I move the following amendment—

1. (a) pursuing a policy of deliberate overtaxation in order to produce large surpluses;
2. (b) failing to make proper provision to protect die fixed income group, and particularly pensioners, from the continual increase in the cost of living;
3. (c) the ill-considered and unnecessary scope and severity of the sales duty;
4. (d) its indecisive management of credit and currency control”.

Before I come to the amendment, there are a couple of matters I should like to mention to the hon. the Minister. The first refers to the oil find on land, what Dr. Kuschke has referred to as the first tangible result of the continuing search for oil on land. Soekor has issued a carefully worded statement to the effect that a small quantity of crude oil had been found at a depth of 7,400 feet at Colchester in the Port Elizabeth area. The statement further said that further tests were being carried out to establish the extent of the find, which at this stage seemed unlikely to produce oil in commercial quantities. On Friday morning the Press reported this and the Government Press in particular had banner headlines such as “We Have Oil”, etc. Naturally this statement produced tremendous interest in the country. We all know that oil is the Achilles heel of the country and this discovery naturally raised hopes in which we all share. But I do think that if is important to keep a proper perspective on the matter before the public and I hope that the hon. the Minister or his colleague the Minister of Mines will come into this debate to make an authoritative statement on the matter, showing how much importance can be attached to the find, which undoubtedly is an important one.

The other point I want to raise with the hon. the Minister is this. There has been talk recently and comment in certain newspapers of the Government Press of the possibility, or even the desirability, of an early devaluation of the rand.

Which paper was that?

Dagbreek was one. [Interjections.] It does not really matter which paper it was, but it has appeared in the Press which is commonly regarded as supporting the Government. When discussions of that kind occur in papers supporting the Government, the public are liable to say that there is no smoke without fire; and goodness knows our money market is nervous enough without the idea of devaluation hanging over its head as well. I expect the hon. the Minister to deny it. I believe that if he did intend to devalue, it would not be announced in that way well in advance. [Interjections.] My reason for mentioning the matter is that I hope the Minister will do more than that and that he will declare emphatically that he can see no sound reason or necessity for devaluing the rand, and I hope he will be able to make such a statement in his reply to this debate, which will effectively stop such speculations or rumours.

I now come to the amendment I moved. In regard to taxation, over the years the Government has accumulated surpluses which are gradually amounting to nearly R1,400 million, and I find it impossible to believe that this continued accumulation of surpluses is due to anything but a policy of deliberately underestimating revenue in order to produce large surpluses without openly saying so. I believe that this is a wrong policy. I believe it is wrong, in the first place because it places an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer, and, secondly, because it creates an impression that money is no object, and it increases pressure on the hon. the Minister to make money available for unnecessary things. Under “unnecessary things” some people might include a Cabinet of 24 Ministers and Deputy Ministers. I think the hon. the Minister knows that pressure will be brought to bear on him to make funds available for things which cannot possibly be regarded as essential.

Sir, when the hon. the Minister introduced his Budget last year, he estimated that his surplus would be about R58 million. We tried throughout the session, right up to the end of last session, to find out what it actually was, but the Minister did not tell us; he did not reply to direct questions on this subject, so we did not know. We now have the Auditor-General’s report, in which we find that the surplus was not R58 million but R75 million, very big increase in customs duty. Under Ex-As a consequence, the hon. the Minister has at his disposal the Stabilization Fund, amounting to R341 million; surpluses over the past two years, up to March of last year, amounting to R105 million, after allocating RIO million to the Economic Co-operation Fund, and then there is the Taxation Equalization Fund, started by his predecessor, the late Dr. Dönges, which now amounts to R45 million. That means that the hon. the Minister has R491 million tucked away in one fund or another. As far as the Taxation Equalization Fund is concerned, it is an interesting point that there was put into that Fund over two years, up to 1965, an amount of nearly R38 million. It has earned interest amounting to R7 million since then; that takes it to R45 million. This R38 million was given by the Government to the Public Debt Commissioners. The Public Debt Commissioners presumably invested most of that money in Government stocks, and the question arises: Who pays the interest; where does the R7 million interest come from? The answer, of course, is that it comes from the taxpayer, so you have the interesting position that the taxpayer, who saved R38 million, which the Government is using, is now being called upon to pay R1 million interest a year on its own saving, which seems rather a peculiar state of affairs.

Sir, this year’s Estimates bear looking at because they are typical of the way in which figures are put before this House. I am going to quote from the latest Government figures in the Government Gazette of 7th February. According to those figures the Government’s revenue for the 12 months was estimated at R1.661 million; that was an increase of R158 million over the previous year. In the first nine months—these are the latest figures we have—revenue has amounted to R1,277 million compared with R1,046 million in the previous year, an increase for the nine months of R231 million over the previous year. In other words, Sir, in nine months the hon. the Minister has collected R73 million more than he budgeted for by way of increase for the whole year. One wonders what his surplus is going to be at the end of March. Of course, we still have the Additional Estimates, of which he has given notice this afternoon; we do not know how much they are going to be but I expect they will be pretty big. and I have no doubt that he will make them as large as he can. In addition to that, he has told us that the sales tax in respect of the last quarter, the last three months, is being held over to be paid in the next financial year. Sir, this increase is not fortuitous; it is not due to an increase under any particular head; it applies to almost every head of taxation. Take customs, for instance. The hon. the Minister expected to get R4.7 million more customs duty in the whole of this year than he got the previous year. Well, in the first nine months he got not R4.7 million; he has already got R26 million. Then with reference to sales duty on imported goods, I should like to ask the Minister: Is that duty credited to Customs or is it credited to Sales Duty? Otherwise it seems a very big increase in customs duty. Under Excise he budgeted for an increase of R19.6 million; in the first nine months he has got R23.4 million. In regard to Inland Revenue he budgeted for an increase of R48 million and in the first nine months he got an increase of R122 million. Under Income Tax he expected an increase of R35 million for the year and he has already got R87 million in the first nine months. Under Stamp Duties he hoped for an extra R5 million; he has got R17 million in the first nine months. Under Marketable Securities he wanted R10 million more and he got R17 million more in the first nine months.

That is not estimating, it is “guesstimating”.

What about your prophecy of unemployment and a recession?

Sir, I think the hon. the Minister feels a little guilty about this. But he said, of course, that these increases in taxes are associated with a high level of prosperity. Surely, Sir, that is a platitude. All taxes depend on the rate of prosperity and the ability of the taxpayer to pay. Surely the hon. the Minister will not really argue that the level of prosperity is nearly twice as high to-day as it was last year when he was preparing his budget figures?

No, Sir, I think these figures simply reinforce our argument that what the country needs is a government which deliberately and honestly aims at a balanced budget. Talk about the credibility gap, Mr. Speaker! When it comes to the Minister’s estimates the gap is as wide as False Bay; it is nearly as wide as in the case of the weather forecasts. I am reminded that the late Mr. Eric Louw, when the weather forecasts were stopped during the war, called on the then Government to restart the weather forecasts with the sole object of misleading the enemy. It almost seems that the hon. the Minister of finance regards the unfortunate taxpayer as his enemy instead of being his best friend. I wish I could say that the taxpayers regard the Minister as their best friend.

I now come to the question of the sales tax. The hon. the Minister said that this tax increased the cost of living by only .07 per cent. No tax, either in its scope or in the severity of its application, has, I believe, caused more resentment since Mr. Burton’s famous patent medicine tax way back in the early twenties. That tax, incidentally, lost the government of the day the next election. In his Budget Speech, the hon. the Minister, referring to the sales tax, said that “if the income tax … is reduced, and if the sales duty is applied in a selective manner, namely not on basic necessities, then the case for it is even stronger”. We know what happened. When the list appeared, we tried to reconcile it with the hon. the Minister’s statement. We found, for instance, that the Minister does not regard soap as a basic necessity. I wonder whether his family agreed with that. Talk about the credibility gap, Sir! We hear a good deal about the permissive society. In this case it seems as though the hon. the Minister is preparing us for a “muishond” society. That was typical of the list we received.

Sir, we accepted the principle of the sales tax, but we urged that it should be confined to a small tax on luxury and semi-luxury goods. We believed that with that, he would be able to balance his budget. Surely events have proved that we were quite right. The hon. the Minister now says that he discovered towards the end of last year that the tax would have a somewhat higher yield than he expected. Sir, we told him that a year ago. If only the hon. the Minister would more often take the sound, constructive advice of this side of the House, what a lot of trouble he would save himself and the country! Now, having come to that belated conclusion, he has made a few reductions. He has reduced the tax on soap from 10 per cent to 5 per cent. Apparently he is now only half convinced that soap is not a basic necessity. But why not abolish that tax altogether? Why merely reduce the tax from 10 per cent to 5 per cent? I wonder whether the hon. the Minister, between attending high society weddings, ever spares a thought for the unfortunate man who has to eke out a living on R35 a month, and who has to pay 10 per cent tax on every cake of soap he buys.

The Minister, in addition to reducing the sales tax, has now announced that the sales tax for the last quarter will be collected in the next financial year. He says that he is doing this out of consideration for the taxpayer and the officials in his own department. It will suit everybody, he said. I cannot accept that. Sir. I think that the Minister is taking this step out of shame for the surplus with which he is con-confronted. It is quite obvious to any objective observer that all the fuss and bother over this tax would have been quite unnecessary had it been properly handled. This tax could have been imposed in such a way that it would balance the Budget. That is the very reason why it was introduced, and not to produce a large surplus. After the 22nd April, we shall abolish the sales tax on all real necessities. We shall confine this tax to luxury and semi-luxury items. We shall make it possible and we shall interpret the term “real necessities” in a sensible way and not in the way in which it has been interpreted by the hon. the Minister in the present list of dutiable commodities.

I come now to section (b) of the amendment in which we charge the Government with not having made proper provision for pensioners and the fixed income group. Other speakers will deal with this point in more detail. I should like to observe that we now have the Minister coming here with a proposal to give R10 million in a full year. Here we have the Minister with a nest egg of nearly R500 million. Mr. Speaker, that is some nest! He has a nest egg of nearly R500 million, the prospect of a substantial surplus in the current year and every indication that revenue will continue to be buoyant, but what is he doing? He is offering social pensioners 6-t cents per day. That little more than covers the increase in the cost of living. Does the hon. the Minister really think that an old age pensioner can live decently on R35 per month to-day? Does anybody in this House think so? [Interjections.] It is becoming more and more apparent that the only solution is a contributory pension scheme without a means test that will enable our old people to live decently in their declining years.

They only received R10 a month in your time.

Never mind about what happened in our time. We are dealing with what is not happening under the present government. The old age pensioner to-day is not interested in what happened 25 years ago, but he is very much concerned about the lack of concern on the part of the present government when it comes to his life to-day.

You hope so for election purposes.

Mr. Speaker, listen to that hon. Minister. I can only say in conclusion that it appears to me that the hon. Minister of finance’s handling the finances of this country is on a par with the general mishandling of national affairs by this deplorable Government of which he happens to be a member. This is a Government which is obsessed with ideologies, careless of the needs of the people and blind to the collision course with the rest of the world on which it has set the country, and which should be removed without delay if South Africa is to continue to live in peace and to prosper.

Mr. Speaker, what we have been hearing here to-day is in point of fact a repetition of every speech usually made immediately prior to an election. The years have taught us that with the approach of an election there is one thing which the United Party can do very well indeed without its having the necessary means at its disposal to carry that through, and that is to make promises to the electorate. It promises the voters to do more for them and to take less from their pockets by way of taxation. These two promises cannot be reconciled with each other in the first place. We have learned that as soon as the election has been held and the United Party has been given a sound beating, these promises disappear one after the other until they are again served up with the same sauce and in the same way five years later. I shall come to several of the points raised here to-day by the hon. member for Constantia.

Let us first go back to the speech he made here on Friday. At the beginning he put two questions to the hon. the Minister. Any reasonable person may expect that if one person puts questions to another, that person should wait for the replies to those questions before taking up a standpoint. But the hon. member did not do so. He put two questions and immediately proceeded to furnishing the replies himself. At the same time he launched an attack on the Minister.

The first question was why the Minister had not made the statement in Parliament that had been made by the president of the Reserve Bank the day before in connection with the relaxation of credit control. Why had he detracted from the rights of Parliament? Sir, we know that the hon. the Minister is a man who upholds the rights and the dignity of this House at all times. But what surprises me is that that question and statement came from a person who was a Minister himself in his time and who ought to know better than the ordinary member of Parliament. Parliament has empowered the Reserve Bank to bring about relaxations in credit control or to tighten such control further in consultation with the Treasury. This is a power that has been laid down in law. Now the hon. member wants to withdraw those powers and return them to the hands of the Minister so that announcements may be made not by the president of the Reserve Bank, but by the Minister here in Parliament. Throughout the years it has been the practice that announcements of this nature of which this was, what is more, not a very important one—it was a very small concession— are made by the president of the Reserve Bank. Therefore this charge levelled by the hon. member was completely unreasonable and unfair. I may say that it was false.

The second charge was of a more serious nature. He referred to the so-called “credibility gap”. He said the Minister had made one statement in the House of Assembly and had made another statement in the Senate that evening. In the second place he referred to what the State President had said in his Opening Address and alleged that the hon. the Minister had subsequently made a different statement. These are the two examples he quoted to prove that the hon. the Minister was a “prime example of a credibility gap”. This is a serious accusation. If only the hon. member had waited until he had received his replies! But he did not wait. Firstly, the hon. the Minister said in this House that he did not expect a relaxation of exchange control as he would not solve the gold marketing problem within the foreseeable future. The hon. member ought to know that things move quickly on the economic scene. The information one has that day and the day after is not that which one has that evening. To me the United Party seems to think very slowly and move even more slowly. After the hon. the Minister had made the statement in this House, he received information that very day that negotiations in connection with gold sales which had been in progress for many months had been successful. The Minister was then faced with the question whether he should first wait before making a statement in that regard which would enable exchange control to be relaxed slightly or whether he had to make the statement immediately. What is in the interests of the country? It is in the interests of the country and of the public that the hon. the Minister should make a statement immediately when a new situation arises. That very day a new situation arose and he fulfilled his duty towards the country by making a statement immediately and by doing what he had wanted to do for a long time, i.e. to announce a small relaxation of exchange control. In this way he wanted to prevent share prices from climbing even higher and people from burning their fingers even more.

Why did he not give an explanation?

When a statement is made it is not necessary to give an explanation as well. The hon. the Minister did what the interests of the country required him to do, but hon. members on that side of this House do not realize this. The State President said in his Opening Address that he did not foresee a general relaxation of credit control. What is the difference between saying that a general relaxation of credit control is not being foreseen and that a relaxation of credit control is not being foreseen? There is a big difference between these two statements. Hon. members opposite should develop their powers of comprehension to some extent. If the word “general” does not have any meaning, why use the word? We who are familiar with these words know that there is a big difference between those two concepts. Hon. members opposite speak of a “credibility gap”, but I wonder whether they do not have an “intelligence gap”. We on this side of the House object most strongly to the words used by the hon. member for Constantia, i.e. the so-called “credibility gap”. These are words which do not suit the hon. member and which are not worthy of him.

I now come to another idea mooted by the hon. member. The hon. member spoke of the possible devaluation of the rand. It is true that when the United Party handed over the reins of government to the National Party in the forties, the position of our monetary unit was such that it had to be devalued. The country was in financial difficulties, there were large balance of payment deficits and our monetary unit had to be devalued.

Whose fault was that?

Your fault. Let us examine the position of our monetary unit under the National Party rule. To-day the rand is one of the strongest monetary units in the world. I am surprised that the hon. member for Constantia put such a question under the circumstances. Surely the hon. member ought to know this. I should like to quote what Dr. Pick, an international monetary expert in America, said about the rand. In a report he said the following—

This is a testimonial for the National Party; this is a testimonial for South Africa.

The hon. member also referred to Soekor. He virtually accused Soekor of not having made available to the public all the information it had at its disposal. However, the hon. the Minister informed me that that was not correct and that Soekor had, in fact, made available to the public all the information it had at its disposal at that time.

But we have also been hearing another story to-day. As is usually the case, this amendment has once again given rise to a whole number of anomalies. On the one hand we are being blamed for the conditions of inflation; on the other hand we are being accused of over-taxation. The first accusation that hon. member made was that the National Party was overtaxing the public of South Africa.

Hear, hear!

Before long you will again be saying “Hear, hear”, but that will be in a different sense. It is true that there are surpluses. We do not deny this.

You are concealing some of them.

We do not make any apologies either to the Opposition or to the public because of these surpluses, because for the sake of the public these surpluses are essential. This is being done in order to restrict and to curb public spending which reached a peak in 1969; otherwise the rate of inflation would have been much higher still. Those hon. members speak of the balancing of budgets. But the budget policy is one of the most important measures in the hands of any government to bring about a more or less steady flow in the economy, to combat inflation, if necessary, or to stimulate the economy, if necessary. If to-day we were to allow that instrument to be taken from our hands by budgeting in such a way that the Budget would more or less balance, how would we be able to win the struggle against inflation? Every country in the world has two measures at its disposal, and they are, firstly, the fiscal policy, i.e. the taxes levied and, secondly, the monetary policy. And upon my word, the hon. member for Constantia comes along and says that one of the most important measures employed by every country in the world should not be employed. Can hon. members see what would become of this country if those hon. members were to come into power? We would head for bankruptcy. The hon. member for Pinetown spoke of the decay of the monetary unit under this Government’s rule. But if ever they were to come into power there would be a decay of the monetary unit. At the moment, however, our monetary unit is one of the strongest monetary units in the world.

But I again want to refer to over-taxation. I have here with me an edition of the Economic Journal. In this journal details are given of the tax burden in the various countries of the world. A division is made into four or five groups. The first group is that in which taxation as against national income exceeds 25 per cent. Fifteen of the world’s major industrial countries fall into this group. South Africa, however, does not fall into this group. The next group of countries is that in which taxation is between 20 per cent and 25 per cent, in other words, somewhat lower than in the case of the first group. In this group we have ten countries and South Africa is not one of these either. Then there is a third group in which taxation amounts to between 15 per cent and 20 per cent. South Africa is in this group. But in this last-mentioned group there are only two countries that are regarded as industrial countries. The first country is Japan and the second is South Africa. There are other countries which fall into this last-mentioned group, but their levels of development are much lower than those of Japan and South Africa. These countries are: the Argentine, Ireland, Finland, Chile, Uruguay, Greece, Algeria, Malaya, Brazil and the Congo. These are the countries in which the tax burden on the public is the same as it is in South Africa.

The ratio of tax to national income of the industrial countries is 31.8 per cent. And what is that of South Africa? It is 16.5 per cent, or virtually one-half. It is interesting to note that the tax burden in 1968-’69 was still lower than what it was in 1947. In 1947 the tax burden was 18 per cent. That was in the days when the Opposition was in power, more than 20 years ago. To-day, in spite of the increased obligations of the State and everything it has done for the development of the country, the tax burden is, relatively speaking, still lower than what it was under United Party rule.

How is that!

The hon. members are as quiet as mice. They do not have an answer. They have made a false accusation against the National Party in this House. It is untrue and hon. members know that it is untrue.

I now want to refer to the sales duty. Hon. members have been saying morning, noon and night, that the sales duty would yield an amount of nearly R200 million per annum. A few days ago the hon. the Minister told this House that his estimate, before he delivered his little budget speech, was R112 million. Hon. members must remember that when the hon. the Minister made the estimate of R100 million, that estimate was for 11 months. The amount of R112 million was for 12 months. Now it is true that the hon. the Minister has introduced tax relief amounting to R8 million. The amount of R8 million plus the amount of R112 million give us a total of R120 million. When we deduct one-twelfth, i.e. RIO million, from that amount it gives us a total of R110 million. Where do those hon. members get the amount of R200 million? When I put this simple question to the hon. member for Sea Point—and I notice that he is not present here to-day—he made a big fuss. They have misled the public. They have not made any calculations. Those hon. members have made a guess with the idea in mind that the higher the guess the greater the impact on the public. Hon. members will be surprised at the extent of which this sales duty is welcomed by John Citizen. This is one of the most equitable taxes that has ever been levied in South Africa. Everyone is very proud of this. For the first time in our history a just contribution is being made towards keeping the machinery of government in motion. Virtually all countries in the world have such a tax. We also know that the sales duty in South Africa is minimal in comparison with other countries. Most countries tax even food and clothing. In South Africa these items are mainly excluded. I am afraid that this story of the sales tax is simply being told in order to catch a few votes.

We are going to catch many votes.

Our public is much better informed than that.

I now come to the other point, the question of inflation. First I want to deal with pensioners. Last year an amount of approximately R125 million was paid out in pensions. This year this amount has been increased by virtually 8 per cent. This gives one a further RIO million, therefore a total amount of R135 million per annum. The Government gives a fantastic amount in pensions and this amount is adjusted virtually every year. A pension has never been intended to be the sole means of support of a person. This has never been the case. Do those hon. members want to make of our country and our people a servile people, a people of beggars? I am shocked to hear that they are of the opinion that the Government should make adequate provision by means of old-age pensions for every person who retires so that that person may live on that pension.

On what else should he live?

But does a person not save while he is working? Are there perhaps any of those hon. members who do not save while they are working? If there is one, let him get up so that I may see what he looks like.

Let us now consider the combatting of inflation. If there ever were deeds on which the Government could look back with pride, those deeds concern this very matter. A few years ago the cost of living in South Africa gave it the fourth and the fifth positions in comparison with other countries. South Africa subsequently moved up to the third position. In 1969 South Africa, as far as this was concerned, experienced a record year; it was one of the best years in our history. Other countries had a rate of inflation of 4 per cent whereas the rate of inflation of the United States was 6J per cent. The countries which had always been doing better than South Africa were Canada, Belgium, the United States of America and Australia, but all of them fell back in 1969. At the end of 1969, the new international year, South Africa, did second best in its struggle against inflation; the best it had done since 1963. South Africa occupied the second position after Germany. This is a testimonial for this National Party, this Government, this Cabinet and for our present Prime Minister. This is a testimonial which the United Party cannot conceal from the people. Listen to what was said by one of their own newspapers, and this will be fairly interesting to them as they never believe our newspapers; I am going to quote from the Sunday Times of 31st August, 1969 …

Whose newspaper is that?

But that is Uncle Albert’s newspaper.

I quote—

Hon. member should take cognisance of particularly the last few words—

The Sunday Times says that our position makes us the envy of other countries and then those hon. members come along and accuse this Government! The Secretary for Finance of Western Germany recently said that his government was prepared to accept an annual inflation growth rate of 3 per cent per annum as the normal price for economic growth. Over recent years South Africa has been doing considerably better than that. But this is not all. At the same time South Africa has the highest economic growth rate after Japan. This is an achievement. If the economic growth rate of a country is stationary and in addition it is experiencing inflation, then that is very serious. If a country is developing an inflation in that country is at a high level, like in Japan, then that is fine, but if a country is developing fast and can keep inflation within limits, then that is excellent. These are the achievements of the National Party, [Interjections.] The hon. member cannot deny that.

I now want to come back to a few other points. I have already replied to the points raised by the hon. member for Constantia, but during the no-confidence debate and outside this House in the Press a great deal of criticism was levelled at the hon. the Minister of finance in connection with occurrences on the Stock Exchange. Time does not permit me to reply in great detail to that criticism, but I should like to make three quotations from their Press. The first quotation is from the Sunday Express of 2nd November, 1969, in which the following appeared—

The second quotation is from the Rand Daily Mail of 5th August, 1969, in which the following appeared—

The final quotation is from the Sunday Times of 28th September, 1969, in which the following appeared—

Is it too much to expect that the United Party should also be reasonable people? Here their own newspaper condemns them as being unreasonable, and this is exactly how matters stand. They also know as well as any of us do that the Minister of finance did more than his share to warn the public. As a matter of fact, he could do nothing more. What he did, in fact, do, amounted to a small pinprick and that coincided with the turning point which came. I wish it could have come earlier. A rise and a fall on the Exchange form part of our system of private initiative. What is a fine thing is the fact that the Stock Exchange today is no longer so closely bound up with the course of the economy as it was before. The hon. member for Parktown himself spoke of a depression which would come when the prices were so high; he spoke of a recession and of people who would walk in the streets without employment. I have it all here in Hansard. Sir, the Stock Exchange is very low, and to-day we have the highest figure of employment in our entire history—an unemployment figure of only .5 per cent.

Time does not permit me to quote the numerous testimonials I still have here in order to prove that in the economic and financial spheres this Government has been running this country as no other Government has; that to-day South Africa is an economic fortress in Africa and in the world; and that our population is prosperous. In this connection we need only look at the standard of living. During the 30 years from 1918 to 1948 it increased by 54 per cent and in the subsequent 20 years, i.e. from 1948 to 1968, it increased by 56 per cent—virtually one and a half times more rapidly than in the days of the United Party Government. The data we have show that this Government is running this country well. For that reason the voters will tell the Cabinet and the National Party to-day, “We have appointed you over many and over many you have been faithful; you have done well and have given a good account of your stewardship. We appoint you again to do as you have done up to now”. Most people can bear failures, but few can bear success. As regards the National Party, it has learned to live with successes and to master its successes. The United Party, on the other hand, has experienced failure upon failure. On 22nd April, 1970. the electorate will return the National Party to this House …

Whistling in the dark!

The electorate will return us to this House with a large majority and a new mandate, something the National Party will accept with humility and with acknowledgment towards all who deserve acknowledgment.

Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to know whom to believe. The hon. member has quoted at length from eulogies from countries overseas about how good things are in South Africa. And yet last September it was said that the impression was gaining ground that South Africa had an unstable Government. So, what is true: the hon. member’s quotation of the confidence of the rest of the world in us. or what the Prime Minister said in September last year? Because it was the Prime Minister himself who on the 16th September, and later again on the 22nd September, said that the impression was gaining ground overseas that South Africa had an unstable Government. That was one of the reasons for his calling an election.

I said as a result of reports emanating from …

Evidently the hon. the Prime Minister has received a different report to the one received by the hon. member for Florida. Or does the Prime Minister only take those reports which suit him? One minute the hon. member for Florida says that reports are all favourable to South Africa and the next the Prime Minister says they are unfavourable.

Reports from your side.

There again we have proof of the credibility gap. At the opening of this Parliament we had in the speech by the State President, in truth a statement by the Government, that “the economy remains very liquid and because there are many visible signs of an increased growth rate no further general relaxation of credit control is considered advisable”. And yet the hon. member for Florida takes exception to the hon. member for Constantia querying why the credit ceiling was improved to the extent of 15 per cent within a fortnight of the State President’s address. Whom are we to believe? The one minute we had to hear that there was no need for further credit and the next we heard that the ceiling was raised. The hon. member for Florida also referred to the announcement of the hon. the Minister during last session and said that the speech he made afterwards in the Senate was based on news he received from overseas. Why then did the hon. the Minister in making his announcement in the Senate not give those reasons? He made a statement in this House and thereafter he made a statement in the Senate on the gold position without giving as an explanation that what the hon. member for Florida has just said. The hon. member for Florida has not had a word of cheer for the thousands who lost their savings, or a considerable portion thereof, on the Stock Exchange over the last few months—not one little bit of cheer. If one looks over the past 22 years of Government finance, one realizes that the position to-day is not as good as it was 22 years ago when we were able to lend Britain R160 million in gold. While I do not propose to traverse the past 22 years I should like to remind the House that despite the optimistic views of successive Ministers relating to an increase in the price of gold, we are fortunate enough to have the floor price of gold fixed, let alone an increase in the price of gold. South African gold mines cannot expect additional revenue through free market sales for at least 18 months. Even a rise in the price of gold depends upon monetary unrest. At the beginning of this year the Minister announced a new agreement negotiated with the I.M.F. in terms of which South Africa received an allocation of paper gold of 33,600,000 dollars (approximately R24 million) in special drawing rights. It must be remembered that the recipients of allocations are bound to accept up to twice of the amount of the allocation from other countries. This means that South Africa is now bound to accept R48 million in addition to its own allocation. There is a strong section of American opinion which is in favour of the demonetization of gold, and the Minister is well aware of that. According to an article which appeared in The Times, as reported in The Star of 5th January, much of the credit for the gold agreement announced by the International Monetary Fund goes to Dr. De Kock, which says sufficiently much to create the widespread hostility created by the aggressive tactics of the Minister after the establishment of a two-tier gold price, and gives one to understand that this official realized that aggression does not pay and that cool-headed diplomacy can win better results. We realize that all the negotiations in regard to gold are difficult, but is it necessary for the Minister to make them more difficult, or is the report in The Times incorrect? We should like to know that. It is an unfortunate report Which appeared in The Times, which gives the credit to Dr. De Kock, and criticizes the Minister, and I would like to know whether the Minister agrees that this report is correct, or is it not? Both sides of the House are in favour of an increased gold price and both sides are in favour of maintaining the present price of gold and increasing it when the opportunity arises. But if the present price of gold is to be maintained, then if the gold reserves of the country are not to be eroded, it is essential that inflation be curtailed or curbed severely. Otherwise we will be eating into our gold reserves: because the increase in inflation puts up mining costs and the increase in mining costs reduces the value of the gold which is below the surface and shortens the life of our gold mines. Is the relaxation of credit which the Minister has announced going to start another wave of inflation, or how does the Minister propose to avoid it? Are the increased credit facilities not going to cause further inflation? If they are not going to cause further inflation, how does the Minister propose to control it?

Are you in favour of further relaxation?

I am in favour of additional relaxation, but I am asking the Minister how he proposes to control the position so that further inflation will be avoided. The country has been asking for the relaxation of credit. I am not quarrelling with that. Sir, but what I am asking is whether it will cause further inflation, or will it not cause further inflation, and what steps will be taken by the Minister to avoid further inflation. For that reason we ask the Minister to say something in regard to devaluation. I will support what the hon. the member for Constantia has said and I would not have raised the question of devaluation had it not appeared in one of the Government papers. I think it was most unfortunate that it did.

Which paper?

I think it was in Dagbreek of about a fortnight ago. I think it is unfortunate that a reference should be made to devaluation at this critical time. I think it embarrasses the Minister particularly because this is a paper in which members of the Cabinet have an interest and it supports the Government. I think it is very unfortunate to talk about devaluation at a time like this.

Was it by a letter-writer, or was it an article by the editor?

It was either a news item or an article.

Have you got it here?

No, I do not have it in front of me. I think the Minister must accept that it appeared in Dagbreek and he will have the opportunity of checking it before he replies. The Minister admitted last session that the financial position of the world was uncertain, and when certain persons are flying kites about inflation I think it is as well that the Minister should discourage such talk as soon as possible. Devaluation will only encourage a further wave of inflation, which is already embarrassing the country.

Over the years the Government has failed in its administration of the finances of the country. We do not query that the economy of the country is sound, but our criticism is in regard to the finances of the country and the administration of the country. Its administration of the country has failed all along the line; it has bungled the boom, and I have a list often headings underlining that failure: (1) failure to provide adequate means for controlling the soaring cost of living; (2) a situation in which long-term interest rates, especially mortgage rates, have reached an all-time high; ask any young couple wanting to borrow money; they will confirm this; (3) the application of the sales tax to certain essential items in the consumer’s budget, an item which has already been dealt with at length toy the hon. member for Constantia; (4) inadequate liaison with the Stock Exchange resulting in widespread and large losses on a scale quite unnecessary, even if it were deemed desirable to bring people to their senses or a price worth paying for the gold strategy. I suggest, Sir, that while the hon. the Minister was overseas gambling with the future of gold …

Is that how you see it—gambling with the future of gold?

As I see it the Minister was gambling in that while he was taking the opportunity overseas of trying to get an increased gold price, liquidity at home was increasing and becoming overheated, and as a result of the Minister’s trips overseas he was unable to control the position at home. We want an explanation from the Minister as to why that excess liquidity became overheated and resulted in the Stock Exchange debacle with which the country is now faced. We would like to hear what the Minister has to say in that regard. Let met go on with the list of headings which underline the Government’s failure: (5) a financial position which has resulted in insufficient housing for those who really need it; (6) a gold sales agreement which has now placed the South African economy in pawn with the International Monetary Fund and amounts to an extraordinary encroachment on our national sovereignty; (7) a manpower situation which is leading to a breakdown of essential services and is assuming the proportions of a national crisis; (8) factors adversely affecting productivity and efficiency in industry and commerce; (9) failing to provide adequate social services linked with sound finance; (10) entering into the Mutual Fund field through the I.D.C.

Sir, there is not time to deal with all these matters in detail. The past year has seen the effect of the Government’s hesitancy in the finances of the country. While the Minister was overseas he was allowing excess liquidity to build up in South Africa, thus providing a climate for speculation. The building society movement was in dire straits a year ago, and it was only when they were on the brink of disaster that the Minister took steps to assist the building society movement. The embarrassment would not have been nearly as great had the Minister acted with more alacrity. As to whether the Minister is culpable, that was certainly the case when he spoke at the end of last session. The Minister then said this (Hansard vol. 27, col. 8385)—

That was on 18th June, when the Minister was speaking on the last financial Bill dealt with in this House last session. On the same day and after he had made this speech in this House, the Minister made a statement in the Senate (col. 4164) and that statement included the following—

In view of what the Minister said, although he may not have had that intention, his speech certainly had the effect of accelerating the downward trend on the Stock Exchange. Is there any significance in the fact that the market started to go down about a week before the 18th? Certain big finance houses had started to sell. Did they know that the Minister was going to take steps to depress the market? Since last June it is estimated that the share market has shed a staggering R5,000 million. But that does not explain away the misery, the anxiety and the worry of thousands of South Africans who are not speculators on the Stock Exchange but who invested in mutual funds. Many put their life savings into these funds, because they thought they were safe. They were invited to invest in mutual funds as a cushion against inflation. A year or two ago I criticized the flamboyant claims of some mutual funds, and certainly criticized the wisdom of the Government in taking a direct interest in them. In the early days of the development of the mutual fund movement, the salesmen of one of the main funds, in which the I.D.C. had an interest, were quoting that particular fund as the safest fund to invest in because it was backed by the Government. It was not backed by the Government, Sir. but the Government had an interest in it. The glossy pictures of a board room with the directors of the I.D.C. sitting in it, must have had an effect on the ordinary investors. The ordinary investor was not speculating on the Stock Exchange. He was told that to invest in a mutual fund was to help curb inflation. It was made perfectly clear to him that the value of money was decreasing, that the cost of living was going up and that inflation was continuing. He was told that, to avoid inflation, mutual funds were the answer. Can one blame the people for investing in the mutual funds, after seeing the Minister’s nominees on the Board, appearing on a glossy brochure, and encouraging people to invest in those funds? All that has been said this after noon by the Government side, has not given any encouragement to, or shown any sympathy for the thousands of persons who invested in the mutual funds, and for those many people who invested their life savings in those funds. We still have had no explanation from the Minister as to who they hold culpable.

The Minister indicated that there would be about six mutual funds. There are now ten or more mutual funds. I do not wish to mention these funds by name, but I should like to refer to the statement made recently by the Minister when he commented on N.F.I., and said:

Last year the Minister came to the rescue of the building society movement. I should like to know whether he now intends coming to the rescue of the mutual fund movement, or does he intend to come to the rescue of any particular institution? I have no quarrel with mutual funds, provided that they are on a sound basis. The public have been led to believe that this was a safe investment, and the public have been caught. I do not suggest that the I.D.C. is directly interested in the N.F.I. organization, but I do suggest that it is indirectly connected. People are concerned about the I.D.C. being interested in the private sector. I want to know how far this incursion into the private sector is going to continue. Can one blame the ordinary citizen who wishes to invest when he is assured by the salesman that the organization is backed by the Government and must have Government support because it has I.D.C. directors connected with the mutual fund movement? I cannot do better in this regard than to refer to a leading article which appeared in the Daily News a few days ago. It reads as follows:

One sees money flowing out of building societies into mutual funds and the stock market. Now we are finding that that money is either being lost, or coming back to the building societies again. We have been conditioned by the Minister to lose faith in money because it is steadily losing its value. The tragedy is that the ordinary man in the street suffers because he has so foolishly put his trust in investments which he thinks have the backing of the Government. The Government took an interest through the I.D.C. in a field which the I.D.C. should avoid. We find that no less a person than Mr. Barlow, the head of the Barlow Organization, has said: “The Government must make up its mind whether South Africa has a free enterprise economy or one that will follow the European pattern of increasing Government interference in industry.” He made several criticisms of Government policy in the annual report of one of the biggest industrial companies which has more than 11 thousand employees and 200 factories in Great Britain and South Africa. When a person of that calibre says that it is uncertain how one should invest in the future, because one does not know when one is going to meet the I.D.C. coming round the corner, I think it is time we took notice of that. What we are concerned about is not having so many persons making money. We need more people in factories turning out goods. To-day it is far easier to pick up a telephone receiver and telephone the Stock Exchange than it is to telephone Pretoria to try to query a permit about industrial planning or even to try to get a few Bantu for one’s staff. It is a sad state of affairs at a time when the country should be producing more goods and services that in fact far too much time is spent upon those who try to make money out of money. To-day we are short of manpower. We know that the ordinary man sees his life savings disappear and faces the dilemma of a depreciating rand and the cult of the equity. The few may be happy with a few quick tax free profits but the man in the street feels that he has been cheated. It is time for a change and the sooner the change comes, the better.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Pinetown, who has just sat down, had a long list of charges against the government. Before dealing with his list of charges, I just want to say a few words about the “credibility gap” of which the hon. member for Constantia and the hon. member for Pine-town spoke. They spoke of the credibility of the hon. the Minister of finance. The hon. member for Constantia spoke of the lack of credibility on the part of the hon. the Minister of finance because he had had it announced in the State President’s Address that there would not be a general relaxation of credit control and then announced last Friday that there would be a further selective relaxation of credit control. Now, it so happens that the hon. member for Constantia probably reads only the English-language newspapers, and that certain newspapers omitted the word “general” in their reports on the State President’s Address. But in point of fact the hon. member for Constantia has no excuse, because he had after all heard that speech himself and if he had forgotten it, he could simply have referred to his Minutes of Proceedings, in which that address is reproduced word for word. In the State President’s Address it is explicitly stated: no further general relaxation of credit control is deemed advisable at this stage”. What the hon. the Minister announced here last Friday, is a certain selective relaxation of credit control. There is a world of difference between this section of the State President’s Address, which appears on page 4, should the hon. member want to know where it can be found, i.e. a general relaxation of credit control, and a selective relaxation. The hon. member for Constantia also spoke of the lack of credibility on the part of the Minister of finance because last year, when introducing the sales duty, he allegedly gave the assurance that it would not affect the necessities of life, and when the list of taxable items appeared, the hon. member did in fact find necessities of life on that list. But let us see what the hon. the Minister said in his speech when he introduced the Budget. The hon. the Minister said very explicitly (Hansard, 26th March, 1969, column 3249)—

He elaborated on this and said that if he were to have introduced such a tax on luxury and semi-luxury articles only, the rate would have had to be too high and he would have frustrated his own object. Therefore the basis was a relatively broad basis of consumer goods, which would cause as few hardships as possible to the lower income groups. But he stated very explicitly, and I repeat it, that “a broad tax of this kind cannot be painless”. On the basis of these incorrect quotations of the hon. the Minister of finance by the hon. member for Constantia in two respects, the hon. member, as well as the hon. member for Pinetown, tried to make out a case that this Minister and this Government could no longer be believed. What a scandalous representation! These matters were completely misrepresented.

The hon. member for Pinetown elaborated very extensively on his ten reasons why the government had failed. He started by referring to the high cost of living. But after the hon. member for Florida had anticipated him and had proved in advance that the increase in our cost of living was among the lowest in the whole world, the hon. member probably paged hurriedly past that part of his speech. Then he came to the major topic which is now being discussed so widely, namely the severe losses which the general public have allegedly suffered as a result of the slump on the Stock Exchange. Then the hon. the Minister of finance was accused that his speech in the Senate on 18th June last year had started off this severe slump and had caused it to gain momentum as time went on. That is, of course, very far-fetched and entirely unfounded, because I do not think there is one economist, businessman or financial student of note in the country who would agree with the Opposition that it was this speech by the Minister of finance which caused the Stock Exchange to develop such a sharply declining tendency. Furthermore, this declining tendency on the Stock Exchange would perhaps have been firmly arrested three or four months ago already, had it not been for the appearance on the political horizon of a small party which has been blown up by the Opposition Press into something big. The Stock Exchange, as is known by everyone who occasionally has something to do with it—including me—is a very sensitive instrument which is very easily affected by, inter alia, political events. If hon. members would look at a graph of the Stock Exchange—I have a copy here in front of me—they would see that from the peak reached in May there was a constant drop till October. Then the Stock Exchange made a right-about turn. From October it started rising fairly sharply and in November the rise gained momentum. But in the second half of November it suddenly changed and then dropped further and further. If one examines this graph against the background of political events in our country, one finds that the Hertzog group was established in October. On 24th and 25th October they held a national congress in Pretoria. [Interjections.] Hon. members may become fidgety, but I shall prove with chapter and verse how such an event can in fact exert an influence on the Stock Exchange. I have here a very interesting letter which I shall read to this House in order to prove my statement. This foundation congress on 24th and 25th October was a fairly tame affair, but things did not remain so tame for long. In the meanwhile the English Press in South Africa blew up this small new party into something big. They vied to outdo one another in their eagerness to blow up this small party into something almighty. They hoped that the mighty National Party could be hurt in this way. A few weeks later, on 7th November, this small party produced its declaration of policy in that small 20 cent booklet of theirs. In this declaration of policy it is stated that Afrikaans shall be the official language of South Africa, with English as a second language. We on this side of this House received that announcement with a philosophical laugh up our sleeves. We were aware that we had entered a referendum contest nine years ago with the very explicit undertaking towards our English-speaking fellow-countrymen that they should help us to bring about the Republic with the explicit reaffirmation of the principle of equal language rights. Consequently we were not very worried about that declaration of policy. However, many English-speaking people read only the English Press, and the same applies to many investors on the Stock Exchange. They had a terrible fright. I should like to give hon. members an example of the bad fright they had. This morning I received a registered letter from a person in Pietermaritzburg. This person is English-speaking and, to judge from his handwriting, pro bably elderly. The letter was written in consequence of an article which had appeared in the Natal Witness. According to that report I had, at a meeting in Fish Hoek called upon English-speaking people to take part in the government of the country. In this letter, inter alia the following is stated—

Then these remarkable words follow: “This would eliminate the dominance of one language over the other”. From this one can see into what depths of fear this English-speaking person has been plunged by that declaration. He already believes that Afrikaans will dominate his beloved English language. I wanted to show this House that the fear existing among the English-speaking people, also those on the Stock Exchange, is not so far-fetched. I must, however, admit that I do not know who wrote the letter, because it is unsigned. In the last paragraph of the letter it is merely stated—

I therefore want to call on the Natal Witness to please assure this man that he has nothing to fear. I would be very glad if he would get in touch with me through the columns of the Natal Witness so that I may reassure him. I am very keen to have a discussion with him so that I may reassure him. In the meanwhile I should like to reassure all English-speaking people that, in spite of what this small party now has in its programme of principles, we on this side of the House shall never never commit a breach of faith against our English-speaking fellow-citizens of this country. I want to give the English-speaking investor, not only in South Africa, but also abroad, the assurance that this small party which wants to interfere with the language rights of the English-speaking people will most certainly be wiped out from the political scene in South Africa on 22nd April. Furthermore, not only will this little party disappear from the political scene in South Africa, but the National Party will emerge from this election as a stronger party. Nothing inspires as much confidence in the investing public as a strong government does.

There are of course other factors as well which exert an influence on the Stock Exchange and which have contributed towards the slump which the Stock Exchange experienced. I should just like to point out one factor. In 1968 there was still a net capital inflow of R446 million into the country. In 1969, however, it decreased to R70 million. What caused this? Unfortunately, foreign investors in South Africa also draw their advice mainly from the English Press in South Africa. Need one wonder, then, why they lost their confidence in our investment possibilities and in our economic stability after they had heard about this little party, which is being blown up to such large proportions by the English Press? But I would much prefer to point out a few economic and financial factors which have led to this recession on the Stock Exchange. I cannot resist the temptation to refer to the attack which, a decade ago, was made regularly every year from that side of this House, and especially by the former member for Jeppes. I still recall very clearly how the then member for Jeppes as regularly as clockwork at every Budget referred the government to the fine example which America set in the form of their “deficit budgeting” and which was worth following. He referred to this almost as regularly as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition at that time held up the wonderful example of the political federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to this Government. In every no-confidence debate the hon. the Leader of the Opposition held up to one government what a great success that Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was. Now we never hear about it any more, because it has been written off permanently. But just as regularly the then member of Jeppes held up to us the great advantage of “deficit budgeting”, which has now resulted in its being generally said that the average man in America to-day is living on the salary or wage which he will be earning in two years’ time, because that deficit budgeting has worked through to the man in the street. In our case, incidentally, it has been calculated that to-day the average man is living on the income which he will be earning in 14 weeks’ time. As I have said, it is calculated as being two years ahead in America. This house of cards must of course collapse sooner or later. This has resulted in inflation getting so out of hand in America to-day that the percentage for the past year was 6½, as against the 3.3 per cent of South Africa. The result of this is that the American Government now has to apply the strictest measures in order to check this tremendous inflation. All this means that money becomes more expensive. Only recently the American Government had to offer as much as 101/4 per cent on an 18-month loan, while a very large business undertaking had to offer 103/4 per cent for a short-term loan. All these factors are having a dampening effect on the Stock Exchange. As long as investors can obtain 10 per cent or more on their fixed deposits, the Stock Exchange is no longer so attractive to them. This is after all a perfectly normal economic fact, and this is precisely what is happening in our case. Hon. members must not think that the fact that interest rates are high in America at the moment, has no influence on our interest rates. As long as interest rates are high in one country, that country inevitably draws capital from other countries and drains them of the capital they require. For this reason the supply of capital in South Africa is so much less. The whole world is one economy to-day. Consequently the higher interest rates in America must necessarily influence us as well. They must necessarily have a dampening effect on our Stock Exchange as well.

Although I have said all these things which contain no message of hope for the investor on the Stock Exchange—the hon. member for Pinetown said sneeringly that the hon. the Minister of finance had no message of hope for the investors who have lost so many millions on die Stock Exchange—I nevertheless have a message of hope for those investors.

You must just hurry up.

The hon. member next to me here has apparently lost money too. I have a message of hope for the investor on the Stock Exchange, and that is that after 22nd April we shall no longer have this impotent little party which wants to interfere with the language rights of the English-speaking people, on our political scene. [Interjections.] I want to repeat that I spoke of the impotent party. But much more than that, this country with its Stock Exchange and with its investors on the Stock Exchange will then enter a new period of prosperity and welfare, led by a very strong government. This is my message of hope to the investors of South Africa and, incidentally, also to foreign investors on our Stock Exchange.

I should like to conclude, but I cannot omit to address a few words of thanks to the hon. the Minister of finance for announcing in his Budget Speech last Friday that the bonus system in regard to old-age pensions will now be consolidated with basic pensions. As recently as the 8th of April last year I pleaded that the bonus system be abolished and consolidated. On that occasion I said, and I quote from column 3544 of Hansard—

I am very pleased to hear that these bonuses are now going to be consolidated with the basic pension and that an adjustment will also be made in respect of the means test. I understand that the R2 which will be granted with effect from 1st April will be consolidated together with the R5 which was granted in the past. I am also glad to hear that the new means test of private income plus pension is to be increased from R528 to R612. This is a very valuable concession, not only for our poorest people, but also for those who did not spend all their money in the course of their lives, but saved enough so that they would have something for their old age. Therefore I just want to emphasize again that I hope that in the future we shall do away completely with this system of bonuses in the case of old-age and other pensions. I also hope that whenever we increase the pension, we shall not do so by means of a bonus, but by means of an increase of the basic pension, with commensurate increases in respect of the private means plus pension limits. Then I foresee that our people will themselves save more and more, because when a man sees that when he saves he is never worse off than the man who has saved less or nothing at all, it will be an incentive for him to save enough for his old age during his working life. Then I foresee for this country not a nation of beggars to whom the Government must constantly distribute alms, but a nation of people who use their hands to work so that they may provide for themselves, their families and their old age.

Mr. Speaker, I knew that my hon. friend the member for Paarl had a special interest in Herstigte meetings, but when he talked about the Herstigtes having been responsible for bringing down the share market since November and when he suggested that after April the 22nd if the Nationalist Party gets back to power, the market will go up, it seemed to me that he did not live with a credibility gap but with a credibility chasm.

I have been taken to task by some of the Nationalist newspapers for a statement that I made on the 25th May last year, in which I said that high prices on the Stock Exchange are here to stay and that prices will even rise higher. I said that, and I make no apologies for having said so. However, I did add that my projection was long-term and that the market was likely to drop if exchange control was relaxed, although probably only for a short period. But I made one serious mistake and I admit it quite frankly, and that is that I failed to take into account that the hon. the Minister of finance, whose clarion call to the country a short while before, was “work and save and invest for prosperity”, would decide just when the public did that, that he was going to bring down Stock Exchange prices so that funds could flow into fixed interest investments. I failed to take into account that in South Africa we have a Government which was incompetent, a Government which was far removed from realities, a Government which was determined to put impracticable ideologies before the well-being of the people, a Government which lived by ad hoc action and not by long term planning, a Government where a statement by one Minister was contradicted by the statement of another hon. Minister, a Government which blew hot one day and cold the next day, a Government which vacillated ad nauseum, and that this Government by its own actions could create a state of affairs which one would not have believed to have been possible. One would have expected the hon. the Minister to look after these small investors whom he had persuaded to invest their money in the market. Because they were small investors. They had heard not only every hon. Minister on that side of the House, but also every hon. member on that side, telling the country of the fantastic prosperity under this Government, and the man in the street wanted a part of this prosperity, so they took their savings and made the investments, and then the hon. the Minister of finance bust the market.

That is not true.

We all know of the statement that was made by the hon. the Minister of finance in this House on the morning of 18th June, and the statement he made in the Other Place the same afternoon. I do not want to repeat them, but I do want to point out that in both these statements the emphasis by the hon. the Minister was that there could only be relaxation in exchange control if there were a gold marketing resettlement; and on the morning of the 18th the hon. the Minister told us in regard to the gold marketing problem that there was no imminent solution to this problem. But how could the hon. the Minister that same afternoon announce a relaxation in exchange control? How could he on the same day in the Other Place drop his bombshell by announcing that funds would now be allowed to leave South Africa for investment abroad? In the morning the Minister had the funnel tightly closed; funds would not be allowed out of South Africa, a bull point for the market, but some hours later the funnel was wide open and the market slide began. Did the hon. the Minister not know when he spoke in this House what he was going to do the same day in the Other Place? Now the hon. member for Florida says that the hon. the Minster got information from overseas that afternoon which forced him to make that statement. But the Minister had said in this House in the morning that there was only one set of circumstances under which he could change his policy of applying exchange control, and that was a settlement in regard to the sale of gold. Is the hon. member for Florida telling us then that in the afternoon the Minister had settled his gold problem, but did not tell the House so until 31st December last year? That was the position; it is as clear as daylight: no relaxation of exchange control unless there is a gold settlement, but in the afternoon he announced a relaxation of exchange control, and the hon. member for Florida says it was done because of information from overseas. Or was the whole operation designed to further the determination of the hon. the Minister of finance that the market had to be brought down? Why did the hon. the Minister of finance not tell the country what amount of foreign exchange he was prepared to allow to leave the country, thus leaving the people and the country under the impression that in effect exchange control had virtually been abolished? Because that was the impression, Sir. I think the answer is self-evident. The hon. the Minister had made up his mind that prices on the Stock Exchange were too high and that they had to come down, and he succeeded only too well. Since May of last year the index of the London Stock Exchange has fallen by 10.2 per cent; it went down and it went up again. The New York Stock Exchange fell by 12.7 per cent, and in South Africa it fell by 25.4 per cent. But to show the fruitlessness of the hon. the Minister’s statement in the Other Place, on 21st August, exactly two months later, the Minister re-imposed the full curb on foreign exchange leaving the country. So, what was the purpose of the statement in the Other Place two months earlier? Of course, we were not surprised, Sir. We have lived too long with a Government which changes its financial policies overnight. Its major achievement has been to create uncertainty permanently in this country, and the hon. the Minister knows it is true. He said so himself in an article which appeared in the Sunday Times on the 8th of this month. I quote—

How can the financier or the industrialist be other than in a state of indecision when changes in Government policy are taking place from day to day and from week to week, and they have to go to some Minister or to some official to find out what they can do and what they cannot do? Does the hon. the Minister not believe that industry is being affected by this uncertainty and that it is also affecting what the hon. the Minister has called the psychological drop in the market? The Government’s tight control of labour is already confining our productivity, and now through the Bantu Laws Amendment Bill it will completely and utterly take control of all Bantu labour in South Africa. The hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration has wide powers already. How and when is he going to use his new powers? This is the vital question. The F.C.I. has already said that arbitrary control of labour, which has created localized critical shortages and escalating wages, threatens to put some industries on the scrap-heap. The Government had further warnings last week on the labour position in the publication of Union Acceptances’ “Economic and Financial Review”, and by Mr. Jan Marais of Trust Bank. With the new powers the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration is taking, things might be very much worse. Until last week there had been no meaningful relaxation in the credit squeeze, despite the comments of bankers and industrialists and economists, but in the short space of two weeks the hon. the Minister has changed his mind again, and quite frankly we are not impressed by dwelling on the word “general”, or “algemene”. Nobody to-day knows where he stands, neither the industrialist nor the investor. They have to try to assess from day to day and from month to month just what pace the hon. the Minister is going to set. No wonder there is a lack of confidence, psychological or otherwise.

The hon. the Minister’s handling of the gold situation saw a rise in the price of gold from 35 dollars an ounce to well over 40 dollars an ounce, and a subsequent drop again to below 35 dollars an ounce, hardly a bull point on the market. Now it is easy for the Minister to say that the drop in the market is largely psychological, but I would say that the ineptness of the Government is the major contributing factor, and to illustrate this I want to deal in some detail with the gold agreement.

On 31st December last the hon. the Minister told the country that he had made what he called a new arrangement for the marketing of gold. We in the Opposition have been in a very difficult position in regard to the problems of marketing our gold. At no time during the long negotiations undertaken by the hon. the Minister did he really give us any information on the actual course of events, and I admit quite frankly that I did not expect him to. The hon. the Minister could not be expected to shout from the housetops what he was doing in his negotiations with the countries abroad. But in addition, because the issue was so vital to South Africa, we had to be more than circumspect in what we said. We wanted in no way to embarrass either the hon. the Minister or the Government. It was not in the interests of the country that we should rock the boat even if we disagreed with what the hon. the Minister was doing. The issue was much too big for South Africa to be made a political issue. The same applied to our bankers, our economists and our financial commentators. I think they are to be congratulated on the responsible way in which they dealt with this question of gold. Because of the complexity of the issue and its vital importance to the country the hon. the Minister was virtually given a free hand; he made the play without outside intervention. But it is abundantly clear now that the Minister failed in what he set out to achieve. He gambled and lost. His unilateral decisions misfired. Because what were the Minister’s objectives? He spelt them out very clearly in a debate we had in this House last February. He said—

Clearly an unrestricted right—

At the time I reacted to the Minister’s four conditions by saying that I believed them to be fair and reasonable. I added this one important rider, however,—

Here, Sir, we have the crux of the matter. We knew and the hon. the Minister should certainly have known that there was not the remotest possibility of his conditions being accepted, particularly by the United States of America. This does not mean, Sir, that the Minister was wrong in the validity of the objectives which he set himself and we as a responsible Opposition lent him our support. Let me be quite clear, Mr. Speaker. However critical we may be of the line which the Minister took over the past two years, this must in no way be interpreted as an acceptance of the attitude of the United States. If the view of the United States had prevailed, we might have been faced with a demonetization of gold, with the world on a dollar standard, and however much this might have suited the United States we, like the hon. the Minister, do not believe that such a step, certainly not at this stage, would have been in the best interests of the monetary system of the world. Where the hon. the Minister went wrong, firstly, was in setting himself objectives which he should have known were completely incapable of achievement, and secondly, in basing his whole financial strategy on his ability to attain a higher price for gold and so embarrass the dollar.

You are completely wrong.

Let me finish, Sir. The hon. the Minister will have an opportunity to answer me. When the two-tier system was introduced in 1968 the hon. the Minister had two options, either freely to dispose of his gold on the free market as long as he received not less than 35 dollars an ounce or, alternatively, to withhold his gold from the free market in an endeavour to force the price of gold up as high as possible beyond 35 dollars an ounce. Those were the hon. the Minister’s two options. The hon. the Minister chose the latter course. One would have thought that after March, 1969, the hon. the Minister would have gone overseas at the earliest possible opportunity for discussions with the monetary authorities and his own people so that he could assess the position for himself. But, no, he sat here in his ivory tower and relied on the homespun advice that if he was tough enough, he would get what he wanted. I believe that this was one of the main reasons for the hon. the Minister’s choice of options; I believe he was completely out of touch with the real position and that he was particularly out of touch with American thinking.

That is where you are completely wrong.

I also believe that he failed to realize how isolated South Africa had become from the listening posts of the world. We do not know to-day what is going on. I believe the hon. the Minister failed to realize that the European countries were really not on our side and that any opposition to United States policy was entirely in their own interests. They did not have the slightest concern for South Africa. I believe that the hon. the Minister, perhaps like many of us, had been propagating a rise in the price of gold for so long that he had become the victim of his own propaganda. He had talked himself into believing that a rise in the price of gold was inevitable. Sir, after the two-tier system was introduced and the price of gold rose to over 40 dollars an ounce, he believed that this rise was probably permanent, completely misinterpreting international opinion and having no regard to the facts of the international gold scene or to modern economic thought which was developing new monetary concepts such as S.D.R.s which we know the hon. the Minister did not like. I do not say that I blame him for not liking them. But the strangest aspect of all, Sir, is this: While the hon. the Minister was warning the clerks and typists against speculation on the Stock Exchange he was being the worst offender. He was not hedging his bets; he was gambling on a permanent rise in the price of gold. But there was this difference: While the clerks and typists might have burned their own fingers, with the hon. the Minister holding the flame, his gamble affected the economy of South Africa. Because we had difficulty in exchanging gold for foreign currency we had to live with tightened exchange control.

It was the strategy of the hon. the Minister that caused the hothouse conditions that led to the Stock Exchange boom which ended so disastrously for so many in June, 1969. Excess liquidity, as we all know, reached astronomical figures, but it did not find its way into private investment or consumer spending. The hon. the Minister told us this in a speech two years ago. It found its way into the Stock Exchange as a safety valve. It was the lifeblood that was pumped into the Stock market day after day, lifting prices higher and higher, despite the credit squeeze with which we are still living to-day. Sir, I accept the avarice of the Stock Exchange gambler, but the tragedy of the situation is that in tens of thousands of cases, it is the investor, not the gambler who is licking his wounds. And when I talk about the investor, I do not mean the capitalist or entrepreneur; I mean the little man to whom the hon. the Minister appealed not so long ago. Sir, there is no “thank the Minister” in this situation, except perhaps from the bears or the financiers.

Will you tell us something positive about your policy?

Yes, I will come to that in a minute. The price of gold then dropped below the official price and now negotiating from weakness instead of from strength we had to capitulate, and all the sacrifices we had made in the two years to protect our gold position were in vain. Not a single one of the four objectives which the Minister set out to achieve has been attained in this agreement.

At least two.

Instead we find ourselves no longer the gold monopolists of the world and we have lost our sovereignty in so far as gold is concerned. By our own actions we have shown the world that the one commodity in which we are vulnerable is our greatest asset, our gold. The prestige of gold has suffered a severe shock and its value in the world’s monetary system is looking more than a little tarnished. I suppose that an official price of more than 35 dollars an ounce is today an exploded dream.

But what if the hon. the Minister had taken the other alternative and had fed the market with gold at 35 dollars or 36 dollars an ounce? It might well have been that we would have seen an orderly advance in the price of gold on the free market over a period of time, instead of a rapid high followed by a disastrous drop. If we had accepted a free market price of 35 dollars to 37 dollars an ounce, I believe there would have been no need to enter into the agreement which we have just entered into; we would have remained free agents and we would have been masters of our own destiny. If we had not by our own strategy forced the price of gold up to an unacceptable high price to the rest of the world, but had instead fed the free market freely, this would have caused no concern to the rest of the world. The fact that the hon. the Minister was completely out of touch with events is abundantly clear from the amazing statement which he made in his speech on Friday. This is what he said:

There was nothing strange about this, Sir. It is the basis of my whole criticism of the hon. the Minister. It is the one salient factor that the hon. the Minister failed to take into account, namely the fact that if the price of gold on the free market had been kept at a level near the official price, he would have had no problem. This the hon. the Minister says is strange. He says it is strange that he managed to achieve an agreement when the price was low. This is the very thing he should have done. Instead of pushing the price up to 40 dollars and then letting it drop to below 30 dollars, there should have been an orderly advance. He would then have had no problem. The arrangement for the marketing of gold clearly shows that the Western world, and particularly the United States, cannot at this stage tolerate a gold price which is less than 35 dollars an ounce. Their own vested interests make a price of under 35 dollars an ounce absolutely impossible. We could have exchanged an orderly advance of the free market price of gold for our own gold freedom, but we chose to act differently. Because the United States was concerned with its own position, with perhaps scant consideration for the rights and wrongs of the issue, we are now shackled with the restrictions of the December agreement. No credit is due to the hon. the Minister as a result of this agreement. He could and should have done better.

One of the nine points of the Nationalist election programme now makes strange reading. Let me quote it. It reads as follows: “Hoe hy (they are talking about the hon. the Prime Minister) die neteligste ekonomiese vraagstuk, die goudvraagstuk, altyd in Suid-Afrika se guns gestuur het.” I wonder whether the hon. the Minister of finance would to-day write this point into the Nationalist election programme. I wonder whether the country is not entitled to ask whether the hon. the Minister is the right man to be entrusted with the economic future of South Africa.

We shall show you on 22nd April. [Interjections.]

Like other members of this House, Sir, I am conscious of the fact that there is an election on 22nd April. The voters of South Africa will then choose the government of this country for the next five years. They will have a choice of five political parties, a choice of five political philosophies —from the Progressive Party on the left to the Herstigtes on the right. When I am asked, as I am going to be asked: “Why should I vote for your party?” my answer will be a very simple one. It is this: In the world in which we live, there is one inexorable law, the law of evolution, the law of development by natural processes from a position that already exists. It is a fundamental law which is so commonly ignored, both by the conservatives on the right and the radicals on the left. The Nationalist Party live under the illusion that they can stop evolution and even reverse it. We know that they cannot be any more successful than were the efforts of King Canute when he demonstrated to his court his inability to stop the waves of the sea. The Progressive Party at the other extreme, live under another illusion, namely that they can start from scratch, ignoring the way of life and the conventions we have inherited from the past, endeavouring to impose a political system on the country that the electorate is not prepared to accept.

Our philosophy is a rational one. We accept that change will take place and that it should take place in time, to avoid crisis. We want the peaceful evolution of Britain, not the bloody revolution of France or Russia. At the same time change must not be so ill-timed as to create crisis itself. We do not want change based on immature and emotional impetuosity, ignoring the basic facts that exist. We will nurture change that in reality has become part of our way of life. We will not impede it with legislation that cannot be enforced. At times we will initiate change, but always mindful of the fears and the need for security of the individual. What we will not do is to propose change that is incapable of achievement, because of its unacceptability to the people. Sir, we postulate an orderly advance of change so that all the people of South African can move forward together, each with a sense of personal security to a better way of life, to a life free from want, to a life of opportunity, to a life of ever-increasing living standards, to a life where the human dignity of all is respected by all, to a life that is purposeful and meaningful for all the peoples of South Africa. That, Sir, is the real challenge to the leadership of the white man in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, the three hon. members of the United Party who spoke this afternoon surprised me by what they said. I want to begin with the hon. member for Constantia. He swung into action here and spoke a great deal about the hon. the Minister supposedly overtaxing the people of South Africa. He hit out here at the fact that there is now R491 million that is being hidden away and with which our people have supposedly been over-taxed. He said that it was our nest-egg. What are those hon. members angry about then? They say that on 22nd April they are going to win the election, then surely they will be sitting with a nest-egg! But that is not all either. The hon. member for Pinetown spoke about inflation all the time. His greatest grievance is inflation. These two hon. members must now tell me how they reconcile these two statements. The hon. member for Constantia wants this R491 million pumped into the economy. Is that not inflationistic? The hon. member for Pinetown must answer me this question: Would it not be inflationists if that R491 million were pumped into the economy? No, hon. members must not come to light with such contradictory statements.

But you are pushing up the taxes still further.

That is not so. That hon. member knows very little about finance. If I were him I would not make interjections about financial matters. The hon. member for Pinetown surely knows better than to actually believe in what he came up with here this afternoon. If this additional R491 million were to have been ploughed back our people would have had that extra amount in hand to force up the prices in South Africa unnecessarily. With this amount there would have been additional speculation on the Stock Exchange and the catastrophe there would consequently have been even greater. The hon. member for Parktown can surely not dispute that. I want to ask those three hon. members. They have already made quite a few statements here to-day, but now I want to make one and I want to ask them whether they agree with it or not. I particularly want the hon. member for Parktown to reply. If the National Party had not reduced income tax to such an extent last year and if there had not been so many concessions, would our people have been able to speculate to such an extent on the Stock Exchange, thereby causing the absurd peak that was reached in May? Could it have happened? That was the sequel. The hon. member for Kensington, who has a great deal of knowledge about the Stock Exchange, can tell me whether this is so or not. The fact that so much inconvenience and misfortune was experienced on the Stock Exchange was one of the consequences of the National Party making so many concessions as far as income tax was concerned. Last year I expressed my personal view here regarding the Franzsen Commission’s recommendation, and the minority report that was opposed to it, namely that a capital gains tax should be introduced. I specifically went into greater detail about the Stock Exchange. The hon. Opposition did not support my point of view at all. On the contrary, they attacked me about it. Had that tax been levied at the time this would not have happened. If the hon. Opposition did, in fact, have South Africa’s interests at heart, they should also have acknowledged that standpoint. We know that there were other reasons why the Government did not accept the recommendation. I fully accept those reasons, but the hon. Opposition must be very clear in their minds when they want to adopt a standpoint. They must tell us where they stand.

This afternoon the hon. member for Park-town had quite a lot to say about the question of gold. I think it is a case of it being easier to criticize than to create. Ultimately that hon. member’s whole tirade boils down to the fact that he is angry because of the hon. the Minister of finance’s gigantic success overseas in the sale of gold. He is angry about the fact, for example, that the hon. the Minister succeeded in not allowing the U.S.A. to demonetize gold and about the fact that the hon. the Minister succeeded in arranging for gold to retain its value in the commercial and financial world. It looks to me as if that hon. member is very angry about that. I think South Africa should be very grateful to this hon. Minister for what has been achieved and for what he accomplished for us, i.e. this new arrangement in respect of our gold. The member for Florida very cleverly drew attention to a few points. I therefore want to skip those points and make a few general statements here this afternoon. Since we are on the eve of an election there are, in my opinion, a few criteria against which the electorate of South Africa are going to test this National Party.

Which National Party?

The electorate is going to test this National Party on the way it has governed in the past few years.

In the first place this Government provided for order, peace and security in South Africa. It made opportunities for work available for its people. It took care of the health of this nation. It maintained a sound administration. I am now going to elaborate a little about the basic services, such as water, power, transport, communications and education, which this Government established. It is not the Government’s job to do the work of businessmen for them, to carry on their businesses, to look after their profits or to see to their administration for them, but it is the task, function and duty of a government to ensure that that infrastructure, those basic services expected of a country’s government, are established. I want to say that the Government has done this in a manner unequalled by any previous government, and in a manner in which no other government in the world has done so for its people and its country.

Lastly, this Government will be tested on the measures it took for the continued existence of the people. This Government has done its duty over the years for order, peace and security in this country. We have rooted out Communism in this country and the police are taking the lead in keeping the terrorists from our borders. If we look at last year’s Estimate, when R357 million was budgeted for Defence, we find that this was 21.6 per cent of the total Estimate. That is what this National Party has done to make this country safe for its people. When this Opposition goes to bed to-night they sleep peacefully. They know that there is no internal or external threat here.

Let us just look at a few general points. As far as our communications system in South Africa is concerned, we discussed the Post Office Part Appropriation Bill last Monday. I personally pointed out very clearly what we had done in this country for both our internal and external communications systems. Another I important responsibility of the National Party is this country’s transport. Here the electorate of South Africa can only give the National Party credit once again if we think, for example, that in South Africa we have 19,322 miles of single railway lines, 5,296 miles of which have already been electrified. Only the railways of the U.S.A. and Europe have been electrified to a greater extent than that of South Africa. I think this is an achievement. All the other countries, with which we cannot actually compete, are lagging behind South Africa. If we consider that the Railways’ revenue for the 1968-’69 financial year was R668 million, that 493 million passengers were transported, that it gave work to its people and that R401 million was paid out in wages, we see that this Government has done its share in respect of transport. There is not a place in South Africa that is not served by either the Railways or our Road Transport Service. This is also the case in respect of the Airways. In the past year over a million passengers were transported. Not only did we bring our internal services to perfection, but also our external services, on which we have 11 flights each week. Then there is also a flight to North America via Rio de Janeiro. We do not have cheap internal water transport available. Therefore it is not so easy and convenient for a government to supply all these transport services. But as far as our transport in South Africa is concerned, it is only this party’s past policy that can satisfy our electorate.

Apart from our transport, this Government must supply power. What have we done in that field? Let us see. Escom electricity sales have increased by 8.4 per cent and its capital expenditure on its expansion programme, i.e. for power stations that are to be erected, amounts to R70 million per year at present. From 1975 it will be R90 million and from 1980 it will be R100 million. In co-operation with the Government Escom has also made arrangements to obtain power from the Cabora Bassa scheme, the Oxbow hydro-electric project, the power station at Usutu in Swaziland and from the Ruacana scheme in South West Africa. In this way there is a saving on capital expenditure and we are also helping our neighbouring states. Owing to the policy of the National Party since 1960, our industries have progressed with rapid strides. In the past few years the industrial power consumption increased by 10.6 per cent. This could only happen as a result of the basic services and the guidance given by the National Party. For example, during 1968 power was supplied to almost 1,900 new farms, an increase of 7 per cent on the previous year. Matters have already progressed so far that the first nuclear power station will be established in the Western Cape by 1978. According to estimates the transmission lines to the Western Cape will be able to operate at their maximum safe capacity by 1978, and therefore it is also possible to provide this service. As a result of the National Party Government administration we also see that South Africa’s power is among the cheapest in the world. In South Africa our power costs .48 cents per unit, as against Canada’s .58 cents per unit, and the United Kingdom’s 1,04 cents per unit. If this is not cheap, what is? Over the past 22 years the Government has also done its share in respect of fuel. We know how this Opposition fought the Government tooth and nail when it wanted to establish Sasol. At Sasol petrol is manufactured from coal. To-day this installation is the largest of its kind in the world and it furnishes 20 per cent of South Africa’s needs. I admit that there was a capital investment of R119 million in Sasol, but we see that Sasol saves South Africa about R50 million annually in foreign exchange. Apart from this goods to the value of more than R3 million are exported annually. Sasol also furnishes the chemical industries with a tremendous number of by-products which serve the industries as raw materials. And all this came about as a result of this Government’s far-sightedness and as a result of what has been obtained for South Africa through the years by means of this party’s policy. Sasol has not stood still either, because it posseses 50 per cent of the shares in Soekor, the company co-ordinating the search for oil in South Africa. We know that on 25th March, 1969, it was announced in this House that natural gas had been discovered 30 miles from Plettenberg Bay. On Friday, 13th February, 1970, a quantity of crude oil was discovered 20 miles north-east of Port Elizabeth. It is this Government that placed the country’s industry on such a sound footing. To-day crude oil is transported by pipeline from Durban to the Rand. The hon. Opposition complains each year about the profits made on that pipeline. By now they are genuinely angry about the good profits this Government is providing for our country.

Let us now look at another important industry, i.e. Iscor. We also know that the establishment of Iscor was opposed by hon. members opposite. It is no use the hon. member shaking his head, because he ought to know that when his party was in power, South Africa had to buy its steel from England only, and that no other factory was allowed in South Africa. What do we have to-day? Iscor is now selling steel to the value of R220 million in South Africa. That is what we did for this country.

Mention was also made here of our human material and hon. members referred to the labour shortage. I should like to dwell for a moment on the question of our labour shortage. There are complaints in South Africa today about our manpower shortage. In talking of this manpower shortage everyone just wants our women to go out and work. However, as far as I am concerned this is not the solution. We must also think of the children. As far as I am concerned the child is our source of future manpower. Since we speak of a manpower shortage, why do we not then speak of a shortage of women in respect of their having to bring our children into the world? We have this manpower shortage as a result of the tremendous prosperity in this country. Because our country is so prosperous we have this manpower shortage. According to available statistics there were 1,074,000 economically active Whites of both sexes in 1963. As against this there was an estimated shortage of 28,600 workers at all levels, i.e. the professional, semiprofessional, technical and trade levels. The overall shortage was therefore 2.7 per cent. But if the productivity of every worker in this country were increased by only 3 per cent there would be virtually no manpower shortage to-day. According to the economic development programme for 1965-’70 there was to have been a demand for 1,424,000 white workers this year. But according to the estimates by the National Bureau for Educational and Social Research there was to have been 1.457,0 white workers available. In other words, there was to have been a surplus of 33,0 white workers. However, we must remember that the economic development programme was drawn up with a view to 20,000 immigrants coming to South Africa annually, while the National Bureau for Education and social research proceeded from the standpoint that there should be 30,000 immigrants. In 1963 there was a 29.1 per cent shortage in professional, semi-professional and technical workers, while the skilled artisans evidenced a shortage of 25.8 per cent. Immigrants cannot supplement this shortage. I want to make it very clear that we cannot get these people from overseas. They must come from our own ranks. That is why I say we must have more children of our own and that we must train them, because this is the solution for the future. We can surely not differ on that question.

What is our natural growth? In 1911 the birth rate of Whites was 32.2 per 1,000. Gradually it decreased. For example, in 1936 it was 24.2. In 1946 26.9. Directly after the war it therefore increased by 2 per thousand. However, it decreased until it was 24 per 1,000 in 1963. In other words, from 1911 to 1963 it decreased from 32.2 to 24. According to an investigation carried out in Pretoria in 1953, the average number of children per family was 3.3. But the average number of children of the parents of those couples was very much higher. For the women it was 7.7 and for the men 6.7 children per family. This merely goes to show how great a decline there has been in our birth rate in South Africa. If one goes back even further one finds that during the middle of the previous century there were 9 children per family. At the end of that century it was a mere 6 children per family and in 1949 3.5. We must bear in mind that this is where our problem in South Africa lies. The Commission of Enquiry into Family Allowances points out that 26 per cent of the urban and 19.8 per cent of the rural families were childless in 1941 and that about half of all families had no children or else only one. We must, of course, also bear another factor in mind, i.e. the fertility rate which has decreased rapidly. Just look at the figure for legitimate births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 years. In 1911 it was 248.6 per 1,000, while in 1961 it was a mere 171. We therefore see that there was a drop here. The drop did not occur as a result of the unpopularity of marriage. It is occurring as a result of the deliberate birth control measures being applied.

And the high cost of living.

There is another factor, i.e. the medium marriage age. In 1918 the average age at which men and women got married was 28.1 and 23.3 years respectively. In 1963 the average age for men was 25.2 years and that for women 21.9. This indicates that our people are getting married at a young age, but that starting a family is postponed to a later date. This is wrong. This is not only the National Party’s problem. It is also the United Party’s problem. This is a problem which will have to be given attention. According to an estimate by Dr. L. F. Badenhorst the white population stood at 3,067,638 in 1960. He said that in the year 2000 it would be a mere 4,917,000. This amounts to a growth of plus-minus 2 million in 30 years. This is not good enough for us. It is too little. If we compare the census figures for 1960 with those for 1951 in respect of all races in South Africa, we find that the increase in Whites was 1.69 per cent, the increase in Coloureds 3.43 per cent, Asiatics 2.97 per cent and Bantu 1.9 per cent. The present position in the Cape is already such that there are more Coloureds at school than Whites. There are also more Indian children at school in Natal than Whites. We must have more children. That is why, in this House and from platforms, we must ask people and encourage them to have more children. Every family in South Africa, which can do so, must present its country and its people with six children. There are problems such as the cost of living. One of the things I want to plead for to-day concerns the cost of confinements. This is something the Government ought to give attention to. It is to a large extent a provincial matter. Hospital costs for a confinement are at present about R40. Doctors’ costs amount to an additional R60. The total is about R100. It is these initial costs that put young people off. Of course, in the case of complications deliveries cost even more.

They must join medical aid funds.

We must inform our people in this connection and give them the necessary guidance. It can easily be said that the world’s birth rate has decreased and that South Africa’s is still one of the largest. South Africa’s present birth rate is 22.8, while that of other countries is as low as 15.2. How ever, this is a serious matter as far as I am concerned. We must encourage our young people. We know that when a woman is pregnant she must stop working. There is a great deal of expense involved in this. We know what this National Party has already done to keep the cost of living at a low level. We know what the National Party has done to provide our people with housing and to keep the interest rate at a low level. We know what has been done in that connection for our public servants, post Office and railway staff. But we want to make an appeal to the businessmen of South Africa, to the private sector, where the Government cannot intervene, to contribute their share. We must do something for South Africa in this respect.

I conclude by saying that what this Party has done in the past 22 years speaks volumes for any party and any government. When we go to the polls on 22nd April the voters outside will not pay any attention to what the United Party has said and will say at a later stage in this debate, but they will take note of the National Party’s recent administration, of how it has ruled and what it has given to its people.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard from the hon. member for Sunny-side a ringing call to the womenfolk of South Africa to produce at least six children—the married ones of course—for “volk” and “vaderland”. This is a rather wry reflection, because it might well be that there are many of the womenfolk of South Africa who would be only too willing to have a few more, or at least one or two more children for “volk” and “vaderland”, if they were able to find housing and adequate accommodation in a place where they could rear a family of that size. I ask the hon. member how does one under modern conditions where, as it has already been pointed out in this debate, we are becoming a nation of flat dwellers, raise a family of six under flat conditions? I believe that it is one of the greatest trials for a young mother to have a troop of children living in a flat. This has been proved overseas to lead to tremendous tensions in the married life. That is the reason why houses are being provided for young married couples overseas, namely to avoid those types of tensions in marriage. It strikes me as a bit odd that some two years ago this member was a member who went to town against the mini skirts. We had a tremendous speech from the hon. member against the dangers and the moral conditions involved in the mini skirt. He said that it was dragging down the “volk” and “vaderland”.

Are you in favour of the mini?

Yes, I am for the mini skirt. Let me say straight away that one of the factors which were involved in the case made by Lady Summerskill in the House of Lords against the proposal to lower the age at which a girl could become married without her parents’ consent was, “because the young men of our country would be so totally defenceless against these lovely young girls with their lovely legs and their mini skirts”. One should expect this hon. member to support earlier marriages and bigger families. I must say that there is one thing I want to thank this hon. member for. I must immediately confess one thing: Where we have heard speaker after speaker from that side launching a bitter attack on the four unfortunate members of the Herstigte Party, this hon. member forebore to do so. It might perhaps be significant that we have had no attack on the Herstigte Party by the hon. member who has sat down. I want to thank him from my side of the House.

Amongst the long list of successes of the Nationalist Party that he gave us, he mentioned water conservation. However, right at this very moment we have the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs touring the country to promote the Water Year, which will bring to the attention of our people how critical the water position really is in our country. I do not want to go on with this issue, because there are various other speakers who will deal with it, but I think the hon. member can hardly now come to this country and say how proud he is of what has been done and what a tremendous success the Nationalist Party has made of the conservation of the water supply in this country. The hon. member should not make such statements at a time when virtually every city to-day is in a state of utmost shortage of water supplies.

What I really want to speak about is the “reuse sukses” which, according to that hon. member, the Minister of finance has had overseas in relation to the gold price. I want to say straight out that I believe the hon. Minister took on the almighty dollar with the strength of South Africa’s gold reserves and with the full pressure of the international speculation running against the dollar to a fantastic extent. He thought that everybody in the world would be betting on the devaluation of the dollar in relation to gold. However, the hon. Minister has come back to South Africa with a bloody nose, because I believe that we have been put firmly in our place by the almighty dollar. This has happened because America is a country with a gross national product of some 956,000 million dollars.

We are getting wonderful patriotism from your side to-day.

It is not a question of patriotism. The hon. the Minister has made an attempt to force up the price of gold and has failed, if in doing so he jeopardized the position of gold in monetary markets throughout the world, does the hon. the Minister think that it will be patriotism on my side if I keep quiet and say nothing about this? Let us be quite clear about the fact that the United States has made it quite clear for a number of years that they intend to demonetize gold. For the hon. the Minister to pretend, as he did at the end of his speech, that because there was a balance of payment difficulty in the United States there might still be hope in the future for a rise in the price of gold, is merely deluding himself I think it is serious for South Africa that he should do so and it is important that he should not continue to do so. The Secretary to the Treasury of the previous administration in the United States, Mr. Fowler, made it quite clear that the U.S.A. Administration regarded South Africa as an unfriendly country, and because Russia, the other major producer of gold, is hostile to the U.S.A., he made it quite clear that as far as he was concerned the Johnson Administration would not consider a rise in the price of gold. What has happened in the last year or so is that the three major currencies, the pound sterling, the mark and the franc, either had to revalue or devalue in terms of the dollar. They have been forced to do so by the strength and the power of the American economy and the dollar. I think the Minister is deluding himself and he is building South Africa’s future on a false foundation if he is going to continue to hope for a rise in the price of gold, unless it is done through an organization such as the International Monetary Fund. When I spoke in this debate last year I said that I thought that the way in which a new status could be found for gold was by including in the deposits made with the International Monetary Fund gold to the value of the credits which the individual countries have to make available to the fund. The Minister in his speech said that in fact we had done so; I do not know to what extent, but we had deposited gold with the International Monetary Fund in terms of the S.D.R.s made available to South Africa. This, to my mind, would have been the one way in which gold could have acquired an international status which would be outside the pressure of international politics, because to-day the gold price is simply a matter of politics; it is no longer a financial or an economic matter, but international politics with the U.S.A. playing the most vital part in fixing the gold price. Where you have a system such as the Special Drawing Rights, it is being done with one purpose only, and that is to do away with gold as currency. I think we in South Africa have to accept this. I do not think it is basically so important to us. I think if we can establish and maintain the price of gold at 35 dollars an ounce as long as our gold mines survive, that is the most important thing we have to do, but beyond that we have to look to the exports of our industries to build up our economic position on an export industry. In this regard I want to draw attention to something.

We have spoken here already of the plight of people who invested on the Stock Exchange, but I think it is wise to draw the attention of investors in South Africa to the deliberate policy this Government is following, which is to divert the whole future economic development of South Africa from the present metropolitan areas to the border areas and the Bantu areas. Let the hon. members not tell me that the emphasis, in terms of what the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration said recently, is not going to fall on the development of the Bantu areas, something for which this side of the House has been pleading for so many years. But it is being done on the basis of subsidization, and the entire economic development of this country for the future is being affected by a deliberate act of this Nationalist Party Government through the Minister of Planning at the behest of the Minister of Bantu Administration, and it is being diverted from the present metropolitan areas to the border areas and inside the Bantu areas. It boils down to one thing only, that the Minister of Bantu Administration has become to-day the economic Tsar of South Africa, and he will decide how our economic development and progress will take place.

Commissar.

Yes, of course the Tsar was eliminated in 1917 and perhaps Commissar is a far better term to describe the hon. the Minister. The thing that worries me about this is that people are being encouraged to move to the border areas and into the Bantu areas, and they are being subsidized to do so. and the taxpayer is providing a great deal of the capital investment for the buildings in which these people house their factories, and the only capital investment of a great number of the people vesting their undertakings there is the machinery they put into those buildings and which they are allowed to write off at a pretty fair rate. I do not believe this is a sound basis on which the future industrial potential of South Africa can be built up. And basically, what are we achieving? The hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration will tell you that what they are achieving is to prevent integration, but as far as I am concerned you are simply moving integration from one place to another.

You are merely re-locating the integration of Black and While, of capital and of labour, and you are doing it at the expense of White South Africa because you are taking it from the present centres of development where you have the maximum efficiency in terms of size, and you are fragmenting your economy and breaking it down to go to various areas on the borders and in the homelands.

Then why do you support it?

We support decentralization if it is done on an economic basis, but what we do not support is this deliberate ideological practice of the government which is fragmenting the economy of South Africa for their own political purposes. That is what we are against.

Where do you want it to be?

Will the hon. member for Potchefstroom explain to me how this helps the white man in his political future, when you take the white man to the border and create an industry on the border thereby merely re-locating integration from one place to another place?

What about your own policy?

The dependence is exactly the same. The hon. members have solved nothing. If they go into the Bantu areas, something which the hon. the Minister has learned from the United Party at last, it will be better and the Minister may learn as time goes on but of course he has not much time left in which to learn. The re-location of industries in the border areas is not solving the problem of integration, because you still have the white man there with all his capital and you have the Bantu who supply the virtually total labour force. The few skilled white workers have to travel to work by bus while the Bantu are located merely across the railway line. How a railway line can provide an effective border between White South Africa and Black South Africa, I do not know.

What do you propose?

We have already proposed quite clearly that South Africa shall remain one country under the control of white men. That is quite clear. Obviously the hon. member is going to Another Place and he will not be with us much longer. [Interjections.] The point is that we are now having to base the whole of our economic future on export industries, and I do not believe that we can benefit those export industries which we will have to build up in this way. We have been told by a recent trade mission that the world is wide open to our exports, and let me say that I believe our exports have to go to-day to the nations of the west and to the Americas, because we have heard about the vast market which exists in Africa. But I think one of the problems we face in dealing with Africa in terms of trade is the fact that so often one has to provide credit in order to be able to trade with countries which have virtually no resources with which to pay for the commodities they buy. But we have the ability, as was proved by the mission which recently went overseas, to exploit a ready market, and I think it is important to realize that we must get into the markets of Europe and the U.S.A. to an ever-increasing extent, if we are going to be able to survive economically. I think one of the great points in favour of South Africa is that in a normal year we are able to produce surplus food. I believe we have to realize that food is a tremendous economic weapon. If we have surplus food in South Africa, that food will open to us the doors particularly of Black Africa where we wish to penetrate. If we have surplus food that we can make available to the nations of Black Africa, then we have a very real economic weapon, something which can be of very great importance to us in our future trade relations with the rest of Africa.

Are you advocating the production of surpluses?

The hon. member wants to know whether I am advocating the production of surpluses. We have had surpluses in all normal years. To the hon. member a surplus is like holy water to the devil. If there is one word that really scares the Nationalist Party it is the word “surpluses”. But we must realize that surpluses are a real factor, a tremendous force that we can use in our foreign relations.

Another point that I wish to raise is the problem of stock theft. I wish to raise this in the knowledge that I will be interviewing the hon. the Minister of foreign Affairs in this connection. I believe that this is a matter which is of the utmost importance in view of what has happened in a neighbouring country where the government has been taken over. Sir, I raise this matter because I want the House to know and I want the Cabinet and the country to know how very serious this problem has become, particularly in view of the fact that where you have stock theft in the mountain areas alongside Lesotho, any action which is taken by the South African Government can only result in accentuating the difficulties which Chief Jonathan has in Lesotho at this moment, because it is precisely in those areas where this is taking place that he lost support, a loss which appears to have given the election to the Opposition party. Sir, I was in Lesotho last year in July. We met the Deputy Prime Minister on an election tour in the area and we had a tremendously interesting discussion with him on the problems in which we are involved. The problem that has arisen is this: We have found there that stock theft has almost become legalized by reason of the fact that straying stock can be impounded and the moment the stock are impounded they become the legal property of anybody who buys them, at whatever price that person wishes to pay [Interjections.] I assure you. Sir, that this is the legal position. This is a problem which is going to become more and more serious. I want to make it clear that I am not talking about our country; this is the situation across the border. I want to explain that because I want everybody to understand the nature of the problem that we face. It is becoming such a problem that people farming along the Lesotho borders are unable to farm and unable to sell their farms, because who is going to buy a farm in that area? I have taken this problem to the Police. I believe that we have a very able stock theft squad handling the matter but it is getting beyond control. Sir, my reason for mentioning it here is that I am perturbed that there might be an incident involving nationals of Lesotho along that border in the near future, and I wish to draw this to the attention of the House. I have asked for an interview with the hon. the Minister of foreign Affairs, and I hope we are going to be able to reach some kind of reasonable settlement with the Government of that country, because if that does not happen then I believe there may be the most terrible trouble along our borders with that particular country. I hope that when I have a chance to speak to the hon. the Minister of foreign Affairs we will be able to find some kind of solution to this problem which is becoming more and more serious every day.

Mr. Speaker. I shall furnish a brief reply to what was said by the hon. member who has just spoken, but before I do that I just want to say in general that I shall not reply in detail to financial points, except so far as the sales tax is concerned. This day, Monday, 16th February, we have been eyewitnesses here to the wonderful spectacle of those hon. members on that side, including the hon. member for Mooi River, professing to be the new gold experts in South Africa. I wonder what happened to them over the week-end. for I am calling the entire country as my witness that to-day is the first day that side of the House has saddled the gold horse.

I said the same thing last year.

We recently negotiated a gold agreement; this was publicized through Press statements; it appeared in all the newspapers. We have recently conducted a no-confidence debate in this House and one would have expected that this would have afforded the Opposition, through its Leader, to seize upon this matter and level crticism at the Minister, if there was any criticism to level. Mr. Speaker, throughout that entire debate they did not say one word about gold. But something happened to them over the week-end—I do not know what—and today they are the only people in South Africa who are criticizing that gold agreement. I almost wanted to say that they are the only people in the world who are criticizing it. I want to say to them what has already been said to them here by way of interjection, i.e. that they committed an unpatriotic act against South Africa here to-day.

I want to say to the other side that it is only with the greatest praise and appreciation that we want to speak of the sustained and persevering work done on behalf of South Africa by the hon. the Minister and his team of officials over a long period to bring this extremely serious and important matter for South Africa to a satisfactory conclusion and solution. We want to say to the Minister that we appreciate the brilliant way in which they dealt with this matter. It is not only we who want to thank him; I think the Opposition ought to thank him as well, and if they do not do so, they ought to feel ashamed of themselves. I am certain that I am speaking here on behalf of the whole of South Africa when I convey our gratitude to him.

Sir, this is not only the feeling in South Africa. In Europe, throughout the entire world, there was great appreciation for the absolutely correct manner in which these negotiations were conducted. Through this team, led by the hon. the Minister, South Africa won great and even greater esteem in the international world of finance. We appreciate this, and I want to say to the Opposition: I do not think one of the election horses they saddled during the past few days are going to run, but this one will not even leave the starting gate.

This one will throw them.

Sir, Stock Exchange matters were discussed here. I will reply to that for I am certain that on Wednesday the Opposition will have to take their medicine. I am certain that that medicine will taste worse than the worst castor oil they have ever swallowed. Sir, what is it in fact that we heard here? There was absolutely no scientific analysis; all we heard was politics. Even the hon. member for Park Town, who seldom does this, descended to the lowest level of politics today. The whole thing centred about two statements the Minister made; they spoke about absolutely nothing else. But the hon. the Minister had issued regular warnings. They did not mention that. The public paid no heed to those warnings, hut now those two statements are suddenly responsible for the collapse on the Stock Exchange, whereas the Minister had warned in advance: “My friends, when circumstances allow, this will be the last deflationary step I am going to take; I am warning you that I am going to take it, and when I take that step, share prices are going to fall.” That is recorded on black and white. But now hon. members bandy arguments about here in regard to these two statements. May I just in passing put this question to them: Suppose the hon. the Minister had made his second statement here that morning; would they then still blame him for the slump on the Stock Exchange? According to their own argument they would of course not blame him. Mr. Speaker, however sorry I am for people who have lost money on the Exchange —and I am truly sorry for them—I just want to remind them, as I also remind myself: Let us search our hearts. Who told me to buy shares? Who told me to invest my money there? It was not the Minister. On the contrary, he warned me against it. Did I not make that decision myself? Did I not listen to Tom who was supposed to have made R100 the week before, and to Dick who had made R1,500 the week before that. And then I took part in that mass stampede. If I must be angry at anyone, then I must also be honest. Regardless of how difficult it is, the only person I must be angry at is myself.

I appreciate the fact that I got it from the hon. member for Mooi River this afternoon on black and white that they are irrevocably opposed to our subsidizing industries to go to border areas. I shall hold this against him and that side of the House. I do not want to go into this now, but he went further and said: “You are just moving integration from one part of the country to another”. He criticized this, and I am glad that it has been recorded on black and white.

I want to return now to the question of sales tax. I want to tell the Opposition straight that they have no standpoint whatsoever in regard to sales tax. That is why the Leader of the Opposition, during the no-confidence debate, came to light with such an incongruous statement as the following when he said shortly before he concluded (Hansard, column 41)—

Where did the hon. the Leader of the Opposition get that information from? Did he see the release issued by the Department of Information? I am now putting this question to him. Did he see it? If he did see it, he would have noticed that it was stated quite clearly there: “Release midnight Sunday, 1st February on Monday 2nd February”. Now he is laughing. Did he know about it, or where did he hear that the Minister had interviewed newspapermen on a Sunday? Where did he hear that?

You are really ridiculous.

Where did the hon. member for Hillbrow hear this? In the Rand Daily Mail the following is explicitly stated: “Dr. Jacobs said last night …” The Leader of the Opposition said to the Cape Times on a Sunday: “It is a blatant political manoeuvre”, or words to that effect.

Was that midnight Sunday?

No, midnight Monday, i.e. Sunday on Monday. [Interjections.]

They are using a Roman calendar.

Sir, the new system should have been introduced on Monday morning, 2nd February, so that it could apply to February.

The announcement was issued to the Press on Saturday.

Yes, and Monday the newspapers contained reports of interviews with those hon. members. They must reply to my question; otherwise the newsmen of these two newspapers, in which their interviews appeared, are under suspicion as far as we are concerned and stand accused.

The Leader of the Opposition may as well laugh some more, but I want to tell him that they have no policy whatsoever in regard to sales tax. The Leader of the Opposition said in Estcourt: “The purchase tax must be abolished.” This he said on 3rd November of last year. Did the hon. the Leader of the Opposition not say this? [Interjections.] Very well then, they misreported him. After the Leader of the Opposition had spoken in East London, a report was written under the hand of Donald Woods on 8th November. It is reported there that the Leader of the Opposition used the following words: “… more sensible taxation and abolition of the so-called sales tax.” That is what the Leader of the Opposition said at a meeting in East London. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition does not know what he is saying, but apparently he is taking it back now.

I know full well what I am talking about.

We now come to the skunk standpoint mentioned this afternoon by the hon. member for Constantia. He said that this whole matter made him think of a skunk. The hon. member for Durban (Point) finds himself in the same company, for he said: “It is an unnecessary, and unneeded and unwanted tax.” Now what does that mean? If words have any meaning this means that they do not want it. But then the hon. member says that unfortunately he is sitting here in a half-washed state. He said that instead of being a messy, unwashed and dirty person, you can now be a half-washed person. His ideas and his opinions are not only half-washed; they are half-baked. I said the United Party did not have a standpoint on sales tax. They fought an election in Kuruman. There they issued a pamphlet in which they pointed out that they would abolish the sales tax on sugar. Since when is there a sales tax on sugar? But in that pamphlet they went further. They stated that they would also abolish the tax on candles. They probably thought the people of Kuruman did not have very many electrical installations on their farms. That is why they added candles as well. The hon. member for Durban (Point) must really give his people better advice. Canned fruit and vegetables were also included. The people there do not have a great deal of water with which to cultivate vegetables, and that is why they buy canned foods. Now the United Party was saying to the voters at Kuruman that there was a sales tax on canned fruits and vegetables. Is the Opposition not ashamed of itself? What is its policy? Sir, they went further, and said. “The National Party Government is placing a tax on sweets.” That hon. member was standing in his bench when he said: “We agree, sweets are bad for children. Place a tax on sweets.” Those were his words, Sir. [Interjections.]

It is untrue.

Here is the hon. member’s Hansard. If it is untrue he must show me where the United Part opposition proposed that the sales tax on sweets be omitted.

We did not say that they were bad for children. [Interjections.]

Sir, so he was not talking about our children, but here they state in their pamphlet that this sales tax was even going to affect our children. They said to the people of Kuruman: Just think of the amount of tax which is being imposed on biscuits. [Interjections.] Then they also say: Just think of the amount of tax which is being imposed on mincers. There is in fact a tax on biscuits and there is a tax on mincers, but I am asking the hon. member for Durban (Point) again, to tell us why they did not move amendments in respect of sweets for children, biscuits and mincers.

I now come to the pamphlet “You want it —we have it”. Here it is stated: “The purchase tax will go from all but luxury and durable goods.” I have the relevant Act here, with its schedule, in which the various items, on which purchase tax has been levied, are mentioned. I looked to see what “durable goods” are mentioned here. I found a whole list of durable consumer goods. I shall mention a few of them. There is for example all kinds of stoves, pots and pans, knives and scissors, shavers, refrigerators and grass mowers, or, as the hon. member for East London (City) says “grasmaaiers”. [Interjections.] Other durable goods mentioned here are sowing machines, television and radio sets, and furniture. Then they say: “The purchase tax will go from all but luxury and durable goods.” I also looked at the list of “luxury goods”. Sir, we have a sales tax on carpets. The Opposition proposed that that sales tax be deleted. Sir, there are carpets and carpets. One gets Persian carpets which cost up to R5,000. Surely those are luxury goods. When they hold a meeting in Dordrecht in my constituency they say: “Oh no, it is those articles on which sales tax should be imposed. We are opposed to luxury goods.” But then they go somewhere else and tell the people: “The Government had introduced a sales tax on carpets.” What is our standpoint? Then, on the other hand, they say: “Oh no, we proposed in Parliament that your carpet should not be taxed.” So I can mention one item after another. Take cutlery for example. One finds the most expensive cutlery made of silver. We have a sales tax on cutlery. The man who buys inexpensive cutlery pays a proportionately smaller amount in the form of sales tax, but the one who purchases the luxury cutlery, pays a larger amount in the form of sales tax. So I can mention one example after another.

I am mentioning this to indicate the position to the House and we will also tell this to the country, because we have every right to do so. The United Party does not have a standpoint in regard to sales tax. It is only this side of the House that had a standpoint. I want to go further and say that we will tell the country that it would not have been possible for us to have had this new tax structure if we had not introduced the sales tax. In terms of this new structure income tax has been reduced; inter alia, a concession of R500 has been made to married working women. These are two sides of the same coin. One cannot throw the one away and retain the other. We must either have the old system of income tax without the sales tax, or we must have the sales tax together with the new dispensation. We shall inform the people that we have introduced a new dispensation in terms of which it is no longer only 8 per cent of the population that pays tax, but that we have for the first time introduced a system in terms of which the entire population of South Africa pays tax. If at the outset it did not function properly and had its shortcomings then I call the hon. the Minister and myself to witness that we informed the people of South Africa that we would remedy this matter and adjust it as we went along. We kept our promise. We announced relief measures and we will in future adjust the sales tax from time to time. If necessary we shall reduce it further when and on whatever articles we may find this possible. We shall do so taking into consideration the most important interest and requirements of everyone in South Africa, including the lower income groups. We are giving South Africa this assurance.

Mr. Speaker, every second day those hon. members make a gesture with which they want to indicate to me that my throat will be cut in Queenstown. [Interjections.] The hon. member for North Rand also said something. My time is running short, but I want to inform the House why I shall return to this House. Mr. Speaker, you are sitting in a very good position. Do you see those two swinging doors? I want to say something about those two swinging doors, but first of all I want to say that over a period of years the National Party has been working to get the non-Whites taken of the common voters roll. Over a period of years the National Party has been working at and establishing separate governmental institutions for the non-Whites. We will expand these further and follow that course, but the United Party wants to allow non-white people to enter through those two swinging doors to sit here with me and with them.

[Inaudible.]

This is the case, but that hon. member does not want to know it. Mr. Speaker, just listen to the row he is kicking up. When I said this in Queenstown, a very high-ranking Office-bearer of that party shouted: “That is nonsense.” Do you know, Sir, even their own people do not know this, but I will go and make their own people understand this. That will be the first instalment of race federation. Together with that instalment eight representatives of the Bantu will enter this House. There will at first be Whites. We know the old story. We know what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Yeoville have said. We know what the hon. member for Durban (North), whom I do not even see here, wrote in the Cape Times and what Senator Horak wrote in Week blad when he was secretary of the party. We know that whole story and we shall tell it to the people. Who will enter through those swinging doors? I do not even have a word of comfort for the hon. member for Kensington and the hon. member for Durban (Central). Those hon. members must not think that the Bantu will elect them if they are thrown out by the United Party here. After all, they are completely tame.

The Bantu will not even elect Jan Steytler. They will elect the highest bidders. Those are the people who will enter through those doors. The people who will be able to offer the highest bid and who will promise the Blacks heaven on earth are the people the Opposition will let loose on this House. These are the people they want to let loose on South Africa and the Bantu. Nor will it remain at that. According to their own evidence it will remain at that, for under their policy the six Coloured representatives may be Coloureds. When we are level pegging they will say to the Coloureds: “Vote for us.” But with a coalition government they will want to come in on conditions. They will introduce a motion of no confidence in the Government. Those hon. members will want to do so with their help. Mr. Speaker, they will do this at a price. They will do this for a seat in the Cabinet, for the expansion of their representation …

He can become Prime Minister too.

Yes, he can become Prime Minister too. My life testifies to what I have done for my Coloured people, and the respect I have for them. In all decency I want to say that we will then share this lobby of ours with one another. We will share the coffee lounge and the dining room with one another. Nor can their wives enter this House on any other basis. They will then be members of the House, and what will become of their guests? Since my time is so short I shall leave that subject at that.

I come now to another matter. I feel dissatisfied about something those hon. members said. They said that it was we who were separating children. [Interjections.] In this book it says …

What book is that?

This is the booklet that states: “You want it, we have it.” This booklet states: “Racial division begins in the schools.” This booklet states that isolation begins in the schools. I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition who isolated his child into an English medium school where it was absolutely impossible for him to come into contact with Afrikaans children?

My son is attending the University of Stellenbosch.

You talk about schools. I just want to know who isolated his son. He isolated him from Afrikaans-speaking children. There is the hon. member for East London (North). Who isolated his child. He lives close to the parallel medium school at Molteno, but he isolated his child in King William’s Town. There sits the hon. member for Newton Park who looks so pious. Who told him to isolate his child in an English medium school in the Cape. [Interjections.] Now he wants to know from me what is wrong with that. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. But those hon. members are saying to our people: “Look at the cruel Nats, the infamous Nats, the race haters.” They say that we are doing this, while they do so themselves. I maintain that this is politically immoral and disgraceful.

Mr. Speaker, I want this afternoon to deal with water affairs. As far as the hon. the Deputy Minister is concerned I must say that I thought he made a most remarkable speech for a man who himself has such a peculiar political history. I hope that in the election of 22nd April, the voters of Queenstown will remember that he is a Nationalist for the purpose of this election that we are going to have now because otherwise they may vote for him thinking that he is a United Party candidate. He was a candidate for the United Party in the past, so they could be forgiven if they thought that he was standing for the United Party again now. That is the position. I merely want to say that the best reply to him will be the speech I want to make now dealing with the United Party policy, a speech which will also be repeated by the United Party Minister of Water Affairs when we meet in July. Hon. members opposite are given two guesses as to who he will be because my blushes and my modesty forbid that I should enlighten them as to who our Minister of Water Affairs will be.

You are an old man now.

This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I am not in the Senate, however old I may be. Perhaps it is a hint to the hon. the Minister of Transport that he should leave the sacred precincts of this House and be elevated to another edifice altogether.

In dealing with this matter of water affairs in the short time at our disposal, may I say that one makes no apology for dealing with that matter in a debate of this kind. The State President only a few days ago opened the Water Year with due formality in Johannesburg. So let me at once come to the point that we on this side of the House accept the importance of this particular issue. We have drummed at it and repeated it over and over again for many years. I want to come very soon to some of the matters with which, in our opinion, the Government can be charged, and not necessarily this Minister only, who has only been here a short time, but the Government as a whole with the responsibility which it has as the Government of the country.

Before reaching that particular point, I should like to deal very briefly with the statement which was published in the Natal Mercury on the 5th of this month. It was given very great prominence by that newspaper. It is a statement by the Minister of Water Affairs, who was reported to have said in an interview the previous day—

I think there is no doubt that if water meters can be installed, they will result in an overall saving of water. I am now talking about the municipal areas. But it cannot be done all at once. There are side effects which flow from the use of meters in the local authority areas. I suggest that the hon. the Minister go into some of those matters and discuss them with the Department of Health. He should have a look at some of those side effects. I have been involved in this matter since the days in the Provincial Council when there were suggestions that we should compel Durban to undertake metering willy-nilly. Long and fruitful debates ensued. But there is more to it than that. I think this is perhaps the appropriate moment when we could draw to the attention of the Minister the fact that the rise in the standard of living being enjoyed by more and more people every year, including the non-White races, means a greater consumption of water. This is one of the matters that we just have to face up to. There cannot be a rise in the standard of living and a reduction in the consumption per capita of water. I know the Minister has plenty of problems, but here I would advise him to go slowly and carefully into this matter before compulsion is used, taking into mind all the costs involved. He should take into consideration the people who have to be necessarily employed, the technical people, the artisans. The meters must not only be provided, but installed and maintained properly afterwards. It is a very big and costly project.

Then I want just for a moment to repeat the principles on which this side of the House stands and which the Minister of Water Affairs will repeat from that side of the House in July. Firstly, we stand for the safeguarding and the guaranteeing of the supply of water to existing communities, whether they are urban or rural. Principle No. 1 from this side of the House is that those existing communities must have their water supplies safeguarded. Secondly, we say that we should use the money that we have available for the purpose of developing our own South African water supplies before we embark on foreign adventures. May I say to my hon. friend from South West Africa who misunderstood me last year, that where water is necessary to protect, in terms of principle I, the supply to our existing communities, it is our principle No. 1 that their supply be preserved from wherever the water may come. Let us not spend millions of rand on foreign adventures when we are still waiting to develop to the limit our own internal supply. Thirdly, we believe that in the upper regions there should be adequate storing facilities so that water can be channelled from high snowfall areas, the areas where there is plenty of water, to drought-stricken areas or areas of low rainfall. To that we added last year the need to apportion the water. We believe the time has come in South Africa when there should be at any rate some form of apportionment. Industrial and urban development, big irrigation schemes, and so forth, should have some kind of a foot rule by which they can measure what water they are likely to get at any rate in the forseeable future. Some kind of apportionment should take place so that sporadic or unexpected development would not leave us suddenly without the necessary water.

Bearing in mind that this is a water year and the interest the Minister is showing, I want to say that in our opinion, the Government has been woefully lax throughout the years in dealing with pollution. Here I have cutting after cutting from visiting scientists from overseas, engineers, and so on. I do not have the time to quote from them adequately, but one and all they come back to the same point that we must recycle and re-use our water. That is the basis. Let there be no mistake about it that we favour the installing of meters in principle. But it cannot be done at once and it should not be enforced in the manner apparently envisaged by the Minister. What is necessary, is the halting of pollution, and so far as it goes, the purification of that water so that it can be recycled and re-used. That is the point on which the Minister himself has spoken only recently. He has spoken on it from the point of view that he intends to have it done. But the backlog is terrific at the present time. Not only our rivers are being polluted, but the sea itself. There was a time, only a few years ago, when it was believed that the ocean was so large that the amount of sewerage, industrial effluence and pollutants of all kinds could just be poured into the sea. It would be washed away and one would see no sign of it. Sir, those days are gone. Over the last few years already we have seen that the pouring of industrial effluence into the sea can cause untold harm, not only to the marine life along the seashore, but also from other points of view, even to human health. It is because we are allowing pollution to take place. I want to quote from the American News Digest of 12th February. It says this—

I have used the word “agencies” instead of the actual word “facilities”, because while the word “facilities” may be good American, it is not very good English. The President of the United States himself has said that no government-operated agencies in the United States are to continue to pollute water or air. It is being stopped. In addition to that, he himself is actually the chairman of a committee that has been constituted of the top scientists in the United States to set about the recovery now of the rivers and lakes of America and to return them to their erstwhile freshness and purity, which is going to cost thousands of millions of dollars. We are facing trouble in this country. I have had from the Minister of Water Affairs on two separate occasions assurances in regard to a big proposed factory on the upper regions of the Umzimkulu River, a hundred miles away from the sea. He has given me those assurances. The hon. the Minister will forgive me if I come back and ask once more for those assurances. In the Natal Mercury of 17th May, 1969, is a report from the village of Creighton which deals with the reverse of depopulation in Creighton. Creighton is a little village right next to the proposed side of the Mondi mill. This is a depopulation in reverse, in other words, an inflow of population. The Town Board are selling plots there at a price they would never have realized not long ago. Each buyer must build a house worth R6,000 within three years. The following is also said: “The provincial authorities meanwhile have been asked to help with the layout of more housing land in time for the expected influx of European workers and their families when the Mondi mill is established.” They ask for a school to be built, for certain hospital facilities from the provincial authorities, and so on. The whole thing is accepted as being matter of fact, and people are pouring in. They have to sign agreements to erect houses on those plots. The provincial authorities have been officially asked for school facilities and so on. I hope that when the hon. the Minister replies he will make it clear that until there is a cast-iron guarantee that no effluent will be returned to the Umzimkulu River, under any kind of pretext whatsoever, he will not permit the abstraction of water from the Umzimkulu for the purpose of founding this factory. It will be a fine market for the type of agriculture in which I myself am engaged. We would like to have that market, but no market for one section of the people justifies the pollution of a river which for its last 100 miles to the sea must be the lifeblood of the lower South Coast when the time comes. The whole of our industrial development in the future and the whole of our domestic supply will depend on it. This year the regional water corporation which supplies water to the lower 54 miles of the South Coast, is applying for a Water Court order to take water from the Umzimkulu. It has temporary permission and is putting a temporary plan into action now. The Umzimkulu River is the only source of water on which we can rely. If this factory is established 100 miles inland and it pollutes the river the generality of the people of South Africa, as in America, will have to put their hands in their pockets one day to pay for the clarification and the purification of the effluent that has flowed into the river. I have said in this House before that when we sat on the Select Committee under the chairmanship of the hon. member for Ermelo who was a very good chairman—seeing that he is not here I can say that—as a joke at that time it was suggested that the effluent from a factory should be returned to the intake of the water supply of that factory. That select committee sat for three years and an Act was passed in 1956. That suggestion is no joke now. I saw it professionally recommended the other day. It was suggested that we should have a law now that would demand that the effluent from a factory should be returned to the intake of that factory so that such a factory has to recycle its own water.

If such a factory cannot purify its own water so that it can use it over again, the answer is that it will have to close down. It will not need the hon. the Minister to step in. I know the burden that is on the hon. the Minister. These big factories have to be made to toe the line. They have to leave us pure water, not only in our rivers but also in the sea, as pure water is vitally necessary for our industrial and urban development. There is not a big town in South Africa, as my hon. friend for Mooi River has said, which is not to-day facing a shortage of water on a short-or longterm basis. On a short-or long-term basis every town in South Africa is facing a shortage of water. It is no good crying about the shortage of water when the time comes, if we do not have the water. The water is there if we recycle it and if we purify it when it comes from these factories.

One of the newspaper cuttings I have here refers to what was said by the hon. the Minister. This article appeared in the Daily News of 29th January, 1970, and the heading is: “Industry warned—Government to end river poison.” It says the following:

That is very good, but how far does it take us? Only to those factories which are pumping their waste into the Umlaas River. This is only one tiny fraction of the problem that we are faced with.

I want to repeat that what we have now come up against is the lack of vision, planning and appreciation of what we are faced with in South Africa since the 1956 Act was put on the Statute Book. During the last 14 years we on this side of the House have seen what was coming and have warned against it time after time. Now it is coming will such a rush that I do not know whether the professional people, the technical people and the money will be available to deal with this problem. But here I have a fresh slant on the matter. This is a report of a meeting of the congress of the South African Institute of Race Relations which was addressed by a Mr. Pepler, who is the Director of Bantu Development. He told this congress that there are coal mines in the Bantu areas and that there are other mineral deposits that can be exploited. He also said that there are various types of industries that can be established. I want to put a very clear and straight question to the hon. the Minister in this regard, because I am coming to one particular point in a moment. Who is going to control the pollution from mines or factories if they are situated in Bantu areas? Is the hon. the Minister going to have the last word as to whether water shall be abstracted from rivers for the purpose of those factories or mines, or is the Department of Bantu Administration, which as in so many other matters is becoming a law unto itself, going to determine that they can take water which runs through a Native area without reference to the Minister of Water Affairs? Who is going to have the authority? There seems to be certain very split authorities already in regard to other branches of Government service in South Africa. We want to have no split authority in this regard. We are ready to back the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs and he need have no qualms about that score. As we have pointed out before we will stand behind him and say: The authority of the Minister of Water Affairs is absolute in this regard and cannot be questioned. Whether the Department of Bantu Administration, or any other, is concerned the authority of the Minister of Water Affairs should be the top.

Why do I come back to this matter? I come back to it because after three years in this House the then Minister of Water Affairs, Mr. P. K. le Roux, under tremendous pressure the whole time, eventually grasped the nettle and closed down a factory on the South Coast which was dealing with ilmenite and other minerals on the Umgababa River. He refused to allow that factory to abstract water from the Umgababa River any longer. Mr. Pepler told this congress that there are about 2 million tons of ilmenite at this site on the Umgababa River waiting to be developed. He was talking about the very workings that the then Minister of Water Affairs closed down because of the gross pollution, not of the river, but of the Indian Ocean. I believe the then Minister flew over the sea at that time. I did, and one could see 5,000 to 6,000 acres of the Indian Ocean blood-red because of the pollution taking place from the ilmenite factory at Umgababa. Despite that Mr. Pepler made that statement before the congress. We want to know if the hon. the Minister is going to have the last word? If factories or developments of any kind that are going to pollute the rivers or our sea are proposed in scheduled Native areas, homelands, the Transkei or anywhere in South Africa, is the hon. the Minister going to be the man who is going to say that he will not give a permit for the abstraction of water until such time that he is satisfied that there will be no effluent, or is someone else going to do it? We would like to have a very clear answer on that point. Because I know the hon. the Minister is in difficulty himself I am going to sit down to give him an opportunity to reply.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for South Coast is a person who has been sitting in this House for many years now. He played a special part in the establishment of the present Water Act and also in all the committees which have been appointed by this House since he became a member. I am highly appreciative of the fact that the hon. member made this contribution in the past. But I cannot understand how the hon. member can maintain here that the government has failed to do those things he mentioned here to-day. Nor can I understand how the hon. member can accuse us of these things, knowing that since the National Party Government came into power in 1948, the foundation has been laid for the proper control of water in the Republic of South Africa. Prior to 1948 there was no such thing as proper water control in this country. But in 1956 an Act was passed which made it possible to exercise control, as the hon. member put it to-day, over all the spheres he mentioned. The hon. member was a member of the commission which undertook the inquiry in this connection. He was a person who displayed special interest. Subsequently the hon. member has served in each one of the subsequent committees appointed by this House. Therefore I want to inform the hon. member that his history is not entirely correct. Prior to 1948 there were no control measures as we have to-day. The measures we have to-day were in fact created after the National Party Government came into power in 1948.

One can judge this matter according to various norms. It can be judged according to the total amount which has been spent in South Africa on all kinds of water storage and water control. If we want to judge this on the basis of figures, we see that prior to the year 1948 the total amount which was spent per annum on all forms of water control and the allocation of water in South Africa was less than R4 million. Since then the amount which is being spent has increased to more than R80 million per annum. Between 1948 and the present not R33 but R300 million has been spent. As I have just said, we are now spending more than R80 million per annum in this regard. This curve will go up in the years which lie ahead. Soon we shall have to spend more than R100 million per year on this. If it is therefore to be judged in terms of spending, there is no comparison between the amounts which were spent before 1948 and the amount which is being spent at present.

If this can be expressed on the basis of what has been established in the form of machinery to be able to meet these problems, that machinery was in fact established in the Department of Water Affairs subsequent to 1948. Since 1948 we have had to see how water in South Africa became a restricting factor, how it became increasingly expensive to store, and how it became increasingly difficult to control wherever it was being used. The various sections of the State machinery which deal with this were created during the regime of this Government. I want to mention only a few. It is not possible to speak of water control and pollution control and omit to mention research. Research in this connection began after the establishment of the hydrological section of this Department. Research began since the C.S.I.R. made a start with the National Institute for Water Research. The research and application of the results of this research began after the 1956 Act provided that the Minister of Water Affairs shall issue a permit for every drop of water abstracted by every factory in this country in order to remain in operation and also for every drop of water flowing from that factory. Therefore, measures have since then been introduced with which we are able to exercise control. However. I also want to give the hon. member credit for the fact that he also played a part in the establishment of this control. If all the other hon. members on that side of the House were always to make such a positive contribution as this member, we would have gone much further by now. What has been done in South Africa to store water properly, allocate it properly, and ensure that the effluent can be controlled as far as the content and the pollution is concerned has been done since the National Party Government created this machinery for that purpose.

However, I want to return to the various points mentioned by the hon. member. The hon. member stated that his party advocates the provision of water to existing communities. I take it that what the hon. member means by that, is that if a choice should be made in South Africa between the allocation of water to areas which still have to be developed, and the areas which have already been developed, and other areas where developments which are essential to the country, should receive preference. I now want to inform the hon. member for South Coast that that is precisely what this Government means by planning. That is precisely what is being done to-day. If we were to look at the present state of affairs, we would see that the more than 90 points at which waterworks are at present being constructed for allocation to and use by communities, are all points by means of which a need which already exists will be supplied. The hon. member need not say that this must be done. That is the basis of our policy. That, and nothing else, is what is being done.

The hon. member also said that we should use money to develop our own sources instead of spending money on the development of the sources of neighbouring states, so that we could keep ourselves independent as long as possible. I want to inform the hon. member that that is also our policy. Apparently the hon. member mentioned this point because we are all discussing and we are all speculating on the possibility of water being brought here from Lesotho, or the possibility of water being brought from the northern rivers of South-West to supply South-West Africa with water. I could even have mentioned this as a result of the speculation on the possibility of water being brought from the Zambesi in Rhodesia. I think the golden rule here is that one should as far as possible use one’s own water and that you must also try to obtain water from new sources you have at your own disposal before making use of sources over which you do not always have full disposal. If I may discuss these three aforementioned areas, I just want to say that it is true that there is water available in Lesotho and that we are in fact conducting negotiations on the possibility of bringing water from Lesotho to South Africa. It is true that this could be beneficial to South Africa if we could make use of that additional source. It is also true that the water from that source could probably be delivered in South Africa at a cheaper rate than if that same water were to flow down in the same rivers and be pumped back to Johannesburg. But our entire development plan for the future is based on the Vaal River being developed to its maximum and that the additional water should come from the Tugela, as is the case at present. To date no agreement has as yet been entered into with Lesotho regarding the use of water from Lesotho. Negotiations have in fact been conducted with Lesotho, although they have not reached an advanced stage. During these negotiations the two governments took cognizance of their respective positions. In addition, a great deal of technical investigations still have to be carried out. In other words, we have not by any means reached the stage where South Africa has concluded an agreement with Lesotho. It may well be that the most sensible course for us and for them would be to help each other in this way. However, the principle is that we want to be as independent as possible, as far as this important source is concerned as well. I therefore assure the hon. member that we will not commit ourselves unnecessarily if it is not in the interests of the economy of South Africa and will not be in the interests of such a neighbouring state either.

If we consider the second source I mentioned, i.e. the northern rivers of South-West Africa, I must say that we have played a great part in this. In terms of international law we have a share in the following rivers: the Kunene, a great river in which only we and Portugal have a share, the Okavango, a river with which three countries are concerned, and the Kwando, a river which is as large as the Orange River. We also have a share in the Zambesi. Our borders run along the Zambesi up there in the Caprivi Strip. But now one must be practical. It is no use having these sources far from us, for it could mean that we would probably have to bring water down from the north at such a cost that we would scarcely be able to exploit it. We shall have to establish, according to the laws of economy, whether it can be done cheaply or not. But what is in fact important is that South-West Africa is on the verge of a development which makes it possible and necessary for us to bring in that water there which already belongs to us, for use as quickly as possible. This will be done. As far as our share in the Zambesi is concerned, and the possibility of bringing water in from Rhodesia, I must point out that this is quite unpractical. It is unpractical to consider pumping water over a distance of hundreds of miles to one’s consumption area which lies 3,000 to 4,000 ft. higher. It becomes as expensive or perhaps even more expensive to supply water by means of pipeline than it costs the Department of Transport to pump oil from the coast. It is too unpractical even to consider. The hon. member and all of us hope that, as the need arises, there will at some time or other be a breakthrough so that we will be able to harness the ocean. This is however a development which we cannot anticipate. That is something about which we should not even speculate unnecessarily. Science is working on this. We are working on this ourselves. Many countries are working on this. You and I hope that within the foreseeable future we will reach the point where it can in fact be done economically. This, however, is something for the future. I almost want to say that we are closer to this solution than to the possibility of water being brought from the north to South Africa. Not only is such a solution perhaps closer, but it will also be cheaper. I say therefore that this is in fact the policy. In fact, the application of our policy over the past number of years has in fact been aimed at ensuring that our water supply, too, should be as independent as possible.

The hon. member made another point. He said that we should be sensible and that we should store our water at high-lying points and from there take it to places where it is needed for use. This is correct and we are doing it wherever we can. However, the hon. member will understand when I say that one cannot always, as in the case of the Tugela, have a dam basin on a high point in which water can be stored. The water must be stored at a point where it is possible for one to do so. The best example is the Boland itself. We cannot for example dam up the Berg River in the Berg River itself. We shall heave to take the water by tunnel nine miles through the mountains and store it on the other side of the Berg River. In other words, we will in fact have to take topography into consideration, and judging in accordance with that, do the best we can. We must be careful when we establish large storage points that we do not then proceed to distribute water throughout the entire country. As far as irrigation is concerned, there is such a thing as giving preference to the rights of the riparian owners. When it comes to the requirements of cities and industries the possibility does exist that the water can be pumped out and taken overland, in the same way as we are taking it out of the Tugela River to the Vaal River. But it must always be borne in mind that it is extremely dangerous in South Africa to concede in principle that water can be taken from any possible point to any other point where the need exists. This cannot be done. We have too little water to do this. We will come up against irreversible problems in regard to conflicting interests.

The hon. member mentioned a fourth point as well. He stated that we should allocate water properly to places and areas where the need exists. This ties in with what I have just said. This is so. We shall allocate water where the need exists. The best example of this is the requirements of the Witwatersrand. This is a requirement which exists in a place because of its inability and because of the fact that that is precisely where there is a concentration of the masses. We must, in other words, take water to that place. As I have just said, the right of use of the place where the water comes from, which is predominant, cannot be disregarded. We cannot accept the principle that water can be taken in any direction to other places where water is needed. It must always be established whether the need and the rights of the place where the water comes from are not greater than those to which it is being taken.

The hon. member also put forward an argument in regard to pollution. The hon. member stated that we were being faced with a serious crisis in regard to pollution. When I asked him whether he was reproaching us because we were not doing enough, the hon. member said that that was not so. Recently everybody seems to be talking about pollution. I even read in a newspaper the other day of papers which had been read in which the idiotic statement was made that as far as pollution is concerned we were much worse off even than the United States of America or Europe. This is of course completely untrue. The fact of the matter is that as far as pollution control is concerned, South Africa is the leading country in the world. There is not one single country outside South Africa which has as much control over the pollution of its natural resources as we in fact do.

Hear, hear!

Along the great rivers in America where industries have arisen like mushrooms, you dare not swim in the water. It is simply not possible. It is highly dangerous and no animal or plant life can live in that water. There is no control in those countries to maintain the quality of the water. Our Water Act is extremely strict in regard to this point. No factory may abstract a single drop of water from a public stream if such factory does not have a permit from the Minister. In future the quantity of water and the rate at which it may be abstracted will be stipulated in that permit. No person may draw water from a public stream and return it or utilize it unless he has a permit which states how he should use it and what standards must be complied with. I can give the hon. member the assurance that at the present time in the Republic of South Africa there is not one large factory which takes a single drop of water from a river that does not do so according to a permit which stipulates precisely how clean that water should be and where that water should go.

Does that also apply to Mondi?

I shall come to Mondi in a moment. In this connection I should like, for the third time, to make a statement in the House. We therefore have control over this matter. The section which deals with this is already a large section in the Department. We work in the closest collaboration with the C.S.I.R. We work in the closest collaboration with the Bureau of Standards. The Bureau of Standards helps the Department. Regular samples are taken of the effluent and this is tested. If those samples do not meet the standards, the permit is cancelled at once. I want to give the hon. member the assurance that this is repeated by way of a special instruction. There are few things in regard to which we are as strict as we are in regard to the control of the quality of effluent returning to our streams.

The hon. member referred to the case of Mondi. It would be just as well if I told the House what the position was. This is an important case. Mondi lies plus-minus 125 miles upstream in Natal. It is situated near the Umzimkulu River. The Umzimkulu River is the second largest river in Natal. Water flows down that river at a rate of 530,000 morgen feet. Not only does it carry such a great quantity of water down, but it also has a reasonably assured supply reaching the sea. Not only does it have an assured supply reaching the sea, but the Umzimkulu River is at present the cleanest river in the Republic of South Africa. There is not a single river the water of which is as clean as that of the Umzimkulu. Is that correct?

Yes.

Now a large firm has decided to purchase land near Creighton—the specific name of the place is Mondi—and to erect a pulp factory there. The effluent from a pulp factory is among the most difficult to clean that we know of. There are two kinds of effluent. The one kind of effluent, which forms the bulk, can be handled; in other words, it can be purified to a standard where it can be re-used, but the other kind of effluent, which is called black liquor, is the effluent which results from the pulping process. The various chemicals contained herein cannot to the best of our knowledge be extracted easily. I now want to give the hon. member the assurance that we are very apprehensive of the situation. My Department has sent scientists out and they have travelled all over the world. They have seen what other countries are doing and studied every process by means of which water can be purified in this way, but to the best of our knowledge it is still not technically possible to clean that water to such an extent that I would be satisfied that it could flow back into the Umzimkulu River. I have previously given the hon. member the assurance, and I am going to say this again, that regardless of whether an investment of R5 million, or RIO million, or R20 million has been made at Mondi, my Department will not issue a permit for that development, even if that investment has to rot away, if an assurance cannot be given that that water is pure enough to flow back into that river. As I have already told the hon. member, my reason is that I cannot accept the responsibility of issuing a permit for a factory which will pollute the second largest river in Natal, and the cleanest river in South Africa, so that it becomes unfit for use by people, animals and plants—and that just for the sake of a single factory. I want to give the hon. member this assurance. I have discussed this matter in public in Natal on two occasions, and I am repeating it now. I do not intend repeating what I have now said to them, since it is their own business to get to hear what I have said here. However, if the hon. member wants to bring what I have now said to their attention, I would be glad. I want to add that we cannot say at once that we will not issue a permit, for if the C.S.I.R. is able to report to us that we can rest assured of the fact that the effluent has been absolutely purified according to our standards, then a permit will be issued. However, I do not yet know, and nor do they, of a process by means of which it will be possible to purify this water. There may in fact be a method, but then they must come forward with it. I also want to say that we are not prepared to lower the standards just for the sake of one factory. We would much rather raise the standards. Now, at this stage, I am satisfied with their solution, which is not to release the effluent into the river, but to spray it over a large area which they have purchased in order to get rid of it in this way. I am not satisfied with this solution because it could happen that we could pollute an entire area and the underground water of the area, and all the seepage, in such a way that it would not be in any way possible to solve the problem. For that reason I am not satisfied either that it is a solution to spray the water over a large area. I want to give the hon. member this assurance. I also want to say to the hon. member, whatever he or his party may think, that we realize that the pollution of our water is the greatest threat to our sources. Some of this pollution takes place owing to circumstances beyond our control. Nature in itself can also pollute water. I am thinking for example of water which flows down after heavy rains. Such water can also be regarded as polluted water.

Mr. Speaker, in the short time at my disposal I want to touch cursorily upon a few matters. The hon. member for Paarl pointed out this afternoon that the establishment of this small party was, inter alia, responsible for the fact that the Exchange could not recover from its slump. I want to tell the hon. member that I deny it, but if we should have that tremendous power, I feel very sorry for him and his party on 22nd April. If we are capable of forcing and keeping down the Exchange, a very unpleasant surprise is in store for him.

The hon. the Deputy Minister of finance took up a standpoint here, and I want to agree wholeheartedly with the interpretation thereof. This was when he said that in terms of the policy of the United Party, non-Whites would in due course enter through these swing-doors and share these benches with us. I repeat that I support that interpretation, but I want to add that both he and his party should consistently adhere to it. If my deductions are correct, the course of the policy his party has now adopted is the very one which will lead to those final results.

That is ridiculous!

I am going to quote here from a magazine, and in due course I shall afford hon. members on that side of the House the opportunity of guessing what magazine it is. I quote (translation)—

Hon. members will just have to guess at the source from which this quotation was taken.

Willie Lubbe!

Would hon. members now regard this passage as coming from a gossip newspaper?,

No, but what did you say at the congress?

Would hon. members now endorse this policy as it is stated here? My standpoint is still as it was reported in the Dagbreek of 28th September last year, and I quote (translation)—

That is my policy. This policy which hon. members on that side supported, was formulated in an editorial of Die Suidwester of 8th September, 1965. [Laughter.] Those hon. members are laughing now, but Die Suidwester is the organ of the National Party in South West Africa. I wonder whether the South West Africans are laughing, too?

I want to touch upon something else, i.e. two charges I want to make against that side of the House. The first is that not enough is being done for the small and medium class entrepreneur, and here in my hands I have the latest I.D.C. annual report, that of 30th June, 1969. It appears from this report that during the year July, 1968 to June, 1969, assistance was granted to 21 small industries to the amount of R626.878. Over all the years since the introduction of this service on 9th November, 1962, assistance has been granted to 132 small entrepreneurs, assistance to the total value of R2.962 million. Nothing is being done for commerce. In Volkshandel of December, 1969, the director, Mr. Stockenström, advocated an institute for the retail trade, and he said the obvious solution lay in a Government-established institute which could tackle this problem on a national level. I do not want to go into the matter of agriculture. It is sufficient to say that, as is apparent from the announcement the hon. the Prime Minister made Friday before last, the Government is also of the opinion that not enough is being done for the agricultural industry.

Even your colleagues have run away from you.

The second charge I want to make against the Government, is that the growth rate is too high at this stage and that our growth factors are being overburdened by it, and that especially our skilled white labour is being over-burdened, which will have to lead to the kind of integration in respect of which the hon. the Minister of Transport admitted the other day that 1,162 positions traditionally held by Whites, were now being held by non-Whites. The position has developed where the economy, which ought to be the slave of man, has become his master. We on this side of the House are fully aware of the value of a powerful economy, but the economy may never cause the nation to forfeit its character, and in saying this I am not alone. Here I have a report, and you may assess this man’s integrity if you feel like doing it. It was written by Dr. A. S. Jacobs and is entitled “Rate of Growth Too High”. He said the growth rate was too high, and I shall only read one sentence—

Why does he say this? He says this because, if we do not slow down our growth rate, and if we do not bring it into line with our natural resources and our supply of skilled white labour, we must admit that our immigration policy is now being dictated by the economy and no longer by what is stated in the programme of principles of that side of the House; the alternative is that we should go on promoting the non-Whites to positions traditionally held by the Whites. That is why the hon. the Leader of the House was not prepared to reply to my question the other day when I wanted to know to what extent he was prepared to allow the intrusion of the non-Whites into positions traditionally held by white workers; and I still say that he owes the people of South Africa a reply. It is his bounden duty to tell the people that he is preaching apartheid but implementing labour integration in practice. Sir, my time has run out, and I want to content myself with this idea, i.e. that during the years 1929 to 1933 there was a great deal of material poverty and distress, but the Afrikaner people retained its spiritual strength, and we must be on our guard lest, with the material prosperity of the seventies, we enter this era with a large measure of spiritual bankruptcy.

I feel myself obliged to discuss a few little matters which were raised and which fall under my various departments. The hon. member who has just resumed his seat made a few remarks in his speech and at this stage I do not want to say very much about them, but I just want to remind him that what we have to-day in respect of apartheid, which he maintains is being preached but not implemented, we have as a result of the course of action followed by the National Party during the past years. The measure in which he can enjoy peace and quiet, and his wealth, in South Africa in all the various spheres to-day, he owes to the National Party Government.

Mr. Speaker, give me the opportunity to discuss other matters, and then I will in all probability return to what happened in this House as a result of the action of the hon. member for Innesdal. Friday of last week a question was put to me by the hon. member for Durban (Point), which read as follows. I should like to read it out in English—

In the Afrikaans version it asked quite clearly whether a report or a complaint had been submitted to me or to my department by the Bureau or the Department of Defence, and if that was the case, whether an investigation arising out of the report had been institured. Sir, I state unequivocally that no report was submitted to me or to my Department, and now I am asking you what my reply to that question should be? My reply must be no. Surely that is clear. And then he asked, arising out of that report, whether I instituted an investigation. Now, if the reply to the first part of the question was no, surely it is obvious that the second part of the question was irrelevant, and for that reason I said the question fell away. But despite that, the weekend newspapers, the Sunday Times and the Saturday evening Argus, and the leading article of the Cape Times this morning and to-night the Argus again, stated that no report had been submitted to me and that I had stated that no investigation whatsoever, arising out of the document which was disclosed in this House by the hon. member for Innesdal, was being instituted. Now, if the hon. member for Durban (Point) is not capable of asking a question as he would like to ask it, then he and his English newspapers must not blame me if I replied only to his question. I hope this matter is clear now once and for all. An investigation was instituted, of course, with my knowledge and my instructions, arising out of the document which was disclosed by the hon. member for Innesdal here. The investigation is still in progress, but if the hon. member does not know that investigations are from time to time instituted by the Police on their own initiative, then it is time he learns. [Interjections.] I wish I could hear what the hon. member for Transkei was saying, for he ought to know better.

May I put a question?

Yes, but only one because my time is very limited.

May I ask the hon. the Minister whether it is the duty of any citizen of South Africa who has knowledge of the loss of security documents to report this to the Police?

I would say so, but in this House we have taken cognizance of that document which was made available to the hon. member for Innesdal, and because we have taken cognizance of it here, and because the whole country has taken cognizance of it, but particularly because the Police took cognizance of it, the Police immediately got to work and started an investigation. [Interjections.] Of course the Police institutes investigations on their own initiative, and in this case on my instructions. [Interjections.] Sir, the hon. members must please give me a chance, because my time is very limited. We regard this matter as being a very serious one. The removal of a document of that nature must be investigated in the first instance in order to find out how it was removed from a Government Department, and secondly, the disclosure of the intelligence contained in that document by the hon. member for Innesdal is in itself also a very important matter which must be investigated.

Which Department?

The hon. member must not interrupt me so frequently. At this stage I do not yet know from which Department it was. We are trying to establish where it came from and we are instituting a general investigation into the matter. I maintain that it is a very serious matter that a document such as this should be disclosed in this House, and I want to associate myself with what the hon. the Prime Minister said to the effect that the disclosure of that intelligence could result in the lives of our own young men on the borders being endangered.

I should like to give you a brief survey of the position on the borders, and when I do so, I should like to call to witness the hon. member for Durban (North) and the hon. member for Odendaalsrus, because they accompanied me to the borders last year. They saw what the conditions there were like. They know what things look like there and under what circumstances our young men there are working. I say that I am hesitant to disclose any information in regard to the borders here because our enemies beyond the borders are waiting eagerly to seize upon it and to use it against the security of our own people on the borders.

Who says you must?

I am doing this because I have done it in the past. If the hon. members do not want any information about this, then it does not matter, but previously they were eager to hear about this. Certain information has recently been disclosed by the Rhodesian Government in regard to happenings in Rhodesia. One of our camps in Rhodesia was attacked. On this occasion no fewer than six of our young men were wounded. Two of them were pierced through by not less than two bullets each, bullets of communist origin. These are the dangerous conditions under which they find themselves there. Not only were six men wounded on that occasion, but damage was to a large extent also done to property. But I want to tell you this. Sir, to set your mind at rest, that of those six men, some of which went to hospital, there was not one who was subsequently prepared to return to South Africa. We gave them the opportunity, and they said, no, they want to carry on with their work on the borders until their time was up. But that is the danger in which these people are living from day to day. On another occasion towards the end of December—I am briefly giving this information to the House, because I think the House ought to know about it—our young men in Caprivi clashed with a group of terrorists and those terrorists were virtually wiped out. In fact. I think only one or two of them were taken prisoner: the others were all wiped out, and fortunately not one of our young men even sustained any injuries on that occasion. At the same time a large quantity of automatic weapons, ammunition, explosives and hand-grenades were found in the possession of these terrorists. They were wiped out by our young men. In the incident in Rhodesia, where a group of terrorists attacked our camp, the attackers were also pursued, and as far as I know, they were wiped out and the last two, the leader of the group and the guide, were taken prisoner.

With what purpose are you making this statement?

The hon. member for East London (City) need not listen if he is not interested; he can walk out.

The people want to know.

Sir, when I furnish this information in regard to our actions on the borders, I must display the utmost caution not to be specific—the hon. member for Durban (North) will understand this—even if it is in respect of our success on the borders, because if our enemies learn of this success on our borders, they know where a group of terrorists have been wiped out and where they should send in new terrorists. But now the hon. member for Innesdal comes along and gives information in this House to the world at large which could result in our enemies being able to make attacks on our young people on the borders.

And the Opposition condones this.

The information which the hon. member gave us in this House was made available to the world for the first time and was eagerly seized upon. [Interjections.] Sir, if hon. members on that side are indifferent to the safety of our young people, then I cannot help it. [Interjections.]

They are laughing about young people who are being shot dead.

That horse will not run for you.

They must not joke about this. Sir, if they are not interested then that it is their business, but I want to state unequivocally to you to-night that the information which was furnished in this House could at least result in our enemies being more on their guard, and would place our young men on the borders in greater danger.

They are laughing about that.

The hon. member for Ermelo and they have the same views now. Apparently the hon. member for Ermelo approves of information of that nature being made available to our enemies.

Is the fact that you monitor a secret?

My conclusion is the following: We regard this matter in a serious light. Once and for all I want to remove all doubt by saying that we are investigating the entire matter, not only to establish where the document came from but also to what extent it is permissible that information of that nature should be made available to the world at large. I think the position is clear now. [Interjections.] I do not act on reports which I receive from anyone else; I am acting because it was brought to my attention and to the attention of the S.A. Police and it is our duty to act in this regard.

The second matter I should like to touch upon is the matter raised by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in regard to the incident last year when three prisoners suffocated in a van which was removing them from the place where they were being detained to the court. I should like to issue a statement in regard to this matter, as I undertook to do:

Immediately after the incident and before such action could be urged or suggested from any other source I announced on 3rd April of last year that apart from any criminal or other investigations, and whatever the result or finding of such investigations might be, I would appoint an inter-departmental committee of inquiry under the chairmanship of the chief magistrate of Johannesburg to investigate all the circumstances related to, and giving rise to the incident, and to make recommendations in order to prevent any repetition. During the debate on the motion of the hon. member for Durban (North) the names of the committee were announced, i.e. Mr. Gush, the chief magistrate of Johannesburg, as chairman, Maj.-Gen. Crous of the Police, Maj.-Gen. Brink of Prisons, and Mr. Venter, the regional prosecutor, as secretary. Mr. Speaker, I should like to avail myself of this opportunity to thank the members of this committee very sincerely for the work they did. The report they brought out comprised four bulky volumes which have since been handed to me and which I began studying at the beginning of November.

I have here the report which was brought out by the committee. The members of the committee were all senior Officers of their various departments. Unfortunately they could not be released full-time for the purposes of the activities of the committee from their normal duties and responsibilities and were forced to carry out the investigation and their normal official duties simultaneously. This did in fact bring about a degree of delay, but in no way detracted from the thoroughness of their investigation. It is obvious that after I have received the report I must first study it. I received it, as I said, at the beginning of November, and then I decided to make the report available to Parliament, where the matter was raised last year shortly after the incident. Sir, you will recall that this matter was raised here last year by the hon. member for Durban (North), and that is why I felt that I should make this information available to the House. I want to state clearly and unequivocally that on 2nd February, the day on which the no-confidence debate was introduced here by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, I discussed this matter that same morning with the hon. member for Durban (North) and told him that I was going to report to the House during this session; that if I did not do so during the no-confidence motion, I would do so during the course of the Part Appropriation debate.

An important factor which undoubtedly had a hampering effect on the activities of the committee is the fact that notwithstanding wide publicity by means of repeated notification over the radio and in the Press as well as at Bantu Affairs’ Offices and magistrate’s courts which addressed an invitation to the general public to give evidence before the committee, not a single member of the public came forward to give evidence. This negative attitude on the part of even the most outspoken critics and know-alls is clear proof that obviously they were not really so concerned about the incident as they professed to be. I am afraid I am compelled to say this, Mr. Speaker. When the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was speaking in the no-confidence debate, he berated me for being an arrogant Minister. Sir, I am the most modest and humble Minister in the Cabinet. I think I am the last person the hon. the Leader of the Opposition should berate on that account. But what he did in fact berate me about was the fact that I have said last year that they wanted to make political capital out of this matter. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition then said that I had said that they had wanted to make political capital out of this because I had objected to the fact that he raised this matter in this House. I just want to correct him. This was not the reason, and he may as well look it up in Hansard. He knows just as well as I do what the reason was; he wanted to steal a march on Helen Suzman last year, and he did so.

I did not raise this matter; the hon. member for Durban (Point) raised it.

His party wanted to steal a march on her. I just want to correct the incorrect accusation the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made against me.

It was not incorrect.

It was. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition may as well look it up in Hansard. Sir, the finding of the committee was as follows:

The committee confirmed (1) that the primary cause which gave rise to the incident on 2nd April was the daily conveyance of a large number of prisoners over long distances and through heavy traffic between prisons, police stations and courts in the Johannesburg complex, a duty which has been placed squarely on the shoulders of the police. This causes immense problems for the police in addition to their many other duties in regard to the application of the law and the administration of justice, and bearing in mind the long distances, heavy traffic and the possibility of defects in vehicles it happens almost every day that prison vans are forced to stop by circumstances beyond the control of the police drivers, as a result of which prisoners, depending upon weather conditions, are exposed to inconvenience; (2) the problems in regard to conveyance has their origin in the fact that there is insufficient prison accommodation in Johannesburg (Central) and that prisoners coming from Johannesburg have to be detained at Modder B on the East Rand, approximately 20 miles from the courts; (3) that a few members of the South African Police, as a result of the routine nature of this task had unfortunately not exercised continual proper control and supervision in regard to this matter. The steps which have already been taken, as mentioned in the committee’s report, are as follows—and the committee confirmed that these measures would bring relief but would not offer a permanent solution—firstly the system of transport has been revised and improved inter alia by (a) following a more convenient and somewhat less busy roundabout route from Johannesburg to the prison; (b) equipping all prison vans with two-way radios; (c) intensifying supervision and control over the transportation of prisoners and placing this under the personal command and supervision of an Officer with the rank of major; (d) withdrawing seven-ton trucks from this particular service replacing them with adequate additional three-ton trucks and making provision for more reserve vehicles; (e) supplementing staff in order to make more motor vehicle drivers and guards available for prison vans, and (f) further improving ventilation in the vehicles.

Secondly, steps were taken to eliminate, as far as possible, the delay in prisoners being received and sent out from the Modder B prison; thirdly, arrangements have been made between the police and the courts to try to maintain a more constant flow of prisoners during the day and eliminate congestion and delay in the afternoon as far as possible. Sir, hon. members who know how courts work will realize that a more constant passage of prisoners through the courts will also improve the position.

Fourthly, improvements in the cell accommodation at the Bantu Affairs Commissioner in Fordsburg have been made.

Sir, the following recommendations are the recommendations of the committee as a longterm solution to this problem:

1. (a) In order to shorten considerably the d: stances which prisoners have inevitably to be conveyed between the courts and the prisons, which is seen as the only permanent solution to the problem, the Committee recommends the construction of a new prison complex situated both near to the courts and the city centre of Johannesburg and the branch Offices in the Bantu areas. As an immediate interim measure the Committee recommends that where accommodation is available at police stations, particularly in the Bantu residential areas south of Johannesburg, this accommodation should be used as far as possible for awaiting-trial prisoners. Where this is possible it will greatly reduce the distances of conveyance between the courts and the places of detention. Pursuant to this recommendation of the Committee the Department of Police is of the opinion that when the new centrally situated prison complex is constructed, provision should also be made for the establishment of branch courts as close as possible to the prison, possibly as part of the same building complex; in other words, that the courts be brought to the prison instead of the prison being moved closer to the courts.

Now, as far as the question of steps against the persons who failed to execute their duty properly:

The apparent lack of adequate control and supervision on the part of certain police Officers concerned has been thoroughly investigated departmentally, and rising out of that the following steps have already been taken: (1) Seven police Officers and six other members have been warned; one Officer has been dismissed from his post and transferred elsewhere; (2) a disciplinary board was appointed to deal with two Officers; one was admonished, dismissed from his post and transferred; the other was released; and (3) one constable was tried departmentally, found guilty and fined.

Mr. Speaker, I said that I was not prepared to make this report public because it contains information which in my opinion cannot, in the public interests, be disclosed. However, I want to make this offer to the hon. the leader of the Opposition: If he and the chairman of his justice group, the hon. member for Durban (North), is interested in it, I will make this report available to them for study. This of course applies as well to the chairman of the justice group on that side of the House. This is the report I promised to make in this House arising out of this incident which took place last year.

Now I should, briefly, like to raise a matter in regard to the Electoral Laws. This matter was raised by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout spoke about “loading” and “deloading”. He raised very serious objection in regard to this matter. On the 6th of this month the hon. the Prime Minister asked the hon. the Leader of the Opposition what his attitude in this regard was. It has always been part of our electoral system that the sparsely populated area of our country where long distances are to be found, we should apply deloading there. Now I want, for the information of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to say that a few years ago, in 1965, there was a select committee on the Constitution. In the Constitution provision is made for loading and deloading. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout was a member of that select committee. He is a man who said …

Take a look at how the voting went there.

It is the hon. member who should look. He did not vote against it.

Read out the names.

That hon. member is a man who says that he changed his party, but not his policy. [Interjections.] On that occasion the committee adopted a unanimous resolution to the effect that the large constituencies, such as my own, which is more than 10,000 square miles in extent, would have deloading of 50 per cent. Then a proposal was made by Mr. Steyn to the effect that the deloading should only be 30 per cent, i.e. 70 per cent of the quota. There was no vote on that. Now I want to remind the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that the Prime Minister asked him where they stood in respect of this matter. I want to inform him that my constituency would also like to know where it stands in respect of this matter. I have a constituency which is larger than 10,000 square miles. It is 300 miles long and approximately 100 miles wide.

May I ask the Minister a question? Does the Minister adopt the attitude that a man from the rural areas, merely because he is from the rural areas, is entitled to a vote which is worth more than that of a man in the city? [Interjections.]

This is not the matter which gave rise to these resolutions. I am now asking the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to tell us where he stands in respect of this matter, because we should like to know. There are other matters as well which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition raised, but unfortunately my time is spent. I cannot therefore reply to that now.

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I should deal first of all with a matter which the hon. the Minister raised, namely the question of terrorists on our borders. I am glad that the hon. the Prime Minister is here, because I did not have the opportunity of replying to some of the things he said during the no-confidence debate, owing to the time factor. I hope that he will hear what I have to say.

I did not really appreciate what the hon. the Minister was getting at when he went on and on about our boys on the border and terrorism. He was kind enough to ask me, in my capacity as chairman of the Justice Group on this side of the House, to accompany him and the chairman of the Justice Group on the other side on a tour of the borders to see what our boys in the Police Force are doing. Let me say now what the hon. the Minister will remember me saying to a group of our people, when he asked me to address them. I said: “Van albei kante van die Raad is ons almal trots op julle vir die werk wat julle hier doen”. I think that I was speaking for everyone when I said that.

This has nothing to do with what the hon. the Minister said. He was apparently leading up to the hon. member for Innesday letting out something. He said that he should not be prepared to make anything public because it would then be available to our enemies. I want to ask him: Who made public what was in that document? Was it the hon. member for Innesdal, or was it the hon. the Prime Minister? No one knew what this was all about. There was something about “meeluistering”. I did not know what “meeluistering” was all about. It was only when the hon. the Prime Minister expounded on this document and told one what it was all about that one had any idea at all of what was in this document. Surely the hon. the Minister of Police should not be so worried about the hon. member for Innesdal mentioning part of a document which appears to be a secret document. What he should be worried about is how that document came to be in the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal, how it disappeared from the place it should have been. That is what he should be worried about.

Let me deal now with what the hon. the Minister of Police said about the enquiry into the deaths in the police van. He mentioned the recommendations which were made. He mentioned the facts that had been discovered. If I may say so, Sir, my reaction was “elementary, my dear Watson”. Why on earth had the department not known about this long before? They took all this time, and suddenly a commission had to tell them, in three volumes. When the hon. the Minister makes the offer that he will make that report available to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and to me, so that we can look at it, I should like to say that we are here in our public capacity. We are not here in our private capacity. I want to ask the hon. the Minister why he will not make this public. What is the point of our seeing this document in our private capacities, and then being bound not to say anything about it, because it has been shown to us in confidence? We raised this matter in the House and we asked for an explanation from the Government. We were told nothing until he appointed a commission of enquiry, which reported in November. Now he tells this House that he will not make the document available to the House. Sir, we represent the people. This Government must get that into their heads. We all sit here in our capacities as representatives of the people. We do not do things that the people are not allowed to take part in.

If you cannot trust yourself, I cannot trust you.

It is not a case of trusting myself, Sir. I can trust myself. But the hon. the Minister knows very well what happened on this tour to the borders I mentioned. He was very frank. He made available to us everything that could be made available. He can trust me. He knows that he can trust me. Sir, the point is that this is a responsibility he has to Parliament, not to me because I raised the matter, nor to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. His responsibility is to Parliament.

My responsibility is to South Africa.

Yes, of course, and to this Parliament. Sir, can the hon. the Minister tell this House why he cannot lay the report on the Table and thus make it available? I shall tell him why he cannot do so. He cannot do so, because quite obviously it must disclose some tremendous incompetence on the part of the hon. the Minister and his colleagues. The Minister must not tell us in this House that it is in the interests of the State that this document cannot be revealed. That is what he said in answer to my question last Friday. Actually it is not in the interests of the National Party that this document cannot be laid on the Table, because it will disclose tremendous incompetence on the part of the administration of this Government just before the election.

You have the opportunity to investigate the matter.

Yes, but as I have said, I am not here in my private capacity. I am here in my public capacity. What makes this even more interesting is that when that hon. Minister talks about the interests of the State, I think we are entitled to wonder whether he does not in fact mean the interests of the National Party. Do you remember what happened when this matter was raised last year, Mr. Speaker? We raised this matter in one of the short, snappy, half-hour debates when you, Mr. Speaker, ruled that this was a matter of public importance and of urgency. We used the occasion, Sir, under your guidance; you said that it was such an occasion. What was that hon. Minister’s attitude? His attitude was that it was a scandal that this matter was raised here and that in fact we only raised the matter so that we could “beswadder” the name of South Africa overseas. In other words, what he was saying was that it was not in the interests of the State that we should raise this matter. Now he says that it is not in the interest of the State that this Parliament should have disclosed to it what the findings of that commission are. I feel the same about this comment on the interests of the State as I did about his comments when we raised the matter last year.

I do not quite know how to describe it, but the hon. the Minister then tried to deal with the difficulty in which he found himself when the hon. member for Durban (Point) asked him a question the other day. The question was a very simple one and read as follows:

1. (1) Whether any alleged security leakage from the Bureau of State Security or Military Intelligence has been reported to him or his department; if so, by whom;
2. (2) whether the report has been investigated; if so, with what result?

Does that hon. Minister really want to tell this House that he did not know what the hon. member for Durban (Point) was getting at? Is the fact of the matter not that he wanted to avoid the question? If I may use an expression which the hon. the Leader of the House uses very often in respect of hon. members, he was too clever by half, this time. The answer was “no”. Does the hon. the Minister not appreciate that on 9th February …

First tell me who made the report to me if my answer should have been “yes”.

I will come to that in a minute. I want to deal with something else before I come to that. The hon. the Minister says that the Police act on their own initiative. What sort of Minister is this that he apparently did not know that they had acted on their own initiative? Why was his answer to the hon. member for Durban (Point) “no” on Friday if they were acting on their own initiative?

Because it cannot be anything else.

Did the hon. the Minister not know about it when he said “no” or did he know that the answer was “yes” when in fact he said “no”? What we want to know is whether the hon. the Minister did know and whether he did not.

The answer is that nobody made a report.

Did you know about it or not? That is what we want to know. Did the hon. the Minister know that the matter was being investigated when he answered “no” to the hon. member for Durban (Point)? [Interjections.] You did know. Why then did you say “no” to the hon. member for Durban (Point)? This is the sort of credibility gap of which that hon. Minister is guilty. The interesting point is that he says “no” despite the fact that the Commissioner of Police on. the 9th February, 1970, is reported in the Cape Times as follows—

In reply to a question put to him in this regard on Friday, the hon. the Minister replied “no”.

Deal with the report.

Let us deal with the next point. Did the hon. the Minister not say “Dit is op my opdrag gedoen”. It was done on his instructions and yet he could say to the hon. member for Durban (Point) on Friday when he knew very well what the hon. member was asking: “No, the matter is being investigated”. This is too important a matter to have a small play on words. The hon. the Minister either knows about it or he does not. The Police are investigating the matter or they are not. This Parliament should not be treated in this way. This is the attitude they have to Parliament. Their attitude is that they can play with Parliament. What is the position? Is the matter being investigated by the Police or not? That is what we want to know. So much for that …

You have lost a point.

No, I have not lost a point. A point that has become very obvious is that that hon. Minister came very close to trying to mislead the House and through that also the country when he knew very well what the question was about. That is the point. The whole matter is an unsavoury chapter in our history starting with a threat by the hon. the Prime Minister to the hon. member for Innesdal in this House and then leading on to all these occurrences. The hon. the Prime Minister worries me even more.

Order! I think the hon. member must withdraw the word “threat”.

Can I rather call it a warning then? I have never heard that done before in this House.

The hon. member must withdraw the word “threat”. He may use the word “warning”.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw the word “threat” and will use the word “warning”. The hon. the Prime Minister said—

The same applies to you.

The same should apply to that hon. Minister and all the hon. members on that side, but it seems to me that we have the law of the Medes and the Persians when it comes to applying the security laws of South Africa. The hon. member for Innesdal must not even mention some document but the hon. the Prime Minister can disclose all of them. Then that hon. Minister tries to warn me too. He must not threaten me because I have nothing to be threatened about and will not be threatened by this hon. Minister or anyone else. After the 22nd April, the threats of Ministers are not going to mean anything because in South Africa you will be able to get your rights and justice from independent courts.

While I am talking about free and independent courts, let us deal with the hon. the Prime Minister.

Do you want to take a bet?

I will take a bet with you later on. What worries me about the hon. the Prime Minister is that he has repeated here what he said about section 29 at his congress in, I think, the Transvaal.

You think?

I can look up where exactly it was he said it. The hon. the Prime Minister broke his silence in regard to the very responsible outburst there was over Section 29 at about the same time that he announced that a commission was going to be appointed to investigate the Bureau of State Security. He issued a Gazette in which the various terms of reference of the commission were set out. Now I want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister a question. When that commission was set up. did he intend it to investigate section 29 of the General Law Amendment Act?

That is within the terms of reference.

No, that was not my question. I want to know whether he intended it to investigate section 29.

That is within the terms of reference.

The judge has subsequently said that it is within the terms of reference but did the hon. the Prime Minister intend that that should be investigated? That is what I want to know.

That is a stupid question.

If it is a stupid question, can the hon. the Prime Minister merely answer “yes” or “no”?

You will find it in the terms of reference.

Very well, then, the answer is “yes”. Then I want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister why when he intended that commission to look into the matter, did he then straight away say that a whole lot of nonsense has been spoken about clause 29?

Of course a lot of nonsense has been spoken and you said your fair share of it.

Not only has a lot of nonsense been spoken, according to the Prime Minister, but he said that section 29 has not altered the law at all. That was always the law and this section merely clarified it. He defended Sampie Froneman, who was the Deputy Minister in charge of the Bill at the time. He said that he was absolutely right. He congratulated him on his behaviour at the congress. Then, when my hon. leader raised the matter in the No-Confidence debate, the Prime Minister said “Ask the member for Durban North”. My hon. leader said that I did not agree with him. Then he said “Go and ask another advocate whether that is the position or not”. Now let me call my first witness. I only need to call one, really. This is the Johannesburg Bar, the biggest Bar Council in the country, which said in its statement about section 29—

That is nonsense.

Now the hon. member for Prinshof says that is nonsense, but, Sir, it is terribly interesting that the day that this Parliament adjourned last year his Bar Council, the Pretoria Bar Council, came oui with exactly the same statement. So they are also talking nonsense. It so happened that the Natal Bar Society did it as well. It so happened that the Cape Bar decided to do the same. It so happened also that the General Council of the Bar, which only speaks when it speaks unanimously for all the Bar Councils, approved of every single statement that was made. So the hon. the Prime Minister, when he says that the hon. Leader of the Opposition must find another advocate, is going to have some difficulty. Is it a lot of nonsense that they have spoken? Was it a lot of nonsense that was spoken by Judge Kowie Marais and by other judges? Was it a lot of nonsense that was spoken by all the deans of the faculties of Law? Are they all wrong and the hon. the Prime Minister, the Administrator of the Orange Free State and the hon. member for Prinshof correct? No, Sir! This is one of the difficulties. It is the arrogance that he displayed which is so disturbing. The hon. the Prime Minister is a lawyer. He has practised at the Bar. Surely he must appreciate that one side is always wrong. Why cannot he be big enough to admit that this is so? But what worries me, is that the hon. the Prime Minister is already determined. It does not matter what the commission said; he says that section 29 makes no difference whatsoever to the existing law. The hon. the Prime Minister went on to quote various examples. He said that there was a difficult decision in Natal in 1965, presumably in Naicker’s case. He said that in 1963 he signed a certificate and the court accepted it.

You know the case.

Of course I know all about it. But it is irrelevant. What I am trying to drum into the hon. the Prime Minister and what my hon. Leader tried to get into him, is that in 1967, in the case of Van der Linde and Calitz, the Appellate Division made a decision and that settled the law once and for ah.

Unfortunately not.

It is most difficult to get the hon. the Prime Minister to understand that that decision said that the court had a residual discretion. It also said something else which contradicted the hon. the Prime Minister where he said that in South Africa it went even further than in Britain and that officials were entitled to give certificates.

That is exactly what happened in the Free State case.

Yes, but never mind about the Free State case. The matter ended with the case of Van der Linde and Calitz (1967, volume 2, p. 239). Would the hon. the Prime Minister like to read it? I will pass it over to him. Division, namely that those officials cannot give such a certificate. It has to come from the executive head in the provinces, for example from the Executive Committee, and here from a Cabinet Minister.

There are so many other contradictions, apart from the contradiction of the hon. the Prime Minister himself, from the hon. the former Deputy Minister, who said that this had been the law in England for 100 years. The hon. the Prime Minister himself admitted the other day in a Press statement or in a speech reported in the Press that, in fact, up to 18 months ago only had it not been the law. But the House of Lords 18 months ago said if that was the law stated by the hon. the Deputy Minister, then it was no longer the law.

I have only a few minutes left, and I still want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister two things. I want to remind him of his own definition of democracy when he addressed the General Council of the Bar in Grahamstown a few years ago when he was Minister of Justice. He said that democracy was “general and regular elections and a free and independent judiciary”. The hon. the Prime Minister has gone about it apparently in an attempt to undermine the independence of the judiciary.

Oh, please!

Don’t say “Oh, please!” I am not saying this. Let me say wha1 Judge Kowie Marais said, talking about the independence of the judiciary. He was talking about section 29.

Where did he say that?

He said this to a gathering of ladies, if the hon. member for Prinshof wants to be as blind as that. What die-he say about the effect this would have on the independence of the judiciary?—

Then he said something most significant. He said—

There is every indication that this might be so.

What is your criticism of the commission of inquiry?

What use has the commission of inquiry? What does it matter what the commission of inquiry finds? This hon. Prime Minister has already prejudged the whole matter. He has already determined that in fact it is the law, that it should be the law and that a lot of nonsense has been spoken about it. That is the attitude of the hon. the Prime Minister towards the commission and section 29. I ask again, will the commission report, in fact, before the 22nd April? What did he appoint it for? To look into section 29? Sir, look at the attitude.

I want to give just one more example of the manner in which he regards the security of the State, the manner in which this Government is prepared to use the machinery of the State for its own purposes. What happened when there was this outcry by most responsible people, judges and Bar Councils, as I have mentioned? What happened when he constituted the commission? The commission was to “inquire into and submit recommendations and a report on the following …”. Then he set it out. Then suddenly the hon. member for Ermelo said something, and he thought, “My goodness me” —he must have been advised by someone who also wants to be too clever by half. He decided *o pillory him before the commission, because it was sitting and it could easily be done. But what is interesting is that in the terms of reference of the commission of inquiry, because this is more important to the country in his opinion than the other matter, “the commission has been requested to inquire immediately into and report forthwith”. Why? Which is more important? Let us get our perspective right. Is it more important that the hon. member for Ermelo has said that it would cost R40 million when it in fact will cost only R4 million? Or is it more important that the country be satisfied about section 29, about the power of the courts to intervene on behalf of the individual where the State might molest his interests? That is the most important thing, namely, access to free and independent courts. That is the byword in our policy and that is what the people will get after the 22nd April.

Are you repeating that we are a police state?

That hon. Minister ought to be ashamed of himself. That hon. Minister quoted to this House what I had said about being a police state. My next words he deliberately omitted. They were: “Are we a police state; I do not believe it”.

This is our difficulty. When one gets to the stage when a Government has a blank cheque, they yield to the temptation to overdraw. People in this country will not stand for that and we will see the results in April.

Let us make our position clear. I now want to put the difference between this side and that side of the House. We believe the State exists for the benefit of the individual and not vice versa. If the freedom of the individual is subverted and also his right to free access to the courts, the very foundations of the State are subverted.

You did that to Philip Moore.

It is quite clear that this Government cannot be trusted with the liberties of the individual. Look at the performance they put up last year when the Boss Bill was discussed. During the discussion or clause 29 not one hon. member opposite could get up to justify or to condone it. Nor the hon. member for Houghton, of course, but that is by the way. That is the stage we have now reached. When your parliamentary representatives are clearly wrong this is what happens. Either the hon. the Prime Minister does not understand what clause 29 means or he knows what it means but he is determined to have the power and we want to know why. I think the answer to that “why” is either that he does not know or that he wants the power for a certain purpose. Why should the courts be precluded from hearing evidence? The hon. the Prime Minister says it has nothing to do with Boss.

It has absolutely nothing to do with Boss.

Right, but it can have something to do with Boss. If investigations are made …

If your Leader will argue that, I shall reply to him during this debate.

Let me put the position in another way. Say there is an investigation into some leak from Boss. If one was beaten up or unlawfully detained then, in relation to that matter, you would have a claim for damages against the hon. the Minister. One can, however, be prevented from pressing one’s claim, because one can be prevented from giving evidence about the events that took place because in the opinion of a minister it would not be in the interests of the State. It is the sort of attitude which the hon. the Minister of Police has as to what is in the interests of the State which makes this so bad. One would then have no claim. This is just one example.

Argue it from the point of view of the Transvaal case.

But there is no Transvaal decision any more. There is only one decision, namely that of the Appellate Division in 1967 which overrules all the other decisions. There is now only one law which applies to all the divisions. That decision says exactly the opposite of what clause 29 says. I have that decision here and I will send it to the hon. the Prime Minister. I hope that he will have a look at it and that he will perhaps argue it.

I am waiting for your Leader to argue it; he made the accusations.

What accusations? I said exactly what the hon. member for Durban (North) says and you have no answer.

The hon. the Prime Minister is either right or wrong. All the advocates in South Africa say he is wrong. A number of judges also say he is wrong…. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, we have now seen here an exhibition which in the sixteen years I have been a member of this House, I have never seen before. I want the hon. member for Durban (North) to listen very carefully. During the No-Confidence debate I quoted certain passages from Hansard, as a result of which I accused him of having said that South Africa was a police state or developing into one. I now challenge the hon. member to deny that he said South Africa was a police state. Does he deny it? No, he does not have the courage. I am now accusing the hon. member of having told the world that South Africa was a police state. Does the hon. member deny this? [Interjections.] I shall deal with the hon. member for Durban (Point) at a later stage. I am asking the hon. member for Durban (North) once again whether he denies that he said South Africa was a police state. He will not reply now, because his Hansard is lying here in front of me. The hon. member ought to be ashamed of himself for having been so indignant the other day because I said he had said South Africa was a police state, whereas he knows he has been propagating this throughout the country and whereas he knows he said it in this House. I have here another quotation of what the hon. member said on another occasion. However, it was with profound indignation that the hon. member denied here that he had ever said South Africa was a police state. On 22nd January, 1963, he …

What is the date?

Wait a minute; the hon. member is talking now and I want to repeat this question to him: Did you say that South Africa was a police state, yes or no? I shall furnish the hon. member with the date. He need not be afraid of it. I am testing the hon. member’s courage and his sincerity. This is what is going to be tested in the weeks ahead. In the course of the No-Confidence debate I accused the hon. member of having said that South Africa was a police state. At the time the hon. member exploded in indignation. Does the hon. member deny that he said South Africa was a police state? Now the hon. member does not know anything about it, but when I mentioned the date, he was quick enough to ask what the date was. The date is 22nd January, 1963. What I now want to read out to him, is recorded in Hansard (Vol. 5, column 73). These are his words—

Is the hon. member not ashamed of himself? Is the hon. member not ashamed of denying that he said this while he knows he did? Surely he knows he goes around saying this all over the country. The whole speech the hon. member has now made, amounts to South Africa’s being a police state. The hon. member’s two friends are looking at me in a funny way, but I shall deal with them in a moment. Because the hon. member for Innesdal has made a mistake, the hon. member for Durban (North) proclaims that South Africa is a police state.

He did not say that.

He said we were changing South Africa into a police state. So much tor that hon. member and so much for the question of the police state. I thought I was going to speak to-morrow, but the hon. member made me so angry that I had to speak now.

I now want to deal with the hon. member for Port Natal. In the course of the No-Confidence debate the hon. member for Port Natal, and I am sorry the hon. member is not here to-night, delivered himself of untruths, the like of which this House has never heard before. For instance, he said, “I have a letter from him”—the reference is to me—“in which he said that 600 Indian traders in Durban are still looking for trading premises after being evicted from the ones they were in”. I want to say that it is a downright untruth that I have ever written such a thing to the hon. member. The hon. member ough to be ashamed of himself for telling the world that we evicted 600 Indian traders from their trading premises before they had obtained other trading premises. What his accusation amounts to, is that we deprived 600 Indian traders of their livelihood and that we took the bread out of their mouths. There is nothing which can besmirch South Africa’s good name more than that accusation which was made by the hon. member for Port Natal. Any government which takes the bread out of their mouths and evicts them from their business premises while they cannot offer those people alternative accommodation, is worthy of being condemned. What did I in point of fact write to that hon. member? In regard to the Indian traders in Durban and the position in Chatsworth I wrote to him as follows—

But where did I tell him that they had been evicted from their trading premises? I have repeatedly said that they are not evicted before they have alternative accommodation, and the hon. member for Port Natal ought to know this.

But where is he?

Yes, he is not here at the moment. But he told the world that 600 Indian traders had been evicted from their shops and that they were unable to get other accommodation. Is it not a shocking thing to say while he has from time to time received the assurance that not one single Indian trader would be evicted from his trading premises until such time as alternative accommodation was offered to him in his own group area? I challenge any hon. member from the Natal area, the hon. member for Umbilo, the hon. member for Musgrave, the hon. member for Pinetown or any other hon. member from Natal who is spreading these low, base stories against South Africa, to prove that we are evicting these Indians from their trading premises without affording them alternative accommodation. Can they bring me one single Indian trader who has been treated in that manner? If they can bring me one, I shall resign as Minister of Community Development. But they do not mind telling these stories to the world. The only Indians who have been evicted from their shops, are those Indians who were offered alternative accommodation, who were given twelve months’ grace to change accommodation but then refused to do so. If they are in fact evicted, it is done by court order alone. But that side of the House is spreading the story here that Indian traders are recklessly being forced to leave their business premises and that they do not have an opportunity of carrying on business. I just want to say to that hon. member that if he had a grain of decency in him, he would not only apologize to me, not only to the Department, but also to South Africa for that abominable untruth he spread about South Africa.

But he also told a second untruth. In the accusation he levelled at Mr. Con Botha, the then secretary of the National Party, he said, inter alia, the following—

This is land which the Community Development Board allegedly bought from Indians—

What is the impression the hon. member wanted to create by saying this? He wanted to suggest that Mr. Con Botha had bought that land under suspicious circumstances.

In a dishonest manner.

Yes, in a dishonest manner. He also suggested that Mr. Botha’s tender had not been the highest one, or that there had not been a tender and that Mr. Botha had obtained the land in an underhand manner. According to the hon. member Mr. Botha wanted to conceal his underhand dealings and bought the land in the name of his wife. What are the facts of the matter? The facts of the matter are that the land was advertised for tender purposes in the Daily News and in the Natal Mercury of 30th September, 1966, and in the Nataller of 7th October, 1966. Six tenders were received and Mr. Con Botha’s was the highest of the six. The land was subsequently allotted to Mr. Botha. It was not registered in his wife’s name either. It was registered in the the name of Cornelius Johannes van Rooyen Botha. Having submitted the highest tender and gained possession of the land that way, Mr. Botha sold the land to a company in which he and his wife are equal shareholders. What is wrong with that? But the impression is now being created here that the Department of Community Development sold the land to Mr. Botha under false pretences and did so because he was the secretary of the National Party.

But the hon. member also told a third untruth. He said—

But the fact of the matter is that this Mr. W. J. Schelin was the surveyor and he did not buy one single square inch of land. In fact, he did not even tender for one single square inch of that land. Never before have there been so many untruths about so many people in such a short speech as was the case in this speech made by the hon. member for Port Natal. I say he ought to be ashamed of himself. He obtains this information from letters he receives from me. Out of courtesy I wrote these letters in reply to his letters. I just want to tell him that if he does not apologize to Mr. Botha and Mr. Schelin, I shall pay no attention to his criticism in future. Nor shall I reply to his letters again. I simply will not do it. And if the Natal Mercury does not publish denials of this disgraceful report in the same way as they published the report, I shall know how to deal with them.

But now I want to deal with another group, the new high priests of South Africa, namely the Hertzog Calvinists. I am very sorry that the hon. member for Innesdal is not present. I want to take him to task first. After all, he is the high priest of Innesdal, Jaap Moari. Under his leadership they are proclaiming here in South Africa that I allegedly wrote to the Girl Guides that “the Government is happy with mixed parades”. I want to tell him that it is a downright lie that I wrote anything of that nature to the Girl Guides. But these Hertzog Calvinists, these new sanctimonious people we find in this country, deal with the truth in a manner I have in many a year not seen truth dealt with. Just look at the hon. member for Innesdal himself. If he says such a thing in this House, just imagine what he is going to say in the rural areas. Here in this House he manhandles the truth recklessly; he halves the truth and violates it. Just see what he does. He quoted from a letter which was written by my private secretary to the head of the Girl Guides, and in which only the following is said—this is the relevant part—“… and have to inform you that the Minister agrees with your exposition …” And from this “exposition”, with which I allegedly agreed, he read out the following sentence only: “the Government is happy about mixed parades …” That was all he read out. His behaviour in this House is shameless. But he did not read the rest of the paragraph, namely—

No, this was not read. [Interjections.] Now I come to the hon. member for Ermelo. It is not I who used the words “mixed parades”. It is this lady, the leader of the movement, who used these words, but her conditions were quite correct. That is why I told my private secretary that he could inform her that everything was in order.

What were her conditions?

I am coming to that hon. member now. Now this hon. member says that I am happy with mixed parades. I am not happy with them. Just as the people in the last World War were “bomb happy”, so the hon. member for Innesdal is “election happy”, for he knows he is going to forfeit his deposit. “Meat pie” is going to make “mincemeat” of him at that election. What are the facts of the matter? The facts of the matter are that the Girl Guide movement has Whites and non-Whites in its ranks and always holds separate parades. This is not because the law lays this down. This has become tradition in South Africa. They hold their parades separately. But now the position is that they invited Lady Baden-Powell, an elderly lady of between 80 and 84 years. I do not know her exact age. At that time the leader of the Girl Guides in South Africa, through the Leader of the Opposition, approached the Prime Minister and wanted to know what could be done since the poor old lady could not address the Whites and the non-Whites separately. The hon. the Prime Minister subsequently entrusted to me and the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development the task of going into this matter. In point of fact, there is nothing in the Act prohibiting this, but we told them that where venues and ground could be obtained, they could arrange the Girl Guides in different groups, a white and a non-white group. The only condition that was laid down, was that these groups had to sit and stand separately and that Lady Baden-Powell could then address them. If a march past had to take place, the Whites had to march past first, subsequent to which it would be the turn of the non-Whites. Is this really something very strange in South Africa?

When are you coming to the tea?

I am coming to the tea now. And I am now coming to the tea you had with the Bantu. [Laughter.] And if you do not look out. I shall also tell whom you danced with. [Laughter.] That hon. member is the last one who should raise the question of tea. After all, we do have other mixed gatherings. At New-lands, Ellis Park and in circuses we have mixed audiences. In various spheres this has been the policy of the Government of which that hon. member also used to be a member. For instance, there was our Republic Festival, where a number of Bantu were present in the church in Pretoria at the inauguration of the State President. It was raining. At that stage the hon. member was perfectly happy about the presence of Bantu inside the church. But if he had to speak about it to-day, he would say that while poor white boys and girls were being drenched outside, a lot of Kaffirs were sitting in the church, and this takes place under the regime of this Government! But this was the policy of Dr. Verwoerd. All that happened here was that, with the retention of all the precepts of apartheid, we merely tried to perform an act of decency towards an elderly lady of 84. That this is strange to the hon. member for Ermelo, does not astonish me at all. Nor do I find it at all astonishing that this is strange to his whole party.

Now I come to that hon. member who complained about the fact that Officers of both races were allowed to have tea with Lady Baden-Powell. I had no control over that matter, nor was this against the law, as long as invitations were not sent to outsiders. This is done during the sessions of the Anglican synods. At those synods Whites have tea along with black clergymen. This is also done during sessions of Dutch Reformed synods, where Whites have tea along with non-white missionaries. This has always been the position. What is so objectionable about it? When the hon. member was still Minister of Health he addressed a health conference at Turfloop. Subsequent to that he took refreshments along with non-white professors and lecturers.

But he took the cup with his left hand. [Laughter.]

Does the hon. member deny that? Would he deny that he took refreshments along with those non-Whites? What is the great objection? His beard did not turn black.

But now I come to their hotel story. According to their hotel story it is now, under this Government, being allowed for the first time that black people may stay in South African hotels.

Along with Whites …

Yes, along with Whites. Are you not ashamed of yourself?

Order!

… mix with Whites.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the hon. member for Ermelo whether he is not ashamed of himself. He knows just as well as I do that under certain circumstances the position has always been that certain non-Whites may stay in white hotels. But now they come along with their little newspaper pretending that this is a totally new thing and that it is being permitted by the present Prime Minister. I just want to tell Dr. Willie Lubbe, who is such a great Calvinist, that his little newspaper is the most untruthful newspaper I have ever read in South Africa. After 25 years of the Sunday Times, this is saying a great deal. To say that under this Government it is being permitted that non-Whites may stay in white hotels, is an utter and absolute untruth. Under the Group Areas Act of 1950 there was no prohibition on non-Whites to enter white restaurants, cinemas and hotels. That was left to convention and tradition. The first time action was taken by the Government, was more or less at the time of the Sharpville riots, when a number of non-Whites sat down in the restaurants of the O.K. Bazaars, Stuttafords and others. In addition there was the trouble at the Luxurama in Wynberg. Subsequent to that a proclamation was issued in terms of which these people were forbidden to enter restaurants and places of amusement without a permit from the Department of Community Development.

At that time he was in the Cabinet.

Yes, that hon. member was in the Cabinet at the time. But the position as regards non-Whites and white hotels, has never been abused in South Africa. Nor has there ever been a case of a South African Bantu staying in a white hotel. This matter was left to tradition and convention, because the owners of those hotels would simply not allow those non-Whites to stay there.

Just as an owner of a private home would do.

Of course. I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that if it should be abused, this Government would immediately take action. However, it has not been abused up to now. The only non-Whites who have stayed at hotels so far, are important non-Whites from outside South Africa. They stayed in hotels when that hon. member was a member of the Cabinet. Carpio stayed in the Union Hotel. The Egyptian maize buyers stayed in cur hotels. Over the past twenty years important non-Whites from countries abroad have been permitted to stay in White hotels, where the owners wanted to permit it under limited circumstances.

The Minister of Katanga, for instance.

The Minister of Katanga also stayed in our White hotels.

And the hon. member knows it.

He also received young Banda in his Office. He drank whey or tea with him—I do not know which of the two they drank. We are trying to meet this problem. More and more non-White hotels are being built. Non-White hotels are being built at Bosmont in Johannesburg, at Kimberley, Beau-tort West, Uitenhage, Port Elizabeth, Oudtshoorn, Paarl, Elsies River and Athlone. For instance, there is the international hotel which is being built at the airport and in which conferences can be held.

Then the hon. member for Ermelo complains about a luxury hotel which is going to be erected in the densely built-up area in front of the Union Buildings, where Whites and non-Whites can stay together. Where did the hon. member hear that? Who but the liar Willie Lubbe told the hon. member this? Who said that a luxury hotel was going to be erected in the middle of Pretoria, right in front of the Union Buildings, a hotel where Whites and non-Whites can stay together? Are you not ashamed of yourself for propagating such things here?

Put him under oath; he might tell then.

Under oath? Heaven help us! I beg your pardon. Sir, I wanted to say, “Good gracious!” This is an absolute untruth. What really happened there? The two De Jongh brothers applied for permission to build a luxury hotel there. There is a possibility that if important Black visitors from abroad should come here before other facilities are available, they will stay in that hotel of the De Jonghs. They will stay there, just as the others stayed in the Union Hotel not far from there and did so with the permission of the hon. member for Ermelo. Now he comes forward with the story that the Black people are going to be enticed into our White residential areas, and he wants to know what is going to happen to our poor White boys and girls. Nobody has done more to disrupt our whole apartheid policy than did the hon. member for Ermelo when he was Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. What did he do at the time? Now the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs and I have been saddled with this problem. What did he do at that time? By signing his name he gave permission for a luxury restaurant for Bantu, Coloureds and Indians to be fitted up in the micro-wave tower which is situated in Hillbrow, the most densely populated White part in the Republic and a part which has already become a problem area.

That is not true.

I am now telling the hon. member that it is true, and if he tells me that it is not true, the hon. member is provoking me to say that he is a … Oh, well, let us rather not say it. The hon. member knows it is true. Am I now to furnish the hon. member with proof to the effect that he did affix his signature to it? The hon. member gave his consent and the contract was signed, and now I am asked whether I will grant a permit. The contract was signed while the hon. member was Minister of Posts. This contract provides that Bantu, Coloureds and Indians may visit the micro-wave tower and that a restaurant is to be fitted up for them.

The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs has nothing to do with that.

It is of absolutely no avail to the hon. member to wave his hand, because this is what he did. He did this without consultation with the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development and without consultation with the previous Minister of Community Development. By doing that he created for thousands of non-Whites an opportunity to enter Hillbrow in the evenings and at any time of the day, and what an atrocious position would this not have caused! This is the great leader of the White people. It is the great leader of the White civilization in South Africa who does such a thing. Now the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs and I are saddled with this position, but we shall solve it. There would never have been a greater congregation of Whites and non-Whites than would have been the case with that position which was approved by the hon. member for Ermelo. And then they come along with their cries, “Back to Verwoerd!”, “Back to Strydom!”, “Back to Malan!” Those four members are betraying every standpoint for which those people stood.

That has nothing to Go with it.

Now they are using the Afrikaans language as their slogan, and I want to conclude with this. The Afrikaans language is now to become the only language in South Africa. What does the hon. member for Wonderboom do? He is a director of large companies. One of his companies issues every annual report of theirs in English only.

That is not true.

Therefore, when it comes to politics, he wants to cheat the English-speaking people out of their language, but when it is possible for him to make money out of the English-speaking people, he is fonder of an Englishman than ten King Georges are.

You know, Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House have got used to the tactics of the Nationalist Party. Whenever they are in real trouble, what do they do? You know what they do: They call on the hon. the Minister of Community Development. Why do they do that? They do this because they are hoping that his well-known blusterings will bluff this House. So far as his fight with the hon. member for Ermelo is concerned, we leave that to the hon. member for Ermelo and his colleagues, because I am sure that they are in the position to deal with it themselves.

At this stage of the debate I am rising to tell the hon. the Minister of Community Development and other hon. members on that side of the House, that we have no intention whatsoever to let them off the hook. The hon. member for Durban (North) has drawn to the attention of this House this evening, some most important and vital issues. These are issues to which the hon. the Minister of Community Development made no attempt to answer.

You will get your answer.

I hope we will. The hon. member sitting on the crossbenches has said that we will get our answer and I do hope we will. I intend to bring this House back to some of the issues that were raised by the hon. member for Durban (North). These issues are far too important to be passed over, they are far too important to allow the Nationalist Government not to deal with them. One of the most important points raised by the hon. member for Durban (North) is the fact that through the years we have been opposing legislation introduced in this House by the Nationalist Government on the pretext that these laws are required in order to control the country and in order particularly to deal with subversive elements and elements attempting to sabotage the country. I want to point out to this House that on many occasions when we on this side of the House have felt that the laws which the Government were attempting to pass in order to acquire powers to deal with subversive elements, with saboteurs, etc., were necessary, we have supported this Government when we have felt that these powers were justified, having regard to the existing conditions at that particular time.

You were still right in those days.

The hon. Chief Whip who has interjected knows that on many occasions when the Government has placed before this House this type of legislation, we have readily supported them. We have done so, because we took the view that the powers asked for were justified in the circumstances which prevailed at that time. When we opposed the Government we opposed them on the grounds that the powers which they sought were quite unnecessary, far-reaching and beyond what was required to meet the existing situation. We pointed out to this House that the danger in taking such far-reaching powers is that it makes the Government, as it were, punch drunk. It is very easy to abuse those powers and to use them, not against elements which try to subvert the State, but against the Government’s own political enemies. Have we on this side of the House not been proved to be justified in our opposition to the laws which we opposed? Of course we have been proved to be justified.

You are helping the communists.

The hon. the Chief Whip tries to resort to the usual Nationalist tactics, by saying that we are helping the communists. Mr. Speaker, will the hon. the Chief Whip deny that the hon. the Prime Minister used the Security Police against the writers of smear letters which were directed not against the State as such, but against the Prime Minister and his party? Were the Security Police not used against the political opponents of the Nationalist Party? This has nothing to do with communists at all. Will he deny that? What is more, Sir, these letters had nothing to do with the subversion of the State. The smear letter writers had nothing to do with the subversion of the State. They were merely criticizing the hon. the Prime Minister and his party, and who did he use against them? He used the Security Police. What do we find now to-day, Sir? It appears to us of the official Opposition that the same may be happening to the Herstigte Nasionale Party, We are not interested in the fight between the Nationalist Party and the Herstigtes. Both parties are Nationalists. Both parties, in our opinion, are extremists. Both parties, in our opinion, are verkramp and we wish to have nothing to do with either. What we are concerned about as the official Opposition in this country, is that it appears to us that the Government is using the far-reaching powers, which it took, to attack the Herstigtes, not because they are subverting the State, or saboteurs, or anything of that sort, but simply because they are political opponents of this Government. We wish to have clear proof, and the country is entitled to clear proof, that the Government is not using its powers for these purposes. What have we had so far?

What powers have been abused?

The hon. member for Prinshof asks what powers have been abused. The hon. member is very fond of interjecting when I am on my feet.

Just tell us. You made the statement.

If the hon. member will stop interjecting I shall reply to his question. The hon. member for Prinshof is asking me what powers this Government is abusing.

What powers are they abusing against their political opponents?

I have given the hon. member for Prinshof one example, namely the use of the Security Police against the smear letter writers. That is the first point. As I said a moment ago, we are concerned that this Government may now be doing the same thing against the Herstigtes.

In what way?

Sir, the hon. member for Prinshof knows the facts. It is up to the Government to reply to these points and, since the hon. member for Prinshof is so loquacious, perhaps he will get up and explain to us the reasons for the actions taken against the hon. member for Innesdal. If this sort of thing is done against the smear letter writers, and if this is done against the Herstigtes, what assurance have we as the official Opposition that these far-reaching powers are not going to be used against us, the legitimate political opponents of this Government? Let us examine some of the answers we have been given. We have questioned the Minister of Police and the Prime Minister on these matters. My Leader, during the no-confidence debate, asked the hon. the Prime Minister how he explains that a document, which he claims is top secret, got into the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal. We are still waiting for the answer to this question. The hon. the Minister of Police addressed the House this evening for half an hour, and he did not even attempt to explain to this House how a top secret document, bearing the signature of the hon. the Prime Minister, got into the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal.

Nobody has even reported that it was lost.

Yes, I am coming to that. This document, which presumably runs into eight foolscap pages, must deal with a number of very important matters if it is a top secret document. If that sort of document can get into the hands of persons who are not entitled to it, what assurance does the country have, and what assurance does this House have that the security of the State is in safe hands when it is in the hands of the Nationalist Party? The other curious aspect of this matter is that the hon. the Minister of Police tells us that nobody reported to him, as Minister of Police, the fact that a top secret document had got into the wrong hands. I am sorry that the hon. the Prime Minister is not in his seat this evening, because I would have liked to put the question directly and unequivocally to him: Did he, or did he not report to the Minister of Police the loss of this document or the fact that this document or a copy thereof had fallen into the hands of someone who should not have had it? If he did not report it, why did he not? These are questions that this House and the country are entitled to have answered. We hope that we shall hear answers to these important questions from other members of the Cabinet as well as other members on that side who rise to take part in this debate.

Sir, while I am on this subject, I wish to accuse the hon. the Prime Minister of irresponsibility in the handling of this matter in this House. The hon. member for Innesdal referred to one paragraph in this document which suggested that “meeluistering” was taking place in this country. He interpreted this paragraph as support for his contention that telephone tapping was taking place. The hon. the Prime Minister stood up, and what did he say? He said that he had been forced, by the fact that the hon. member for Innesdal had raised the subject, to disclose to the House facts which would endanger the safety of our young people guarding the borders between this country and other territories adjoining us. This was an irresponsible attitude to adopt, in the light of what the hon. the Prime Minister told this House. What did he tell this House? All that he told this House was that that paragraph in the document had nothing to do with telephone tapping. All that it referred to was the fact that monitoring of subversive elements, and that sort of thing, was taking place in this country. Sir, he was not divulging anything that the enemies of South Africa do not know. Everybody knows that all Western nations resort to the use of monitoring devices to ensure that they are well informed as to what the communists and other persons who wish to subvert the State are doing. The hon. the Prime Minister did not tell us in this House where monitoring is taking place, where those devices are situated or who is actually doing the monitoring. He did not disclose any of that sort of information, which could have given any secret information away. All he told us was that monitoring devices are being used, and this is a fact which is well-known to everybody including those who wish to subvert the State. To say that he was disclosing to the House information which could jeopardize the safety of our young men guarding our borders, was the height of irresponsibility. This attitude was repeated in the House this evening by the hon. the Minister of Police who again said that the hon. member for Innesdal had disclosed information which would place our enemies in a better position to endanger the lives of our young people who are protecting our borders.

Why are you so worried about it?

Why I am worried about it, and I repeat what I said a moment ago, is that the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Minister of Police appear to me to be using this incident as a smokescreen in order to make use of their far-reaching powers not to control subversion, terrorists and so on, but to use it against their political enemies. As we ourselves are their political enemies and will continue to be their political enemies, we are very concerned that their powers are being abused in this way, if indeed they are. I do not know whether these powers are being abused in the case of the hon. member for Innesdal because we do not have all the facts before us. Nevertheless, those facts which we do have and the fact that we have not had satisfactory answers to the questions we have raised lead us to a very strong suspicion that this is in fact what may be happening. It is up to this Government to assure this House and the country that in fact they are not abusing their powers by using them simply against their political opponents.

I want to refer to another matter on which the Minister of Police reported this evening, i. e. the report on the investigation into these van deaths. Once again it appears to us that the hon. the Minister of Police and the Nationalist Government are glibly exhibiting their well-known attitude, i.e. that when they wish to not answer a question, it is usually against the interests of the State to answer if. It appears to us that once again they are resorting to this. I fail to see, and I should like some hon. member on that side of the House to explain to this House, how the report on the van deaths can possibly contain any matter which would not be in the interests of the State, as opposed to those of the Government and the Department of Police, to disclose. I can believe that this report contains unfavourable statements in regard to the hon. the Minister’s department because the way in which this incident was handled certainly did not redound to the credit of the hon. the Minister’s department. But how could it possibly not be in the interests of the State to disclose this information? The only issue which this commission had to consider was the cause of the deaths of these people in the van and whether or not anyone was responsible, and what steps should be taken to ensure that a similar incident would not recur. How can the hon. the Minister of Police suggest to this House that an investigation of this nature into these three basic issues could possibly contain anything which would effect the interests of the State were it disclosed? No, Sir, I am afraid we are finding far too often with this Government these days that where they wish to hide their own incompetence and the fact that they are abusing their powers, they resort to the tactics that to disclose these matters would be against the interests of the State, whereas, in fact, it is no such thing. Of course, it would be contrary to the interests of the Government or the Nationalist Party. They would not like the electorate to know the truth. But that is a very different matter from saying that it is contrary to the interests of the State. The State of South Africa is not the same thing as the Nationalist Party. It is time that this Government realize this.

The other matter which I wish to deal with is also a matter which the hon. member for Durban (North) raised, and on which we do not intend to let this Government off the hook. Since they have refused to deal with it, I wish to deal with it once again to ensure that this time we shall get a reply. That is the whole issue over BOSS and section 29. The hon. the Prime Minister persists in telling this House that section 29 did not in any way alter the law as it then stood. He persists in telling the House and the country that the law, as it is in section 29, is the same as it has always been, and this despite the fact that we pointed out to him during the debate that that was not the case. I would forgive him for not accepting our word. He seldom does until such time as it is obvious to him that we are right. But I did expect of him to accept the statement made by our responsible and well thought of judges such as Mr. Justice Kowie Marais and Mr. Justice Ludorff, to name just two. But the most disappointing aspect of this matter is not so much that the hon. the Prime Minister is so obstinate, despite the fact that judges, lawyers, lecturers and professors in law have all expressed alarm over the far-reaching extent of this BOSS section, section 29, which was passed last year. The aspect of it that concerns us, is the fact that the hon. the Prime Minister has clearly prejudged this issue in two respects. Firstly, he did not make section 29 part of the terms of reference and said it was not necessary to enquire into it, and it was only when the judge who was chairman of the commission of enquiry decided to enquire into it that the hon. the Prime Minister accepted the position. Secondly, he appears to be prejudging the issue, because he told the country in statements made by him after he appointed the commission of enquiry that section 29 did not change the law and that it did not have the effect which judges, lawyers, professors in law and we on this side of the House claims that he did.

Those statements are quite correct and the Prime Minister can prove it. He will prove it to you.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very interesting interjection from the hon. member for Potchefstroom. I hope this is not a case of the blind leading the blind. We have the situation in this House that the hon. the Deputy Minister for Justice, who introduced this Bill last year, as a result, largely I think, of his conduct in this House, has now been removed from Parliament and has been appointed elsewhere. I want to come back to the statement made by the hon. member for Potchefstroom. He reiterates that the hon. the Prime Minister was quite right and that he will prove it. We challenge the hon. the Prime Minister and any other hon. member on that side of the House, including the hon. member for Potchefstroom, to substantiate the statements the hon. member for Potchefstroom has just made. I want to go further and ask the hon. member for Potchefstroom what the purpose is of including this issue as part of the matters to be considered by the commission of inquiry if the Government has already made up its mind. It is quite obvious to us what is going to happen. They have already made up their minds, so whatever report is submitted by the commissioner who is sitting on this matter, we shall be told by the hon. the Minister for Police or by the hon. the Prime Minister that the report cannot be Tabled because it is not in the interests of the State to do so. They will resort to this well-tried statement.

Have you seen the terms of reference?

Of course I have studied the terms of reference.

He is just preparing you for the fact that he is not going to Table it.

My hon. leader draws my attention to the fact that the hon. the Minister of Police’s attitude appears to be to prepare us for the fact that he does not intend to Table the report.

You do not know what you are talking about.

If I do not know what I am talking about, perhaps the hon. the Minister of Police will tell the House one thing. I will not even limit it to the inquiry on clause 29. What is the point of this inquiry which is now being conducted into the whole spectrum of State security if the hon. the Minister of Police, the hon. the Prime Minister, the hon. member for Potchefstroom and other hon. members on that side of the House, appear already to have made up their minds on these issues? It is quite obvious to this House and it will be quite obvious to the country outside that we are going to have the same whitewashing operation that we have been used to in the past. When this matter is Tabled we shall get the same story, namely that it is not in the interests of the State to Table the report. We shall then have some weak statement from the hon. the Minister of Police telling us what is contained in this report but not being prepared to Table it so that we can debate it.

I wish to close by emphasizing that we have in the past, in opposing these far-reaching measures taken by this Government, expressed our deep concern that such far-reaching powers lead to arrogance and abuse and to a state of affairs where they will be used not for the purposes for which they were allegedly taken, namely to deal with communists and saboteurs and so on, but used against the legitimate political opponents of this Government. We are very concerned that some of these laws against which we complained are in fact to-day being used for these very purposes.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Musgrave has now actually treated us to a duplication of the speech of the hon. member for Durban (North). All the hon. member for Musgrave proved with his speech is to how great an extent the United Party has now found itself in alliance with the Herstigte Nasionale Party. To-night we have seen these two hon. gentlemen blatantly and openly pleading the case for the Herstigte Nasionale Party. However, there is not a grain of principle in this pleading of the H.N.P.’s case in this House this evening. I shall try to prove this.

On the same argument, the Progressives must be your allies.

We shall try to prove the argument. The hon. member for Musgrave told us this evening that they were concerned at the fact that the Government is supposedly using its police and security forces to intimidate its political opponents. The hon. member for Musgrave asked a rhetorical question about how the document got into the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal? They repeatedly ask us how it is possible for that document to have come into the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal? If we then tell them that we are investigating the matter they say that we are intimidating these people. Now what do the hon. members on that side of the House want us to do? Must we go and sit down without a word and allow important State documents to fall into all kinds of irresponsible hands? Or must we do our duty towards South Africa in order to safeguard our country and our young men out there? I now ask the hon. member for Musgrave whether we should not investigate this matter? What would he like us to do? How must we act? Must we not investigate it? I am asking the hon. member for Musgrave a plain and simple question. He must tell me what his party’s standpoint is in this connection. Must we not let our police investigate how this important document came into the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal? What is his reply?

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

The hon. member cannot make another speech.

No, I merely want to ask him a question. The hon. member for Prinshof has challenged me to answer this question. Will he now answer our question as 1o how this document got into the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal?

Mr. Speaker, I resumed my seat on purpose because I wanted the hon. member for Musgrave to reply to my question. I knew as well as the hon. members sitting around me that he had no reply and that he would not give one. The only reply the hon. member could, in fact, honestly give me is that they are joining forces with the Herstigte Nasionale Party against the National Party. That is the only reason why he made that speech. What are the facts of this matter? The facts of the matter are that an important document, signed by the Prime Minister, is suddenly read here in this House by the hon. member for Innesdal. It is evidently a document of eight pages; it is apparently a top security document. I regard it as this Government’s duty to have this matter investigated. If the hon. the Minister of Police or the hon. the Prime Minister had not had this matter investigated our country would have been entitled to ask, where is our Government heading? In one way or another, how we do not know, this document ended up in the hands of the hon. member for Innesdal. Now hon. members on that side of the House ask us how this affects the security of South Africa, as if they could not imagine for themselves how this was possible. If they are then so stupid that they cannot see this I want to ask them: Supposing security documents come into any person’s hands, what is going to happen on the borders of South Africa with the terrorists making an onslaught upon our young men? There is a leakage somewhere in our Police Force or in our Military Forces and these documents are apparently being obtained in some way or other. We do not know how many copies the hon. member for Innesdal made. We do not know how far the hon. member for Innesdal himself would go in revealing the contents of these documents. Let me accept for a moment that the hon. member for Innesdal is acting responsibly. In my humble opinion he did not do so. If I do, in fact, accept for a moment that he did act in this way, the question still remains whether those documents which he obtained could not also leak out elsewhere? Could they not leave the country? Could they not get our young men there into trouble? Was it not his duty, when the person gave it to him, or however he obtained it—according to him he received it quite innocently through the post—to have read the document immediately and, having seen that it bore a security stamp and was a top security document from the Prime Minister’s Office, to have submitted it to the Police? Was it not his duty to do so? Was it not his duty to say to himself immediately that he should not read any further from the document since it was obviously not meant for his scrutiny? Should he not, as a responsible Member of Parliament, even if he is an Opposition member, immediately have returned the document to its source? No, we have reason to feel unsafe. We have reason to feel unsure and we have reason to investigate this matter. I notice that the hon. member for Durban (North) is now walking out. He also made an attack here. I hold it against them as advocates that, while the matter is being investigated, they do not only insinuate, but directly accuse the Government of now using the Police to intimidate the members of the Herstigte Nasionale Party. I regard this as an outrageous utterance. I know that these hon. members cannot reply to that.

I now come to the so-called section 29. I refuse to be taken in tow by the hon. member for Musgrave when he refers each time to the BOSS section. It is not the BOSS section. Section 29 of the General Law Amendment Act is a section embodying the legal position as it existed in common law. It is merely a more detailed definition. The hon. member for Durban (North) knows this. He knows very well what the difference is between common law and section 29. He knows that section 29 was in reality only a consolidation of the Government’s standpoint. He knows very well that what the Appeal Court really said was that a privilege did, in fact, exist in respect of matters concerning State security. In other words, even under common law a person could say in court that it was in the country’s interest that certain evidence should not be given. On the basis of that certificate our courts, and the English courts in England, have always said that the evidence need not be given. All that this court decision states is that the signature of the person concerned should be that of the political head of the department. The powers cannot be delegated. That position has been rectified by section 29. Section 29 now reads that on his signature the Minister can delegate that right to someone in his department. That person must be a responsible person who may then issue a certificate when he thinks that the country’s security is being affected. There is an argument among jurists about the degree to which the Appeal Court case is affected by section 29. I notice that the two hon. members are now holding a discussion. I have to listen to them, but now they are not listening to me. I expect those hon. members to afford me the courtesy of listening to me as well.

There is now a difference of opinion. The hon. member speaks of the Johannesburg and Pretoria Bars. These are two Bars I know nothing about. He should rather speak of the Natal Bar. As far as the Pretoria Bar is concerned, I found out that the decision was taken without a proper and comprehensive legal opinion being submitted to the Bar.

Is it necessary for them to obtain a legal opinion?

He asks if it is necessary. My standpoint is that when one wants to criticize such a section one must take into account that a Bar is composed of a lot of advocates and that everyone is busy. Those advocates are not all in a position to study the full implications of that Act. In my humble opinion it was the task of each Bar to say that they must first obtain a comprehensive legal opinion about what the precise extent of this section is. On the basis of that they must hold discussions and formulate their decision. I am now going to accept that the Bars acted in all good faith.

What about the judges then?

I am going to accept that the judges expressed an opinion in all good faith. I am also going to accept that the reason why we are submitting a case to five judges in Bloemfontein is because there could possibly be five different opinions. In other words, there are as many different opinions as there are jurists. Legislation is now being submitted here which will altogether clarify the position. The hon. the Prime Minister goes still further and says that he sees that there is turbulence in the country, that there is a lot of discussion about it in legal circles and that is why the commission of enquiry has now been given the task of finding out to what extent section 29 differs from our common law position. Now there are complaints against that. Now the hon. members come along and ask us why the hon. the Prime Minister appointed a commission of enquiry for that. They gave us the reason, because they made such a fuss about virtually nothing. The matter has now been submitted to a proper technical enquiry because they made such a lop-sided fuss here. What is wrong with that? Surely there is no fault to be found with that at all. Now the hon. member for Durban (North) is blaming the hon. the Prime Minister for expressing such an opinion. The hon. member for Durban (North) is also a lawyer, is he not, and he surely also expresses his opinions. Even the hon. member for Musgrave expresses his opinion. Every man expresses his opinion, and now the hon. the Prime Minister comes along and also expresses his. The commission of enquiry can ignore this if it wants to, but we are all entitled to express opinions. Why may the hon. the Prime Minister not do so now? Oh no, this hon. Opposition actually makes one laugh. I now want to refer to another point and that is the point raised by the hon. member for Durban (North) as well as by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. I want to reproach them most severely for this. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said this earlier on, and this evening the hon. member for Durban (North) once again said that he blamed the hon. the Prime Minister for appointing a commission to report on the allegation made by the hon. member for Ermelo. The allegation was that the Bureau for State Security would cost an amount of R50 million instead of R4 million. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition is himself a lawyer, and now I want to put a question to him. These allegations were made at various meetings, at two, as far as I can remember. The hon. member for Ermelo may correct me. His allegations were reiterated by the hon. member for Innesdal at Bronkhorstspruit. Only the hon. member for Innesdal went further with the insult by saying that his source was such a sensitive one that they were afraid that the lives of the persons concerned would be jeopardized if the sources were revealed. Let us now look very honestly at this claim that R50 million would supposedly be spent on the Bureau for State Security. What does this allegation mean for South Africa? It means one of several things. It either means that the entire Public Service joined the Prime Minister in dishonesty, or it means that that hon. member’s utterance was a complete fabrication.