not need letters; one needs the experience of what is going on. I have a record here of one person who showed me his overtime hours, varying from 110 to 130 hours per month in the harbour service of Durban.

Did this come through the post?

No, Sir, this came from a railwayman who sat in my Office with his wife, and his wife was in tears. She said: “He wants to resign. We cannot make ends meet. We cannot raise our children on our salary. Now he has to work day and night so that we can exist.” If those hon. members have not seen people like those, it shows that they have lost contact with the people of South Africa. I remember that hon. members who now sit on the front bench came in here perhaps not as affluent as other hon. members on that side of the House, perhaps not with large business undertakings. As the years have gone by, the contact which they had through their knowledge of the people of whom they were one, has become less and less. As their cars have become bigger, so their knowledge of the railwaymen has become less. These hon. gentlemen who used to know the railwaymen no longer know them today. When the Volkswagen made way for a Mercedes, the contact with the railwaymen was lost. Therefore one finds this denial. But I say that throughout the Railway Service the men, and particularly their families, are fed up with the hours they have to work. I can give hon. members case after case. One man was seeking a transfer, because he is working 101/4 hours per day. I have the letter and I will give the hon. the Minister his name if he wants it. I have taken it up with the System Manager. I have tried to get him a transfer. He said: “I want a transfer, because in this particular station I can get 12 hours work per day and then I will be able to get that little extra money which will enable me to live.” So I say that the first of the four failures of this Government is that they are forcing the railwayman to work overtime because of an unrealistic basic wage structure.

Vause, you are talking nonsense.

If I am talking nonsense, then that hon. member believes that the 64,000 railwaymen earning less than R200 per month are well paid. I want to ask any hon. member on that side of the House how he will bring up a wife and children on under R200 per month, how he will clothe and feed them decently and pay the rents which he will have to pay today, unless he is one of the 22 per cent of the privileged railwaymen who have Railway housing. Only 21,500, in fact, are railwaymen who receive Railway houses. Apart from them, the other 80 per cent have to pay commercial rentals. They have to pay the standard rental which anyone else pays. They are paying to the Department of Community Development R40, R50 and R60 per month for a flat. They are earning R160, R170 and R180 basic salary. Yet these hon. members say I am talking nonsense when I say that an unrealistic wage structure is the cause for the overtime which is driving these men into ill-health and into family friction.

They can try and beat the racial drum as much as they like; that horse has been ridden hollowback. The railwayman has realized that he has been led along by the fear stories that the United Party would endanger his job on the Railways. They do not believe it any more. These hon. members who for two days here have said the railwayman is well paid, well off and satisfied, will find that they have lost touch with the real feeling of those people.

But, Mr. Speaker, I mentioned four things First is overtime and low wage scales, which are related. The second is the promotion system. Always, and I accept this, one will find dissatisfied people who feel that they have been overlooked. That is inevitable in any business, any society and any government. There have always been the odd people who feel they have been hard done by. But I have never seen so many complaints as I have over the last year to 18 months by people who feel they have not had a square deal. One asks them, “But why don’t you use the appeal system?” They say: “Of what use is that? It is a waste of time." The answer is that very few appeals are upheld. But I have had cases where a man has appealed and he has been turned down in the one case because the other man had merit as against his seniority. A few months later somebody else was promoted and he appealed again. He was turned down because he had the merit but the other man had the seniority. The same man was turned down twice for exactly opposite reasons. The hon. the Minister knows about the case. I sent it to him. I have dealt with it right through to the top. I could get nowhere with it. One is finding a growing dissatisfaction over the system. I say that is another field in which this Government owes the railwayman a rethink. It is a field to which we will give a rethink after April. There are all sorts of anomalies. I do not have the time to deal with them. I will just quote one case in the Harbour Service of a man who was a sailor with all the qualifications which he got from having been a sailor for years. He came in and because it is the red tape system of the Railways, he joined as a deck helper. In the last two years in which he has been in the Railways, he has acted as steersman, as coxswain and as master. He is at present acting as a master, or was two weeks ago when I left Durban. But he cannot be promoted, because other people are senior to him. They come in, not knowing the work; he has to teach them. He has to do the work, and as soon as the new man has learnt it, he goes back to deckhand. A few weeks later he is promoted, acting again. These are isolated incidents, but if one had the time, one could go on and name dozens and dozens of them. Individually they are piffling; individually they can be shot down. But when taken in the mass in which they are happening today, they are creating a spirit of dissatisfaction which I believe is not in keeping with the debt which South Africa owes the overloaded, short-staffed Railway Service.

Then I want to say that the disciplinary system is another source of serious complaint. I asked the hon. the Minister a question today as to whether railwaymen were penalized without having had a chance to defend themselves. My printed question reads as follows:

The hon. the Deputy Minister replied: No, punishment is not imposed. In a supplementary question which I have here I said: My question was not “punishment” but whether they were penalized. The hon. the Deputy Minister then said that “the reply is the same”. In other words, railwaymen are not punished without a chance to defend themselves. But I have here a letter from the System Manager in Durban, dated 2nd February, 1970. This letter was not written on his own authority, because I warned that I intended to raise this case. He referred the matter to Head Office and replied to me as follows: I will not deal with the name of the person concerned or the details. I will give them to the hon. the Minister afterwards. The letter reads:

What happened was that a person committed an alleged offence in May last year involving an allegation that two people were found on his train without tickets. In December last year, seven months later, he had not been charged and no action had been taken against him. This man then resigned. But what happened? He was penalized by being made to forfeit the interest on his contributions to the provident fund. The letter reads further:

This happened to a man who served the Railways for some 35 years. As he put it to me if he wanted to do something crooked, would he have jeopardized his career for one or two rand for two non-white third-class passengers by not issuing them tickets. What could he have got out of it if he wanted to? He said that he made his position clear. I will give the person’s name to the hon. the Minister. He was Mr. A. Meyer, a ticket examiner. From May to December he was not charged. Eventually this person got fed up, was offered a business opportunity, and resigned. I queried his case and asked how he could be punished by fining him the interest on his provident fund contributions. This is the reply I received, namely that “in the opinion of an Officer, based on information before him”, without a chance to defend himself, without a hearing or an opportunity to state his case he is fined the interest on his provident fund contributions. That hon. Deputy Minister said this afternoon that that could not happen. Is that the credibility gap of this Government? Is that what we must believe of hon. Ministers who, when you ask them a question, say “no” and here is the evidence that it can be done.

My time is running out, but I have other cases of disciplinary action which I believe are a disgrace. I want to say again that I believe the whole disciplinary system is causing discontent. I have gone into case after case. I accept that the people have made mistakes, but even for clerical mistakes people are fined. If a checker, for instance, places a parcel on the wrong lorry, and if he has done it two or three times before, he can be fined.

Nonsense.

It is not nonsense. I have seen the offence sheets and the personal files of people concerned in such cases. I accept that there have been previous convictions, but if people are working the hours these men are working under the conditions they are working, I do not blame them. I have seen gangs working with one checker where there should have been two, and this person was trying to handle two gangs of Bantu loading up lorries. If he makes a mistake he is subject to disciplinary action. I can go on and on but I want to state the incontrovertible fact that there is a great deal of dissatisfacion over the whole disciplinary system.

The fourth field in which something more could be done is that of housing. The hon. member for Bloemfontein District made a statement that was untrue this afternoon. He attacked the hon. member for Newton Park for having stated that some railwaymen have to pay high interest rates on bonds. The hon. member said that the interest rates were 31/2 to 4 per cent. I do not know who passed him that information. I would be interested to know from whom he received it on that little slip of paper he had. I have here the report of the Controller and Auditor-General on the accounts of the South African Railways Administration for the year 1967-’68. The fact is that there are two schemes. One lends a Railwayman money for a house and he pays 31/2 to 4 per cent interest on such a loan. Under the Assistant House Ownership Scheme a servant is advanced the deposit to enable him to get a bond from a building society or a bank. On the deposit he pays 31 to 4 per cent interest but on the bond he has to pay 81 to 9 per cent. Our case is that the Railways should subsidize the rentals of railway servants who cannot get railway houses and who are being forced to pay high interest rates to commercial institutions. It is easy to talk of globular sums. Hon. members opposite talk of 3 million rand for housing, but what is R3 million? If one can obtain a house for R10,000, which one can hardly get to-day, R3 million means 300 houses. We have heard of the great advance made with housing, but I want to read the footnote on housing in the report. It reads as follows:

Of those 22,727, 1,525 were not occupied. In other words, 21,000 houses are available for the whole of the South African Railway staff. This is stated in the Report of the Controller and Auditor-General, whose word I accept before those of the hon. members opposite. There are dozens of other matters I could raise. For example, in connection with the promotion system and casual clerks. I have one case where 23 people have not been paid their Christmas bonus because they were transferred from the grade “intermittent casuals” to the grade “temporary staff” during the year. Although they had unbroken service they had not worked as temporary staff for the necessary 313 shifts. These 23 men were, therefore, fined their Christmas bonus although they had unbroken service for 4 years. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, before dealing with topics of a more controversial nature and while the hon. the Minister’s mind, I trust, is still perceptive, I should like to propose a certain matter to him which I trust has the agreement of both sides of the House. [Interjections.]

Order!

I thank the hon. the Minister for at last listening to what I have to say. I want to propose a matter which I trust will have the agreement of both sides of this House. It is a matter which affects the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs of whichever Government may be in power after this election. We know of course who will be in power, but the hon. the Minister will not agree with our view. On the 24th May this year, it will be the centenary of one of the greatest men that our country’s history has ever known. I am referring to Gen. Smuts. I trust and hope that whichever Party is in power and whoever is Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, favourable consideration will be given to issuing a commemorative stamp on that memorable day. I want to put that to the hon. the Minister without any political implications, or any political second thoughts.

I now want to come to issues which are a bit more controversial. Firstly, the hon. the Minister announced that radio licences for all social pensioners would in future be R2. Of course, we are not going to oppose that. More than that, we are going to agree to a very large extent with that because it has been this side of the House, the United Party Opposition, which has fought all along throughout the years for a concession of this nature. But even then the hon. the Minister has not gone far enough. We asked for these licences to be only R1,00. He made them R2,00. He has at least accepted part of our policy, but he has not gone far enough. I trust that the country will remember how long, for how many years, we have had to fight on this particular issue and how long it has taken us ultimately to persuade the hon. the Minister to make the announcement which he made during the second reading debate. I have here a letter which proves how long we have been fighting for it. My hon. colleague the hon. member for Umbilo has been appealing and asking the Government over the past ten, twelve, fifteen years to grant a concession of this nature to the ordinary man, to the social pensioner. Do hon. members know that in 1963 the S.A.B.C. in a letter to my colleague the hon. member for Umbilo agreed that it could be done and that it should be done? However, it has been the Government itself, the hon. the Minister and his predecessor, who refused to grant this concession. A letter dated 20th February, 1963, signed by the head of the secretarial department of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, said—

This was in 1963, remember—

The S.A.B.C. has been in favour of it for the past six years. The hon. the Minister, his predecessor and the Government have been undermining this excellent principle. However, at last, after all these years, we have convinced them and persuaded them to accept at least part of the United Party policy in this regard. It is a small step forward. I suppose we cannot complain; we must congratulate the hon. the Minister halfway. Let us hope that some time in future there will be further concessions granted, I trust by a new government.

The hon. the Minister made quite a great play of the issue of television. I think everyone of us will agree that it was obvious that the hon. the Minister was not arguing with this side of the House. He was replying to objectors in his own Party. He was replying to people who, on hearing of the appointment of this commission, asked themselves: “What on earth is happening now? We thought television was such a vast evil; we thought that our Government was against television and here we see that a commission has been appointed.” The hon. the Minister appointed this commission to hide the fact of the vast division in his own party, in his own caucus and among the ordinary ranks of the Nationalist Party in regard to television.

He said that television had nothing to do with this election. He challenged us to ask him to make television an issue. Good gracious! I accept that challenge. Let us make it an issue; then we shall have the three points of view, namely, the view of the Herstigte Nasionale Party, which is a 100 per cent against television; secondly, the view of the United Party, which is 100 per cent in favour of a good television service and, thirdly, the view of the Government itself, which does not know its own mind and has to appoint a commission under the chairmanship of the Broederbond chairman to find out whether it should accept television or not. Then the hon. the Minister added: “Please remember, whatever they do decide, I am not bound by the decision of the commission; I may not accept it.” Of course, we accept that challenge. Will he make that an issue at the election? They do not even know what their policy will be. They have to ask a commission to tell them what they have to do.

I think we should look at this commission which the hon. the Minister mentioned in his speech. I, quite frankly, am not impressed by this commission; I am not impressed by its terms of reference; I am not impressed by its membership and I am not impressed by the energy and enthusiasm with which it has tackled its task. The terms of reference include this vital one, namely, that this commission has to find out whether television will be desirable for South Africa, whether it will be desirable that our children should be educated in part by one of the most modern methods of education ever yet devised; whether it would have been desirable for the people of South Africa to have seen the landing on the moon; whether it would have been desirable for us to have seen Graeme Pollock and our great South African cricketers at Durban. He does not yet know; he has to appoint a commission consisting of members of the Jukskeibond to decide on this matter.

As I have said, I am also not impressed by the membership of this television commission.

I believe that it is not fair to both sections of the South African population. The commission consists of 13 members, of which nine are Afrikaans-speaking and only four, as far as I could establish, are English-speaking. When one looks at the names of the Afrikaans-speaking members, I am sure that if the majority of them were ever to get together it would be like an old-home week of the Broederbond, with cabalistic rites and secret hand grip and all. I am not a member but enough leaks out. We know that the Broederbond is basically against television. There is a split in their ranks.

Where do you get that from? [Interjections],

I am not even impressed by that. I do not think that all four the English-speaking members appointed to the commission are really representative of English-speaking South Africans. Surely, after having appointed Prof. Horwood to the Senate as a supporter of theirs, then appointing him to this television commission is an admission that they are not looking for an independent judgment and an independent point of view. They are simply appointing supporters of their own party.

The next reason why I am not impressed with this commission is that it is entirely unrepresentative of the interests who really will be affected by television when it is introduced. There is no representative of the Press on this commission; there is no representative of the advertising industry in this country; there is no representative of sporting bodies; there is no representative of the entertainment bodies. For instance, the cinemas are not represented. It is one of the most unrepresentative commissions to decide on a vital issue that has ever been appointed in this country. This is supposed to be a commission to decide on the effect of television on family life. Why is there not a single woman on this commission, or not more than one, for that matter? Surely the mothers of South Africa are the people really to decide on the effect of television on family life.

The third reason why I am not impressed by this commission is its lack of enthusiasm in tackling its task. It must be remembered that this commission was appointed on 3rd December, 1969. In January we heard that the secretary was rushing around trying to find where the members of the commission were so that he could at least have a meeting of the television commission before the end of January. But there was no meeting at all in January. Last Friday I asked the hon. the Minister a question on this, and he then said that the commission had not yet met. And then, when we opened our papers this morning, we discovered that they had had their first formal meeting. Do you see how long it has taken them?

They adjourned.

Yes, they probably adjourned. I am quite sure they have already adjourned. How can you expect a timeous decision from this commission? It is quite clear that this television commission is a bluff. It is a bluff and a bit of a sop to the enlightened section of the Nationalist Party. I think that the light emanating from this commission is not much more than the light of a poor little lonely, love-sick firebug in a fog which has lost its battery. This is a case of a government which is in search of a policy. It is a case of a government which is afraid to put the issue of television before the voters because it has not developed a policy. It is a case of a government which has befuddled its own supporters to such an extent that its own supporters are coming and pleading with it, asking, as in the case of the sports policy: “Please tell us what has happened.” It is a case of a government who is hopelessly and basically divided on this particular issue. I only wish that the hon. the Minister and his Government just had a little bit of intestinal fortitude. If they would only go to the country and say that they are in favour of television and that they will ask the commission to report before 22nd April to say whether it is in favour or not. But I am quite sure that they will not do that. The reason is that the verkramptes in their ranks are still far too strong.

There has been a less acceptable development in regard to television. After the announcement of the appointment of this commission, we found people exploiting the idea of television. They are exploiting the ordinary people of South Africa, trying to convince them that television is definitely coming, so as to make money out of it. I am going to mention this case this evening. It is the case of a firm called Teljoy (Pty.) Ltd., or Telgeluk (Edms.) Bpk. This is one of the worst cases of the exploitation of the ordinary man that I have yet come across. It is a firm which says that it will rent television sets to subscribers when television comes. This firm seems to be sure that it will come. In its pamphlets are a wonderful set of photographs of what the television screens would look like. There are photographs of landings on the moon, entertainments, etc.

Do they show Albert?

They might even show the hon. member for Ermelo, but not yet. Now, Sir, one might ask, who are these people who are exploiting the ordinary voters of this country? Are they knowledgeable people, or people without any inside knowledge? Who are they? I think this country and this House should know. Here are their names. One is Senator G. R. Wessels, who is chairman. I do not believe that we have a Senator Wessels in our party. The second is also a Senator, Dr. J. H. Loock. The third one is a Mr. T. B. Rutstein. I see that the hon. the Minister of Transport is not in the House. He might have been able to tell us more about Mr. Rutstein. The last one is a Mr. J. J. de Villiers. Here I speak under correction, but I do believe that this is the Mr. J. J. de Villiers who is the Nationalist Party candidate in Von Brandis.

What is the point?

The point is that they are issuing a pamphlet and they are trying to persuade people to join their firm, to become members of their organization, on the condition that they will get television sets at a rental of R2.56 per week when television does come about. The hon. the Minister of Community Development seems to think it is an excellent idea. He sees nothing wrong with it.

I do not think it is an excellent idea. I do not think it is any worse than joining the United Party.

I hope that remark goes on record. He says that asking people to join Teljoy is no worse than joining the United Party. My point is that people are being asked to join and to agree in writing to pay R2.56 per week as television rental. Do you know what the rental amounts to in Great Britain? It amounts to 85 cents a week.

Nonsense!

The rental is 85 cents per week. They are asking the people here to pay three times that amount of rental, which means 300% profit. I have it in black and white and I am not talking nonsense. I say that the indecisiveness of this Government has resulted in what I want to call the exploitation of the ordinary public of South Africa.

There is no uncertainty about the policy of the United Party in this regard. We demand television. We are not in doubt whether it would be advantageous to our country. We ask this commission to report in two stages. After all, let us get that first stage over and done with, the first stage which would say whether television is desirable or not. Let us get that report before 22nd April. We do not ask it; we demand it. [Interjections.] It is utter nonsense for the hon. the Minister to say we in the United Party do not care what type of television comes. We realize that if we were to be in power and were to introduce television, it would not only be enough to say “Abracadabra!”, or “Hey presto”, “Open Sesame!”, or something like that, and that we would then immediately have television. We agreed that there should be an investigation, but there should not be this time-wasting delay of first of all deciding in principle as to whether television should be introduced or not.

For the record, I should like to read what the United Party policy on television is. I hope the hon. the Minister will listen and that we will not hear those nonsensical remarks from the other side of the House that we have no policy on television. We say—

2. The United Party Opposition further believes that the majority of citizens want television, and calls upon the Government, if it has any doubts on the matter, to hold an immediate referendum on the subject.

Possibly, if the hon. the Minister agrees, we could take this general election as a referendum on the subject. I now go on to Point No. 3—

4. The television service shall give proper attention to the cultural and language needs of the main population groups and seek to maintain a proper balance between news, entertainment and instruction.

5. To ensure this, and to expedite the introduction of television, the United Party will immediately appoint a commission to enquire into and advise on …

Yes, Mr. Speaker, we too shall have a commission, but not a commission to decide whether we should have television. It will be a commission which will have to decide on certain basic facts and certain basic items which we believe to be important, namely to enquire into and advise on—

1. (a) whether the service is to be controlled by the S.A.B.C. or a separate body created for that purpose;
2. (b) measures to ensure that the television service shall be free from bias, but that at the same time Parliament shall have full power to scrutinize its activities and finances every year.

Who formulated that policy?

This was done long before the hon. the Minister had announced the appointment of this commission. I quote further:

1. (c) The advisability of getting either colour or black and white television;
2. (d) Measures to ensure that the official languages are given equal treatment in programmes;
3. (e) Facilities for producing programmes locally and the availability of programmes in general;—

These are all matters which are to be inquired into:

1. (f) Measures to ensure that advertisers do not exercise control over programmes in any commercial service;
2. (g) The estimated cost of the service, and possible sources of revenue;
3. (h) Any other matters to achieve the aims set out above.

That is a constructive policy. That is our policy on television.

What is your policy?

They have no policy. In the little time that is left, I should like to say a few word in regard to a certain body of which there has not been as much discussion as there could have been, namely the South African Broadcasting Corporation. I believe I might just as well start at the top. It is well known that the chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation, Dr. Meyer, will be terminating his period of Office during some time this year or early next year. Could I ask the hon. the Minister whether he has considered reappointing Dr. Meyer or whether he has considered appointing someone else in his stead. A strange statement was made by the hon. the Minister recently in reply to a question of mine when he uttered the following words:

There may be instances where he does not want to give the reasons, but here he states that there may be no reason at all for re-appointing a person as a member of the Board of Governors. What is his attitude going to be in regard to Dr. Piet Meyer? Let us refer to the other appointments. We have read that Professor Weiss has been ousted from the Board of Governors. I believe the Herstigte Nasionale Party will have more to say about that than I, because my views and those of Professor Weiss do not agree. Somebody was appointed in his stead and his views do not agree with mine either. This person is nobody else than Mr. W. A. Maree. We know the gentleman and we should like to hear from the hon. the Minister why he was appointed to the Board of Governors. We should like to know what his qualifications were so that he was appointed member of the Board of Governors. We know that the hon. the Minister is an ex-organiser of the Nationalist Party in the Free State and I believe that Mr. Willie Maree is one as well. They are old political cronies. Is this simply an attempt to get an old friend on to the Board of Governors to act as a sort of a watchdog against Dr. Piet Meyer and against the verkramptes? The hon. the Minister should tell us what the qualifications are of Mr. Maree for being appointed in this particular post. [Interjections.]

Order!

One does not know to what extent the verkramptes have infiltrated the Board of the S.A.B.C. and the other echelons of that body. I want to quote from a newspaper article, whose heading is: “Top S.A.B.C. men at rebel Nat meeting, says Jaap Marais”. Mr. Marais disclosed at a public meeting in Lichtenburg “that top S.A.B.C. men attended a meeting of the Hertzog Group.” Amongst these S.A.B.C. men were Dr. Piet Meyer, Mr. Douglas Fuchs, Director of Programmes and Mr. A. M. van Schoor, editor of Die Vaderland, who broadcasts on foreign affairs. The Sunday Times also disclosed that Mr. Theo Greyling, who is largely responsible for writing “Current Affairs”, attended the meeting. To what extent have the verkramptes infiltrated into the S.A.B.C.? We ask the hon. the Minister what is he going to do about it. Merely appointing Mr. Willie Maree is not enough at all. What is he going to do about that?

The S.A.B.C. is very much a body on its own. We must realize that most other bodies associated with the Government have their books audited by the Auditor-General and their finances can be discussed in this sovereign Parliament of ours. However, this is not the case with the S.A.B.C. We read about the chairman of the S.A.B.C. going on an extended trip abroad during last year or the year before. If Mr. Willie Maree or any other Minister goes on an extended trip abroad, at least we have the right to ask in this House what it costs. We dare not ask what the trip of Dr. Piet Meyer cost. All that we can see is that the expenses of the Board of Governors increased by 30% in that particular year. In this sovereign Parliament of ours we can ask about the ministerial black yachts on wheels, the Cadillacs, but we dare not ask about the S.A.B.C. All we see in the report is that R400,000 has been spent on buying vehicles for the S.A.B.C. Calculated at approximately R2,000 a vehicle it means that 200 motor cars have been bought for the S.A.B.C. However, we dare not put a question to the hon. the Minister on that issue, because he refuses to answer anything along those lines.

I want to refer to another topic. We had a discussion on phone tapping during the discussion on the second reading of this Bill. What utter confusion there was on this issue! The hon. member for Umhlatuzana said that there was tapping, but that is was necessary. The Prime Minister said there is no tapping at all. The hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, however, said that he did not authorize any tapping, but if other departments have done so, or if we suspect they have, we had to ask them. Here we had three different points of view on the issue of tapping. The real answer came from my colleague the hon. member for Umbilo, who proved that tapping has taken place at the instigation of the Government. The hon. the Minister had the political effrontery to accuse the Durban Corporation on account of that. Does he not realize that it was the security branch of the police of his Government who asked the Durban Corporation whether the phones could be tapped? Does he not know that there was a …

I did not say that.

Very well then, let me ask the hon. the Minister a question. The hon. the Minister said that the Post Office had nothing to do with that, but did he know that a representative of the Post Office was present at the meeting where the tapping was discussed? Now he tells that he has said nothing. Now the hon. the Minister can say nothing. Did he know that, yes or no?

I was not Minister of Posts and Telegraphs in 1960.

There we have the answer; he does not know. Why did he come here with denials if he was not even a Minister at that time? [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, from the discussion of the third reading of this Bill it is quite clear to us that the Opposition is making a final attempt not only to prevent this legislation from being approved, but also to use this opportunity to indulge in some scandal-mongering. The Opposition is aware of the fact that the Post Office as a department has been independent financially for merely a year now. It was only during the past financial year that they had their own funds at their disposal for capital expenditure and other expenses. The hon. member who has just sat down, raised a few matters here to which I would like to refer. In the first place, he claimed credit for the Opposition for having made the pleas which lead to the reduction of radio licencing fees for pensioners and scholars. He referred to the fact that the S.A.B.C. had also said in 1963 that it was essential that the amount payable should be R1. Considering what the income of pensioners was in 1963, we can understand that they would have found it more difficult at that time to take advantage of this concession in respect of licencing fees and to pay the small amount of R2. The value of the money they had to pay for those licences in proportion to the pension they used to receive every month, was much greater than it is to-day. They can, therefore, afford more to-day because pensions were increased yearly since 1963. For that reason they are now, under the present circumstances, better able to pay this small amount. For that reason the concession announced by the hon. the Minister, is so important. It is alleged by those hon. members that it was their pleas that convinced the Government of the necessity of a step such as this. I can say quite frankly here that since I have been a member of this House, not one suggestion made by the Opposition has done anything to convince this Government of the necessity of such a step. This Government acts quite independently according to circumstances and according to what is right, fair and possible.

The hon. member also had a great deal to say about television. He said they were not impressed by the commission of enquiry appointed by the Minister into the possibility of introducing television in South Africa. Whether they are impressed or not, leaves us cold. Up to now not one hon. member on that side of the House has made the slightest attempt to calculate what television is going to cost, or what effect television is going to have on the people of South Africa; whether salaried people in this country will be able to afford it or not or whether the system will not be too expensive or hopelessly unpractical and inadequate. They have not made any suggestions as to how it will be possible to make television available to all the races in South Africa in the light of the variety of languages they speak. All we got from them, were vague statements which were actually made with a view to the election. I still remember what they said before the last election, namely “If you want T.V., vote U.P.” or something of that nature. The idea was that if people voted for them, we would got television. This was said without consideration being given as to how it would be used, what the cost and effect of it would be and what kind of films could be made available. All these considerations did not carry any weight with them. It is typical of the Opposition to act in this manner. As far as this matter is concerned, I want to lay it specifically at their door tonight that, during all these years that we have known them as an Opposition, they have never said or suggested anything which served to promote the Afrikaans language and culture in South Africa. We have never heard one word to that effect from that side of the House. Their attitude has always been one of materialism and unpatriotism. For that reason we cannot expect them to take up the cudgels for the Afrikaans language and culture at all. I shall be glad if those hon. members can mention one example now which will convince us that they have, in fact, done something to promote the Afrikaans language and culture. What is more, they do not want to do anything for South Africa as a whole, the more so since we became a Republic in 1961. They did not want South Africa to become a Republic. For that reason we cannot expect them to take up the cudgels for the language and culture of the Afrikaner and for everything that is dear to a South African. Over the years they have adopted only one attitude, and that is to fix their gaze on strangers overseas and not on South Africa.

In the short time I still have at my disposal, I want to say that this commission of enquiry referred to will possibly bring South Africa television. If they were to make a recommendation of this nature, and if the Government were to accept the recommendation the people of South Africa would know that they are going to have a fine television system in South Africa, a system which everyone will be able to afford. People will then be able to watch future moon landings. I believe that a great number of the Opposition members are still going to go to the moon one day. I shall be glad to be able to see on television how they land on the moon. One of those hon. members expressed criticism as regards the members appointed on the commission and also asked, inter alia, why no women were appointed on the commission. A woman may well be appointed on the commission at a later stage after a favourable recommendation of this nature has been made and after the Government has decided that programming, and so forth, has to be worked out. At that stage there will be ample opportunity for a number of women to be appointed on the commission. Why should this be done at this stage? This is criticism which really has no substance.

The hon. member referred to the fact that people wanting to rent out television sets are already advertising it even at this early stage. This is a personal matter; it has nothing to do with this House or with our party or with the Opposition. Any person can start a business undertaking of this nature. These people have already been warned by various sources that they do these things solely at their own responsibility.

Comment was also made as regards the appointment of members of the Board of Governors of the S.A.B.C. I am grateful that the hon. member for Orange Grove has not been appointed on the Board of Governors yet. There is one other matter as regards the S.A.B.C. I want to refer to briefly, namely the improved programme broadcast for the farmers of South Africa at 6 o’clock in the morning. This programme really provides in a great need. We want to thank the Board of Governors and the people responsible for the programming for that excellent service rendered to the farmers of South Africa.

In conclusion, I want to say that the Department of Posts and Telegraphs deserves that we pass the third reading of this Bill. As was stated quite clearly by the hon. the Minister during the second reading debate, major capital works have to be undertaken. For that reason it is essential that we make available these amounts at this stage, otherwise the hon. the Minister cannot proceed with this work. We are confident that, with the amount they have at their disposal, they will be able to carry out what they have set for themselves as an ideal.

Mr. Speaker, in the few moments granted to me I shall be able to touch upon a few points only. The first point I should like to touch upon, is that of telephone tapping. The hon. the Minister said that a few years ago I had allegedly said that no tapping was taking place. I should like to ask him to correct his findings slightly. At that time I said, and this is all I have always said, "By the Post Office”. No tapping is being done by the Post Office. I have never said that tapping is not being done by other bodies and persons. I maintain that tapping is in fact being done by other departments, by the Police Department in fact.

Did you allow it when you were Minister?

The Minister of Posts is not in a position to allow or not to allow it, for this is being done on the quiet. It can be done on the quiet. It is very easy for us to ascertain whether or not this is the case. We need not level the accusations at one another here that one or another person is telling an untruth. After all, there is an easy way of ascertaining this. I want to challenge the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs and the hon. the Prime Minister to take steps whereby it will be easy for us to ascertain this. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to recommend to the Prime Minister that a select committee be appointed to investigate that matter. That select committee should have the freedom to enter every Office and every building where necessary. If that is done, we shall very soon get behind the truth. I want to tell the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Prime Minister that if they do not accept this challenge I am afraid that only one conclusion can be drawn, i.e. that, in the first place, tapping does in fact take place in South Africa and, in the second place, we shall unfortunately arrive at the other conclusion that there are certain Ministers whose word one cannot accept in this House. There is only one way in which these two conclusions can be prevented, and that is by appointing a select committee to investigate this matter.

Now I come to the next point, namely that of television. The Government has appointed a commission of enquiry in order to ascertain whether television is desirable. Unfortunately I regret that I have to tell the hon. the Minister that his arguments carry very little conviction. I can only conclude that when one advances unconvincing arguments for steps one takes, there must be other considerations; there must be reasons other than the reason one reveals. This must be the case. The conclusion I arrive at. is either that the Government is already giving serious consideration to introducing it, or that it has in point of fact already decided that it will introduce it. The hon. the Minister advanced two main reasons why he had to introduce television. He said that it is in fact true that Dr. Verwoerd was against it, but that was ten years ago. He forgets that Dr. Verwoerd died only three years ago, in 1966.

Who says Dr. Verwoerd was against it?

He said that Dr. Verwoerd had been against it ten years ago. He also said that circumstances had changed a great deal since then. According to the hon. the Minister these circumstances had changed, in the first place, because of scientific changes and, in the second place, because of economic changes. Let us take first the changes in the economic sphere which the hon. the Minister advanced as a reason. As regards the scientific sphere, he said, television broadcasts from satellites had now become a possibility. This means that by means of satellites other countries can transmit to us television broadcasts which we have to receive here in South Africa; and from that observation one infers that it would be better if one had one’s own system. This is a very unfortunate argument, because it is after all very easy to prevent this. The hon. the Minister need only licence all television sets with this personal licence and refuse to permit people to have television sets in their possession or use. Then this possibility would be prevented altogether.

Oh, a dictator?

That is precisely one of the complaints we have to-day. It is no longer merely a question of what the Government is doing, but of what they do not have the courage to do. There are more sins which are being committed in South Africa to-day because they do not have the courage to take action, than the fact that they are making wrong decisions, and the wrong decisions are already large enough in number. That is why I say that if the wish to safeguard the people does exist, one has it in one’s hands. This is an easy means. But let us now deal with the economic sphere. The hon. the Prime Minister said the major change had occurred in the economic sphere, because we had a micro-wave network in South Africa. However, what he did not say, was that the micro-wave network merely meant that there was a micro-wave line between Johannesburg and Cape Town with a slight detour, and another between Johannesburg and Durban and a little further. This is not a network over South Africa. In other words, these “networks” do not affect the major part of South Africa at all. In point of fact. they do not affect the Rand, nor that extensive, densely populated area, because they can do without that network. No, the most densely populated part of South Africa—Pretoria, the Rand and Vereeniging—is not affected by that argument. The only area which is in fact affected by it, really amounts to Bloemfontein and the coastal towns, because that is the course the micro-wave line follows at present. This is, after all, no argument. This is, after all, no change. That major complex has been there all these years, just as it was in the time of Dr. Verwoerd. In the time of Dr. Verwoerd he said, “No.” But that hon. member says things have changed since Dr. Verwoerd’s time.

What did Dr. Verwoerd say in 1965?

I am coming to that.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

Please, my time is so limited, if the hon. member does not mind. [Interjections.] No, I am prepared to answer if the Speaker would allow me more time. I have been granted a terribly short time to speak.

You are merely running away.

I am not afraid of replying to any question. This is just another example of the fact that this Government has absolutely closed its eyes, or is trying with open eyes to destroy one after the other—and to destroy them quickly—the wise principles which our people retained in the past, and to deviate from all the principles which one of our greatest leaders pegged out for us, one after the other. That great leader showed us the course we had to follow, also in regard to television.

Let me now deal with what Dr. Verwoerd said in order to show how the hon. the Minister and that side of the House are absolutely deviated from his policy and doing infinite harm to the white man in South Africa.

What did Jan van Riebeeck say?

Dr. Verwoerd said in the first place that it would be wrong for us to introduce in South Africa a black-and-white television system, because the whole world was moving in the direction of colour television. It would be better to wait until we were able to introduce colour television. If television had to come, one had to wait until colour television could be introduced, because, so he said, the cost of the conversion would from the nature of the case, according to our knowledge to-day, be astronomical. The cost will be so exorbitant that it will be foolish to introduce at this stage a black-and-white system when the colour television system may be introduced in the future. The conversion alone is terribly expensive. Therefore, Sir, at present it is not yet possible for us to introduce colour television with great success. That first requirement which was laid down by Dr. Verwoerd, has not yet been complied with at all.

But let us now deal with the second requirement. He said that there were in the world various frequencies on which television was being broadcast. To change over from one frequency to another, is a terribly expensive process. We know that there is a difference in the frequencies used by France, England, America and other countries. It would be foolish for us to decide on a frequency before knowing what the civilized world will eventually decide and prove to us what the best frequency is, because we shall have to convert again at an enormous loss for the population. I say that the second requirement laid down by Dr. Verwoerd, has not been complied with either. And the Government on that side and the hon. the Minister still want to proceed with this policy and proclaim that they are pursuing Dr. Verwoerd’s principles.

But let me deal with the third principle. The third principle stated by Dr. Verwoerd is as follows: He said television was a luxury from which only certain people benefited and that it involved an infinite number of disadvantages. He said that since it was not essential, but a luxury article, it would be foolish to start something the cost of which would be enormous, when such a large portion of the population of the country was looking forward to economic aid and development. There are thousands of farmers who find themselves in most distressing circumstances, young people who do not have homes, pensioners who are almost finding it impossible to make a living, medical expenses which have become astronomical, and the water resources of the country which have to be developed. Dr. Verwoerd’s wise policy was that one did not choose a luxury article at enormous cost when one’s own people had to forego essentials. I want to repeat that hon. members opposite are only thinking of enriching a certain little group of merchants and not of looking after the interests of the farmer and the small man. Nor are they interested in the need of pensioners and of those persons who require hospital services. This is the state into which that party has unfortunately fallen.

Now I want to deal with the fourth requirement that was set by Dr. Verwoerd. He said, “It is true that where physical danger is visited upon a country, a Government always tries to keep a new invention out of that country.” He also said that “if there is spiritual danger of possible harm being done to one’s society, a similar attitude should be adopted”. Is this not a deadly argument from a clear-sighted person? He said that one could not destroy one’s nation. If something is capable of doing spiritual harm m one’s country, that thing dare not be introduced. These are the words of Dr. Verwoerd and also his fourth requirement. Everybody has admitted the harm television can do. British merchants have calculated that they will make a profit of R200 million out of the introduction of television in South Africa. Rather than looking after the interests of their own people, hon. members opposite are looking after the interests of those people overseas, of their few rich friends who want to extort vast riches from the public of the Republic of South Africa, and of firms in Britain which want to make a profit of R200 million. Television is a spiritual danger, and because it is a spiritual danger we must avoid and avert it until eventually it will no longer be a spiritual danger, and that time I do not foresee at all. [Interjections.]

Order! Hon. members should refrain from becoming frivolous.

I should like to refer to a report which appeared in the Washington Post. Hon. members opposite are doing precisely what our enemies want them to do. This publication is a deadly enemy of South Africa. This is what it said—

This is the modern life of America and England—

This is the American and English approach to racial problems—

This newspaper foresees that this hon. Minister and the Government are planning to bring these films and television programmes into the home of every White person in South Africa. The influence of the cinema does not achieve enough and must now be carried right into the home of every person. Those people would then be broken down spiritually and the children would be prepared for accepting the race attitudes of America and England. This is what they are doing. I cannot but remind myself once again of the words of that leader. Here we have the mouthpiece of five of the hon. Ministers on that side of the House, i.e. Dagbreek. This is the mouthpiece which expresses their opinions; the mouthpiece which expresses their points of view, for otherwise it would after all not be able to exist. Their approval has been attached to it. I want to repeat that the attitude adopted by the Washington Post tallies precisely with the attitude adopted by Dagbreek, which is as follows (translation)—

This is what is behind it. They are playing precisely into the hands of our enemies who are now engaged in destroying the old Afrikaner world, that old Afrikaner world which in the time of Dr. Verwoerd was the good world. This is the world that was accepted by those people three years ago. They are now destroying that world which is the salvation of the South African and the White man in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, to-night the hon. member for Ermelo once again accused us in this House, as he has been doing before the public outside, of forsaking the principles of the late Dr. Verwoerd. The hon. member quoted from the speech Dr. Verwoerd made in this House in 1960. The hon. member for Ermelo said that we were destroying and breaking down the principles for which Dr. Verwoerd had stood. He also mentioned the principles here. Is the hon. member for Ermelo not ashamed of this incorrect interpretation of the words of Dr. Verwoerd? I want to read out to the hon. member what the first principle in regard to this matter is, as Dr. Verwoerd saw it. This is recorded in the same Hansard from which he quoted, in column 3002. He can check me. The Prime Minister’s words were as follows—

This is the first principle Dr. Verwoerd laid down on that occasion. But the hon. member for Ermelo did not mention this; he mentioned other principles here. The hon. member for Innesdal now wants to suggest that this was a general statement by Dr. Verwoerd. However, Dr. Verwoerd himself laid this down as the first principle. This is the way they quote Dr. Verwoerd. I should also like to quote what the hon. member for Innesdal said in this House in 1965. This could just as well have been my voice in reply to the hon. member for Orange Grove the other night. He said—

This is what that hon. member said five years ago during the regime of the late Dr. Verwoerd.

If you read my whole speech, you will know what conditions were laid down.

But to-night we are told that it is we who are running away from the principles of Dr. Verwoerd. They interpret their own words just as they please. I am very glad that the hon. member for Ermelo has taken part in this debate, because he, too, has attacked me outside this House by saying that I did not re-appoint Prof. Weiss, not because I wanted to break down the Hertzog idea in the Broadcasting Corporation, but because I was in point of fact breaking down the principles for which Dr. Verwoerd had stood. This is the argument. The hon. member used the fact that Prof. Weiss had not been re-appointed to show the country that I was breaking down the Verwoerd school of thought in the S.A.B.C. It has apparently slipped the hon. member’s memory that Prof. Weiss was not appointed by the Verwoerd Government. Prof. Weiss was appointed by the Vorster Government in 1967.

Who recommended him?

I sat very quietly while the hon. member for Ermelo made his speech. I now expect him to display the same common courtesy for which he was known to us in the past, and also to afford me the opportunity of replying to him.

But your colleagues …

I did it. I have nothing to do with my colleagues now. I have nothing to do with the hon. member, either. I am dealing with the hon. member for Ermelo now. I merely expect a little courtesy and civility from the hon. member. Who is the person the Government appointed in the place of Prof. Weiss? It is ex-Minister Willie Maree.

A verligte.

He was appointed by Dr. Verwoerd to his Cabinet in 1958, along with the hon. member for Ermelo. Along with the hon. member for Ermelo he served in that Cabinet until Dr. Verwoerd’s death in 1966. But in appointing ex-Minister Willie Maree, a ministerial appointment by Dr. Verwoerd, I am allegedly breaking down the Verwoerd idea and the Verwoerd principles in the S.A.B.C. This merely goes to show, Sir, how fond the hon. member for Ermelo is of the truth. The truth merely has to be slanted slightly so that, at least, it may still create the impression of truth. I want to tell the hon. member for Ermelo to-night that we are not breaking down the Verwoerd principles. I am not engaged in destroying Dr. Verwoerd’s principles in the Post Office or in the S.A.B.C. I am in fact engaged in breaking down and destroying the spirit of mistrust, the spirit of suspicion and the spirit of slander which that hon. member wanted to bring into the Post Office and the S.A.B.C. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member for Rosettenville is enjoying himself too much. The hon. the Minister may proceed.

What is more, the hon. member for Ermelo did not even show me the courtesy of being present here to listen to me when I replied at length to the second reading of this debate and justified the appointment of the commission of enquiry.

I read all of that in Hansard.

You read all of it. In the newspapers?

No, in Hansard.

In the English newspapers in which the hon. member is now so assiduously searching for the truth, I take it.

I asked for your Hansard.

Oh, at least you read my speech. The hon. member has therefore read at least one good speech lately.

The hon. member for Innesdal really need not have such a fit of nerves. The other night I said that the hon. member had thought he had dug a huge pit for me in order to bury me in it, and while he was still doing this, he found himself in a very sorry plight.

I challenge you to prove that I have given away military information.

Both of those hon. members were not present here the other night. But why did the hon. member for Innesdal not ask the hon. member for Ermelo the meaning of the word “listening-in”?

I look in the dictionary. Do you ask your leader what the meaning of a word is?

No, but why did the hon. member not ask his Leader?

Do you ask your Leader what the meaning of an English or an Afrikaans word is?

Or did the hon. member perhaps ask his Leader, and the latter was unable to answer this question? If the hon. member for Innesdal wanted to take the trouble to consult his Leader about the meaning of this word, the hon. the Leader could perhaps have prevented him from falling into this pit which he had dug for me. Does the hon. member for Ermelo now want to tell me that he did not know the meaning of the word either? I will not get a reply. I want to ask the hon. member for Ermelo again whether he really did not know the meaning of the word “listening-in”?

Everybody knows this is a stupid question.

The hon. member must not give me a stupid reply. Even if this is supposed to be a stupid question, did the hon. member for Ermelo not know the meaning of the word “listening-in”?

But surely you know, because, after all, you heard what I said the last time.

No, I will not get a reply, because the hon. member must now have time to think first so that he may once again twist the truth. After all, then it would at least create the impression of truth. The hon. member for Ermelo knows just as well as any Minister in this Cabinet does what the word “listening-in” means. If he does not know or did not know it, I want to tell him that either his memory failed him, or he did his homework as Minister very badly. I can now understand that the hon. member did not do his homework every day, because he was too busy with other matters.

Must the hon. the Minister always try to blacken everything?

This is the position, or else it was simply a blatant attempt on the part of the hon. member for Innesdal, and I am more inclined to assume this, to reveal military secrets of the country in this House.

I challenge the hon. the Minister to prove to me that these are military secrets.

Hon. members opposite, one may as well call them the co-Opposition, enjoyed the speech made by the hon. member for Orange Grove to-night. The hon. member for Orange Grove would not have believed his eyes if he had seen how attentively the hon. member for Ermelo listened to him to-night. To-day the hon. member for Orange Grove and the hon. member for Ermelo enjoyed being in partnership in talking about the tapping of telephones. They also enjoyed each other’s company in talking about television. Both of them say that we are bluffing.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23 and debate adjourned.