Mr. Speaker, it has come to my notice that in a debate on 17th February I used the word “paranoia” in reference to an hon. member and that it is unparliamentary. With leave, Sir, I wish to withdraw it.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, recent important debates in this House have, I think, given rise to quite a bit of disquiet on the part of those who have the interests of South Africa at heart. In this pre-election session. at a time when the problems of the country are crying out for attention, the public has the right to know what the Government’s intentions are and what its solutions are. But we have been treated to the unedifying spectacle of the Government, and particularly the hon. the Prime Minister himself, devoting the greater part of his time in this House to attacks on the Herstigte Nasionale Party, and attacks in the most extravagant language. If ever there was an occasion when dirty linen was being washed in public, this was it. It is amazing that this should be so in respect of a group of people whom the Government alleges have no support, have no policy and are entirely unimportant. I think all the public has really learned from the debates in which these matters have been raised has been that there is a measure of dislike and a great touchiness in Government quarters and an overwhelming nervousness in respect of this little group which forms the Herstigte Nasionale Party. I believe there are two main reasons for this touchiness, for this nervousness and for this dislike. I think the first is that the Government has not the faintest idea of how weak or how strong this little group may be. They have not the faintest idea whether there are not still perhaps fifth columns amongst their own ranks. They think back on the assurances the hon. the Prime Minister gave us last year about his whole caucus being with him and accepting his interpretation of policy, and they wonder whether he is right or wrong when he gives the same assurances now. Then I think there is another reason why there is such dislike and disquiet on the Nationalist side in respect of this little Herstigte Nasionale Party group, and I think it is because they are the legitimate offspring of the Nationalist Party—was it Milton who referred to “the brood of their folly”? [Laughter.]

And now you are their adoptive father.

Sir, I am not seeking adoption rights against the legitimate child of the hon. the Prime Minister. I believe he should be capable of supporting it himself without my assistance, because the only time you seek to give your child away in adoption is when you cannot support it or control it. [Laughter.] After all, what is this quarrel about? Why are these people no longer in the Nationalist. Party, and why did they have to leave it? I believe quite simply because they could not accept the four points in his policy in which the hon. the Prime Minister is beginning, however timidly, to plagiarize United Party policy. Let us take these four points and let us bear in mind that the Government is accusing these gentlemen of coming closer to us. The Prime Minister is accusing them of moving closer to us. Now let us look at these four points on which they have differences with the Government.

The first is immigration. One knows what the policy of this side of the House has been in regard to immigration. One knows how we had to struggle for years to get the Government to support any immigration at all. One knows on how many occasions during the years they have been in power we lost more white people than came into the country. One remembers, during the years they have been in power, that our gain of white people over emigrants has been less than sufficient to make up our road deaths in South Africa. What is the attitude of hon. gentlemen on my left, the Herstigte Nasionale Party? They want even less immigration than the Government. They are far out on the right, so how can they be coming closer to us?

Then let us deal with this question of black diplomats. The hon. gentleman knows very well that we had statements from that side of the House in previous years that it was not their policy to accept black diplomats in South Africa.

Who made those statements?

They were made by the late Mr. Eric Louw when he was Minister of foreign Affairs, and there were also statements by the last Prime Minister, the late Dr. Verwoerd, in which he said they were quite unnecessary that they could ring up on the telephone, and that we would have roving ambassadors to visit these other countries.

And what about Mr. Strydom?

If the hon. member has a quotation from Mr. Strydom, he can have it as a present. I am not interested in it. He knows very well that it is not their policy. Now, Sir, what happens? We state categorically that we believe it should be done and very soon it begins to happen. And what happens. Sir? These gentlemen on my left are not prepared to accept it. Are they moving closer to us? What is moving closer to us, is this Government. They are beginning to appreciate the common sense and the absolute necessity of accepting the policies of the United Party. What is the position in respect of sport, Sir? Are those hon. gentlemen moving closer to us? They do not want any non-Whites in treams visiting South Africa. The Government is about to admit them. I am not interested in whether it was or was not Government policy before. To whom are they moving closer, Sir? No, what is happening is that the Government is moving closer to us again. Take the question of national unity, Mr. Speaker.

You are wrong.

The hon. the Minister of Information, the chief propagandist of the Nationalist Party, says I am wrong. I wonder if he is old enough to remember the days when General Hertzog, former leader of the Nationalist Party, left the Free State Congress of the Nationalist Party “oor die regte van die Engelse”—over the rights of the English. I wonder if he is old enough to remember that Republican constitution that came out, of which Dr. Malan said that it reflected the thinking of the Nationalist Party, a Republican constitution in which Afrikaans was to be the official language and English was to be used at the mercy of the Executive? These hon. gentlemen are forgetting this. They have changed their policies; they are moving towards the United Party’s ideas on national unity, but are those hon. gentlemen (the Herstigte Nasionale Party) coming closer to us? No, Sir, it is the Government that is coming our why and it is the Herstigte Nasionale Party that is standing where the old Nationalist Party used to stand. Quite clearly the opposite of the Government’s charge against them is the truth. Where the Government is moving, however timidly, to saner policies, wiser policies, policies advanced in the past by the United Party, those gentlemen are not prepared to go with them and they have been left behind.

What is happening. Sir? This Government is paying for its shameless exploitation of prejudice and sentiment in the past for purposes of catching votes. The hon. the Prime Minister has been so preoccupied with this battle, which of course affects his own leadership most intimately, that in this the first election in which he is going as leader of his party to the public of South Africa to ask for approval of what he has done and to state his policies for the future, we have had no election manifesto or platform from the hon. gentleman; we have had no statement of his intentions; we have no indication of what he is offering the people of South Africa that is different from what his predecessor offered. We have heard nothing of those two election platforms about which he spoke with such confidence last year —those nine points on which he was going to go to the people of South Africa and ask for their support in the coming election. You will remember. Sir, that the hon. gentleman really went to the country on two platforms at that t;me. The first was directed against his previous followers, now in the Herstigte Nasionale Party: the second platform was designed to find replacements for those turning against him For these latter there were the most attractive or, shall I say, the most distracting issues such as how the terrorists were being fought, the success in dealing with the United Nations, the turning of boycotts into goodwill trade missions, managing the economy of the country and many other things. I have no doubt that the public will be delighted to be reminded of these feats of the Prime Minister. They have receded rather into the background of late, and they have receded into the background with all the worry about finding a place to live, with paying accounts swollen by the sales tax, with their worry about losing money on the Stock Exchange, with their sighs over the increasing cost of living and other similar bread-and-butter-matters. Sir, I said at the time that most of the issues which the hon. gentleman raised were not inter-party issues. In so far as they were inter-party issues they were not isssues out of which he came very well. We were asked, for instance, to support the hon. the Prime Minister if we were satisfied with the manner in which the Nationalist Government had defended South Africa against communism and against terrorism. Of course we are grateful. All of us are grateful that we are not being overwhelmed by communism or openly invaded by terrorists. But are the voters of South Africa really expected to believe that no other Government would have combated communism or vigorously resisted terrorist attacks upon our country?

Who voted for Sam Kahn to remain in this House?

Sir, that hon. gentleman who is always a bit loud-mouthed seems to forget that when the Nationalist Party had been in power for some four years, Dr. Malan got up in this House and read out a report on communism which he had got from the Police, a report that was given during the time that General Smuts was in power.

And did nothing about it.

Sir, do you know what the hon. gentleman said after he had been in power for four years? He said, “the situation was bad then; it is much worse now”. He did nothing about it.

The Springbok Legion was your ally.

Who supported the Springbok Legion? Frankie was a commandant.

There is no reason, Sir, for the hon. the Minister of Tourism to be so worried. I am sure it is the only thing of which he has ever been a commandant. Sir, do they really suggest that no other Government would have vigorously resisted any terrorist infiltration or attack on South Africa? With my own party’s experience of participating in two world wars, of dealing with undermining influences on the home front most successfully, I see no reason why I should be so modest as to suggest for one moment that we on this side of the House could not have done what the hon. the Prime Minister has done and probably done it a great deal better.

And more quickly.

Let me say here for the record that I still believe that attempts to introduce communism into South Africa should be equated with treason and that in extreme cases they should carry the death penalty. But, Sir, there must be a fair trial before the courts so that no innocent person will suffer, and in addition there must be an organized and directed campaign to educate our non-Whites against the danger of communism. Hand in hand with this must go a campaign to eliminate the seedbeds of communism by declaring war on poverty throughout South Africa. It is exactly in that field, in this attack on poverty throughout South Africa, that the policies of this Prime Minister, because of his ideologies, are falling down.

Sir, on the question as to whether we are satisfied with the manner in which this Government handled the United Nations in its attempted boycotts of South Africa, I want to pose the counter-question whether it is the Government that has handled the United Nations Organization or whether it is the United Nations Organization’s own incompetence that has solved the problem for the Government? That body has failed hopelessly in its efforts to interfere in the affairs of South West Africa and it will continue to do so. The hon. the Prime Minister knows that in those arguments against the United Nations he had the full support of the Opposition. Sir, is it really the Government that has successfully combated boycotts or is it that UN has failed in its own boycott attempts? Because countries like Sweden, not so long ago, decided that they lost more than they gained by refusing to trade with South Africa. A country like Japan, although they continue to say some very unpleasant things about South Africa, still continues to buy our iron ore when it suits them. Of course, if the hon. gentleman is using the term “boycott” in its wider sense, then it seems to me that his policy has been an utter failure because it is becoming increasingly evident that as far as sport boycotts are concerned he unfortunately is making no headway at all.

The hon. the Prime Minister asked for approval of his policy on Rhodesia. That policy has been proved in practice to be very closely allied to what we asked for. On the very day when there was a unilateral declaration of independence, there was virtually no difference between us. I do not see how he can go to the country on an issue like that. We had to jog the Government’s arm occasionally.

But that is not true.

Oh yes, it is true. The very day of that debate in this House with the last hon. Prime Minister was the day the first permit was issued for petrol to be taken across the frontier. Good heavens, the hon. gentleman knows it! And then he says, “But that is not true!”

The hon. gentleman then asked for support on account of his management of the economy of South Africa, particularly of the economic development of South Africa. Does he really expect to gain praise for an economic development which is being made possible by ignoring the basic principles of his party’s policy on apartheid in so far as it affects the presence of Bantu with the Whites in our urban and rural areas? We are having economic development, not because of the policy but in spite of it. We are having economic development because that policy is not being applied. Throughout the country it is becoming more and more evident that where you have separation, you do not have prosperity and where you have prosperity, you do not have separation. Nor, Sir, can it be claimed that the Government’s management of our economy has shown the expertise which we are entitled to expect. In the earlier part of the discussion of this Bill we had a long and most unsuccessful defence by the hon. the Minister of finance of his own actions in triggering the disastrous Stock Exchange decline, with losses to so many hundreds of thousands of South Africans, including a great many small people like the clerks and the typists, to whom the Minister referred so disparagingly. Many of those people were encouraged to go on to the Exchange by the Minister’s advice to invest in equities and to share in the prosperity of South Africa.

Please prove what you are saying now.

Sir, let us go back to the background of this whole situation. Let us look at the background which was given to us by the Minister when he said that his own committee reported that the reaction, when it came, was intensified by a number of factors. He then goes on to stress an unfavourable psychological climate. Sir, how was this unfavourable psychological climate created? We heard the hon. the Minister speaking last year about the desire to reduce liquidity. In a speech by the hon. the Minister himself, we had that liquidity estimated at some R400 million at least, which had to be siphoned off. We had the Minister’s of t-repeated desire to divert money to the building societies. Against this background we had the hon. gentleman’s statement in this House on the morning of 18th June, last year, when he said (Hansard, Vol. 27, col. 8385):

He then went on to show the advantage to building societies if that were to happen. Then came the statement in which he announced that exchange control would be relaxed. He went on to indicate that the relaxation was primarily aimed at assisting in the removal of excess liquidity from the private, non-banking sector. There was no statement at that time as he admits, regarding new information that had suddenly come to his notice. What was worse, Sir, was that there was no indication as to what extent he was going to release exchange control. The public knew what his object was. His object was to reduce liquidity, to bring down share prices and to divert money into the building societies. Then he makes the statement that exchange control will be lifted without giving any indication of the extent to which this will be done. Is he surprised that a market, which was admittedly overvalued, took fright? Is he surprised that there was a sudden rush by people who did not know what the situation was? Even some of those people of whom he approves have expressed their views on the matter. Here we have one example:

The hon. gentleman triggered the crash. He seemed quite pleased with it when he first did it. He spoke a few days later about exporting money and about money now being available for the building societies. What was the good of clamping down again when he found that things had gone too far? What is the good now of talking about relaxations like those of July, 1968? In fact he was anxious to achieve exactly what he did achieve. He wanted a fall on the Stock Market, he wanted to reduce liquidity and he wanted money to be available for the building societies. But he did not realize what he had done and the slide apparently went further than he had expected. He lost control and now he will not tell us whether he is satisfied with the present level of prices. Now he says that it is not a true reflection of the economic state of the country, but he will not tell us whether he is satisfied with the present level of prices. I want to tell him that there are certain of his own people who have no doubts at all about this matter. There is the editor of Dagbreek. He knows that there is an election coming. On 15th February, he wrote the following: “Ons moet berge versit om te verseker dat daardie Beurs heelwat hoër is voor 22 April.” What has happened? The hon. the Minister has tried. There have been relaxations of the ceiling on credit. We have had statements from the Minister but his statements have tended to be ineffective. Not only are they being ineffective, the public are fast losing confidence in this hon. gentleman because they do not know what to believe when he makes statements about the economic situation in South Africa to-day. That is why the hon. member for Constantia raised the question of devaluation and asked the Minister to deal with it. On the 25th January of this year devaluation was written about on the front page of Dagbreek, a newspaper of which the hon. the Minister of Transport is chairman. Do you wonder, Sir, that people worry about it?

Then there has been this fiasco with the purchase tax. The figures the hon. member for Constantia mentioned have been queried. It is quite clear that the hon. the Minister is heading for another big surplus, resulting from more over-taxation. I am not surprised that we have not heard much about this issue lately. There is no joy for the hon. the Prime Minister in claiming to have managed the economy so well. He knows very well the warnings are coming now that development is slowing down. While this is happening and is being referred to by many of the leading writers, we find this Government indulging in the internecine warfare with the H.N.P. further down and giving no attention to the real issues before the country, no attention to the failure of his non-European policy, no attention to the proper combating of the manpower shortage, no proper attention to the problems of the ordinary man in the street and no attention to the problems of the farmer in South Africa to-day. There were a few million rand more for the Land Bank to lend to the farmer, but no coming to grips with the fundamental problems with which the agriculturist is faced.

Then there is the continued evidence of these authoritarian tendencies on the part of the Government. This has been an issue with the hon. the Prime Minister before. The hon. gentleman has said on occasion that he was claiming support because of his success in maintaining law and order in South Africa. But then, Sir, we have a very high crime rate. We have over-full gaols. But what worries me is that the actions of the hon. gentleman are often leading to an undermining of confidence amongst the people of South Africa in our maintenance of law and order. That is why I raised with him the question of the powers which he had asked for in respect of what had become known as the B.O.S.S. section. Of course, I accept they are not administered by B.O.S.S. I want to say to the hon. gentleman that I have read his statements on the subject with interest. I am satisfied that the passage to which he refers in Van der Linde’s judgment is quite consistent with decided cases which went before that case and is consistent with the ratio in the judgment itself, with the possible exception of the Redelinghuys case. I want to put this issue quite squarely to the hon. the Prime Minister. Ministers now can decide that they withhold evidence if it is in the interest of the State or public security.

Those words come from the judgment.

Yes, Sir. they come from the judgment. The hon. the Minister of Police has recently had an inquiry into the suffocation of certain prisoners in a trailer on its way to the gaol. He has had a Police inquiry. He has the results of that inquiry. He is not prepared to make it available to this House, because it is not in the interest of the State he says. If any of those dependants sue, are we going to have a certificate from the hon. gentleman to say it is not in the interest of the State to reveal the evidence or the findings of this committee of inquiry? Do you see, Sir, where these things are going and why there is an undermining of confidence? That is the sort of problem with which we are faced. That is the sort of thing to which the attention of this hon. gentleman should be directed. It is perfectly clear that if that Minister is prepared to state to this House that it is not in the interest of the State that that information be made available to Members of Parliament in this House, what is he going to do if there is a lawsuit? Is there to be no possibility of going behind it? What is going to happen in respect of people who probably bring in an action in a case of that kind? That is why I say that there must be more and proper attention for matters of this kind. I believe one of the greatest problems we are faced with at the moment is the position of the ordinary man in the street in South Africa. He is suffering at the moment. He has economic difficulties. These are the problems which have been neglected by this Government. It is one of the reasons why people are going to vote against the Government on the 22nd April.

Mr. Speaker, there is an election in the offing on 22nd April. The various political parties will be tested with a view to that election. The Government will be tested on its ability to govern the country and on the way in which it has done so during the past few years. The other parties that are striving to govern will be judged on what they have to offer as alternative policies and on their ability to gauge the deepest needs of the people of South Africa. Having listened to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, who has just spoken, one cannot but come to the conclusion that that speech holds out no hope to his followers for the election. What I find most significantly absent is the ability to notice what really counts with the voters of South Africa at this stage of our nation’s existence. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has now dealt here with the economic problems and with the difficulties of the man in the street. I want to tell the hon. member that there will always be problems for the man in the street, as for any other man as well. This was also the case in the past. To-day the man in the street maintains a better standard of living than ever before in our history. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition’s talk about them living in misery simply does not wash. What is of greater importance is measuring the ruling party up against its opponents by noticing what it is that infuses those various parties. That is what makes an impression on the electorate—what is such a party’s motive, what is it striving for and in which way does it best want to govern the country? That is what matters to the voter.

I want to say that in this connection to-day there are basic matters that count as far as the voter is concerned. I want to mention one which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition also referred to, i.e. the deep-felt desire on the part of our white population. Afrikaans and English-speaking, to stand together as one man in order to ensure the safety of our country. The ordinary man, whatever may be said about him here by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, at least has enough common sense to know that if his security and his future are not ensured, all the world’s riches will be of no use to him. In a single moment it can be destroyed, and that is why the ordinary man attaches importance to what approach the various political parties have to the safety of the country. The ordinary man also insists that for the sake of that freedom there be unity, even though we do not all speak the same language, and even though we have different points of view here and there. Another requirement imposed by the voter is bound up with this aspect of the safety of our future, i.e. what is the approach of the various political parties to the race question. Is the governing party establishing and evolving a policy which will renew increasing pressures and tensions, or is the party doing away with all forms of pressure and friction. Then, of course, the ordinary man is also interested in economic stability and in prospects for his own livelihood. I say without any doubt that no previous government, even a National Party Government, has created such a bright future for the ordinary man as this Government has done.

But let us look at this basic inner urge of our people to find one another for the sake of the safety of our country which goes above and beyond political parties. This does not mean political unity. The reproach was made here by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, and previously by other speakers on that side of the House as well, that this Government is not trying to bring about and to promote national unity. When the session ended last year, an article appeared in the Cape Times and, according to the hon. member for Ermelo, we must believe what this paper says because it is the truth. It was a review of the past session, written by Gerald Shaw and appearing in the newspaper on 21st June, 1969. The writer states the following about the United Party, which is the alternative government. He was specifically speaking about this great matter of unity and stated the following—

Can hon. members see what this man has written? He is an English-speaking journalist, but he notices the defect in that party’s whole approach to this matter. He then continues—

An English-speaking journalist notices that defect in a party that speaks from morning till night about national unity but has no idea of what it means. In conclusion he states—

This is the great defect the voters of South Africa notice in the United Party; what the voters now notice, and what they noticed in the past about the United Party, is that it speaks from morning till night about unity— it is not very clear about what its object is— but that in the realization of its endeavour there is a nagging deficiency in its ability to penetrate to the very soul of South African nationhood. The United Party does not know what it means. The other day the hon. the Prime Minister reminded the Leader of the Opposition of what the views of his party were in respect of becoming a Republic. They evidenced an inability to see that the coming of the Republic would create a new unity for Afrikaans and English-speaking people in which the country could develop to greater heights. The hon. the Minister also reminded him of other deficiencies evidenced by his party in the past, i.e. the Opposition against an individual South African citizenship and individual symbols. The hon. the Prime Minister also reminded him of statements by hon. members on that side of the House which indicated on various occasions that they could not yet comprehend the true spirit of the growing South African nation.

But I also want to refer here to-day to a further instance. I want to do so without dragging this matter into the political arena, because this is not our object. This is a matter of South African symbolism. It is old news that a new flag is being envisaged for South Africa. It is a matter that came from both English-and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. A leading English newspaper man even delivered a strong plea for a new flag. We are living in a new republican era; we are living in a time of new nationhood. The Government understood the need for a symbol of that new nationhood. It did not make politics out of it. Quietly the preparation and the work is being done for such a day. I believe that we have the co-operation of that side of the House in this connection. But what does the official mouthpiece of that party state? In February, 1968, it stated the following (translation)—

Then the writer continues by stating—

Here we have once more an absolute proof of the inability of that side of the House, judging by their official party newspaper, to comprehend the true feelings of the South African nation, the young up-and-coming nation, and to realize that they are striving for a symbol for their nationhood. This young nation does not want the new flag to symbolize the past, when there was division and strife. That is the inability of that side of the House to which this English-speaking journalist was referring.

Who is that journalist?

The hon. member is getting a little old, but if he had listened a moment ago he would have known who it was, because I mentioned his name.

What is the name of that so-called mouthpiece?

Its name is Voorwaarts. Let us now test the other party, which has come into being, in respect of this matter. This party, which has now come into being, is also adopting a standpoint about unity. Its unity boils down to one language group having virtually to relinquish its self-respect. Then there can be unity. Never in the past could unity be built upon such a basis. Nor will this ever be possible. While I am dealing with them, I want to say this to the United Party as well, with reference to what the Leader of the Opposition suggested a moment ago, i.e. that they are the offshoots of the National Party, which itself advocated such ideas.

The Leader of the Opposition also referred to the so-called Republican Constitution which was supposedly approved by Dr. Malan. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition does not know the history. [Laughter.] That hon. member who is laughing so loudly does not know the history either. That document was published in 1943, not by Dr. Malan, but by people outside the party. They submitted it to Dr. Malan and he said that if they had ideas they could publish them. But immediately afterwards that document was repudiated in a leading article in Die Burger.

[Inaudible.]

Would the hon. member for Worcester please speak more clearly?

Did they begin repudiating at that stage already?

Yes, they repudicated it immediately. The hon. member would have known this if he had made a better study of Die Burger. That document did not come before any National Party congress and was not accepted by any congress. [Interjections.] Let me now give hon. members, who are becoming so boisterous, a little information about our political history. That document appeared in 1943. In 1942 Dr. Malan made a speech in Pretoria specifically about this matter. On 16th September, 1942, he said the following (translation)—

But Dr. Malan went further. He spoke to people who thought as this party now thinks and with people who thought along the lines of that Republican Constitution. With a view to that, Dr. Malan said (translation)—

Remember, this was only 1942—

That is the reply to that. There is no longer anyone who will fall for the joke the hon. the Leader of the Opposition told this afternoon. We surely know the history of the National Party. Since its establishment in 1914, and under successive leaders, one of its basic policies has been equality of rights. It was the National Party’s standpoint that unity could not be made artificially. One cannot do what the hon. member preached here the other day, i.e. having schools where the children can be together and then thinking that one can obtain unity while keeping one’s own children away from such schools. This is not the way in which one obtains unity. Unity is a process which must grow out of the hearts of people and out of an understanding between people. It can only grow in an atmosphere created by the Government of the day. I want to state to-day that pursuance of the National Party standpoint throughout the years, i.e. equal rights for the two languages in all respects, is the only possible condition of national unity. This, then, is also perfecting itself in the atmosphere created by this Government. I want to tell the hon. members of the Herstigte Party, who call our previous leaders to witness, that in this connection they have trampled underfoot one of the most basic and most pressing principles of the National Party and of previous leaders. I want to level the accusation that that provision, which is now embodied in their constitution, was not even in the congress document when they established their party. That provision was subsequently introduced by their executive, or whatever the case may be, in an endeavour to arouse and exploit Afrikaner sentiments. They are indeed strange Afrikaners in thought and action. I want to level the same accusation at the Opposition. When the hon. member for Innesdal spoke at Welkom, he said the following, and I quote from the Cape Times of 16th November, 1969—

The hon. member for Innesdal made that statement, and in contradiction to it the hon. member for Durban (North) came with another statement. He conducted an entire campaign in Natal to try to prove that this Government was attempting to do an injustice to the English-speaking people. These kinds of tactics are endeavours to exploit language sentiments. In the field of language they are trying to fence off people who stand on the outer fringes of South Africa’s realistic patterns of thought. These attempts will not succeed, because they cannot hold out against the powerful stream of South African Nationalism. They cannot hold out against that.

I want to tell the hon. member that those stories with which he conducted his campaign are transparent and obvious because in Natal the hon. member had bad luck with the party leadership. Because he has become less popular, he is trying grossly to exploit English sentiments in that way. The existence of two such extreme standpoints, the one a recrimination that the Afrikaner, and the other that the Englishman, are being trampled underfoot, is specific proof to me of the extent to which this Government is, indeed, succeeding in getting the two groups together. It shows me how well the Government has succeeded in creating the right climate for the growth of a unity that takes no notice of such political games, but which strives in the greater interests of South Africa and its safety. I also want to remind hon. members of the Herstigte Party of one of the late Dr. Verwoerd’s first speeches as Prime Minister in this House. This was in 1958, and he expressed himself as follows—

The late Dr. Verwoerd said that there should not be the slightest suggestion of any discrimination. Tested against this statement both the Opposition parties fail, and the South African nation takes note of the fact. The South African nation observes what is happening. It sees what is developing in this country. It sees that, with respect for our own languages and cultures, both sides are finding one another, and that we are also accepting the other language as our own and our country’s. This is the atmosphere that is growing here in South Africa and which will be promoted by this Government. It is for that reason that the nation will bring this Government to power once more.

But, seen from a security point of view, the people are also interested in what the approach of the various parties is in respect of the race situation. The other day we heard here from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that his party planned to reverse what the Government had thus far done, so that there could once more be representation for non-Whites in this House. Now he will not speak about that, one has to question him about it. We have now heard the opinions of various members on that side of the House to the effect that they have complete clarity about those representatives eventually being even non-Whites. And there will be Coloureds in the House as soon as that party comes into power. We now have the hon. the Leader of the Opposition’s assurance that he was previously under pressure, but that that had now vanished. That is why he now wants to announce this so-called white policy of non-white representatives in this House. If this were to be done, the peace and quiet that has prevailed during the past 22 years of this Government’s administration, would be transformed into a new crucible of race tension and friction. This would create new problems for South Africa.

At the time of the creation of a Republic, in an effort to keep South Africa a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, Sir John Diefenbaker required that South African begin by having at least four Bantu in Parliament. The complaint I have against the Leader of the Opposition and his Party is that they were prepared to yield to that pressure.

Where did you hear that?

I reproach them with the fact that they were prepared to yield to that pressure. In the election following the establishment of the Republic the hon. the Leader of the Opposition told the electorate that if they placed him in Office he would make South Africa a member of the Commonwealth of Nations once more. On 1st December of that year, 1961, the hon. member for Orange Grove wrote about the situation at the Commonwealth Conference in a United Party newspaper, and blamed Dr. Verwoerd for being responsible for the fact that South Africa had to leave the Commonwealth. “With Sir De Villiers Graaff in London” he wrote, “South Africa would still have been a member of the Commonwealth to-day.” I take it he wrote this with the authority of his party. In other words, his party was prepared to yield to John Diefenbaker’s pressure.

What is your point?

If the intelligence gap of that hon. member is so great that he cannot understand it, I am not in a position to bridge that gap. The voters of South Africa will have to do so. But there are additional proofs for the United Party’s attitude in this connection. On 3rd of this month the hon. member for Wynberg wrote a letter to the Cape Argus. I am glad to see her entering the House at this moment. I should like her to hear what she wrote. She wrote that when the United Party was in power they would repeal the following Acts: The pass laws, the Population Registration Act, certain Bantu legislation, the legislation for the establishment of separate universities, etc. Therefore the people of South Africa surely know that in the United Party they only have a party advocating a white policy at present. Thus, for example, during his in-fighting with the Progressive Party, the hon. member for Sea Point said: “Keep Sea Point white!” In their yellow booklet they laid down a white policy for South Africa. But surely it is obvious that the endeavour of the United Party is to bring the non-white question, which for years gave rise to a great deal of political tension, in this House as well, back into the South African politics once more. I cannot see how a sensible electorate will fall for such a joke.

I want to say that we appreciate the fact that on occasion the official Opposition agrees with us that the safety of our country must be maintained. We are grateful for that. But at the same time I must say that there are so many other times when they do not do their duty. Just before the previous election the Rhodesian question became a ticklish one, one that had to be handled by experts. Yet the hon. the Leader of the Opposition thought fit to intervene and to draw that matter into our politics, to the great consternation of the people in Rhodesia. Again, with the recent difficulties in Lesotho, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition tried to draw the matter into our domestic politics. Mr. Speaker, this is not the way to maintain your country’s safety in a difficult world.

At the same time I want to point out how this other party handles this matter. We have already had discussions about documents quoted here, etc., and the undermining of the whole nation’s attempt to protect itself. I have here a document which I believe also emanates from that party. Take note of what is written here about our present Prime Minister (translation)—

I say that this remark is one of the most disgraceful that has recently occurred in South African politics. If there is ever a man revered by the nation, a man to whom they would give all their support for the way he has ensured South Africa’s security over the past decade, it is our present Prime Minister.

I do not think that the South African people will allow themselves to be misled by remarks such as these; nor by the official Opposition’s lack of a sense of responsibility on occasions when the security of our country has been involved. On the contrary. The people will turn their eyes to our Prime Minister, the National Party and the Government, who have indicated over the past number of years that the security and prosperity of South Africa is safe in their hands.

I want to let myself be tempted into making a few remarks on the speech made by the hon. member for Stellenbosch in so far as it had a bearing on the relations between Afrikaans-and English-speaking people and their striving for national unity. Of course I cannot deal with this at length but I just want to state that it is my view and that of my party that there are three basic approaches in South Africa as far as this matter is concerned. In the first place there is the approach of the United Party, inherited from its predecessor, i.e. that the Afrikaner must merge into a new nation in South Africa, a nation which might exist even now or does not yet exist, but a nation which, as we know from our history, must have in the main an English content and character. Let me say at once that the Afrikaner is not prepared to loss his identity in a new nation and that is why this standpoint is being irrevocably rejected in South African politics. In the second place we have the standpoint of the present governing party, a standpoint based on binationalism; Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking people parallel to each other, full equality in rank and in rights, in two streams flowing unconnectedly, parallel to each other. They say that from this base of binationalism they are striving to achieve uninationalism. What a contradictio in terminis! [Interjections.] The interpretation of this standpoint in the past number of years has been more and more in the direction of the United Party standpoint, as Mr. Piet Cilliers, the Editor of Die Burger wrote in a leading article in April, 1965—

That is what is happening in that party. Instead of their achieving national unity between Afrikaans-and English-speaking people they have succeeded in dividing the Afrikaner. What there is to-day is not greater national unity, but greater national disunity, precisely because of that approach. Now one finds the situation in South Africa that a man with the record of service to the Afrikaners such as that of the hon. member for Ermelo is being rejected by that party, but a man such as Professor Horwood. with his liberalistic views and background is being welcomed into that party in the name of national unity. That is why that policy has failed, and the United Party’s policy has been rejected. That party’s policy has failed, has palpably failed in South Africa. Now there is only one standpoint left, and that is the standpoint of this party, which adopts the premise that within the white population of South Africa there is a nucleus, and that nucleus is the Afrikaner nation which was wrought by history out of this soil here; out of the smelting pot of history the Afrikaner nation was born. About it there can be a larger white national unity, but this must form the foundation and basis on which this must take place. [Interjections.] I regret that I am unable to go into this any further.

I want to return to the speech made by the hon. the Prime Minister during the Second Reading of this Bill, where he presented an idea of what happened at the information conference in Pretoria on 20th August, 1968. The hon. the Prime Minister quoted from what he said was a verbatim report of what took place there; and I said to the Prime Minister that I challenged him to play the tape recording the Prime Minister made of those proceedings, before competent witnesses, for on that occasion the hon. the Minister of Transport, who was chairman, would not permit anyone else to make tape recordings, but the Prime Minister said he was making a tape recording of those proceedings. I said to the Prime Minister that I challenged him to play it before competent witnesses because I allege here with absolute certainty that the idea he gave of what happened there is wrong and incorrect and I want to go so far as to say that it is a falsified version of what took place. [Interjections.] It was significant that the hon. the Prime Minister did not react to that. But I now want to draw his further attention to this now. [Interjection.] He need not believe my evidence, but I shall bring him other evidence. A year after that conference the Prime Minister issued that falsified version of what took place there to the Press. Subsequently a report appeared in Hoofstad and in Die Vaderland of 10th October in which the following was mentioned, and I am reading to you the first paragraph of the report in Hoofstad—

[Interjections.] Sir, here are nine sworn statements from people who were at that conference, and one of those who made a sworn statement was a minister. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased if hon. members would take into account that I only have a limited time in which to deal with this matter. They can reply to it. I am reading to you the first paragraph of the sworn statement by the minister—

Now. Sir, if the statements of those nine people who made sworn statements are false, and their statements are now being opposed to the word of the Prime Minister of this country, then I say that the Prime Minister would be neglecting his duty if he did not have those people charged with perjury. I am now saying that the Prime Minister knows that that idea he gave of what took place at the conference, is incorrect, that it is wrong, that it is a falisified version of what happened there. If this were not so he would have accepted my challenge to play that tape recording before competent witnesses and he would have tried to deny these nine sworn statements. From all this it is clear that this is simply an attempt on the part of the Prime Minister to disguise the fact that he has turned his back on his predecessor the late Dr. Verwoerd, and that he has rejected entirely his policy in regard to this question of sport. The Prime Minister was a member of the Cabinet in 1965 when ex-Minister Jan de Klerk issued a statement on 8th September of that year in which it was stated in emphatic terms: Maoris will not be accepted. The Prime Minister endorsed this. Now his Minister of Sport issues a statement which says precisely the opposite, namely that Maoris will be acceptable, and now he has to flee from his own past and have this matter covered up.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister of Transport, the leader of the party in the Transvaal said this on 25th September, and I am quoting his own words as reported in Die Transvaler of 26th September—

in other words Dr. Hertzog and I—

Mr. Speaker, I am now asking the Prime Minister: Is this the policy of that party, as interpreted by the Minister of Transport? If the hon. the Minister of Transport is not correct, why is he not being repudiated? There is only one reason why he is not being repudiated, and that is because it is the policy of that party. This has been confirmed by the Minister of Sport, who stated explicitly to The Star on 2nd September—

Not one of those statements were repudiated because that is the policy of that party. But now we get the ridiculous situation that the Prime Minister will not dare to repudiate one of those two Ministers, but he will not say either that it is in fact the policy of the party; that is the ridiculous situation.

What is your policy?

I ask my hon. friends on the opposite side—anyone of them—to mount a public platform and state that it was the policy of the Government that Maoris would not be received. If they were to do that they would be kicked out by that party. I challenge them to mount a public platform and inform the voters of South Africa that the policy of the party was as the hon. the Minister of Transport and as the hon. the Minister of Sport had stated it to be, i.e. that Maoris would in fact be received. Not one of them has the courage to mount a platform and to make that statement, because they know that the voters would then kick them out. The gist of the matter is that that party does not want to inform the voters what its policy is; they want to keep the voters guessing. That is why the Prime Minister kicked up this dust cloud in regard to what he said at the information conference, but he dare not repudiate the Minister of Transport.

I challenge the Prime Minister to tell the nation that what the Minister of Transport said is correct, that that is the policy of the Government. I challenge him, since they are now going to the country to fight an election, to say to the voters: It is the policy of the Government party, as stated by the Minister of Sport and as stated by the Minister of Transport that full-blooded Maoris—not merely people with Maori blood in their veins— will be accepted. Mr. Speaker, I am asking the Prime Minister to display the courage to go to the voters and say: This is the policy which we want you to vote for. Mr. Speaker, I want to leave it at that now, but I want to predict at this early stage that the Prime Minister will not have the courage to say that the Minister of Transport was correct. He will not have the courage to do so because he knows that if he does he would be presenting the people with evidence in unequivocal terms that he has departed from Dr. Verwoerd’s policy; that is why he will not have the courage to do so.

Mr. Speaker, I want to return to the question of monitoring. The other day in the no-confidence debate, on 5th February, after I had spoken, there was a good deal of reaction. The Minister of Defence said that monitoring had nothing to do with telephones. The hon. the Minister of Information said that if I had only consulted a dictionary I would have known that it had nothing to do with telephones. The Prime Minister said that monitoring had nothing whatsoever to do with a telephone. Then the Prime Minister went further. He said that, because he now had to furnish me with the explanation that monitoring had nothing to do with telephones, I had as a result of that, helped the enemies of South Africa. In explicit terms the Prime Minister then asked me whether I realized that he was now being compelled by me to disclose secrets. After that he addressed a warning to me that if I interfered with military secrets or if my actions were such that I was endangering the safety of South Africa, he would take steps against me. The whole case of the Prime Minister rested on the meaning of the word “monitoring” being such that it had nothing to do with telephones. My hypothesis in that debate was that the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs and the Minister of Defence were fully aware that this concerned telephone tapping. I was urged by the hon. the Minister of Information to consult a dictionary. I consulted the dictionary, and I consulted the Post Office glossary. This is the list which furnishes the hon. the Minister of Post and Telegraphs with the meaning of words.

That was probably in Dr. Hertzog’s time.

I do not know whether that hon. Minister is so ignorant as to think that it is the Minister who compiles this list of terms and that it is not the experts who do so. On page 87 of this list of terms the word “monitor” occurs, and the meaning in Afrikaans is “meeluister”. Sir, now you can go and look in an English dictionary. In the Webster International Edition of 1961 the meaning of the word “monitor” is given. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, apparently many of these hon. members do not even know what a dictionary looks like. They put me in mind of the group of soldiers who, during the war years, had nothing to do in the evenings. Their Officers then addressed them, but the men grew very tired of that. One night an Officer said to them: “To-night somebody will come and talk to you about Keats”. The men then complained terribly, and the Officer said to them: “You lot of barbarians! I do not think one of you have ever in your lives seen a Keat!” I think the same applies to those hon. members. [Interjections.] According to Webster the definition of “monitor” is as follows: “To check, as a radio or television broadcast, or a telephone conversation for military, political or criminal significance.” The hon. the Minister of Information suggested that I consult a dictionary. This is what the dictionary says. Now I say that the Cabinet, in the persons of the hon. the Minister of Information, the hon. the Minister of Defence, the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs and the hon. the Prime Minister, did not know what it meant, or else they deliberately brought this House under the wrong impression. It can only be one of those two possibilities.

Sir, if there could still be any doubt about what the meaning of this word is, in the specific context in which it was used in this debate on 6th February, I have here a photostatic copy of the search warrant issued in order to have me searched at D.F. Malan airport. Now hon. members must listen to what they had to search for.

What does the dictionary say about … [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister should really behave himself in a more seemly fashion than he is doing at present. It is certainly not necessary to show the world that he does not know how to behave himself here. This is the document they had to search for: “The original or photostatic copy or any other copy of a document dealing with the monitoring of telephone conversations and to which Mr. J. A. Marais referred on 5th February in Parliament.” This is how the South African Police identified that document. They say it is a document “which deals with the monitoring of telephone conversations.” [Interjections.] Here is clear proof now from the Post Office, from an internationally recognized dictionary and from government circles, the clearest proof that this document deals with the monitoring of telephone conversations.

You do not need a dictionary; you need some sense.

Perhaps I need some sense, but I want to inform that hon. Minister that he has far greater need of it, but he has far less hope of finding it than I have. I am now saying to the hon. the Prime Minister and each of the other Ministers that they know that this document deals with the monitoring of telephone conversations. If it happens so that one of them does not know this, then he is being led up the garden path by someone in the Government, and then it is the Prime Minister who is leading them up the garden path. The sole ground on which the hon. the Prime Minister based his accusation against me was the meaning of the word “monitor”. On that basis he said he was now being forced to disclose military secrets. On that basis he told me that I had now been helping the enemy. On that basis he addressed a warning to me. How ridiculous the Prime Minister now appears! How ridiculous can a Prime Minister become to argue on such an erroneous basis and to kick up such a fuss to the amusement of the entire world and to the embarrassment of South Africa!

Why was this deception practised? It is precisely because the Government wanted to conceal the fact that telephone tapping is taking place. That is the reason for this anxiety to give an arbitrary meaning to words in conflict with all language usage and all dictionaries. This monitoring which I referred to in what I quoted here, has nothing whatsoever to do with military matters, and to try to suggest something like that is quite laughable. [Interjections.] Because the Prime Minister argued on that basis and went to the extremes he went to, I now want to tell him something. He knows what is stated in that document. I read paragraph 10 under the heading “monitoring”. Paragraph 11 of that document explicitly separates the military aspect from the other one. Paragraph 11 which he is now forcing me to read, reads as follows—-“The army will attend to its own tactical and strategic monitoring itself.” We see therefore beyond any doubt that the first part which I read did not deal with military matters. Military matters are dealt with in the ensuing paragraph which I did not actually read out in the House because it dealt with military matters. Because the Prime Minister had no defence against what I read out and the charge I levelled at him, he conjured up this erroneous basis of argument in order to level an accusation at me. Let me now say to the Prime Minister, I shall not allow the Prime Minister or any one on that side to teach me what patriotism is. The Prime Minister knows that what I read out could not be of any advantage to any terrorist. To try to proclaim this is arrant nonsense. The Prime Minister resorted to this absurdity and that is proof that he wishes to conceal the truth in regard to this matter, i.e. that telephone tapping does take place in South Africa and is being utilized against people who are critical of the Prime Minister. I reject his entire charge. It is in fact unnecessary to do so. The whole country is laughing at his argument. [Interjections.] The Prime Minister was attempting to create confusion and wrong impressions. To lend weight to his allegations he then coupled them with warnings and assertions in regard to military secrets. I challenge him to tell us now in this House what military secrets were disclosed. If people disclose military secrets to the detriment of South Africa then I expect, and I think everyone in this House expects, that the Prime Minister will take action. But he must not make South Africa appear ridiculous in the eyes of the world with this type of argument which he used in the House to try to conceal an activity which is taking place in South Africa. I must tell him that one only acts as he acted when one no longer has any arguments against your opponents. This whole series of events we experienced, this searching of my person at the airport, as well as my house, after I had given the Police the assurance and it was an agreement between me and those two policemen that I would hand it over to them on Tuesday at quarter past two in the House of Assembly, was simply to try to give some measure of credency and gravity to the ridiculous accusations made by the Prime Minister. They paid a visit to my house at half past six that morning, although I had given them the assurance that I would give it to them on Tuesday at a quarter past two. They nevertheless searched my luggage and my own person at D.F. Malan airport Then, according to Hansard, the Minister of Police said:

Now I want to ask the Minister something. In order to issue this search warrant a charge had to be made under oath, according to the search warrant, as grounds for this search. Did the hon. the Minister of Police lay that charge under oath? That is what I deduce from what he said, i.e. “in this case on my instructions”. [Interjection.] Who laid that charge? If it was the Minister who laid that charge under oath, it just indicates to what lengths of absurdity one can be enticed because one is not prepared to accept the integrity of another person, and if one is not prepared to accept the integrity of another person, it is because you have been enticed into blunders of this kind because of lack of confidence and suspicion in your own ranks.

Now it is a fact that events can follow strange patterns. Here the Minister issued instructions to the effect that the Police should search me for a document dealing with State secrets, as the Prime Minister said. At the airport I asked them to search my travelling bag. They did not do so. They kept it from me for seven hours, from about 12.30 to 7.15 p.m. When that travelling bag was returned to me, it appeared not to have been searched. But when I opened the bag, I found a Police document with the same day’s date on it. [Laughter.] It was a nine-page police document with the stamp of the divisional commissioner, Western Province Division, 10/2/70, which I found in my bag. I do not want to say that it was terribly important, but here there was an investigation into State secret documents, and the persons who were carrying out the investigation left an important police document behind in my bag! [Laughter.] If I had brought that document into this House without an explanation of how it had come into my possession I would probably have been accused of having stolen it. This is an indication of the total incompetence of this Government …

Of the Police.

No, of the Government, of which the hon. member is a supporter. These were steps taken by the Government, from the Prime Minister down through the Minister of Police. If this kind of incident takes place as it took place step for step, from the dust cloud kicked up by the hon. the Prime Minister in order to create the wrong impression down to this search, then there is something sadly amiss with the Government. This negligence and exceeding of powers and the avoidance of all integrity is symptomatic of there being something sadly amiss with the Government.

The hon. the Minister of Water Affairs, and I am pleased that he is present now, spoke at Nylstroom on 7th February and there, according to sworn statements given to me, he said that I had stolen the document. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs whether it is true that he stated in Nylstroom on 7th February that I had stolen the document. I am in possession of sworn statements and I would be pleased if the hon. the Minister would tell me whether this is true. That hon. the Minister has a habit of holding meetings in the Bushveld and then making statements which he is too cowardly to repeat when he is in this House.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, may such a snollygoster as the hon. member …

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

I withdraw, Mr. Speaker.

I just want to say to the hon. the Minister that his conduct is representative of the total lack of any sense of responsibility. I have now challenged the hon. the Minister to say whether he said this, and he does not have the courage to do so. This is representative of the low level to which those hon. members … [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, the tirade delivered and the fuss made by the hon. member for Innesdal reminded me at once of the man who received psychiatric treatment because he suffered from a persecution mania. He thought he was a mealie grain and they treated him for that delusion. Eventually he made progress to the point where he accepted that he was not a mealie grain. He then wanted to know whether the cock and the hen would not take him to be a mealie grain.

At the outset the hon. member for Innesdal said that the National Party was no longer living up to and complying with the policy of its former leaders. In his opinion the members of his party are the only ones who are on the right course in respect of political relationships in South Africa. Ostensibly they are on the course which was followed by Dr. Malan, Mr. Strydom and Dr. Verwoerd. What has happened now? The hon. member said that they were the only people who wanted to build a nation around a nucleus of Afrikaner Nationalism. He said this would be the conservative element. I want to quote what this same member said on a previous occasion in this House on 13th April, 1961. I shall read from Hansard (Volume 107, column 4444), where the hon. member said the following—

Who was Prime Minister in South Africa at that time? Was it not Dr. Verwoerd? In the same column the hon. member went on to say—

That is what the hon. member for Innesdal said. Where doss this whole somersault in approach, as propagated by his party at the moment, come from now? But what did that hon. member’s own leader, Dr. Hertzog, say? I am referring to the Hansard of 22nd April, 1969, column 4511. That was when our present Prime Minister made a statement in this House on the race policy of the National Party, the relationships between the Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking sections. At that stage Dr. Hertzog said—

You do not understand it properly.

These are the people who want to make us believe that we are on the wrong course in South Africa. I should like to deal with a few matters to-day. I am speaking with responsibility as a person who has for many, many years served along with these people in the National Party. We served along on the Transvaal executive and management committees. The hon. member for Innesdal has for many years had the idea in his mind that a liberalist infiltration and influence is taking root in the National Party. I want to refer the hon. member for Innesdal back to the year 1965. I should like him to listen. He should show the courtesy of listening to one, because I listened to him. In 1965 we had a general provincial election. At the same time there was a by-election in the Mayfair constituency. At the time Dr. Luttig was abroad and Mr. De Jager was the candidate. I now want to ask the hon. member for Innesdal whether he can remember that he addressed a meeting on Mayfair station along with Mr. De Jager and myself.

Yes.

That night the hon. member delivered a tirade on liberalism. He told the audience how there were liberalist influences in South Africa as well. He told me that night that I should be wary. He said to me, “You hold an executive position in the Provincial Council of the Transvaal. You must be wide awake to the fact that amongst your own people in the Provincial Council, just as is the case in the National Party, liberalist influences are taking root.”

You are simply fabricating now.

That hon. member is the person who is suffering from fabrications. What I am saying here, I can Drove. He did say it. Ever since those years he has had a mania, a fear of this liberalism. Even at that stage he started gossiping about what was happening in the National Party. Who was the Prime Minister of this country at the time? It was Dr. Verwoerd. Even at that stage it was being whispered about that Dr. Verwoerd was the greatest liberalist alive.

I would not be astonished if those were the people who started those whispers. Even at that stage it was being whispered that Dr. Verwoerd was putting the National Party on a liberalist course. I am putting it on record— and I know what I am saying—that even Dr. Verwoerd was concerned about this kind of gossip-mongering and underhandedness which was going on. But are these people not behind the conservative study circle that was formed in Pretoria? Do the hon. members for Ermelo and Innesdal want to state here to-day with clear consciences that they know absolutely nothing of that conservative study circle? [Interjections.] I am asking the hon. member for Innesdal and the hon. member for Ermelo whether they can to-day say before this House and to the world that they were absolutely unaware of that?

To suggest that, is the biggest trash out.

These are the people who started with these things at that stage already, because they suggested that some counter had to be found to this liberalism which was infiltrating into our Afrikaner circles and into the National Party in particular. For what other reasons could those circles then be formed?

There is unrest throughout the country.

What unrest?

[Inaudible.]

Was there unrest in Dr. Verwoerd’s time as well?

There were certain people …

And at that time, in Dr. Verwoerd’s time, did you say that there were liberalist influences acting upon the National Party? Is it not true that in 1967 already, when this sports policy of ours was discussed in the caucus of the National Party, the hon. member for Innesdal went to Pretoria spreading gossip there by saying that this Government would allow the Maoris to come to South Africa?

“Maoeris.”

I think the hon. member has since learned how to pronounce the word. It is not “Maoerie”. At that stage already it began to leak out in Pretoria that at the caucus of the National Party there had been discussions on the Maoris who would be coming to South Africa. Was he not aware of that? Ask the hon. member for Ermelo. Leakages about what had allegedly taken place in the National Party appeared under the name of “Hennie Serfontein” every Sunday. Is it possible to-day for these hon. members to say with a clear conscience before this House and to the public outside that they were absolutely unaware that Beaumont Schoeman and Hennie Serfontein had had secret talks where certain leakages occurred of what had allegedly happened in the National Party?

That is absolute nonsense.

I am merely asking.

In that case, why do you tell us such rubbish?

I am merely asking. They will just have to test their own consciences against this. What did in fact happen, all of a sudden after the newspapers had spied on the movements of the person I mentioned? All of a sudden nothing is being heard any more of a certain Hennie Serfontein. All of a sudden that source of leakage has been stopped up and the Sunday Times is silent.

You are fabricating this.

Where does this person find himself to-day?

It was Dirk Richards who suggested this, and this week Dirk Richards was found guilty of …

Where does this person find himself to-day? To-day he is the smear-writer of the Afrikaner sheet which is not only a disgrace to the Afrikaner as such, but also to journalism in South Africa.

Of course, Dagbreek is …

When our journalism has sunk to such a level and this is the way in which our language is being abused to besmirch or slander people, one is sometimes actually ashamed of saying that one is an Afrikaner.

These hon. members claim to be upholding democracy and to be professors and champions of democracy. They said this in the first publication they issued when they were convening their congress. And what happened? When they had to constitute an executive committee, it was constituted as it was done in the days of a Stalin, a Lenin and a Marx. That executive committee was constituted by the master mind of that party. Dr. Albert Hertzog. A list of names was drawn up and announced from the dais. Everybody they could think of was appointed to the executive committee at the time. This was done to such an extent that they threw suspicion on and discredited some of our most honourable Afrikaners in this country, so that subsequently, by way of public announcements, these people had to say that they did not want to have any dealings with this party and this filth. The conduct of these people is synonymous with the conduct of these instigators amongst the students and the demonstrators overseas. Their conduct is absolutely synonymous with that of these instigators. Those people who are making a study of this incitement, will see that what they are doing here, reveals the typically nihilistic spirit of what is being done overseas. If I were to establish an alternative party in order to advocate an alternative policy in South Africa and to try to get an alternative government into power, what would I do? That hon. member for Innesdal has now risen and is about to walk out of this Chamber. That is what people do after they have denigrated others; they walk out.

I have not finished with you by a long shot.

And I have not finished with you either. This is what one can expect from people who do this type of thing. They are impolite, unashamed, rude and have no sense of decency. These are the people who want to go to the people of South Africa and say to them, “Here we stand; we are true Afrikaners.”

One is ashamed of a person who makes such a speech.

What I am saying here is the truth, and that hon. member will still hear a great deal of this truth. These people are revealing the same nihilistic spirit in South Africa to-day as do the demonstrators and instigators abroad. If one wishes to establish an alternative party and to provide an alternative government, one comes forward with a positive policy, one fights for that policy and one states those views, but one does not come forward with a campaign of denigration and abuse as we find amongst your people.

Order! The hon. member should refer to the hon. members as “hon. members”.

The hon. members, Mr. Speaker. Those of us who have made a study of the history of politics, find in the conduct of these people and in their methods a very marked parallelism with the methods applied in the course of history by men such as a Lenin and a Marx during the earlier stages of their rise to power. When they wanted to destroy a person, their method was to denigrate him first, to throw suspicion on him, to slander and malign him.

To whom are you referring, to the Prime Minister?

This is the method these hon. members are applying, too. They are on precisely the same course and they are turning to precisely the same methods as were applied by those people. They boast of their being the great Afrikaners, and they say that they as great Afrikaners are following the course set by Dr. Verwoerd. I think that if Dr. Verwoerd had to know to-day what these people are imputing to him, he would turn around in his grave. The hon. member for Ermelo will still recall that we fought a referendum here in South Africa, and that prior to the referendum we had statements of policy by Dr. Verwoerd. There was a great deal of suspicion-mongering by the United Party against a republic in South Africa. They said that such a republic would be a unilingual republic. I want to quote here from the book entitled “Dr. Verwoerd aan die Woord”. In those days Dr. Hertzog, the hon. member for Ermelo, was a supporter of his. With reference to allegations made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, Dr. Verwoerd said the following (translation)—

That is what Dr. Verwoerd said, and with this statement of policy we went to the people of South Africa and on that we held the referendum, and what followed on this? We subsequently drafted a constitution for the Republic of South Africa, and the hon. members for Ermelo and Innesdal voted in favour of that Constitution, and what does section 108 of this constitution provide? It reads as follows—

But what is happening now? These hon. members, under the leadership of the hon. member for Ermelo, are now saying to the people of South Africa: We are committing treason in respect of the word of honour of a Hendrik Verwoerd, in respect of what he gave to the people of South Africa, to both race groups, English and Afrikaans-speaking, and I, the great man from Ermelo, the founder of the Herstigte National Party, am committing treason in respect of that word of honour of a Hendrik Verwoerd and, if my party comes into power, I am going to make Afrikaans the only official language of South Africa. What right do these people have to be huckstering here with Dr. Verwoerd and to say that they are professors of the views and the philosophy held by a Dr. Verwoerd? No, these people are preaching a devilish gospel in South Africa and they are inciting the people of South Africa by these means. At these elections we shall flagellate them and we shall annihilate them so that nothing remains of them. Their boast is that they are Afrikaners and that they are following the course of the Afrikaner and that they are advocating the Afrikaner philosophy, but in all their publications, in all their magazines, and in their newspaper, I have been searching for the philosophy and the thinking of the Afrikaner. I even want to go so far as to say that in these publications I have been searching for the philosophy of a General Hertzog, of a Dr. Malan, of a Strydom, of a Verwoerd, of a Paul Kruger and of a Steyn. I challenge the hon. member for Ermelo and I challenge the hon. member for Worcester to show this to me. No, the entire outlook of these people is saturated with the most extreme radical views, which one finds in the works and the views of people such as McCarthy of America. This is what they are saturated with. These people read works of this kind from morning till night, and now I ask myself, if one reads works of this kind from morning till night, it is not inevitable that it must later on contaminate and influence one’s own ideas? And this is what one finds. I say this is what these people are engaged in, these views, and behind the smoke screen and under the cloak of Calvinism, which is dear and sacred to our people, and particularly to a large section of the Afrikaners, they are now trying to attract the people to them. I say that what they are doing is a Satanic thing. It is a devilish gospel they are preaching.

On a point of order, Sir, may an hon. member tell another hon. member that his party is doing a satanic thing?

I say that they are huckstering with Dr. Verwoerd, but Dr. Verwoerd is dear to the Afrikaner people and he is also dear to the English-speaking section of South Africa, for they grew fond of him and believed in him. I want to see who the people are who will believe these hon. members on 22nd April.

We relied on having an opportunity, after the speech made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in introducing this debate, to discuss the affairs of our country with a view to the forthcoming election. We trusted that the bread and butter issues which are of importance to the citizens of South Africa and which were raised by my hon. Leader, would set the tone in which and determine the level at which this debate would be conducted. But almost at one this level was abandoned; the questions he had raised were not answered. The hon. member for Stellenbosch started off, and he had my sympathy. He desperately tried to find some diversion. He came forward with the idea of one flag, about which there is no real disagreement among the parties, because it seems to me there is a feeling that if a representative committee or commission were to decide that we should have a new flag, everyone would agree to it. Consequently I do not understand why he tried to raise that undisputed matter in the hope of diverting attention from the real issues before the people. Furthermore, he held a lengthy dissertation in an attempt to prove that Dr. Malan did not mean it seriously when he wrote a foreword to the draft republican constitution of 1943. It was published in the Transvaler, and Dr. Malan stated explicitly that although it did not conform in every detail to the policy of the Nationalist Party, it could be taken as representing the standpoint of the party in broad outline.

Then the hon. member for Innesdal took part in the debate, and that was the end of any reasonable discussion, except that I think a heavy onus is resting on the hon. the Prime Minister. We on this side, who hold an impartial position in this matter, do not know whom to believe, because two such conflicting statements were made by the hon. member for Innesdal and the hon. the Prime Minister that they cannot both be true. I think the Prime Minister should give us a reply to only one question, which is causing me a great deal of concern, and that is: Did the hon. member for Innesdal speak the truth when he said that in this document there was a paragraph which stated that monitoring (meeluistering) by the Defence Force would be dealt with separately? To me this is the crux of the matter, because if this is the case, then the Prime Minister was at fault when he got up and divulged military secrets in this House, as he said, because the hon. member for Innesdal had allegedly busied himself with military secrets. The onus is resting on the Prime Minister, and we shall be interested to hear what the reply is. But at the moment there is something wrong. One or other of these two gentlemen is not speaking the truth.

Then I want to say that there is an onus resting on the hon. the Minister of finance as well after the speech made by my hon. Leader in connection with who pulled the trigger to set off the reaction on the Stock Exchange. No one wants to deny that the Stock Exchange stood at an inflated level on 18th June last year and that an unhealthy state of affairs was developing on account of share buying on credit. The hon. the Minister of finance owes us an explanation. He has already made two attempts at furnishing an explanation, but all he achieves whenever he speaks is that the Stock Exchange goes down. He must tell us how it came about that he made one statement on the morning of the 18th and contradicted it by another on the afternoon of the 18th. Now, seven or eight months later, he tells us that he received new information from abroad that afternoon, but what was the new information, and why are we hearing about it now for the first time? And what was the hurry? If the information reached him late that afternoon, as he stated in his speech yesterday, why did he immediately have to make a statement in the Other Place which by all indications was a considered statement? And what did the Minister of finance mean when he referred in his speech to the relaxations of 30th June, 1968?

Here I have his Senate Hansard of that day. He announced two relaxations. One concerned the blocked rand, people who had made investments in South Africa and who wanted to withdraw their money. He announced that relaxations would be made in that connection in the spirit of his statement of 31st July, 1968. Nothing ever came of those relaxations. But then in the second place the Minister said— and he separated the two announcements— that a new relaxation would be made which had nothing to do with 1968, which would allow investors to invest money in the stocks of other countries in the outside world. Nowhere was it indicated that it would be limited; it seemed as if there were going to be large-scale relaxations, and the public was misled. I think the hon. the Minister of finance must explain to us, since he triggered the shots which forced down prices on the Stock Exchange, whether the prices are low enough to his liking now. If so, having forced down the Stock Exchange with such brilliant success when it was too high, he must tell us what he is going to do now, when Stock Exchange prices are too low, to protect the investor and even the speculator—because many small men are involved in this—with equal success. The minor attempts he has made so far, have been futile: the Stock Exchange is still dropping. What is he going to do?

He was very glad—as appeared from his statement at the time and subsequently—that he had been able to save the building societies by forcing share prices down. What is he going to do to save investors in stocks, in the prosperity of South Africa, now that he has been too successful and has lost control of the situation. These are the questions which he must answer and these are the questions in which the people are interested, and not this bickering between one Nationalist and another, not the speech by the hon. member for Benoni. What a swansong to sing in this House of Assembly! What a swansong by the hon. member for Benoni, who will not be returning! Not one constructive word, not one word in the interests of the people of South Africa did we hear from him—only one attack, one accusation and one insult after another directed at four frustrated men, to use the words of the Deputy Minister of Transport, insignificant people according to the Nationalist Party. But never in our entire history has an insignificant matter received so much attention from a mighty party such as the Nationalist Party as these four insignificant gentlemen on my left have been receiving.

Sir, whether one wants to or not, one must admire them. If one considers that, according to the Nationalist Party, they are of no significance and that not one of them will be returning, then they must after all be remarkably effective in order to unleash such anger, such suspicion and such rage on the side of the Nationalist Party.

But, Mr. Speaker, this does not help the people any; it contributes nothing to the discussions in this House; it gives the people no clarity as to what the election will be about; it affords no solace to the downcast one’s among our people; it brings no solace to the old-age pensioners; it affords no solace to those who have difficulty in meeting doctors’ accounts; it affords no solace to the aged who have to make do with R35 a month, and who are still struggling under a means test and do not enjoy the privileges of having a contributory pension scheme in South Africa.

[Inaudible.]

Yes, Sir, it was £3 or R6 per month when it was introduced by the Nationalist Party. The only social security measure which originated under the Nationalist Party was the old-age pension, and they introduced it at R6 per month. They have not introduced one other social security measure. I challenge the hon. the Minister to name one other social security measure which originated in that party—not war veterans’ pensions, not maternity allowances, not children’s allowances, not disability allowances. Then he is the man who scornfully reproaches me about social security. He ought to be ashamed of himself because of his neglect of, indifference to and disregard for the interests of the man in the street.

Sir, the hon. the Minister indicated that his Budget after the election, that is to say, if he is re-elected, would exceed the R2,000 million mark by far, and I think the time has arrived for the people of South Africa to consider whether they can entrust the expenditure of R2,000 million and more to this Government, which has proved, by facts which I am going to mention now, that it is unable to attend to the daily administration of the interests of the people. Mr. Speaker, while I am addressing you now, there are railwaymen who will go home this month with R5 in their pockets. [Interjections.] Yes, as a result of mistakes which were made in connection with deductions from their salaries under the pay-as-you-earn system, and then they are told by a high-ranking official of the Railways that they can borrow money to overcome their financial embarrassment. I say it is bad administration; it is inefficiency; it is helplessness.

You do not know what you are talking about.

As far as the Railways is concerned, this can be compared to only one other thing, and that is the case where the Minister of Transport had a railway bridge built at Bethulie without ascertaining that the bridge would be inundated by water from the Orange River when the river came down in flood, with the result that he had to build a second bridge. This is the kind of administration we get from these people.

Why did you not raise the matter during the Railways debate?

The hon. the Minister, in his capacity as Minister of Transport

Order! The hon. member is dealing with the wrong Department. Railways does not fall under Transport.

He did not have the courage to raise the matter in the Railways debate, when I would have been able to reply, and now he is cock of the walk because he knows I am unable to reply.

The hon. the Minister can reply across the floor of the House.

I cannot.

The hon. the Minister sits there talking continuously, can he not just say “yes” or “no”? The hon. the Minister should after all, be enlightened. He must not try to bluff me. Sir, the Minister was recently approached by the insurance companies which had been excluded from the consortium which may undertake third party insurance in South Africa. They offered to do that work at a commission of 15 per cent.

That is not the case.

It is. Mr. Speaker, I have the memorandum and I can show it to the hon. the Minister. The hon. the Minister refused to reduce the cost of third party insurance to the people, because he is tied down by an injustice which he committed when this consortium was established. But, Sir, that is not all.

You are talking the biggest nonsense in the world.

I have seen the memorandum.

I repeat that you are talking the biggest nonsense in the world.

I challenge the Minister to say that the memorandum which was sent to him did not reach him.

If you are saying that insurance would be cheaper as a result of that, you are talking the biggest rubbish.

Mr. Speaker, I repeat that I myself saw the offer that was made to the Minister, and it is no use for the hon. the Minister to deny it. I want to mention a few more cases. In every sphere of government there is maladministration—in the provincial sphere and in the Central Government sphere. Wherever the Government party is in power, there is maladministration. I do not even want to speak of the Transvaal, where they have been struggling for 18 years to build a general hospital for Johannesburg and now, after millions of rand have been wasted, there is again disagreement as to where the hospital should be built. When they establish a central laundry for all the hospitals of the Transvaal, they lose 30,000 sheets within the first few months. When a road construction unit goes to Heidelberg to build roads, they subsequently discover that the unit is not building roads, but is building dams for the farmers of Heidelberg. But that is not all, Mr. Speaker.

That is not the case.

There is a shortage of 82,000 telephones in South Africa to-day, nearly twice as many as at the end of the war.

You are on the Hertzog road.

Sir, what must we hear from the Department of Defence? We are spending approximately R300 million on defence to-day, and that is a good thing; we support it. South Africa must have a good Defence Force. But what does one do when one reads in the evidence given before the Select Committee in 1965 that the Secretary for Defence had to admit to the Select Committee that the accounts in connection with the stores and the equipment of the Defence Force had been in a chaotic state for a very long time? What must one do, Sir, if one finds in the case of the Department of Agriculture that the Secretary for Agricultural Technical Services had to admit openly in 1968 that some officials in his Department thought that the stores they carried were their private property and were therefore inclined to keep excessive quantities of stores, which were necessary? What must one do with a Department such as the Department of Transport when one hears that the National Road Board recently, in 1965 …

There is no such thing as a National Road Board. You do not know what you are talking about.

The National Road Fund.

There is a National Transport Commission, but not a National Road Board.

It came to light in 1965 that the National Road Fund had apparently bought expensive equipment, with large capital expenditure, and then discovered that the rocks which had to be broken up could be bought much more cheaply from private contractors, and the expensive equipment was never used! This was revealed by the Controller and Auditor-General. What does one do with such an Administration? The Controller and Auditor-General’s report of 1967 mentioned the chaotic state of affairs in the planning, building and management of Bantu townships in the Bantu Trust areas, where it appeared that houses and stands were sold for R3,869,408 in 1967 and then, after all these were sold, an amount of R3¼ million was still owed to the Trust. The Controller and Auditor-General’s report mentioned that an inspection had revealed that large quantities of building material had never been used, but lay wasting away for three and a half years. Some of the equipment had been lying in the open air and had been damaged to such an extent that it had become worthless. Hundreds of houses stood unoccupied for as long as 20 months, because they had forgotten to lay on water. Certain pre-constructed houses were completely unsuitable and could not be used for occupation by people. In 11 townships there was inadequate control over rent instalments on the purchase price, service levies, power extensions and meters. In eight townships contractors were paid too much as a result of inadequate control. What does one do with a government which allows such things? That is not all, Sir. Here is a beautiful example of what the Government did in terms of the Group Areas Act. The Auditor-General pointed out in 1960 that the Group Areas Board had expropriated a property valued at R123,000. The amount of compensation was disputed, and the Board allowed legal and other costs to accumulate to an amount of R454,000. The dispute cost four times as much as the property over which the dispute arose. Can one believe it? These are the people who are asking that we should vote them R2,000 million to administer the country. Can one trust such a government with the security of the State, not only after what we have heard from the hon. member for Innesdal, but also from the Judicial Commission on the Tsafendas case? There we heard that Tsafendas was a prohibited immigrant who should not have been allowed into South Africa, that he had tried in vain to find employment. The Department of Social Welfare then sent him to the District Surgeon of Cape Town, who found within five minutes that he was a schizophrenic. Nevertheless he found employment here at this House. We also find that a deportation order had been issued against him, but that that deportation order had not been carried out by the department concerned before the unfortunate event which occurred in this House. We find one mishap after another, one proof of inefficiency and ineptitude after another. Then the Prime Minister has the audacity to tell the people that they must vote for him again, because he is going to maintain the security of South Africa. He cannot even protect his own documents so that they do not fall into the hands of others. But, Sir, that is not all. I have already mentioned the case of the Bethulie bridge. I also find that Mr. Jan Marais, the chairman of Trust Bank, said something very striking, and that is (translation)—

I find that the principal of the Rand Afrikaans University, Prof. Gerrit Fourie, said before a conference of heads of State Departments in 1969 (translation)—

It is over-government, it is over-control, it is maladministration, it is a waste of money and it is inefficiency, and then we are asked to vote for this Government again on 22nd April because it is governing the country well and guarantees the security of the country. I have never in my life heard of such audacity. I have never in my life heard of such self deception.

Why then will we be returned to power?

If the hon. members on the other side are returned to power, it will be a disaster for South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I want to draw your attention to one more matter only, i.e. that South Africa simply cannot afford a government which is so inefficient and such a failure as this one, because if there is one thing about which thinking people in South Africa agree, then it is this: If one looks deeper than the surface, the security of South Africa in the future is dependent on one important matter, and that is that we shall continue building on our prosperity and developing our prosperity further and, furthermore, that any government which follows a policy which impedes or limits that prosperity, is acting irresponsibly as regards the future peace and security of South Africa. In this connection I want to say that I noticed that the President of the U.S.A. delivered his message on the state of the country to Congress yesterday. He explained, among other things, his standpoint on Southern Africa and Africa as a whole. According to the Cape Times of this morning he said, among other things, the following, which struck me very deeply—

I want to say at once that we wholeheartedly agree with that statement made by the President of the U.S.A.

So does the National Party.

I am glad to hear that the Nationalist Party also agrees with it, because we want to ask them to throw off these ideological bonds in which they want to tie the future of South Africa, and especially to see to it that we shall have continued prosperity and will give to the people what they need and not magic formulae for a future which no one can determine. Mr. Speaker, in this connection I should like to draw your attention to the February, 1970, edition of Volkshandel, the official organ of the Handelsinstituut, which reached me to-day. In this edition Volkshandel also states that we must have continued growth. It says (translation)—

When we of the United Party say this, because it is our policy, then we are denounced for wanting to destroy job reservation and wanting to lower the standard of the white worker in South Africa. Volkshandel is not a publication which will normally support the United Party, but they are speaking with the mouth of the United Party here.

Why would Volkshandel not support you?

I said “normally”, not because it is ideologically the same as the Nationalist Party, and because it was born of Nationalist Party thinking. But in the same way as the Nationalist Party itself is being forced to admit that our standpoint on all important matters is the right one, so even Volkshandel and the Handelsinstituut are being forced to move to our side. What worries me, however, is the following paragraph in this article. In this, Volkshandel makes it clear that while the Government says that we want to undermine the standard of living of the white worker by wanting to destroy job reservation, the Government is the one which is doing so, but that it covers up and hides this and deceives the people by doing it not where it can be seen in the white industrial areas, but on the borders of the reserves. Listen to Volkshandel (translation)—

But this is not honest, Sir. What I want to ask to-day, is that at this election we must stop fighting under the slogan which the Nationalist Party indicated to us in these debates as the slogan under which they are going to fight. The slogan will be “Vote for Vorster; he hates Hertzog wholeheartedly”. This is the slogan on which we are going to fight the election. I want to suggest that we should fight this election with slogans such as “Maintain the prosperity of South Africa; maintain the security of South Africa; bring justice to South Africa; restore the good name of South Africa”. Then the debates which we have had in this Session would have been of a different nature, and we would not have had the violent language which the Minister of Transport used in reference to the little Hertzog group. We would not have had the outbursts of the Deputy Minister of Transport. I was astonished that the hon. the Minister of Defence, like the hon. the Prime Minister himself, devoted the greater part of his speech the other day to a tirade against people which he himself tells us to regard as insignificant. The interests of the people remain forgotten. I repeat, the interests of the people are left in the background. The Government is not going to the people with a policy. They are going to the people with hate for the Hertzog group.

Mr. Speaker, this speech by the hon. member for Yeoville is probably the last he will make in this Parliament before we come to the election, as there will be no further parliamentary opportunity for him. The hon. member availed himself of this opportunity to try to make an impression on the electorate outside. I have great confidence in leaving it to the electorate outside to pass judgment. After all. that is why we hold elections. We hold elections to afford the people outside an opportunity to decide, each after consulting his own conscience and taking into consideration his responsibility and both his own future and that of his children, who shall govern South Africa for the next term. This is a task and a privilege which I have no hesitation whatsoever in entrusting to the electorate of South Africa. In the same way we have had elections before. While the hon. member for Yeoville was speaking, I thought of the 1948 election, among other things. Has the hon. member for Yeoville ever pondered the question of why they lost the 1948 election? They lost it because the people instinctively felt in those years that one could not have confidence in such a government. It was because the people realized that the colour policy of that side of the House would plunge South Africa into the abyss and would lead to anarchy and chaos in South Africa. Moreover, the people of South Africa were sick and tired of the incompetence with which the United Party had governed South Africa. Nothing has happened since those years which can or will make anyone outside think that we no longer have to deal with the same incompetent United Party. There is surely not one single person outside who will not believe that the policy of the United Party is heading and will head for chaos in South Africa. If the hon. member for Yeoville asks me on what basis I am going to the electorate of South Africa, I have very great confidence in saying to him that the oasis on which I am going to the electorate of South Africa as thinking people and as people whose future is at stake and who as voters have to decide about their future and the future of their children, is a simple one. I shall tell those people that the National Party has governed South Africa for 21 years. I cannot and do not want to and shall not tell them that we have not made mistakes in those 21 years, for we are human. What I am quite prepared to say is this: What the National Party has done over the past 21 years is before the electorate. They have experienced it and they have lived under that policy for 21 years. There is no need for me or anyone else to tell the electorate what it was like. Every one of them experienced it personally. Because that is so, I have the confidence to tell the electorate on 22nd April: “Judge me by my deeds and judge me by my past. Then vote according to your conscience.” I ask hon. members to-day what can be fairer than that, namely that a party which has been in power for 21 years, with what has happened and which stands before the electorate of South Africa, can still have the confidence to say: “Judge me by my deeds and judge me by my past.” But what about the United Party? In the few weeks we have been sitting in this House I listened to the speeches made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Yeoville and the other leaders of that party, but I never heard an appeal being made by them, not even to-day by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, to judge the United Party on its policy. I never heard the United Party presenting its policy and saying: “This is what I stand for.” What we did get from hon. members on the other side was one negative statement after another. We heard no positive statements from that side of the House. I shall come to that in a moment. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition dare not go to the people of South Africa and say: “Judge me by my deeds; judge me on my policy.” no, he dare not go to the people of South Africa and say: “Judge me by my past.” No, if one speaks of the Opposition’s past, they adopt the attitude of the young man who appeared in court on a charge of murdering his father and mother and then pleaded for mercy because he had become an orphan. [Interjections.] I just want to say to the hon. member for Yeoville that I listened to him in silence. I now expect at least the same courtesy of him in this late stage of the debate.

But then you should not tell such jokes.

Order!

If the hon. member asks me on what basis I am going to the electorate and on what I set my hopes that after 22nd April the National Party will return as the governing party, I say to him that I set my hopes on the fact that I may confidently place my party’s past and my party’s policy before the electorate. But let us now see what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his party are setting their hopes on. They do not set their hopes on attracting people on the basis of their policy; they do not set their hopes on winning seats because they will persuade Nationalists to vote for them. Hon. members on that side of the House do not set their hopes on these things. Likewise their apologists outside and their newspaper correspondents and those who make propaganda for them outside do not set their hopes on these things. The hon. the Leader, as he is sitting there, knows that it is the position that he is setting his hopes only on this, that in certain seats his allies will draw enough votes away from us to enable him to come into power. This is the naked truth of the political situation in South Africa to-day. It is no secret. Let us look at this report which appeared in the Sunday Express, under the headline “H.N.P. says U.P. will beat Torlage”, as recently as 8th February. Let us read on what grounds they say this—

Hear! Hear!

Now hear this—

Hear! Hear!

Order!

The hon. members who are so vociferous now, do not realize the implication of the report which they are acclaiming so loudly. What is the implication of this report? Its implication is that even the malcontents which there allegedly are, those who are allegedly annoyed at the National Party, hold the United Party in such contempt that they will not even vote for it. Senator Henderson is not going to win the seat because those Nationalists are going to vote for him. No, he is going to win the seat only because those malcontents are supposedly going to vote for the Hertzog candidate. As a result, Senator Henderson has a chance. But on its own merits and under its own steam the United Party has no chance. [Interjections.] They are even acclaiming this.

While we are speaking of the past, I want to point out how the hon. member for Yeoville made a big fuss here about the poor aged people and expressed his concern about them. He is terribly concerned about them. The hon. member for Yeoville even said that in 1928 £3 or R6 was for the first time paid by way of old age pension by a National Party Government. Then the war came, and we all know how the cost of living increased as a result of the war and its aftermath. According to the hon. member for Yeoville we must now return to that land of the United Party in which milk and honey flowed. And yet, what were they prepared to do for the aged? They increased the pension from R6 to R10. The pension was increased by two-thirds. That is all. Over a period of 20 years the pension was increased by two-thirds, in spite of the fact that the cost of living had risen by leaps and bounds during the war years. What has this Government done in 20 years? It has more than trebled the amount paid by the United Party. However, time does not permit to enter into these arguments any further.

In passing I just want to deal with the assertion made by the member for Innesdal, before I return to the Leader of the Opposition. This assertion deals with the report in connection with monitoring. What is the charge that was levelled by the Leader of the Herstigte Nasionale Party, the hon. member for Innesdal and their other leaders? Their charge at public meetings and elsewhere was that it was the Bureau for State Security that was tapping their telephones.

Don’t talk nonsense.

This is the chaise that they proclaimed from one platform to another.

Read my Hansard.

I am not speaking of what was said in Hansard. I am speaking of the charges levelled by them outside.

[Inaudible.]

I am taking no notice of the hon. member’s interjections. I cannot hear them, and common courtesy requires of him to listen when I am furnishing him with a reply. The charge levelled outside was that it is the Bureau which is tapping their telephone conversations. He himself quoted from this document. His interpretation of monitoring (meeluistering) is that it is not a function of the Bureau at all. He says it is by no means a function of the Bureau. It appears that the hon. member does not believe this now.

I gave my exposition on the basis of the document which I read out here.

What did the hon. member read out? I am quoting from the document (translation)—

If it is the Bureau that is listening in, surely it will not be stated here that it must make it available to itself?

Read my Hansard.

I am just pointing out to the hon. member how they have changed their standpoint. The following paragraph also appears in this document which the hon. member had in his possession (translation)—

In other words, this is an agreement only between the Military on the one hand and the Bureau on the other hand in respect of the demarcation of functions. The Military has nothing to do with the Police. It was not necessary to make a demarcation. It was a question of amalgamating certain organizations of the Military with the Bureau. Those are the functions which had to be demarcated. Since the South African Police is not a party to this agreement and since it deals only with the demarcation of functions between the Bureau and the Department of Defence and apart from the meaning which is attached to a word in military circles, as the hon. the Minister of Defence pointed out to us, it follows, surely, that the word “meeluister” has the meaning that I attached to it and not the meaning that the hon. member attached to it. That is why it stands in this document. The hon. member had this document in his possession and he knows that the only two parties concerned in this document are the Defence Force on the one hand and the Bureau on the other.

What about the Security Police?

The Security Police are not concerned in this document at all, by reason of what is provided by section 9. The hon. member had it in his possession long enough to know that. I want to go further by saying that the person who gave him this document, and I hope the hon. member is taking note of my choice of words, also knew that. I suspect that this person told it to him.

What?

What I have now said here. By way of summary I just want to say that the Police are not concerned in this matter at all. What is more, the charge has never been that the Police are tapping their telephones. The charge was that the Bureau, in collaboration with the Post Office, was tapping their telephones.

You can read my statement of this week-end.

I just want to tell the hon. member that I am not at all interested in his stories to ingratiate himself with George Oliver.

You are not interested in the facts.

I have now given the House the facts in connection with the allegations that have been made, and I hasten to come to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

What about the hon. member’s assertion that this document contains a clause to the effect that the Military should do their monitoring separately?

That is what this whole matter is about.

Read that.

The whole matter is that the Military will do it and will stand on its own feet and that the Bureau will have nothing to do with it.

[Inaudible.]

I have finished dealing with monitoring now, and I turn to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. I told him that he could not make an appeal to the voters on the basis of his policy, nor on the basis of his past. In the past few weeks for which we have been sitting here, it has become apparent that the hon. the Leader, and especially his lieutenant, the hon. member for Yeoville, believe that they can make an impression on the electorate by sheer opportunism. “You want it. we have it, the money or the box.” This is the type of cry with which they want to go the electorate of South Africa. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition made accusations against me here, but let us now submit our party on the one hand and his party on the other hand to the test which he put to me. Who has failed that test? There were the standpoints adopted by parties at the time of the referendum. At no other time have the political parties had the opportunity in South Africa of postulating the highest interests of South Africa to each other as it was done at that time. Even in that difficult year this side of the House preferred to stand by South Africa. That side of the House was prepared to subordinate the interests of South Africa to the interests of the British Commonwealth.

Hear! Hear!

Nonsense!

That is recorded in the history books of South Africa. It is recorded in the documents of this House, and it is to be found in the files of newspapers outside.

But let us submit ourselves to another test now. If there ever was a time—and hon. members know this as well as I do—when South Africa was faced with the most serious internal threat with which it has ever been faced, then it was in the years 1960 to 1964. Those were the years in which South Africa was faced with the most serious internal threat with which it has ever been faced. Those were the years when, if we had not stopped it in time, sabotage could have brought us to our knees in South Africa. I recall that, as the Minister responsible, I had to sit in this House for one night session after another to listen to accusations from the other side in connection with that and to plead and to beg to be granted the necessary machinery in order to combat that threat.

I go further and come to the problems of to-day. I come to the main problem of today. What is of the greatest importance, not only to South Africa in the present world circumstances, but to every country in the world, when you open the newspaper or read reports or listen to the radio? I am not now speaking of safety and security, which have and from the nature of the case must have high priority on the list of every country; and while referring to this, I am confident in saying that when it comes to safety and security, this Government has a proud past which it can lay before the electorate of South Africa. Then my colleagues the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Police and other departments which are concerned with these matters can stand before the electorate of South Africa with pride. Safety and security receive the highest priority in any country in the world and must from the nature of the case receive it, but as the world has developed today, what is of importance to nations and peoples and to the ordinary man in the street? It is that in his country he should be able to associate free of tension with the other inhabitants of that country. If we look at the world to-day, we realize, particularly in a country such as South Africa, where one probably has more explosive material than there is in any other comparable country in the world, that it is of cardinal importance that language relationships, human relationships and race relationships should not be disturbed. We have seen what can come of that in a country such as Italy, for example, and we have seen what can come of that in a country such as Northern Ireland. We have seen in so many countries of the world how disturbed relationships between one human being and another, even people who speak the same language, and sometimes even people who have the same religious convictions, can lead to chaos, can lead to the fall of governments, and can lead to instability. We in this country, with our language relationships and with our race relationships, have more to guard against than any comparable country in the world. I feel so strongly about this matter that I wish to say that I regard it as a crime for any person deliberately to disturb language and race relationships. If the hon. the Leader of the Opposition takes it amiss of me that I strongly reprimanded the Leader of the Hertzog party and his people, then I say to him that I reprimanded them because no one can do more harm to language and race relationships than those very hon. members. That is why I adopted my standpoint openly and repudiated them, not only in this House, but before the people of South Africa and the electorate of the country. I ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition: Can we afford to have another language struggle in this country? I say we cannot afford it, and I say that he who wants to lead us in that direction, commits a crime against South Africa. But in his opportunism the hon. the Leader of the Opposition did not utter one single word about that danger. He is so afraid of offending these people who must potentially win seats for him that he did not utter one single word of censure or disapproval.

He did so this very day.

Let me tell the hon. member for Yeoville that if he did so, he did it so half-heartedly that not even his own party noticed it. No, on the contrary, what did the hon. member do? The hon. member not only began his speech by reproaching me for having reprimanded these gentlemen, but devoted by far the greater part of his time to it. The hon. member for Yeoville has reproached me time and again for our joining issue with those gentlemen. But, Sir, I say that not only do we not dare disturb language relationships, but we also do not dare disturb race relationships in this country; and in respect of these race relationships the electorate outside expects each of us to adopt a definite standpoint. The world outside knows that the policy, the standpoint, of this party is the standpoint of separation, that it has set its feet on the road of separation, and that it will continue on the road of separation. As far as the Progressive Party is concerned, the world knows that they have set their feet on the road of integration. But what does the world know of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition’s party, apart from what the hon. member for Hillbrow, Dr. Jacobs, said the other day? He was speaking about this very aspect, and he is the man who makes the statements on behalf of that side of the House. And what does this maker of statements of the United Party say? He was speaking about this very matter and he said it was a mistake to believe that there were only two roads, namely the National Party’s road of separation and the Progressive Party’s road of integration; he said there was the third road of the United Party, and what is that? The hon. member for Hillbrow says it is a little bit of separation and a little bit of integration. [Interjections.] The hon. member said very clearly that for 300 years we had had neither separation nor integration, but a bit of both.

Yes, like under the Nationalist Party.

Now the hon. member says, because he has no other reply to me, that this is what we now have under the National Party. But then he comes forward and moves a motion of no confidence in us. He tells the electorate that what he stands for is what the National Party is doing now, and then the electorate comes long and says to him, “But then you are being silly.” The hon. the Leader of the Opposition will recall that I told him years ago that he was silly, and surely this proves that to be the case. [Time expired.]

Sir, there is very little time left for his debate and I want to say just one or two things in pursuance of the hon. the Prime Minister’s speech. The hon. the Prime Minister said at the end of his speech that the Progressive Party had placed its feet in the direction of integration. I want to tell the hon. the Prime Minister that the Progressive Party has placed its feet in the direction of the reality of South Africa, the multiracial reality that has always been South Africa and always will be South Africa, despite any of the laws that his government has passed over the last 21 years. We recognize this to be a country of 20 million people, made up of different races. All of us have to live out our destiny in this country, and when we talk of national unity we do not, like the official Opposition and like the government, talk of national unity as being unity between English-speaking White South Africans and Afrikaaans-speaking White South Africans. We talk of national unity not as a ganging up of the White races against the non-White races in South Africa; we talk of the national unity of 20 million people in this country, all of them owing loyalty to this country by virtue of the fact that they love South Africa. The hon. the Prime Minister went off on one of his favourite tacks this afternoon. He boasted about the peace and quiet and law and order in South Africa …

Which you enjoy.

Of course I enjoy it, Sir, but I would enjoy it more if I did not know, as the Prime Minister ought to know, that no country, which has one of the highest crime rates in the world, which has an ever-growing rate of violence, robbery, assault and murder, can claim to be a country enjoying law and order and quiet.

What about the United States?

The hon. the Prime Minister must not deceive himself into believing that because there is racial quiet in the country at present this means that the non-Whites of South Africa have accepted his policy. He has for years deceived himself into believing that submissiveness is the same as positive acceptance, and I can assure him that this is not so. Among the African people in South Africa there is insecurity, there is dismay, there is poverty and there is despair, in a country where more than half the people are living below the poverty datum line in the cities and probably as much as 70 per cent in the rural areas, in a country where there is growing malnutrition, where there is poverty and starvation in some areas, it is utterly self-deceptive to believe that the non-Whites, the African people in particular, are accepting the policies of the government with anything but dismay.

Do you prefer Russia?

The hon. the Prime Minister is utterly out of touch with 80 per cent of the population of this country if he believes that the Indian and Coloured people are enjoying the Group Areas Act and its consequences. Sir, the other day I asked a question in this House and the answer to it revealed that of the people affected by group areas 1½ per cent were Whites; the rest were non-White people—Coloured people and Indian people. Does he honestly think that they enjoy the insecurity of the Group Areas Act, the loss of their businesses and their residences, the break-up of their communities, ironically under the Department of Community Development? If he believes this, Sir, then the hon. the Prime Minister is deceiving himself. In the few minutes at my disposal I want to say that I believe that both the major parties in this country are in for a shock on the 22nd April. I believe that they have completely ignored the idealism of the almost half a million young voters in this country who are on the voters’ roll to-day.

Young Progs.

I am talking about the half a million young people between the ages of 18 to 25 who are on the voters’ roll to-day. Those young people are, thank Heaven, no different from the young people in the rest of the world who are sick and tired of the false values presented to them by their elders, sick and tired of the materialism presented to them by their elders and in this country sick and tired of the racialism which we always hear from the official Opposition, from the government, and, of course, from the small way-out group on my right. All they hear about is “Maoris”. Who cares about the Maoris, for Heaven’s sake? There are other more important things for our young people to care about. What they require is an idealism, and they know that they are being misled by the politicians of this country. As you know, Sir, politicians can lead and they can mislead, and in this country the young people of both lanuage groups are beginning to realize that they have been misled; that self-preservation is a law of the jungle, that it is not a civilized law, and the young people of this country are going to shock their elders and they are not going to vote for racialism. They are not going to vote for the racialism offered to them unashamedly by the government on the one hand and the racialism partly covered but by no means disguised in its nudity, of the official Opposition. This country is in for a shock, Sir. The young people have woken up to this and they are not going to stand for it any longer. They want the ideals of a civilized world. They do not want the ideals offered to them which, as I say, are approximate to those of the jungle. Sir, I am very glad of this indeed, because those young people are the people who are going to live in South Africa, the South Africa that is being created by the politicians of to-day.

Sir, many of us will be dead and gone in 20 or 30 years’ time. What we have sown the young people are going to have to reap, and the young people of to-day are realizing more and more that what is being sown by the politicians of both major parties in this country—I am not even thinking of the extreme lunatic fringe which now exists in politics in South Africa—they will have to reap. They are realizing that the path on which the Prime Minister is leading them and the alternative path offered by the official Opposition offer no safe future for South Africa. The only security that South African can hope to enjoy in the long term is the security of a contented population and not a contented population consisting of 3½ million privileged White people, but a contented population consisting of 20 million people made up of all the races of the multi-racial country that South Africa is.

To-day at the end of this major financial debate the hon. the Leader of the Opposition once again had a chance to make the speech of the year, the speech which was to urge the people of South Africa on to vote for his own party on 22nd April. I think you will agree with me, Mr. Speaker, when I say that if the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his people thought that the speech he made here to-day would serve as a clarion call to the people to vote for the United Party, if he thought that the speeches he and his deputy made here were in any way inspiring, if he thought that the speech which he made here to-day would in any way succeed in strengthening his party in the coming election, then it is time he thought again, because with that speech he proved that he was completely out of touch with the feelings prevailing among the general rank and file of the people. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, in the same way as his deputy, the hon. member for Yeoville, and in exactly the same way as all his members did in the second-reading debate, came forward here with mere accusations, with mere negative allegations, with a few isolated things that had gone wrong here and there in the State machine. In this great opportunity the hon. the Leader of the Opposition had to give the people outside a message which would rouse them and inspire them: he failed completely. The hon. member for Yeoville once again gave us one of his characteristic tirades. That hon. member has appeared a few times now in my constituency. Every time that hon. member appears in my constituency, more people turn up the next day at my electoral Office. I would appreciate it very much if the hon. member would appear again in my constituency during this election period.

Are you worried?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition made the assertion that the Herstigte National Party was born out of this National Party. At the same time he stated that the National Party was moving closer to the United Party. Sir, how out of touch with reality that hon. gentleman is! Let us just glance for a moment at the history of politics in South Africa. Let us, in regard to one aspect, go rather far back into the past. It is, for example, often said that when the National Party began with industrialization of South Africa, with the first Iscor and the reinforcement of the Board of Trade and Industries … The hon. the Leader of the Opposition need not smile about that. The fact of the matter is that that party opposed the industrialization of South Africa. It was the National Party which made a start with it. Now they are, in imitation of the policy of the National Party, the great advocates of the industrialization of our country.

They are the people who talk about apartheid. In certain cities and even here in Parliament they attack us on the policy of apartheid, but when they reach their homes at night they are grateful for the benefits apartheid brings them. They will exercise criticism of what they regard as the disadvantages of apartheid, but they will make full use of the benefits apartheid brings them. They say that we are moving closer to them. Let us glance at a few matters in the political field. Take, for example, the question of placing the Coloureds on a separate voters’ roll. What is the standpoint of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to placing the Coloureds on a separate voters’ roll? When we in this Parliament wanted to remove the Coloureds from the general voters’ roll and place them on a separate voters’ roll, they fought us day and night in this House. They had to fight court cases in regard to this. Where do they stand now? We have moved further away, and they have reached the point the National Party reached years ago, for they have now taken over National Party policy.

Sir, let us go back to the question of the sovereignty of our Parliament. Those hon. members spoke about the sovereignty of gold, etc., but when the question of the sovereignty of our Parliament was discussed, they opposed us in this House. Will they oppose it again to-day. or do they to-day advocate the idea of sovereignty of our Parliament? [Interjections.] Sir, one of the most important things for which we fought in the past was a distinctive South African citizenship. We held night sittings here. We had demonstrations outside, and we fought in this House because those hon. members of the United Party did not want South African citizenship. They wanted to remain “British subjects”. Will they still do so to-day? No, Sir, I think that to-day it is they who have moved away. They have now accepted the standpoint of the National Party.

Sir, take for example the appeal to the Privy Council. Where do they stand to-day if it is not on the standpoint of this side of the House? Take for example the question of the Republic. How did they not fight us here in regard to the Republic. They adopted an anti republican standpoint. Would the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, who claims that we have taken over their policy, now tell me where they stand to-day? Are they still opposed to the Republic, or have they also become republicans? They have accepted our standpoint.

Sir, take for example the question of the Commonwealth. They gave themselves out to be the Commonwealth Party, but now that the Commonwealth has fallen into disfavour, they will no longer advocate membership of the Commonwealth either. Now they endorse the standpoint of the National Party in respect of the Commonwealth. In all the major political questions in regard to which we have fought over the years, they have accepted our standpoint and taken over the policy of the National Party. Then there is the question of national unity.

You almost cried when you were out of the Commonwealth. [Interjections.]

The hon. the Leader wants to return. Then there is the question of national unity. They are now talking about national unity. What was their actual standpoint in that regard? They are telling us that those hon. members of the Herstigte National Party are the offspring of this party.

Of course!

That is not so. They are a delayed reaction to the policy of the United Party, which in its earlier days was un-Afrikaans, and anti-Afrikaans. The hon. member sits there shaking his head.

No, I am just yawning.

Yes, I understand. The hon. member must not yawn like that; he might perhaps fall asleep. Sir, was there not a time when an Afrikaans-speaking person would not dare to walk into certain Offices in Johannesburg carrying a copy of Die Transvaler? I have had personal experience of that I went to play jukskei, after a person had put through a telephone call to me to ask me to join him in a game that afternoon. The afternoon we went to play the detectives’ van was standing there, for they had listened in to that conversation and they then came to watch us playing jukskei. That is the sort of thing we had to cope with as a result of espionage. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, they are laughing, but they know that that party is a reaction to their threat of ploughing under Afrikanerdom. They advocated a unity which was to have been based on a British empire.

In other words, we split your party for you?

Thank goodness that we evolved as a reaction to you, and that the National Party originated in order to effect true national unity on the principle of equal rights for both culture groups, and not on the principle of the submersion of one group by the other. That party no longer has a right to exist, as the Prime Minister also said. The only reason it is still able to exist is because it has incorporated in it part of the politics of the National Party. If it were to lose that part of the politics of the National Party which it had incorporated in itself, and were then to go to the voters with only its old policy of 20 years ago, it would return to this Parliament with fewer than half of the members it now has. The only reason why it still has this representation in Parliament is because it has accepted the mantle, genuinely or falsely, of the National Party. That is what they are always going to the people outside with.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition challenged me in regard to the question of the Stock Exchange. Sir, if there ever was a party so bankrupt of policy that it had to grab at every straw to see whether it could not in that way win a vote, then it is that party. In a previous debate I enumerated the reasons for the Stock Exchange being in this condition. Yesterday in my reply I pointed out that hon. members on the opposite side had been unable, throughout the entire debate, to enumerate a single item of criticism of my argument. Today the hon. the Leader had the opportunity of indicating where my argument in regard to the situation of the Stock Exchange was wrong. After all, he has had the opportunity during the last few days to think about it, but the hon. the Leader kept his mouth closed. He did not utter a single word in which he proved that my arguments, as based on the report, was wrong. In other words, he is not able to dispute that argument. Now he merely came along here with an accusation about a statement here and a statement there. This is a childish argument the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is putting forward. It is a shot in the dark to win votes, and he will not succeed in winning those votes. The hon. member for Yeoville asked why I had not stated a long time ago that that was the reason for my having made that statement in the Senate. I said this yesterday. Was the hon. member not listening, or does it not suit his purpose to listen?

You said it yesterday, but what about the month before yesterday?

I said it in the Senate. I said it the same night in that House. I said it the next day to the hon. member for Constantia as well. It was my duty, and I said it the very same day in this House. What reply does the hon. member have to that now? I am telling the hon. member now that it is not in Hansard. It is not my fault.

But Hansard does not make mistakes like that.

If the hon. member does not want to accept my word we have no basis for an argument. The hon. member can go and play back the tape on which my speech is recorded, but I am now giving him my word.

Then I must accept it.

I would not give the hon. member my word if I did not really mean it. Before I made the statement I stated in the Senate my reason for doing this in the Senate and not in this House. Possibly the Hansard writers thought that this did not form part of my speech and it was therefore not necessary for them to take it down.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question? If the hon. the Minister noted that it had been left out, why did he not, during those eight months, rectify the error?

Where would I have rectified it? The hon. member knows how busy we were on the last day of the session. It was simply impossible to do something like that. But I did subsequently tell the hon. member for Constantia about this. Even if it were true that I had not stated in the Senate why I was making that statement in the Senate and not in this House, what difference would it then have made to the situation? Would the hon. member tell me what difference it would have made? It seems to me he does not know. He is turning away now because he knows he cannot furnish a reply to that.

The point is that you did not mention that you had received new information from abroad.

I did mention it and the hon. member has just told me now that he accepts my word. I said it in Parliament.

But what difference does it make?

I said in the Senate that I had received the information late that afternoon, and the hon. member said that he would accept my word on that. The hon. member therefore has nothing with which to argue about this matter.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has not had a single word to say against my argument the day before yesterday, nor has he any proof. He accused me of having caused the slump on the share market; he said: “You triggered it off”. Yesterday I quoted one statement after another by persons who know much more about the share market than my friend there. He knew nothing about that. The people have more faith in what the President of the Stock Exchange and other businessmen have to say than they have in what that hon. member is saying for political reasons. Now the hon. member is saying that I was very eager to cause the Stock Exchange to reach rock bottom. I did not cause the Stock Exchange to reach rock bottom, nor was I eager to have it fall. That is not true. The hon. member also asked me what I would do to cause the Stock Exchange to rise again. He asked me what my feelings in regard to the situation on the Stock Exchange were? I am not a broker, but I can inform the hon. member that there are shares on the Stock Exchange which are to-day still overvalued on their yields and dividends. But there are also a large number of shares on the market to-day which are excellent investments. I said that the time had come when large companies were beginning to think of purchasing shares again and that there was now an opportunity for investors who wanted to invest money on the market to make good selective purchases. I cannot say more than that. I could perhaps say that the curve denoting the country’s growth and the curve of the share prices have now crossed so that the curve of share prices is below that of our economic growth. If I look at the economic growth of the country then I think it is time good shares will now begin to attract buyers again. That is all I can tell the hon. member in this regard.

That hon. member wants to know what shares he can now purchase.

I shall not tell the hon. member what shares he must purchase. I can tell him however, that if I were to hazard my money on a share, I would never hazard it on the shares of the United Party.

The hon. member once again discussed the sales duty. I do not have the time to go into these matters, for already my time is almost up. The hon. member forgets that they are the people who year after year pleaded for a decrease in the income tax for the middle and higher income groups. Are they aware of having pleaded for that? Do they know that that decrease costs approximately R140 million per annum? Now that this request has been acceded to and a decrease for the middle and higher group has been introduced, they are hiding away. This year the decrease will cost approximately R130 million. I almost want to say it is disgusting that they should have asked for those concessions and are now hiding away, now that we have to pay for what they requested. Now they are making accusations against us. There is only one way of paying for this and that was to introduce indirect taxation. These indirect taxes we introduced are much lower than those which have been introduced in most countries of the world.

But they were too high. You had to decrease them.

Order! The hon. member for Yeoville has been given a chance to make his speech. He must give the hon. the Minister a chance to make his reply.

Mr. Speaker, can one believe such a party? Last year when I introduced this new tax I said that we could not estimate in advance precisely what it was going to yield. Neither could they. They said that it was going to yield between R200 million and R300 million, but now sales tax is only yielding a little more than R100 million. During that debate I said that we would keep an eye on the position and that if we found that a decrease in sales duty was necessary, we would effect that decrease. Those hon. members voted for that, and now that I want to make provision for a decrease, this is being taken amiss of me as well. Those hon. members want their bread buttered on both sides. With that one cannot go into politics. If I increase the taxes, I am attacked, and if I reduce the taxes, I am also attacked. This indicates the sheer opportunism on the part of that party.

The hon. member also spoke about prosperity. He stated, quite correctly, that prosperity is the basis on which all politics in this country, its safety, its peace and its future is based. That is absolutely correct, but do those hon. members have any recipe for prosperity? That side has a great deal to say, but do they have any recipe for prosperity? The only recipe with which they have ever come forward is that we should absorb more non-Whites into the economy of the country. That is their recipe for prosperity. The hon. member for Hillbrow is actually straining forward in his seat, so sure is he that this is the only policy for prosperity. This is the only policy for prosperity they have ever suggested, i.e. that we should make greater use of non-Whites in the economy of the country. We shall go to the electorate with that policy of theirs, for that is the only policy for prosperity with which they have ever come forward. We do not merely have a policy, we have the reality. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition is looking very pleased about this. I hope he has also shared in the prosperity built by the National Party Government. I do not really take it amiss of him. We built prosperity. Although the hon. member for Yeoville complains so affectedly about the poor man, for whom we also feel sorry, we not only brought him an increase in pensions, which is far more than they did, but we also brought him work. We brought him real growth so that every individual in South Africa virtually doubled his actual welfare during the period we were in power. During the past year alone we had a real growth of approximately 4½ per cent per member of the population. Where can one equal this in other parts of the world. South Africa has really been experiencing prosperity, and because we had this prosperity, there is no question of devaluation. The hon. member who spoke about devaluation of the rand does not know what he is talking about. We did not devalue in 1967 when Britain devalued. To-day we have even less reason to do so. To-day we are far stronger. The rand is one of the strongest currencies one can find. Our economy is one of the sturdiest and soundest in the entire world. Perhaps we to-day find ourselves temporarily in a difficult position in respect of our balance of payments. It is temporary. America finds itself in even greater difficulties in respect of its balance of payments. We have no unemployment in this country. We have grown tremendously. South Africa is enjoying prosperity as it has seldom done before under this régime. I shall read again what was written in The Argus of the evening before last. It was written by the Financial Editor. He is certainly not a Nationalist. I do not know who he is, but this is not a Nationalist newspaper. He writes—

This is the situation under the guidance of this party. That is why devaluation under this Government, as we had to devalue in 1949 after we had taken over the estate of the United Party, is out of the question. The people know this, but they can have confidence in the actions of this Government, because the Government proved this in the past by deeds and not by words only. Because people do not have that confidence in the promises of those hon. friends, but in fact in the policy and the deeds of the National Party Government, we will return to this House in far greater numbers after 22nd April.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

It is a great honour to me to move the Second Reading of this private Bill which is before the House at the moment. In 1913 the Apostolic Faith Mission was registered as an unlimited company under the company laws of the Union of South Africa at the time. Subsequent to that the Mission was incorporated as the church by The Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (Private) Act, 1961. But, unfortunately, the Act was not applied to South West Africa. The Registrar of South West Africa is of the opinion that it is necessary to effect the present amendments before the House in order to straighten out the matter completely. The amendments provide that property which was previously registered in the name of a company, shall now be registered in the name of the Apostolic Faith Mission, and that The Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (Private) Act, 1961, shall also apply in respect of South West Africa as well as the Eastern Caprivi Zipfel.

Mr. Speaker, we on this side were approached by the denomination in question before the introduction of this Bill. Our caucus agreed to support this measure. Therefore, I just want to say that we are willing to dispose immediately of all the stages of the Bill.

Bill read a Second Time.

Committee Stage taken without debate.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Chairman, during the last discussion of this clause by the Committee, the hon. member for Musgrave dramatically tried to make a major issue of the hon. the Deputy Minister’s having allegedly misled this House by what he had said in his second-reading speech and by what was published in the accompanying memorandum. The hon. member tried to suggest this in a dramatic way, but the trouble is that the hon. member did not read the relevant clause properly. If he had in fact done so, he would have seen that the changed wording made no difference to the principle. Indeed, he himself said in his speech that it was not incumbent upon anybody to pay compensation for something which had no value. This has always been the position. This wording is merely better. But the hon. member is concerned about the words “if any”. The explanatory memorandum also indicates clearly that it makes provision for the case which the hon. the Deputy Minister mentioned, namely that there ought not to be any obligation to pay for compensation for a lot of old rusty sheets of corrugated iron and a few pieces of sacking. It actually refers to the provision contained in the: next clause, in which a further addition to section 3 is created. This is what those words actually refer to.

The hon. member also tried to make a great fuss about the fact that the public inquiry was being abolished and that that public inquiry actually gave the Bantu a “real right” in these circumstances. There is no such thing. It is not a real right. If my interpretation of “real right” is correct, then it is a “corporeal right”. These people have never had any real right in this matter. A real right is, after all, something like a proprietary right which one can defend against third parties. This is not a real right which has ever existed. All that is being amended in this clause, is the provision in respect of an inquiry which could be held namely the deletion of the words “after a local inquiry held in public by an Officer appointed by the Minister for that purpose”. This is no real right. It is no use trying to make a fuss of real rights in this House when this has nothing to do with real rights. The hon. member also said that a public enquiry had to be held so that it would comply with the dictum “justice must also be seen to be done”. What is the use of that public enquiry? What has experience shown us as regards that public inquiry? The hon. member knows very well that the experience of the hon. the Minister of Transport and the Department as regards those public inquiries in the past has been that, when they are held, no one turns up. This has been the Department’s experience in this connection. The hon. member for Houghton also referred to it and said that people should at least have the right to appear at such public inquiries. But what happened to the persons who in fact appeared there? The persons who did appear there, did not appear with bona fide intentions. I am now referring to the vast majority of the persons who appeared at these inquiries. They do not come with bona fide intentions. They come on their own or are represented, and then their intention in appearing before that public inquiry is to employ delaying tactics, or they do so with other ulterior motives, with the result that the vast majority suffered because of the conduct of a small minority at these inquiries. That is what the problem was, and it is a very real problem. Therefore there is no real reason why this matter should be persevered with, if this is the problem which is created.

There is another aspect which I also want to mention in connection with these public inquiries. As I have already said, these persons had no real rights. As is stated in the explanatory memorandum and as the hon. the Deputy Minister said, no rights were taken away from these persons. They still have access to the Minister and the Minister still has access to the local government. The hon. member asked where it was stipulated in the Act that these persons would still have the right to make representations to the Minister. Surely, it is not necessary that every Act should stipulate that persons have the right to make representations to the Minister, or that they do not have that right. If it is the intention to exclude this right, it will be mentioned in the Act. If one wants to exclude a person’s right of appeal or access to someone in a higher position in a department, it will be mentioned in the Bill. However, as the clause reads, there is, with due respect, absolutely nothing which indicates that these people do not have the right to take their representations to the Minister. If we accept that these people had no real rights and that none of their rights are being taken away, and if we accept further that this section in the Act as applied in practice, relates to Bantu villages, locations and Bantu hostels situated in white areas, I want to ask the hon. member for Musgrave what prerogative these Bantu have in that respect in this white area. They have no prerogative in that respect. If we accept that they have no prerogative in that respect in the white area, why should a public inquiry then be held? If we take this as a basis, then the further matter which arises from it, namely whose cases are resolved at such a public inquiry, is subject to the question of compensation. Compensation is applicable to every individual owner. The group is not concerned in the compensation the individual is going to receive. The calculation and payment of compensation is the business of the individual concerned. Why should every individual’s right to compensation be discussed at a public inquiry? There is no reason why it should be discussed by way of a public inquiry. That is why I am of the opinion that the hon. member’s views are wrong, firstly, where he wants to support real rights, and, secondly, where he says that these people should have the right to appear before a public inquiry. Why should such a person settle his private affairs in public? I think the hon. member is completely wrong in that respect, and that is why it is quite a good thing that this section of the Act be amended as it is being amended in this clause and as it is stated in the explanatory memorandum as well. In the explanatory memorandum the following is stated—

I should like to refer briefly to another aspect. The provision in respect of the payment of compensation is not at all affected by the changes in the clause. I refer the hon. member to the words which are being omitted in the Afrikaans text, namely “dan alleen”, “sulke” and “andersins”. Inter alia, the original section read as follows in Afrikaans—

Surely it is very obvious that it is not being changed. The hon. member was terribly worried about this aspect: if compensation had to be paid, why could the money not be paid into a guardian fund. Surely, the hon. member ought to know what the procedure has been all these years. The hon. member cannot blame the hon. the Deputy Minister for saying that compensation cannot be paid, for example, when such a person has moved away. This is not what the hon. the Deputy Minister meant, and this does after all become apparent from his speech. He wanted to know why he had to pay for sheets of tin and pieces of sacking when, what is more, such persons had in many cases moved away. This is what it amounts to. He did not say that he did not pay compensation when a person had moved away. If the hon. member wants to interpret it that way, I think he is doing it wrongly. The hon. the Deputy Minister said in one sentence that he did not pay for a tin shanty and, besides, it was often the case that the person concerned had already moved away. The hon. member should after all know that, even if such a person had moved away and his house, even if it were a tin shanty, possibly had any value, compensation would be calculated which would then be paid into a trust fund at the Office of the Bantu Affairs Commissioner of that area. That Bantu Affairs Commissioner tries everything in his power to contact that man, even though it might take years. Should all attempts to contact such a person fail, that money is eventually paid into the Bantu Trust Fund of the Treasury. This is the usual procedure which is followed, and it is quite unnecessary for the hon. member to be concerned that what the provisions of this clause will now amount to, is that it will be within the discretion of the Minister to decide whether or not compensation will be paid. Furthermore, the hon. the Deputy Minister cannot decide at any time not to pay because a person has moved away, so that nothing is done with the money. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Potchefstroom has made certain statements to which I wish to reply. First of all he said that I admitted that the present amendment regarding compensation does not in any way change the law as it was before. If he claims that I made such an admission, either the hon. member is misreading what I have said, or he misunderstands me.

Can the hon. member please repeat what he has just said? I could not hear him.

If I understood correctly the hon. member for Potchefstroom said that I admitted during the course of my speech on this clause that the proposed amendment giving a discretion in regard to the payment of compensation does not change the law from what it was before.

I did not say that. I said that the hon. member did not admit that.

If that is what the hon. member for Potchefstroom meant, I accept that, because I certainly did not admit that. Mr. Chairman, it is quite clear that the proposed amendment does change the law as it exists to-day because the law as it exists to-day states that “no location, Bantu village or Bantu hostels shall be removed, curtailed or abolished with the consent of the Minister, after reference to the Administrator, and upon such terms and conditions as to compensation, and otherwise as the Minister, after consultation with the urban local authority, may direct”. So it is perfectly clear, as the law stands to-day, that it is obligatory to pay compensation. Naturally the question of the amount of compensation which is to be paid is dependent upon the value of the dwelling. If, in the case of the example given by the hon. the Deputy Minister, the dwelling has no value whatsoever, because it is made of a few gunny bags and tins, no compensation will be paid, but not because the Minister has a discretion not to pay. That is not the basis of it at all. The basis is simply that the dwelling has no value. Therefore, to suggest as the hon. member for Potchefstroom has that the position is in no way altered, is a false argument. Our complaint against this clause is that the introduction of the words “if any” in relation to compensation now changes the whole meaning of this clause. Whereas, as the clause stands at the moment, compensation must be paid in all cases provided. of course, there is some value to the dwelling, now the introduction of the words “if any” actually gives the hon. the Minister a discretion to pay or not.

I now want to come to the other aspect of this clause, namely the doing away with the public inquiry. When I said that this is a real right that the Bantu enjoy under the law as it stands at the moment, I was obviously not referring to the real right in the legal sense that the hon. member for Potchefstroom has just referred to. What I meant was that this is a right which is real to the Bantu. I was using the word “real” in the layman’s sense. The hon. member for Potchefstroom must concede that in terms of the clause as it reads at the moment, this is a right which the Bantu has: A right to a public hearing, a right to have the matter aired in public with all the benefits that such a public hearing has. The hon. member for Potchefstroom argues that the Bantu have no right in the white areas. If they have no right in the white areas, they have no right to a public hearing. Therefore, by removing this, the Government is not doing them any injustice. But we disagree with the hon. members on that side of the House as to the status which urban Bantu should enjoy in areas such as Soweto. Kwa Mashu and other Bantu urban residential areas. Quite apart from that, if they had been given the right to a public hearing in terms of the clause as it now reads, they have been given this right by the Nationalist Government. If this right is now being taken away, surely this is an injustice to them even though the Government may regard them as merely sojourners in the so-called white areas of South Africa.

So-called?

Of course, it is so-called. The hon. members know perfectly well that there are, I think, 1½ million Bantu living permanently in the white area. So how can that be classed as a white area?

There is one other matter which I wish to deal with. That is the hon. member for Potchefstroom’s reply to my criticism of what the hon. the Deputy Minister said in his Second Reading speech, namely that those persons aggrieved would have the right to make representations directly to the Minister. The hon. member for Potchefstroom admitted that this is not written in the clause, but he said that everyone has that right anyway. However, that is not the case. If such a right, the right to make representation directly to the Minister, is not written into an Act, no such right exists. The hon. the Minister may, of his own free will, hear representations if he wishes to do so. But nobody can go to him and say: “I have a right to make representation to you and here are my representations. I require you to consider them.” If such a right is written into a law and the Minister fails to receive these representations or is mala fides in his approach to these representations, that aggrieved person has a right of recourse to the courts because it is written into the law. However, if it is not written into the law, he has no rights. It is merely a discretion of the Minister to accept representations if he wishes to do so. If he decided to reject them out of hand and not even receive them, the aggrieved party has no right of redress whatsoever. Therefore, to say, as the hon. member for Potchefstroom has, that there is this inherent right, is incorrect. I again point out that no right of representation to the Minister is written into clause 3 and therefore the statement which the hon. the Deputy Minister made in his Second Reading speech is incorrect.

Mr. Chairman, it is very obvious that the hon. member for Musgrave is particularly worried about the public inquiry which will now no longer take place. I think there is an irrefutable suspicion on this side of this House that he is actually worried about the privilege of politicizing in public about this matter. It is also true that, in his previous utterances in connection with this clause, the hon. member for Musgrave mentioned persons who allegedly leave and cannot be traced. The argument then arose that any compensation which should be payable, should be paid into the Guardian’s Fund. But I accuse him of not properly ascertaining what the rights are of the people under discussion here. He ought to know that it is actually an incorporeal right. At most, it is the right of occupation which can be involved here.

Consequently, should a person go away and no longer occupy the house or whatever, he would have forfeited that right of occupation of his own free will. I think it would be absurd to expect the hon. the Minister to determine the compensation of his own accord and then to pay it into the Guardian’s Fund. The person, as I have said, has at most a right of occupation. The hon. member also argued that the words “if any” are being inserted with the object of eliminating all possibility of compensation. Furthermore, he said that compensation was to be paid in all cases in terms of the original Act. The words “if any” were now removing this. He also said that compensation should be paid in all cases, but then he added the excuse that compensation should be paid if any value is attached to the improvements in such cases. I do not think the hon. member is very sensible in his approach. The words “if any” could not possibly have removed this. They serve as a qualification. It means that compensation will be paid if there is any. This is what the amendment provides.

As far as the discretion of the Minister is concerned, the clause clearly provides that any person who is affected by its provisions, will have the right to approach the hon. the Minister. It is also very clear, then, that the Minister will make no determination before first having exercised his discretion. Consequently I believe that that hon. member adopted his attitude with the sole purpose of trying to prove that the hon. the Minister would pay no compensation or need give no consideration to such payment. I am of the opinion, therefore, that the clause, as it reads at present, affords sufficient protection to any person affected by it.

I already replied to the arguments of the Opposition very comprehensively when the clause was under discussion last week, so I merely want to add a few points now to amplify what I have already said about the matter. Firstly, I want to identify myself with what the hon. member for Musgrave said. He understands a certain aspect of this clause very well and correctly when he says that the clause, with the insertion of the words “if any”, in contrast with the present situation, now provides that compensation will not be payable in certain cases. This is quite correct. Now the question arises as to why the existing position is being changed in this way. In other words, why are the words “if any” being inserted? I have dealt with this before, but I want to put it clearly again. The reason why we regard it as absolutely essential that certain words be omitted, is in the first place the fact that a public inquiry which must pre cede the abolition of a location has in practice proved to be absolutely unnecessary. My Department assures me that over the past five years they do not know of one case when such an inquiry was necessary. The reason is very clear. Because the local authority controls the interests there, it is the local authority which handles these matters, and a public inquiry has become a dead letter in practice.

I now come to my second point, which deals with the two little words “if any”. It has been the experience in practice over quite a number of years that the prescribed compensation— and now the hon. member for Musgrave must pay careful attention to what I say—as a sine quo non was not practicable. This was the argument which I advanced when this matter was discussed before. It is simply not practicable. Let us take the case of a dwelling which consists of bags and corrugated iron sheets or one which is not occupied at all. If, with the best will in the world and with the help of people who have the interests of the Bantu at heart, i.e. the local authority officials, one cannot trace the owner anywhere, what must one do? In order to be able to act in practice, one will do what we now intend doing, i.e. amend the clause in such a way as to create the possibility of a situation in which no compensation will be payable. This will occur in exceptional cases only. That is my second point.

I now come to my third point. The hon. member is not correct in suggesting that, as the clause reads at present, “it will give the Minister the discretion to pay or not to pay”. That is not correct. All that this clause means is what I have already explained. That is to say, it creates the possibility for a case where in practice it is quite impossible to pay compensation. This will occur in exceptional cases only. But these exceptional cases create many problems. For this reason the clause is being amended in this way.

I want to make another point in this connection. Should the position in the existing Act be left unchanged, an enquiry into any particular case can contribute nothing to the merits of the matter, because at that stage the removal of such a Bantu location has already been decided on in principle. All that remains, therefore, is the aspect of compensation. The hon. member will readily concede that any disputes about compensation could not be settled at such a public enquiry in any case. Therefore we do not intend depriving the Bantu of any right in terms of the provisions of this clause. As I have said, the persons concerned usually do not turn up at such an enquiry. Moreover, it cannot affect the merits of the case, because clause 5 stipulates very clearly how compensation shall be payable, and the respective categories in which compensation shall be payable. In my humble Opinion the arguments of the hon. member for Musgrave therefore do not hold water. I shall therefore content myself by repeating that the local authority will manage the Bantu’s affairs locally and that the amendments as contained in the clause, do not detract from that in any way. It merely confirms the practice as it has existed over the past five years and more. To my mind, therefore, there is nothing wrong with this clause.

Clause 4 put and the Committee divided.

AYES—91: Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Brandt, J. W.; Carr, D. M.; Coetsee, H. J.; Coetzee, B.; Coetzee, J. A.; Cruywagen, W. A.; De Jager, P. R.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, J. M.; De Wet, M. W. Diederichs, N.; Du Plessis, A. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Havemann, W. W. B.; Hayward, S. A. S.; Henning, J. M.; Herman, F.; Heystek, J.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Jurgens. J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Koornhof, P. G. J.; Kotzé, S. F.; Kruger, J. T.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. J.; Le Roux, J. P. C.; Lewis, H. M.; Loots, J. J.; Malan, G. F.; Malan, J. J.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, P. S.; Marais. W. T.; Maree, G. de K.; Martins, H. E.; Meyer, P. H.; Morrison, G. de V.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Otto. J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Reinecke, C. J.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van Breda, A.; Van den Berg, M. J.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Viljoen, M.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Vosloo, W. L.; Waring F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: P. H. Torlage, G. P. van den Berg, H. J. van Wyk and M. J. de la R. Venter.

NOES—30: Basson, J. D. du P.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Connan, J. M.; Deacon, W. H. D.; Eden, G. S.; Emdin, S.; Fisher, E. L.; Graaff, De V.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Jacobs, G. F.; Kingwill, W. G.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Waterson, S F.; Webber, W. T.; Wiley, J. W. E.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: A. Hopewell and T. G. Hughes.

Clause accordingly agreed to.

Mr. Chairman, there seems to be a lack of support for this measure if one looks at the representation of the members on that side of the House. Obviously they are not interested, because they do not support this measure. Had they supported this measure, they would have been here in their droves.

Who wants to listen to you?

I want to hear that hon. member for Benoni defending this clause. According to the White Paper this clause makes provision for a simple procedure which must be followed to remove or abolish any location, Bantu village or Bantu hostel without instituting lengthy court proceedings. It goes on to say that the Minister may fix a date on which a Bantu may no longer remain in a location or a village or hostel without the permission of the local authority. The following subsection goes on to say what can be done to a Bantu who in fact does remain or enter such village or hostel after the date decided upon by the Minister. He can be sent to another village or another place whether within the jurisdiction of that local authority or not. This is the provision we, the United Party, are going to oppose unless the Minister can give us some assurances. I think he is able to give us these assurances. The Minister in the second-reading debate has said that it is not the intention to whittle down section 10 of the Urban Areas Act. He says that this Bill is not intended to prejudice the qualifications of the Bantu as laid down by section 10. He made those remarks because we had indicated our opposition to this section earlier on because of his interference with the rights of the Bantu as laid down by section 10 of the Urban Areas Act. When the hon. the Deputy Minister made those statements he was dealing more particularly with clause 11 to which we shall refer later. Our objection to this clause is also based on the fact that the rights of the Bantu acquired under section 10 of the Urban Areas Act, will be interfered with. If the Minister is genuine he could easily give us the assurance that a Bantu who has rights under section 10 of the Urban Areas Act will not be sent out of the area of jurisdiction of the urban area where he has acquired those rights. If he says that, our objection to this clause will largely fall away. I want to test the hon. the Minister’s bona fides by moving an amendment. I therefore move as an amendment—

I appreciate that the hon. the Deputy Minister, in administering this Act, might find a local authority where a hostel or a village has to be abolished, and where there is not suitable alternative accommodation within that urban area. Therefore it may be necessary to send the Bantu out of those areas to a neighbouring village. Now if you place them in a Bantu village, say around Cape Town, where the employment of the Bantu will not be affected and where he can carry on with his employment, we have no objection. Of course, this clause does not deal with the Bantu who comes into the area illegally. [Interjections.] I am waiting for the Minister to stop discussing something. Everybody is running for advice now. [Laughter.] If the Bantu is in the area illegally, then of course there are many laws to deal with the matter, but what we are worried about is the Bantu who is there legally, who is in employment, and who is there with his family. Then he finds that because of the powers given to the Minister and to the local authority in terms of clause 4, which we have already passed, he has to move out. We have to protect his interests and I hope the Minister will give us an assurance that if a man is in employment and he has to be removed from a village, they will put him into a village close by so that his employment will not be interferred with and he will still be able to earn his livelihood. But even in spite of that assurance, we want a further assurance regarding the protection of the man who has acquired rights in terms of section 10, i.e. the man who was born in the area or who has worked for one employer for 10 years, or who has worked continuously for 15 years, rights which were given to him by the late Dr. Verwoerd when he amended the Urban Areas Act in 1952. These rights were given by Dr. Verwoerd and I submit that it is up to this Minister to protect them. We fear that the Government is trying to get round those rights, because the Deputy Minister said the other day that those rights are an impediment in the way of the implementation of their policy. He admitted it, but he said that if we want to take those rights away, we will not do it indirectly and surreptitiously; we will face the issue and we will repeal those rights without equivocation. Now I want to test the Minister that if they do not intend to do it indirectly, as they can do in terms of the powers granted by this clause, he should accept my amendment, in which case we will give our support to this clause.

The position in connection with this matter is briefly as follows: the existing section 3 of the old Act does not contain any provision such as the amendment which is now being suggested by the hon. member for Transkei. In other words, the existing section 3 was accepted by the Opposition and by everyone in good faith, and it was accepted that it would by no means affect the implications of section 10. If you look at section 3, you will see what the existing section says. All we are doing now with section 3A (1), (2), (3) and (4), which are now being inserted here, is to expand section 3, which in no way affects the merits of the existing section 3 in connection with this matter that was raised by the hon. member for Transkei a moment ago. This is the first point I want to make.

The second point I want to make is that he is now asking certain assurances of me that this clause 5 will not affect the so-called rights of the Bantu in terms of section 10. I prefer not to speak of rights, because section 10, in our opinion, in fact confers no rights; on the contrary, it gives cover of presence to the Bantu in the white area. Consequently I prefer not to speak of rights, and consequently I am quite within my rights when I say that with this clause 5 we have no intention to try to circumvent section 10 in the least, or to interfere with that cover of presence deliberately.

Clause 5 of the Bill, as it stands in the Bill, envisages no more than precisely what stands in the clause. We therefore do not want to interfere with any of so-called rights of the Bantu here, and we are not trying to circumvent section 10 here. That assurance I can very definitely give to the hon. member, and I hope that he will now keep to his word, while I, in terms of what I have said, have his assurance that he will not oppose this clause. But now I want to add a very important thing which he raised himself. That is that if there are circumstances in which a location must be abolished, and one cannot possibly have certain Bantu that in terms of section 10 may have certain qualifications, placed in a prescribed area there, what does one do then? And the hon. member raised it himself. Then I cannot keep to the assurance I have given him now, and surely this is quite self-evident, because if there is no place near there where one can do it, then it simply cannot be done. I therefore do not see my way clear to doing it in that connection. I want to content myself with saying that, as far as I am concerned, the matter is closed with this. It is not our intention to circumvent or to interfere with section 10 here. That is not our intention at all. I therefore stand by what I said in connection with this matter at the Second Reading.

The hon. the Deputy Minister’s explanation certainly does not satisfy me. I cannot understand what he means when he says that it is not his intention to interfere with what he says are the so-called rights under section 10 (1). This clause enables him to interfere with the rights of any Bantu who lives in any location which, after the proviso has been fulfilled, is to be abolished. Now it may very well be a township or a location which has been established for 20 years, where certain Africans have been born or have lived for 15 consecutive years or who have worked in the area for one employer for 10 consecutive years. Those are all the provisions contained in section 10 (1), as the hon. the Minister knows. Now he may decide to abolish this township. Will he tell me what he is going to do with those Africans who have been there in that township for the 15 years or 10 years, or who have been born in the area? How does this not affect their rights? Of course it affects the rights of all other Africans in that area, too, who may only have entered the area within nine years or within 14 years. What is more, this assurance asked for by the hon. member for Transkei, as far as the second condition is concerned, is clearly contradicted in the actual clause itself. Surely the hon. member for Transkei must agree that the last two lines on page 7, lines 64 and 65, specifically give the hon. the Minister the power to move an African, together with his personal effects, from such a location, Bantu village or Bantu hostel, to any other place, whether within or outside the area of jurisdiction of such urban local authority. He moved only one amendment, and that deals with section 10. The hon. member was prepared to accept the verbal assurance of the hon. the Minister that he would not remove anybody to an area which was not adjacent. That is what I understood him to say. He wanted those assurances and the Hansard will prove it. He moved an amendment in regard to section 10, and then he said he wanted an assurance that when these people were removed, they would go to some nearby village. [Interjection.] What I am trying to point out is that this section specifically enables the hon. the Minister to move them anywhere at all, and not just to a nearby village so that they can continue their employment in the existing area. So what is the good of getting a verbal assurance from the Minister, when actually and specifically in this section he has the right to move them anywhere at all, outside the jurisdiction of the local authority, with only one proviso, and that is that the Secretary must be satisfied that in his opinion there is adequate alternative accommodation. I think the hon. the Deputy Minister will agree that I am right. That is what the clause says. Will the Deputy Minister tell me what these words mean if they do not mean what I have said? The clause specifically says he may remove the Africans to any other place. whether within or outside the area of jurisdiction of some urban local authority, having in the opinion of the Secretary adequate housing acommodation.

I have already mentioned cases.

I do not care what cases the Deputy Minister has mentioned, but I am saying that this clause is very wide indeed, and even if the section 10 Africans are protected, I see no reason why the other people should not be protected. I do not draw a clear distinction. To me all these people have acquired rights. They are presumably in employment and I cannot see why they should be penalized and be removed lock, stock and barrel like so many chattels to wherever the hon. the Deputy Minister decides they should go. I am going to oppose this clause outright.

I cannot see the hon. the Depty Minister’s difficulty in giving effect to what he has stated over and over again in his speech on the second reading of this Bill. The hon. the Deputy Minister said over and over again that the section 10 rights of the Native people will not be affected in any way by this clause. The clear fact is that this clause, which is an entirely new clause, does in fact affect these rights most appreciably. As the last hon. member who spoke has said, subsection (1) refers specifically to the removal of people to a place within or without the urban area. So it is quite clear that such people, though they may have rights acquired under section 10, can in fact be removed outside the area of jurisdiction of the urban authority.

The hon. member for Transkei referred to it. How otherwise can you deal with it?

You can deal with it in the way suggested by the hon. member for Transkei, namely to retain the power to remove certain people when the various conditions are fulfilled, but you may not move the people with section 10 rights outside the urban authority area. Surely that is clear enough, and if the hon. the Deputy Minister is going to stand by his of t-repeated assurances, he must surely protect the rights of these people. The Deputy Minister says that is what they are doing, but how are you doing it when you have the power in so many words to move them outside the local authority area? That is what we want the hon. the Deputy Minister to tell us.

I have already replied to the points raised by the hon. members on the other side of the House, and I am not going to expand on that because I do not think it is necessary to do so and because I believe we are only wasting the time of the House in doing so. I have given the assurances asked for by the hon. member for Transkei. He himself raised the point that there would be cases which you cannot cover by such an assurance, and I have explained to the House why those cases are there and why I cannot go beyond the assurances I have already given. If hon. members are not prepared to accept that assurance, then I can do nothing about it. Then there is this other point which is very important. In the new section 3A (3) it is stated explicitly that in the first place there must be a warrant and there must be a court case. Every Bantu will have the opportunity to put his case before the court. That is clearly stated in the new section 3A (3); so what hon. members want beyond that I honestly do not know. I would like to call upon them to accept what I have told them. I think they have come to know me as a man who stands by his word once he has given it. I therefore call upon them to stick to the proposition made by the hon. member for Transkei a moment ago.

Sir, what was the proposition that I made? The hon. the Deputy Minister keeps on saying that he has given his assurance. What assurance has he given that the rights of the people, acquired under section 10, will be respected? He has given no assurance to that effect at all, and that is the main point that I raised. I said that there may be some difficulty in housing other Bantu who had not acquired those rights, and that we wanted an assurance from the Minister that those Bantu would be housed in villages close to their employment. He rightly says that they will do that. But, of course, in terms of this section, he can send them right up into a reserve, and once a person who has acquired rights is removed from the area of jurisdiction of the urban authority the Deputy Minister knows very well that he loses all his rights. The Deputy Minister will admit that he loses all his rights. Sir, we want to protect the rights of those people. The Deputy Minister says that we know him and that we must accept his word. If his word meant anything in the second reading debate, it meant that he was not going to tamper indirectly with rights acquired under section 10. If this clause is passed as it now stands, he can indirectly interfere with rights acquired under section 10. Will he not admit that he can remove a person who has acquired a right under section 10?

I said in those cases where you cannot do anything else.

I am not worried about cases where you cannot do anything else. The Minister can deprive a man of the rights which he has acquired under section 10.

The courts can do so.

The court does not do so. The court can find that an African has remained …

What is an “African”?

Sir, that hon. member does not know what an African is. He is one of the “verkramptes”; he is going to lose his seat.

You are a Liberalist.

They are both “verkramptes”.

I can quite imagine that the words used by those two hon. members to describe the Africans, are words which Dr. Malan prohibited when he was Prime Minister. Sir, let me repeat this for the benefit of the hon. member for Umhlatuzana: If an African is residing in a Bantu village and he has to be removed because the whole village is to be removed, what is his position? He has not come in illegally. Take the man who is living in the village but who remains in it after he has been ordered to remove himself. He commits an offence and he can be found guilty, but he says, “I am not going to move from here, because the moment I move and go where you want to send me, I lose my rights under section 10.” Sir, that is the man we are worried about and that is the man we want to protect, and if the Minister was genuine—and I accept that he was genuine and that he meant it when he said that he was not going to interfere with rights acquired under section 10—he must agree with us that a provision is necessary in this clause to protect those rights, otherwise how is that man to be protected? The Minister can move that man despite his rights. We do not call them “sogenaamde regte”. They are not “sogenaamde regte”; to those Africans they are definite rights and they are meaningful rights. Therefore I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to abide by his word which he gave us during the second-reading debate and to protect these people by accepting my amendment.

Sir, the hon. the Deputy Minister has asked us to accept his bona fides. If he wants us to do that, I want to ask him to accept this amendment to show his bona fides. We are prepared to accept his word as a gentleman and as a Minister that he will not interfere with these rights, but is he the one who is going to have the final say? Is he the one who is always going to have the final say?

Not after April.

Sir, we cannot legislate in this Committee on the basis of accepting a gesture or an undertaking by the hon. the Deputy Minister. This must be written into the law. When the time comes to interpret the law, the courts are not going to act on what the Deputy Minister said here to-night: they are going to act on what is written in this law, as has been pointed out by the hon. member for Houghton. The whole objection to this is based on the contents of the proposed new section from line 63 onwards: “The Bantu may be removed, with his personal effects, from such location, Bantu village or Bantu hostel to any other place, whether within or outside the area of jurisdiction of such urban local authority.” Sir, will the hon. the Deputy Minister accept an amendment to delete the words from “whether” and “or outside”? Would he consider accepting such an amendment?

No.

Why will the hon. the Deputy Minister not accept such an amendment?

Because the clause as it stands is as fair as it is humanly possible to make it.

The hon. the Deputy Minister says it is fair, as far as it is humanly possible. Sir, I want to quote the example of a person who is living in a Bantu township in a local authority area. He has acquired, in terms of section 10 (a), (b) or (c) the right to remain there and this is a very real right which was granted to him toy the late Dr. Verwoerd and a right of which he is very jealous. He has obtained the right to remain in the urban area, and I want to make it clear to this Committee to-night that section 10 has nothing to do with employment. All section 10 does is to give the Bantu the right to remain within the area of jurisdiction of a particular local authority. Sir, the hon. the Deputy Minister nods; he agrees. He understands, but there are many members in this House who do not understand this point. The point I am trying to make is that this man who has obtained this right may be self-employed; he has his own business in the area, and then because the department or the hon. the Minister decides that the accommodation is inadequate or unsuitable in that particular township in which the man resides, that township is deproclaimed. A date is set by which all the Bantu must have removed themselves. I presume that alternative accommodation will be offered to them. It might be offered to them 100 miles away; it might be only around the corner, but there is no guarantee here that it will not be a 100 miles away. And if it is a 100 miles away, if it is outside the area of jurisdiction of the local authority and that particular Bantu who has his own business, who has acquired the right under section 10 to remain within the area of jurisdiction of that local authority loses that right immediately he is removed. Sir, I am sure the hon. the Deputy Minister sees my point. This is the settled, permanent, middle-class urban Bantu, the one who is going to be on the side of the white man when the confrontation comes between the White and the non-White in this country, but this is the way in which we are going to treat him now if this is passed; this is the shabby manner in which this Government intends to treat him, to subvert the right which he has earned— because they have all had to earn this right— in terms of section 10 to remain in the urban area. This is one of the reasons why we are opposing this. The hon. member for Transkei has moved a reasonable amendment. If the hon. the Minister wishes us to accept his bona fides, let him at least accept that. I am not wholly satisfied with it, but it is better than what we have to-day. Sir, I will tell you why I am not wholly satisfied with it. It is because every Bantu who happens to be in a location, in a township in the area of jurisdiction of any urban authority, is there under some authority; he is there with some permission. In other words, he is there with a certain right to be there, perhaps not the permanent right which those who qualified under section 10 might have acquired, but he has some right to be there as long as he is in employment, as long as he has a service contract with his employer. Their rights are also being subverted by this clause, because in terms of this the hon. the Deputy Minister is taking the power to move them to some point where they will no longer be able to carry out the work for which they are registered in the urban area. I know that the hon. the Deputy Minister has problems; I know that this is a problem which exists particularly in the built-up areas of South Africa, and more particularly on the Witwatersrand. But, Sir. let us have some guarantee, some safety valve, written into this clause to protect those Bantu who do have these rights and who, as far as we can see by reading this clause and by reading the Act as it stands, stand to lose those rights through administrative action.

I have already replied very clearly to the questions and points that were put to me from that side, and in my humble opinion the hon. member who spoke a moment ago has not raised any new point. I said that we are not trying to circumvent section 10 here. I said that section 3. which has been on the Statute Book for all these years, does not contain the proviso which is now being proposed by the hon. member for Transkei as an amendment to this clause, and therefore I can see no reason why hon. members now expect me to accept this amendment while it was not deemed necessary to insert this provision in the existing Act. I have said what our intention with this matter is. I cannot put it any stronger than I have already done. I think I have given the hon. member the assurances he asked me for, with the proviso which I mentioned, i.e. that if there are cases and circumstances where one simply cannot do it, then he cannot expect that assurance from me in those cases. In any case, he raised this point himself. In the last place I stressed that it is put very clearly in the proposed new section 3A (3) that there must be a warrant, and that a court will decide about the circumstances in that case.

What will the court decide?

It is my honest opinion this clause already makes provision for all the necessary protection, and I cannot say anything more in connection with that.

I really cannot understand the argument of the hon. the Deputy Minister when he says that he cannot accept the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Transkei because there is no such proviso to section 3 at the moment. Of course there is not. If there had been such a proviso we would not have moved this amendment. But can the hon. the Deputy Minister not understand this? Section 3 as it stands at the moment, does not permit of the removal of a Bantu outside of the area of jurisdiction.

Of course it does. Read the Bill.

Where does it say so?

In section 3 of the Act.

I do not think the hon. the Deputy Minister is right.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. member to read section 3 (3).

I take it, Sir, that I now have a second chance to address the Committee.

I will give my ruling, if necessary.

The other point that the hon. the Deputy Minister made is that these people will be removed by a decision of a court. I assume that by that he implies a hearing held in public by a court. That is not the position which is laid down in this clause as we have it to-day. That is not the provision at all. What the hon. the Deputy Minister is proposing to provide in the proposed new section 3 (a) is that “any person who is proved to the satisfaction of a Bantu Affairs Commissioner by means of affidavits placed before him …”—not by means of a hearing held in public by a court, not even by giving the Bantu concerned the opportunity of appearing before the court to state his case but merely by affidavits placed before him presumably by certain Officers of the department. Is this what the hon. the Deputy Minister refers to when he says “by order of the court”? This is not what I believe to be a court, Sir. I should like to remind the hon. the Deputy Minister of certain remarks made by a Judge here in the Cape a few months ago, about certain evidence that was presented to him by affidavit, and by other means. Sir, this happens. I am afraid that I cannot accept this assurance by the hon. the Deputy Minister at all. The more the hon. the Deputy Minister argues about this, the more we must doubt his bona fides with regard to the rights of these people, which are very real rights. I am glad that the hon. the Minister is here as well, because I want to remind him and the hon. the Deputy Minister that they have been warned before in this House that if they are going to interfere with the rights acquired by the Bantu in terms of section 10, they are playing with fire. These are very real rights and mean an awful lot to those Bantu people. These are the only rights which they are able to acquire. They are extremely jealous of those rights. It is the only security which they have. We are now going to find that these rights are going to be interfered with not by an order of court, but by a certificate issued by a Bantu Affairs Commissioner on the strength of affidavits placed before him by officials. I hope that the hon. the Deputy Minister will reply to these points. Is this the court he refers to, and is this the order of court to which he referred?

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister says that he cannot accept this provisso because there is no similar proviso in the existing section 3. With respect, Sir, if the hon. the Deputy Minister will look carefully at section 3 as it stands, he will see that it refers to the removal of a location or village, and so forth. It does not mention the removal of a person. It deals with the removal of a village, location, etc. In other words, it does not deal with the rights of the individual Native himself, in terms of section 10. The new section has a different effect. It deals quite clearly with the rights of the individual. It says that he may be removed outside the urban area. I want to quote the relevant words. Such a person may be “removed, with his personal effects, from such location, Bantu village or Bantu hostel to any other place, whether within or outside the area of jurisdiction of such urban local authority …” With great respect, therefore, to the hon. the Deputy Minister, there is a vast distinction between section 3 as it stands, which refers simply to the removal of a village, while leaving untouched, I submit, the rights of the individual which he enjoys under section 10, and the new section 3, where the rights granted under section 10 are clearly affected, because it states that he can be removed. If the hon. the Deputy Minister can satisfy us on that point, we shall be most grateful.

Mr. Chairman, if the hon. member who has just sat down can explain to this House how one can remove a location without removing a person or persons, I shall be very glad to reply to him.

Mr. Chairman, we have heard a lot from the Deputy Minister about a court having to find such a person guilty. What does the Minister’s White Paper say when dealing with this matter?

What does it say?

Has the hon. member not yet read this White Paper? [Interjections.] Before I read what the White Paper says, I want to deal with section 3. The Deputy Minister asked the hon. member for Pinelands how one can remove a Bantu once one has decided that a village must be removed to a new situation. I can find nothing in section 3 which tells him how such a Bantu can be removed. I want to ask the Deputy Minister: How does he remove a Bantu in terms of section 3, as it stands now? That is why his White Paper says this—

The impression the Minister has been creating here to-night is that the court has already ordered them to go. He says that because the court has ordered them to go, it must be legal, and therefore there can be no objection. But the court does not order them to go. The court finds them guilty of being in a certain place illegally, but the court does not order them to go to any particular area. Obviously this new section is now being introduced to give the Deputy Minister the power to remove these people without a court order. I should like the Deputy Minister to tell us where, in section 3, he is given the power to remove them anywhere he likes outside the jurisdiction of a particular authority. If he has the power, why does he waste the time of this Parliament and the taxpayers’ money by bringing an amendment to Parliament to give him the power to do so? If he already has the power, why does he come to this Parliament and ask us to amend the law to give him a power he already has?

Mr. Chairman. I had hoped that I would be able to avoid this, but it now seems to me I will have to explain to hon. members precisely what is being envisaged with this new section. [Interjections.] I shall explain now. This is what I am trying to do. In the first place, the new section 3A (1) merely provides that the Minister has to give his consent for a location to be abolished. The new section 3A (2) provides for the date of abolition to be published in the Government Gazette in order to freeze the location to be abolished. In other words, provision is being made in the first place for the consent of the Minister to be obtained. In the second place, provision is being made for a date of abolition “afskaffingsdatum” as I should like to call it. I want to say at once that this is not a new procedure which is being followed, and the hon. member for Transkei should know this. Of course, hon. members opposite are now feeling a little uncomfortable. This procedure has been in force for years now in terms of the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, (Act No. 53 of 1951). This is the same procedure for which provision is being made here now. That hon. member should be well aware of it. I am sure he is well aware of it. That is why he has been talking with his tongue in his cheek here. The same procedure exists in the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act. The new section 3A (3) also makes it quite clear that a warrant should be issued to the Bantu person concerned. I would also like to emphasize quite strongly that no criminal proceedings will be instituted against such a Bantu person. This appears quite clearly from this new section. The court will then have to decide about any claims such a Bantu person has as regards his place of abode as well as the location which is to be abolished. [Interjections.] I am hundred per cent correct. The court will then have to pass the necessary judgment. Thereafter provision will be made for the circumstances under which compensation has to be paid to such Bantu persons in terms of clause 3A (4). This is all that is contained in this clause, Sir. I have been asked to give certain assurances. I have given hon. members those assurances.

Where is provision being made here for the court to be able to grant compensation?

A warrant has to be issued. The court is, therefore, involved.

Mr. Chairman, the further we get with this discussion, the more it becomes “confusion worse confounded”, if I may use an English term. The hon. the Deputy Minister is now giving us certain assurances which he wants us to accept in regards to this matter. We are dealing here with a removal. However, the matter is not so simple as the hon. the Minister gave us to believe a moment ago, that is that when an application is submitted the Minister has to give his consent. This may also happen upon instructions given by the Minister. Nor is this simply a question of a squatters’ location, but also of a proper location. These can be removed from one place to another on the instructions of the Minister or with the cooperation of the urban area. They are now being deprived of the rights they have in terms of section 10. The hon. the Deputy Minister now wants us to accept his assurance that he will act sympathetically, but he does not want to accept an amendment: nor does he want to effect an amendment himself. Surely, the hon. the Minister must feel that there is something wrong with the legislation otherwise he would not have given us his personal assurance. Or is that not how he feels? If he does, in fact, feel that there is something wrong with the legislation and he is giving us his assurance for that reason, I am asking what, in heaven’s name, does a personal assurance from a Minister mean? It is all very well as long as he is there as Deputy Minister. We have to accept it as long as he is Deputy Minister, but no Minister can commit his successor. What is more, only yesterday the Deputy Minister was the Secretary of the Broederbond; to-day he is the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration; to-morrow he may quite easily be the leader of the Hertzog group and he will do much better than they.

Mr. Chairman, I do not intend replying to that hon. member, but there is one matter I simply cannot allow to pass unanswered. Those hon. members doubt my word as far as the court is concerned. I therefore want to read to them what is laid down quite specifically in the new section 3A (3). It reads as follows—

It is for the court to decide. This is the point I have been making all along, but those hon. members now pretend that this is not contained in the new section 3A (3). I think this is quite unreasonable. A moment ago the hon. member for Transkei tried to bring this House under the impression that I do not know what I am talking about when I talk about a court, because, according to him, no mention is made of a court in clause 3A (3). This is not true; I quoted a moment ago what reference is made to a court in the new section 3A (3). Mention is quite clearly made of a court in the new section 3A (3). I am telling that hon. member once again that it is clear that a warrant has to be issued and that there has to be a court. Hon. members opposite are doing nothing else but acting wilfully as regards this clause.

Mr. Chairman …

Order! The hon. member has already spoken three times.

Mr. Chairman, may I address you on that point?

No.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I want to point out that I was interrupted by the hon. the Deputy Minister when I was making my last speech.

The hon. member sat down to read something. It was not my fault that he did not make full use of his turn to speak.

Mr. Chairman, with respect …

Order! I have given my ruling. Would the hon. member kindly resume his seat?

Amendment put and the Committee divided:

AYES—28: Basson, J. D. du P.; Connan, J. M.; Deacon, W. H. D.; Eden, G. S.; Emdin, S.; Fisher, E. L.; Graaff, De V.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Hughes, T. G.; Kingwill, W. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Murray, L. G.; Radford, A.; Smith, W. J. B.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Waterson, S. F.; Webber, W. T.; Wiley, J. W. E.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

NOES—73: Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Brandt, J. W.; Carr, D. M.; Coetsee, H. J.; Cruywagen, W. A.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, J. M.; Du Plessis, A. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Havemann, W. W. B.; Hayward, S. A. S.; Henning, J. M.; Herman, F.; Heystek, J.; Holland, M. W.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Koornhof, P. G. J.; Kotzé, S. F.; Kruger, J. T.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. J.; Lewis, H. M.; Loots, J. J.; Malan, G. F.; Malan, J. J.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; McLachlan, R.; Morrison, G. de V.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Reinecke, C. J.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smith, J. D.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van Breda, A.; Van den Berg, M. J.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visse, J. H.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, W. L.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: P. H. Torlage, G. P. van den Berg, H. J. van Wyk and W. L. D. M. Venter.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Clause, as printed, put and the Committee divided:

AYES—72: Botha, M. C; Botha, M. W.; Brandt, J. W.; Carr, D. M.; Coetsee, H. J.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, J. M.; De Wet, M. W.; Du Plessis, A. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Hayward, S. A. S.; Henning, J. M.; Herman, F.; Heystek, J.; Holland, M. W.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Koornhof, P. G. J.; Kotzé, S. F.; Kruger, J. T.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. J.; Lewis, H. M.; Loots, J. J.; Malan, G. F.; Malan, J. J.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; McLachlan, R.; Morrison, G. de V.; Otto, J. C; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Rail, J. J.; Reinecke, C. J.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux P. C; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smith, J. D.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van Breda, A.; Van den Berg, M. J.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visse, J. H.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, W. L.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: P. H. Torlage, G. P. van den Berg, H. J. van Wyk and W. L. D. M. Venter.

NOES—27: Basson, J. D. du P.; Connan, J. M.; Deacon, W. H. D.; Eden, G. S.; Emdin, S.; Fisher, E. L.; Graaff, De V.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Hughes, T. G.; Kingwill, W. G.; Marais, D. J.; Moolman, J. H.; Murray, L. G.; Radford. A.; Smith, W. J. B.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Waterson, S. F.; Webber, W. T.; Wiley, J. W. E.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

Clause, as printed, accordingly agreed to.

Clause 6:

Mr. Chairman, this clause deals with the removal of Bantu who unlawfully remain in a prescribed area. Here he has to be convicted under different sections and until he is so convicted the Minister’s department is unable to send him to a rural village, settlement, rehabilitation scheme or institution. But now the Minister intends adding another class who can be sent to the rural area. Unfortunately, in terms of the law as it stands at the moment, there is no provision for making them do any work in the area. What worries us about this clause, is that regulations can be published to detain a Bantu for such period and compel him to perform such labour as may be prescribed by the law in terms of which such rural village, settlement, rehabilitation scheme, institution or place was established. When passing this clause, we do not know what is contemplated, how long he can be detained in the area or how long he will be forced to work there. We say that it is wrong merely to detain the person there. It is wrong for us to give any department power to detain a person in any area, because detention is like arrest. It is almost like detaining a man in gaol. He is not in gaol, but he is detained in the area and he cannot leave it. He is also forced to do work maybe for a year or so. We do not know what the terms are. We say, too, that that is wrong. We appreciate that there is a provision in the law for the Minister to deal with idlers and disorderly people. These can be dealt with. Obviously, they can be sent to work colonies and be made to work. But this clause we are now passing will not deal with idlers or disorderly people. And yet the Minister is asking us to give him these extensive powers. It is no good the hon. the Deputy Minister saying that he gives assurances that this or that will not happen. I do not know what authority the hon. the Deputy Minister has to give assurances and thereby bind the Government. After all, it is not the Minister giving us the assurances. The hon. the Deputy Minister gives the assurance that he will not do it, but how do we know that the hon. the Minister agrees with those assurances that are being given? After all, the hon. the Minister is the person who is going to decide. I now want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister if he can give us some information. Clause 6 deals with section 14 of the Urban Areas Act. Section 14 refers to the provisions of subsection (9) of section 21 ter of the Bantu Labour Regulation Act, 1911. That Act was repealed and was substituted by Act 67 of 1964. I shall be glad if the hon. the Deputy Minister will tell us what the provisions are that will now be applicable in this case. Quite frankly I have not been able to find them. I would therefore like the hon. the Deputy Minister to tell us what these regulations are.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister did try to tell us something about this in his Second-Reading speech. I want to quote the hon. the Deputy Minister’s own deathless words. In his smooth way the hon. the Deputy Minister told us that this was purely a technical correction and he told us that this new clause was simply in order to bring section 14 of the Urban Areas Act into line with section 29 (7) (d). He also stated that the new provision would only apply to subsection (1) ter, in other words, to the idle people to whom the hon. member for Transkei referred. I do not agree with this interpretation at all. When I look at section 14 as it stands in the Act, I see that it deals with the removal of any Bantu who remains unlawfully in an urban area and not only to those who are won’t-works or idle. For instance, a Bantu whose employment has been cancelled or has not been sanctioned by a labour Officer in terms of section 22 of the Bantu Labour Act, may be required to leave the prescribed area. If he does not, he is by definition unlawfully in that area. He is not, however, a won’t-work; he is, in fact the very man who is looking for work because he is a man who has found work but whose contract has been cancelled. Therefore such a person is not an ordinary undesirable Bantu in anybody’s interpretation. I do not understand how the hon. the Deputy Minister’s explanation can be that this is only a technical correction to bring section 14 into line with section 29. I want to point out to the Committee that when clause 11 comes into effect, and the hon. the Minister has the power to cancel any existing contract, thousands more Bantu will fall under the purview of this clause, because by definition those persons are there unlawfully. The minute their contracts are cancelled those persons are unlawfully in an urban area and will then become subject to this clause. I think it is a very far-reaching clause indeed, and if this is not what the hon. Deputy Minister intended it to be, he must redraft the whole clause. As it stands at present it goes much further than a mere technical correction. I, of course, must object to it.

Mr. Chairman, I stand by what I said during the Second-Reading debate, that basically this clause is merely a technical correction. I shall now explain further why I have said this. The position is that in terms of section 25 of the Bantu Administration Act it is the intention of the department that such rehabilitation centres be established under the governments of the homelands. A proclamation to this effect is being drawn up at present; this is the first point. The second point is that article 29 of the Urban Areas Act, as the hon. member for Houghton was quite right in saying, which deals with idle and undesirable Bantu persons, provides quite specifically precisely what we are introducing with this clause now, that is for such a Bantu to be removed to such a place. All we want to do here, is to bring section 14 in line with what is contained in section 29. Let us see what is contained in section 14. Section 14 of the Urban Areas Act deals with three categories of Bantu. The first category of Bantu includes Bantu who remain in such an urban area for more than 72 hours without any permission at all. The second category of Bantu includes foreign Bantu and the third category of Bantu includes Bantu who have been brought in unlawfully. What is wrong in bringing section 14 of the Urban Areas Act into line with that section when we already have a provision in section 29 for Bantu to be referred to such a place? What more is it than merely a technical correction in the light of the first fact I have mentioned to the House a moment ago? For that reason I am being quite honest and correct when I state the matter as I stated it during the Second-Reading debate. I also want to add a third point, which is of much greater importance. In any case, this clause is only an interim measure. The moment such a rehabilitation centre exists in the Bantu homeland — and I say again that such a rehabilitation centre does not exist at all at the moment — it will fall under the jurisdiction of the Government of that Bantu homeland. The Government of such a Bantu homeland is going to decide on the matter itself, and at the same time this serves as an answer to the first question put by the hon. member for Transkei, that is how people should be treated who are referred to such a rehabilitation centre.

But in the meantime?

In the meantime there are as yet no such rehabilitation centres. Under point one I explained very carefully to the hon. member that it is our intention to establish such centres in terms of section 25 of the Bantu Administration Act. These centres will be established under the homeland authorities, and such a proclamation is in the process of being drafted. I want to point out to the hon. member once more that such a proclamation will have to be tabled in this House and it will be open for discussion. This is the position as far as this clause is concerned. I do not want to be difficult now and I hope hon. members opposite will refrain from being difficult too. Hon. members will recall that I made my Second-Reading speech under the theme, as I stated in the House, that the Opposition, in terms of this Bill, was conjuring up spectres. I then proceeded to mention seven or eight of them. We have disposed of clause 5 a moment ago and in the process the Opposition, in my honest opinion, conjured up certain spectres and to my mind the hon. the Opposition is doing exactly the same as far as this clause is concerned.

The hon. member for Transkei also asked me: “What about the proviso’s”? Act No. 15 of 1911 has been repealed and the corresponding section in the new Act is section 22 (10) of the Bantu Labour Act. I am very grateful that the hon. member put this question to me, because I would have mentioned the point here in any case. Section 22 (10) reads as follows —

This is the position and it is quite clear.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister’s idea of what is a technicality is a very interesting one. I do not think he does himself justice in stating that this clause is a mere technicality. The hon. the Deputy Minister is equating an idle and undesirable Bantu with a man who, perhaps driven by need, has wrongfully come into a prescribed area to seek work. He can be anything but idle and undesirable. It is in respect of that category of person that this provision applies. One can well understand that it can apply in relation to an idle and undesirable Bantu, but when you have a man who is showing anything but those qualities, it is then that one feels mightily surprised. I do hope the hon. the Deputy Minister will take my argument into account and inform me whether he still feels that there is virtually no difference between the two so that he can describe it as a technicality. Mr. Chairman, I hope the hon. the Deputy Minister will also tell us why this greater power has become necessary, why it has become necessary to have this provision in relation to this far larger category of people, those who are not idle and undesirable? I should like to know what in fact is happening that it has become necessary to extend the provision giving the power to send a person to his home or place of residence, etc., in order now to provide that he can go to various institutions and be detained there? What is happening that requires that they be detained there? On what scale is this happening? I should also like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether there are already several of these institutions in being for idle and undesirable Natives? If so. are they going to be added to. to cope with the new influx of people? What are the hon. the Deputy Minister’s plans in this regard, or is this merely a matter of legislation without there being any intention of giving practical effect to it? I think if the hon. the Deputy Minister could answer some of those questions, it will enable us to have more light on the matter.

Mr. Chairman, I would be glad if the hon. the Deputy Minister could first answer the questions which I asked and to which he did not reply. So far he has answered in regard to those Africans who remain in the urban areas for longer than 72 hours or those who are strangers, i.e. the foreign Africans, and those who, I think he said, came in unlawfully originally.

Those imported by employers.

Imported? It sounds as if we are talking about objects or articles. However, the point is that the hon. the Deputy Minister has not answered the question I have originally put to him. What about the people who become unlawful by virtue of the fact that their contracts are cancelled in terms of a subsequent clause of this Bill which is very far reaching indeed and in terms of those whose existing contracts have not been okayed by section 22 of the Bantu Labour Regulations Act? What happens to those people? Does this clause not affect them? As I read it, section 14 refers to any Bantu who remains unlawful in an urban area. That would include the additional categories which I have mentioned. The hon. the Minister told us that when they are sent back to their homelands to these rehabilitation centres which do not exist yet, but which will presumably be set up some time or other, they will then fall under the control of the homeland authorities. They will decide what to do with them. I think that is a most indecisive and very callous way of dealing with people. Let us take an individual case. We can even take a case within the three categories mentioned by the hon. the Deputy Minister and not one of the obvious looking-for-work or found-work people that I am talking about. Let us take somebody who entered the urban areas and has stayed longer than 72 hours. That man gets hauled into a Bantu Commissioner’s Court and is then charged with being unlawfully in the urban area. Only about a thousand a day this happens to, incidentally. In fact, more than a thousand are convicted each day. So, many more are hauled into the courts. However, he is then sentenced; he either pays his R10 fine or he serves ten days or two weeks in jail. Incidentally, even if he has paid his R10 fine he still cannot go free. I do not know whether people know that. But under some or other obscure section of, I think, the Bantu Labour Act, even if he has paid his fine he cannot go free. He is kept in detention usually at a police station, or in a prison, until some sort of armed escort can be found to take him back whence he came. I personally know of one case of a man who was sentenced to two weeks imprisonment, or R10 fine. The R10 fine was paid by me. But when I went to get his release I was told that he could not be released. Subsequently this man turned up at my house two months later to tell me he had been kept at Modderbee for five solid weeks. So, if I had not paid his fine, he would only have served two weeks and he would have been free much sooner. This is a true story. However, let us leave this to one side. This man is sent to jail. Having paid his fine, he is held until he can be sent back. I would say that this is his punishment for having been unlawfully in the urban area. But the hon. the Minister does not think so. This man is then sent to some rehabilitation centre. What do they do with him there? What is the hon. the Deputy Minister contemplating that they do? Do they teach them how to weave baskets? What do they do at these rehabilitation centres? Let us get some practical explanation in this regard. Is the hon. the Minister going to set up carpentry shops? Is he going to train them for something? What work are they going to do? Are they going to clean up the river banks in the reserves? And what will happen after that? Then they are in exactly the same position as they were before. There is a very ugly atmosphere of forced labour about this clause, this sending people back to their homeland.

You are obsessed with forced labour.

Yes, it is. They have to do any work which the rehabilitation centres say they have to do. The man may be trained in some other field. But, nevertheless, for the sin of entering an urban area and looking for work and even having found work because an employer might have “imported” him illegally in the first place, and thus have work if he belongs to an employer, he is sent back and he has to do whatever work the homeland authorities decide he has to do. I think we need a little more explanation in this regard.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Houghton should support these extremely positive measures. As a matter of fact, this measure could be the beginning of the resettlement of the Bantu in their own rural areas. To my mind the Opposition does not want to oppose this at all. It may be the beginning of an improvement of the economic activities of the Bantu. Surely, the Opposition does not want to object to that either. For example, satisfies reveal that out of a population of 5,511,921 male Bantu 2,457,774 were economically inactive in 1960. In other words, we can only improve on this position. If the Opposition does not give its support to this measure, it only means that they definitely do not want to promote the economic position of the Bantu. Consequently. I think that they are, in fact, contradicting themselves particularly when one considers their little book of promises. In this book they say, inter alia, that file reserves will be utilized to help to solve our racial problems. But they do not say how this is going to be done. However, with this measure we have a positive way in which it can be done. I do not think they will be able to justify their conduct to the voters if they do not support this measure.

Mr. Chairman, perhaps the hon. member for Transkei will not have to rise to speak once more after I have finished replying to these questions.

The hon. member for Bloemfontein West, who spoke a moment ago, is quite right as far as the position in this regard is concerned. Both my department and I are quite convinced that this is an extremely positive measure, seen particularly from the point of view of the Bantu. I appreciate that this is the “pet subject” of the hon. member for Houghton. The position in this regard is briefly that we should like in this way, by providing for a rehabilitation scheme in the Bantu homelands under the existing Bantu national authorities there, to do away with the odium attaching to the White administration in the White area. At the same time, I should like to reply to the first question put by the hon. member for Pinelands. A Bantu falling under any of these three categories I mentioned and who is not here legally in terms of section 14, has to be dealt with in terms of existing legislation. Nobody in his right mind could find anything wrong with that, because, after all, a Bantu who is here unlawfully has to be dealt with. In practice he is, in fact, being dealt with by the courts. As I have said, the purpose of this clause is to try to do away with the odium attaching to the White administration, because this still falls within the White area. This odium is being shifted to where it really belongs, that is in the hands of the homeland government and the homeland authority of such a Bantu. What could be more positive than that? What could be more reasonable than that?

Will he get pay while he is in one of these rehabilitation centres?

If the Bantu authority under whom such a rehabilitation scheme is established, should decide that such a Bantu should receive payment, there would be nothing to stop them from doing it. That is the very point I wish to make. The opportunity is being granted the Bantu authority here to deal with their own people.

The reply to the second question the hon. member put to me, is also quite clear. We want to give the Bantu Governments the opportunity to display some initiative themselves and to decide themselves how to deal with Bantu at such a rehabilitation scheme. We want to leave such initiative to the Bantu authorities themselves. They will be able to decide themselves in which wav they want to do this. These are their people and such a procedure is one hundred per cent correct. What we are, therefore, doing is to bring the existing position into line with that in our neighbouring states. We are moving in that direction. For example, a Bantu who comes here from Basutoland falls under the Basutoland Government when he returns to that country. The same parallel applies in this case. A Transkei Bantu who comes from the Transkei to the White area and who is here unlawfully in terms of section 14, should be dealt with by his own Bantu homeland Government. In this clause the necessary provision is being made for that. I believe and I am sufficiently confident that they will do this in a sensible manner. If this clause is going to work in practice as we expect it to work, it can be foreseen that Bantu who are put in jail in terms of section 14 as a result of having contravened some law or other, can be referred by the court to such rehabilitation centre falling under the Bantu authority. He can then be dealt with as laid down in this clause according to the specific proclamation applicable to such rehabilitation centre. These are the replies to the questions put by the hon. members. I just want to repeat again that I really believe that this is a real positive measure to deal with Bantu who are unlawfully in White areas in such a fair, human and just manner as possible by creating the necessary machinery in terms of which they will be dealt with by their own Bantu authorities.

The hon. the Deputy Minister has still not answered my question. Will he please just answer this simple question whether Africans whose contracts of labour have been cancelled fall under this clause or not? I am referring to section 22, i.e. those whose contracts have been cancelled or have not been approved.

Clause 11 of this Bill.

Yes. Either under clause 11 of this Bill or under section 22 of the existing Bantu Labour Regulation Act. They are contracts which have not been approved and they then become unlawful. I want to know whether they fall under this clause. I wish I could share the dream world of the hon. the Deputy Minister. I honestly do.

You will never be able to share my dream world.

This comes as a grave disappointment to me in my declining years. I was hoping that this would be sort of some compensation for my grey hairs, but I think it is not to be. I will be brave about that. My customary courage will come to my rescue. The hon. the Deputy Minister visualizes these rehabilitation centres as replacing the gaols. Maybe the time will come when instead of these people who are unlawfully in the urban areas being sent to gaol, they will be sent back …

I did not quite say that.

Well, you more or less implied that they may be sent to the homelands where their own people will deal with them. There they could either be paid …

We are setting up the machinery in that regard.

You are going to get your finger caught in that machinery; I can tell you that. The hon. the Deputy Minister does not seem to understand what volume of people this sort of thing applies to. Where does he think the homelands are going to have the machinery to deal with the thousands of Africans who are illegally in the urban areas, who come there not to be idle and undesirable as he thinks, but because they need the work and because their Reserves are not able to provide them with the necessary employment? They come because of the push of poverty from the Reserves, as well as the demand for labour from the urban areas. Where are they going to find this alternative employment? If the rehabilitation centres are just going to keep them there collecting firewood without paying them—the hon. the Deputy Minister said they may or may not be paid—does he seriously think they are going to remain there? Does it not occur to him that unless the homelands are able to provide an enormous police force to maintain these rehabilitation centres and to contain the people that are sent there, the actual physical problem is going to be completely overwhelming. Exactly the same thing is going to happen there, just as we in this country, despite urban areas laws and pass laws, cannot overcome economic forces that push people into the urban areas. I can assure the hon. the Deputy Minister that his rehabilitation centres, unless policed by a large army or police force, are not going to be able to contain the thousands of Africans who are going to be pushed back into the Reserves. Does he not see these practical difficulties?

No, I do not.

Well, then he lives in his own little world. Do you know, I have changed my mind. I do not want to go there because it is so impracticable and so beyond the realms of possibility that I really think he is living in a sort of crazy Alice in Wonderland world.

I should like to reply to the hon. member for Houghton. Who does the hon. member think would be in the best position to treat the Bantu fairly and justly? Would it be the hon. member with her pleas in this House or would it be the Bantu authorities themselves who will look after the interests of their own people? The answer is obvious. The Bantu authorities will be in a much better position to look after their own people in a fair and just manner than that hon. member or I myself would be able to do. Surely, even a child can understand this. I am not, therefore living in a dream world when speaking about these things. I am living in a most realistic and practical world with both my feet firmly on the ground. This is also the case as far as the hon. the Minister is concerned. Against that, the hon. member “is in a fine dream world of her own”. That is the difficulty and the problem.

As regards the question put by the hon. member, I was under the impression that I have dealt with that question repeatedly. I have said that this clause, in the first place, deals with section 14 cases. I have repeated this all along. I am quite prepared to furnish the hon. member with an answer. It deals with section 14 cases and I gave her a careful explanation of the three categories. The cases to which the hon. member has referred, can only fall under this section 14 category by way of a court order. Neither I nor the Minister has any say as far as that is concerned. If there is such a court order, it could be that the type of case referred to by the hon. member could become a section 14 case as a result of that.

I was shocked when I listened to the speech of the hon. member for Bloemfontein (City), and even more shocked by the hon. the Deputy Minister’s confirmation. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (City) said that the United Party should support this clause because we want to see the Reserves develop and that this was a way of developing the Reserves. What utter nonsense! We want the Reserves developd by having industries in the Reserves.

Is it shocking to be sensible?

We want work to be given to the Bantu in the Reserves. We do not want this type of work where the hon. the Deputy Minister cannot even tell us whether they are going to be paid or not. How are they going to keep their families there? What sort of development can there be in these resettlement areas or labour camps? We do not visualize development of this nature for the Reserves. We visualize proper development and industrial development where they can earn a decent wage, have their own homes and rear their children properly. We do not want work of this nature when it is not even certain that they are going to be paid a wage. The hon. the Deputy Minister indicated that there was as yet no institution or resettlement anywhere. This is something up in the air, in dreamland, as stated by the hon. member for Houghton. Why must we worry about passing a law now which may never be applied? Where is the hon. the Minister going to apply this law? I can understand that he may perhaps be able to get one of the authorities in the Reserves to agree to accept these people. But he will have to make the money available. He will have to house them and give them employment. But the hon. the Deputy Minister went further. He said that they could go to Basutoland. Now how can we pass a law here detaining a man in Lesotho?

That is a parallel case.

All right, it is a parallel case; the Minister has mentioned it. How can we pass a law here detaining a man in Lesotho? How ridiculous can you get?

You are using it as an analogy.

I used it as an analogy and nothing more.

What does the hon. the Deputy Minister mean when he says that he has used an analogy? It is meant to be an example for us as to how it can be applied. Why use a ridiculous analogy unless the hon. the Minister does not realize what he is trying to do here. Has he discussed this provision with the Transkeian Government? Are they going to agree to establish these settlements over there? I know that they are annoyed about the Africans who are being sent back at the moment and who have no employment. The hon. the Minister must know that too.

If an African who has lived all his life in an urban area becomes out of work he can be convicted under section 14. Say this Bantu has never known a reserve, is the court going to decide which reserve he has to be sent to? If he is sent to a strange reserve, is that reserve going to be responsible for his upkeep? I submit that the hon. the Minister on his own showing, has not thought out the consequences of this measure. He has not tried to work them out. I do not think that this Committee should be asked to deal with a matter of this nature where the Minister has not even thought of the consequences and which is not a practical measure. He is asking us to pass something which may be applied in the future, but we are certainly not going to do so.

Mr. Chairman. I cannot understand why the hon. member for Houghton and the other hon. members who spoke a few moments ago, do not prefer to be honest with this House by admitting that we should please not remove the Bantu as the Bantu should be brought into the White areas in order to strengthen our economic position. After all, that is what their policy is all about.

Now what does that have to do with this?

That is exactly what it amounts to. Why are hon. members talking of “forced labour” and “labour camps”? After all, they know that that is not the position. Should one simply remove a Bantu, who is loafing here or who does not want to work, or who, for other reasons as laid down by section 14 cannot qualify here, and do so at great expense so that he may loaf somewhere else?

Where are you going to place him?

Why are hon. members opposed to the principle that a loafer should be removed from one place so that he may be settled at another where he would be able to work for his own good and also for that of his own area? What is wrong with that? Why do hon. members not want this? Surely there is absolutely nothing wrong with that? The principle contained in this clause is a very important one, i.e. that a Bantu person who does not want to be productive may be sent to a place where he has to be productive for his own good and also for that of his area. Why are the hon. members opposed to this? Why do the hon. members want to retain those loafers in the White areas at all costs because those loafers might not know from what areas they hail? They ask to what places the urban Bantu will go now, and similar questions they have fabricated. Surely the hon. members are merely conjuring up a lot of spectres which will still catch them in this very debate. If the hon. members proceed any further along these lines, there will definitely be an analogy between the hon. members of the Opposition and the other Opposition party. I really think that the hon. members are wasting the Committee’s time now.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Potchefstroom has not followed us completely. Here we are not dealing with idle and undesirable people. This is the whole point. There is machinery to send idle and undesirable people to these institutions and that is another matter. We are here dealing with the Bantu who does want to be economically active. We are dealing with the one who does want to come and work and who may be forced by need to come and work in the cities.

That is a spectre!

No, this is the type of man we are dealing with. Indeed, the hon. the Deputy Minister indicated that this was the type of man we are dealing with. He indicated that all these many people who might be convicted for pass offences are people who could conceivably be taken up in these areas. So. the hon. member for Potchefstroom must not make that accusation. We quite concede that idle and undesirable people must be dealt with, but we are here dealing with people who are keen to work and who are law-abiding people who just cannot get work unless they come illegally into the urban areas.

How long do you want him to stay in the area?

The question of their presence in the urban areas would under the United Party also be regulated by influx control. I want to get back to the hon. the Deputy Minister. The hon. the Deputy Minister has indicated that these people, it is hoped, will work under the Bantu authorities at these institutions. I want to take the point that the hon. member for Transkei has touched upon, a little further. I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether he has got the agreement of any Bantu authority at all for the establishment of this type of institution. I want to ask him whether he has had the consent of any of the authorities. The only ones that I know that have expressed opinions about these matters are people like the Transkeian Territorial Authority. They have said absolutely flatly that they are completely against the endorsement of their people into their areas. They have said that what they want is the establishment of industries in their areas to give these people work. They certainly do not want to have people piled back into their areas. I sincerely hope that the hon. the Deputy Minister will give us a straight answer on this point. Let him say if he has come to an agreement with any of the authorities. Let him tell us with which authorities he has come to an agreement, so that we can realize that this thing might get off the ground. If he has not got anybody’s agreement to it, I hope he will tell us quite frankly that he has nobody’s agreement to it. Then we can see that the whole thing is very much a product of his hopes and his dreams. I sincerely hope that he will tell us this, because we want to know whether we are dealing here with something which the Government seriously intends to bring into operation or whether it is just an absolute façade which is quite meaningless. In my opinion, based upon the statements of the Transkeian Territorial Authority, this is the last thing they would tolerate in their areas. Apparently the hon. the Deputy Minister is building high hopes upon it. I hope he will tell us quite frankly what the position is.

Does the hon. member think that we would introduce such a Bill and such a clause in this Bill, if it was not the serious intention of the Government and my department to implement it? That is obviously just nonsense. It is the intention of the Government to do this and I have made it very clear.

Have you got an agreement?

We are not so foolish as the Opposition is tonight in trying to kill time. We regard these clauses very seriously. These clauses are both in the interests of the Bantu and in the interests of the Whites of this country. We on this side of the House are not trying to kill time as the hon. members on that side of the House are doing. It has become quite clear that that is what the hon. members are trying to do. I never dreamt that I would be subjected to so much nonsense from some of the Opposition members, as I have been subjected to on quite a few clauses this evening. Some of the members on that side of the House have been talking with their tongues in their cheeks for quite a while. I know them very well.

The hon. the Deputy Minister must withdraw the accusation that hon. members on that side of the House were talking “with their tongues in their cheeks”.

They surely spoke with smiles on their faces.

The hon. the Deputy Minister must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, Mr. Chairman. I should like to reply to a question that was raised by the hon. members opposite. The court that decides these matters will definitely not send a Xhosa to Vendaland, or a Tswana to the Transkei. Surely the hon. member himself knows this. The hon. member for Transkei put that question to me, and made that statement. I repeat that the court will not take any decision which will result in a Xhosa being sent to Vendaland or a Tswana being sent to the Transkei. Surely the hon. member knows this. Then why does the hon. member talk such nonsense? I have honestly tried all evening long to reply to these questions in a very fair and just way, but it has now reached the stage where I am compelled by the hon. the Opposition to deal with these matters in a different way. The other point with which I want to deal is the fuss made by the hon. members about a perfectly innocent matter like this particular clause. In the Second Reading I mentioned, and I repeated it here to-night, that this is a technical correction. The first member who tried to make out a case here that this was not a technical correction, was the hon. member for Houghton. She did so because of her approach to these principles, and for no other reason. For that reason I do not even argue with the hon. member about that aspect at all. I persist in my opinion, however, that this is a technical correction, and, secondly, that this is an extremely positive measure, as I have repeatedly indicated here. Now hon. members submit that this is a provision which is up in the air, and that we are introducing legislation on an ill-considered matter. That is not correct. These national authorities are in the process of evolution, and at every opportunity we are seeking methods and ways and means of assisting and activating these people by giving them responsibilities. What is more fair than to provide that, when there are Bantu who in terms of section 14 are illegally in a white area, they should be placed under their own national authorities, and that those national authorities should decide how those people should be dealt with? I am asking the Opposition: What is more fair, what is finer and what is more positive than this? The hon. member asked me whether we had obtained the consent of these national authorities. Sir, we have the closest contact with each of these national authorities. This matter has been discussed with the national authorities from time to time and on various occasions. What is more, this Bill was forwarded to every Commissioner-General. We do not act arbitrarily in connection with these matters. We are very careful in connection with the national authorities. It gives me great pleasure to say in this House to-night that in general we are on a very good footing with each of these national authorities. Also in respect of this matter this is the answer which I have just given the hon. member. Then why should hon. members be unreasonable in this connection? I want to say at once that if the hon. member for Houghton votes against this clause, I shall be able to undesrtand that, because she will do so because of her approach to these principles, but if the Opposition votes against this clause, they will hear more about it. I do not want to discuss this now during the Committee Stage, nor is it the time and the place to do so, but they will hear about it on the political platform, and there is no doubt about that.

I want to put a direct question to the hon. the Deputy Minister, and I should like to receive a direct reply to it. Have any of these Bantu authorities agreed to implementing this system? Have they agreed to accepting these institutions? This is a direct question. Has he obtained the approval of any of them?

I have already replied to the hon. member. [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, in all seriousness, this side of the House has asked certain questions to try and find out what this was all about. Sir, what have we found? The hon. the Deputy Minister now admits that this is a half-baked scheme which he has presented to the House to-night. He does not know what work they are going to do. He does not know where they are going to work. He does not know whether they are going to be paid. He does not even know whether these establishments will ever be established, and even whether or not they are going to be accepted by the authorities. He is not prepared to tell this House, but he is asking this House for a blank cheque. Who are the Bantu we are dealing with here? He is not dealing with the idle and disorderly or the “undesirable” Bantu— that is the word they use to describe them. He is not dealing with that sort of Bantu. He already has provision for those people, and for a number of years work colonies have existed, to which these people were sent by order of the court. He is now dealing with people who have, through some action on their part, contravened a regulation or a law and who find themselves in the white urban areas. Because of this they are not complying with the provisions of section 10, which does not allow them to be in an urban area for more than 72 hours without the necessary permission, or of section 12, which deals with foreign Bantu. I accept the example that the hon. the Deputy Minister gave us with regard to a citizen of Lesotho, so I think that we can leave section 12 alone. However, these people can also be contravening the provisions of section 11, where an employer can be convicted for employing a Bantu without prior authority. Sir, these people are not idle and undesirable. These are people who have gone into the urban areas with the object of becoming useful members of society. They have committed a technical offence in what the hon. the Deputy Minister likes to call “White South Africa”. The Deputy Minister now has a half-baked scheme to send them back and make them the responsibility of the Bantu authority. I ask you, Sir, what an arduous responsibility to place on a Bantu authority, which is barely off the ground, and which barely has sufficient knowledge to cope with the few things under its jurisdiction to-day! This Deputy Minister now is going to pass on to them this responsibility to administer “a rural village, settlement, rehabilitation scheme, institution or other place …”. He is giving the authorities the responsibility not only to administer them, but also to provide labour for Bantu who have committed technical offences in what will amount to a foreign country. These Bantu are now to be punished by the Bantu authorities in their own areas by compelling them to work, but the hon. the Deputy Minister cannot even tell us whether they are going to be paid. What sort of labour does he envisage them being asked to do? The hon. member for Houghton …

May I ask what you are going to do with the Africans you do not allow in under the pass laws?

That is easy to answer. The hon. member for Houghton knows the answer to that question.

No, I do not.

She knows full well that it is our policy to develop the Bantu areas, the reserves, to the point where there will be sufficient employment for them. [Interjections.] I submit that the hon. the Deputy Minister has come here with a half-baked scheme. He has not been able to answer the queries we have put to him. If we had received courteous attention from him, and if we had received courteous replies to the questions we put, we may have reconsidered our attitude and supported this clause, but in the light of his manner and in the light of the fact that he has not been able to supply satisfactory answers to our questions, we shall vote against this clause.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to tell that hon. member that the occasional flashes of silence on his part make very good conversation.

Mr. Chairman …

Has the hon. member not just made a speech?

He can make another one.

There was no speech in between.

The Deputy Minister got up and spoke.

The hon. member may continue.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that the attitude the hon. the Deputy Minister adopted this evening is most unbecoming. If he thinks that he is going to get his Bills through when he talks to us about wasting time, he will learn a lesson. I think next time he should let his Minister introduce the Bill. He can take a lesson from the Minister of Transport and other old Ministers on how to get their Bills through. They do not behave in the way he is behaving to-night. The Deputy Minister blames us and says that we are wasting time. What has happened in regard to this clause? We have asked him for information and he has not been able to give us any. In terms of this clause the Bantu can be detained in a settlement and made to work there according to the law which is passed in respect of that village. We do not know what laws are going to be passed. How can we be asked to give the Minister carte blanche? How do we know what laws are going to be passed? We have asked him to give us an example, but he cannot give us anything at all, because he does not know what the Bantu authority is going to say. How dare he ask this House to pass a law like this when he can give us no information as to how it is going to be applied. All he does is to get up and talk absolute nonsense about such a law being applied in Lesotho. He then says that he is only giving us an analogy. Sir, I submit that this Deputy Minister has not prepared himself. He does not know how to get this measure through, and he must not expect us just to give him carte blanche.

Mr. Chairman, I have replied to all the questions pertaining to this clause. I have replied to each and every question. That hon. member is definitely being unfair to me by making such accusations. I have replied to all the questions and there is nothing more to add.

Mr. Chairman, after that rather rude remark of the hon. the Deputy Minister, and I do not know whether he used that sort of language in his thesis but I sincerely hope not, I want to raise another matter and point out that this hon. Deputy Minister …

Order! Did the hon. member say something about a “rude remark”?

Yes, Sir, I did. The hon. the Deputy Minister made a personal remark.

Did the hon. member say that it was a “rude remark”?

Yes.

Then the hon. member must withdraw it.

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw it and say instead that it was a personal remark which was entirely unjustified. It is not what we expect from the dignity of the Treasury benches. [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Houghton put two direct questions to the hon. the Deputy Minister but he did not reply to them. If he new section 20A which is being introduced by clause 11 of the Bill is approved, will a Bantu who is denied the right to certain employment fall within the scope of section 14 of the Act?

Order! With which clause is the hon. member dealing now?

I am dealing with clause 6 of the Bill which amends section 14 of the Urban Areas Act.

But a moment ago the hon. member was referring to clause 11 of the Bill.

Mr. Chairman, with respect, I had referred to clause 11 of the Bill. I know that it is not under discussion now. I should like an answer from the hon. the Deputy Minister as to whether the Bantu who will be affected by that clause will be dealt with in terms of section 14 of the Act which is amended by clause 6 of the Bill. Then we go further. We have the provisions of section 22 (6) of the Bantu Labour Act which inter alia state that: “a district or municipal labour Officer … may … refuse to sanction the employment or the continued employment of any Bantu … if he is satisfied” and then seven different conditions are laid down which the labour Officer must satisfy himself exist.

Order! To which clause is the hon. member referring now?

I am not at the moment dealing with anything in clause 6 itself.

What the hon. member is saying is not under discussion.

Mr. Chairman, may I, with respect, then put my question in another way? I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether any Bantu who is disqualified from working, who has his contract of labour cancelled by the Labour Bureau, falls within the scope of the amendment contained in clause 6. This question has been put directly to the hon. the Deputy Minister and he has not given a reply. I raise the matter because it is pertinent to this particular clause that we are discussing now. If these Bantu are not going to fall within the scope of this amendment to section 14 of the Act or the existing section 14, then of course a different light is thrown on the whole matter. I want to allege that they will fall under the provisions of the proposed section 14 (1A). We are going to have the position where a law-abiding Bantu finds through a technicality that he is deprived of his employment and he is then going to be sent to one of these work colonies. I wonder whether the hon. the Deputy Minister would show us the courtesy of replying to these two questions. Will those Bantu affected by the proposed section 14 (1A) …

Order! Will the hon. member now stop repeating himself?

I merely want to know whether these Bantu will be affected by the amendment contained in clause 6 of the Bill.

Mr. Chairman, out of courtesy, and purely out of courtesy and for no other earthly reason. I want to say that I have already replied to the question that that hon. member is trying to put in this House but cannot put properly because he does no know what he is talking about. I replied to that question when I replied to the hon. member for Houghton. She is nodding her head because she at least understands what is going on as far as this clause is concerned.

Clause 6 put and the Committee divided:

AYES—71: Botha, M. C.; Brandt, J. W.; Carr. D. M.; Coetsee, H. I.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, M. W.; Du Plessis, A. H.; Du Toit, I. P.; Engelbrecht, I. I.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, I. I. P.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. L; Havemann, W. W. B.; Hayward, S. A. S.; Henning, J. M.; Herman, F.; Heystek, I.; Holland, M. W.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Koornhof, P. G. I.; Kotzé, S. F.; Kruger. J. T.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. I.; Lewis, H. M.; Loots, I. J.; Malan, G. F.; Malan, J. J.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; McLachlan, R.; Morrison, G. de V.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Reinecke, C. J.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smith, J. D.; Stofberg, L. F.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van Breda, A.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visse, J. H.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, W. L.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: P. H. Torlage, G. P. van den Berg, H. J. van Wyk and W. L. D. M. Venter.

NOES—28: Basson, J. D. du P.; Connan, J. M.; Deacon, W. H. D.; Eden, G. S.; Emdin, S.; Fisher, E. L.; Graaff, de V.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie. R. G. L.; Hughes, T. G.; Jacobs, G. F.; Kingwill, W. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Murray, L. G.; Radford, A.; Smith, W. J. B.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Webber, W. T.; Wiley, J. W. E.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

Clause accordingly agreed to.

Clause 7:

Mr. Chairman, this clause amends section 18 of the Urban Areas Act. Section 18 of the Urban Areas Act provides that where the medical Officer of health has condemned a building in a municipality or local authority, such municipality or local authority can remove the occupants provided it provides other dwellings, accommodation or sites where these people can build other accommodation for themselves. The municipality or local authority also has to pay compensation for the dwelling which is demolished.

I want to make it quite clear that we agree that when a building becomes dilapidated or verminous and the conditions obtaining there would be injurious to health, it should be removed; we agree with the hon. the Deputy Minister that that should be done. The new changes to section 18 will however not give people the same protection as the provisions of the old section 18. Section 18 provided for the removal of persons from such a building, but it had to be in the area of such local authority concerned. I now refer again to section 10 and the rights which have been acquired in terms of that section. During the second reading debate the hon. the Deputy Minister said that it was not his intention to circumvent the provisions of section 10 and he asked us to trust his bona fides. If he wanted to remove such rights, he would do so by passing a law in this House.

This is now the second example of the way in which the hon. the Minister can circumvent the provisions of section 10. He can deprive people of their rights. I want to make it easy for the hon. the Minister; I am going to move an amendment on the same lines as the one I moved previously. My amendment reads as follows—

The amendment the hon. the Deputy Minister wishes to introduce will entitle him to move Bantu from a house which is going to be demolished to any other location or village not necessarily under the control of that local authority. It can be outside the local authority area altogether. Paragraph (b) which is introduced by this clause is an entirely new provision which entitles the hon. the Minister to move Bantu to a scheduled native area or a released area. All we want to do is to see that the rights acquired under section 10 are protected and if the hon. the Deputy Minister is genuine in the statement he made the other day, I submit that he must accept our amendment. I move my amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I will not object to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Transkei which tries to protect existing rights. Where I take issue with him and his Party, however, is why do they not think that the rights of other people who are in the process of qualifying under section 10 are also not worth protecting? After all, section 10 is a continuing process. There are people who every day qualify in terms of section 10 (1) (b) and (c). There are the people who qualify in terms of the section which says they have to be in the urban area for 10 consecutive years with one employer, or for 15 continuous years in the urban area. Every day there are people in the process of qualifying, or their wives and families or you might say unborn children, as long as they are in the urban areas. These people are all in the process of qualifying under section 10, which is of course what worries the Government about section 10. I do not think that they would mind too much if section 10 was simply limited to the sort of self-generating urban African, but what really worries them is that every day more and more Africans are qualifying. It does not worry me in the slightest, for the simple reason that I consider South Africa one country. I think the United Party gives away its arguments against the Bantustans by not considering South Africa as one country; by not considering that all Africans born in South Africa are South African citizens who should be entitled to mobility in the country of their birth. The very fact that they say that they will apply pass laws and will keep Africans from coming into the urban areas gives the Government its ethnical background of Bantustans. It amazes me that they do not realize that. There is either one South Africa where every South African-born citizen is entitled to free mobility, which is a normal and natural right of every citizen, or there are two South Africas, a Black South Africa and a White South Africa, as the Government says there are and as the United Party says there are not. But in the meantime they apply the same laws as far as control and influx is concerned. I would go much further, of course, in terms of this particular clause. I object to it because it is taking away a right not only from the section 10 Africans but from all the Africans who could be in the process of qualifying under section 10, and for that matter from any African who happens to come in and reside in an urban area and take up work there. I think it is his normal right as a citizen any time from now on. Up to now the existing law has made it necessary for the hon. the Minister, if a building has been condemned by an M.O.H., to find alternative accommodation in the same local authority area. That is the existing law. The clause as it reads now makes it, of course, unnecessary for the hon. the Minister to find alternative accommodation in the same urban local authority area. What is more, it does not even lay the necessity upon him of finding alternative accommodation in another urban area. He may find alternative accommodation in a rural area in a homeland. This can apply to a man who may have been living in the urban area all his life or for 10 years consecutively working for the same employer, or for 15 years, or for any time within that period. I think it is a deprivation of a basic right. For that reason, in terms of the rules of the House, I obviously have to vote for the amendment moved by the hon. member for Transkei, but I want to make it absolutely clear that I am also going to oppose the clause in toto, even if his amendment is accepted.

Mr. Chairman, we have heard two speeches so far. I must say that the points that have been made are very valid. Does the hon. the Deputy Minister realize — or is this in fact his intention — that the Minister is now usurping the power of the local authority? In terms of the existing section 18. it is laid down that when giving such notice the local authority shall offer to give such occupant who is entitled to reside in such location or Bantu village either other adequate housing accommodation or. subject to the payment of reasonable compensation, a site on which he can build another house. The provision at the moment is that the local authority, because of a report received from its medical Officer of health, decides that the house has to be demolished. It then offers to the Bantu such alternative accommodation as it thinks is proper, as was pointed out by the hon. member for Transkei, in another location or Bantu village under his control. Or it offers to him a site on which he can build a house. Now, Sir, in terms of this amendment the local authority will now only be able to offer to the Bantu such other adequate housing accommodation as the Minister may approve. In other words, the authority is now taken out of the hands of the local authority concerned and is placed firmly and squarely in the hands of the hon. the Minister. The Minister must decide. Then there is the other aspect, namely that in terms of the amendment all reference to compensation payable to a Bantu for his house which has to be destroyed is removed. In fact, all reference to the provision of a site, a substitute site which a Bantu might use on which to build himself accommodation, is also removed. The Bantu are being deprived of two — I do not want to call them rights, but I cannot think of another word — vested interests which they have had: the right to compensation and the right to a site on which they could build. In substitution for the removal of those two vested interests the hon. the Minister proposes that they can be offered by the local authority “such other adequate housing accommodation in a scheduled Bantu area or released area and at such rent and on such condition as the Minister may deem expedient”. I do not want to go into the question which was raised by the hon. member for Transkei. But I want to put this question to the hon. the Deputy Minister. Whose responsibility is it to provide housing? Who has the authority to provide housing? Can the Bantu build his own house in an urban area whether or not he has the right to remain within that area under section 10? Does he have the right to residence in that he has a valid contract of employment with an employer and is registered at a local bureau? Whose responsibility is it to provide housing? I submit that it is not the Bantu, because he is precluded by law from doing it. He cannot even repair his delapidated premises which have been provided by a local authority or by the Government. He cannot even try to put it into a condition where it is not verminous and not considered a hazard to the health of the community.

I submit that this whole position is being brought about by the Government and local authorities, and that if this is approved you will have a situation which will be worse even than to-day. The local authorities are having extreme difficulty in getting money for the renewal of their Bantu townships. Many of these Bantu townships, as was pointed out by the hon. member for Walmer during the Second Reading of this Bill, are now in a delapidated state. Many local authorities want to renew to prevent this very health hazard which is referred to in this section. They are unable to do so, because they are unable to raise funds at a reasonable rate of interest. I am glad to see that the hon. the Minister of Community Development is here. He controls the National Housing Commission. This commission is designed to provide funds at a low rate of interest to local authorities for the renewal of Bantu townships. They are declining to do so and they are making it as difficult as possible for those local authorities which want to renew their Bantu townships. Here we find the Minister introducing this extra power …

What has that got to do with this particular clause?

Mr. Chairman, that is the point that I am getting to. The situation is created where the Bantu’s house is going to be declared and is being declared a threat to the health of the community. For that reason it must be demolished. In terms of the existing provisions of section 18, the local authority is compelled to offer that Bantu either other adequate housing accommodation in the same or any other location or Bantu village under its control, or, and I want to quote section 18 (1) (b)—

That is the position to-day. The hon. the Minister of Community Development is making it impossible for the local authority to offer them a house within a township within their control. Now the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration is usurping the authority of the local authority and he is now taking the power to send that Bantu to any other township or to any place where he considers that there is adequate housing, whether it is within the area of jurisdiction of the local authority, or whether it is within the area of jurisdiction of another local authority, or even if it is outside “White South Africa”, namely the homelands, a scheduled area or a released area. I wonder if the hon. the Deputy Minister has thought of these particular aspects. I should like to hear his reply to this.

Mr. Chairman, I want to reply briefly to the points raised by the various hon. members on that side of the House. Here we find ourselves in exactly the same position as we did in the case of the amendment which came from that side under clause 5. The hon. members on that side of the House are alleging once again that section 10 will be affected by this clause. My reply to that is exactly the same as it was under clause 5. The answer is that we do not intend to interfere with section 10 along these lines. The position is stated very clearly in this clause, i.e. that if the house of a Bantu is condemned by the medical Officer in terms of the existing Act, such a Bantu may be offered adequate housing accommodation within the prescribed area. The only thing we are doing here is to provide, too, that such a Bantu need not necessarily be given an adequate house in the prescribed area if his house is condemned, but that the Bantu may also, at the discretion of the Minister, be offered a house in a homeland, for example. That is the only thing which is being embodied in this clause, and nothing more. For this reason the amendment moved by the hon. member for Transkei is not acceptable to me. I cannot understand at all why the hon. members are so concerned about section 10 to-night, because there is a considerable number of sections in the Urban Areas Act which specifically affect section 10 cases. Section 29, for example, does this, and there is a considerable number of others which also affect certain of the section 10 cases. For what reason is the hon. the Opposition so concerned about the protection of section 10?

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23.