When the House adjourned last night I was making the statement that we are not dealing here with any quirk of international law, but with a situation recognized in international law. I was, in particular, pointing out the meaning of the terms “citizenship” and “nationality”—and the comparable term, state membership. I pointed out that citizenship emphasized the municipal, i.e. the local and that nationality emphasized the international law aspect. In some states citizenship means full membership while in other states a distinction is drawn between various classes of citizens. Up to 1935 the Filipino’s were, for example, citizens of the U.S.A. and also owed loyalty to the U.S.A., but they were never U.S. nationals. This distinction between “citizens” and “nationals” still exists in the United States Immigration and Nationality Act, 1952, and on several occasions a decision was given that the term “American national” had a wider meaning than “United States citizen”.

The identical situation is also found in certain Latin American states. In England “citizenship” means, in constitutional law, membership of a local community. International law also recognizes the concept of domestic citizenship as against foreign citizenship. This is a recognized concept in international law. In the well-known Dread Scott case in 1857 the American Chief Justice Taney, on behalf of the Full Bench, held that a Negro was not a citizen of the state of Missouri in terms of the constitution of the U.S.A. This decision again led to the acceptance of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of America in 1868, by which citizenship of both the State and the Federation is recognized by the provision which reads as follows—

It therefore boils down to the fact that a person obtains constitutional nationality of the United States in this way, but it is also possible for a person to be a citizen of the U.S.A. without being a citizen of a specific state of the U.S.A. In this connection, Sir, I want to refer you to the case of Hammerstein, where a lady went from America to England, and because it was her intention to become domiciled there, the American court held that she thereby lost her citizenship of that specific state, but that she did not loose her U.S. nationality. This distinction must be made and borne in mind in respect of the legislation at present before this House. The writer of the source also points out that as long as an area does not yet have the status of a state, no nationality can be obtained. Hon. members opposite would like to continue upon the argument that no citizenship can be obtained here because there is no sovereign independent state. This is not a concept recognized in international law. Dual membership was maintained in several of America’s areas, which were then known as “territories of the United States”. In this case I need only mention, for example, Alaska which was bought from Russia in 1867. That purchase agreement provided that inhabitants of Alaska could personally decide if they would obtain citizenship of Alaska or of the U.S.A. Then there is the case of Hawaii, which was annexed in August, 1898. All persons who were citizens of Hawaii before 12th August, 1898, then became citizens of “the United States and of the Territory of Hawaii”. It also differed in respect of the independent states to which hon. members referred. Sir, I refer you to the situation in the Philippine Islands and in Porto Rico where this independent citizenship was also maintained. In these instances the Spaniards, who were inhabitants of the areas, also obtained citizenship of those areas, but they obtained their passports and their protection from America. The question was asked here by one of the hon. members opposite about who was going to issue the people with passports one day. There is also recognition of this situation in international law. Further examples that can be dealt with, which I cannot go into for lack of time, are, for example, the Virgin Islands, Guam, Samoa, Panama and the Canal Zone, which are similar cases.

Sir, then I should like to refer you to the statement of a great authority in this field, Sir Frederick Cleveland, who said the following—

Then I also want to refer you to what a very well-known authority in this field, Dr. Cooley, says in his work “American Citizenship”. On page 23 he states—

What edition is it?

I do not have the reference here, but it appears on page 23— Cleveland in his “American Citizenship” refers to Dr. Cooley on page 23 and he states—

Then he continues—

Therefore, Sir, you see that it is a very familiar international law situation which we are also dealing with in this Bill. There are also other authorities dealing with this same aspect. I refer you to “British Nationality Law” by Mervyn Jones. There the writer says, for example, on page 1—

Hon. members opposite, who are concerned about us being engaged here with a recognized constitutional law matter, may rest assured that we are acting correctly here as far as constitutional law is concerned; international law recognizes the situation and the particulars have already been given in the debate, by other speakers, of how our own people, white as well as non-white welcome this legislation and would like to have it.

The hon. member for Potchefstroom who has just sat down has obviously raided the library to get several volumes dealing with constitutional law and he has come here with a technical case in an attempt to justify a Bill which he knows himself is an admission of failure on the part of the Government. Sir, the position is quite simple. Obviously the Bantu are going to get dual citizenship, and in simple language it involves two aspects: (a) economic citizenship that will be irrevocably tied up for all time with the Republic; (b) the other kind of citizenship they are going to get is political citizenship, a citizenship of convenience conferred on them by this Government. The hon. member also talked very glowingly last night about the sayings of a Tswana chief, who said how important it is that the Bantu people should be able to develop a national pride, their own culture and tradition. But the point that the hon. member forgets is that this chief was talking about a situation within the homeland where he was residing. The hon. member forgets entirely about the thousands upon thousands of Bantu who have long since completely severed any connections which they might ever have had with the homelands. The situation to-day is entirely different.

Millions of them.

Sir, I think the hon. member for Nelspruit also referred to the Jewish people and their homeland, Israel. The Jewish people really began to develop a national pride when they got a country of their ownn a place in the sun, where they could permanently reside, and this most certainly is not the case in respect of millions of detribalized Bantu in our urban areas. As I have said earlier, I believe that this Bill which we are now considering in this House, is surely the most convincing evidence that we could ever wish to have that the Government no longer has any confidence in its policy of separate development which everybody acknowledges is falling to the ground. [Interjections.] Hon. members know that that is so and they are trying to concoct some last ditch effort to convince the people outside that separate development is in fact practicable. This Bill is simply a smokescreen. I believe that when we put the true facts of the case to the electorate of South Africa, this Bill will play a large part in unseating this Government.

Order! That point has often been made before.

I want to raise the point as to why this position is so. It has been made quite clear to us that the Government policy is based on an ideal that the numbers of the Bantu people in the white areas should decrease and that there should be not only physical separation between the residential areas, particularly in regard to the Bantu, but also physical separation in the sense that they should be given homelands which should be gradually developed in such a way that they will be able accommodate not only the natural increase in these Bantu homelands but also the Bantu now resident in the white areas. It is becoming increasingly clear every day that this policy simply cannot be carried out. That is the reason why the Government has come to this House with this Bill. Now I am averse to quoting statistics because statistics to an argument can be like a lamppost to a drunk, more a means of support than a source of light, but I would like to quote statistics to support my argument.

Does it need support?

We do not need support, but the Government needs support and they are trying to bolster up their failing policy with this Bill. In 1946, when we still had a sensible government in South Africa, there were 1.7 million Whites in the urban areas and about 2 million Bantu. In 1960, after approximately 12 years of this Government and its separation policies, we find that there were 2.5 million Whites and 3.5 million Bantu The tempo of integration between Black and White under this Government was increasing very rapidly, and by 1967 the position had got even worse and there were 3 million Whites and 4.5 million Bantu. The Government, realizing this position and realizing that the homelands to which they had hoped to be able to transfer the Bantu resident in the white cities have not been developed sufficiently, now come with this measure. But I want to tell hon. members opposite what in fact the position is in the Transkei, one of the homelands to which the Bantu are supposed to be repatriated. In case you do not believe me, Sir, I want to quote a real authority on the subject, a man who knows what is going on in the Transkei. I want to quote Chief George Matanzima, who was speaking in Graaff-Reinet. I am quoting from the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser of Thursday, September 18th. This is a reliable paper, Sir, and it often gives prominence to what the hon. member for Graaff-Reinet says; so I think we must accept its bona fides. It reports Chief George Matanzima as saying—

I think the hope that this Government will ever succeed in its policy of repatriating Bantu is failing; that is why it makes this last effort. Matanzima said that the people sometimes misinterpret his visits; he does not go round to summons people to the Transkei; on the contrary, he is trying to arrange work for his people in the Republic. In other words, more people are going to come out than are going to be repatriated, and it is true that people in the Transkei sometimes die of hunger. He is therefore not prepared to encourage people to emigrate to the Transkei, because it would mean that he, who is fighting for the welfare of his people, is prepared to have his people bundled into the Transkei where they will starve and die of hunger. Sir, this is rather a dismal tale. I think the sooner the Government accepts the situation and realizes that once and for all we are going to have an ever-increasing Bantu population not only on the platteland but also in the urban areas of our country the better. Therefore, the more it involves realistic policies which can deal with that situation in a realistic way, the better for South Africa.

Have you seen the map drawn up by you people?

Further, Mr. Matanzima stressed that to the Transkei Government separate development means development and then separation, and not the other way around. I think this is a point hon. members opposite must appreciate. What they are trying to do by hurrying up the political rights of the people in their homelands is to do it the wrong way round, and Chief George Matanzima realizes the position only too well. Before you try to move the Bantu back into the homelands, you should see that those areas are developed and that work opportunities are created. You should create a situation where they voluntarily want to go back to their homelands because they realize there is an opportunity and a “heenkome” for them there. Until that position is created, legislation of the kind we are dealing with to-day cannot possibly solve the many problems with which this country is confronted, and it is for this reason that I very strongly support the amendment of the hon. member for Transkei that this Bill be read this day six months.

The hon. member for Walmer’s speech may perhaps have sounded very interesting to him, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with this Bill. The matters he touched upon there are matters that should have been discussed during the discussion of the Bantu homelands question, when the Minister so pertinently emphasized how economic development should take place for the benefit of the homelands. Had the point been raised there, it would have proved of value, but this measure at present before the House deals with citizenship and has nothing to do with the economic aspect of the homelands as such. I, in my turn, therefore say that the entire discussion last night, and from the beginning, about this subject boils down to a question of recognition and disregard. this Bill recognizes not only the Bantu homelands, but it recognizes at a high level that that homeland is inhabited by people who speak one language, that it has a government embracing all the work of a government, that has the recognition of the inhabitants of such a country because they are governed by their own government there, because they speak their own language and because they decide there about their own weal and woe. This Bill recognizes that, and for the first time in the history of South Africa it is giving an international status to a citizen living in that country.

And what about those living here in the Cape?

It is now giving him citizenship, while in the past one had that meaningless term that labelled a man a Bantu who was not a White, Coloured or Indian, as provided, for example, in terms of the Population Registration Act. Now this Bill recognizes that the inhabitants of that particular country, say the Transkei, are citizens belonging to the Transkei, and the same applies to the Tswana, the Zulu, etc. It is recognized that those citizens belong to that particular homeland, and when he now, for example, goes abroad, his passport does not display the meaningless term “Bantu”; it states that he is a Xhosa, a Basuto, a Tswana or a Zulu. The Bill consequently affords status or recognition to those people which they never had in the past. Now the Opposition comes along and disregards it in all their discussions. By virtue of the fact that they are opposing this Bill they deny that there is such a thing as a Zulu living in Zululand, or that there is such a thing as a Xhosa living in the Transkei. They disregard all those various ethnic groups and Bantu peoples of South Africa. For example, they leave any European country absolutely in the dark. If, for example, one encountered a man to-day on whose passport it stated that he was a European, how would one know whether he was a Hollander, a German, a Frenchman or a Belgian, because there is only that vague term “European”, It still does not indicate anything, and consequently I think that the point made in wanting to make a comparison between this Bill, the measure we are dealing with here, and America, is totally wrong; they are not comparable. In Europe one has one continent with various nations, with various languages and countries, and a Hollander is a Hollander when he lives in Holland and speaks Dutch, and likewise you have a German who was born in Germany, who lives there and who speaks German. He is inherently a German citizen. Here one also has the same position, that a man will inherently be a Xhosa if he was born in the Transkei and if he speaks that language. [Interjection.] Yes, there are assimilatable groups. That goes without saying. If one takes a young Hollander and one brings him up in England, under their traditions and customs, he will become an Englishman, but then he no longer has ties with Holland or with the Dutch language. Consequently, if one took a young Xhosa, for example, and had him brought up by a Basuto mother, with the Basuto customs and language, he is assimilated into that group, just as, for example, an important figure in British history, Lord Milner, who was as much of an Englishman as I am a horse. [Interjection.] I do not have the time to enlarge upon that now, but what misconception was there. But that is just by the way. But to-day the Opposition disregards all those various Bantu peoples of South Africa. If such a person were to travel in Europe or in America they want those countries to be in the dark and not to be aware of the existence in South Africa of a Xhosa nation or a Zulu nation, or any of the other Bantu peoples. Now we are giving citizenship to those various population groups who belong to those various Bantu homelands.

Dual citizenship.

This is an essential process in the development which is also taking place in South Africa in the emancipation of the Bantu. I still remember very well that when the late Mr. Hofmeyr offered such strong opposition when we spoke about guardianship over the Bantu, he always said that if such a thing as a guardian exists, the stage must probably be reached one day when a form of emancipation must take place, and here is one of the most essential steps one takes to prove one’s honesty and sincerity towards those tribes who were then and still are subordinate to South Africa, because we are, in fact, engaged in a process of emancipation. It is no use telling him that there is a country and that the matter rests there. When he goes abroad or makes contact with any other country in the world, he will be able to say that whereas, under the guardianship of the South African Government, he previously received no recognition of the fact that he was a Xhosa, he now does receive that recognition. If he were now to find himself in any place in the world he could be told that he was ostensibly a Bantu, but a Bantu in the sense of, for example, a European, the only difference being that the one is white and the other black. The term European is not indicative at all. It could mean anything under the sun. It could mean a Hollander, an Italian or something like that. Here we are now dealing with an absolutely essential process. Recognition is now being afforded to our Bantu on an international level. When going abroad he could say that he was from South Africa. He could point out that although he is classed under the term “Bantu”, a Bantu in South Africa means the same as “European” in Europe. Now, however, he will be able to say that he is not only a Bantu, but that he is a Xhosa, a Sotho or a Zulu. That is the status we are now giving those people. It is an absolutely essential process of emancipation, if we want to be honest about it. However, the Opposition denies the Bantu this. A way in which one can hurt a person’s feelings is to insult and to disparage the group to which he belongs. Neither is there, then, any greater form of disparagement than specifically to disregard him. What greater disparagement can one direct at the Xhosa nation than to state that no Xhosa nation exists? What greater disparagement can one direct at the Zulu than by telling him that one does not recognize any such thing as a Zulu, one only recognizes a Bantu? One must necessarily hurt the feelings of good friendship and the good understanding between people of various races if one adopts the attitude of the United Party in so blatantly opposing a measure such as this. If there has ever been a measure which will evoke the necessary respect in the future between the Whites and those other various population groups in South Africa, it is specifically this measure. They are now being given international recognition for the first time, the recognition that in South Africa no less than eight different population groups exist in the respective Bantu homelands. Consequently this Bill will be regarded in the future as one of the measures that has helped to bring about a better understanding between Whites and non-Whites in South Africa. It will prove to have been an unprecedented step forward. When white South Africa took that great task of guardianship upon itself, it was fully aware of what guardianship means. One has no clear understanding of it if one does not also take the process of emancipation further. Just as we have accepted guardianship in the past and maintained it, so must we also take the process of emancipation further. This measure is then also the most positive step in that direction.

Mr. Speaker, I have sat here during the course of this debate and I must admit that from time to time I felt rather appalled at some of the speeches that I have heard from hon. members on the Government side in dealing with an issue which is probably in terms of race relations, the most important that we have in South Africa. This matter transcends all ordinary political considerations and all normal party divisions. It is something that affects the whole of the Republic of South Africa. It is something which is going to leave its echoes in the long years ahead of us. If we do what is wrong now, it will not be possible to redeem it hereafter. The Minister seems to glory in the fact that he is now responsible for doing something in respect of which we will never be able to turn the clock back. That is a very grave responsibility what the hon. the Minister takes on himself.

We have one simple issue in regard to this matter. The fundamental issue is that we are destined to live together here within the confines of South Africa. I say we have to live together. Not jammed up socially and all that kind of thing. The Bantu of South Africa and the white people of South Africa, together with the other race groups, have to live together. The issue simply is: How do we live together in amity? How do we live together in peace? Here is the issue. The hon. the Minister to my mind goes blindly forward with legislation from time to time. This is the second measure we have had during this Session. The Minister goes blindly forward, oblivious to all the trouble that he is causing and the potential explosive situation which he is creating. Through blind ignorance and lack of understanding of his own portfolio and the people he is dealing with, he just rushes headlong taking South Africa with him willy-nilly.

There are many hon. members on the other side who understand the Bantu. They just say “ja” when they are told to say “ja” and “nee” when they are told to say “nee”. After that they seem to think that they have done their share by the Nationalist Party. That is all they are called upon to do in the Government of South Africa. They vote yes or no as the case may be and this is determined for them by the party bosses. They know that this is wrong.

How many people have you told to say no?

The hon. member for Umhlatuzana will find out how many noes there are when the 22nd April comes. He need not worry about that. I tried to listen with interest to the hon. member for Middelland, who has just come in. I expect that he probably sat down in his study and went through all his books investigating the historical background of the Bantu races and that sort of thing.

I did.

He then came here and made a speech which was completely divorced from reality. That is the big impression on my mind after listening to this debate and what hon. members on that side had to say, from the hon. the Minister downwards. It is a fantasy entirely divorced from reality. It is a complete fantasy. Citizenship, Mr. Speaker, means something to you and to everyone of us in the House. It may be very hard to define it in all its nuances, in all its finer meanings. But it has meant a great deal to many people. It has meant so much to some people in South Africa that they gave up their lives for their country. That is how much it meant for some people in the past. What does it mean to the Bantu people when we are passing legislation like this and are applying it? The hon. the Minister says that it will apply to everyone of the Bantu people in South Africa, men, women and children. When the State President signs this Bill then it is applicable to every man, woman and child of the Bantu people in South Africa. What does it mean to them? It is all very well for us to sit here in Parliament and even here to disagree as to the precise meaning of the citizenship that is presumably being placed willy-nilly, whether they like it or not, on the people of the Bantu races in South Africa. They have not asked for it. That question was put yesterday. It was not a rhetorical question. It was a pertinent down to earth question, namely: Have the Bantu asked for it? The answer is no, they have not. Have the white people asked for it? The answer is no, they have not. When the State President signs this Bill there will not be one change in so far as one single Bantu is concerned throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. The exception is the agitators. The agitators will grasp this with both hands. They will appreciate what has happened and the significance thereof. They will be the only ones that will appreciate it. Hon. members know that. Hon. members who know the Bantu know that. To the ordinary men, women and children it will make not one iota of difference at the time of the signing of the document.

Mr. Speaker, I go further. I should like to know what steps the hon. the Minister has taken in advance to explain to the Bantu what he is doing. How does he explain citizenship to the 9 million ordinary, raw, rank and file Bantu? I was up in Natal over the past weekend and I saw one of the court interpreters there, a Zulu. I said to him: You are an interpreter in the court. Will you be called upon to explain this Bill? The Bantu know about this Bill. He said: “Yes, possibly I shall, Sir.” I then asked him: “How do you explain citizenship? If you have to stand up in front of a group of Bantu and explain citizenship to them, what will you say to them?” He replied: “I shall say to them that they must honour, respect and salute the King of Zululand. That will show that they are citizens of Zululand.” Sir, he immediately associated loyalty to the King of Zululand with the Question of citizen-ship. If a person became a citizen of Zululand, he would have to owe respect and loyalty to the King of Zululand. That, to him. was citizenship. I than asked him: “What happens to the loyalty to the Government?” He replied-“We Shall respect the Government because it has the authority and it can compel us to do certain things, but when we are told that we are citizens of Zululand, we shall be loyal to our own King.” That is natural and therefore I wonder what the hon. the Minister is going to do to explain this concept to our 15 million odd Bantu. How is he going to explain the concept of dual citizenship to them, the type of citizenship which hon. members on that side fought against so long and so hard? You see, Sir, citizenship as envisaged by this Bill, is to be granted to all Bantu, even those in territorial authorities. They do not need to reach the stage of the Transkei. The Government is dragging its feet and hanging back when it comes to bringing any other Bantu authority to the stage of the Transkei Government. Not a single member of this House, from the Minister downwards, will have the temerity to stand up here and say: We are now going to take one more of the so-called Bantu nations and give them the status and the government we have given to the Transkei. I challenge any one of them to do so.

We will do so.

The hon. member at the back there, after deep thought …

[Inaudible.]

The hon. the Deputy Minister of finance does not even know his own job. He must not interfere in Bantu Affairs. The hon. member for Fauresmith said that they will do so. Will he tell us the name of the Bantu group which is to be given a government on the same level as that of the Transkei?

That will develop in time to come.

You see, Sir, he runs away from this question immediately. He is not prepared to identify them, because the Government does not intend to give them that level of government. To us this Bill is an empty shell. It means nothing. To the Bantu agitator it is something to which he will cling and hold fast through all the troublous times that may lie ahead of us.

Did South African citizenship mean anything to you?

Sir, I resist the temptation to reply adequately to that question. It meant much more to me than it did to the hon. member for Middelland. While the hon. member is talking about what South African citizenship means, I want to say that I listened to the speech he made yesterday, and that he should be ashamed of that speech. The hon. the Minister has many times, and again in his second-reading speech, referred to the respect which the Bantu should feel for themselves. He referred to the soul of the Bantu. Sir, the Bantu already have self-respect. Why is there any suggestion that the Bantu do not have self-respect? The hon. member for Middelland, by implication, made exactly the same allegation yesterday. He asked why the Bantu do not have any self-respect. What is wrong with the Zulu self-respect? There are no more self-respecting people in the world than the Zulu people. Why does the hon. member talk like that? Why does he talk about the soul of the Bantu? What does he know about the soul of the Bantu? They are a loyal, responsible and self-respecting people.

I know the Bantu better than you do. I live among them. I speak three African languages.

Sir, when I listened to the hon. member yesterday and heard the way he was carrying on, I wondered what he would do if the Bantu Police we have throughout the length and breadth of South Africa, decided that we as white people could do our own police duties? I wondered what he would do if those Bantu Police were to leave us and go back to their homelands, and take the Government at its word. What would happen to law and order in South Africa without the help of the Bantu Police? Let us face the facts. Let us be practical and realistic. I am a realist. Sir, and I should like to ask the hon. member, in the light of the speech he made yesterday, whether he is not ashamed of himself when he thinks back on that speech.

I am ashamed of the United Party.

Is he not ashamed to have spoken about people like that? Mr. Speaker, we do not only want the Bantu in commerce and industry. We do not only want them in all the activities which make the wheels of South Africa turn. We also want them in our Police Force and in other fields as well. Let us try to look ahead a little. Let us try to realize the difficulties other countries are facing. If such times are to come upon us, are we going to call upon Bantu, who are no longer only South African citizens, but who can claim a loyalty and a duty to some other country, a loyalty based upon language, race and blood, which will tie them to their homeland, this ephemeral place which exists in the imagination of the Minister? Is that going to be our position? What is wrong with giving them South African nationality, which the Nationalist Party gave them? This Government gave them South African nationality. What was wrong with that? Have they ever been reproved for it? Has anybody ever complained about it? Why do they not leave it like that? Why do they go and disturb it? Surely it should be sufficient for them to be able to say to the world: We have a law-abiding and responsible Bantu population in South Africa, who are proud to be South African citizens. Why should they not be? Has the stage now been reached where the Nationalist Party is so scared of the Herstigtes that they want to show that there is a cleavage between citizenship for white people in South Africa and citizenship for Bantu in South Africa? The Minister shakes his head, Sir, but he is the architect of partition …

You are pitiable.

The hon. the Minister is given to these little interjections from time to time. I think we can just leave it at that. I have asked how the Minister is going to explain citizenship to the Bantu? The Government cannot even explain the latest tax which has been devised for the Bantu. They are now putting the responsibility on the employers to explain to their Bantu employees how the new tax is to be applied. The Government cannot even explain an ordinary tax. The Deputy Minister of Bantu Development is leaving soon, and we wish him good luck in his new post. He can speak Xhosa. I should like him to think it out and then decide how he would explain this concept of citizenship, as envisaged in this Bill, to the Bantu people, without detracting from their loyalty to South Africa.

They claim it themselves.

Sir, if you ask a Zulu whether he is a Zulu, he will say “yes”. If you ask a Xhosa whether he is a Xhosa, he will say “yes”. If you ask a Tswana whether he is a Tswana, he will say “yes”. Does that imply citizenship? It implies blood ties, but where does the concept of citizenship come into it? This is a purely artificial European concept. It has none of these connotations whatsoever in the Bantu languages. It is a purely European concept which has come about as a result of our civilization throughout the centuries.

I want to look for one moment at how it is going to be applied. We had before us recently the question of the disposal of the Bantu in location No. 6 in the Richard’s Bay area. Nearly 4,000 of these people are involved. On the signing of this Bill they will have Zulu citizenship. The Minister has not decided where they are to go. He is moving them from their homes although he has not consulted with them. He is moving them nevertheless. Some will go to one place, some to another and so on. They are going to places where they will be available to provide labour the new developing Richard’s Bay industrial complex, ’’That is where the Minister is putting them. They have not been consulted and they have not agreed to go anywhere.

They have been consulted.

The evidence given before the Select Committee was that they had not been consulted. They were told what to do.

That is how you put it.

No, it is how your officials put it before the Select Committee. They put it like that. These people were told and they are being kept in the surrounding areas so that they can do their work in that new industrial area around Richard’s Bay. Those people are now willy-nilly going to have Zulu citizenship put upon them and they are going to be dissipated under these circumstances amongst other groups and other tribes. They do not belong to the adjacent tribe. They are going to be dissipated. At what stage does this citizenship get something meaningful in it? When is it going to get something which will mean that a man can say in regard to his citizenship, “I am proud to be a Zulu with Zulu citizenship”. To-day he says, “I am proud to be a Zulu”. He has self-respect, he is proud of his history and of his people but when can he also say that he is proud to have citizenship and what will it connote in terms of his dealings with the Government? Will it stop people like those from location No. 6 being moved around under the circumstances under which they are being dealt with at the present time? What will they get as a result of citizenship? Do they get anything at all? I hope the hon. Minister will show us that there is something meaningful, some substance in this question of citizenship, if he is going on with it. We are seeing here in South Africa the British Kenya policy being adopted by this Government. They gave British citizenship to the Bantu in Kenya and they left them to themselves. They went through all the travail and all the trouble and we know what the outcome has been. The Government to-day is doing precisely that. It is fragmenting the Bantu people. It is giving them a loyalty to something else completely outside the Government of South Africa. Our concept is a common government in South Africa under which we all live, the Coloureds, the Bantu, the Asiatics and the Whites of all races and groups, all with one common loyalty to one fatherland under one central government in one country with sacred borders. That is our concept and the Government is destroying that. They are breaking that down. They have admitted that they can do nothing about the Coloureds and the Indians. The late Dr. Verwoerd said that he was prepared to do something about it. The late Dr. Verwoerd had a very important Quality in his character. He had a very strong Quality which at the same time was a weakness. He was very definite and logical and the fact that he was logical was a strength and a weakness at the same time. He would face an issue unlike hon. members opposite. Mr. Speaker, do you know that we do not have a single member of the Cabinet at the present time, 1st alone any of the ordinary Members of Parliament on that side, who will face the logical consequences of their own policy when it is taken to its logical conclusion. There is not one. They do what that hon. member did: They run away from it. As soon as they can see the consequences when they are logically put to them, they take fright and run away. The late Dr. Verwoerd did not do that. What did Dr. Verwoerd see as the logical outcome as far as this question of citizenship is concerned? He saw the logical outcome as a commonwealth here in Southern Africa. The Government do not talk about that any longer.

We do and we say so.

Mr. Speaker, I want that interjection recorded. The hon. the Minister says that they do talk about it. They are going to have it and it is coming.

We talk about it in the same sense as Dr. Verwoerd talked about it.

The same commonwealth of nations is still your policy then?

Yes.

The hon. the Minister said “yes”. Now we are getting somewhere. It is still the policy of the Government to have the same commonwealth of nations here in South Africa. This shows us that Dr. Verwoerd’s concept which was going to bring into that commonwealth of nations all the various groups that the hon. the Minister is now creating with their own separate homelands and so on, is still the Minister’s idea. One representative of the one white race in South Africa is going to sit here amongst the eight representatives of the eight states which will form this commonwealth of nations here in South Africa. That is the ideal of the Minister and of the Government. That is the ideal that is being lent the weight of all the hon. members sitting on that side. They are all backing it. Here now is the vision glorious that we have been waiting for, a commonwealth of the eight black nations of Southern Africa with our one white representative in the midst of them. That is the destiny of South Africa as the hon. the Minister sees it. Now we see this citizenship in its true colours.

You were quite content with the British Commonwealth.

Mr. Speaker, it is no good that hon. member using Std. VI politics here to-day. His Minister has spoken for him and whether he likes it or not he is now committed to it. I want to get this matter pinned down as we have been trying to do this for a long time.

It is on record.

Yes, that is right; we have it on record but we want it nailed down. It is from this point then that we have this departure to-day where we are dealing with citizenship because now you are going to have these people free to throw off South African citizenship. That is the next point with which I want to deal. When you have the self-governing nations created on the model of the Transkei, there comes a day, whether, we like it or not, when they will do what we did to British citizenship. We did not say to Britain: You must throw off the concept of British subjects in South Africa. We passed a law in this House and we said that there would be no more dual nationality, British citizenship is out. We will have South African citizenship and that alone. These Bantu states will also be able to say: Dual citizenship is out. Being of South African nationality is out. You cannot have both. You can be a Xhosa with Xhosa citizenship, a Zulu with Zulu citizenship, or whatever the case may be. Their parliament will then pass the law stating that there will be no dual citizenship. That is what we are heading for at present. Now Dr. Verwoerd’s dream of the past will be given effect by the hon. the Minister if he gets his way. I hope that something intervenes to stop him before he puts South Africa on that collision course. Nevertheless we know what his intentions and those of the Government are at the present time. Surely, one of the essential points of all our legislation should be that it should be easy to explain to the people whom it affects. It should be possible to explain legislation to the people whom it affects. I have dealt with this point and I want to hammer it home by saying this. Here in Parliament we can pass a law and deem a man to be a woman but biologically it does not turn him into a woman. I wonder whether hon. members opposite will get my point in regard to this question of citizenship. We can pass all the laws we like in regard to Bantu citizenship. We are either going to make it meaningful and say that this legislation does mean what it says, namely citizenship carrying with it full responsibilities but also full powers, or it carries nothing in the way of responsibilities, because all the responsibilities of our Government in South Africa are retained in the Bill. So what does it carry? We are simply saying that this woman shall be deemed to be a man and that biologically it is null and void and of no effect whatever. That is the effect it will have at the present time until such time as the agitators get hold of him. I want to warn my hon. friend opposite that then there will be a different story to tell, one I do not wish to go into today. We all know perfectly well that the mass of the Bantu people cannot have explained to them the meaning of citizenship as set out in this Bill. We all know that. We know that there are millions upon millions of them who cannot grasp that concept. But the hon. the Minister goes forward with it. At this particular time, in the face of all the advice he received from his own people who know what they are talking about in regard to the Bantu—not that they asked for it; they told him not to do it— he still goes forward. In the face of all that he proceeds on his collision course. When he was speaking the hon. the Minister said that many problems will disappear when this Bill is signed. I would like the hon. the Minister to tell us in his reply what the problems are with which we are faced in regard to the Bantu question at the present time, which will disappear. Will he kindly enumerate the problems which will disappear? I can tell him of some of the problems that he is going to get in their place. I would like to know what problems are going to disappear, and I hope the hon. the Minister will tell us. [Interjection.] Will he just tell us about two such problems. The truth of the matter is that here is a Western concept being forced upon the Bantu who do not understand it, do not want it. and do not know anything about it. It is going to create confusion and trouble between the State itself and the Bantu. It will create trouble between masters and servants. It is also going to create trouble between the urbanized Bantu who is long past tribalism. As for the Bantu on the hilltops, the raw Bantu, I can already see in my mind a gathering of the old women. Those old native women sit hour after hour and discuss events as they come along. Somebody will then say: “Let us talk about the citizenship the Minister has given us.” Then one will hear a roar to heaven of “Mai babo, nesotini ngaloko na!” What are we going to say about that to-day? There will be nobody to explain it to them. The speech of the hon. the Minister was a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end. He has been adequately supported by most of the speakers on the other side of the House. Those who know most about the Bantu on that side of the House, have been conspicuous by their absence from this debate. They have good reason, namely because they know it is wrong and that this Bill cannot be defended. I hope they will support this side in voting against the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, first I should like to make a few general observations, and then I shall react to the remarks made and questions put by hon. members on the opposite side. For the sake of goodwill, I shall begin with the last speaker, i.e. the hon. member for South Coast, who has just resumed his seat.

I want to begin approximately where I left off in my Second Reading speech, when I was saying that I hoped that this Bill would bring home to everyone in South Africa, and to us as Whites in particular, as guardians of the non-white nations, that we have a task to fulfil in respect of the development of nations in South Africa. This one can summarize in the brief clarion call which I uttered, namely “Do your duty by the nations.” Whenever I tell anyone in South Africa to do his duty by the nations, it has an express dual significance. In the first place, it has a significance in respect of one’s own nation. For that reason each one of us must each day do what is necessary to strengthen and to develop our own white nation. I do not want to concentrate now on the Whites, for they are not what this Bill is all about. Then there is the second connotation which I want to emphasize strongly when discussing this Bill, and hon. members on this side of the House did in fact do so very well. We as Whites must realize the task we have in respect of the other nations in South Africa, whose members we must help to ensure that justice is done to them among their own people and to develop within the cadre of their own nations. That is what this Bill is all about in respect of the Bantu. The Coloureds and Indians, of course, are not involved in this Bill. The discussions in this debate showed how completely unwilling the United Party is to grant to the individual person and to the homogeneous communities of Bantu persons their own worth, which is a universal concession throughout the entire world to homogeneous human communities. Eskimos are granted the right to be Eskimos; Japanese are granted the right to be Japanese; Italians are granted the right to be Italians; Americans are granted the right to be Americans, and Brazilians are granted the right to be Brazilians by the hon. Opposition. But a Zulu is not granted the right to be a Zulu. A Zulu is required to be a mixed South African together with myself and together with the hon. Opposition members on the opposite side.

But what about an Eskimo who is an American citizen?

The hon. member for Durban (Point) is this morning in an entirely different state than he was in last night, and he cannot now speak so out of turn as he did last night. This is irrelevant now. Eskimos are entirely irrelevant here and the hon. member knows it. He will not divert me from the thunder and lightning which I am going to pour down on him this morning. As I said, the debate showed that the Opposition on the opposite side stubbornly denies, or as the Germans put it, “vernein”, those universal human rights which date from the time of the Creation— the Bible teaches us that there are separate nations. The hon. member for Durban (Point) is after all so fond of quoting from the German. They do not grant the Bantu that right, if they do not understand what I said before. The debate also shows that we recognize this, and that we want to build on it. That is the theme of this Bill. In general I do not want to say much more than this, except that I should very much have liked, so sincerely did I ask for a positive attitude on this matter from the side of the hon. Opposition, to have thanked them as well to-day if they had shown but a touch of positivism. However, there was nothing, and I regret there is nothing I can thank them for. On our side, many hon. members made very positive contributions, and it has become unnecessary for me to react to certain points raised by hon. members on the opposite side. I want to thank hon. members on this side of the House very sincerely for their fine contributions. I hope that it will prove a stimulus to all our many supporters throughout the country to dedicate themselves afresh, with the same dedication we saw in this debate, to the implementation of our policy outside, away from this House. We are coming forward with this Bill for citizenship for the Bantu before the Bantu homelands are independent because it is so patently obvious that the Bantu can even now share in the benefits of such an internal citizenship. That is precisely why we are bringing it in advance and that is also why we brought it in advance for the Transkei, as well as in the constitution of that area. This enables the Bantu, at this early juncture, to build on the benefits, and enables them even now, as with many other matters in which they must also go through the evolutionary process of development, to develop this in an evolutionary manner into a full-fledged distinctive citizenship at a subsequent juncture in the future, if that can come. I am in full agreement with my friend, the hon. member for Krugersdorp, who said that this measure would contribute a great deal to the improvement of relations among the Bantu nations on the one hand and the Whites on the other, and also that it would contribute a great deal to the way in which each one of those Bantu nations follow their distinctive course of development. As regards that positive task of building up good relations among the nations in South Africa, it seems to us that the National Party will have to follow that course with the wheel skids of the United Party behind us like drags.

I now want to proceed to react to what individual members said.

†I wish to begin with the hon. member for South Coast, because he was the last speaker on the other side. After that I will go back to the others according to the sequence in which they spoke; that is to say in so far as they raised points which are noteworthy. The hon. member for South Coast tried to stress that we in South Africa are destined, as he put it, to live together with all the groups in South Africa. Yes, we are destined to do so. We are also destined and called upon to devise schemes and methods how to set about to put into evolution a proper order for good relationships between these groups. That ds where we differ so fundamental! / as the Government and the Opposition in South Africa. This Bill relates to a matter also in connection with which we on the Government side demonstrate clear and sober logic, whereas on the Opposition side we see that they suffer from blind obstinacy, wishful thinking and unwillingness to accept the natural, inevitable human development within the ranks of every one of the Bantu nations we have in South Africa. We see that for the umpteenth time here in this House. I fear that also after the 22nd April, when we come back to these benches and they in diminished numbers to those benches, we will still see that.

Whistling in the dark.

I will speak to that hon. friend of mine again. I hope as soon as possible after the 22nd April. It is no use making cheap political talk of this matter. It is a most serious matter. One cannot laugh it off and try to get it off the agenda by referring to Hertzogites and all sorts of -ites and -zogs we have in South Africa. We have to apply our minds to this matter under consideration. I say to the hon. member for South Coast that it is most disappointing and dangerous for them on the other side that they are so adamant to force unassimilable, distinct Bantu nations into one organic whole with the white nation of South Africa. It is not only disappointing; it is most dangerous. It is unacceptable. It is deplorable. It will be confirmed by the electorate on 22nd April. I should like to know whether that hon. member for South Coast and his party are prepared to integrate nationally with the Zulus, whom the hon. member for South Coast knows so well, and with all the other Bantu nations in South Africa. Do they want to integrate with them nationally with all the implications that it entails?

What do you mean by national integration?

I say that we on this side are not prepared to integrate with them nationally, definitely not. That is why this Bill is before us to-day. I say here, and I am going to repeat it outside, and I appeal to my colleagues to do so as well, to the public of South Africa that the United Party wants to integrate with the Zulus and all the other Bantu nations in South Africa nationally.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question? Will the hon. the Minister please explain to us what he means by “integrate nationally”?

To integrate nationally means to do what the Opposition asked for during this debate. That is to say, all the 18 or 20 million human beings in South Africa and all the others to come in future, must all belong to one South Africa with one nationality with one system culminating in one Parliament here in this House. That is integration nationally. Nothing but that is integration nationally. We will explain that from Dan to Beersheba before the 22nd April.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question? Do all the Bantu and all the various races including the Whites in South Africa have a common South African citizenship in terms of the law?

I will deal with that point during the course of my speech and I am not shying away from any matter. At present the position is that there is a dual form of citizenship in South Africa as other hon. members on this side of the House have indicated. It is incorporated in the Bill. Hon. members must allow me to reply in sequence to the points made by hon. members on that side of the House. I should now like to deal with this matter of dual citizenship. We of course have a double form of citizenship. But, as other members on this side of the House have already pointed out, that is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of the disintegration of this dual citizenship that we have. That is what we are providing for in this Bill. [Interjections.] I should like to continue with my speech if hon. members on that side of the House will allow me to do so.

Have we a common citizenship?

I replied to that question just now. Does the hon. member want me to repeat that three or four of five times? The hon. member for South Coast asked me a pertinent question which was quite correctly answered by the hon. member for Fauresmith. The hon. member for South Coast wanted to know which other Bantu territorial authority would be the next to have a Transkeian form of self-government? My reply to the hon. member is that it may be any one of the other territorial authorities we have at present. However, it depends upon their own progress and their own ability. The Government does not believe in straitjacketing them into a timetable by saying that the Venda must be second or that the Tswana must be second. It depends entirely upon their own ability and progress. As far as we are concerned, it may be all of them at the same time or anyone first.

Who will decide?

Who will decide? We in conjunction with them will decide, as in the other cases. The hon. member for South Coast also asked what the privileges will be that Bantu will enjoy in terms of this form of citizenship. As a matter of fact, I dealt with that, very concisely I must admit, in my introductory speech. It is not necessary for me to say more than that. Any intelligent person can elaborate himself on what I have said. However, I should like to quote what I have said in my introductory speech. I said:

There are also many other privileges on which we can elaborate. That is the type of privilege and I can mention many others. I should like to have the courtesy of the hon. member for South Coast because I am replying to him in particular. I should like to have his attention.

All right.

I should like to have his attention especially in regard to the next point. He thinks that he can play football with it, but we are going to play the football. His question was: What about the Commonwealth idea which Dr. Verwoerd mentioned here various times and also outside this House?

Do not tell me that you are going to repudiate what you have said just now?

I am not going to repudiate what I have said. I now have the opportunity to reply properly to that question. I cannot do so while sitting in my bench and therefore I am now going to read out to the hon. member what I have written very recently in connection with this matter. What I have said is in every respect in accordance with what Dr. Verwoerd said. I want to say categorically that the Government does not deviate a single inch from what Dr. Verwoerd envisaged in regard to a Commonwealth association. I want to remind the hon. member that neither Dr. Verwoerd nor anybody else on the Government side or within the National Party ever envisaged a Commonwealth with a central parliament which could legislate over the authority of this Parliament. Therefore, it might be to the benefit of the hon. member if I read out to him what I have written in this regard very recently. I quote:

If that is not clear to any man, even to a dumb one, then I do not know what to say. That is exactly what Dr. Verwoerd said and that is what we stand for. That is the dispensation we can have in South Africa ultimately in terms of our policy if it develops to its logical conclusion.

*The hon. member can now sit back and relax for a while; I shall now refer to other hon. members who participated in this debate. I shall begin at the beginning, and that is with the hon. member for Transkei, who said that I was living in cuckoo land.

A Cloud-cuckoo-land.

No, I am not living in cuckoo land, but I know of quite a number of members on the opposite side of the House who are living in the land of blind moles. They shy away completely from reality. Then these hon. members and numerous others come forward with a refrain which they agreed on somewhere, apparently in a committee room. Apparently they agreed to say that this Bill is removed from all reality. The greatest exponent of that idea was the hon. member for Mooi River. While I am now referring to the hon. member for Mooi River, I want to pay him the sincere compliment, from the heart and without the slightest trace of a tongue-in-the-cheek attitude, that he in every respect, seen from his point of view, made a better speech than did the hon. member for Transkei. The Opposition ought to have let him speak first. [Interjections.] Yes, that is so, for I must confine myself to the truth. Whilst sitting here, I listened to the arguments by hon. members on the opposite side, but at the same time I also evaluated those hon. members. This is a kind of incidental political pastime which I feel I must have. I evaluate them, and in the debate on the opposite side of the House, the hon. member for Mooi River was number one. For the last in line there are two strong competitors, either the hon. member for East London (City) or the hon. member for Durban (Point). Yesterday evening the hon. member for Durban (Point) was at his very worst, the worst I have ever seen him to be.

I must have got under your skin.

Sir, after this playful interlude, we are now going to turn to more serious matters. After what I have just said about the hon. member for Transkei, he will realize why I am going to reply to more points from the speech made by the hon. member for Mooi River than from his speech.

Apparently you cannot reply to them.

No, Sir. With such a superficial remark the hon. the Leader of the Opposition must not amuse himself here. The hon. member for Transkei said that the Bantu were going to obtain certificates of citizenship whether they wanted them or not; this could bring the Bantu nothing to their advantage, but could only bring them tremendous disadvantages because they would have to pay tax and would be assessed for taxation. Sir, surely these are two nonsensical arguments to put forward. Anyone, who merely glanced through this Bill would laugh at that remark of the hon. member. It is of course an extremely derogatory attitude, but it is in keeping with the technique of hon. members opposite. Everything we do, no matter how good, must ge demolished and destroyed. The hon. member referred to taxation, but what is the position? For decades all the Bantu in South Africa have been used to paying tax, not only indirect taxes but direct taxes which they themselves levy. It is ridiculous to tell us now that this measure can result in taxation. All the Bantu pay taxation levied by this Parliament, and almost all the Bantu in the homelands pay forms of taxation, which we in fact call levies, which they themselves have been levying all these years. All the territorial authorities have the power to levy taxation, whether this Bill is passed or not. Sir, the hon. member must not assume that everyone is as ignorant on these matters as his own colleagues, and that he can get away with an idea like this. He also said that at the time the Transkeians were told that they should register for the Transkeian Parliament and that they would in that way get preferential treatment as far as employment goes. Yes, I am the man who was the first to say this; I subsequently said it five or six times more, and I am still saying it today, at this moment, the 25th day of February, 1970, the year of Our Lord. This is one of the greatest benefits this measure can bring the Bantu. It is a phenomenal benefit that this Act will give the South African Bantu preference above any other Bantu in Africa as far as work in the Republic of South Africa is concerned. There is nothing wrong with that; that argument is perfectly correct. After all, we should also give preference to such Bantus who say that they accept in South Africa that they find their political home and aspirations in their own homelands rather than to come and seek it here in Cape Town among us. We give preference to that type of Bantu.

Then the hon. member and a few other hon. members discussed clauses 3 (c) and (d). He referred to language and affinity or association supposedly being such a difficult test to apply in order to allocate citizenship to Bantu individuals. He said there were inter-ethnic marriages between Bantu men and women in South Africa, and they did not know with what nation they should incorporate. Sir, up to the present this has never caused us any problems. There are the possibilities of appeal —this is quite correct—and the officials and the Minister who have to consider that appeal will let themselves be guided by reality in making those decisions. Sir, of what assistance has reality not already been to us in tre past right up to the present? I find it striking that hon. members on the opposite side have already forgotten that we have, for all these years since the reference book was introduced, been issuing reference books to Bantu individuals in South Africa and that in those reference books there is also a differentiation between the various groups of Bantu we have in South Africa. Those reference books are also issued after the Bantu has filled in a form which they obtain from our Bantu Affairs Commissioner who of course assisted them in filling in those forms. In those forms a series of questions are asked. I am sorry that I am so far from Pretoria; otherwise I would immediately get hold of a form to read out to hon. members here. On those forms all these questions are asked. The Bantu are asked whether they are Xhosas or whether they are Zulus or whether they are Tswanas, or what have you. They all state, with reference to that question, what they are. If you take the reference book of a Bantu male or female and glance at it, you will see at once to what homeland group that individual is affiliated, even if he or she was born in Langa in Cape Town. It is stated in that book. Are we going to have endless difficulty with citizenship certificates, if we did not have it with the millions of Bantu who already have their reference books? I think it is correct to say that about 100 per cent of the Bantu are now in possession of reference books; and we have not yet had any difficulties in regard to them. I especially asked the departmental official who works with this and who happens to be here at present assisting me with this Bill whether they had ever had any difficulty, he said to me “Sir, I cannot remember a single difficulty which gave us sleepless nights”. You have difficult cases here and there but those difficulties have all been solved. If we have been able to get all the reference books endorsed in this way, why should we have trouble with certificates of citizenship? To begin with, everything that we already have on record in regard to the reference books is going to be of assistance to us in allocating citizenship certificates to the right individuals, and in the same way in which they reply to the questions for the purposes of the reference books, they will do the same for the purposes of the citizenship certificates. I do not take it amiss of the hon. member for Transkei for making this ignorant remark: apparently he did not know these things which I have now explained to him, but since he is now aware of it, he must please not repeat these things. Other people who know more about these matters than he does, will laugh at him. With that I have finished with the hon. member for Transkei. I shall return to certain of his questions in my reply to other hon. members.

I come now to the hon. member for Mooi River. If he would like me to give him a testimonial on his speech, I am prepared to do so. The hon. member for Mooi River had quite a good deal to say about citizenship and, like other hon. members on the opposite side, he also discussed dual citizenship.

Unfortunately he will fall out at the election.

Yes. that is the tragedy. They lose their best members and retain their poorest. What I fin-1 so interesting in regard to the question of citizenship is that the hon. members think that they are scoring a bull’s eye when they come along and say to us: “You, the Nationalists are now introducing dual citizenship here, you who all those years were so opposed to dual citizenship in South Africa for the Whites.” Yes, we are proud of having been opposed to dual citizenship. Have the facts not shown that we were right in our attitude in the past in wanting a single South African citizenship, and not a British citizenship? What we intend here for the Bantu is the equivalent of what the Nationalist envisaged for himself in the past, namely that the end result for the Bantu must be their own single citizenship. I think it was the hon. member for Germiston (District) or one of the other hon. members on this side who stated very strikingly yesterday that the dual citizenship which is the point at issue in this Bill is not the end of the road, but only the beginning of the road.

May I also ask for a testimonial?

Gladly. Hon. members must just not ask me to lay these testimonials on the Table; that would be going a little too far. Sir, the United Party wants either a single citizenship which is associated with a foreign country, such as what we had in the past when they were in favour of British citizenship and not of a South African citizenship—that is their attitude—or, if not, they are satisfied with a dual citizenship, as they had at the time, as the object and as the terminal point of the road, and as something unchangeable. In this Bill there is neither of the two. We do not want a foreign citizenship of the Cape Town Parliament for the Bantu, of the nation which has its highest legislative authority here; nor do we want for them, from A to Z, for all time, a divided citizenship, but we cannot abruptly introduce their citizenship for them all at once. It must be an evolutionary process, and that is why this Bill is the beginning of the road and not the end. It is the beginning of an evolutionary process.

Then, Sir, I want to convey my appreciation to my hon. friend, the hon. member for Windhoek, who came to tell me here that he had not had the opportunity to do so, but that I should nevertheless remind the Opposition that no less a person that their illustrious leader, General Smuts, himself introduced dual citizenship for the Germans of South-West Africa, and that it was we who subsequently had to change that position. The memory of hon. members is very short; they do not know their own history.

The point is that you were against it.

Yes, in that case as well because they formed an integral part of the Whites. The South-West Africans are now sitting in this Parliament; they are part of this Parliament, and that is why they must share one citizenship with us. But we do not want the Bantus to share one citizenship with us which culminates in their sitting in this Parliament. Can the hon. member not understand that?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Mooi River and others—including the hon. member for Transkei—said that my speech was supposedly such an unreal speech, far removed from all reality. Sir, I am now going to tell you of what reality my speech is comprised, and the hon. member for Krugersdorp actually took the words out of my mouth in his speech when he referred to the reality of the Bill, but I want to repeat that briefly in this context. The hon. members on the opposite side are, as I said a moment ago, denizens of the country of the blind, moles who see nothing because they cannot see, or those of them who did in fact see a glimmer of light, are all Rip van Winkles, sleeping an eternal sleep. Sir, we speak in this Bill of the various Bantu nations, of the Zulus, the Tswanas, the Vendas, the Shangaans the Xhosas, etc., and in the of her Act of two years ago we spoke of the Ovambos and the Kavangos, etc., of South-West Africa. Is this unreality? No, Sir, these are hard, living facts. Are they not hard, living facts that in South Africa there are Zulus, and that there are Tswanas, and that there are Vendas, Ovambos, Hereros and Xhosas, and what is more, as Bantu nations? Surely this is hard reality. And then hon. members come and tell me that I am living in an ethereal world, in the clouds as someone expressed it. Sir, the Opposition does not a limit this. They do not want to recognize that we have surrounding us in South Africa Bantu communities who are different to us, each of whom has an own identity and who are capable of development. For that reason it is they who lose sight of reality and do not want to recognize it, and it is they who want to do something unreal in regarding all those people about us as nationally integrated, as I explained here a moment ago, and who want to integrate them further with us. It is they who are dealing with unreality, not us.

Sir, the hon. member really asked me a strange question which certainly cannot be reconciled with his intelligence, unless of course I am mistaken about his intelligence, and I do not think that I am making a mistake. It was to ask me what would happen if all the Zulus were to become white.

Overnight.

He must please not repeat that question to his children because they will laugh at “Daddy”. The hon member wants to know whether we will then stiff regard them as a separate nation. Sir. the Germans are a white nation and the Hollanders are a white nation; but they are not one nation, they are different entities. Let us come closer to where there is no language difference. The Australians are English-speaking and the New Zealanders are English-speaking, and they are not one nation.

But what about the Germans in South Africa?

They are engaged in merging, quite deliberately, together with such refractory English-speaking persons as the hon. member for Durban (Point) and together with such refractory Afrikaners, as I am perhaps, into one nation in South Africa.

In my speech I expressly dealt with the question of the criterion of colour and I said that ethnic identification is not something which is based on language only. That is why I have just furnished the example of the New Zealanders and the Australians, who speak the same language, but who are different nations. That has nothing to do with it. Nor does it have anything to do with colour or the language. People of the same colour, are not yet the same nation. [Interjections.] If the hon. member wanted to intimate that if all the Zulus should overnight, speaking quite hypothetically of course, become Whites their amalgamation with us into one nation would then be acceptable to the Whites, then that is also a very erroneous deduction, for then all the albinos the hon. member can find among the Bantu nations ought to be integrated with us into one nation. Sir, that is a real albino argument.

The hon. member also said that a stable political society should be our aim. Of course, and we insist that our policy in general with this Bill as part of it, will result in far greater inter-ethnic stability and goodwill in South Africa than that party’s integration policy will result in; for could you imagine, if all these nations were drawn together into this Parliament, how they would struggle here to gain supremacy? If they could all have land tenure throughout South Africa and could work and attend universities on an equal footing, how they would rot struggle among each other for supremacy, what friction that would not result in, and what conflict that would not cause? That is why I say that the policy which the hon. member for Mooi River advocates will cause far more political instability than our policy.

The hon. member also asked “whether the independence of the Bantu is the Government’s aim”. We have on various occasions furnished a very clear reply to this question. I shall repeat that our policy states that every Bantu nation can develop constitutionally along its own lines, and that we accent as the end point of the road the possibility that each one. of them can become an independent nation: and we will say this an hour before election day as well, because we have said it on numerous occasions already, during the previous election as well. But the United Party does not want to admit the full consequences of its policy. I am not for one moment saying that they are deliberately heading in that direction, but I say that their policy is heading in that direction and that they are closing their eyes to the fact that their policy is heading in that direction—namely that the end result of their race federation policy will be that the Bantu will gain the upper hand in this Parliament. It is no use making hopes and wishes one’s goal.

The hon. member also stated that the certificate would cause so much labour disruption, but may I remind the hon. member of the fact that we are even now negotiating with certain independent countries, and that we negotiated with other countries when they were still Protectorates. We also concluded labour agreements with them, and this produced everything except labour disruption, in fact if was more conducive to labour regulation. The first treaty we signed with the Malawian State was a labour treaty to regulate the labour relations between us and Malawi, and the position has been improved in this way, and not made worse. I shall return subsequently to this subject in my reply to the hon. member for Green Point. When that labour treaty was negotiated with Malawi, the Malawians working in South Africa did not all stream back to Malawi. Those are the words the hon. member used; he said that when this citizenship was introduced and they had to find work in white South Africa, inter alia, on the basis of their citizenship, they would stream back to their homelands. But the Malawians did not want to stream back, neither did the people from Lesotho, nor the people from Botswana and from Mozambique. These are people with whom we had agreements, or understandings if we did not have agreements. That argument is therefore a fallacious one. But the hon. member must tell us whether they will succeed, under their race federation policy, in confining the labour on the farms, which the hon. member spoke about, to those farms.

They will remain there.

The hon. member is saying that they will remain there. Very well. I should like to see whether the hon. member can state this everywhere, and do so candidly; this hon. member who in particular is trying so hard to be modern in this modern world. He will have to come and tell us, and will have to tell other people outside South Africa, how he will succeed in confining, in this modern world, Bantu labourers to a farm, as he has just said they would do.

He never spoke about that.

Confining, pinning down, compelling—use whatever verb you please. [Interjection.] Now the hon. member must remember the contradictio in terminis in what he says, the contradiction: He wants to bring the Bantu even into this Parliament to have a say here, and then thinks that in terms of that same system he will succeed in compelling the Bantu workers to remain working on the farms forever, while their own people have a say in this Parliament in getting the Act changed.

On a point of explanation, Sir, I never said that I wanted to bind the Bantu to the farms.

The hon. member said so five minutes ago. He said so here by way of an interjection “we will do that” and it is already recorded on tape. The hon. member spoke about the control of the rural areas which is extremely important. Yes, of course, and I repeat that we can only expect that we will be assisted to a great extent if these citizenship certificates can be given to the Bantu as a status symbol to regulate and to help perpetuate their presence in the white areas, if the proper conditions are coupled to that, as I said a moment ago.

†I now come to the hon. member for Houghton. I must admit that to a certain extent I was a little embarrassed when the hon. member spoke in such glowing terms of the gleam she saw in my eyes, but fortunately it was only a gleam on a film.

It did not last long.

It did not last long enough, Sir, and that is the trouble. Well, unfortunately I cannot say that I saw a gleam in the hon. member’s eyes. No, in her eyes I see blindness only, figuratively speaking, because she refuses to accept what she sees around her, and I said the same thing a moment ago in regard to the United Party. They see Zulus and Vendas and Shangaans and Hereros, and the hon. member also sees such different groups in South Africa, but she refuses to accept this heterogeneity which she sees in South Africa. Therefore I say it is not a gleam but a blindness in her eyes. I know we can remove some blind spots, but some blind spots cannot be removed, according to the pathologists, and hers is that sort of blind spot in the eye; it cannot be removed. The hon. member said it was too late now in this year to start making separate nations. We do not make separate nations, Sir, the Almighty did that. We do not make separate nations. The Zulus and the Shangaans and the Hereros, and all the various Bantu nations, came into being without the doing of this party or of this Government, or of any party or Government in South Africa.

Were they made all different?

They are not made now. This is an organic evolutionary process which started many decades ago, and the hon. member should know it. [Interjection] She should know it if she listened to the speech of the hon. member for Durban (Point) last night, which started before the time of Adam and Eve. Sir, they are separate nations and it is only necessary for us to organize this diversity and to regulate it, and that is what is going to be done in terms of this Bill when it becomes law.

The hon. member also said that the Bantu in South Africa would not go back to tribal conditions, and that they prefer to stay in the urban areas. But this is not only a matter of tribalism. It is a very important matter and I tried to bring that home to hon. members, and particularly to this hon. member, that we are not dealing with tribalism only in this Bill. We have to do with national affinities, which is a wider thing than tribal affinities. But the hon member does not know that. But we have ample proof, especially in the most urbanized areas in South Africa, like Soweto, for instance, that although the Bantu people there are severed from their tribal connections they are still connected with their national units, with their nation as such, by bonds of tradition, history and language, all those bonds which I mentioned in my speech the other day. [Interjections.] For a Bantu man or woman to be in the white area of South Africa is not incompatible with his national citizenship which we are introducing in this Bill. It is not incompatible at all and I said over and over that those with this citizenship will be more welcome here than those who refuse to accept that separate citizenship. The labour preference for our South African Bantu visa-vis the foreign Bantu in South African can now be stabilized by linking it up with his own citizenship, which is to the good of us all, the Whites in South Africa, as well as the Bantu individuals and their nations and their authorities.

*I come now to the hon. member for East London (City). There is not much I can say to him. He also spoke of reality, and I have already furnished a reply to this, but I just want to add the following. If he has not yet gone about enough in Johannesburg and spoken to Natives there, I would recommend him to do so for a while, quite on his own, and accost a Native there and ask him: What are you, what language do you speak and where do you or where did your forebears come from? And he will receive a reply from each one of them. Now I am asking you. Sir, whether this is unreal? I want to say something here which is of particular significance for our policy in South Africa, and that is that the Bantu nations who have immigrated hence from the north of Africa to where we know the Republic and their homelands to be to-day, all of them here, have, in their homelands and in the white areas, even in Cape Town, retained their own specific language, and have also learnt the languages of other nations, including my language and the English language, which is also one of the languages of our country. The hon. member must contrast this with the portion elsewhere in the world, particularly in that country whence we are getting so much we-know-it-all advice. I say again— the hon. member spoke of “africans”—that the black Africans who came from African countries to the north, all retained their languages in the Republic, Sotho, Zulu, Xhosa, all of them, but those who went to America did not retain their languages. The Negro of America did not take his language with him. He was incorporated into that human society, but the Bantu nations here retained theirs, and they were afforded an opportunity here of coming into contact with more different languages than their brothers in America came into contact with. Here the Natives are coming into contact with English, Afrikaans and with other Bantu languages. In South West Africa they are also coming into contact with Germans, and already speak the language reasonably well. I know a Bantu who is to-day chairman of one of the territorial authorities, a multi-lingual man, a real “polyglot”, a man who can speak more languages than I can, for apart from almost all the Bantu languages in South Africa he can also speak English and Afrikaans. Nevertheless he is a member of his own specific nation and they have chosen him as chairman of their territorial authority. This is typical of the Bantu in South Africa, things which are being given effect to in this legislation. And then we have to hear about “cuckoo land”, and so on. Now the hon. member for East London (City) can put his question.

Why does the hon. the Minister regard them as separate nations because they are multi-lingual, while the Whites, with many languages and extractions, are regarded as one nation?

The hon. member is all at sea. The point is that we Whites in South Africa have one form of ethnic context with two languages, something which is not so strange either. This is where the hon. member for Musgrave floundered yesterday evening. A nation can have more than one language. As far as the Bantu are concerned, it is our policy that the Bantu must not amalgamate with us; they must not become one nation together with us, with their separate languages, so that we do not become even more of a multilingual country. On the contrary. Every Bantu group becomes a nation on its own, with a citizenship of its own and with their particular language as the primary language within that area.

I have now done with the hon. member, despite the temptation of discussing the “fiktitiese” or “fiktisiese” (fictional/fictitious) nations of which he spoke. I could not make out which of these two terms he used. The hon. member did rectify this subsequently though, by speaking of “denkbeeldige” (imaginary) nations.

As regards the hon. member for Albany. I did my best to find at least one point in his speech to which I could reply. Since he is one of the newest members in this House and also takes an interest in these matters, I should so much like to find something to which I could reply. There is in fact one minor point to Which I have already replied. He stated that the Bantu have the same citizenship as the Whites and that this should remain at that. Very well, this is merely the refrain we hear from that side. The hon. member must realize that his party wants to give the Bantu citizenship in name only, and then subsequently restrict their rights as much as they can. In this connection the hon. member must remember that a person who has equal citizenship with us, has equal rights in every respect with us. The party opposite wants to maintain "White leadership which means "equal rights’ in name, but “you will be sorry if you should put it into practice”. That is their attitude, and the hon. member for Albany must give some thought to my words. If what his party advocates is done, the Whites here will be inundated.

The hon. member for Green Point said many odd things, and I shall let these pass, including the rather unsavoury remarks he made on what he saw in Vendaland. As I said, I shall let these blow past. After all, he only did so for the sake of cheap political effect. The hon. member gave out that traditionally the opening was not there. All I want to say in reply to that, is that it merely goes to show that that hon. member does not have the ability to understand the essence of the Bantu nations. In the same way as the hon. member for Houghton did, this hon. member also had eyes only for the externals, such as togas which are hung over the shoulders of the Bantu, things they had been using in their territorial authorities all these years. But the deep-rooted spirit and essence of the entire function he has missed completely. The sad part of it is that the hon. member has grown old and white here in the shadow of Table Mountain. He also deplored the fact that this Bill is not creating a South African citizenship for the Bantu. By so doing he merely confirmed the unnaturalness of their own policy, of wanting to force people into a unity, and combined their half-baked and faulty views and brought into full view the danger of national integration with the Bantu. His criticism in regard to the identification, I have already dealt with, and can therefore be omitted. In addition he said that the loyalty of the Bantu to the Republic was in conflict with the Bantu’s citizenship of a specific territorial authority. That I cannot accept. By no means, because the loyalty which they can gradually and to an increasing extent develop towards their territorial authority, does not inevitably mean enmity towards us. Other countries meeting together in the U.N.O., for example, countries each with it own citizenship, sworn enemies? Not necessarily. In the application and implimentation of our policy we must see to it, and this Bill will aid us in that, that the Bantu develops a good disposition towards us here in white South Africa.

I said that the Bantu would put loyalty to his own homeland first.

Apparently the hon. member is even now not able to explain what he meant yesterday.

I come now to the hon. member for Pine-lands. I understand that he unfortunately cannot be here. Actually he did not say very much to which I can reply. In effect he only asked three questions which boil down to this, to what extent this Bill, and Bantu nations each with their own citizenship, can be of assistance to us in the implementation of our policy. I say that they can, in many respects. It can help us with the consolidation of Bantu areas. By this means we can give a greater geographic significance to the citizenship and distinctive identity of a Bantu nation. In addition, it can help us with the regulation of labour and to get the presence of the Bantu in the white areas onto a properly rationalized basis. In this way it can help us in many ways. Here a new basis for negotiation is being created, a basis for a new understanding between us and the Bantu.

The hon. member for East London (North) was really looking for points. It then occurred to him to ask me where the Tomlinson Report had recommended separate citizenship and in what respect this was in accord with Dr. Verwoerd’s views. With that the hon. member thought he was asking us a question we could not answer. Let me give that hon. member a piece of sound advice. There are two documents I want him to read. The one is the Tomlinson Report. It will take a long time, but he would do well to read it. Then he will see that the entire spirit and essence of that report is in complete accord with this separate citizenship for separate Bantu nations—in complete accord with it. In reply to his question to what extent this Bill was in accordance with Dr. Verwoerd’s views, I can quote him many examples. The simplest is the Constitution of the Transkei, a constitution which was passed here in 1963 when Dr. Verwoerd was still Prime Minister. In that constitution there is a section which reads that for the Transkei there will be a Transkeian citizenship. Does the hon. member perhaps want to suggest that Dr. Verwoerd did this for the Transkei and would not have done the same for the other Bantu nations?

For those who are in the white areas.

Dear me, Mr. Speaker! The ignorance of people who have to make the laws of our country! Transkeian citizenship is accorded Transkeian citizens as far away as Messina. From thence they exercise their franchise. If this is the case, would. Dr. Verwoerd perhaps not have granted it to the Shangaans working in Johannesburg? How can the hon. member ask a question like that? I think the hon. member should, if he does not know anything, keep it hidden rather than to display it here. The hon. member also asked how we were going to keep the communists away with this Bill. Perhaps we will not be able to do so directly by means of this Bill, but we will be able to do so by means of other methods, the same as those with which we sup pressed them here in South Africa when hon. members opposite were still in favour of our not doing so. As far as Communism from beyond our borders is concerned, the hon. member for Potchefstroom indicated in the words of a Bantu leader what their attitude in this regard is. There are more Bantu leaders than only that one who say the same thing. I hope the hon. member will live long enough to be able to see that if this should ever happen, and I sincerely hope it does not, i.e. that the communists have to be turned back on our borders, that this Bill was instrumental in stimulating a good disposition among the Bantu towards the Whites, to such an extent that they will help us to keep communists out. This is, in any case, one of the objectives which we must seek to achieve—to ensure good alliances and a sound disposition on the part of the Bantu.

As regards the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District), there is in fact one point I should like to deal with. He asked whether all the rights of the Bantu are now going to be rescinded. Now, I have already replied to this on various occasions, but I shall do so again. In the first place this Bill is rescinding no rights whatsoever. The hon. member must show me where this Bill is rescinding the rights of any Bantu. On the contrary. This Bill creates the possibility of far more rights for the Bantu. But these are rights which stand in the correct relationship with the position of the Whites in South Africa. These rights are rights which will arise out of their membership of their own nation, their own citizenship and not out of an integrated national entity with us as Whites. Therefore, this Bill is depriving the Bantu of nothing, but is bringing the Bantu added advantages. It is affording the Bantu a new status and a new intrinsic value X—another important benefit. I do not know what the hon. member was hinting at when he spoke about rights being taken away. Under our policy all so-called rights which could lead to equality with the Whites in South Africa on a basis of integration will in due course be removed by us.

Including rights under section 10 of the Urban Areas Act?

I said “all rights which will lead to integration with the Whites in white South Africa in all the various spheres”. All these rights will in due course all be affected.

That is all their rights anyway.

I have finished speaking to the hon. member. I spoke in this House on section 10 at the right time and in the right place. This is not the time for that.

The hon. member for Musgrave was very much at sea in regard to race, colour, language and peoples. I want to make it very clear to all and sundry in South Africa that the U.P.’s policy is a racistic policy, one based on races. In fact, this is what they call it—for example, they talk about a race federation. All that is White, they regard as one race. That is correct. In contrast to that, they regard all who are Bantu in South Africa, as one race. That is also correct. But then they want to bring these two races together within a political unity.

That is not true.

It is true. Our policy is anthropologically founded. Our policy is not racistically founded. We accept the unities of nations, for within one race there can be many nations. This must be clearly understood. Within the western white race in the world we find many and numerous nations. This is, according to the United Party’s policy in South Africa, an absurdity. Within the Bantu race as we know it in South Africa we find many and various nations. This is the same inside South Africa and also beyond our borders. We accept the nation basis. Our policy is anthropologically and not racistically founded. Let us have a good understanding of this.

Now I want to tell that hon. member that neither colour, nor language, are determinants for a nation’s unity. He can jump about as frantically as he wishes, but this is very clear. Consequently it will not help him to argue about it. If he does so, he will find himself in a maze and in a pool of mud. There are other magical factors which when all put together, inextricable from the unity in which they are interwoven, create the unity of a nation. Those magical factors we cannot disentangle. That is why we say that these three million people who are Xhosas, have a language which is one of the most clearly distinguishing factors, but this is not the determinant. This is not the decisive factor. They are one unitary community as a nation owing to those intangible cohesive elements which they share. This is what we find among all nations in the world. This is what we are struggling to such an extent with in the case of our own white nation in South Africa. This is the difficult process of becoming a nation which those hon. members do not want to accept and do not want to recognize. With those words I think that I have dealt with the hon. member for Musgrave, as far as that one argument of his is concerned.

The hon. member also said that we do not want to admit to our voters that our policy can result in independent Bantu states in South Africa. I put that point to the public time and again during the previous election in no less a place than Natal. I also stated it in the other provinces. If the hon. member thinks that I have never said this, he is a Rip van Winkel more than anything else. If he thinks that we have never said this, I want to say it again in this debate. We accept that the end of the political road for each Bantu nation is independence if they are capable of that. We are not evading this eventuality. We are doing everything possible to have that eventuality one day result in the best possible situation for Whites and Bantu in South Africa, but the United Party is evading the eventuality of their policy. With that they are being untrue to the people of South Africa.

Last night the hon. member for Durban (Point) spoke about LSD and opium. I wondered when he was going to start talking about love philtres and clay oxen, for last night he really carried on like an old bone-thrower of the United Party. For once in my life I had to witness to his discomforture how the hon. member for Yeoville himself felt utterly ashamed because of the ignorant debating of the hon. member for Point, who went back to a point in time prior to Adam and Eve, and who in his point had no point. That textbook which the hon. member had hold of last night was apparently far beyond the comprehension of the hon. member. Yesterday evening, at least, that was the case. Perhaps that will not be the case this morning, but last night it was definitely beyond his comprehension. I want to go into only one point raised by the hon. member. The hon. member spoke about languages, and he tried to prove that the differences in language among the various Bantu nations is something we can negate and ignore. He then compared things which should not be compared. He pointed out that the Xhosa and the Zulu understand one another. Sir, they are cognate languages. He then said that we should consider Tswana and Sotho. But they are cognate languages. Then he may as well say that Flemish and Dutch is the same language. Why does the hon. member not compare the Venda to the Xhosa language or the Sotho and Herero. Why does he not do that? That is why I told him that he was adopting a stupid attitude yesterday evening. That is a stupid attitude.

I have already replied to the point made by the hon. member for Walmer.

Do you agree with Matanzima?

I agree with him on many points, and on many points I do not agree with him. What is strange about that? He does not agree with everything I say either, but the point is that his ideas can find a culminating point in his country, but not in mine. My ideas must find a culminating point in my country and not in his.

Mr. Speaker, this brings us to the end of this debate, and I want to convey my sincere thanks to those hon. members who participated in this debate for their contributions. I hope that in the stages which lie ahead we will also have the constructive assistance of members on the opposite side so that we can deal expeditiously with this Bill. [Applause.]

Order! I hope the hon. member will not clap his hands again.

Question put: That the word “now” stand part of the motion.

Upon which the House divided:

AYES—101: Bodenstein, P.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Brandt, J. W.; Coetsee, H. J.; Coetzee, B.; Coetzee, J. A.; Cruywagen, W. A.; De Jager, P. R.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, C.; De Wet, M. W.; Diederichs, N.; Du Plessis, A. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Haak, J. F. W.; 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.; Kotzé, S. F.; Kruger, J. 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.; Maree, G. de K.; McLachlan, R.; Meyer, P. H.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rail, J. J.; Rail, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Stofberg, L. F.; Swanepoel, J. W. F.; Swiegers, J. G.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van Breda, A.; Van den Berg, M. J.; Van den Heever, D. J. G.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, J. W.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Viljoen, M.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visse, J. H.; Visser, A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Vosloo, W. L.; Waring, F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentzel, J. J. G.

Tellers: P. H. Torlage, G. P. van den Berg, P. S. van der Merwe and H. J. van Wyk.

NOES—39: Basson, J. A. L.; 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.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Moore, P. A.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Taylor, C. D.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; 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.

Mr. Chairman, this is the clause which establishes the citizenship. In terms of this clause every Bantu person in the Republic shall be a citizen of a homeland, whether he wants it or not. As we have said before in the Second Reading debate, if he wishes to get a certificate of citizenship, he can get it by applying for it. But whether he applies for it or not, he will, in terms of this clause, become a citizen of a homeland. He may be detribalized and living in an urban area. He may never have seen a homeland. He may have no interest in a homeland. In terms of the next clause, with which we cannot deal now, there may even be a dispute as to which homeland he belongs; but he will belong to a homeland. In terms of this clause he is given dual citizenship. He will not be regarded as being an alien in the Republic and the hon. the Minister certainly cannot take his citizenship away from him if he has obtained it by birth. He loses none of his obligations to the Republic. He also loses none of his rights. Of course his rights are very limited. He acquires rights as a citizen of the homeland and he must take up certain obligations towards such a homeland. What rights will such a person get in the homelands in terms of this clause? He will get no more rights than he has at present. As I have pointed out during the Second Reading debate, if he lives in a homeland and he occupies a piece of land, he will continue to occupy that land. I want to ask the hon. the Minister what right a person who was born in an urban area, lived there all his life and who has never been to a homeland, have to obtain land in the homeland where there is no land available? It is all very well saying that he will get rights in the homeland, but we are still waiting for the hon. the Minister to tell us what rights they will be. The only right such a person will get is that not only because he is a citizen of the homeland, but if he applies for a certificate, he will get preference in the labour market. This will be a means of forcing the Bantu to apply for citizenship in the homeland. He might not want to be a citizen of the homeland, but he will willy-nilly be forced to apply for citizenship in order to get work in the urban areas. In his reply to the Second Reading debate the hon. the Minister dealt with certain of the, what he called, privileges. He said these privileges will be bestowed on him by legislation or administratively. We asked what these privileges were. The Bantu will be given opportunities for employment in the urban areas. He will be given opportunities for residence in the urban areas. He will be given the opportunity to visit urban areas. Are these all the rights the Bantu will receive for the privilege of being a citizen of a homeland? What rights is he going to get in the homelands? What material rights is he going to gain on becoming a citizen of the homeland? The hon. the Minister ridiculed the fact that I said that he will now be subject to obligations in the homelands because I referred to the question of taxation. He asked me whether I do not know that every Bantu has to pay taxes. How ignorant does the hon. the Minister think I am? Does he not know that everybody knows that all Bantu have to pay taxes? Of course we know that. We have attacked the Government on many occasions in regard to the taxes Bantu have to pay. The point I made was that once a Bantu became a citizen of a homeland, and I refer to the example of the Transkei, he would then be obliged to pay taxes which the homeland government would impose upon him, no matter where he lives. That is the point I made and the one the hon. the Minister ignored.

I did refer to the levies. I will refer to the matter again in my reply.

I would also like the hon. the Minister to tell me whether an urbanized Bantu who was born and has lived in an urban area all his life and who has no connection with a homeland, can be made to pay levies for a homeland. Not at all, I submit. He cannot be forced to pay any levies to the homeland unless he has some contact with it, for example a piece of land or family. He will then have to pay certain tribal levies, but those who have left and who have dissociated themselves altogether, surely cannot be made to pay tribal levies? Once they become citizens of a homeland, however, the homeland government will be able to tax them, no matter where they live. This clause will only subject the Bantu to further obligations and will give him no additional material rights that he can enjoy. It also imposes on him new dual citizenship. The hon. the Minister argues that although such a Bantu has dual citizenship at the moment, this is only the beginning. We must accept it because through evolution he will eventually have only one citizenship. I say that that is absolute nonsense because the hon. the Minister himself limits the opportunities for the homelands to become so independent that they can only have one right to citizenship. Where does the hon. the Minister see any homeland getting sovereign independence in the near future or even in the distant future? Take for instance the Transkei, the one which is the furthest developed. Can the hon. the Minister in the foreseeable future see the Transkei getting sovereign independence if he himself insists that they must be viable before they will be given independence? We will have the citizens of South Africa subject to dual citizenship imposed upon them by this Government. The hon. the Minister says that by not giving this citizenship, we are denying them their nationality. They are a nation and we must honour their nationhood by giving them citizenship. If it would mean anything to them, we would say that they should be given citizenship. But I submit they are South African citizens and will remain South African citizens. Therefore it is quite unnecessary to give them this type of citizenship which really only means a sort of right in a local authority. It is a sort of city citizenship. That is all it will amount to. We are opposing this clause. We will vote against it and against the next clause. After that we will indicate our opposition to this Bill by recording our objection to the clauses because we cannot amend this Bill. We can see no way of making it any better and therefore we will not move any amendment. We are opposed to it in any terms.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to deal with one point only. The hon. the Minister evaded these specific questions that I put to him on this question of citizenship. I hope the hon. the Minister will be frank with us in this regard. This Bill has not been passed. The Bantu in South Africa have citizenship to-day. They are citizens of South Africa under our law together in common with all the other citizens of South Africa irrespective of colour. This Bill proposes to confer some other kind of citizenship, whatever nature it may have, upon them. I want this pinned down and clarified because the hon. the Minister avoided answering the questions to whether in fact there is one common citizenship for all the citizens of South Africa to-day irrespective of colour. He tried to equate nationality with citizenship. That is subterfuge. I am not dealing with quibbles like that, I am talking about citizenship in terms of this citizenship Bill. I say the hon. the Minister must say clearly whether, before this Bill is passed, there is a citizenship Act which applies equally to all people of South African citizenship irrespective of their colour? The hon. the Minister must answer yes or no to my question as to whether we have one common citizenship in South Africa under the law.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to make my position quite clear. I am going to opt out of this farce altogether. The Committee stage of this Bill can mean nothing at all in terms of ordinary Parliamentary dialogue or Parliamentary argument—not that one ever has any hope of convincing hon. Ministers to accept any meaningful amendments to any legislation that they bring before this House. The principle of this Bill has been accepted at Second Reading. I think I made my objections very clear. I see no point whatever in advancing the same arguments clause after clause. There is not the slightest chance that die hon. the Minister will adopt any sort of amendment during this Committee stage. I am going to opt out of these proceedings altogether. I think I have made it perfectly clear to this House and to the country as a whole that I do not accept any part of this absurdity, this conferment of a citizenship which is not requested by the people concerned and which gives no benefits whatever to those people when they receive the citizenship. From now on, I am having no further part in the discussion on the Committee stage on this Bill.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to raise again a matter with the hon. the Minister in relation to the position of the Bantu on farms. I specifically ask the question because there is a very real distinction between urban Bantu and the Bantu living on farms. Last night I made the point that there is a family relationship which has extended over generations between people who are resident on a farm and who regard themselves as part of the organization on the farm. If the farm Bantu are now given citizenship, what rights do they get in the Bantu homeland in regard to residence and in regard to the occupation of ground? Does the hon. the Minister contemplate that when this citizenship certificate is issued to people on the farms, they will then have the right to residence in the homeland? If this is the hon. the Minister’s intention, I want to reiterate what I said last night. I said that he was going to destroy completely the relationship between the White farmer and the whole of his farm labour. If a person has a paper in his possession which states that he is a citizen of a particular homeland, if he has a right to go there, I do not believe that the problem of farm labour is going to become any easier than it is to-day. Let me clear up something with the hon. the Minister. He asked me a question just now and I may well have misunderstood him. I am sorry if I did misunderstand him.

I should like the hon. member to repeat his question now.

The question is what right does the Bantu who live on a farm, have in relation to the homeland to which they have been allocated. They will be given a certificate which will say that they are part and parcel of a certain homeland. I ask this, because it is my particular interest. It is a very real problem for us who live in Natal because very few of us live more than a few miles from homelands or areas which we presume, although we have not been told so, will be part of either the southern or northern Zulu homeland or whatever set-up has been contemplated in Natal. I want to make it quite clear, when I said that I might have misunderstood the hon. the Minister’s question, that there was no intention in my mind in replying to his question that I was contemplating that they would be “vasgeketting”. I think that was the word which he used.

I changed the verb.

There was no intention on my part that the Bantu were to be bound like serfs in the old European society, to the farm community and the farming areas where they have grown up. I should like to know what the relationship would be between the White employer and the Bantu on the farm, in terms of the new certificate of citizenship which will create doubt in that Bantu’s mind. That doubt will be created in the Bantu’s mind as to where he belongs, what rights he has and what the intentions of the White employers are. I again want to stress the point that to the Bantu, the White man on the farm is the government. He considers the White man as the representative of the White Government. When you give him a certificate which says that he does not really live on the farm and that he has a right somewhere else, you are destroying in that one single act the whole relationship of farm labour in this country. I would be grateful to the hon. the Minister if he gives us an answer in regard to this matter.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for South Coast has specifically stated once again that he wants a reply to the question as regards “common citizenship”. He asked whether we were going to have this “common citizenship”. If I understand the Afrikaans translation of this correctly, the hon. member is asking whether we admit that we as well as the Bantu have common citizenship.

Unfortunately the hon. member for South Coast is not in the House at the moment, but he had asked a very important question immediately before business was suspended and that is whether we and the Bantu in South Africa had common citizenship, as he called it? I do not think there can be any problems in this regard, but in order to identify this clearly it is necessary to distinguish—something the hon. member did not want to do in his Second Reading speech because he dealt with the matter briefly—between citizenship and nationality. In this connection I should like to refer to the explanation given by Prof. Heine in the “Tydskrif van Romeins Hollandse Reg” on page 45 where he says the following—

The hon. member, who is present again, has to make that distinction if he wants a full answer to the question as to whether we have a common citizenship. But I also want to refer the hon. member to clause 2 (4) of this Bill, which corresponds to the relevant section 7 of the Transkei Constitution Act. Clause 2 (4) confirms this principle. Clause 2 (4) reads as follows—

Mr. Chairman, this principle is also being confirmed here. However, this common citizenship is also confirmed in another aspect, and that is in the issuing of passports. A passport does not mention a person’s race. When a South African Bantu applies for a passport, he receives such a passport and his nationality is mentioned on that passport—in English the word “citizenship” is used—and it says that he is a South African citizen; it does not say that he is a member of a Bantu race. This is also further confirmation of the common citizenship that is being enjoyed in that respect. In answering that question, distinction should therefore be made between a citizen of a State who enjoys full rights of citizenship under that State and who, therefore, enjoys citizenship, and a person who is merely a subject. The subject enjoys citizenship in the sense of the local, the municipal authority, while the citizen enjoys nationality in the wider sense of the word. For that reason one can put it this way: The Bantu is a subject of South Africa; the white person with his greater franchise rights, voting rights, etc., is a citizen, and both of them enjoy citizenship of South Africa as a result of the inter-state, international recognition South Africa enjoys as a sovereign state. I think that is the answer to the question put by the hon. member, that is whether we have common citizenship in South Africa.

I just want to say a few words with regard to the questions that have been asked here. The hon. member for Mooi River is not in the Chamber yet, but I shall furnish him with a reply as follows: He asked, “What rights do the Bantu get, in terms of their homelands, on the farms where they work?” As regards the presence of Bantu workers in White areas, whether they work on farms or in factories or in homes or in any other sphere of employment, we must realize, of course—and the hon. member for Mooi River, too, should bear this in mind— that this is being regulated, in the first instance, by laws other than the Bill we are dealing with at the moment. The presence of workers, and conditions, etc., are being regulated mainly in terms of the Bantu Labour Act as regards farm labour, supplemented by the Bantu Trust Act, Chapter IV, in which provision is made for the old system of labour tenants and the new forms which are replacing that, while in the other spheres of employment where they come to the prescribed areas, to the cities, the Urban Areas Act will enter the picture as well. The hon. member for Mooi River, who has entered the Chamber in the meantime, must realize that labour arrangements on the farms are being regulated, in the first place, by the labour laws applicable in that case, and they are the Bantu Labour Act and Chapter IV of the Native Land and Trust Act of 1936, while, in prescribed areas labour arrangements are being regulated by the Urban Areas Act and the Regulations in terms of all those matters, and by the Regulations in terms of the labour bureaux as established within the tribal areas and announced recently. The question of labour arrangements is, therefore, in the first instance, one for the labour laws. This Bill is not being introduced for the purpose of creating labour arrangements, but once this Bill has come into operation other privileges may be given to them not only as regards labour on farms but also as regards labour everywhere in the White areas on the basis of the citizenship the various nations enjoy in terms of this Act. In other words, they may be given preference to other Bantu. As a matter of fact, I can reply to the question of the hon. member by telling him that the position of the Bantu on the farms is essentially the same as it was up to now in terms of the existing laws and that materially these rights are not being amended directly and immediately by this Bill, but it may bring the Bantu additional benefits. I have tried to explain the matter to the hon. member as clearly as possible.

The hon. member for Transkei also asked what further benefits there could be for the Bantu. Well, a great deal has already been said about the benefits. I quoted examples of benefits that may be introduced. These depend on two different legislative authorities. In the White area certain benefits may be offered by the White legislative authority and administration. This will be done by this Parliament or by my department when it is being done administratively. The hon. member also asked what benefits the Bantu could get within the homelands. What he is going to get, does not depend so much on this Parliament. As the hon. member knows at present we can still make laws or proclamations, but fundamentally this really depends on the authorities of the Bantu themselves, in other words the territorial authorities of the Bantu, too, may decide—now and when their development has taken them to a higher form of self-government, such as the Transkei has at the moment—to grant certain benefits to their people or to introduce certain obligations or other activities connected with their citizenship. I want to go a little further in this regard by reminding hon. members of what I said in passing during the debate, i.e. that the North-Sotho people had asked me last year, immediately before they attained the activated higher form of self-government, whether they could not, before entering that phase, also incorporate the position of their own people in the White cities and on the White farms. I told them it was very wise of them to think of those people of theirs but that I did not think we should do it at that stage, because the whole process of establishing their territorial authority would thereby be delayed to some extent, and that attention should be given to that matter immediately after their new territorial authority had been established. I may tell the hon. member that this is something which is at present receiving the attention of both the North-Sotho territorial authority and the Department. Attention is being given to that wish expressed by the North-Sotho authority itself, and that is that they want to establish in one way or another a bond between their own people in the White areas and their system of territorial authorities. Whether that bond will be between those people and the tribal or regional or territorial authority is something we shall discuss with them, and in terms of this Citizenship Act, this is something which can come about more readily now, because, in terms of the citizenship which everyone will be granted, we now have something to which to tie this bond between the Bantu outside the homeland and the authority within the homeland. Of course, the hon. member should know, we have something similar—not in terms of this Act, but in terms of the Transkei Constitution Act—in the case of the Transkei, whose citizens outside the territory of the Transkei have the franchise, not on the tribal authority or regional authority level, but on the highest level, their Parliament. We therefore, have one concrete example of a benefit which the territorial authority wanted to offer its people of its own free will, practically before we have reached the right stage for doing so. I think the hon. member is simply doing everybody a disservice with his remark that, “nationhood means nothing to them”. It is not true that nationhood means nothing to them. These are, in fact, concepts which have to be developed into something valuable.

Then the hon. member for South Coast put a question to me. The reply that was given by the hon. member for Potchefstroom to that question was such a correct and comprehensive one, that I honestly cannot do anything else but repeat what was said by the hon. member for Potchefstroom. In point of fact, I cannot add anything to his reply, which was that we should realize full well that there were two concepts we might have been confusing in South Africa in their everyday use, namely nationality, the fact of being a subject of a State with its own political structure as against citizenship, i.e. membership of a particular people. We have the legal position in South Africa to-day that both White and Bantu people are citizens in the sense of nationality for international purposes. This is being recognized and respected, as it is also being respected in this legislation, as I said in my speech. But up to now we do not have in South Africa a position of national membership to which both Bantu and White people can belong—something comparable to what we are now introducing here for the Bantu peoples individually.

Clause Two put and the Committee divided:

AYES—102: Bodenstein, P.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. 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, C.; 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.; Haak, J. F. W.; Havemann, W. W. B.; Hayward, S. A. S.; Henning, J. M.; Heystek, J.; Holland, M. W.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Kotzé, S. F.; Kruger, J. 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.; Maree, G. de K.; Martins, H. E.; McLachlan, R.; Meyer, P. H.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rail, J. W.; Rail, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reinecke, C. J.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Swanepoel, J. W. F.; Swiegers. J. G.; Torlage. P. H.; 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 Niekerk, M. C.; Van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, J. W.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter. M. J. de la R.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visser, A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster. B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Vosloo, W. L.; Waring, F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentzel, J. J. G.

Tellers: G. P. C. Bezuidenhout, G. P. van den Berg, P. S. van der Merwe and H. J. van Wyk.

NOES—33: Basson, T. A. L.; Connan, T. 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.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Moore, P. A.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Waterson, S. F.; Webber, W. T.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

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

Clause 3:

We do not intend speaking to this clause, but we said earlier that we would oppose it and we will vote against it, and to the remaining clauses we will record our opposition.

Clause put and agreed to (Official Opposition dissenting).

Remaining clauses put and agreed to (Official Opposition dissenting).

Title of the Bill put and the Committee divided:

AYES—99: Bodenstein, P.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. 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, C.; De Wet, M. W.; Du Plessis, A. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Grey-ling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Haak, J. F. W.; Havemann, W. W. B. Hayward. S. A. S.; Henning, J. M.; Heystek, J.; Holland, M. W.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Kotzd, S. F.; Kruger, J. 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.; Maree. G. de K.; Martins, H. E.; McLachlan, R.; Meyer, P. H.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rail, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reinecke, C. J.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw. W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Schlebusch. A. T..; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit. H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Swanepoel, J. W. F.; Swiegers, J. G.; Torlage, P. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van Breda. A.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van Her Merwe. H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van Niekerk, M. C.; Van Rensburg. M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, J. W.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Van Zyl, J. T. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Viljoen, M.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visser. A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Vosloo, W. L.; Waring, F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentzel, J. J. G.

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

NOES—36: Basson, J. A. L.; 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.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Moore, P. A.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Taylor, C. D.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Waterson, S. F.; Webber, W. T.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

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

Title of the Bill accordingly agreed to.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

This Bill has passed through the Second Reading and the Committee Stage without any amendments, and our objection to the Bill remains as strong as ever. I want to say to the Minister, that in replying to us at the Third Reading, I hope he will take a different attitude from the one he took at the Second Reading.

Must I adopt a different attitude?

Yes. The Minister should realize by now that abuse is no argument.

Whom did I abuse? I abused nobody.

The waving of arms and the striking of pads do not strengthen a bad argument, and the Minister should have learned by now also, with the experience of the hon. the Prime Minister, that acting like a court jester also does not add lustre to a Cabinet Minister.

You are being personal.

Yes, I am being personal because of the way the hon. the Minister replied to us on this side of the House. The hon. the Prime Minister was not present when the hon. the Minister spoke. He therefore did not hear the reply of the Minister.

Our objection to this Bill in the first place was that it was meaningless. The rights that were given to the Bantu in terms of the provisions of this Bill were meaningless. The hon. the Minister tried to bolster his case by saying that they were to be given certain privileges. These privileges were that by legislation or administratively they would be given opportunities for employment, residence and for visiting the white areas. We pointed out during the Committee Stage that these were not great privileges. When we pointed out that in any event these were not privileges which were to be granted in the Bantu homelands but that they were privileges which the hon. the Minister was offering in the urban areas, the hon. the Minister stated that the granting of privileges did not depend on the Government of the Republic alone. He said that it also depended on the Bantu authority and that they no doubt would give privileges to their citizens in their homelands. I asked the hon. the Minister in which other country in the world a citizen would have to ask for another citizenship in order to be able to enjoy rights in his own country. That is what the hon. the Minister was saying. If Bantu citizens who live in the urban areas become citizens of the homelands they would get privileges in the areas where they are now resident. Is this going to be another form of attack on section 10 of the Urban Areas Act? Will the right of residence in urban areas which Bantu enjoy under section 10 now be threatened unless they apply for certificates of citizenship in the different homelands? The hon. the Minister especially mentioned residence as one of the privileges.

I dealt with the obligations. I also dealt with the right which the Transkei for instance has to tax its citizens whether they live in the Transkei or not. The hon. the Minister told us that the Authority for the Northern Sotho wants this Bill because they want their people to be tied to the homeland. The request comes from the homeland Authority and not from the tribesmen living outside the authority.

In that case from both.

The hon. the Minister now says it comes from both. He however only mentioned the request from the authority. I can quite understand why the authority would want to tie its people to them. They would have additional powers of taxation as on’ of the advantages in having their tribe tied to the authority.

The hon. the Minister also said in reply to a question by the hon. member for Mooi River that farm labour is controlled by regulations framed in terms of certain Acts of Parliament. That is not a reply to the question raised by the hon. member for Mooi River. He wanted to know what advantages farm labour would get. We know very well that a Bantu’s stay on a farm is regulated by certain Acts of Parliament. But how is the position going to be altered when a Bantu is given citizenship of a homeland? How is the position going to be altered? He will still be controlled by these Acts in the same way. What advantage is the farm labourer going to get by being declared a citizen of some homeland?

We also objected to this Bill because we said that it would build up a nationalism amongst the Bantu. The hon. the Minister attacked us, as he said, for not wanting the Bantu to have any tribal pride or sense of nationalism in that they will now belong to the different tribes, such as with the Zulus, the Xhosas, etc. We are not opposed to them belonging to certain tribes and having their tribal institutions and tribal affiliations. That is not the point we raised at all. What we do object to is this building up of nationalism among the Bantu tribes, this idea that they are going to be something different from the rest of the citizens of South Africa. We say that the ordinary tribesmen may not be interested in this at all. The agitator type however is going to be the fellow who will play on this business of giving them separate citizenship and the idea that they will be something different.

We say too that this Bill is inconsistent with Government policy. The Government cannot have one policy for the Bantu and another policy for the other races in South Africa. If they say that South Africa consists of a number of different nations and not races then they should treat all the nations on a similar basis. You cannot just legislate for one lot of nations and leave the other nations unlegislated for. We accept that there are different Bantu tribes, different Bantu nations, if the hon. the Minister wants to call them such. But what about the other races in South Africa? What about the Coloureds, Indians and Whites? I have never heard such ridiculous arguments as those put forward by the hon. the Minister about the classification of races on a language basis. One of the bases of classification is language. The hon. the Minister says that although Hollanders and Germans are white they do not belong to the same nation. They talk different languages. If we take the arguments of the hon. the Minister and other members on the other side of the House to its logical conclusions then the white race in South Africa must be divided into two or three different nations. We have different languages, different cultures and different histories. The policy of the Nationalist Party is to keep these cultures and histories separate. These are things they want to do, namely to have unity in diversity. If that is so, why does he not have separate citizenship for the English-speaking people? Why not? He would at least be consistent. He cannot beg this question any further. As far as the white people are concerned, he can hedge. But what about the Coloureds and the Indians? What nation do they belong to?

Order! Is the hon. member discussing the Bill now?

My point is that the effect of the Bill is going to be to give a different citizenship to the Bantu, not because they are separate race groups but because they are separate nations. If that is the Government’s policy that there are no races but only nations then the Government should deal with all the nations and not only with one group of nations. That is why I say that this is pertinent to this question. Why does the Government only give separate citizenship to the Bantu nations? What about the Indian nation and the Coloured nation? I want to refer again to the Bill we passed a few days ago dealing with the question of the reservation of work also for different nations. There again the Government is not being consistent. It is only providing for one section of the population. I say therefore that this Government is inconsistent and that is a further reason why we oppose the granting of separate citizenship to one group of races or nations.

Yesterday we had occasion to listen to the long lecture by the hon. member for Odendaalsrus and others on citizenship, its legal implications and the constitutional position. Nobody was arguing with him, Sir. I do not know why he had to go to all the trouble of looking up that law. I do not know whether he was here in 1963 when the Transkei Constitution was passed, but if he had been, he would have realized that we discussed the legal implications then. Incidentally, although the Government now accepts that this is dual citizenship, the then Deputy Minister, Mr. Froneman, argued against this and said that it was not a dual citizenship. He went into the legal implications as well. Of course we know that in certain countries …

You are learning your lesson very quickly.

I do not know if that hon. member was here in 1963.

I read the debates.

Well, if the hon. member read the debates, he should know that we had these arguments about citizenship. We are not arguing that there cannot be different types of citizenship. We are not arguing that issue at all. What we are saying is: What is this citizenship worth that is being given to the Bantu? What is the object of giving them this different citizenship? We say that there is no purpose behind it except to bolster the Government’s policy of apartheid, to try to prove that it is doing something. We have said that the whole edifice of apartheid, this carefully built up edifice, has now collapsed. We are about to enter an election, and that party is going to be asked what they are doing. The White areas are getting blacker and blacker and more Blacks are doing the work of Whites. They are going to be asked what the Government is doing. Therefore they introduce this Bill to give separate citizenship to the Bantu, to bring about a documentary separation. That is all they are doing. They are bringing about a false idea of separation. Any government can grant citizenship to the inhabitants of one city. Those people can then have certain citizenship rights. We are not disputing the fact that the government can give them these rights. Of course, these people can be made citizens of different areas, but what is the purpose of it in this case? In this case we are merely dividing the country with false promises of separate states. There is no hope of giving them those states at the moment. These Bantu are now going to be put into the position where they will be discriminated against because they will have to apply for separate citizenship of different countries before they can exercise rights which they would normally be entitled to in the country to which they really do belong. The Minister has said so, so the hon. member for Odendaalsrus need not shake his head. This is an attempt to prove to the world and to South Africa that the Bantu are accepting the policy of the Government. If the Bantu were prepared to accept this policy, and to accept citizenship, it would not be necessary for the Minister to tell us that he is going to give preference to those who do apply for citizenship, because they would all rush forward. If they were all so keen on the policy, they would all willingly demand their certificates of citizenship to show that they do belong to a homeland. But that is not the case. They are not going to do that. They did not do so in the case of the Transkei and they will not do so in the case of these other homelands. The Government’s policy is rejected by the Bantu, and on 22nd April we shall find that it is rejected by the Whites as well. We shall vote against the Third Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, certain speakers on the Opposition side have indicated that they are realists. One thing is certainly obvious. If they regard themselves as realists, then they are realists of an era gone by, not of the 1960s or the 1970s. We live in an Africa and in a world where tremendous changes have taken place over the past 15 years. Realities of past eras have changed drastically. Even though those members feel that we, the peoples of Southern Africa, are members of a single nation, it is not in fact true that we are members of a single nation. If we were to be regarded as members of a single nation, then the hon. member for Durban (Point) would have every right in regarding all the peoples of Europe as belonging to the same nation. That is just as fallacious an argument.

Are we citizens of one country?

I shall take up the hon. member for Durban (Point). There was a time when a very large portion of Europe was one political entity. Some 200 years ago the Holy Roman Empire was one political entity. Its artificial unity was brought about by power politics, and that unity was maintained by power politics. There was an artificial unity of many different peoples of different cultures, in different stages of development, and speaking different languages. So we in Southern Africa are also many different nations that were brought together by the forces of history and the forces of power politics, into an artificial unity in which the people involved had no part. It is for that reason that we must now face up to the same process of dissolving this artificial unity as the process Europe went through in past centuries.

Both White and Black?

Both White and Black.

Are you going to dissolve Switzerland?

The hon. member for Durban (Point) asks whether we are going to dissolve Switzerland.

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

Yes, if it is sensible.

Can the hon. member tell me whether, on that basis, English-and Afrikaans-speaking people in South Africa should have different citizenship?

I shall come back to that question in a moment. The hon. member for Durban (Point) asked me what the position is as far as Switzerland is concerned, where there is one country with four different languages and four different peoples who make up one state. The position is simply that the choice of citizenship is a choice which is voluntary, and which depends on the people involved. That choice must be made by the people who have the authority to make it. We in South Africa have the position at the moment where the authority vests in the hands of the electorate which is limited to the white people. It is our choice—hon. members must take note of this—not to be a single nation with the other peoples who have hitherto been foisted into an artificial political unity of the Republic of South Africa. It is our choice not to be part of the same nation. It is our task to give the opportunity to the various non-white peoples of Southern Africa to make a choice at a later stage for themselves, voluntarily, whether they will be a separate Xhosa nation, a separate Zulu nation, or a separate Tswana nation, or whether they may in future, by voluntary choice, desire to unite into a single nation. It is not for us to determine that they must be united into a single nation. That is the very reason for the strife on the African continent. That is the very reason why the war in Biafra was waged. That is the very reason for the strife between the various different peoples of the Sudan. That is the very reason for the strife which persists in Cyprus to-day. That is the reason for strife when there is an artificial unity of different peoples. We in Southern Africa are faced with the problem and the task of finding a solution to the co-existence of the various peoples of Southern Africa.

We will carry out that responsibility bearing in mind that our first responsibility is towards our own people. At the same time we will carry out that responsibility with honesty and with sincerity towards the non-white people. That is the important point, because we can say that we are honest and sincere in our desire to assist and enable the non-white peoples to develop to the status of full citizenship of their countries. The United Party are either not in the position to know what is happening —I do not want to use the word “stupid”— or they are not being sincere when they speak of the 19 million people of South Africa being regarded as citizens of one country because if they regard them as citizens of one country, they must also accept the next step. Citizenship means full equality of all the peoples who have that status of citizenship. It means full citizen status at one stage or another. If it does not mean that at the moment, it must mean that at some stage; otherwise it must mean blatant domination of the non-white peoples.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member a question? Does the hon. member not concede that in the last 300 years all the peoples of South Africa have been citizens of South Africa? If he concedes that, what is the basis of his argument?

The position is that in the past 300 years all the different peoples have been citizens of South Africa but in the past 15 years the situation has changed entirely. Fifteen years ago there were only four states on the African continent that had any sovereign independence. To-day there are over 40 such states. We cannot regard what has happened in the last 300 years as being a modus vivendi for the future. Anyone who is as stupid as to think that must be a member of the United Party.

I will now deal with the question raised by the hon. member for Port Natal, namely whether we should regard English-speaking people and Afrikaans-speaking people as being members of two different nations in South Africa. The position is simply that when the emigration efflux from Europe took place, there were then in existence certain nations that had evolved in the course of history. There was the German nation, the English nation, the French nation, the Belgian nation, etc. Then there was a movement to the New World. There was a movement towards Australia, the U.S.A. and South Africa. In this process these people that came from all parts of Europe, evolved and developed into new nations. Even to-day the peoples of the U.S.A. are still in the process of evolving towards full nation status. They might have the legal status of a nation but they have not reached the same cohesive status of a nation that the French, the British or the Germans, for instance, have reached. The same process applies to Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The same process also applies to South Africa. We have in South Africa amongst the Whites people who have evolved over the centuries and are still in the process of evolving into a single nation, into the status of a nation in the international sphere, a unity of South African people.

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

Mr. Speaker, I prefer not to answer any more questions. [Interjections.] I am not afraid to answer questions but my time is limited. We are in the process of evolving into a single nation status. This process has been hastened since South Africa became a republic, because before that there was in the actual spirit of some of the people a dual loyalty. Since then this single loyalty to South Africa has evolved. In this process of the development of a single loyalty to South Africa there are two cultures. There has been such an interweaving between the English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking language groups and other language groups in South Africa that many have in fact irrevocably evolved into a single nation and many are still in the process of doing so. The Whites of South Africa can therefore not be regarded as two separate nations. We are one nation, but at the same time there are still sufficient differences among the non-white groups for any logical person to realize, appreciate and recognize the differences between a Zulu and a Xhosa who are nevertheless closely related in their descent and language. There is a very definite relationship between the Tswana and the Sotho but there is sufficient difference between them. There is a difference between the Zulu and the Xhosa similarly as there is a difference between the Dutch and the Germans.

What is the difference between the Xhosa and the Zulu?

They have evolved in separate parts of Southern Africa in the same way as the Dutch and the Germans have evolved in separate parts of Europe although they live next to one another. Tell anyone in Europe that the Dutch and the Germans should form a single nation and you will have a minor explosion. The same applies to Southern Africa.

Hon. members of the Opposition have objected to this Bill creating nationalism amongst the non-Whites. They have resorted to the common mistake of referring to “Black nationalism”. If words have a meaning, I ask the members of the Opposition to examine the words “Black nationalism”. There can be no such thing as Black nationalism. There can be no all embracing Black nation. There can be no European nationalism. There can be French nationalism, British nationalism, nationalism of nations, but there can be no so-called African nationalism. There can be a Xhosa nationalism or a Zambian nationalism but there can be no Black nationalism. We on this side of the House are prepared to accept all responsibility for the evolving nationalism in the true sense of the word, namely the love of one’s own. We are prepared to accept the evolvement of Zulu, Xhosa or Tswana nationalism but what we do object to and what they confuse with the word nationalism is Black imperialism. That is something we are not prepared to accept. We are prepared to do everything in our power to counter the effects of Black imperialism. As far as nationalism is concerned, I have no objection whatsoever to either George Matanzima or Kaiser Matanzima or anyone being proud to be a member of his national entity. In fact, I welcome that. I, as a Nationalist, am prepared to accommodate their nationalism in their areas and to cooperate with them in helping to build a healthy nationalism.

The policy of the hon. members opposite is one of White leadership. White leadership must essentially mean that leadership must be voluntarily accepted. Leadership in any sphere, in any country or in any democracy means that that leadership must be voluntarily accepted. Now I want to ask the Opposition a question. If in terms of their policy their leadership is no longer accepted, will they then turn into stark domination? What will they do then?

Why do you quote half our policy? Why do you not say White leadership and political control?

That can only mean domination. I want to know from them whether in terms of their policy of rejecting separate development, and putting in its place the policy of White leadership, it means that they also accept the necessary implication of leadership, namely that it is voluntarily accepted. I charge the Opposition with not being sincere when they say that their policy is one of White leadership. They are trying to bluff the electorate.

As has already been stated, our policy is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of the road. We are leading up to a situation, and we are facing, with full responsibility, the realities of the 1970s. We are prepared to accept them with full responsibility. I think of the fears that have been expressed by members of the Opposition, and in particular by the hon. member for Albany, when he threw up his hands in horror at the fact of the Transkei having a coast and that they might be the basis for agitation. That is exactly the same reason why the Opposition in the 1960s opposed South Africa’s becoming a republic, especially outside the Commonwealth. They were scared, and asked who would protect them. I say that we in the National Party are not scared of the implications of our policy. In fact, if a small nation which lives in a country smaller than the Kruger National Park and counts some 2 million people, a nation that is surrounded by some 50 million or 60 million hostile people who are bent on destroying that nation—I am referring to Israel and the Arabs surrounding her—is prepared to accept and maintain her sovereignty, there is no reason whatsoever why we should have less courage than the Israelis in Israel.

Mr. Speaker, we had a sort of world tour from the hon. member for Umhlatuzana. I must say that I do not really find that I have an enviable task in trying to reply to him. First of all, the history books that he has read, are very different from the history books that I have read. [Interjections.] Well, I might say that I am going to stay here for quite a long time. I am afraid the hon. the Minister will have to put up with it. I could not really follow the hon. member’s reasoning very readily, but maybe the hon. the Deputy Minister followed him more easily than I did. For instance, he told us that Europe was divided into many nations, that the races have not been able to live together and that that was the reason for all the political and social divisions in Europe. How he makes this analogy and draws this conclusion in connection with South Africa, I really cannot imagine. One would have thought that there are already independent nations existing inside the Republic of South Africa, where people who had been unable to live together, had decided to separate and had formed a separate state for each of these seven or eight Bantu nations that we hear so much about. But, of course, no such thing has happened. There is only one entity which has any pretentions whatever to any sort of semi-independence. There is only one area really which is properly consolidated, and that is the Transkei. Even that is only semi-independent. We have no idea where and when the real independence is going to come. I accept the bona fides of the hon the Minister, who says that he will face the consequences of this policy and that ultimately independence may come. It will be granted presumably when this Government, or whatever successive governments there are, decides that these states are ready for independence. But at this stage, when there are no independent nations, such as the hon. member for Umhlatuzana has been comparing us with, the whole argument is surely an absurdity. There are, for instance, something like 245 …

I have dealt with that point already.

Yes, the hon. the Minister dealt with that point, but the hon. member for Umhlatuzana apparently has not grasped it, because he talks as if these nation-states in Southern Africa already exist, independent states that have hived off because of the racial animosities of the people concerned. Does he not know that there are something like 245, or even more, separate black spots that still have to be consolidated before one can even talk about a consolidated African area in the Northern Transvaal? Where is this state to be?

Areas have also been consolidated in the United States and in Pakistan …

But surely citizenship of Pakistan was not granted until the Pakistani independence arrived. Up till then all the citizens who were of Pakistani origin were citizens of India. They were not citizens of Pakistan until Pakistan was separated from India. If this in fact is the inevitable evolution in South Africa, let us wait until it has happened. Why anticipate the event? For what purpose are we anticipating this event?

The hon. member for Umhlatuzana said something with which I wholeheartedly agree, although the conclusions he drew thereafter are, of course, very different. He says that things have changed in South Africa over the last 15 years. I thought I was always the one who said that. I thought it was always Government members who were talking about tradition and the need to maintain the traditional South African way of life, whatever that may he. I am the one who said that things are changing and that the necessary adaptations have to be made. But in this regard I do not see what changes have come about that necessitate the granting of citizenship to separate African nations. Indeed, quite the contrary is true. If one looks at the latest available figures, one finds that only 40 per cent of the African population is permanently resident in the homelands. I am quoting from Dr. Riekert’s paper delivered in January to the South African Institute of Race Relations. He said:

Those were the last figures he had …

I do not understand why the necessity arises for sending back 54 per cent of the population living outside the homelands, no matter what tribal links some of them may maintain. I do not say that every African living either on a white farm or in a white city has broken all links with his tribal customs and culture. Of course he has not. But what he has done, he has broken his link with his “homeland”, since he does not have a “homeland” any longer. The homeland is where he lives. To me a homeland means where one’s home is. One’s home, surely, must be on a white farm if one’s family has lived there for generations. [Interjections.] That hon. Minister who is shortly to be elevated, may not like to admit it, but I am sure if he owns a farm, there must be families living there. [Interjections.] No, but it is the horns, nevertheless, of the African families living there as labourers. They have lived there most probably for four or five generations. For him to bluff—it is the only word I can use—himself that these Africans, or the Africans who have lived, for instance, in Soweto, with whom I am very familiar, or Langa. consider the Transkei, the Ciskei or the Northern Transvaal as homelands when they have never set eyes on them, is most amazing.

They do.

Well, I do not know. We must talk to different people; we do not only read different history books.

Whom did you talk to?

I talk to all classes of Africans. That is where the hon. the Minister is wrong. It is a pity he does not. I want him to tell me how many urban Africans have asked for this Citizenship Bill. Can he truthfully say that he has had hundreds of deputations and petitions from urban Africans or from rural farm Africans, for that matter, asking for this Citizenship Bill? Have they been yearning for this certificate of citizenship? Have they felt themselves deprived because they have not had certificates of citizenship? I do not believe the hon. the Minister can honestly tell me that one single urban African has asked for this-because they do not want it. It means nothing in their lives. Their lives are where they work.

They do not know what it is all about.

Of course they do not know. They will not know what it is about even after this House has passed the Bill. The only time they will know all about it. is when they find themselves in some way or other discriminated against because they do not have that certificate in their possession. That is when they will suddenly realize what this Bill is all about. That will be the first time. They do not want it.

The hon. member for Umhlatuzana says that the Africans do not consider themselves as one nation. I quoted Matanzima in this House yesterday. I should think he is probably more qualified to speak on behalf of the Africans than the hon. member for Umhlatuzana. Matanzima made a statement in March of last year in which he said that the “Africans are one nation”.

What about other leaders who said the opposite?

Let them argue it out among themselves, but do not force the citizenship of the Transkei, on the so-called de jure citizens, on the people of Matanzima, if he does not want it. Who are we to decide from above that Africans are not one nation? Matanzima thinks they are one nation. Matanzima after all is the Prime Minister of the only existing continuous African area. I hope the hon. member for Umhlatuzana understands this. Somebody said that he was not sure of the object of this Bill, but I am quite sure of the object of this Bill. I do not have the slightest doubt as to the object of this Bill. The object is to provide “ethical” justification for what is to come. This is just the first side of the coin and we still have to see the other side. What is still to come is the rights that are going to be removed from the African by virtue of the granting of this useless certificate of citizenship. The hon. the Minister made this quite clear. He did not try to pull the wool over our eyes, and made it clear that he does not believe that Africans should have any de jure rights in the white areas. He said it was not part of the logic of Nationalist policy. I can see the reasoning and it is very logical, but as I have said earlier it is based on false premises. This is the tragedy of the whole situation. All this reasoning is based on false premises.

In the next session we will have the other side of this Bill, namely the Deprivation Bill. The hon. the Minister is then going to stand up---with absolute certainty I know this—and he is going to say that now that the Africans enjoy their own citizenship of their own homelands, it must be absolutely clear that they will now enjoy no de jure rights whatsoever in the white areas of South Africa and more particularly in the urban areas. That is quite obvious to me. The urban Africans do not want this phoney quid pro quo. It is a bad swop for them because they are earning their living in white urban South Africa. Nothing the homelands can ever offer them can compete with what they can earn in the white industrial areas of South Africa. They do not want this phoney citizenship and they are going to consider themselves ill-used when in return for this citizenship they are going to be told that they enjoy no rights whatever in white South Africa. I know that that is coming.

This Bill is an anachronism. It has no part in modern South Africa and it cannot put the clock back 50 years as hon. members opposite hope it can do. It is 50 years too late to try and de-urbanize urbanized people and it cannot be done. In whatever guise it may be introduced to try and sweeten the bitter pill which is coming, it is not going to work. I can only say that hon. members opposite who talked in such lyrical terms yesterday about the wonderful gift of citizenship of the homelands which they are conferring on the African people, are deceiving themselves. It is the same sort of thing that we had from the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education when he talked this nonsense about the de jure per capita income of the reserves. We will have the same nonsense. We are going to have all these great developments that we hear of in the reserves and all of it is going to be calculated in terms of what white industrial South Africa is in fact supplying by way of a livelihood to the Africans.

Nobody is being deceived by this Bill and I think it will be a more honest way of doing it if the hon. the Minister just went baldly, without any disguise whatever, to the ultimate objective that he is aiming at. He must not try and come to this House and deceive us and deceive the African people outside that he is giving them anything in exchange for what he is ultimately going to take away from them. I therefore object most strongly to the Third Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Houghton once more gave out with her characteristic lamentations here. In the process she advanced nothing new upon which I can react. The fact that she ranges herself bag and baggage on the side of the Opposition and joins them in opposing this legislation, will be a very clear indication to the voters outside of where they stand in respect of the Opposition. Were I a United Party member to-day I would have had the courage to stand up here and to sing a song of praise to that hon. Minister for the monumental piece of legislation which he is placing on the Statute Book with this Bill. Unfortunately the hon. Opposition does not have the vision and the statesmanship. What one found in their speeches was that they tried to present this important Bill in a ridiculous light. They did so because they had no searching arguments to range against the arguments of this side. All their ridiculous representations, the spectres they tried to conjure up in order to frighten the electorate outside, all their stories about this side having no realization of the realities of life and their claims that we are unrealistic, display a pathetic, pitiful and shameful shortsightedness on the part of hon. members on that side of the House. It displays a general inability to comprehend the actual questions and problems concerning our complicated population question. It also displays a characteristic spineless inactivity when the problems of this country must be tackled and solved. I never pose as a prophet, but as sure as I am standing here and the sun is shining outside, that party will accept this measure in five years’ time, if there are still some of them left on that side, and they will even blatantly and shamelessly describe this legislation as their own policy. History has taught us this, and history will repeat itself.

In spite of the futile efforts of the United Party to present this legislation in a ridiculous light and in spite of the irresponsible way in which they and particularly the hon. member for East London North, discredited the image of South Africa abroad with some of their speeches, every person, who really desired that the population questions of this country should be solved satisfactorily, is convinced that this is one of the most important pieces of legislation ever on our Statute Book. I say this because this Bill will contribute fundamentally and positively towards eliminating one of the greatest misconceptions about the set-up in South Africa as far as our various peoples are concerned. The misconception that the Bantu people in South Africa are a similar integrated black mass. This lie about similarity, this atrocious misconception, is propagated and spread abroad by many people in South Africa, and also by hon. members opposite, for their own purposes. Historical fact and the irrefutable truth, which we also find manifested in the already independent states of Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana, i.e. that here in South Africa we have a number of Bantu peoples, each with its own language, culture and national identity, can simply not be accepted and understood by hon. members opposite, quite simply because they do not fit into their general integration pattern for South Africa. That is the reason why hon. members opposite cannot comprehend it. This truth, that South Africa has a diversity of Bantu peoples, was already tragically revealed early in our history by tribal wars and bloodshed.

This is the situation that existed even before the advent of the white man. That is the situation the white man encountered here. Our own forefathers, when they trekked into the interior, also made the acquaintance of separate entities. Even the British Government of that time recognized separate tribal authorities and negotiated with them. It was only much later, in the 20th century, that the idea took root among certain liberally minded people in the white community that this separate existence of separate Bantu peoples should be broken down and destroyed. Initially this endeavour had its origins in the imperialistic and commercial objectives of that time. In time the endeavour towards equality, which wants to see all people in South Africa as equal individuals with equal potentials and equal rights in one and the same fatherland, became the driving force behind that. Essentially this endeavour towards equality, this purposeful process of fragmentation is nothing more than the integration endeavours which that party has to a large extent swallowed and into which it is being increasingly forced by its younger members. That is why those hon. members do not want to accept and to comprehend the existence of separate ethnic units, separate and emergent peoples. That is why they plead for the continued existence of an integrated black mass which must then be integrated economically and politically with the Whites in one undivided fatherland. It is fortunate, not only for the Whites of South Africa, but also for the non-Whites, that there are people with vision and insight sitting on this side of the House who could prevent this gigantic genocide.

This party, irradiated by nationalism which appreciated the love for that which is one’s own, which let an individual consciousness take root, could also thereby be inspired to recognize and appreciate the concept of separate entities among the various Bantu peoples. That is why, in its election manifesto of 1948, this party already wrote (translation)—

From this it is very clear that the most fundamental point of National Party policy in respect of our population situation is that the population of South Africa is multi-national. This concept of multi-nationality, in which we believe, and which is rejected by that party, in no way rests on the inferiority of one race as against another, or of one people as against another, but it rests on the biological differences between peoples which one finds throughout the world. It rests also on the traditional ethnic inequality between human groups of various peoples. Specifically because of the divergent variety, because of the mutual differences, it is impossible, it is short-sighted and irresponsible, to want to compress all these various groups of people into one people to want to have them integrated into one nation. That is why we believe in separation, in separate development for each population group. That is why we have continued to consolidate homeland areas for these people. That is why we have already placed several of these population groups on the road to full political realization. That is why the Government is now also coming forward with this Bill to grant citizenship to the citizens of these developed peoples in their own respective areas. This Bill is therefore the logical consequence of our previous legislation and of our policy.

When this policy of separate development was formulated it was no crude, irrational plan we were holding up to the nation and to the world. Oh no, it was a well-considered policy which was drawn up with vision and with statesmanship. Every consequence of this policy was previously determined and thought out. That is why we on this side of the House are not afraid to implement the consequences of this policy. Hon. members on that side of the House hoped that we would run away from the consequences of the policy of each developing along his own lines. They hoped that with the spectres they conjured up they would be able to make us run away, the way their allies ran away from the consequences of the policy they once believed in. We are prepared to carry separate development through in all its consequences. This citizenship legislation fits into that pattern, in fact, it is an important cornerstone. Henceforth every Bantu person can be a citizen of his respective homeland. There he will be able to realize the duties, responsibilities and privileges which citizenship entails.

If hon. members on that side of the House are claiming that the Bantu worker in the white cities is not interested in what is going on in his homeland, then I say they are unrealistic, I say they do not know what they are talking about. Simply ask the citizens of Lesotho or of Botswana, who are working in the urban areas, whether they know what is going on in their homelands and whether they are interested in what is going on there. Hon. members will then hear what they have to say. Citizenship entails privileges for the subject— privileges such as a voting right and passport facilities. But far more important, it also entails responsibilities and duties. It entails responsibilities such as the care of the soil, a hygienic way of life, language and cultural pride, defence of country, etc. In the long run no government can withhold the rights and privileges of citizenship from its responsible subjects. If the full privileges of citizenship in their own homelands is not granted to the Bantu people in South Africa, it will not be possible to withhold it from them and they will have to obtain it in the white homeland. Is that the reason why the hon. members on that side of the House are offering such tooth and nail opposition to this Bill? Are they opposing it because this Bill would once and for all destroy their ideal of political integration in an undivided South Africa? This is the only logical conclusion one can come to.

But when we grant citizenship to the various Bantu people in South Africa, we are not only placing an important piece of legislation on the Statute Book, …

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, is the hon. member for Algoa allowed to read his entire speech?

Order!

Mr. Speaker, in placing this legislation on the Statute Book we are performing a great task in Africa. It is known that various African states obtained independence in the past decade. It is known that these states were prepared to accept economic and technical aid from other stakes, but that they did not want political aid because they regarded it as interference, it is also known that these states collapsed one after the other, and that democracy failed hopelessly. The reason for that is that statesmanship and politics, like economics, are complicated maters demanding time, experience and knowledge. By granting our Bantu people the rights and the responsibilities of citizenship and letting them realize those responsibilities towards their own homelands, this political experience will permeate like a leaven to the African countries as well. In that way we can make a tremendous contribution to the permanence and certainty of the political situation in the whole African continent.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a great deal during the second-reading debate and from one or two members on the other side during this debate, about reality. We have also heard a great deal about philosophy. I think it is fair to say that the philosophy of the Nationalist Party has now become a reality in this Bill. I want to say that this Bill is a monument to the selfishness of the Nationalist Party. This is part of a flat earth kind of society that the Nationalist Party has been attempting to build in South Africa, the looking-back-over-their-shoulder attitude, the looking back to a society which has been dead in South Africa since the end of the war. The hon. member who has just sat down, is as guilty as anybody else of deliberately evading what is the reality of what is happening in this country to-day. I wish to deal with that attitude of the Nationalist Party, the “I am all right Haak” attitude of the Nationalist Party, the party which seeks to look after itself and to entrench itself in South Africa at the expense of all the other peoples in South Africa and to separate them out and hive them off. One has heard in history about the suicide of the Amaxhosa. The hon. members will remember the story of how a young girl who acted as medium under the control of a notorious witch doctor persuaded the tribe to destroy their means of production, their cattle and their means of subsistence, their maize crops, and await the day when the ancient warriors would come out of the clouds to sweep back and drive the white man into the sea. I want to say here to-day that this Bill which is before the House is the suicide of the white man, the Abelungu. What we are doing with this Bill is to male it possible to bring a direct threat to our means of production, our industrial life and our industrial society, and to bring a threat to the means of subsistence of the whole of our farming industry. For what purpose? So that we may sit back and await the aid to come from somebody or other which is going to sweep the Bantu back into their homelands. There is no other purpose to it than that. I call all the words that have been put into this Bill and the whole structure of it, the tail of the paper tiger. It is a game that children play at a party where they are blindfolded and where they then must try to stick a paper tail on to a figure drawn on the wall. This is all this Nationalist Party is doing because the reality of what is happening in South Africa is that we have an industrial process going on which is drawing more and more of the non-white population permanently into the white man’s orbit, if one may call it that. They are being drawn in permanently, economically, residentially and in their minds. Surely, this is what is so important to us. This is what is happening to us in South Africa. Surely, the hope of survival of the white man depends on the extent to which he can identify the western way of thought and the Christian civilization, which he has brought into this country, which stands like a beacon in Africa and of which we are so proud. Surely, the only way we can make it survive is to graft it on to the alien stock of Africa. How else is this going to survive? Every hon. member on that side of the House has said that democracy is not part of the Native life of Africa. That is perfectly true; it is not part of the life of Africa at all, but if it is going to survive, and I am sure everyone of us believes that this is something that has got to survive in some form or other, somewhere or other in South Africa, then it has to be grafted on to the stock of Africa. How are we going to do it? Surely, we are to-day already embarking on that process in the urban areas, because the urban areas are the civilizing elements in the life of the black people of South Africa. This is a reality. I am sure that no hon. member on the other side of the House will disagree with that, not even the hon. member for Umhlatuzana. No one can disagree with the fact that the civilizing elements in the life of the black population in this country is living in the urban areas, working in the white man’s economy and learning in the schools which are provided for by the white man’s money.

Where is their first task?

Their first task is to make a living and to bring up their families in a proper fashion in order to ensure a safe and a permanent future for their families in the areas in which they are resident. Those are the only areas where there is a secure employment for their families. Let the hon. member or anybody else come to this House and say that he has taken the first step towards providing in the homelands some kind of economic future for these people. Then he might have some sort of justification in saying that this is a real measure that has some kind of real application to what is going on in South Africa. When we hear that in the Transkei, as the hon. the Minister said last night, there is only employment in certain industries for 41,000 Bantu out of a total population of some 3 million, then we are perfectly entitled to say that there is no reality at all in a measure which after 22 years of Nationalist Party Government can offer no real, live and viable homeland unit for any one of the Bantu groups in South Africa. The Government has not yet left square one in this regard. I believe what is happening in our country is that we are undergoing the only real revolution in Africa. This will be the only revolution which will survive the test of time and it is a revolution in the minds of the Bantu population. This revolution will come, because we have taken them out of their tribal society, out of their tribal security and we have put them down in an urban area, where their only security is their own individual unaided efforts. This is the new wave in Africa. This is what is so important about what is happening in South Africa. We have broken off the security of the man who has a place in the tribal society. We have put him down in a position where his very own brother will take his job tomorrow, should that job be vacant and should the person not be available for work for some reason or other. This is the reality. What we are doing is that we are creating a whole new way of life and a whole new approach for the Bantu population in this country which can be parallelled nowhere else in Africa. No other single country can point to the achievements that we have made on this very basis. For the hon. members on the other side to pretend that they are conveying any kind of a real right in terms of this legislation, is merely a bluff. As I have said before, this is merely election propaganda which will be used to try to convey the impression that they have at last got some kind of solution to the fact that we are overwhelmed by the numbers of Bantu people permanently employed in the industries in the white areas, on which the whole development of the country, including the development of the Bantu homelands of the country depends. Everything has to be funded by the contributions made by White South Africa. We carry the country on White South Africa and the economy of White South Africa. Any kind of development that takes place in Black South Africa, in the homelands, the areas which have been set apart by the 1936 legislation of the United Party, has still got to be funded and supported by the activity of the economy in the white areas which is controlled and run by the white man at present. For the hon. members to pretend that it is otherwise, is totally unrealistic. I do not really believe that they will attempt to force back, or even draw back, the Bantu population into the homelands. When the hon. the Minister said the other night that he had a solution, I think he meant it. I think that the attitude of the Nationalist Party will be to look upon this legislation as solving the problem. The hon. Minister said that there is no longer a race problem in South Africa, and that there is no colour problem. The hon. member for Umhlatuzana said that there is no Black nationalism in South Africa. There is no problem any more, according to them, because here we have a Bill which says that the whole Bantu population are now citizens of different homelands. What satisfaction is that going to give them? What satisfaction is that going to give a man who is employed in an urban area where he can earn a good living and where he can find some kind of education and some kind of health service and where he can find a decent place to live for his family and for his children? What satisfaction does it give him to know that he has a piece of paper which certifies that he in fact is a citizen of the Transkei? What can it mean to a man of that kind? What satisfaction can it give him to think that at any moment he can be endorsed out of the place where he is living to the homeland, should he for example at any time be without a job? I want to ask the hon. the Minister how does one put the toothpaste back into the tube? It is as simple as all that. In the urban areas we have the Bantu people who have been excluded from their civilization, their way of life, their old tribal fashion of life which they used to follow, who have been drawn into an active economic association with the white man, which we call the Western way of life, of which they have become part and parcel, and which is impossible without them. For the Minister to come here with this Bill, pretending that he has solved the problem, I believe is misleading the people.

It is dangerous.

Yes, it is exceedingly dangerous because the hon. the Minister is now turning his back on the problem. He is turning his back on the problem, because he thinks that he has solved it. It is also dangerous, because I am convinced that the Bantu people themselves will be unable to understand and appreciate what is conveyed by a certificate which certifies that this person is a citizen of some homeland where he has never been and where he does not even want to go. They will not be satisfied with this, because they are perfectly satisfied to work and stay in the area where they are currently living. I want to say that history is full of instances of people who have failed to meet their destiny, and I want to say to the hon. the Minister in all sincerity that this Bill in my opinion is merely part and parcel of the Nationalist Party’s refusal to meet the destiny of the white man in South Africa, which is to guarantee and to safeguard and to build on the white Christian civilization that we have brought to this southern point of Africa. Without our survival—and I say this in all seriousness—* Western survival is impossible, and I say that this Nationalist Party has turned its back on the problem. It is not facing up to the reality which I have described—those Bantu people drawn out of their own system and brought into something which is new in Africa, something which is growing, dynamic, and holds infinite promise for the future. I believe, as I have already said, that this is the practical living evidence of the suicide of the abelungu (White man) in this country of ours, South Africa.

Sir, when the Bantu representatives walked out of that door, this side of the House had already begun to draw up this Bill. If the hon. member for Mooi River knows his history, as he professes to, he would know that in about 1906 there was a rebellion, described in some history books as “The Native Rebellion in Natal”. As a result of that a commission was appointed. One of the people who served on that commission was a certain Mr. Maurice Evans, and as a result of the findings of that commission he wrote this book, “Black and White in South-East Africa”, which was published in 1910. I am going to quote from it at length because hon. members on the Opposition side, and particularly those from Natal, ought to know about this. What is also interesting is that the person who wrote the foreword to this book, Lt.-Col. Sir Matthew Nathan, was governor of Natal at the time. Among other things he said the following—

Then this writer quotes the following from the report of this commission on page 247—

What he is referring to here is not what this side of the House wants, but what that side of the House wants, i.e. total detribalization of the Bantu, voting rights in the white man’s country and participation in the government of that time in Natal. The hon. member makes a great fuss about what the influences of industrialization in our country would be on the detribalized Bantu, but he approaches the matter from one side, i.e. from the United Party’s point of view, but there is also a National Party side. This is very clear from what this writer says in that connection on page 280—

But he goes further—

What the writer is referring to here, is specifically their detribalization and the fact that they could not adjust in the white areas.

Is it true that they have now been detribalized?

That is what the hon. member has just said. I am reacting to the hon. member’s argument and I am replying to it in the words of a writer out of his own area. I quote further—

In other words, their Bantu authorities, the authority structure they are used to—

My argument is then that these hon. members are not making allowances for the logical, historical development of our Bantu policy in this country, and they have specifically not learned about what happened in Natal, as I have just illustrated here. Then just a last quote from this book, page 318—

That is the United Party’s idea—

Sir, this comes from Natal, and I want to suggest that the hon. member for Mooi River take proper cognizance of the opinion of a person who made these findings in Natal on the basis of a commission’s inquiry. His attack was chiefly directed against the policy of separate development as such, and therefore I told him that we have here a recommendation born of observation and experience.

Mr. Speaker, the cardinal principles of the Bill envisage as their practical consequence that the political stability of this country be ensured. It channels the black man’s political aspirations away from those of the white man once and for all, and it is actually this all embracing principle and the expected effect of the Bill that the Opposition are opposing themselves to. If Bantu politics should ever prove unstable or even militant in the future, as the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) would like, changes could be brought about in their form of government, or they could even try to overthrow their reigning government, but this Parliament will still remain inviolate. In other words, this Bill is a policy with which the white man is ensuring his own continued political existence. This Bill also gives full recognition to the existence of nationalism under the various Bantu peoples. The Bill offers the opportunity for the development of the political aspirations and the nationalism of the particular Bantu peoples, and for their education in such a way that they can live in friendship alongside the white man. The Opposition denies the presence of nationalism. They say it must be suppressed. This was said repeatedly yesterday in the second-reading debate. They say that it should be incorporated into a broad nationalism. In what rationalism roust it be incorporated, in the White nationalism as they see it here in South Africa? That, Mr. Speaker, means a politically integrated community. After this debate the United Party cannot escape that conclusion. What is their reply if a people wants to secede? Would they suppress it with bloodshed, as in the case of Biafra? They must tell us what they would do.

Finally, this Bill makes provision for peaceful race relations here in our country. We are budgeting for a long term, we are governing according to a particular philosophy of life, and in this way crises are being avoided, while the United Party, on the other hand, as we have come to know them through the years, governs to solve crises as they crop up. In conclusion I want to tell you this: Between the lines of this Bill an educational task for White South Africa is very clearly delineated, and it is a task this side of the House very gladly accepts.

Sir, I still wonder why the members of the National Party take so much trouble to prove to this side of this House that the Bantu peoples here are descended from many peoples. It was repeatedly said by the hon. member who has just sat down, by the hon. member for Umhlatuzana and the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central). Time and again they advance the argument that the Bantu population of South Africa is descended from many peoples. Who disputes that? We do not dispute that. The Bantu has its origin in many peoples, just as the Whites in this country are descended from many peoples. They arrived here at more or less the same time. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I put a question to the hon. the Minister to which he has not replied as yet, and I hope that he will reply to it now. I made the statement, as the hon. member for Umhlatuzana also said, that the Whites who came to this country, were descended from many peoples in Europe. The hon. member mentioned only four or five peoples. There were 10 or 12, not only four or five. There were not only the Dutch and the Germans and the English and the French; there were the Jews and the Greeks as well, and to-day there are the Cyrians and the Lebanese as well as many other peoples with their own languages that are united here in one South African people. Sir, by what right can we, as million white people, tell 141 million people, “You will be citizens of this or that country; this is your territory; you belong there”? One thing became very clear to me when the hon. member for Umhlatuzana was speaking here, and I may add that it is a long time since I have heard such an obscure, silly speech as the one he made here …

You could not understand what I was saying.

… so much so that it became clear to me from what European nation he is descended, a nation which thought it could take people, put them anywhere and do with them what it wanted to do. We know what the result of that was. Sir, nobody disputes the statement that the Bantu peoples here have their origin in many peoples. If it is the desire of the Whites, who are also descendants of many peoples from many countries, with different languages, cultures and faiths, to develop into a South African people, do hon. members on that side not think that it is the desire of the Bantu as well to develop into one nation, instead of being separated in different territories? To me it seems too strange to argue that the desire for nationhood does not exist among the Bantu as well. It seems to me as if we cannot reach the same wavelength on which we can argue in the light of the facts. We must take the facts and the statistics before us into account; it does not help to float around somewhere in space. Surely we know what the composition of the Bantu peoples in South Africa is.

Hon. members on that side consistently mention the example of Europe to us. It was mentioned by the hon. member for Umhlatuzana and other members. They mentioned the example of Europe where over the decades, nations have been separated by means of closely defined boundaries. As the hon. member over there said, if one were to tell a Dutchman and a German that they belonged to the same nation, one would create an explosive situation. Sir, in terms of this legislation we want to move in exactly the same direction as Europe did, and America as well, which he described as a nation which was still immature..

I did not say that.

Oh yes, the hon. member said they were a nation in the making. There were 50 states with more than 50 nationalities and that was an example of a nation in the making. But in this regard we want to use the example of Europe, and what is the example of Europe? Has there ever been a world conflagration or a world revolt in which the whole of Europe sided together? Has there ever been a world revolt in which the whole of Europe chose the same side? If we were to have at least 12 independent Bantu states here, could we imagine that they would all choose the same side as us in any world revolution? Is this an example to choose of what we want to do or should we take the American example, where apart from how they all think, they at least form a united group? I should like to have the attention of the hon. the Minister. What is the Bantu getting in terms of this legislation that he does not already have!? In his reply this morning, the Minister told me to ask a Bantu in Johannesburg to which people he belonged. He would tell me that immediately, but what is so strange about that? In order to obtain his reference book—and he must carry one—he has to say whether he is a Shangana, Zulu or Xhosa, and this is reflected in the reference book. What was reflected originally was what he said he was because he could speak the language, even though he could speak many languages, and because he had a kinship. In other words, he could have said that he was a Xhosa when he was, in fact, a Zulu. But now that is reflected in his reference book. Therefore it is strange to me that no-one has mentioned the fact that a Bantu can obtain a passport to leave the country, and that that document reflects his nationality, of what people he is a member. Apart from the police report or whatever he has to obtain before he may leave, he may obtain a passport, provided it is approved. This reflects what group he belongs to. But in addition to this, this legislation now seeks to grant him citizenship, but the identity card he carries already reflects his citizenship. He must have citizenship, otherwise he cannot obtain it. Therefore, his citizenship has been indicated, but now, by means of this legislation, we want to grant him citizenship again.

The hon. the Minister continued and said this was the first step in the direction of these groups becoming nations. I repeat the question. “What makes the Minister think that he mantle has fallen on his shoulders to identify and classify 14.5 million people into groups? Has it ever happened in the history of the world, that 3.5 million people have identified and told the remaining 14.5 million citizens of the same country where they should go? It has never happened before. But the Minister thinks that the mantle has fallen on his shoulders to take this step. And then the hon. member for Umhlatuzana says that that party will accept the responsibility of guiding them towards becoming nations, while they want to be nothing else but a Bantu population of the Republic of South Africa! But now they have to be guided towards becoming nations. This is arrogance. But again I ask, what else are they getting? If this is the first step, this citizenship and identification which they must get, what is the second step? I think the Minister indicated that. Apart from the dual citizenship which they now have, which the hon. members on the opposite side tried to explain to the point of boredom and which they said had happened many times before, the second step is that they lose their citizenship in the Republic. In other words, there they are identified with one group only and within that group they obtain there their citizenship, but they no longer have a dual citizenship here. This is the second step, and then the third step will follow, as sure as day follows night. What will the position be as soon as one has reached the stage that the Bantu have completely been deprived of their citizenship in the Republic of South Africa, and one has those eight states, which, according to the Minister, can develop to independence? I have never heard him say when, but then we shall have eight independent states on our borders, plus the four which are already independent. Then we shall have at least 12 independent Bantu states. Then we shall have the present-day situation in Europe— closely defined countries, with the same colour and to a large extent the same culture, but which have never been able to unite in the face or a world problem. But here we expect, in terms of what the Minister said, that 12 sovereign independent black states and one white state should choose the same side in any clash with, for example, the East, and this can surely never happen. It is late in the day and we can do little to stop this legislation, but the fact remains that this is not the first great step, as they said, in the granting of citizenship to the Bantu. This is the last great step in the direction of destroying the unity which we still have in South Africa, the co-existence of the Whites and the non-Whites, and this is leading us on to the road of danger, as sure as anything.

I want to admit openly that I find it disappointing that this third-reading debate is now actually an anti-climax, in comparison with what we had in the previous stages. Of course, this must be attributed to a large extent to the tone which was given to it by hon. members on the other side. Therefore I will confine myself only to some of the points which I think should be mentioned. No new points were really mentioned in comparison with the previous stages which we completed, and I shall reply only very briefly to some points.

The first point to which I specifically want to reply, although I have already done so by implication in the previous stages, is the question of the hon. member for Transkei whether those rights of Bantu persons who have rights in terms of section 10 of the Urban Areas Act in regard to the residence facilities, will be affected if they do not want to accept citizenship in terms of this Bill. I do not know why the hon. member is thinking about this now and why he asked that question. Nobody on our side has ever hinted at anything like this, that those rights will specifically be affected now on account of this Bill which we are now discussing. I think the hon. member’s remarks and enquiries will have only one result, and that is to cause unnecessary dissatisfaction, the hon. member also spoke about nationalism among the Bantu peoples and he said that nationalism among the Bantu is being stimulated by this Bill. I am very pleased about what the hon. member for Umhlatuzana did in a very competent way in this House to-day with the explanations he gave, and I want to tell the hon. member for Transkei and all who pretend not to know this, that if they think the various Bantu peoples in South Africa do not each have a national feeling—call it nationalism if you like—then they really are people who live in a dreamland. It is a general fact and we are aware that each of the Bantu peoples have their own particular form of national pride and national feeling. It is the most sensible thing to try to regulate that national pride and that national feeling in the different Bantu peoples and to try to channel it and guide it along healthier paths. But it is in fact the policy of the United Party to try to suppress that national feeling of the Bantu peoples and to try to combine it with the national feelings of the Whites, in other words to unite the two in marriage. That is what they are trying to do.

The hon. member who is an old parliamentarian, should know that in this debate he may not ask me: What about the Indians and what about the Coloureds and their citizenship? I should like to reply to those questions of his, but they are not relevant here and I will not be allowed to do so. The hon. member again pointed out the Afrikaans and English groups, and I must say he made a much better attempt to-day. He asked whether it had to be a separate people with separate citizenships, for Afrikaans and English, but I discussed this in my reply this morning when I said that language is no determining or decisive factor in respect of nationhood. You can have one nation with two or three or four languages—just think of Switzerland, and in contrast to that you can have one language which is used by different nations and different countries. I gave examples of that. But the hon. member buzzes around this one idea like an insect, and he must get away from it.

Then the hon. member also spoke very disparagingly about documentary separation which we are accomplishing with this, and nothing more. No, the hon. member will soon see that this Bill does not only result in documentary separation, but practical separation as well, which manifests itself in the political development of these Bantu peoples, because this matter is a political conception, as we all know. If the hon. member calls this Bill documentary separation, he must call the Transkei Constitution Act documentary separation as well. That Constitution had a practical effect on the political development of the Transkei. Furthermore, the hon. member must then call the Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 documentary separation as well, that Act which removed the representatives of the Bantu from this Chamber, and which set in motion quite a few other evolutionary development processes for the Bantu’s political development. This is all documentary separation. It is very easy to say on the very first day of a new Bill that this matter is a documentary matter and that it has no practical feasibility, but time will show us, as it did with the other matters.

The hon. member for Mooi River let off quite a bit of steam here this afternoon, once again about the same subject as before, but this afternoon he has prejudiced his testimonial possibilities somewhat. The hon. member really mentioned only a subject which I regard as worthwhile enough to reply to. The others we have already discussed. The hon. member said that this Bill is there because the National Party does not regard the destiny of the Whites in this country seriously enough. This is an abominable statement to make, and a bitterly ironic one for a member of the United Party, because we accuse the United Party, and the nation has confirmed these accusations every time and will do so again, that it is not serious enough in regard to the destiny of the Whites in South Africa, especially not about its political destiny, and especially not with his destiny in regard to the exercise of control in South Africa. Quite apart from many other positive programmes which we have already carried out in the economic, agricultural and other fields, which shows that this Government, by means of all its Ministers and Departments, is serious about the development of the Whites, I want to ask you whether during the 22 years since we came into power in 1948, we have not shown that this Government and this Party is serious about the political security of the white man in South Africa. This Chamber has had representatives of all shades, except Indians. When we came into power in 1948 the Indian was almost here as well. That position has been changed step by step by this Government. When we meet again in July, this House will have only representatives of the white authority of white South Africa for the first time in the history of South Africa. Now that hon. member says that this Government is not paying enough attention to the destiny of the Whites. That is an ironic statement. On this same matter of political security that hon. member and his party compare very unfavourably with us. Should they get their way, the representatives of the other peoples would increase through the Whites at first and later in the living forms of their own peoples in this Chamber until they will be, in the majority compared with us. We have not only ensured political protection in South Africa. We have also brought geographical protection.

How can you say “protection”?

Yes, protection. Does the hon. member not know that every white person in South Africa knows where the geographic Bantu territories are, where they have their top priority and where the Whites have top priority in South Africa? Everyone knows this, even that member who pretends not to know. If this is not protection of our geographical and property rights, then that hon. member does not know what he is talking about.

Similarly, we have brought protection in the field of labour. Is it not this Government who over the years have piloted legislation on work reservation and many other kinds of legislation through the Parliament? In fact there was legislation this year in this connection. To whom did the Whites look for the protection of their avenues of employment in South Africa? Not the United Party therefore they are sent back to this Chamber in steadily dwindling numbers.

Who guaranteed social protection for the white man in South Africa? Over the years, this Government has insured that as well. Who imported economic protection so that everyone, white or non-white, know where his economic priority is and chief authority lie? It was us. Now the hon. member for Pinelands says that it is untrue.

It is false security.

No, it is not false security. The supposed security which hon. members on the other side of this House offer South Africa, is false security.

The hon. member for East London (City) tried to draw a comparison, a false comparison. The hon. member indicated that the Bantu peoples, just like the white people, are descendants of many overseas peoples. But the hon. member spoke about the “Bantu people”, not about the “Bantu peoples”, the plural form. He said that the Bantu people, in the singular, are just like the Whites in South Africa which are descendants of many overseas peoples. This is a complete misrepresentation. The white people in South Africa are descended from the many Whites outside this country. But they have developed a new form here. They have developed a distinctive national form here, which was crystallized most clearly in Afrikanerdom. Even the English-speaking people in South Africa have gone through a process—slower than that in America—of becoming South African. But they are developing away from their origins as well. However, that process is much slower than in the case of the present day Afrikaans-speaking people. We admit that we are struggling to become one people. But what happened to the Bantu? Can the hon. member not remember what I said this morning when I delivered my reply? The Bantu peoples came here from other parts of Africa and they still talk their own languages. We know all the different Bantu languages and their dialectical deviations, which is the clearest embodiment of each one’s separate nationhood. I reminded the hon. member that when the Negroes moved from Africa to America, they left their languages behind. They did not take their distinctive languages with them to America. They were Americanized there. The hon. member has given a complete misrepresentation. We are concerned with a large number of Bantu peoples here. We do not create them, as one of the hon. members maintained. It is the Creator who brought about that. The different Bantu peoples in South Africa are not the work of human hands. This is not the result of human endeavour. It is a creation of Providence. That hon. member and his whole party will never be able to undo that.

That hon. member was also very imprudent when he said that the 3½ million Whites are busy identifying, categorizing and splitting the 14 million Bantu. We are not splitting them, they have already been split. We are merely putting this division in order. That is all we are doing.

The last point which the hon. member made, amounts to the most reckless irresponsibility which he has ever been guilty of. He said namely that we cannot expect the Bantu peoples to choose the side of the Whites if Communist dangers threaten our country from outside.

I said what reason have we to think so.

No, I wrote what the hon. member said. He said that we cannot expect them to do it. Now the hon. member asks what reason we have to think so. I accept that statement as well. It is a reckless conditioning of the Bantu in order to try to prepare them in advance to refrain from supporting us if such a situation should arise. It is a reckless mode of action designed to alienate the Bantu from us. We do everything in our power to promote a spirit of good neighbourliness and mutual good relationships between Whites and the different black peoples in South Africa. Words such as those spoken by that hon. member, are merely aimed at marring those relationships. It is conditioning at its very worst. It should be everybody’s task in South Africa to try to apply political conditioning to beneficial effect.

Motion put and the House divided:

AYES—104: Bodenstein, P.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Brandt, J. W.; Carr, D. M.; Coetsee, H. J.; Coetzee, J. A.; Cruywagen, W. A.; De lager, P. R.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, C.; De Wet, M. W.; Diederichs, N.; Du Plessis, A. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Greyling, I. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Haak, J. F. W.; 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.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Kotze, S. F.; Kruger, J. 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.; Marais, J. A.; Maree, G. de K.; Martins, H. E.; McLachlan, R.; Meyer, P. H.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse, R. J. J.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rail, J. W.; Rail, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reinecke, C. J.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Stofberg, L. F.; Swanepoel, J. W. F.; Swiegers, J. G.; 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 Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, J. W.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. I.; Van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Vilioen, M.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visse, J. H.; Visser, A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vor-ster, B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Vosloo, W. L.; Waring, F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentzel, J. J. G.

Tellers: G. P. C. Bezuidenhout, P. H. Torlage, G. P. van den Berg and H. J. van Wyk.

NOES—38: Basson, J. A. L.; Basson, J. D. du P.; Connan, T. 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.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Moore, P. A.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Smith. W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; 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.

Motion accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Chairman, I move the following amendment which stands in my name on the Order Paper—

The previous general registration took place in 1963. In terms of the amendment effected to the Electoral Laws in 1968, a general registration would have taken place in 1969, specifically with a view to the 1971 election, as expected at the time. The date of the general election has now been advanced. As a result of the date of the general election having been advanced, the general registration could not take place in 1969. A general election is now being envisaged in 1975. With a view to that general election in 1975, the year 1973 is being envisaged as the year in which a general registration should take place. I want to put it to the Minister that we have no assurance that the election will in fact take place in 1975. It may in fact take place earlier, for instance, in 1974 or even in 1973. It may just as well happen that the date of that election, as it is in the case of the coming election, will be advanced by a year or two. Then we shall have the position where it will once again be impossible for a general registration of voters to take place. If we were to have a general election in 1973, for instance, it would mean that the basis of the voters’ lists would remain the same as those compiled in 1963. That would mean that the lists would then be at least ten years old.

The supplementary registration which took place in October last year, when there was a supplementary registration of almost three-quarters of a million voters, showed how inadequate and how obsolete the general list, which is being used at present, was. That list should be replaced as soon as possible by a new general voters’ list based on a new general registration, which has now been postponed for several years already. It is in view of this position that I want to make the point that the general registration which did not take place in 1969, should take place as early as possible. This means that it should take place in the year 1970, because there is a provincial election which will also have to take place in 1970. If it is practicable for that list to be compiled before the provincial election, in order that it may be used for that election, it would be so much the better, but if that list cannot be used for the general provincial election later this year, it has to be completed on as early a date as possible in order that the country may be prepared for a general election which may take place earlier than in 1975.

Mr. Chairman, unfortunately I am not prepared to accept this amendment. As I see it, this amendment serves no purpose whatsoever. If one wants to provide in an Act that a general registration has to take place in a particular year, one would after all do so with a specific end in view. It appears to me as though this amendment was moved merely to be different. The hon. member proposes that the next general registration should take place in 1970, but if this were to happen, such a general voters’ list could in any case not be used for the provincial election. If we were to have a general registration now, and if we were also to have a delimitation of constituencies in three years’ time, that delimitation would again be effected on the basis of an outdated general registration. In saying this I do not wish to suggest that a general registration would necessarily bring the voters’ lists up to date, or in order, to the greatest extent. Nor do I wish to suggest that, as a general registration took place several years ago, the voters’ list is necessarily in a worse state at this stage than it was, say, three or four years ago. This depends on the supplementary registration which has taken place in the meantime. I think all of us attach a very great deal of importance to a supplementary registration. This is the position since we know that it is being provided at the moment that a general registration alone may not be used for the purposes of an election. It is for the very reason that we have in the past had experience of the weaknesses of a general registration, that we provided that, after a general registration, there has to be a supplementary registration before that voters’ list may be used for the purposes of an election. Such a voters’ list is therefore compiled after a general registration and one supplementary registration. In the light of these circumstances, we cannot assume today that an election will in fact take place in 1972 or in 1973. We are holding an election in 1970, and the only logical assumption we can make, is that the next election is going to take place in 1975. That is why, as I said in the course of the Second Reading debate, we are making provision for a delimitation of constituencies to take place in the preceding year, i.e. in 1974, with a view to the election which will take place in 1975. It is also for that reason that we are providing that, with a view to the delimitation in 1974, the general election should take place in 1973. I think this is logical and on this basis our conclusions ought to be correct. That is why I want to ask hon. members that we merely leave this clause as it reads at present.

Mr. Chairman, the argument advanced by the hon. the Minister cuts both ways. He wants to eat his cake and have it. On the one hand, he says that if we were to have a delimitation in 1974, it would mean that the voters’ lists would be out-dated if a general registration had to take place in 1970. Therefore, the Minister admits to the weaknesses of an out-dated voters’ list. On the other hand; he wants to suggest that a supplementary registration is as valuable as a general registration. He cannot have the advantage both ways. He must admit that a general registration which is out-dated, is in fact outdated and therefore inadequate, and then he may say that a supplementary registration can take the place of it and have the same significance. He cannot argue both ways. The hon. the Minister said that the only assumption we could make, was that the election would take place in 1975 and on that basis we could have a general registration in 1973, but this does not hold good. Surely it is not true that this is the only assumption we can make. There can be many other assumptions. There is no assurance whatsoever, but there are many assumptions. Surely we now have the evidence that a party which is very firmly in power, is advancing the election date by a year. In 1961 it also happened that the election date was advanced. Surely, in view of the history and what we know today it would be very unrealistic not to have regard to the possibility that we may in fact have an earlier election in, say, 1973 or 1974. In that case it would after all be short-sighted not to make provision with a view to that now. The only weakness, it may have, is that that list which is compiled this year will be two years old in 1973, but how many advantages would there not be implied in having a two-year-old list in preference to a basic voters’ list compiled in 1963? I want to make the plea to the hon. the Minister that in this respect we have an obligation which we must meet. The Minister had an obligation to hold a general registration last year. In spite of the requirements of that Act, he did not do so. He disregarded the law, and what we now expect from him, is that he should really show his good faith by remedying as soon as possible the omission he was guilty of last year in failing to cause the general registration to take place. The best way in which he can do so, is by causing the general registration—in respect of which he pleaded in 1968 that it should take place in 1969, by virtue of the fact that that voters’ list was out-dated—to take place this year before the provincial election, if possible, and if that is not possible to have it later this year.

Mr. Chairman, viewing the clause as it is before us, the position I think is that there are really two requisites for the effective operation of the election machinery in South Africa. The first is that there should be as near as possible to every general election a registration that is up to date and effective and represents the voting strength of the country. The second is that that voting strength should be redistributed by delimitation before every second election. Unfortunately with the announcement of the election date for this year, we found ourselves last year in a position where it was impossible under the laws existing then to have an up-to-date general registration which would be effective by the 22nd April. Mr. Chairman, you would rule me out of order if I commented on the selection of the 22nd April, which has caused this difficulty. We have now got ourselves into this position and we on this side of the House, in consultation with the hon. the Minister, agreed that we would support this amending legislation because there would have been added chaos had that general registration taken place during 1969. What is the position today? If we have a general registration in 1970, as is suggested, and a delimitation is to follow in 1974, that registration will be out of date as far as a new delimitation of constituency boundaries is concerned. I must concede to the hon. member for Innesdal that one runs the risk with an unpredictable government as to when it is going to announce the next general election. On the assumption that we will not have panic stations again within the next few years because there will be a more stable Government after the 22nd April, it seems that this general registration should take place as is planned in terms of this clause, that is a year before the delimitation. I think the necessity for that is clear as has been indicated by the figures which have now been published. The variation in the number of voters in the constituencies from 8,000 to 20,000 is undesirable and that should be rectified with the normal application of our electoral laws so that it will be as near as possible to the delimitation. For those reasons we will support the clause as it stands.

Amendment put and negatived.

Clause, as printed, put and agreed to.

Clause 2:

Mr. Chairman, I want to raise with the hon. the Minister a question for which we believe there can still be made provision, that is the undertaking given to members of the Jewish faith regarding the voting facilities which would be available to them on election day. I also brought this to his notice during the Second Reading. This clause is extending the use of section 42 to persons outside the Republic but it has still not dealt with the position of persons of the Jewish faith. The hon. the Minister seems to suggest that no undertaking was given to the Jewish people regarding special facilities for voting on election day. I have taken the trouble to get the statement that was issued after the Chief Rabbi had had a discussion with the hon. the Prime Minister. I have had this statement telexed to me. The Chief Rabbi spoke to the Prime Minister who raised three points. Firstly he said that “he had not consulted the Jewish calendar when deciding on the date and he hoped that there was nothing to prevent Jewish persons from voting”. We accept that that has happened. It was unfortunate but it happened that the Jewish calendar was not consulted. Secondly, the Prime Minister explained that “a pre-election day postal vote was possible”. That was the second statement. The third statement by the Prime Minister was that “he was also arranging a special vote which I (the Rabbi) will explain to the Jewish community when I know more about it”. We have clause 2 of this Bill, but there is no indication in this clause of any possibility that a member of the Jewish faith can use the postal vote except in normal circumstances of absence from a constituency. As I see it here, there is certainly no indication of an arrangement for a special vote which will enable those of the Jewish faith to vote on election day other than at a polling station. There is no special arrangement to cover the circumstances arising out of the selection of this date. I raise this point because of the fact that during the Second Reading there was an attempt by the hon. the Minister to get away from this undertaking which was given. One realizes that he does not want to involve persons of a particular faith. One realizes this and the hon. the Prime Minister has admitted his unfortunate error in the selection of this date. But you cannot confine persons of the Jewish faith to voting after sunset on election day in some of the urban constituencies which have a very high number of voters in a polling district. Can the hon. the Minister not make provision in this clause to meet this particular problem, which has arisen through no fault of the Jewish people themselves?

Mr. Chairman, in the course of the Second Reading debate and now once again, the hon. member who has just spoken, made a point of the fact that this is a day of spiritual significance to the Jewish community. I want to tell the hon. member that according to the information I gathered, they are inclined to exaggerate the significance of this day. I should like hon. members in this House who are members of the Jewish community to tell us whether it really is such a serious matter that the election has been fixed for that particular day. I do not know whether there are any advantages in debating this matter now, but in all fairness I should also like to call on hon. members on that side to ask them to take the calendar and to decide on a date for a general election and then to find a day which would suit all groups of society, having regard to holidays …

That is easy enough; why not?

That hon. member is welcome to try. I also want to tell the hon. member that since it was brought to the notice of the Government that this was a special day for the Jewish community, the matter has been taken into reconsideration. But in view of holidays. school holidays in the various provinces, Whitsuntide and a variety of other considerations, it simply is not so easy to find a suitable day. Whereas that day has already been decided upon and announced and whereas there was in fact no other suitable day, the Government contented itself with this day. In all fairness I should like hon. members to consider all these circumstances.

An interview took place recently between the Prime Minister and the Rabbi. Unfortunately I was not present. Nor did I have an interview with the Rabbi to ask him precisely what had happened and what the Prime Minister had told him. I should not like to underestimate the Rabbi’s knowledge of the electoral laws, but in all sincerity I must tell hon. members that there must have been a great deal of misunderstanding if the Rabbi had gone away with the impression that the Prime Minister had intimated to him that a special vote would be created just for the Jewish community.

That is what the Prime Minister promised.

Hon. members should refrain from delivering themselves of absurdities. The hon. member for Green Point now tells me that this is what the Prime Minister promised. How does he know that? Was the hon. member present at the interview? I think hon. members must in all sincerity admit that, despite the attitude they may adopt, they should after all expect that, in the circumstances, the Prime Minister has a better knowledge of the electoral laws and all the possibilities in terms of the electoral laws.

But, if that is the case, where did the Rabbi get that idea from?

I have already explained that to hon. members. After all, the electoral laws make provision for a special vote. Does the hon. member for Durban Point not know that there is such a thing as a special vote in the electoral laws. The Rabbi was informed that in cases where people would perhaps have to travel long distances to reach the polling booths and where they would perhaps be absent from their constituency, they would either be entitled to a postal vote, or to a special vote. I do not want to act the part of a judge and give a verdict here; but according to all the information I gathered, the Prime Minister made no mention of a special vote other than the special vote for which provision is being made in the electoral laws. I think that if hon. members on that side wanted to be fair, they would at least agree with me that this conclusion is the most logical conclusion one could make. According to my information no undertaking has ever been given in respect of a Special vote specially for the Jewish community. In the circumstances this was never considered. I said this in the course of the Second Reading debate and I shall once again put it to hon. members on that side: Do they think it is a good principle, and do they want to propagate it, that at every election a special vote is to be created for a particular section of our society?

It is your irresponsibility.

No, Sir, I am explaining to the hon. member how ridiculous his proposal is. Then he says it is my proposal.

You select the election day.

He is trying to force on us a special vote for a particular group of society. Then he tells me that it is a ridiculous proposal. In other words, he tells me his own proposal is ridiculous. But, surely, this is the case. Surely, hon. members know that it is not practical politics to create a special vote for a special group of society. That is why it has never been our intention to introduce such a special vote at this particular election.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Minister asked one of the Jewish members of this House to give him an indication of the importance of Passover. I very happily do so. But before I do that, I want to express my regret, firstly, that the 22nd April was chosen as the date of the general election—I know I am not allowed to discuss that under this clause—and secondly, at two remarks that the hon. the Minister has made. First of all, he says that he had great difficulty in deciding on an alternative date. He gave as one of the reasons certain public holidays and as the second, school holidays. I find it a very sorry state of affairs for a government, which claims an adherence to God, to choose that a religious holiday be ignored instead of school holidays. To me this does not add up to all the utterances we have heard from this Nationalist Government.

You are trying to make political capital out of this.

No, no. This is not politics. If our religion is to be treated in this way and my holy days are to be given less respect than school holidays, then I can certainly have very serious thoughts about the situation. Secondly, the hon. the Minister asks whether he can be expected to change the law for every set of circumstances. Now, Sir, if we believe in religion, and I presume most of us do, I do not think it is right for the hon. the Minister to equate this with “every set of circumstances”. [Interjections.]

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, I am not prepared to answer any questions.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, the hon. the Minister asked whether a Jewish member of this House would deal with this specific question. I think hon. members, out of sheer courtesy, should allow the hon. member to deal with the matter, which is obviously of the very deepest consequence to him and to his people. [Interjections.]

Order! Would hon. members be so kind as to give the hon. member a turn. If the feeling is that no interjections should be made, I shall apply it on this last day. I just want to ask hon. members to give the hon. member a chance.

Mr. Chairman. I am sorry the hon. the Minister is regarding this question as one of “circumstances”. The situation was not caused through the choosing of the Jewish community. It was an error made by the Government. I do not know what transpired between the Chief Rabbi and the hon. the Prime Minister. It would be fair and reasonable to accept that an error has been made and to make some special provision. Now let us come back to the question the hon. the Minister wants answered. The Passover is the third most important Jewish holiday. The first is the Jewish Day of Atonement, the second the Jewish New Year and then comes the Passover. When one considers how important a religious occasion is to a member of a particular faith, one cannot generalize. Sunday is an important religious day to every Gentile. It does not mean that every Gentile keeps Sunday in a religious way. I do not know what the hon. the Minister does on Sundays. I would not dare ask him. But there are many Gentiles who play golf or cricket or fish and do all sorts of things on Sundays, This is abhorrent to a number of people who regard Sunday as a religious day. This must be my answer to the hon. the Minister. The degree of religiousness of a holiday, whether it be a Jewish holiday or a Christian holiday or a Mohammedan holiday, cannot be determined by the way it is kept by a particular person. I can, however, say that Passover is an important Jewish holiday. It is a holiday that is observed by a great number of Jews; it is also a holiday which is not observed by a great number of Jews. I do not think this is the issue; the issue is that I as a Jew have a personal right to treat Passover, or any other Jewish holiday, in whatever form I like. If I decide that I am a man of completely religious convictions and observances, I will keep every single law in regard to this holiday. Amongst these laws are—that you cannot travel, that you cannot write and that you should be in a synagogue. It is my choice to do as I please. It is my personal choice whether I want to travel, to write or to be in a synagogue during the Passover. I do not believe that the Government has the right to say to any religious sect in the country that they are, in effect, going to force such a religious sect, if they want to use their democratic rights, to break the laws they respect from a religious point of view. This is the real issue. If the hon. the Minister will provide us with a special vote we shall be grateful for that. But we have to take the situation as we find it.

I only want to make one appeal at this stage: I want to say to everyone of my coreligionists in South Africa. Irrespective of the fact that the general election will take place on the second day of Passover and irrespective of how religious you are or how religious you are not, please vote. The important thing is that the Jew in South Africa should demonstrate clearly that this vote is something very important to him. I am sure this plea will have the support of the hon. the Minister and that of the hon. the Prime Minister, namely, that the democratic right of the Jewish people of this country, a right which they cherish and value, should be exercised on the 22nd April so that there can never be any question, that as a result of the decision to call the general election on the 22nd April, the Jew of South Africa has been denied his democratic right to vote.

Mr. Chairman, I requested the hon. member or some other member of the Jewish community to give us an explanation of the importance they attach to this day, and the hon. member for Park Town did so. I think his speech bore out to a large extent the statement I made a moment ago. All of us, no matter to which religion we belong, have important days bound up with our religion. There are also less important days. In the church to which I belong, i.e. the Dutch Reformed Church, we have very important days, such as Christmas and Good Friday, but then we also have less important days to which we do not attach as much importance as we do to a Sunday, which is a day of rest to us. In this way the hon. member has shown us that that particular day is a very important one to him. He also regarded it as an important day for the Jewish community, but in any case not as one of the most important days. That is what I said a few moments ago when I asked for an indication. I did not suggest that because some people are indifferent to their religion, I expect everybody to be indifferent to their religion. I honestly think that the argument which we are conducting at this stage, and which the hon. member also advanced, cannot do the matter and the relations any good. I admit and agree with the hon. member that this aspect was not borne in mind at the time when the election date was decided on. The Cabinet was not aware of it, and I must admit that I was not aware of it either. I am not a great expert on the Holy days of the Jewish church. I therefore admit openly that we were not aware of it. We have, however, been given the assurance since then that it will not be necessary for any member of the Jewish community to stay away from the polls in the light of all these circumstances. That assurance was given and it was also taken into account in reconsidering the date. As I said a few moments ago. it is also very difficult under the circumstances to find a suitable date which will suit everybody. The hon. member must accept that under the circumstances we can do nothing else, and that a special vote cannot be created in order to meet these circumstances. It also appears to me as if he does accept it this way.

Clause put and agreed to.

Clause 3:

Mr. Chairman, I do not want to repeat the arguments used during the Second Reading debate or prolong the debate unnecessarily, but I feel that it is necessary to put on record our opposition to this clause. This clause reduces the time during which special votes were intended to be available to the electorate to seven days after nomination day instead of from the day following nomination day. The hon. the Minister has advanced as his reason the technical difficulty of distributing the names of candidates. We on this side of the House do not feel that that is a bar to the possibility of using special votes immediately. The other documents, namely the ballot papers and the various documents required for the vote are, in any case, available to the returning Officers and will be used in virtually every case by a returning Officer in relation to the voters in his own constituency and to the candidates whom he, the day before, himself nominated. He is therefore going to know who the candidates are and the voter is going to know. In the few cases where the returning Officer or the presiding Officer for special votes does not know who the candidates are, we maintain that it is the responsibility of the voter to ensure that he gives the correct names to the presiding Officer before he votes. If he gives the wrong names he has spoilt his own paper by his own mistake and he has nobody but himself to blame for that. In any case, he is not going to apply for a special vote before the lists are available unless there is a particular reason. That reason can only be that he is leaving to go overseas or somewhere else and cannot wait for seven days before he can vote—or for the longer period before he can vote by normal postal vote. It is going to apply to a small number of people, but this was a small concession towards the people who are disfranchised because they are overseas at the time of an election. We have fought on numerous occasions for such persons to have the right to vote, such as our public servants have, at an embassy or before officials at our overseas embassies or legations. That request has been consistently turned down by the Government. This was a small concession giving seven extra days; in other words, one more mail ship or seven more aircraft full of people who are going overseas would be able to vote. Even this small concession upon which we reached agreement on the Select Committee is now being removed by the hon. the Minister. Why? Surely it is not because he thinks that more United Party supporters are going to be overseas than Nationalist Party supporters? I do not suggest that. I submit that the Select Committee was unanimous on this issue and that the hon. the Minister should reconsider this matter even at this last moment by dropping his clause. If we drop this clause and the consequential ones we will meet that small group of people who are going to be affected. This is just a small demonstration of obstinacy on the part of the hon. the Minister. It is pigheadedness; he has dug his heels in. His officials have said that it is going to be difficult and he has decided that he will take their side. We ask for so little that I think the hon. the Minister should meet us.

Whilst I am on my feet I want to say that we will not speak on the consequential clauses, but that our attitude will flow from our opposition to this clause.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Minister indicated in the Other Place some desire to come back to the provisions of the original Act and not to proceed with this amendment. It is commendable that he reduced the period from ten days to seven days, as we have it now before us in the Bill. I want to say with all respect to the hon. the Minister that I do not think that his argument during the Second Reading debate for the necessity of this delay of seven days, is really valid. He indicated the difficulty of communication, of being able to get the information out to all the various constituencies of the candidates elected in other constituencies. But is that really a reason why this right to vote by special vote the day after nomination day, should be stopped? I think we in the Select Committee agreed that this right would be most frequently, if not entirely, used by persons to vote in their own constituencies and not to vote in some other constituency. In other words, a person who was about to leave Brakpan, would vote in Brakpan where he was known and where the returning Officer would know who the candidates were. There is no difficulty. The point I am trying to make is that this right of exercising a special vote immediately after nomination day would, in all probability, and almost entirely, be exercised by people who are leaving their own constituency to go somewhere else, where the identity of the candidates will be known, where there will be no problem of getting information as to whom the candidates are in this or another constituency removed from the one in which the vote is being exercised. For that reason and for the reasons put forward by the hon. member for Durban (Point), we cannot agree with this clause. The fact is that the voter takes the risk of having his vote declared invalid if he has indicated to the returning Officer away from his own constituency the wrong names of the candidates in that particular contest. He invalidates his own vote if he does that. For those reasons I hope that the hon. the Minister will accede to the requests which have been made to him and drop this clause entirely and also the consequential clauses.

Mr. Chairman, the arguments advanced by the hon. member for Green Point do not hold water at all. He says that a person who is going to make use of the special vote is the person who will vote in his own constituency, where he knows who the candidates are. But surely this is not the position. People who qualify for postal votes also qualify for the special vote. Consequently such a special vote will not only be exercised in the constituency where the person concerned has been registered, but it can be done in any constituency in the country. A person who has been registered in Johannesburg and who now finds himself in the Cape, can vote by means of the special vote, and then he may not know who the candidate is there. I have had the experience of still not knowing who the candidate is even a few days after nomination day. This is, of course, not the case in all constituencies. The hon. member for Durban (Point) admits that there will be people who will not know who the candidate in the specific constituency is, but that it will be such a small percentage that their votes will not really make any great difference. However, everybody’s vote is important; even the votes of that small percentage of people who can, as he admitted, vote incorrectly, are important. Each person is entitled to one vote only. Once he has spoilt that vote, he cannot obtain another. We argued about this matter in the Select Committee. The hon. member for Durban (Point), for example, was in favour of …

Order! I cannot allow the hon. member to discuss that. He must come back to the amendment itself, which is only that “ten” be changed to “seven”.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Durban (Point) wanted that date to be moved again to the day after nomination day. This is what I am arguing about. The hon. member was in favour of this taking place on nomination day. We subsequently agreed on the day after nomination day. However, I was hesitant about this, and I predicted that it would not work. The person on whom the responsibility rests in this case, is not the voter, but the presiding Officer. In terms of the new legislation the presiding Officer is entitled to say who the candidates in that particular constituency are. It is he, therefore, who is the responsible person, and not the voter. The ballot papers are blank, and the presiding Officer has to fill in the names of the candidates. If he has no official knowledge of the names of those candidates, how can he be held responsible for filling in the wrong names? He can only be held responsible as presiding Officer after he has been notified officially of the names of the candidates. For this reason I myself am in favour of the special votes being recorded seven days after nomination day instead of on the day after nomination day.

Mr. Chairman, during the Second Reading debate I very courteously requested hon. members to afford me an opportunity of holding a proper election. It now seems to me, however, as though they do not want a well-organized election. They now want to make this an impossible task for us. The hon. member for Durban (Point) said that one boat and seven aircraft would go overseas, and that those passengers would not be able to vote in that case. However, if they do vote, he would only lose by a bigger margin than would have been the case otherwise.

Should our object not be to let as many people as possible vote?

Mr. Chairman, I want to refer hon. members to the statutory provision. Section 71sept of the Electoral Act reads as follows—

1. (1) nadat albei afskrifte van ’n aansoek om as ’n spesiale kieser te stem aan horn oorhandig is, vul die voorsittende beampte vir stemme van spesiale kiesers na raadpleging van die lys bedoel in paragraaf (e) van subartikel (1) van artikel 71 bis en vir sover die betrokke besonderhede onvolledig is, onverwyld …

Then he has to enter the particulars on the ballot paper as provided in subparagraphs of this section. Paragraph (e) of subsection (1) of section 71 bis reads as follows—

What the hon. member for Malmesbury has just said, is therefore quite correct. It is a statutory requirement. This requirement has always been contained in the Act. It is a statutory requirement which places the presiding Officer under the obligation of having to have a list of the candidates; he has to make the names of those candidates available to the person who is to vote. If the presiding Officer cannot do this, the voter may say that he has been wronged, because the presiding Officer furnished him with the wrong name and consequently his vote is lost. Because this is a statutory requirement, I think we are obliged to start the special voting on a date when those statutory requirements can be met. Apart from that this would merely create unnecessary confusion if we did not have the necessary information at our disposal on the date of the commencement of the special voting.

Mr. Chairman, it is obvious that when the Government wants to do something they can always find a number of good excuses, even if they are not good reasons. We do not accept the hon. the Minister’s explanation and we will oppose this clause.

Clause put and the Committee divided:

AYES—101: Bodenstein, P.; Botha, H. I.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Brandt, J. W.; Coetsee, H. J.; Coetzee, I. A.; Cruywagen, W. A.; De Jager, P. R.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, C.; 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.; Haak. J. F. W.; Havemann, W. W. B.; Hayward, S. A. S.; Henning, J. M.; Heystek, J.; Holland, M. W.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Kotzé, S. F.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. J.; Le Roux, J. P. C.; Lewis, H. M.; Loots, J. I.; Malan, G. F.; Malan, I. J.; Maree, G. de K.; Martins, H. E.; McLachlan, R.; Meyer, P. H.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S;. Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Pieterse. R. J. I.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rail, J. W.; Rail, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reinecke. C. J.; Reynecke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman. J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Swanepoel, I. W. F.; Swiegers, J. G.; Torlage, P. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van Breda, A.; Van den Berg, M. J.; Van den Heever. D. J. G.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, I. W.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Viljoen, M.; Viljoen, P. J. van B.; Visser, A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Vosloo, W. L.; Waring, F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentzel, J. J. G.

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

NOES—36: Basson, J. A. L.; 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.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Moore, P. A.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.;. Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; 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 4 put and agreed to (Official Opposition dissenting).

Clause 5:

Mr. Chairman, clause 5 has the result of eliminating what was regarded as an important part of the machinery of election day. I should like the hon. the Minister to listen to what I am saying, because I want to put a question to him. This clause eliminates the compulsory aspect of the availability of presiding Officers for special votes in every constituency.

Order! The hon. members may not stand in the passage over there.

The hon. the Minister ...

Order! Did the hon. member for Pietersburg not hear me saying that he was not allowed to stand in the passage?

The hon. the Minister, during the course of the Second Reading, referred to certain difficulties in some of the metropolitan areas. I do not want to deal with these difficulties again. I would, however, like to have an assurance from the hon. the Minister—and I am sure everybody else would like to have an assurance—that he will give instructions to the effect that where it is possible at all, and preferably as often as possible in so far as the various constituencies are concerned, presiding Officers will be appointed. There are areas where it may not be necessary to appoint presiding Officers, but where there is any reasonable ground for appointing a presiding Officer, I would like to have the assurance of the Minister that such instructions will be given. We should like to have the assurance that the tendency will be to appoint presiding Officers rather than to refuse to appoint them.

Mr. Chairman, I gave this assurance at the Second Reading. I appreciate that there has to be a presiding Officer to accommodate the voters of a special constituency to cast their special votes, but the circumstances may also be such that I will be obliged to appoint various presiding Officers for the same constituency. It all depends on the circumstances. But, as I have indicated in the Other Place, the position may be that one has a constituency consisting of a residential area only; there may be a business centre immediately outside the constituency, where it may be most convenient to have a presiding Officer. As the Act reads now, I cannot place the presiding Officer where it would be convenient, because the Act provides that I have to place him within the constituency, whereas the most convenient place for everybody would, for example, be a business centre where everybody goes from time to time, although it may be situated outside the constituency. For that reason I can unreservedly give the assurance that we shall try to place these presiding Officers where it is most convenient for all the voters to record their special votes. As I said a moment ago, I may appoint many more than just one presiding Officer. The Act provides for one presiding Officer only. It may also be more convenient for him not necessarily to be placed within the constituency. I think the hon. member had better criticize me when he comes back after the election...

He will not come back.

If he does not come back to the House, he would be welcome to criticize me outside this House when matters go wrong.

Clause put and agreed to (Official Opposition dissenting).

Clauses 6 and 7 put and agreed to (Official Opposition dissenting).

Mr. Speaker, I move—

The purpose of the proposal contained in this Bill is to make it possible for the general election of members of the Legislative Assembly of South-West Africa to take place simultaneously with the general election of members of Parliament in future. The relevant provision of the South-West African Constitution Act. 1968, i.e. section 14, at present provides that the Legislative Assembly continues for five years from the date of the first meeting thereof after each general election, and that it shall not be subject to dissolution save by effluxion of time.

After the general election of March, 1966, when these two general elections took place at the same time, the first meeting of this Assembly commenced on 15th April, 1966, and in terms of the present legal provisions, it will therefore not be dissolved before 16th April, 1971.

The Territory of South-West Africa is divided into six constituencies for the purpose of the election of members of Parliament, and into 18 constituencies for the purpose of the election of members of the Legislative Assembly, and this is done in such a way that each constituency for the House of Assembly comprises three constituencies for the Legislative Assembly.

During the general election of 1966 no problems worth mentioning were experienced with this dual election; in fact, it was found that the advantages attached to it, made it desirable for these two general elections to take place on the same day in future. This not only resulted in a considerable saving in expenditure to the electorate, political parties and the State, but the operation of the postal vote system and the system for special votes was facilitated in South-West Africa in that presiding Officers for this type of votes were available throughout the Republic and were on duty particularly after normal Office hours. An absent voter therefore had to visit a presiding Officer only once in order to record his vote for both these elections. As a result, voters had to travel the distance to the polling booth only once on election day to record their votes in this Territory where it is often necessary to travel great distances for this purpose. To the organizers of political parties and candidates the advantages are also considerable, as will be quite evident to those of us who know what demands are made during a general election on everybody who is involved.

It is therefore proposed in this Bill that it the House of Assembly should at any time within a period of five years from the date of the first meeting of the Assembly after a general election be dissolved by the State President by Proclamation in the Gazette, the Assembly shall automatically dissolve on the day upon which the House of Assembly is so dissolved. If this proposal is accepted, it would, therefore, be possible for the Administrator of the Territory to issue the election proclamation in terms of section 35 of the Electoral Act, in terms of which the 22nd April, 1970, will be also laid down as the election day for the election of members of the Legislative Assembly.

This Bill deals particularly with the particular circumstances of South-West Africa, although it does raise an important issue and that is simultaneous elections for members of the Legislative Assembly and members of this House. In this context, dealing with South-West Africa alone, I do not want to raise an issue which may be regarded as a precedent for the rest of the Republic and which is not now before us. But I want to say to the hon. the Minister, that in supporting this measure, as we will do, because of the particular circumstances of South-West Africa, we do not wish to be regarded as having committed ourselves, without debate and without discussion, to a similar attitude in so far as simultaneous parliamentary and Provincial Council elections in the Republic are concerned. There are different circumstances and I merely want to place that on record in supporting this measure in so far as South-West Africa is concerned.

The privilege which has been granted by the hon. the Minister to South-West Africa is welcomed, not only by both political parties in South-West Africa, but also by all White inhabitants because, as you know, Sir, South-West Africa is sparsely populated but covers a vast area. The area of South-West Africa is two-thirds of that of the four provinces of the Republic of South Africa. As the hon. the Minister has said, South-West Africa is divided into six House of Assembly constituencies, one of which is an urban constituency. One of the constituencies covers an area which is bigger in extent than that of the Free State. That is why we welcome this Bill. We have already had simultaneous elections in 1950 and in 1966, and in practice it worked very well. That is why I say that we in South Africa are grateful for this privilege which is being granted to South-West Africa and we thank the hon. the Minister for it.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a Second Time.

Committee Stage taken without debate.

Bill read a Third Time.

I move, as an unopposed motion—

Agreed to.